The Hot Country (2 page)

3

So I beat it down to the docks, where I found out the location at sea of the German ship, the
Ypiranga,
said to be carrying fifteen million rounds of ammunition. Then I stopped at the telegraph office where Clyde had wired me. It seemed that half the Great White Fleet was also headed in my general direction, including the troopship
Prairie,
the battleship
Utah,
and Admiral Fletcher's flagship, the
Florida.
Things were getting interesting, but for now all there was to do was wait. So I ended up at a cantina I reconnoitered near my rooms.

Not that thoughts of Luisa Morales came back to me while I was drinking, not directly. I soaked up a few fingers of a bottle of
mezcal
and sweated a lot at a table in the rear of the cantina with my back to the wall and I watched the shadows of the
zopilotes
heaving past, the mangy black vultures that seemed to be in the city's official employ to remove carrion from the streets, and I thought mostly about what crybabies Thomas Woodrow Wilson and his paunchy windbag of a secretary of state William Jennings Bryan turned out to be. They complained about the dictator right next door in Mexico and his likely complicity in the murder of the previous president—not to mention his threat to American business—but when they finally found an excuse to invade the country, they grabbed twelve square miles and stopped and sat on their butts. Out of what Wilsonian moral principle? The one that let him invade in the first place but only a toehold's worth. What principle was that, exactly? I lifted my glass to Teddy Roosevelt and toasted his big stick.

I'd done that same thing in Corpus Christi a couple of weeks earlier with a guy who knew how it would all happen. I was waiting in Corpus for my expense money to show up at a local bank. I found a saloon with a swinging door down by the docks, but the spot I always like at the back wall had a gaunt
hombre
in a black shirt with a stuffed
bandolera
and beat-up black Stetson sitting in it. He saw me look at him. Coming in, I'd passed a couple of Johnnies rolling in the dirt outside gouging each other's eyes and I didn't want to add to the mood, so I was ready to just veer off to the rail. But the guy in the Stetson flipped up his chin, and the other chair at the table scooted itself open for me, a thing he did right slick, timed with the chin flip, like the toe of his boot had been poised to invite the first likely-looking drinking buddy.

So I found myself with Bob Smith and a bottle of whiskey. He was gaunt, all right, but all muscle and gristle, of an indeterminate age, old enough to have been through quite a lot of serious trouble but young enough not to have lost a bit off his punch. He had eyes the brown you'd expect of mountain-lion shit. He didn't like being called a “soldier of fortune,” if you please, he was an
insurrecto
from the old school, 'cause his granddaddy had stirred things up long before him, down in Nicaragua, and his daddy had added to some trouble, too, somewhere amongst the downtrodden of Colombia before all the stink about the canal, so this was an old family profession to him, and as far as personal names were concerned, I was to address him by how he was known to others of his kind, which was to say, “Tallahassee Slim.”

I said, “There's a bunch of you Slims in all this mess, it seems.”

He agreed happily, listing a few. Cheyenne and Silent and San Antonio. Dynamite and Death Valley and Deadeye. He and Birdman Slim had even spent time together with Villa last fall. Birdman was apparently Villa's one-man aeroplane regiment, having brought his spit-and-baling-wired Wright Model B down to recon and drop homemade bombs for Pancho. The plane got plugged by ground fire over Ojinaga and crashed, but Birdman Slim walked away pretty much unscathed from the wreck and beat it back up to El Paso to lick his wounds. Tallahassee Slim, after some legitimate accomplishments as a cavalry officer in the field, was appointed a major fund-raiser for Villa. He told me this simply, with an ironic shrug, not seeming to feel it was a violation of his
insurrecto
tradition. But after a stint in this capacity—mostly involving the railways and particularly those trains carrying government bullion or arms but not refusing the personal contributions of private citizens who happened to be on board—Tallahassee Slim had also come north to regroup himself and dally with some white women before heading south again. He and I traded war stories and I got around to complaining about Wilson, who I took to be a lily liver.

“Not exactly,” Tallahassee Slim said, leaning a little across the table and rustling the ammunition strapped to his chest. “At least a lily liver has a straightforward position. This guy isn't one thing or another. You hear how the man talks? Teddy would put his pistol on the table and call it a pistol. Old Woody sneaks his out and calls it the Bible. He preaches about upholding civilized values, stabilizing governments, giving the Mexicans or the Filipinos or whoever a fine, peaceful, democratic life. Not to mention protecting American interests, which means the oilmen and the railroad men and so forth. And as for the locals, you simply try and persuade the bad old boys who happen to be running a country we're interested in to retire to the countryside. Problem is, the
cojones
that got those fellas into power in the first place will never let them walk away. So when it comes down to it, Woody's going to go to war. Over a chaw of tobacco, too, when it's time. Mark my words.”

So we drank to Teddy Roosevelt, and I did mark those words. One thing I'd learned filling cable blanks from various
tierras caliente
for a few years already was to listen to anybody with live ammunition who called himself “Slim.”

