The Hot Country (33 page)

Villa was striding this way, running the show, calling for two sabers. All around me bets began. The cockfighters calling out “
Gringo!
” or “
Alemán!
” and showing their bets with hand signals and looking for others making the same bet, pairing up. Mensinger was stripping off his shirt. I figured I'd better keep the sun to our side; it would blind me reflecting off his whiteness. I was just standing here. A little apart from all this. Watching. Which could be the death of me. I was a reporter no longer. That was a German agent standing over there, preparing to kill me. I was an American agent. Standing here. In the middle of the action. Creating the action.

I straightened. I started unbuttoning my shirt. Fine. I'd show my fresh scar to remind Villa who I'd fought and killed for lately. Not that it would do any good if I was run through with a saber. I took off my shirt and tossed it aside. Villa was standing near me. He had a saber in each hand, both of them the older British-style, slightly curved, cut-and-thrust swords. He gave me one. Villa and I looked each other in the eyes as I took it. I said, “Who are you betting on,
Jefe
?
”

“The German,” he said, showing his bad teeth in a big smile.

I said, “In the spirit of my country's friendship with Mexico, I will cover your inevitable losses.”

Villa laughed.

I was glad I didn't choke on the words. At the moment I was not confident.

Villa moved off toward Mensinger, bearing the other saber.

I whipped my sword in the air half a dozen times, getting the feel of it, the heft of it. It was heavier—strikingly heavier—than the stage swords. I looked toward Mensinger, who now had his saber. His heels were pressed tightly together and he was mincing his feet outward till they were at right angles to each other. He'd spent his life learning to fight with a sword on the even, stone floors of a university fencing club. He had a necessary routine. Its full effectiveness was based on his opponent fighting from the same routine.

Villa was heading back toward me, intending, I assumed, to step between Mensinger and me and give some sort of starting signal. And looking at General Pancho Villa, the bandit rebel and would-be savior of Mexico, I thought of his tactics. His men were never driven around in regimented step but encouraged to fight personally and of their free will, in contrast to the
Federales,
who fought stiffly, by the book. His army was relentless and fast-moving and full of tricks. He was always adapting to fit the terrain, fit his men's skills.

I took one sidestep to the right, placing the approaching Villa directly between me and Mensinger. Villa stopped at this. He looked me in the eyes, his face pinching in thought. What was I up to?
You should know, Pancho
. I put my sword hand in front of me, chest high, and I rotated the saber to point to the sky. An improvised present-arms. I said, “I have learned from you,
Jefe
.”

And I took off in a sprint, veering right, doing an end run around Villa and then curving back toward Mensinger at a sharp angle of approach, from off to his left, and he was slow even turning his face to me and I was almost upon him and I pulled up, raising my right arm, and I was swinging the sword as he lurched toward me off balance and he lifted his sword to parry and his saber and mine clanged between us and he stumbled away.

He was quick with his hands.

I was glad I was not fighting by his rules.

My arm was doing an independent thing—since my head was simply crying for it to attack and attack and attack—my arm was swinging back to slash again, and Mensinger had caught his stumble and was straightening and my arm stopped its backward swing and I should have been thrusting now, not slashing, I was giving him a chance to recover and he was upright and trying to set his feet, still trying to establish the only rules he knew to fight by but I was slashing and my arm whipped around and he threw his own sword arm partly across his body, awkward still but he caught my sword and my arm flinched back from his blow, and I saw him doing what I should have done, setting up to thrust, recovering his arm from the stroke and making it glide right and it glided and as I tried to refocus my own arm his gliding stopped and I knew he would thrust and my legs were still at immediate call and I pushed back hard on my feet, I leap-stepped back and away and his sword rushed forward but I was propelling backward and his sword stretched for my chest but I was just out of his reach.

I stopped my backward flight and set myself and I saw Mensinger extended there—his sword stretched into empty air—and I realized I first had to close this distance from him to do what my arm wanted to do but my arm did it anyway—too soon—I thrust at him from a slight side angle and the tip of my saber ran and ran and stopped short of his chest but I did not overextend, I knew not to lunge too far even in the middle of the thrust when I recognized the gap was too big between us, and his saber flicked and parried my blade aside and he set himself for a riposte and because I withheld a little I could sidestep again to the right, I started crabbing around him and I realized I better keep him on the defensive but I was simply moving without attacking and I would look bad to Villa if I didn't attack and I was allowing Mensinger to get his balance and keep his balance as I moved and he was deftly following my sideward movements now, waiting for me to stop, and I was looking bad, and I stopped sidestepping and I set myself and I thrust and he parried and I moved to the side as he thrust back and he was confident now and focused and I had to take some sort of stand or I'd lose Villa and I was thinking too much and I was feeling slow and Mensinger was faster than a thought and I'd stopped moving and I thrust at him and it was weak and he parried almost nonchalantly and I was even thinking about thinking now and I did not see the twist of his wrist after his parry and his blade flashed and I felt a sharp burn on my left cheek.

