The Hummingbird's Daughter_ A Novel - Luis Alberto Urrea [184]
“Look, Father,” she said. “A train.”
“By God,” he said. “A train?”
Tomás was so tired, so very tired. He could barely keep his eyes open. But he raised his head—it could have weighed ten pounds—and smiled.
“Yes,” he said. They were going to be shot against the station walls. Witnesses had been brought in to watch. Reporters, no doubt. Military wives.
“We are, apparently, to be the great spectacle,” he said.
It was a steam locomotive, and it was attached to a long string of cars, and soldiers stood all along its serpentine length and squinted at their black wagon.
Tomás strained to keep his eyelids open, but his vision was blurred. His eyes felt as if they had sand in them. His wrists were black from the bruises, his fingers swollen and dark from the cuffs’ cruel bite.
The wagon jerked to a halt. They listened to the soldiers mumbling outside. It was already so hot in there they thought they wouldn’t be able to breathe. The guards left them locked inside for a half hour. When they finally unlocked the back doors and grabbed hold of Teresita, Tomás was asleep again, huddled on the bench like a dog. A soldier took hold of his ankles and hauled him out; his head smacked against the floor.
Tomás opened his eyes and said, “Watch out, pendejo.”
The soldier grabbed his collar and pitched him forward. Tomás went down chin first in the dirt.
Teresita said, “Stop it!”
The same soldier turned and spit at her.
“Or what?” he said. “Or what, witch?”
One of the others called out, “She’ll turn you into a lizard!”
“She’ll feed you to the Yaquis!”
They were laughing at her.
She helped her father to stand. He shook his head, shook the dirt out of his hair.
“Hey! Hey!” Pepe called. He hurried forward. “No need to hurt the prisoners,” he said.
“How do I look?” Tomás asked.
“Handsome,” Teresita replied.
They smiled at each other.
The train chuffed on the track nearest the station. Soldiers pushed against Teresita’s back with their rifles held before them, knocking her ahead as if she were a cow or a reluctant mule. She reached for her father’s hand, but they knocked her fingers away with a rifle butt. “Move,” Pepe said, and she moved. Her shackles clanked. She could smell herself, and she could smell her father. Dirty hair, sweat. She held up her head as she walked.
“Bastards,” Tomás muttered.
Pepe laughed.
“Where are we going?” Teresita asked.
“Judgment day,” he replied.
They crunched past the caboose. Soldiers stood on its back platform. Then two passenger cars. In the distance, the locomotive chugged like a vast heart. Its languid double-chuff blew vague steam into the air. Cha-hump, cha-hump, cha-hump. Most of the windows of the train cars filled with faces—women and children staring down at her. Atop these passenger cars, sandbag nests held soldiers with more rifles. They stepped up a small stairway onto the station’s platform, and they walked across it at eye level with the passengers, walked to the end of the platform, then down three steps to the slippery gravel along the track. Teresita lost her footing once—Tomás grabbed her with one hand, steadying her. The soldiers crunched behind them.
They walked past the passenger wagons, and came abreast of a flatcar. The car’s bed was lined with sandbags, and rifles bristled over their heads as the soldiers and guards watched for marauding Yaquis. In the middle of the car, a Gatling gun stood tall on its tripod. In front of the flatcar was another, abandoned passenger car with more soldiers on the roof. And ahead, between this car and the locomotive, yet another flatcar covered with soldiers.
“They expect a war,” Tomás said.
The head guard struck him between the shoulders with the butt of his rifle. Tomás fell forward against the side of the car.
“Shut up,” the guard said.
An officer stood