The Jaguar's Children Read online

  “‘Bíttu!’ I say, and there we are—him at one end and me at the other with just an arm length between us. He is pulling hard on the strap, but I was strong then and will not let go. He is much taller than me, especially with his boots and hat, but our eyes meet and lock like dogs will do. That moment I think is worse for him than for me because he has so much to lose. For such a man it is intolerable to be challenged by an indio. You understand la Revolución is finished, but in those days campesinos are still stepping aside for the Spanish—any güero—taking off their sombreros and looking only at the ground. Ooni’ya, he calls me a very rude name, drops his end of the strap and reaches for his sword. He is shouting something like, ‘You little pagan prick! I’m going to beat your black ass back to the campo!’

  “He didn’t intend to kill me I don’t think, but a beating from a sword is very serious and can do some bad damage. I let go of the burro then and Ya it away. Now we are alone in the street and I am trying to make some distance between me and this loco from who knows where. Some people are backing up under the trees. A couple of his friends are telling him to come back and sit down, but others are laughing and cheering and clapping their hands. To make things worse, that cabrón with the accordion won’t shut up, and it is so hot the sun is its own burden. I have never been in such a situation like this, but you know my father fought in la Revolución and it is a waste of a man. He died fighting chilitos like this, and now, after all that, here is one more trying to slap me down like a woman—como una béccu’nà—and many people are seeing it. Ooni’ya, you cannot let such a thing go by without an answer, not if you want to live a normal life in that place. If you do nothing, every man will treat you that way. That is how it is. So now the people are watching to see what I will do—to see how I am made.

  “My burro is gone, and now it is only me and this gachupín alone in the street. The sun is so high we make barely a shadow, only a dark hole around our feet. I remember the charro’s sombrero is just a circle moving and changing shape across the ground—and the sword arm coming out. It is strange what you notice in the dying situation, the things you think of. The charro is slapping the flat of his sword on his palm and coming toward me—not straight on but in a circle, the way the hawk is climbing the sky. I am moving too because he is pushing me, leading this dance, but I can see that his boots with all that jewelry make him a bit clumsy. It can also be the aguardiente causing this. Maybe he is hoping I will run, I don’t know. There is space in the road for me to do this, but it is not a real possibility—not with all those people watching. It is like that strap is still between us, holding us together. I can feel my heart inside me and my mouth is dry, but finally I find something to give back to this pendejo who has shamed me in public and hurt my burro. ‘Why does your mother dress you that way?’ I say to him. ‘Is she blind?’

  “I did not say it loud, but I think others besides him heard it and now he must defend his mother or whatever she is. ‘You will die for that,’ he says, and he means it. I know this because he is not shouting anymore. These words are just for me. That is how such men are and now there is no going back. Someone must finish it. Ooni’ya, you know I carry the machete always and on that day I had it on the strap over my shoulder. Let me tell you, that machete was an old one, the kind they call el Collins—made in America. Those ones held their edge and lasted a long time. You know I had that Collins for many years already, in my hand for many hours almost every day so it is like a part of my own body—my right hand, and that’s where it is before I think of it. The charro sees this and he stops slapping his palm and prepares his blade. Some people are afraid, shouting at us to stop, but there are others there who are wanting to see some blood that day. It is cheaper than la corrida, no? And a dead indio will be something interesting to discuss at la comida.

  “Ooni’ya, with two blades showing no one is coming near us. It is a strange picture, you know—one that no one in that town saw before. There is me, even shorter than you in dirty white campo clothes with no shoes and a straw sombrero, and this charro, tall and pale as a güero, looking like he is going to a parade—together in a duel! It is not an equal situation. If he kills me, maybe he pays a small fine, but if I kill him, I will be executed for sure, maybe shot on the spot. Also, the charro’s sword is longer and so is his arm and this gives him an advantage, but also some false confidence.

  “It is very quiet now, except for that fucking accordion, until someone yells, ‘Shut up, will you!’ Then the accordion makes a surprising sheep noise like it is being hit or thrown and it is finished. This is some kind of signal for the charro and everything happens quickly then—the circle growing tighter, the charro attacking, stabbing first to drive me back and then sweeping his sword around and across with such force like he will open me up or cut me in half. Ooni’ya, I have quick feet—you need them for dancing and to keep the animals from stepping on you—and I jump back, turning away like this, to my left. I can hear his sword behind me in the air, and I am lucky this time, but now my back is to him. He comes after me again, roaring now, swinging his sword up and over his head like an ax, and it is in this moment that one of his fine boots slips just a little on some stones. He must catch himself then, so down I go, as low as I can, like I am cutting cornstalks, and I come back like this.”

  Abuelo is so old, but his mind is eighty years away, on that hot street in Tlacolula. It is hard for him to stand now, or to bend so low, but his machete is there by him like always and he wants me to see how it was. I also think he wants to see it again himself. He makes me stand like the charro and then, with the machete in his hand he shows me his move, sweeping the blade around, away from his body and back, aiming for my right knee.

