The Rift Read online

  “It was the priest who spoke. ‘Do you speak Spanish, senor?’

  “When the words came, they were only a whisper, but in Spanish. ‘Where am I?’

  “Santa Maria, my son. Two men from the village found you near the trail to Bachinava.’

  “‘I must get back to my unit. Please, where are my clothes?’ Funny how duty works on a man. Lying in a room, lucky to be alive, I tell the three people that I must get back to my unit.

  “The priest was sitting beside me, looking at me closely. ‘When we found you, young man, you had no clothes. We assumed by your age that you were a North American soldier, but someone took all of your clothes and your weapons. We were worried about you. You have been lying here for two days. Theresa came for me when she thought you were going to die. You are a strong young man, lucky to have someone with such hands as Theresa.’

  “I tried to rise, reaching a sitting position on the bed when the room began to move and I fell back on the rough mattress filled with corn husks. Slowly, my eyes began to focus. I was afraid to move again. I tried to reconstruct what had happened. I remembered pulling my mount off to the side of the trail. The next thing I remembered was waking in the cool, dark room.

  “‘I am Father Michael, this is Anna, who assists me at the church, and this is Theresa. You had best become acquainted because I am afraid you will be here for some time. You are very weak, and the people here are afraid to try to move you now because the Villistas might find out you are here. If they find out we are protecting you, they will punish the village.’

  “‘I am Lieutenant William Housman, Seventh Cavalry.’ I said simply.

  “I looked at the priest. He was thin, almost emaciated, with thick glasses that made his eyes appear huge when you looked through them. Surprising to me was his sandy hair, out of place in Mexico. I must have stared a moment too long. The priest smiled.

  “‘You are wondering about me, is that correct? I am a Franciscan from Peoria, Illinois. Where are you from?’ The Father continued to talk in Spanish. He did not want the women to feel there was anything they should not hear.

  “‘Denver, Colorado, Father.’

  “The priest rose and lightly touched my shoulder. ‘Perhaps that explains your excellent Spanish. I must be going. I will try to stop by from time to time. We must be careful. Villa does not trust priests, he does not trust gringos. What must he think of a gringo priest?’

  “I found myself smiling at the man. For a brief moment, when I first awoke, I felt cheated because I knew the Seventh had gone to Guerrero without me. Now, as I talked to the priest, I felt suddenly lucky to be alive.”

  ---

  “The charges are serious, as you know, Lieutenant. Colonel Dodd wants you court-martialed for desertion.”

  “And what I tell you, sir, will determine your recommendation?” “That is correct.”

  “Then, Major, I hope the truth will be my shield.” The major looked at the thin, wiry man. His wry humor surprised him.

  “You need some rest, Lieutenant. I will see you tomorrow.”

  The air was hot and damp when he entered the small room. He missed the cool nights and early mornings of Santa Maria and Denver. The major was waiting for him. He stood.

  “Why don’t we begin where we left off yesterday, Lieutenant.”

  ---

  “For three days after I awoke, I was too weak to move. Sometimes, I would wake up, my head and body burning with fever. I would be covered with sweat, the shirt and pants they had given me wet; then came the chills that shook my body. Theresa would feed me, and bring me goat’s milk to drink. It had been cooled in a stream which ran down from the mountains behind the town. At first, I could eat very little, and could never seem to get enough water.

  “One night, I awoke to sounds in the streets. It was very dark outside the open doorway to the adobe hut where I was kept. I heard gunfire. Then screams. It sounded like they came from children or young girls. It was hard to tell which. There were wails from older women, and shouts from men. The sounds did not seem close, and I judged the people who had saved me had placed me as far away from the center of the village as possible. The screams, cries, and shouts continued for I don’t know how long before the village grew quiet again.

  “I awoke to find Father Michael sitting beside my bed. I could not see his face, only the faint outline of his body.

  “‘How do you feel this evening, Lieutenant?’

