Dusty blue twilight appears over the Sierra Madre of Northern Mexico drawing muted colours from the chaparral slopes of the piedmont. A fringe of gold creeps along the crooked limestone peak of Las Mitras Mountain and across a barren plain of sand and rock, a hundred miles of wire fences hum in the morning breeze as the night retreats. Daylight trickles into the valley. With the dirt road pressed firmly against his cheek, Ramón Bernal's contorted face appears below the crumpled rim of a fedora. He lies where he fell several hours earlier, collapsed outside the blacksmith’s shop like a forgotten antique draped in an ochre blanket of dust which rests in the creases of his tattered suit and skin. An empty bottle sits in the dust beside him. Sporadic bursts of breath escape through his matted moustache which clumps with the remnants of last night’s meal. Above the thatched rooftops, spirals of smoke muster and rise into an empty sky while the clatter of cooking pots rattles through the pueblo below. In a nearby street, the cry of a baby echoes out in response.
Forty miles away, a telephone rings in the breakfast room of a large mansion. A thin, yellowed hand appears from behind a large newspaper and lifts the brass receiver.
‘Si….Bernal? Gracias,’ comes a hushed male voice. ‘Muchas gracias.’
* * *
The morning passes and Ramón lies motionless in the road as the village revolves around him as if he were invisible. When the boots of the kindly pastor reach his ribs shortly before noon, he wakes, stands and pats the dust from his hat and sleeves. Drawing the back of his hand across his forehead in a smear of dirt and sweat, he gives a nod to the man stood scowling before him and steps slowly away, dragging the tang of stale beer and tequila behind him. The full weight of the sun pounds the earth with a charred fist, encircling him with a tiny shadow which pools at his feet. Already, the older women are nesting on their verandas for siesta; their bulging chins against their bulging bosoms, a dozen eyes following him suspiciously from the shadows.
Dragging a curtain of dust across the landscape, a 1931 Ford Model A silences the grazing goats as it sputters its way down the twisting mountain road, descending clumsily into the valley over potholes and stones and commanding the attentions of nearby rancheros who stop and look and tug at the peaks of their hats as their horses shift nervously beneath them.
‘Patrón,’ they mumble to the wind.
The same jaundiced man hunches in the back seat; the same newspaper hovers inches from his nose, the headlines flapping and shaking to the chatter of the suspension.
Pushing open the wooden door of the jacal, a wall of sunlight spills into the darkened room. On top of a roughly hewn table, Ramón’s newborn son lies sleeping in a wooden fruit crate lined with a cotton rebozo. He is a tiny tangle of flesh, peaceful and perfect with cinnamon skin and a coffee bean nose. Ramón rises on tiptoes in the doorway to observe his child, as if unseen hands hold him locked at the threshold of his own home. Mrs Bernal sleeps beneath the table. She breaths heavily in the stifling heat, drawing each lungful of air as if a grindstone lay across her ribs. From the stone sink, a tangle of bloodied rags overflows. Ramón takes all of this in from the veranda before silently closing the door and stepping back into the blinding sunlight to retrace his steps.
Another bottle of tequila stands on the bar before him ready to shoulder once again the burden of this day. He looks around the empty room, taking in a deep pensive breath while the cantina’s owner, a round man with a gummy smile, idly polishes glasses nearby. The cantina surrounds him like a museum; a record of the scars gouged into this remote mining community’s existence since the hacendado discovered iron ore a decade ago. The names of the men buried in each collapse are carved into the soft plaster wall and the bar’s scratched wooden countertop reads like a roll-call of the countless souls who have sat here seeking solace in a bottle of mezcal or in the faces of the pin-up girls who smile down from the cobwebs.
Ramón hears the sound of the motor engine before everyone else in the village. He heard it as soon as he returned home to the sound of his wife’s moans and cries spilling out across the village and into the darkness the night before. He found his neighbour on the veranda of his jacal, rocking back and forth on his heels in the sepia light of the oil lamps.
‘Ramón. Amigo,’ he called out. ‘It is time.’
Ramón said nothing. He drew alongside his friend and squinted his eyes to a horizontal tear in the cloth curtain. His face was a frown and he stood very still for a moment as the tall man beside him paced anxiously.
‘She is a young woman, Ramón. She is strong. She is in good hands, I know.’
‘Jorge,’ Ramón said still staring in at the huddle of bodies buzzing around his wife. ‘Our time here has reached its completion.’ A barbed wire scream tore the night as the women inside chanted ‘push, push, push’ in unison. A sweaty ball of a woman burst out through the door which swung on its hinges as she scurried off into the darkness muttering and shaking her head. They both turned their gaze to follow her.
Jorge stopped pacing and stood at Ramón’s side. ‘You could go, now, take a horse, vanish into the night,’ he whispered.
‘And one of these cronies sells us out for a picayune of favour from the Patrón. We would not make it to the mountains. I cannot risk her life again, Jorge, ever. Our freedom for that of our child.’
‘But, you, maybe…’
‘Goodbye, my friend.’
The two men shook hands, tipped hats with looks of finality and respect and parted there in the darkness. As Jorge resumed his occupation of the veranda, the light of the cantina drew Ramón ever closer while the sounds of childbirth faded off behind him.
