Queen of America

  She heard crickets, but that’s all she heard.

  The Nogales raid exploded in the newspapers a few days after the dead were buried. Reporters came—more New Yorkers. The New York Times. The Los Angeles Times. Newsmen from Tombstone and Mexico and Fort Wayne, Indiana, jostled with her followers.

  Military men stood guard around the rooming house. Pinkertons asked to speak to her on behalf of the United States government. The People could not get to her. Soon, the room was full of scribes and detectives and officials. Ochoa didn’t dare show his face.

  Headlines threw her words on breakfast tables all over America. “Had No Part in Them! Asserts Girl Saint about Mexican Uprisings.”

  A rock came through a window.

  Signs bobbed in the street.

  VIVA SANTA TERESA.

  U.S. FOR AMERICANS, MEXES OUT.

  Tomás recognized one of the old Rurales who had come to Cabora years before and shot a pilgrim. He was dressed as a peasant and hobbled piteously among the thwarted followers outside the phalanx of reporters. The man had suspiciously bright white bandages wrapped around his arm and leg. When he pushed his way into the room, he locked eyes with Tomás, and the Sky Scratcher cross-drew his .44 and lodged it in the Rural’s left nostril.

  “Calma, guey,” he breathed. “Easy now, my son.”

  He reached into the assassin’s shirt and withdrew a saltbox derringer. Its four fat barrels made it a squat, ugly piglet of a gun. Tomás held it up in his left hand and shook it in the assassin’s face.

  “And this?” he asked.

  “You got me,” the Mexican admitted. “Are you going to kill me now?”

  “Why shouldn’t I kill you?”

  “The Saint wouldn’t approve of it.”

  “You were going to kill the Saint!”

  “I had my orders.”

  “Asshole,” Tomás said.

  He drew back the hammer of his .44. Those in the room gasped. The assassin’s eyes bugged. Teresita cried, “No!”

  Tomás spun the man around and kicked him in the backside, sending him tumbling into the street. He scrambled to his feet and dashed away, pursued by fanatics. Tomás pocketed the derringer and holstered the pistola and squared his shoulders. He was heroic—he caught his reflection in the wall mirror and scowled furiously and handsomely at himself. Adjusted his vest.

  “Teresita,” he announced into the overcrowded room, “we need to talk, and we need to talk now, and we need to talk alone.”

  The gathered scribes shuffled out and even Teresita had to admit that things were becoming impossible.

  “I tried your city,” he said. “I don’t like it. I’m sorry. Cities are for idiots, weaklings, and eggheads. Cities are full of smoke, piss, trash, and cabrones.”

  She said nothing.

  “I urge you, with the strongest possible sense of responsibility as your father—I am still, you must admit, your father—that you consider, at last, I mean, Christ, consider stopping this madness for one short season. Please! We retreat. We do not concede defeat, nor do we—oh, hell—renounce Jesus Christ. No! Of course we don’t! Don’t be silly! My dear girl, do I look like I’m joking? I am not. God”—he held a hypocrite’s hand over his heart and gazed skyward—“God calls us to duty, it’s true. But He also calls us to rest. On the seventh day and all that.”

  She watched him.

  “Rest, I tell you. I don’t know about you, but I am goddamned tired. Fed up, in other words. Done. Bored. I shit on cities! So!”

  He strode around as if hiking a hundred miles across the llano, bumping into things as he gestured wildly.

  “I propose to you, just as a brief respite, mind you, a retreat. We go back. Yes, to Arizona. But wait! We go back, but we go into the high country. My God! Are you aware of the high country? No, of course you aren’t. But it is cool there. They have pine trees and rivers.”

  “Cool?”

  “Damned cool, Teresa! It even snows up there. Come. Let’s go. Let’s go recoup. Eh? Ha-ha, eh? I see you thinking. I see you smiling. Just think: We can ride horses where nobody knows us. No more assassins. It’s safe, it’s quiet.”

  He waggled his eyebrows.

  “Oh, my dear. The clouds pass close enough to touch. And there are Indians.”

  “Indians?”

  “Indians all over the mountains.”

  “Indians.”

