The Hummingbird's Daughter_ A Novel - Luis Alberto Urrea [17]
“The People!” he said.
“That’s what I said. Are you deaf?”
“Don Refugio,” he finally replied.
Don Refugio Moroyoqui never explained himself. Even when he was teaching little Tomás how to tie a rope, or how to carve a pair of pistol grips out of twin windfall branches, or when he taught Tomás how to make jerky in sun racks that they could hammer apart later for feasts of machaca, he stayed quiet even while speaking. A particular knot could be tied but one way. The grain of the wood allowed but one shaving. Some roads, despite appearances, went in only one direction. Don Refugio did not speak of dried-out riverbeds.
Tomás followed the old Indio around and studied his curious ways. He had learned to ask simple questions, like “What is that?” A ball-peen hammer. “Where did these blue eggs come from?” Quail. “How do Indians say water?” Bampo.
Don Miguel, the great patrón, found it somewhat odd, though he had also learned to rope cows from an old Indio in the 1820s. What boy didn’t have his old Indian to teach him? What girl did not have the old washerwoman to teach her to make teas from weeds? How many hacienda babies had been nursed by old Guasave and Tehueco nannies? Besides, Don Miguel had been far too busy running the ranch and raising his own boys to worry about what Tomás did to keep himself busy. As long as the Indian kept Tomás out of his way, Don Miguel was grateful.
No one, not even Don Miguel, would have asked Don Refugio to explain himself, anyway. He had survived Bácum—that was enough to make them shy around Don Refugio, even afraid. It had already been ten years, but the screams still seemed to echo in the valleys. Massacres were nothing new, but this one had been infected with a kind of genius that made it worm its stench and its crackle into the dreams of the People for years. He was tiny and black as old walnut wood, with snowy tousled hair and white whiskers that hung over his mouth and were shaded yellow and brown at the ends from his smoking. Frail, perhaps, but he had survived.
Little Tomás was up before dawn, as usual, investigating. A roulette wagon was still parked outside the house, its mounted gambling apparatus standing erect like a big wooden pinwheel. It was only half-covered by a white cloth and was a fascination: machinery of any kind was still miraculous. Cigar butts and empty cognac bottles lay about the wagon in a scuffle of mess. Tomás collected bottles: one red, two green, and one blue. He looked through the blue bottle at the world. He hid a few cigar butts in his pockets to share with Segundo after lunch.
These roulette wagons went from hacienda to hacienda, bringing gambling and liquor with them. They didn’t dare roll through the countryside in the dark. Their strongboxes enticed deadly attention, and highwaymen could spring out at any moment, guns blasting away. So the wagons tied off at a main house and kept the party going all night.
The cavalry had been riding past with a few prisoners from the city when they had seen the lights and heard the uproar—their officers were snoring now on the patrón’s couches. Their nasty little horses were standing, heads drooped, already flicking their tails at the biting flies. One cavalry rider sat astride his mount, asleep. The women prisoners were squatting in the dirt, a chain running from neck to neck. They were covered by their rebozos, so they looked like small lumps, or a sort of cattle waiting to be herded to market. Tomás gazed at them through the blue glass. He knew they were being dragged north to Guaymas or south to Culiacán or to some field somewhere to be executed. This was the way of the world—Tomás didn’t know yet to feel bad for them.
As Tomás looked at their hunched forms in the blue light, he saw Don Refugio come striding his way.
Don Refugio had heard the racket all night, the idiotic shouts and forced laughter of the damned Yoris. Don Refugio didn’t like yelling. He knew that Yoris having a high time could quickly turn, and it paid to keep an eye on them.
The soldiers at Bácum