TOM MIX AND PANCHO VILLA: A Novel of Mexico and the Texas border (85 page)

On the other hand, they made movies in California—a sunnier land, I’d heard—and it occurred to me that if I got any work out there I wouldn’t even have to speak. I could start out as one of those mangy fellows leaning against the bar in a saloon, or one of the mustachioed outlaws who tumbles out of a window above the livery stable when the handsome sheriff starts fanning the hammer of his six-gun. William S. Hart himself didn’t do much more than ride and rope and kiss wasp-waisted women, and I’d had some practice in those arts. All I would need was a set of civilized harness. Western heroes didn’t wear sombreros and Levi’s.

A bloody ball of sun dipped toward the mountains that tumbled about on the horizon in the direction of Sonora.
To Sonora …

To Celaya …

To Torreón, again …

To Hollywood …

The desert lay drowned in rich, soft mist. Somewhere, a coyote howled. The dead slept in the slowly cooling earth of Mexico. Goodbye, my love.

What the hell, I thought. The defeats are also battles. Goodbye, my youth—and goodbye. Chihuahua. I flicked a rein. The horse turned west. I rode off into the sunset, singing a mournful tune, and became a movie cowboy.

“I have some rights of memory in this kingdom.”

A good twenty years, and then some, have passed. A lot has happened to me since, but I won’t go into that. I intended to write about the part of my life when I was a revolutionist with Pancho Villa, and I’ve done it.

I lost touch with the people I met during that unruly time, but I know what’s happened to all of them …

Zapata kept on fighting Carranza, who was now president, although there was no vote. Anytime he captured a Federal army officer, Emiliano crucified him on a telegraph pole or smeared him with honey and staked him over an ants’ nest—or, in the rainy season, over a maguey plant, whose thorns would grow a foot or more during the night and drive inch by inch through the man’s body. In April of 1919 he was betrayed by some turncoat colonel and lured into an ambush at a place called Chinemeca. He was shot to death in a patio by more than two hundred men.

In May of 1920, scenting a wholesale military rebellion against the corruption of his presidency, Carranza absconded for Veracruz with the national treasury and the dies of the government mint, even the light fixtures from the National Palace. He got as far as the pueblo of Tlaxcalatango, where he went to sleep in a little hut with only a saddle blanket for cover. During the night he was shot to death by a dozen men.

Obregón, who had come out of retirement and declared himself an enemy of Carranza, eventually became President of Mexico. He pursued his policy of trying to offend everybody as little as possible, except for the Church. In July of 1928, sitting in a café just outside Mexico City, he was shot to death by a religious fanatic.

So much for those bastards.

Felipe Angeles returned from Washington to fight for Pancho Villa, but in 1919 he was captured by General Treviño and shot to death by a firing squad. They say he refused to wear a blindfold, and he gave the signal for his own execution.

General Black Jack Pershing, as everyone knows, commanded our Americfan Expeditionary Force during the Great War and covered himself with glory. Major Frank Tompkins, who led the Thirteenth Cavalry into Parral, received the Distinguished Service Cross for his part in that campaign, became a colonel and fought in France, where he was badly wounded.

In 1934 he wrote a book called
Chasing Villa.
I read it with considerable interest, but he never mentioned me once. I guess I was an embarrassment to him.

George S. Patton, Jr. went to France as a captain and got himself into the Tank Service, won the Distinguished Service Cross and when I last heard of him was a colonel at Fort Riley, Kansas. We’re never met since Las Palomas, but I knew he would do well.

Franz von Papen got kicked out of the United States in 1916 for being a spy. He returned to Germany as a hero, where he rose to become Chancellor. But under that madman Hitler, the best job he could get was Ambassador to Austria.

One day some years ago, when we were on a publicity tour that stopped in New Orleans, a well-dressed, handsome, plump middle-aged woman rushed up to me in the Vieux Carré. It was Yvette.

She told me that she and Marie-Thérése owned a genteel little establishment on Bourbon Street that catered to the carriage trade, and they were doing just fine. Unfortunately I was in a hurry to get to a radio station, and we didn’t have much time to reminisce. I never saw her again.

Hannah Sommerfeld married a Houston oilman and is very active there in charity and cultural affairs, and something called the B’nai B’rith. We’re not in touch.