He was confident again, and it had kindled his arrogance. He thought he could toy with me. I'd just given him the opportunity to run me through and he hadn't taken it. Instead, he'd given me a Heidelbergian cut to the cheek. He let his sword linger now, just a brief moment, as he happily watched me bleed. His blade pulled back ever so slightly and it dropped a little, though he thought—and he was probably right—that he could thrust it into my chest at any moment of his choosing now that he was set and I was standing flat-footed before him. My sidestepping would work for only so long since he'd regained his balance and his composure, and I was still very aware of Villa watching us, assessing us. I had to throw Mensinger off balance again and finish this.

And I thought of Mensinger's wife. What I knew from her letter.

“Quick hands to the cheek,” I said to him, putting the sneer in my voice like a saber thrust. “Like the way you strike Anna.”

His eyes flickered at this. He was a little off balance now in his head. His wife was suddenly here with us. He was wondering how I could know this. And my thinking of Anna made me think of someone else.

But first I needed to shock Mensinger again.

Without taking my eyes off his, I took two quick backward steps, putting a little distance between us, and before he could come forward to engage me, in one smooth unthreatening gesture I lifted my sword arm out to the side, pointing the blade at a right angle away from him, and immediately I flicked the saber out of my hand. It flew off and chunked onto the ground and I was lowering my arm and empty hand, quickly, quickly, swinging them down and then continuing on, out of his sight, to the back of me, even as he shifted his eyes very briefly to my sword lying on the desert floor somewhere off to the right, and my hand moved to the small of my back and I grasped the handle of Luisa's knife and my hand was rushing upward now—holding the knife as easily and loosely controlled as in a mumblety-peg throw—I lifted the knife upward and backward. Mensinger's eyes were returning to me and my hand rose and I felt the leather wrapping of the handle against my palm and I even had time to realize that my outward knife-throwing manner had all my life been like a Mexican's, starting from behind the neck, and my knife hand was ready, even as Mensinger's eyes fixed on me once more. He did not see the knife, and though my posture may have struck him as odd, he overlooked that in order to smile me a now-you-will-die-you-
Schweinehunde
-American smile.

And I threw the knife. It buried itself what looked to be about three inches into his chest. A little lower, however, than directly in the heart. He did not die more or less instantly. Instead, he looked wide-eyed astonished. He dropped his sword. He staggered back. He sat abruptly down, stiff-legged. He was done, Friedrich von Mensinger.

I did not intend to go twist the knife in him or assault him further. He could die on his own. Like a Mexican bullfighter, I turned my back on him. I started to walk slowly away from him. I realized the crowd was roaring. Pancho Villa was suddenly at my side.

He handed me a handkerchief from his pocket. It was, surprisingly, brilliantly, whitely clean.

I pressed the handkerchief against my left cheek.

Villa said, “You have been a good student.” And he laughed.

And a gunshot cracked loud.

I thought, for a flicker of a moment, that now I was dead.

The crowd went instantly quiet.

I didn't seem to be dead.

Villa and I spun around.

Mensinger, having sat down flat on his butt with his legs straight out, was having trouble falling completely over to his side. But the right half of his face, which was sharply turned our way, was a bloody pulp, and he swayed at last and fell backward, twisting to his left. As he did, his right arm swung outward, and as he settled onto the ground, that arm fell over his right hip.

And still in his hand was a pocket Mauser, which he'd drawn and was intending to use on me. Perhaps even on both of us.

I looked at Villa beside me.

He was staring intently at the pistol.

He turned his face to me and we exchanged a look I have seen on battlefields: two comrades in a moment of shared danger that has passed. And he looked beyond me now, toward the place where the shot came from.

I turned as well, and even before I saw her, I realized from an afterimage of Mensinger in my head that the bullet taking him out had entered through his right cheek. The unscarred one. A statement shot. Her signature.

And there she stood.

Her right arm was still straight out and absolutely sharpshooter-still. In her hand was an old Colt Army revolver.

She was dressed in black. A skirt of black, but I recognized the jacket from the lamplight in Vera Cruz. She had no
rebozo
and her hair was rolled tightly up on her head. Villa was walking toward her. I thought she would turn her arm now and shoot Pancho Villa dead.

But she did not.