* * *
And now, like a tide rising across the plain, the people of the pueblo crank in to life as the sound of the Patrón's approach reaches them also, the disjointed chorus of steel and tin rattling through the warm air. The women hurry inside and shoo children into doorways, slamming shutters closed and peering out through splintered cracks.
Outside the cantina, the young driver steps down from the motorcar and opens the rear door for his passenger. He scans the dilapidated village around him, slams the door closed and pulls a packet of cigarettes from his open leather jacket, revealing the handle of a revolver strapped beneath his arm.
The cantina’s owner slides from his stool into a back room.
‘I hear congratulations are in order, Señor Bernal,’ says a skeletal figure from the doorway. It leans and shakes slightly on an ivory handled cane. The voice is rough, throaty, thick with breath and tobacco.
Ramón gazes up to the faded row of lollipop smiles and swimwear pasted above the bar.
Shuffling into the dimly lit room, the old man stops as the light from the window falls across his face. Like a wood-block print, his features are deep and coarse, carved into papery skin that hangs like wet muslin. A grey moustache fidgets as he balances there in the middle of the room loudly churning pearls of saliva over in his mouth and licking at thin lips. A pair of wire coat hanger shoulders hold aloft a pristine black suit edged with silk trim. After pulling a silver pocket-watch from his waistcoat and replacing it, he takes a stool at the far end of the bar and turns to face Ramón who stares ahead, deftly turning an empty glass over and around in his hands.
‘You are surprised to see me, Ramón?’ he asks, tapping a reedy cigar from a golden tube. He pops a match in the rheumatic sphere of his palms. Twirls of smoke expand into the space between the two men. ‘No, Ramón. That is why your bottle holds more air than tequila, am I correct?’
‘You are correct,’ comes a defeated reply.
‘But Ramón, it is the first day of your son’s life. Why do you choose to spend it in here?’ He spreads his arms with a flourish and looks around the room sardonically.
Ramón puts down the glass and refills it slowly.
Across the bar, the owner reappears. He holds his hat to his chest, quietly clears his throat and slides a bulging envelope wrapped with string across the counter.
‘With our compliments, Señor Huerta,’ he says nervously.
The old man’s hands find the package and wedge it inside his jacket pocket and the saliva rolls and slathers in his mouth again. He turns back to Ramón and the barman slides away. He observes Ramón without speaking for a moment. His head wobbles on its bony plinth. He puffs his cigar.
‘And how is your beautiful wife today?’ he eventually asks.
The mention of her draws furrows across Ramón’s forehead.
‘You love her very much, yes? I know this. But, you…me, your wife. We all know how we came to find ourselves in this…situation. Yet, the world spins below us, does it not? The sand shifts, time drip drip drips and situations…they change.’
A strong wind twists and weaves through the streets outside, sending shivers through the spears of the yuca trees which rattle like bones. Ramón empties the glass, empties the bottle and eyes Señor Huerta severely, the sweat scoring a dark line across his collar. The old man licks his lips.
‘Ramón, your wife is very beautiful. We know this. But, we also know that she is a murderer. In the eyes of the law, she is dangerous. I know this, you know this, my people know this.’
‘It wasn’t her fault, Huerta,’ Ramón snaps. ‘The bastard had a knife to her throat-’
‘Minor details. Very minor. But, when my driver found you both huddled in my garage not three months ago, I did not see a murderer. I did not see the pretty face that was strewn across the walls of Mexico City. No, I saw the face of opportunity, the tiny soul of opportunity, growing inside her.’
‘You have your heir, Huerta. Just take the boy, and go.’
‘I invested in your wife, Bernal. I invested in you. I invested my silence and that of my people in your safety, your sanctuary. Yet every investment bears risks, does it not? So today, I collect my dividend, and my…insurance. For every child needs a mother, no?’
Ramón’s fists tighten. ‘Just try it you old bastard-’
‘Or perhaps you would prefer all three of you rot in Apodaca jail? That can still be arranged.’
Ramón shakes his head.
‘Good. Then we both know how it is to lose the people we love. We are even, no? But, Señor…’ He points a long sharp finger to the ceiling. ‘…If you try to contact your wife or child from this moment forth, I will have you shot.’
The pair step into the bright sunlight. As Ramón’s eyes adjust, he sees the Moses basket on the back seat of the car with a silken dress hung beside it. The driver throws a cigarette to the ground and opens the door for the old man.
‘I hope that you at least said goodbye,’ says Huerta through the open rear window. The engine coughs sharply into life.
‘Very well, Señor…’ replies Ramón.
With a smooth whip of his hand, with speed and accuracy that defies the empty tequila bottle now lying on the bar, Ramón draws his father’s Colt .45 from his jacket and places a bullet between Señor Huerta’s eyes. Before the driver can reach for the door handle, a second pop ripples across the plain and his head is slammed into the steering wheel sending a nebula of blood across the inside of the windshield.
‘…Goodbye.’
* * *
That night, dressed in a pristine black suit edged with silk trim, with a silver pocket watch and an ivory topped cane, Señor Esteban Huerta and his new wife and child rattle north in a black, 1931 Ford Model A, its bodywork threaded with bullet holes. Shortly before midnight, they slip virtually unnoticed across the border into Texas.