Elisa Griensen had to leave Mexico after the war and go back to Germany to care for her daughter, who had lost a leg in a car accident. So it probably never would have worked out between us. I heard that bit of news from Hipólito, in the only letter I ever got from him. He told me that Mabel Silva had divorced him, and he was living alone in Chihuahua City, running a little poker parlor. His letter embarrassed me, because he asked for my autograph.

He also told me that Luz Corral was back in her house, Quinta Luz. She had turned part of it into a little museum, and Hipólito said that for five pesos you could see Pancho’s saddle and a good collection of grenades and rifles and photographs …

… and that famous bullet-riddled Dodge.

The chief kept on fighting, of course. He took Casas Grandes and Ojinaga, just as he promised, but then he got licked at Juárez. His new army never got to be more than two thousand men, so he couldn’t take another crack at Torreón, which was always his favorite city to attack.

He attacked Parral instead, hanging a few Carranzista officials in the little square where Elisa had fired above the heads of the cavalry.

But after that he fought only a few skirmishes and guerrilla raids, and in 1920 he finally made peace with the new president, Adolfo de la Huerta—a man he seemed to respect and no relation to Victoriano Huerta, the man we had fought against. Villa sent him a letter which began, “You are about to hear sincere words from the heart of an uneducated man …” and which ended, “Let us begin to discuss the well-being of the republic.”

The old warrior, in his twilight, must have been tired. The government was generous, even forgiving—they’d had enough of him as an enemy. All of the Villista troops were offered a year’s pay or invited to join the new Federal army and keep their rank. Villa could maintain a personal escort of fifty men, and he was given half a million pesos and a hacienda at Canutillo in the state of Durango, not far from Parral. In return he promised never again to take up arms against the legitimate government. It was all in writing, with the usual seals and his fancy signature at the bottom.

In Canutillo he married again—this time with Luz Corral’s dressmaker, a pretty girl named Austraberta Rentería. (I think he’d always had an eye on her.) Luz declined to share the house with them. Pancho went into farming, raising blooded stock and a cote of white doves. He grew fat, and his fifty men rode tractors instead of horses. He had a secretary named Trillo, and in Trillo’s office, decorated with an oil portrait of Francisco Madero and a bronze bust of Felipe Angeles, they studied economics together and read
Don Quixote.
He kept his word, never again taking up arms or dabbling in politics.

In July of 1923, with Trillo and some others, Pancho drove into Parral for a cockfight and a christening. On the way out of town at the wheel of his Dodge, as he slowed at an intersection to wave to a pumpkin-seed seller who had shouted,
“Viva Villa!”
he and his men were shot to death by a barrage of automatic gunfire that came from a doorway.

The chief was hit by seven bullets and killed instantly.

All of Doña Corazon’s predictions had come true. He had died of many bullets, and the large, round thing in his hands had been a steering wheel. It had been quick. And his enemies had never really conquered him.

He was only forty-three years old.

Hipólito arrived in Parral the next day and buried his brother there. It was rumored that the man behind the assassination was Colonel Calles, who had helped defeat Villa at Agua Prieta. He didn’t think Villa had ever forgiven him, and he was running for president then. A dead enemy is the best kind.

In 1926 some vandals broke into the grave and stole Pancho’s head. I hope it gave them
ojo.

A while ago the publicity people out in Hollywood prepared a short biography of my life, written in the first person, and I signed my name to it. But I left out the four years I had been Mexico and told them I was still on the rodeo circuit then. No one checked. I figured I didn’t need any more trouble from the U.S. Army or the government, which was already bothering me about some unpaid taxes.

When the chief was killed I was in the midst of making a film for Fox called
The Lone Star Ranger.
I read about it in the papers during a coffee break. I had never forgotten him, and I hoped he hadn’t forgotten me, even though I had finally quit his revolution in its dying stage. I could almost hear him mutter, as he tugged at his curly mustache and showed a glint of red teeth,
“I’m a man who came into this world to attack … My only hope is to wear myself out. To grow old. Or to be killed.
“

Silently, I saluted him. Then I went back to work. Work is the best anodyne.

