The Hummingbird's Daughter (42 page)

Forty-six

THE TIGERS OF THE SIERRA had left their village of Tomóchic and followed the River of Spiders as it flowed west and down, falling in rapids and cataracts until it bent away from their path, as if the desert below were too extreme, too hot for water, and the river shied away to hide in less volatile light. A rear guard of nine riflemen waited in the foothills for their return. When the waters left the men, they began to trot. They were sons of the Papigochic, partly descended from the great Tarahumara, and like the Tarahumara, the Tigers could run for hundreds of miles when they were hunting or at war, their dark carbines across their backs, muzzle down, tied on with string and rope. Machetes and long knives rode their hips, and leather water bottles and, for those who required comfort, a blanket to sleep in when they finally stopped beneath the stars. Their sandals had soles of leather, softened and dyed by immersion in human feces, tied to their feet by knotted rope. Like the Yaquis, they were Catholic, and they wore rough crosses around their necks. None of them had ever seen a tiger and no one knew where the name Tigre came from. But there it was.

Like their namesakes, they were silent, relentless, and deadly. Catholics who rejected Rome, they maintained an uneasy truce with the nomad Mexican priests who brought their endless circuit ride of masses and ceremonies through el norte. The Tigers still owed allegiance to a long-dead Jesuit who was said to fly over mountain passes, who could walk through a mile-high fin of pure stone and appear, an hour hence, in the next village down the mountains, a man who was reported in Navojoa and Tomóchic at the same time, on the same day. These stories the Tigers took as gospel, the medicine of Christ. If they had seen the messiah Niño Chepito in his Sal Si Puedes valley, they would have shot him.

The Tigers rejected the ways of the lowlanders. These Tomochitecos were farmers and silver miners and hunters and traders who answered to one man only—a fighter selected by the village, who was also their pastor and warrior chief. This man, part medicine man and part priest, interpreted scriptures for them, led the daily church services, and counseled the people in all matters great and small. He was the lawgiver and the judge, the religious leader and the war maker. He commanded the militia.

Cruz Chávez.

He could read, and he started every day with a scripture reading for all gathered. The women covered their heads, and the men carried rifles. Each man was expected to defend his family, his church, his village, and his crops, in that order. Each citizen of Tomóchic was free to offer an insight or opinion about that day’s Bible verse.

Cruz carried his Bible in a small backpack woven of wool. He was a righteous man, whose only vice was smoking hand-rolled cigarettes, though in that place tobacco was not known as a vice. He was a mighty guerrilla fighter, and he was told by the angels that he was the godliest man in Mexico. This led him to announce—it only made sense—that he was the acting Pope of the Mexican Republic, and as such, he was the final authority on all matters Mexican.

He was a tall man with a barrel chest. He wore a thick black beard, carried a Winchester repeater rifle everywhere he went. He had learned to read and write in his time away from the mountains, a time he considered wasted, except for the learning. He maintained a small milpa of corn, and he hunted deer for the village. He had three children. He was descended from Spaniards, but the people of Tomóchic did not hold that against him.

Cruz Chávez put up with Padre Gastélum, even though he found him rude. Not wishing to entirely alienate Gastélum, and loath to bring overmuch government attention down on their own heads, the Tigers invited him to give guest sermons. He leapt at the opportunity—and he bullied and lashed them when he took the pulpit, sometimes for over an hour. They were children; they must follow the orders of their fathers in Mexico City; they must come under the control of the Mother Church. Not surprisingly, it was his impassioned denunciation of Teresita—a heretical Indian half-breed, he exclaimed, fanatical enemy of the great General Díaz, consort of the warlike Yaquis—that first caught the Tigers’ interest.

When they came out of the trees, and then out of the foothills, onto the terrible plain of Sonora, they decided to trot to Cabora. Cruz took the lead, then his rifleman, Rubén. And following, not slowed at all by his affliction, came old José Ramírez, his neck twisted and purple with a tumor. It had been growing at the base of his skull for years, and although nobody stared at him in his village, they all said that one day it would grow big enough to snap his neck bone and kill him.

War parties had parleyed with Cruz in his fortified home west of the town church. They came quietly and squatted in the dark, smoking clay pipes and reed pipes, holding their guns and their bows. Rarámuri runners came, Yaqui spies, some Chiricahua and Mescalero. Pima traders passed through Tomóchic and accepted his invitations to eat with him, to speak of this new saint of the lowlands.

