Mexico in Mind by Maria Finn Dominguez

Author:Maria Finn Dominguez [Finn, Maria]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-49678-2
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2006-06-13T16:00:00+00:00

Then there was a night when the hills, usually silent mounds of darkness, echoed with a sudden volley of shots, shocking and splintering. When the men went out to see what was happening, they saw flames leaping up over a neighboring mine on a distant hilltop—it might have been a celebratory bonfire. At dawn the news came that the rebels, the insurgentes, had looted the warehouse, emptied the vaults, and, after tying up whoever they found on the premises, vanished along with the Company’s mules. There was panic at the news. “Insurgentes?” people asked. “From where?” And some went over to release the trussed manager and supervisor and assess the damage. A party of federals rode into the town soon after—grim, dusty, saddled officers of the government— asking for leads. Had anyone seen the rebels? No? They were warned to be on guard and report.

Everyone watched constantly. By daylight, a cloud of dust raised along a path could give away the approach of troops— rebels or federals—but by night there was no such sign; they could only strain their ears for the telltale clatter of hoofs or a shot and the hiss that followed a bullet. Men stayed up at night, smoking, drinking, playing cards, waiting.

They were to wait for the hoot of an owl. “An owl?” Betty asked when told. It would be a man, Davey informed her, with the message: “La muerte viene con el tecolote.” Betty thought that was the foolishness of grown men playing boys’ games. “Death comes with an owl!” she sniffed.

Older men, who had been in the mining towns in the desert and the sierra for decades already, recalled the raids of the Comanches and the Apaches. This, too, made Betty sniff. “Comanches! Scalp hunters! They’ve been hearing too many of those Wild West stories, I think.”

Ignoring her scorn, when he was put on a night shift, Davey engaged a boy, Lupe’s brother, to keep guard over the house. Betty could not sleep for the awareness of his presence on their doorstep.

She begged Davey to send him away. “Then I’ll have to send you to San Luis Potosí for safety. Some of the women have already gone,” he told her, and when she opened her mouth to protest, added, “You can’t take risks, Betty, in your condition.”

It was the first time they had referred to her “condition.” Betty shrank from the word, and recovered only to say, “And you? What about you taking risks? Aren’t you the father?”

They stared at each other in bewilderment, each wanting to make something of this moment, something memorable. Instead, neither could make the gesture: it was not the moment for one so private.

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