  “I know very well how the animal comes apart,” he says, “and I want to get this one on the ground as fast as possible so I go for the tendons. I catch him only with the tip of the blade, but it is enough. The Collins is heavy and sharp, of such good American steel, and it does not stop. One moment that charro is charging and I am a dead man, and the next his leg folds up like it has no bones—so quick he can’t understand what happened. I tell you, that macho was on the ground como Ya! And his sword came down hard in the sand. I jumped away, not sure if he can come for me again, but he is finished—his leg is loose below the knee and the blood is running hard. It is a surprise for everyone, including me, to see this big charro stirring the dust in his fine clothes and making sounds like a girl.

  “Of course with so much fighting in the past years, people are used to blood and already some men are there trying to calm him, offering him water and aguardiente, and one is with a goat knife cutting pieces from his pants to tie off the bleeding. Myself, I have no damages, but my heart is beating like the walls are not strong enough to hold it. Never again—not even with a woman—have I such a hammering in there. Now that the charro is on the ground without his big sombrero, I can see better how young he is, how soft his mustache, and I wonder what will happen to me. Right then, one of his friends from the cantina comes running into the street. I am afraid he may attack me and I raise my Collins again, but he is interested only in the sombrero. It is lying there, upside down and dusty, and he picks it up, brushing it off like it is injured too—like it is the flag of the republic. Maybe it is his father’s, I don’t know. I put my machete away, I didn’t even think to clean it, and that is when I notice a strange wind blowing on my back. When I touch there with my hand I understand that my shirt is cut open.

  “Ooni’ya, because it is market day there is a truck there from the army—the first one in Tlacolula—and they use it to take that poor cabrón to Oaxaca City. He is alive in the hospital there for seven days. In that time, they cut off his leg, but the infection goes to his heart all the same. I tell you, the authorities were fair with me—so many witnesses, and it is clear I am not trying to kill, but I think what saved me was going to confession. The priest knew the young man’s family and after I confessed to him he defended me. He would not say it t
o me himself, but I heard later that this young man’s father was ashamed of him, that he was drinking so much and making problems for many people, not only for me. But one thing the priest said to me alone and I never forgot it—‘Hilario, if you are prudent, you will not speak of this again.’

  “You know I never want for this to happen, but I can tell you from experience, God’s own shoes are better than Spanish leather. That day, it was my feet that kept me from dying like my father. I hope you are never in such a situation, but there is a saying from that time that I find to be true—No es el tigre, como lo pintan. It isn’t a tiger, no matter how it’s painted. With a nail I cut these words into the blade of my Collins and it was good luck for me. Even after I broke that machete in the forest many years later, I never had such problems again. It is a pity about the Collins, I could never find another, and these new ones coming out of Nicaragua are crap.”

  I asked my abuelo why he never told me this story before and he said, “Because I listened to that priest. Maybe it is the only time I do, but he protected me, and it is because of him I walked away from that. Those hacendados have power and influence and they can do anything they like to a campesino. The padre was right—if they hear I am telling that story, it will sound like I am bragging and it will cause a problem for sure. It is a long way to the market, you know, especially when you’re walking, and there are many places for an ambush. Xútsilatsi! You’re dead before you hear the shot.”

  At the end of November, Abuelo died in his sleep. A neighbor made his coffin and I dug his grave. The family came and Papá offered to help me dig. I knew he didn’t want to so I did it alone. It was better this way because I cried like it was my father I was burying. In my mind when I was digging I saw him at the excavation in Latuxí—Abuelo with his shovel, making his way down into the ground until I couldn’t see him anymore, until he found something deep under there that was softer than stone but harder than clay. I understood then the bargain he was making with the Sierra, with the earth—one Jaguar Man for another.

  I know how my abuelo died because I was there, but my Grandfather Payne died far away with no one to explain it. Always there was a piece missing and that piece is in el Norte together with the Jaguar Man. This troubled my abuelo also, but the closest he came to an answer was the newspaper. “Two weeks after I brought Zeferina home,” he told me, “I went to Tlacolula for the Sunday market and I asked my friend the bus driver if he had any newspapers. He did, and in one of them there was a story in the obituaries telling of the professor’s life and his work at Aztec sites in Puebla and at our site in Latuxí. In there also I read that his death was not an accident like the priest said. The newspaper said he did it himself with a pistol. Always I wondered what could cause such a strong and healthy man to die in the middle of his life. It is a hard question. Because he was a gringo and a jefe there are things about him I could never know, but if it is so, if the professor took his own life, it would make him the only man I know to do such a thing, and it puts a shadow over everything. I didn’t tell Zeferina about this for a long time. Or your father. Not until he was thirteen and he heard some people in the pueblo talking. Then he asked me why his eyes were green like a gringo’s and not brown like mine. That was another hard question, and after I answered it nothing was the same between us.

  “And the reason I am telling you,” he said to me, “is because wherever you are going, you must know what you are made of, and who.”