As Villa neared Luisa, her arm slowly fell. He stopped before her. He spoke. She spoke. I could not hear. The crowd was murmuring. I found myself thinking she might yet shoot him. They talked. The wound on my cheek burned hotly. I'd killed another man. They talked. I'd killed another man, and this was a dispassionate thought. This was the attitude of the men I'd made a career writing about. The men who went to a place away from where they were born, away from where they were children, where they were young and had never killed anyone; and in this other place they killed, they killed in service to their country, they killed because they must or they would be killed. And eventually they did it and did not feel it. Luisa and Villa talked. I had killed and I could pass the bodies by in a street and not even glance their way.

And Villa nodded, and he turned his back on Luisa, blocking her from my sight, and he raised his hand to the crowd. They fell instantly silent. And he called out to us, “From today onward, this
soldadera
will ride with the Army of the North.”

The crowd cheered.

57

I do not understand women.

I walked away. I did not look back.

Later, Pancho Villa stood beside me and put his hand on my shoulder while one of his doctors in one of his hospital boxcars stitched my wound, my
Schmiss,
and I passed his final test. I did not flinch at the pain.

I executed the details of my mission, as instructed, and Pancho Villa shook my hand with a vow of friendship for the United States of America. He put my
colorado
sombrero back on my head. I paid him the amount of his lost wager. We laughed together.

Some of his men escorted me across
estado
Nuevo León to Laredo. Tallahassee Slim and Hernando Soto were not among them, as they were off robbing a train.

I boarded a train for Chicago. A train safe from bandits.

Trask and Clyde both wanted me back.

I was finished with Mexico.

Whatever I do not understand about women began with my mother. But when I boarded that train, one thing about her seemed clear to me. She needed to be rescued.

So on the way to Chicago, I found myself in another taxi leaving Union Station on a steamy May night in the city of my birth. I did not have a clear plan. I realized, though, as soon as we headed out, that I did not want to do another walk Down the Line on Basin Street. The taxis could only work the perimeter of Storyville, so I told my driver to drop me at Claiborne and Conti, The District's far corner. I could walk the quieter few blocks along Conti down to Basin, where the main street ran into St. Louis Cemetery Number 1. The direction Mother was heading the last time I saw her. I figured I could think a little on that walk. For all the time I'd lately spent thinking on the train, I'd come up with no plan whatsoever about how to save my mother from what she was presently doing. Save her to what? I had nothing to offer.

But I was on Conti and I was walking toward Basin and this was a mistake. I was at the low-price end of the street-level, short-time cribs. The older whores, the stranger ones, the ones who were simply used up, were on this block, and in the incandescence they all were jaundiced and most of them were mostly naked and in this first block they were calling at me and offering quite a lot for a dime, just a dime, a thin dime for a lush lady, a dime for a blow a poke a chunk a crack a flop. And I wondered where my angel-faced octoroon was now, thirteen years later, certainly no longer at Willie V. Piazza's house in expensive striped stockings. Did she cost a dime now? If I recognized her would I rescue her instead?

And in the next street they were two bits. And from behind every incandescent-lamp-stained body in every doorway on every tiny, bed-filled room wafted the smell of lye, which they kept in a pan under the bed to throw in the face of any customer who got rough. And I stopped considering anything at all about any of these women, and they went to four bits across Marais and they were a dollar across Liberty and then I crossed Franklin and on my left began the cemetery and I was walking fast now, just needing to find my mother and take her by the arm and whisper to her, low,
We have to go now, we have to go,
and I wouldn't even think about how every man in the place assumed I was her young man for the evening.

And I turned the corner onto Basin and I headed down the street and I was bumping past the strolling men and suddenly the curtain of bobbing heads before me parted for a moment and I saw my mother heading this way with some bowlered, thick-mustachioed Johnny on her arm. The curtain closed again briefly, but I stopped. I let the men flow past me and I waited for her, one moment and another and another and I didn't have a weapon, my knife stayed in Mensinger, who was dead in another country, and my Browning stayed in my checked bag because why would I need a weapon simply to ask my mother to go home now, even if I didn't know where home would be in this circumstance—except perhaps simply with me—and even if I didn't know how to persuade her if she said no. But now I thought it might have been a mistake not to bring a weapon.

And the shifting bodies shifted away once more, and thirty feet before me was Mother and this man and she was looking up at him and I could not wait even a few more moments for her to be in front of me. I called out “Mother,” and it was loud, it was way too loud.