She had healed the sick, they said. And she preached revival. Dangerous revival—even war.
War,
he said,
what saint preaches war?
They had heard her with their own ears, this half-Yori girl, sweet in her face, but strong and sturdy in her spine, telling them that God himself had given them their lands.

“Do you believe in God? Do you believe in justice?” she had asked them. And they murmured
Yes, yes—God, justice.
“Do you? For the governors and the soldiers, the priests and the presidents, they are spiders, falling upon you, drinking the blood of your children! Do you believe?

“Do you believe God put your feet on this land? God gave land to every man and woman! And this is your land! This land is holy!
Do you believe?
”

Yes! We believe!

“These octopi strangle you with their sinful arms. Greed! Greed is a sin! No man, whether he is white or brown, can take the land from you! It came from God! Only God may take it away from you!

“Tell me now!
DO YOU BELIEVE
?”

They had yelled her name. They had danced. They had lifted their hands and fallen to the ground.

She had smiled.

“This is not a call to war,” the Pope of Mexico said.

“It is to us,” his men said.

It took them two days of running. At night, they slept close together on the hard ground, their feet overlapping, each body heating the other. Traditionally, the one in the middle changed each night so all members of a party could have one night’s warmth, though Cruz and Rubén had voted to keep José in the center on this mission.

Cruz would give this saint a simple test. She could heal José, or she could fail to heal him. And if she failed, Tomóchic would renounce her as another imposter.

They squatted in the morning and ate jerked venison and berries from pouches on their belts. A swallow of water each. A pebble in the mouth to make refreshing spit. Cruz pointed to the west and set out at a brisk pace. The others fell in behind.

Cruz found the arroyo before noon, and they ran along its edge. They found the first of Lauro Aguirre’s dams, and they stopped to look at the green water. They’d been running for only three hours—they didn’t need a drink yet, but it was refreshing to look. Already, little willows and alamos trees were sprouting on the banks.

Cruz ran until the main house was in sight, then he slowed to a walk.

All three of them pulled their rifles around in front of them and walked with their weapons across their chests, ready to fade into the brush and shoot anyone who threatened them.

They stopped at a small camp to stare at a twisted child writhing on a pallet. Her knees were terrible balls of bone, and her hands formed claws that scraped the air. She strained her head to look at them, and she seemed to laugh, though it could have been a scream.

Cruz spoke to the mother:

“Sister, what is wrong with your child?”

“No one knows, señor,” she said. “She was always like this. It is the will of God.”

Cruz looked at his companions.

It was a good answer.

They approved.

“God,” he said. “If it is His will, then why have you come here to try to change it?”

“It may be His will to heal her now,” the mother said. “Glory be to God.”

Cruz leaned on his rifle.

“Do you believe God changes His mind?”

“God does what God does.” She blessed herself. “It is not for me to question. I come to God as a child, asking favors of her father.”

He nodded. The girl on the pallet strained her arm toward him. He reached out with one finger and touched her hand. She clutched his finger.

“You are very pretty,” he said to her. “Will you marry me?”

She grimaced and shouted.

It sounded like
Yot!

The mother laughed.

“She says no. You are very old and hairy for her. She is laughing.”

Cruz tipped his hat to the girl. He smiled down at her.

“What is her name?” he asked.

“Conchita.”

Conchita pulled at his finger and made her sounds. He gently pried his finger out of her grasp. He winked at her. She flung her hands over her mouth.

“Has she seen the saint?”

“No, señor. Not yet.”

“Why not.”

The woman extended her hand.

“Many pilgrims,” she said. “Many pilgrims.”

A screen of mesquite trees obscured his view of the house.

“If this saint is real,” he said, “we will carry Conchita to her.”

“Gracias, señor,” she said.

“Adios, beloved,” he said to Conchita. “We could have been happy together. I leave with a broken heart.”

Yot!
She laughed.

Feo!

He nodded to her mother and walked on. Stopped. Came back.

“Do you know who I am?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“We’re from Tomóchic,” José said.

It meant nothing to her.

“In the Sierra Madre.”

“Ah!”

She was afraid of the Sierra Madre. It was a place of crags, ice, Apaches, wolves. She shuddered. Surely, these men were warriors.

“I am the leader of Tomóchic,” Cruz said. “I am Cruz Chávez. I am the Pope of Mexico.”

Conchita drew a squealing breath and laughed again.

“Benditos sean,” her mother whispered.

Cruz made the sign of the cross over them. He hefted his rifle onto his shoulder and walked away. His warriors followed, blessed by the Lord, reconciled, holy in this day He had made, and ready to shoot.