  “‘Much better, Father. The swelling around the wound is less, and the redness seems less, also.’ As I talked, I tried to remember how long I had been lying in the bed. I had to find the Seventh. As I thought of my duty, I tried to rise on my elbows. The room began to swim again but I forced myself to prop my body up. In that position, the dizziness began to fade until it stopped. I could feel the sweat pouring down from beneath my armpits and from my forehead.

  “The priest did not move to help. I knew he was watching. ‘Father, I must get back to my unit.’

  “‘There are no soldiers within fifty miles of Santa Maria. It would be too dangerous for the people of the village to have the North Americans come here, as I told you before. We will wait until you have gained your strength and we know your soldiers are nearby.’

  “I looked toward the priest, trying to wipe away the darkness to see into his face. There was no one else in the room. He had stood, his outline framed in the doorway. There was silence. I had to know.

  “‘What happened out there this evening, Father?’ Still, he was silent, as if Father Michael did not want to share some awful secret with someone not of the village. I wondered after a while whether he was going to answer me. I remember my dad telling me once never to press someone you consider a friend if he or she tells you in any manner that they don’t want to give an answer. Just let it go and move on to something else. In that way, you let them know you respect them, and their right to decide what to share.

  “‘They took two of the young boys and two of the young girls.’ For a brief moment, the priest’s voice seemed to falter, and just barely, I sensed the beginning of a sob. It’s a strange thing, Major, to find that you can feel someone’s pain in the dark. It’s that sense they say blind people have. Well, I could feel Father Michael’s hurt, and when you reach out in the dark like that, you can almost feel it yourself.”

  The major shook his head, acknowledging what he had heard, but not sure he understood what the young man was telling him. He looked at the dark eyes which seemed to look inside him, and nodded again for Billy to continue. This interview was going to be more difficult than he had at first thought.

  “‘Who took them?’ I asked.

  “‘Colonel Lopez and his men.’ The voice was flat. I couldn’t tell from his voice what he felt about Lopez, but I could guess.

  “‘The same Lopez who killed the miners in Santa Isabel?’ “‘The same.’

  “‘Then we have the same enemy, Father.’

  “‘Your soldiers are no more welcome than Colonel Lopez, Lieutenant. Your colonel is perhaps not so cruel, but circumstances could easily change that.’ The voice of the priest had become hard.

  “Father Michael made me angry then, but I knew it was best to say nothing. “‘Please forgive me, Lieutenant. I should not have said that. You must understand we have watched the revolution with all its grand slogans for six years, and it has brought only misery to Santa Maria. When you are better, you will have a chance to see the village. Try to imagine what it might have been like when the stores were filled, people trusted and liked their neighbors and always, the sound of children laughing and playing. The village owned over two thousand hectares in the valley, and we had fine herds of angora goats and merino sheep. Our weavers were known throughout Mexico. Now the people own everything-

  -and nothing’

  “I remember I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say. You read about what was happening in Mexico. I even traveled with my father. But I knew now that my father had carefully planned the
trips to stay in the safe areas, and we probably were very lucky. You suddenly begin to feel like a gringo.

  “‘Now, Lieutenant, there are only a few goats and sheep. There are no men. Soon there will be no boys or young girls.’ There was the silence again. But now I could see the glistening eyes of the priest.”

  ---

  Billy looked at the eyes of Major Somersville. When he had begun, there was disdain in the major’s eyes. Now there was dismay. He said to himself, Well, now you know, Major. Count your lucky stars you were born north of the border.

  ---

  “Another week had passed. I figured it had been two weeks since Colonel Dodd looked me in the eye and sent me over that pass with B-25. I saw Theresa every day although Anna was always there at the same time.”

  ----

  Billy looked at the major with a whimsical smile, deciding he could share something of himself with his inquisitor.

  “Tell me about Theresa.”