And I also lifted my glass that first afternoon in Vera Cruz to Tallahassee Slim. A couple of times. I drank
mezcal
till it was too hot to stay upright and I decided to follow the example of those who actually lived with the infernal bluster of
el Norte
and I took a nap.

4

When I got back to my rooms I found my shirts and my dark trousers folded neatly at the foot of my bed, which led me to notice a quiet babble of female voices somewhere nearby.

I stepped out into the courtyard and Luisa and two other señoritas were over under a banana tree, hugging the shade and talking low. So she saw me looking at her and she rose and stepped into the sunlight, crossing to me but taking her time.

“Señor?” she said as she approached. “Your shirts are clean, yes? Your pants are pressed just right?”

Even in the United States of America, when a girl who works in a shop or a beanery or who does laundry, for a good example, gets a little forward, you take it in a different way than you would with a girl of money and fancy family who you meet somewhere official. I've had a few blue-blood girls say some pretty cheeky things in my presence in this day and age. But the shirt-washing Señorita Luisa Morales who stood before me, as beautiful as her face was—with maybe even some granddaddy straight from Castile—she was sure no
sangre azul,
and she was already plenty forward with me, and she didn't have to get up and come over and ask about my laundry based on me just looking in her direction. So given all this, it was natural to think she was ready to spend some private time together.

I speak pretty good Spanish, but my vocabulary has some gaps. The few things I know to say in this situation I picked up in cantinas and a
burdel
or two, and though I figured she was ready for the substance of those words, I was not feeling comfortable with the tone of them. She had a thing about her that I wasn't understanding. So trying to go around another way, I said, “Why don't you come on in and we check out the crease in my pants.”

She put on a face I couldn't decode. Then I said, “I speak softly and carry a big stick.”

Maybe Teddy loses something in translation. Or maybe not. She was gone before I could draw another breath. I remembered those big eyes going narrow just before she vanished, an afterimage like the pop of a newsman's flash.

Right off, I had a surprisingly strong regret at this. Not just the missed opportunity. The whole breakdown. But I still had too much
mezcal
in me and the afternoon was too hot, and so I took my siesta.

By the time I saw my señorita again, it was two days later, the German ship had arrived, and so had the U.S. Navy. Bunky and I went down to the docks first thing and the German ship was lying to, just inside the breakwater, with the American fleet gathered half a mile farther out. There didn't seem to be any serious action out there and it was only a few blocks inland to the
Plaza de Armas
. So I figured I had time to write a dispatch to Clyde.

I took what I'd decided would be my usual table in the
portales
and even had a couple of beers. Bunky was off on his own with his Kodak snapping what struck him as interesting, and he swung back to me and gave me a nod now and then. He was a former war correspondent himself, a hell of a good one, but he was taking his shots with film these days instead of words, which was a damn shame. Still, he could take a good one.

So we were well into the morning and Bunky had just checked in and was about to go off again when the local Mexican general, a guy named Maass—born a Mex but with German blood and blond, upright hair—marched a battalion's worth of government troops into the Plaza. I figured it was getting time for the off-loading of the
Ypiranga
. I was also the object of some nasty looks from a major on horseback as I finished my beer while the locals were discreetly heading for cover.

Bunky and I beat it back down to the docks, and it had already begun. I counted ten whaleboats coming in, full of American Marines, which I later learned were from the
Prairie
. No sign behind me, up the boulevard, of Maass sending his troops to meet them. I had my notebook and pencil stub in hand and Bunky took off to find his camera angles.

It all went fast and easy for our boys and for me during the next hour or so. The Marines, who numbered about two hundred, were followed by almost the same number of Bluejackets from the
Florida,
and they brought the admiral's stars and stripes with them. We took the Custom House without a shot being fired.

I was still waiting for the Mexicans to come down and put up a fight, but there was no sign of them. Meanwhile, a bunch of locals were gathering in the street to watch. A peon in a serape and sombrero called out “
Viva Mexico
” and threw a rock, and even before the rock clattered to the cobblestoned street twenty yards from a couple of riflemen, he was hightailing it away. The riflemen just gave him a look and the crowd guffawed and it was all turning into a vaudeville skit.

Then a detachment of Marines clad in khaki and wrapped with ammunition started to march through the street along the railway yards. They turned like they were heading for the Plaza. I signaled Bunky and took off after them. They were going down the center of the cobbled street, the
zopilotes
hop-skipping out of their way and giving them a look over their shoulders like these guys could be lunch. I was hustling hard and gaining on the Marines and they were passing storefronts and balconied houses. Mexicans were strung along the street watching like it was the Fourth of July.

Just as I was about to overtake the captain in charge of the detachment, I saw Luisa. She was up ahead with some other señoritas nearby but she was standing by herself and she was dressed in white and she was standing stiff with her chin lifted just a little. But I had a man's business to do first. I was up with the captain and I slowed to his pace and he gave me a quick, suspicious look when I first came up, but then he saw I was American.

“Captain,” I said, and I lifted my arm to point up ahead. “You've got about two hundred Mexican soldiers waiting for you in the Plaza.”