  These green eyes like my father and the professor I do not have. I look only like my mother’s son. If there is gringo in me, it’s hiding on the inside. And now I’m wondering where.

  Abuelo told me a strange story about him once, and always I wondered if it was true. The professor was talking to Abuelo about Diego Rivera and his murals telling the story of Mexico. In one of them is the great pyramid at Tenochtitlán, and my grandfather told my abuelo how Rivera imagined it in the time of Moctezuma before the coming of Cortés—so many being sacrificed and their blood running down the steps like a waterfall.

  “One night,” said Abuelo, “the professor told me how Señor Rivera, he wonders if the Aztecs are only sacrificing these people or if they are eating them also. Well, Rivera is a man who will try anything. Just look at him—that mouth and that panza—nothing is safe. Señora Kahlo was brave or crazy to sleep in the same bed with a man like that. Who can say if it is true, but the professor and Señor Rivera were explorers, young and curious men trying to understand what it means to be Mexicano, and one of them says, ‘I must try it.’ And the other says, ‘Yes, we must.’

  “This is what the professor tells me,” said Abuelo, “that Señor Rivera wants to know how it is to be a priest up there on the pyramid—to take a man, break his chest open and pull the living heart from his body with only your bare hands and a stone blade. He wants to know that moment with the manfruit beating in your hand, wants to feel that muscle still alive with all its colors bright and shining, beating and beating because it doesn’t know anything else, beating because to not beat is to not be.” And Abuelo is saying, “No, Profesor. No es verdad.”

  But it is true, AnniMac. Oaxaqueños know all about it because we are doing this same operation at home—pulled alive from our family, our pueblo, and put in a stranger’s hands to beat and beat until we can’t. Since forever.

  And the professor says to my abuelo, “Sí, mi amigo, es verdad. Mira.” He takes out his wallet then, and pressed in there, flat like a phonecard, is an ear. From a man. It is old and dry, but it is for sure an ear. Abuelo doesn’t believe him completely because many men took such prizes in la Revolución and maybe this ear was from that time.

  “You’re not having a joke with me?” he says. “You and Señor Rivera really ate this?”

  “Not this,” says the professor. “The meat.”

  Maybe you can forgive my abuelo, but he asks him, “What does it taste like?”

  “La ternera,” says the professor. “Veal, but with a little something extra.”

  “Spicy?” says Abuelo. “¿Como la conchita?”

  “No,” he says. “Not exactly. In my experience it is unique.”

  “Would I like it?” asks Abuelo.

  “I think you would need to be very hungry,” says the professor. “Or a jaguar.”

  23

  Sat Apr 7—10:59

  The metal is hot now and I have folded my sweatshirt under my shoulder, my bag under my hip, and I have my sneakers on again. Because of the shape of the tank, my feet must go up the other side and I can’t feel my toes so well anymore. I think this is pushing the blood into my brain and I can feel it in there—the pressure and the pounding—like my heart has moved into my skull. My stomach is clenched like a fist. I am lying on my side with my bottle for a pillow, and this keeps my face by the pipe where there is now a small breeze blowing. It is so hot, but I have discovered the secret to cooling myself—it is in the eyes. That air—such soft feathers on my eyelids. I keep them closed so there is less evaporation and because it hurts them now to be open. It is also why I speak so soft, trying to keep the water inside. I hope you can hear me. I understand now that this pipe is the only way back to the living world—to air and light and sound, and soon I will pass through it.

  Sat Apr 7—11:33

  Too hot for anything. One bar. César’s battery one-third. His water three-quarters gone.

  And breathing starts to feel like the sand on fire.

  This and the waiting.

  Sat Apr 7—14:22

  Hello anybody. This is Héctor María de la Soledad Lázaro González. And I am still alive.

  Sat Apr 7—17:31

  I heard someone—a man, I think—begging to die. I could not recognize his voice because it was a raven talking, but I recognized the word—morir, and I put my fingers in my ears. I had water and air and I did not give it, and I put my fingers in my ears until the voice went away.

  Sat Apr 7—17:42

  In your country is it a sin to be a migrante? If
it is a crime it must be a sin, no? Is this our punishment from your American god?

  When I was small I asked my mother if I was a sinner. “You were born a sinner,” she said. “But you are not old enough to confess. Yet.” But yet has come and gone, and you are my confessor now. Y este aquí es el confesionario más grande del mundo. I confess to you I would rather have some cool water right now than some long forever by the side of Jesus. To drown would be a blessing.

  Sat Apr 7—17:54

  It is a coffin in here. O una crisálida.

  All of us had the same wish, but no one could see past themselves. We were together alone, no better than animals who in their panic only hurt themselves more. I saw a burro once, a young one, with his head caught in a barbed-wire fence. Every time he tried to pull his head out he cut himself, and every time he cut himself he panicked and cut himself more. The other burros in the field came over and stood with him, but what could they do, so that is how we found him in the morning—dead in the fence with the vultures on him and the burros standing all around. The only difference between us and that burro is we paid thirty thousand pesos. Too much for a coffin.