  He sat on the old man’s bed beside her chair and took her hand.

  “We shall make a home there. I can start Cabora Norte there. I will build you a chapel. I will build you a clinic. Whatever you want. But please, please, I implore you, for this once, allow us to live in peace.”

  She closed her eyes. She trembled. She fretted her hands together.

  “Is it truly possible,” Tomás asked, “that God would have you, of all His servants, spend the rest of your life in danger and misery? Really? What kind of God is that?”

  “Oh, Father,” she whispered.

  Finally, she wept.

  Twenty-Four

  BEFORE TERESITA AND TOMAS boarded the train to Solomonville, Aguirre and Ochoa pulled up to the station in Ochoa’s flatbed. Their driver was a notorious agitator and street musician, the ponytailed ruffian Romo. He was an associate of the Iberians, and he could be seen and heard singing drinking songs on corners with Valdivia and Bunbury. Aguirre, Ochoa, and Romo secretly pulled back the edge of a tarp they’d laid down so the weeping fanatics could not see their load. Under the big greased sheet lay dusty rifles. Romo gestured with his hat: Behold, the grand prize.

  “What is this?” Teresita demanded.

  “Bless them,” said Ochoa.

  “You’re insane.”

  “Bless them, I said.”

  “I will not.”

  “Your followers are being slaughtered in your name. Your ancestral lands are stolen and given away to the oppressor. You play the holy clown while your sons and daughters are destroyed. How dare you not protect them. Bless these guns, or you are killing these people.”

  Aguirre nodded sadly.

  “Evolution,” he reminded her.

  She looked at Romo.

  “What have you got to lose?” he said. “Hell, you already lost everything.”

  “Fine.”

  She raised her hand over the guns once. Cameras clicked. She threw her hand behind her and hurried into the train car. Aguirre felt a coldness in his right cheek, and that side of his face went slack and numb. He clutched it and felt the spit drool out of his mouth. The numbness faded away after three days, but he retained a certain fear of Teresita ever after.

  Back across the desert. Back across New Mexico. Back through Spanish bayonets and creosotes, into the mad rocks and saguaros of the Sonoran desert.

  Tomás was serene. He sat with his feet up on the seat before him, working on his teeth with a pick. He didn’t smoke and he didn’t drink.

  “El Paso,” he said to her. “Didn’t care for it.”

  “I loved El Paso,” she said. “I didn’t like the complications.”

  Teresita spent most of the trip asleep. She could not believe how tired she was. It was almost as though once she’d admitted that she was weary, her body betrayed her. Even her mouth was tired. She did not want to speak to anyone, even God. She did not even want to use it to chew—she never wanted to eat again. She wished to be sent to a convent where the sisters took vows of silence. If they would only let her sleep for a year.

  In her mind, the high country was almost as colorful as God’s heavenly valley.

  “Are there deer?” she asked Tomás.

  “Of course. Trout too.”

  She nodded.

  “What is this place called?”

  “Clifton.”

  “Cleeptong,” she repeated.

  “Cliff Ton. The town of cliffs. Cliff-town.”

  “Cliffs?”

  “Oh yes. Mines. Mines everywhere. You’ll love it.”

  She fell asleep and saw Huila in her dream. The old healer
was walking ahead of her, looking back over her shoulder. Teresita tried to catch her, but she could not run fast enough. “Come back!” she called, but Huila never slowed down. On her back, she carried a woven mochila, and the satchel held within it everything that Teresita had ever known or loved. Just before she disappeared over a small ridgeline, Huila turned around and stared at her. She waved once, then stepped over, out of sight.

  To get to Clifton, they first had to return to Solomonville. They arrived as if erasing their original journey to Texas. The same train came back along the same track into the same rattling station. Nothing had changed at all. Even Mr. Van Order and Juana stood beside their same wagon, waving again.

  Teresita dragged herself from her seat. Tomás bounded. He was almost flying. He shouted happy orders at everyone. He hustled her through the car, actually smacking her backside.

  “¡Muévete!” he encouraged. “Move it, lazybones! ¡Andale!”

  She was… appalled… but she laughed, against her will.