Since then, in Mexico, they’ve turned him into a forgotten man. I’m sure that the
campesinos
and the old Villistas toast his memory, but the government seems to be ashamed that he ever existed. Every city and pueblo boasts a big avenue, even a school, named after Venustiano Carranza, but not one in honor of Pancho Villa. From my point of view the revolution—and all true hope for the Mexican people to rise from their gloomy poverty—died with him at Parral. Or perhaps even before that, in Aguascalientes, when he didn’t see that he was the right man to become president, and when I failed to tell him.

In this country, if you ask anyone about Pancho Villa, they usually say: “A bandit, right? And didn’t he once raid Columbus, in New Mexico, and kill a lot of Americans?”

I never contradict that. It hardly seems worth the trouble to explain how I know it isn’t so, and it certainly wasn’t my purpose when I sat down to write this tale of my lost years.

Did I have a purpose beyond a middle-aged man’s self-gratification, and the purging of past sins? Probably, but it doesn’t matter. The means become the end, don’t they? I simply wanted to remember, because there’s not much time left, and it’s colored gray. And that time was the best time—a fever of the mind, an intoxication of the blood that you can’t find in any bottle. I’ve looked, and I know.

I was loved then, and I was in love. Not just with Rosa, and then Elisa Griensen, but with my very existence on the hot planet. I was young. Doesn’t that say it all? Our youth is so brimful with choices, and rarely do we make the intelligent ones that serve us best. How painful it seems, that journey through its startling landscape. But how precious the pain becomes, when it’s gone.

And I have my memories. When I meet a particularly attractive woman at a party in Beverly Hills or London, I can’t help but peer into her eyes to see if my name is reflected there from the list that Candelario swore was written lower down. “Life is short,” he said. I can still hear his voice, and the voices of the others. They speak to me at night, when I’m alone. They call me
“Tomás …” or “my colonel
…” and even
“pendejo. “

Or, in a huskier tone, touched by desert sunlight, one says,
“Go well, my sweet.
…”

I’ve tried, Elisa. I’ve gone far, and sometimes well, although not always.

Another, as if reaching out from deep sleep to make sure I’m still there, whispers in the calm, silent darkness,
“Mi capitán .
. .
?”
I see her even calmer face—bright, loyal, and full of grace.

Rosa, I haven’t stopped loving you. In your short life you brought me more joy than any other, then or since. I miss you still.

T. M.

Florence, Arizona

October 7, 1940

Tom Mix was driving from Tucson to Phoenix on the afternoon of October 12, 1940. Alone in the car, he swerved to avoid a crew of highway workers. He crashed and was killed instantly.

author’s note

This is a historical fantasy, although I prefer the word
romance,
which my dictionary defines as “a novel or other prose narrative typically characterized by heroic deeds, pageantry, romantic exploits, etc., usually in a historical or imaginary setting.”

For the most part I have tried to be faithful to the facts of the Mexican Revolution and Pancho Villa’s life. The battles, the political conflicts, the characters of such men as Carranza, Obregón and Zapata, are all accurately described. Patton and Pershing were in Chihuahua in 1916 (and the young lieutenant killed Julio Cárdenas in the manner chronicled); so were Franz von Papen, Rodolfo Fierro, Hipólito Villa and Candelario Cervantes, who was shot by the Seventh Cavalry.

Elisa Griensen is a historical personage who did indeed lead the citizens of Parral against Major Tompkins’ squadron.

Felix Sommerfeld and Sam Ravel were two of Villa’s purchasing agents in Texas.

Luz Corral vda. de Villa, at this writing, is alive and well in Chihuahua City, in the same house I described.

Rosa, Hannah, and Miguel Bosques are fictional characters.

The stories of the massacre in the stockyards and the gold taken from the column of the Banco Minero, among many others related. are true.

I have changed Tom Mix’s age somewhat to suit my purpose as a novelist. But the young actor’s role as a volunteer for Pancho Villa is mentioned briefly in several books. They include Ronald Atkin’s
Revolution! Mexico 1910-1920
(John Day, New York, 1970); Haldeen Braddy’s
Cock of the Walk: The Legend of Pancho Villa
(University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1955); Ernest Otto Schuster’s
Pancho Villa’s Shadow
(Exposition Press, New York, 1947); and
Twenty Episodes in the Life of Pancho Villa
(The Encino Press, Austin, 1973). by Elias L. Torres, the man who arranged Villa’s retirement for Adolfo de la Huerta. Torres’ memoir, based on his conversations with Villa, was first published in 1931.