The Hummingbird's Daughter_ A Novel - Luis Alberto Urrea [182]
And she saw that the soldiers had moved in behind Cruz and his men. They climbed the roof and poured burning pitch down the chimney hole. They were burning inside the house. Walls, window frames, doors bursting and splintering with withering fire; Cruz bloodied and shouting rose and fell in the broken windows, firing, firing, smoke curling from his hair.
And she saw the Mexicans send a man forth with a white flag.
He gestured at the burning house, was yelling something to Cruz and his defenders inside. The army ceased firing. Eerie silence of echoes and crackling flames. And the door opened—a billow of choking black smoke furled out. And there was Cruz himself, leaning on a friend’s shoulder. Wounded—terribly wounded. His leg was bent, and he had been shot in the side, in the back. A yellow-white finger of bone hung from the red hole in his thigh, splinters of bones like toothpicks stuck to the black clot of blood in his clothes.
The Tigers helped Cruz hobble forward.
The Mexican smiled at him. Took his hand. Offered Cruz a cigarette.
And when Cruz leaned forward to accept a light, a soldier stepped up behind him and shot him in the head.
“No!” she cried.
The lights faded.
Cruz turned to her.
“I am doomed.”
“I did this to you!” she cried.
“We did this to ourselves,” he replied. “We are doomed to our fates,” he said. “But your avengers are strong.”
“My avengers?”
“Your avengers gather in the hills.”
“Who?”
“They come,” he said. “They come. Everyone will die for you.”
“No! No!”
She watched blood spread across his face. Dark black blooms of blood sprouted on his shirt, soaked around his ribs, jetted from his leg.
The world was on fire.
She reached for him, Cruz Chávez, the only man who had ever pressed his face against her and listened to her heart.
“Be strong,” he said. “All is not lost. Adios.”
And he was gone.
Sixty
THE GUARDS MARCHED toward Teresita’s cell at dawn. The skinny kid who delivered her food had been found outside the prison with three arrows in his back. The attackers had also cut off his ears. No one had seen anything.
She awoke to the sound of the guardias’ boots echoing on the cobbles and between the stone walls. She sat up and listened to them come. They weren’t shuffling this time. They were marching. So this is my hour, she thought. Perhaps Cruz Chávez would greet her when the rope snapped her neck.
The thin blooms of crusted blood on her face she wiped away with spit on her fingers. She fixed her hair as best she could in the gloom. The boots approached. She wondered if she would be executed beside her father.
The boots stomped to a halt outside the door. Keys rattled. The lock snapped and the door creaked open on its rusty hinges. Three guards stepped inside and ordered her to turn her back. She put her hands behind her back and waited with her head down. They shackled her. She turned and looked at their faces. She saw that Pepe was not among them.
They gestured for her to step outside. She didn’t know how long it had been since she’d seen the sun, walked any distance at all. She stepped out into the brightness, holding her head high, blinking. Even among the fetid stables, the air was fresh and brisk. They grabbed her arms and led her out of the barnyard, away from the gallows.
So.
It was to be the wall.
“Where is Pepe?” she asked.
“I am here, girl,” he said.
He was behind her.
“Shoot well, muchachos,” she said. “Pepe, aim for my heart. But let my father go.”
“Shut up,” Pepe said. “Do you know your problem? You never learned to keep