  Tomás made an acrobatic leap from the train car’s iron step and landed already in a slight bow before Juana.

  He swept her hand to his lips and kissed the fragrant air a half inch from her flesh.

  He spun on Mr. Van Order and smacked the dust out of the man’s coat in a series of brutally fraternal abrazos.

  Teresita was just stepping out, squinting in the sun, when Mr. Van Order gestured behind him.

  Tomás turned and let out a bark of joy. Segundo! That old buzzard! Back from Mexico!

  And then Tomás let out a cry the likes of which Teresita had never heard.

  His hands rose to the sky.

  He fell to his knees.

  Gabriela Cantúa was standing behind Segundo, and she came forward and bent to Tomás and accepted his weeping face and pressed it to her bosom.

  Part III

  OF LOVE AND THE PRECIPICE

  Teresita’s father chose Clifton, Arizona, because he had visited there while the family was at San José. He had liked the town for its natural beauty, reminiscent of Alamos, as well as for its bustling mining activities. He acquired a few acres of land with several small houses in the narrow valley in the lower part of town, just north of the San Francisco River. The location was sufficiently remote to discourage agents of the Mexican government and religious fanatics with designs on Teresita’s life.

  —WILLIAM CURRY HOLDEN, Teresita

  Twenty-Five

  SUCH BEAUTY, SUCH SILENCE, such clarity.

  Children everywhere.

  Segundo’s wagons brought more than Gabriela—they carried an army of Tomás Urrea’s offspring, along with a chest of gold Mexican pesos, comfortable beds, a sewing machine, a hundred rifles, twenty pounds of sun-jerked beef planks, cotton material in drooping bolsters—red, blue, white, checkered, black, yellow. Something called calico. Tomás made everyone laugh when he announced upon seeing it, “El calico me da cólico.”

  The boys nudged one another.

  “That cloth’s so ugly it makes the boss sick,” they confided.

  Segundo brought delicious dried tamarinds, bisnaga and camote candies, blocks of panocha, tin bins of fermenting maíz masa that might not make tortillas anymore but could make corn beer and Indian tejuino. Segundo brought tequila. He brought long stalks of sugarcane, great burlap sacks of pinto beans, bags of dried corn kernels, lime, a heavy stone-lidded pot of clover honey, chiles verdes, chiles Tabasqueños, chipotles and jalapeños, guayabas and mangoes. He had a sealed pot of the heinously pungent little objects known as nanchis. Neither Teresita nor the animals would touch a nanchi. He brought a potted avocado tree and a potted olive tree. And, on his second trip up from Alamos, he brought the Tubac house girl, Dolores.

  “I would like to introduce you to my fiancée,” he announced.

  Teresita stifled a snort, but Tomás shook with a palpable fit of the horrors.

  He was making a home for his beloved, the exquisite Gabriela Cantúa. Mother of his daughter Anita, as precocious at six as Teresita had been when she was a child. And Gabriela bearing him another already! And the children of his marriage, here for the wonders of America. American educations. American careers.

  The months in this property below Clifton and Morenci had been kind. Fruitful. Tomás enjoyed sun, hard work, familia, money, and cascades of mother’s milk showering his face in the holy debauchery of his bedroom. “It is my little fountain.” Gabriela blushed as she erupted. “Gushing for you.” His beloved tasted of sugar.

  He strode about again in tight black trousers with silver-studded belts. Gabriela loved to cook, and even though they had an American woman who made their meals all week, Gaby took over on the weekends. Her cooking had given him a paunch, but he did not care about his paunch. He celebrated steaming pork carnitas falling into tender riots on his tortillas. He drooled like a dog when the chiles rellenos were searing on the flame, their caustic smoke announcing them to the world, their fat bellies gurgling with yellow cheese as they wore their egg-batter coats into the frying pan. He crunched a hundred fried tortillas awash in pico de gallo salsa and crushed avocado wedges with lime. He sucked goat cheese off the tips of his fingers; he sucked salt and chile powder off orange slices; he sucked marrow from deer bones; he sucked coffee out of his incredible whiskers. His whiskers threw small bolts of white across his lip now, and he also did not care about these. He slung his pistolas low, like the Iberians had in far El Paso. He used eyeglasses to read, las antiparras, but he didn’t complain about this either. Perhaps, oh, if there were the slightest quibble, it would be that his tender, his holy, his wicked Gabriela had limited his access to liquor. Of course, he found his ways. A barn could hide much brandy. His one glass of delightful port wine with supper was often his twentieth drink of the day.