  ---

  “It took me awhile to know Theresa. For the first week, she was like a blur, a presence that I sensed but never really saw clearly. She was there much of the time. Feeding me. Changing the bandages, cleaning the wounds. I know she bathed me sometimes. Sometimes, I probably didn’t know it, other times I was too embarrassed to open my eyes. I found out a little about her from talking to her, Anna would let me know some things, and Father would tell me the most. Theresa’s father was killed fighting with General Villa, two of her brothers were killed, one is with Colonel Cervantes, two others are fighting with the Carrancistas.

  “Once, when Theresa brought my meal to me, I surprised her by getting out of bed and sitting on one of the stools in the room. When she entered with her food basket, she smiled. I’ve been to cotillions, balls, dances, and met a lot of pretty girls. When I went to the academy, my friends kidded me about how I would get all the pretty girls. Well, it’s true. I am not really sure why, but you become the center of attention. So pretty girls don’t turn my head. But Maria did.

  “I was able to stand up with a walking stick Father brought me. He asked me only to stay out of the center of the village. I was curious about the village and the people who were hiding me. Early one morning, I climbed up into the hills and looked at the village and the land beyond it. The rains had come and the fields had turned spring-like green. But on the land, only small patches were being cultivated, the rest lay unused. I could see small, scattered flocks of animals in the fields tended by little children and old women. I thought about what Father had said.

  “At the end of the street was a church. There were several fine buildings of brick covered with plaster, with red tile roofs. At the end of the street opposite the church there was a large building which appeared to be abandoned. In the window openings, there was broken glass and the large doors had been torn off their hinges. In the village between the two large buildings at either end of the street, there were walls of buildings, their roofs gone, their charred remains collapsed within the walls. As I stood there, I tried to imagine, as Father had asked, what the village of Santa Maria had been like, and the events that had destroyed it in the last six years.

  “I thought about the moving picture, The Life of General Villa, of this gallant, daring general returning the land to the people. There were pictures of him riding through towns like Santa Maria, cheered by adoring crowds. Land and Liberty, the people had shouted. I knew then what Father Michael had meant when he said now the people have everything--and nothing.

  “The streets were almost empty. Small groups of children played silently together. Stooped women moved slowly across the square. From where I stood, I could see Father Michael at the door of the church. He was looking in my direction. Although I stood in the shade of a tall juniper, I thought perhaps he could see me.”

  ---

  “By my recollection, Lieutenant, you were moving about around the middle of April. Is that about right?”

  “Yes, sir, Major, that would be correct.” It was not hard to see where the major was headed with that one, Billy thought.

  ---

  Colonel Pablo Lopez did not like gringos. He did not like priests. He despised the hacendados. But he had a taste for young girls. The colonel and his men had been drinking since early afternoon, when they had returned with the two young boys and two young girls taken from Santa Maria. Cruel by nature, Lopez was in one of the ugliest moods his men had ever seen. Like all of Villa’s officers, he had suffered the indignity of being an officer without men to command. Before Celaya and Leon, Lopez had led a thousand men. Now, all that remained were a few pitiful misfits. After his mindless killing of the miners at Santa Isabel, Villa was publicly accusing him of insubordination. Word had gotten to him that the gringo soldiers had been given orders to kill him on sight.

  Now, the killing of the young girl in Bachinava had brought the wrath of Candelario Cervantes, who accused him of being unfit to be a Villista and had a message delivered to Lopez that he would personally castrate him in front of the people of Bachinava if he went near the town again.

  The hacienda where the Lopez band stayed had belonged to a gringo family named Kelly. After losing one of their sons in a raid by one of the Villista bands a year before, the family had left Mexico and headed for Argentina. Since that time, the hacienda had been picked through by the Villistas, the Carrancistas and the Pacificos. Lopez found the place handy because of the walls around the residence and its placement in the middle of the plain, allowing anyone approaching from any direction to be seen. This afternoon, the men sitting around the table were enjoying their good fortune in discovering a case of Irish Whiskey buried among the trash in the wine cellar.