He gave me a quick nod of thanks and turned his face to halt his detachment, and at that moment I looked toward Luisa, who was just about even with me but I passed her with my next step and my next, and I slowed down, even as the detachment was coming to a halt, and it registered on me that Luisa had been watching me closely and I felt a good little thing about having her attention but at that moment the gunfire started. The crack of a rifle and another and a double crack and the Marines were all shifting away and I spun around, knowing at once that the rifles were up above, that the Mexicans were on the roofs, and Luisa had her face lifted to see and I leaped forward one stride and another and my arms opened and I caught her up, Luisa Morales, I swept her up in my arms and carried her forward and she was impossibly light and I pressed us both into the alcove of a bakery shop, the smell of corn tortilla all around us.

“Stay down,” I said, and I put my body between the street and her and I realized I'd spoken in English. “They're firing from the roofs,” I said in Spanish. “Don't move.”

She didn't. But she said, “They're not shooting at me.”

“Anyone can get hit.”

“They're shooting at you,” she said.

“I'm all right,” I said. “This is old news to me.”

A rifle round flitted past my ear—I could feel the zip of air on me—and it took a bite out of the wall of the alcove. I twisted a little to look into the street—I was missing the action—this was news happening all around me—and as soon as I did, I felt Luisa slip out past me and she was moving quick along the store line, heading away. Another round chunked close in the wall and there was nothing I could do about my spunky señorita and I pressed back into the alcove to stay alive for the afternoon.

5

It wasn't a bad spot, actually, to watch the skirmish. The Marines did a quick job of sharpshooting the Mexicans, some of them falling to the pavement below and others going down on the roofs or beating a fast retreat.

Then it was over. I stepped out of the alcove. Bunky was coming up from the direction of the docks and he was doing his camera work. I stayed with the Marines while they regrouped and tended to a couple of wounded. The Mexicans on the roofs turned out to be poor shots and the Marine captain thought they weren't regular troops. Meanwhile a scout came up and said Maass's men had moved out of the Plaza and off to the west. Later in the day the Mexicans would go over the hills on the western outskirts of town to flank the battalion of Marines in the railway yards and along the
Calle de Montesinos
by the American Consulate. The boys on the
Florida
would see what they were doing and break them up with the ship's guns and Maass and his men would all run away.

But for now the Marines mustered up and marched off toward the Plaza and I crossed onto the wide pavement in the sunlight and sauntered in the same direction. I was starting to shape a lead paragraph in my head. I passed a couple of dead Mexicans. I've seen plenty of dead bodies. My business is getting stories. You're dead, and your story's over.

Then up ahead I noticed a figure in white. I was very glad to see her. She'd gotten through the bullets okay. I headed for Luisa and she saw me coming. I was still not within talking distance and she said something to the girl next to her and moved off. I stopped. The girl Luisa spoke to looked at me with a blank face and then looked away. I'm not a masher. A little dense sometimes, maybe. I was ready to leave Luisa Morales entirely alone, if that's what she wanted.

Early the next morning, long before the sunrise, I woke abruptly to the scratch of a match. I turned my face and saw a candlewick flare up and glide to the night table, but before I could quite comprehend it all, the business end of a pistol barrel was resting coldly on my left temple. Floating in the candlelight was Luisa's face.

“You were working for them,” she said.

“Who?”

“The American invaders.”

I was reluctant to get into a political argument with a laundry girl who had a pistol pointed at my head. I chose my words carefully. “I'm a newsman,” I said.

“I saw you with the American officer, directing him.”

The pistol was getting heavier. If her weapon was cocked and her bearing in on me was unconscious, her tired hand could do something it didn't necessarily intend. I tried not to think about that. There were some other pressing issues. For one thing, her attitudes weren't adding up. I needed to talk to her about this, but I had to make the point carefully. I didn't remind her of her hatred of Mexican priests; they were all I could think of in her culture that might speak against her pulling the trigger. But I brought up the logical next thing.

“I don't think you're a supporter of General Huerta,” I said.

“I hate Huerta. Do you take me for a fool?” She nudged my head with the pistol for emphasis.

“No. Of course not. But these Americans. They're here to help free Mexico of Huerta. That's all.”

“Did you see who was dead in the streets?” she said.

Lying sweating in my bed, a pistol muzzle to my temple, I was still unable to set aside the impulse to deal in either the literal facts or the political rhetoric that are the goods of my trade. Rhetoric would be dangerous, and I was short on facts. I hadn't looked closely enough to identify the bodies. I wasn't saying anything, and I felt an agitation growing in Luisa. I felt it in the faint, nibbly restlessness of the steel against my head.

“Did you see who was dead in the streets?” she said again, very low, nearly a whisper.

“No,” I said.

“Mexicans,” she said. And she cocked the hammer.

My breath caught hard in my chest and I waited. She waited too. Weighing my Americanness, I supposed. Weighing my life. Charting a path for herself.

Then the hammer uncocked and clicked softly back into place. The muzzle drew off my skin. The candle flame vanished in a puff of her breath and I lay very still as she slipped through the dark and out of the room and out of the life she'd left for me.