  He was busy again! Fences. Cows. He hired and fired workers before there was any work to be done. He busied himself in exquisite misery with great ledgers where wavering lines of brown numbers danced as he held his head and delightedly cursed his fate. He had dung on his boots again—and a woman who did not allow him to track it in the house. He had money. If he could rope the money and brand it, he would.

  He rode a savage little pony that Venado Azul had brought him from the desert playas of eastern Arizona. The pony was never tired and never scared, ignored lightning and thunder, stomped rattlesnakes to death, chewed through hitching posts, and stripped paint off the sides of buildings with his great yellow teeth. The animal mounted cows, donkeys, other horses. He ate books. The pony hated pigs but loved the barn cat, and they spent many hours in confabulations behind the stacked hay bales. Tomás named him Caballito Urrea, and the pony was not alone; all the animals had apparently been adopted by the family. The bull was El Toro Urrea. The sow was La Cochita Urrea. The green parrot was Periquito Urrea, and he was apparently an egomaniac, for he spent his days announcing “Periquito! Periquito!” to the world. Perhaps he thought they were all named Periquito too. The chickens, alas, did not earn family names, though Teresita and the horde of small Urrea children did grant them titles in secret ceremonies: Misteriosa, Feather Brain, El Drumsticks, Aunt Ca-Ca Maker, Mr. Ochoa.

  Tomás busied himself with the colorful town up-mountain from them. Clifton’s elite found him delightful, and they were insatiably curious about the Saint. Moved yet a bit baffled by her enthusiasm for miners and house girls and burrito makers in smoky little kitchens. Dr. Burtch, the great physician of the town, often sat on the porch and chatted with Teresita about things medical. She narrated various recipes for potions that he could experiment with in his clinic.

  Tomás had barely mentioned in his various enthusiastic outbursts that very few fanatics came to their door, aside from the insistent Dr. Burtch. He had paused long enough to congratulate himself on his brilliance—who was going to drag all the way up these mountains? Especially if they were dying! Ha. It must be sad to be them, he told himself. But he put it all out of his mind because there was work to be done. There were horses to ride, ne
ighbors to cajole, trees to fell, a lumber mill to be designed. He telegraphed Aguirre and requested his assistance.

  Caballito Urrea merely tolerated Tomás, but he seemed to enjoy Teresita. He had many opportunities to know her well—her boredom was complete. She had so little to do. Her father was far too busy to even notice her. And Gabriela, well—she was a mother, and a stepmother, and a wife. She was so adult, suddenly. Who did she think she was? She and Tomás muttered little endearments to each other that others couldn’t hear, and they flounced around giggling like chulos. What kind of behavior was that?

  But Tomás had been drunk with Gaby since he’d first seen her all those years ago in her father’s rude little roadside eatery. Smitten by her hair and her saucy attitude and by something else ineffable, some feminine magic Teresita had studied but failed to comprehend. Whatever it was, it was enough to pry Tomás from his marriage to the formidable Loreto Urrea and engage him in this vast romance, this epic of delights. Teresita had never known what to think of her father making off with one of her girlhood friends. It was baffling. Irritating. But it was… Tomás.

  Little Anita tried to follow Teresita around, but she was impatient with her sister. Anita thought Teresita could teach her things. But Teresita was not yet ready to be Huila. She loved the girl, but really. In the parlor, Anita made her demands known.

  “Teach me. Take me with you.”

  “Go away,” Teresita scolded. “You’re bothering me.”

  “I want to learn.”

  “This is not for children.”

  “You were a child, Teresita.”

  “Yes, and look how I turned out! Now scat.”

  Tomás overheard this conversation and pulled Teresita aside after Anita had huffed upstairs.

  “Not for her,” he said.

  “What is not for her?”