Battle Cry - Leon Uris [163]
He clenched his fists. “A man have to pay a thousand dollar for a shack of cardboard and burlap or a chicken coop. For this, he pay twenty per cent interest. And the big coyote, the white fixer, make us pay. He fix a knife fight…he fix up the jobs…when there is no fixing he make trouble or a riot so he can fix it and take our money.
“Once a year my people get their only work, stoop labor in the white man’s field at two bits an hour. And the ranchers, they let thousands of wetbacks from old Mexico cross the border now and they say to us, ‘You must work for twenty cent an hour or we get wetbacks for less.’…And the poor wetback, he take his money at the end of the season to go home but the coyotes wait for him and kill and rob him. Each year the Rio Grande, she run red with their blood. And many wetback never go back…they stay in Texas where there is already no room for them. But the coyote fix it so the immigration people will not send them away.” He paused for a swig of the ale.
“My people have much sickness. The babies die of TB and the dysentery and diphtheria. They die like flies. And the coyote fix the funeral. A woman must become a whore to live…the coyote fix her up in a house. And the men come like Spanish Joe. Yes, we are nothing but dirty, ignorant, thieving Latinos…we live in filth!”
“Get ahold of yourself, Pedro.”
“The old people, they have no hope left. The young ones live as the white man say…but what Pedro cannot stand…is to see the little ones waste away and die. This, he cannot take. Papa Morales, he is one fine man. He is great doctor. He do much to help the little ones. And my dearest Luisa, she is a nurse. She have a very hard time to learn to be nurse. They did not let her in the Navy. Papa Morales tell her not to feel bad. He say we have our own war to fight in Las Colonias. I tell him I go in the Navy and I learn much medicine and I come back to help him to keep the children well. I ask for the Marine Corps so I can learn many things and my good friend, Doctor Kyser, he let me read his books. They tell great things. Then Pedro come to New Zealand and he does not want to go back to Texas. He wants his Luisa to come here to a land where there is no dirty spik.” He guzzled more ale down and shook his reeling head. “I shall never come back here…the Holy Mother want me to go to Texas to Las Colonias and make the little ones well.” Pedro clutched my arm tightly. “Remember, Mac, I no fight war for democracy. Pedro, he only fight to learn medicine….”
CHAPTER 5
PAWNEE was the new code name of the Sixth Marines. Pawnee red, white, and blue indicated the First, Second, and Third Battalions. On the field problems outside camp, sometimes they laid twenty miles of wire in a single day. The wire was marked in colored stripes of the owning battalion for identification and for reclaiming the next day. Sergeant Barry, the telephone chief, was always moaning about the shortage of wire. Our allotment was divided between the heavy and bulky old type and the new light reels of rubberized combat wire.
Gunner Keats turned his back as they laid down the heavy stuff and sent out raiding parties to reclaim light wire of the other battalions. It was all the same regiment, they reckoned, and they did leave some for the others.
Spanish Joe, needless to say, was the best wire thief in the Second Division. One morning he and Andy were out before daybreak reeling up Third Battalion combat wire. They came to a fence.