In the Works

Hombrecito, The Betrayals of Pancho villa

El Paso Pulpito, Sierra Madre Mountains, Northern Mexico, 1952

He stared down the wide hallway of canyon cliffs rising up in front of them. The dirt road twisted like a piece of brown hemp rope stretching out through the mesquite and junipers as it disappeared deep in the dark shadows where the canyon's sides appeared to merge. Ominous, the canyon was alive with a power that pulled at him, like a magnet drawing a nail. He wanted to turn away, but pride wouldn't' let him.

“Henry?”

Turning his black, marble eyes to Roberta, and relaxing his white-knuckle grip on the jeep's steering wheel, he pointed toward the canyon. “That place is a heart of darkness. She's buried a couple of miles up that road in a side canyon; it's where I joined Pancho Villa in his war with Carranza; and it's where three men died he sent to kill me.”

She saw the pain in the squint of his eyes. “It's okay if you want to leave.”

“No, we'll stay. Do you still want to see her grave before I show you the pass?”

Wondering if it was time to retreat, she studied his face.

“Yes …yes, I do, please.”

The battered old jeep lurched down the dirt road. He stopped at a wash leading up a deep, juniper covered canyon branching north. The early morning air pouring out of the canyon was cold, the sun not yet high enough to warm the day. In the brooding silence, they walked arm-in-arm up the wash, a small cloud of cactus wrens, in a frantic flutter of wings, burst out of the junipers just ahead, startling them. Complaining crows further up the canyon and the sharp, snapping clicks of a roadrunner added to the morning rising.

Approaching a cliff, she saw a thin seep of water following a crack from high above down to where it disappeared in a jumble of rocks nearby. Henry pointed toward a ledge.

“She's up there – on that shelf.”

The cairn was well camouflaged, just a pile of stones caught on a ledge. It took her a while to find it. After a long moment, she shivered. "It's strange to finally see the grave of the ghost that kept us apart for all those years, a memory that held you, one I never knew existed.”

He drew her against his chest. Breathing in deep, he smelled cactus flowers in her long black hair, and whispered, “I'm so sorry that I was blind for so many years.” He felt her arms pull him closer and knew the bones on the ledge were happy.

They found the cliff seep collecting in a red sandstone tank and after drinking their fill, sat close together holding hands. The sap from a nearby thicket of primeval, gnarly junipers still deep in the cliff's shade, gave the place a clean, pungent, cedar scent.

“She's been gone a long time.”

“About forty-five years.”

“Do you think of her often?”

He reached between his boots and broke off a straw of gra'ma grass to chew.

“Sometimes her memory finds my dreams. I see the sun on her face, the sparkle in her eyes, remember the love we had and the loving we made, and then…and then washing her body and carrying it up to that ledge where we worked nearly all night to put the stones over her. But, those memories don't come around much anymore.”

“Do you still wish you had spilled blood for blood? I'll never forget the look you gave him when he danced with me at our wedding a few months ago.”

She was surprised that taciturn Henry, who always thought over every question, didn't hesitate. “No… no not at all. I owe him my life.”

Staring into his eyes, her free hand caressed his scarred cheek, ran a finger over his trimmed mustache, touching his lips as lightly as a baby's breath on its mother's cheek. “Tell me about it. You promised.”

He smiled. “Your woman's wiles can make the Sphinx talk. Okay, where shall I start?”

She laughed, deep and throaty, smoothing the hair out of her face and giving his hand a warm squeeze. “At the beginning. I've let you hide far too long. Start talking!”