And her face turned to me and the man's face turned and she was such a good actress, so very good, and I knew that whatever was going on, keeping her composure would be the appropriate response for whatever character she was playing now in her life, but instead, her eyes went wide and her mouth even fell open a bit, and meanwhile the man beside her—and I could see it was not just a bowlered and mustachioed face but still another oft-beat-upon face—was this my mother's type, dear God?—was this a thing I never noticed?—this man was not astonished at the sight of me, he was pissed, greatly, and he was reaching into his coat and I took a step toward him and I wished again to have a weapon because a little damn pocket Mauser just like Mensinger's was coming out and what an idiotic irony this would be to end up dead from that and I was taking another step and this guy was used to drawing fast and the muzzle was out and starting to swing down and I was lifting a hand that I was not sure what I'd do with and suddenly another pistol appeared over the Johnny's shoulder, a big one, a Browning like mine and there were only so many good weapons in the world and I was caught in my head thinking of these same two pistols back in Mexico and I wondered if I was getting nostalgic over pistols and I wondered if nostalgia could get me killed now, except the Johnny's head thumped forward a little and the Browning was stuck on the back of it and the Mauser paused in its track to a shot at my chest, and attached to the Browning was another bowler and mustache who I'd normally take to be part of the Johnny's gang except for the gun-and-head relationship. And now my own head dipped a little forward from the steel-heavy push of a muzzle and a couple of voices were recommending a general cessation of movement and the man behind the Johnny was reaching around and taking the Mauser.

My mother piped up quick and said, “Phil. He's okay. He's my son.” And my own head was released and Mother hooked my arm and was guiding me insistently away from the others and across the street and into the shadow of the Southern Depot passenger shed.

She stopped me and she turned me and she looked up into my face and her eyes were vast and searching and deep dark—the eyes I could look at in any mirror, the part of my mother I carried most obviously upon myself—and her hand came up and hovered over my stitched-up cheek and she said, “What have you done?”

I said, “That's the question I've come here to ask you.”

“You damn fool of a boy,” she said. “I told you to stay away.”

“Then you shouldn't have given me so much information.”

She took a sudden, deep breath.

“You wanted me to do this,” I said.

“No. No. I just wanted an audience of sorts.”

“An audience?”

She heard in my voice now what I'd been thinking.

She said, “If my best slapping hand wouldn't land on your stitches, I'd make you pay dearly for that tone and all that's behind it.”

I didn't say anything. She looked at me hard in the eyes for a moment and then she wagged her head.

She said, “It's all because my wonderful role, to be wonderfully played, can never be truly seen.”

I didn't understand. I waited.

“My darling,” she said, dropping her voice into a vibrant whisper, “I am working in Storyville as a secret agent for the Pinkertons.”

She paused, but not for me to speak. She was playing the revelatory scene. After holding me suspended, she said, “A large number of wanted men pass through this place. Very bad men. I identify them. I peel them off. The Pinkerton Detective Agency takes them away.”

I was, of course, tempted to speak. My mother and I grew up sharing secrets and ironies and a sense of the mad, unlikely scripts we were cast in beyond the footlights, but I found myself keeping my own counsel now, taking in the ironies, working up to giving her a kiss and walking away. So I remained silent and she played on, only too happy to float uninterrupted upon her dramatic pauses.

“Usually,” she said, “this transpires with more discretion than in the case of Solomon Ward, bank burglar and murderer, whose face I recognized and whose apprehension you so ostentatiously interrupted.”

We looked deeply into each other's eyes for a long moment. She'd spoken her line, given me my cue. She waited. I knew how to work a silence. I have learned much from my mother.

And then I simply asked, “Do you think I've compromised you?”

“No, my darling. Don't worry. I think we'll be all right.”

“I'm sorry, Mother,” I said. “But I'm glad I've put my mind at ease.”

“Me too,” she said.

And I gave her a hug and she inquired after me a little bit and I told her a little bit and we hugged again and she kissed me on my good cheek and I kissed her on both of hers, her preference, in the style of the French, and I explained that I had a train to catch and she sent me off by saying, “My darling son, I know you have always felt my place was in the great body of classic literature. But this work I am doing is great work as well. It is real. It is deeply representative of our unsettled times. It is all about life and death and the struggle for the good and the true.”

I took her hands in mine and I said, “My darling mother, I could not agree more.”

And I let go of her and I walked away.

On the train to Chicago the next day, rushing along the great Mississippi River outside Memphis, the past few weeks began to settle into me. No. Not settle. Perhaps decompose. I thought of Diego. How I likely would never see him again. How there was one more
papi
in this world who had vanished. I thought of Luisa. And I stopped myself thinking of Luisa. I thought of my mother and I found I did not clearly know what to feel about her. I had an explanation for Storyville, but I did not fully understand. I was happy for the vibrancy of her voice and the buoyancy in her body, but I didn't like the risks she was running. Though maybe the risks were necessary for the sense of renewed life in her. Maybe that much of it I did understand. After all, the risks of my own life were greater now, and they promised to grow greater still. And I felt strangely happy about that. As The Bard said, “All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” I'd played at watching others play at the primary narratives of this world. I had a chance to do more now. I would do more.