  As the men drank, Margarita and Elena huddled together in the upstairs room that had once been the master bedroom of Patrick and Mary Kelly. The room had been stripped of all the furnishings, the two small girls huddled on a rough mattress filled with straw. They watched as the light began to fade and the room grew dark. They could hear the men downstairs, the same men who had taken them away from Santa Maria.

  The girls knew what would happen to them. God’s mercy granted them the chance to allow their minds to take them elsewhere while they waited. Father had taught them to pray, to trust in God’s mercy. They could not understand what that meant but it soothed them as they waited.

  “Elena, I am afraid.” Margarita held her younger friend close to her, soothing her with her gentle touch and soft sounds. Somehow, helping her friend helped her. She prayed silently, trying to imagine her father who had been taken away over three years ago. She was the oldest child in the family, and she worried about her two younger brothers and three younger sisters. What would become of them?

  As she prayed, she noticed that the sounds below had stopped. Now she heard men outside, singing songs of lost and unrequited love. For a moment, Margarita listened to the words and was touched by them. Then her senses keened as she heard someone on the stairs. She tightened her arms around the trembling Elena and began to pray for forgiveness of all the sins she would never commit.

  ---

  “It was over a month now and I was walking without a cane. Behind the adobe hut where I stayed, trails led into the foothills and into the Sierra Madres. Twice a day, I would walk with Father up those trails. We would reach a point among the junipers and pines and look out across the valley. There was still no word of our army anywhere close by and the Father asked me not to betray the village by wandering around the countryside where I might be seen. So I acceded to his wishes. I was still pretty weak. I think you’ll have to agree, Major, that wandering through Mexico unarmed is a disregard for safety. But in a few days, no more than a week, that is what I would do. Duty required me to do that.”

  ----

  “What about the girl? What about Theresa? Was she still taking care of you?” Billy now knew where Somersville was going. No matter, he thought.

  “Yes. She still brought me food. Still checked on my wound, which was just a nasty scar on
the front and back, now. I still smart from the pulling around the wound, but it was getting less and less each day. Sometimes, she would walk with Father and me, others with Anna and me. Custom didn’t allow me walking over trails with Theresa alone.”

  “How would you describe Theresa, Lieutenant?” Billy looked at the major, who was looking at him closely. He decided he was beginning to see what Major Somersville’s report would look like. He now found himself putting it together as a prosecuting attorney—like someone in the major’s shoes.

  ---

  “She was not very tall, maybe a little over five foot. Her hair was dark, long, braided down to her waist. Big black eyes. You could see the Indian in them. When she would smile, which was often under the circumstances, her eyes seemed to twinkle. She was beautiful, at least to me. Certainly there were girls I knew who had finer features, bodies more graceful. The way she took care of me, the way she treated the children in the village, her faith in God.”

  Then Billy grew silent. He turned and looked out the window at the men drilling on the parade ground. The shuffling of papers brought him back. The major then straightened his note paper, signaling Billy to continue.

  “Now the question you want to ask, was I in love with her?”

  The major started at the question, as if he had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Then he recovered.

  “Were you, Lieutenant?”

  “I was, Major, and I would bet my pay every man in Pershing’s army would have been, too. They just didn’t happen to have her as a nurse. Everyone in the village loved Theresa. Almost everyone.”

  ---

  Colonel Lopez was not a stranger to Santa Maria. His father had worked on the White Horse hacienda, whose hacendado, Senor Ignacio Obregon owned the town of Santa Maria and collected a share of the income received by the village from the weaving factory. As a boy, Lopez was discovered in one of the stables molesting the retarded daughter of one of the blacksmiths. The hacendado had the young boy tied to a whipping post, and while the families of the peons watched, the hacendado brought the bull hide whip down on his back again and again. As he rode that day, he remembered the pain and the humiliation.