Thirteen Senses by Victor Villaseñor
Tears came to Lupe’s eyes. Oh, how she missed her familia!
RESTING UNDER THE TREES alongside the Colorado River, Salvador and Lupe truly thought that they’d died and gone to Heaven the way they were being treated by the Mexicans and Indians alike. One person brought them some freshly made tamales. Another shared some of their beans and rice with them. An old, heavy-set Indian woman with large bare feet gave them a plate of wild quail baked in cactus fruit that had to be one of the most mouth watering dishes that they’d ever tasted!
Salvador and Lupe truly missed their familias, but they could now also see that they were, indeed, starting a whole new life of their own. Here, Hortensia had little kids her own age to play with and she was very happy. That terrible night of their distillery exploding like a bomb seemed so far away. And that night of the lightning and thunder and then losing their brakes as they’d come down the mountain almost seemed like it had all just been a bad dream.
On the third day, Salvador felt strong enough to go to work in the fields along with the other men. Here, not too many of the women worked. It was well over 110 degrees in the shade, but they weren’t working in the shade. No, they were out in the direct sunlight—where thermometers couldn’t even measure the heat without breaking.
Being a good sweater, Salvador was able to adjust to the heat and work very well in the hot fields. But by the end of the day, his feet were swollen and burning.
That night, Lupe took her husband’s shoes off, and she massaged the soles of his feet with water and river clay, and Salvador was sure that he was in Heaven. Little by little, all those terrible days of their past disappeared and they became a happy little family living here in the trees and brush alongside the Colorado River.
That Friday night, a man got hold of some tequila from Mexico and they started up a poker game and invited Salvador to join them. Salvador said no, saying that he really wasn’t into gambling, but after they kept insisting, he joined them. Quickly, Salvador realized that these men really weren’t into the gambling, either. No, they were just drinking and relaxing. The art of playing cards wasn’t a thing that they even knew existed. And so without really meaning to, Salvador began to win pot after pot until he had almost all of their money.
Then he caught himself. And they thought he was just being lucky. They really had no idea that he was a professional. Quickly, Salvador did something that he’d never done before in all of his life. He deliberately began to lose back all the money that he’d won, doing all he could to make sure that each man won at least one good pot.
He wasn’t going to be a wolf, shearing the sheep this time. He wanted to give thanks to the Almighty for having gifted him His Son Jesus through the form of Kenny White in the desert.
That night Salvador and Lupe made love under the Mother Moon and Stars at the edge of the Colorado River. Salvador and Lupe hadn’t known such peace and happiness since they’d married. Their amor was now anchored . . . deep with roots.
LUPE AWOKE WITH A START. It was half past midnight and her mind was running wild. “Salvador,” she said, “quick, we got to get out of here! The police are coming!”
Seeing her eyes, Salvador believed her. They had no more than gotten in their truck when a horde of men with clubs descended on them, beating everyone in sight. People were screaming and running every-which-way, trying to escape. Women and children were being beaten, too. In their headlights, Salvador and Lupe saw one woman’s head explode into pieces like a watermelon as she ran with her child in hand. And a big young man kept hitting her again and again with his club!
With pistol in hand, Salvador stopped to shoot the man, but then here came six others with clubs in hand, also swinging at anyone they came across. Salvador lowered his .38 snubnose and they drove on, and surprisingly, because they were in a vehicle, no one seemed to notice them. It was like, well, these people own a car and so they must be okay.
Up ahead, Salvador and Lupe gave witness to two grown White men knock down the old Indian woman—who’d given them that dish of cactus fruit and quail—and beat her as she tried protecting her grandchild!
Salvador slammed on his brakes and leaped out of his truck. His .38 snubnose BURST the night open with GUNFIRE! Then his .45 automatic sounded like a machine gun! The men with clubs were suddenly on the run, screaming in pain—as Salvador shot their legs out from under them!
Twenty-six years later, one of these same Okies would come to Salvador and Lupe in Oceanside, California, asking for a job at one of their retail stores. “We knew nothing,” the man would tell Salvador and Lupe a couple of years later, after they’d become good friends. “I was nothing but a big, strong, fifteen-year-old kid off a farm in Oklahoma and the cops told us that we could get jobs once we run off those lazy, no-good Mexican-Indians who lived by the river. We was desperate, so that night we lit into you people there by the river under those trees, breaking heads, not caring if it was women or children—just being told they weren’t White and really human like us who needed the jobs!
“But when that gunfire broke open, it was like we all of the sudden sobered up and realized that these were real people, too. I just don’t rightly know quite how to explain it—I’m ashamed to say—but until some of us was screaming that we ourselves was in pain, it was like we hadn’t had a clue that we’d been doing something wrong. That night still haunts me. One woman’s head I felt shatter under the swing of my club. And the cops, they kept egging us on, and we were just so stupid and desperate that we thought nothing of it at the time.”
This man’s name was Thompson, he was an ex-Marine, and he worked for Salvador and Lupe, in Oceanside for fifteen years and every time he’d have a few too many drinks, he’d come back up with this story, feeling worse about this than any of the things he’d done in the service overseas.
But Salvador never told Thompson that it had been he, Juan Salvador Villaseñor, the Devil, himself, who’d taken aim on those running men with clubs in their hands that night and shot their butts, crippling them on the spot!
The next day Salvador and Lupe fled in the truck. Over twenty people had been killed with clubs—eleven of them women and children—and another dozen had been left with broken arms and cracked ribs. But of this, the authorities didn’t care.
No, they were looking for the man who’d used a gun and shot the legs out from under half a dozen White people! The official story was that once more a bunch of drunk Mexican-Indians had started problemas. Hundreds of good citizens were deputized and brought in to round up all the trouble-starting half-breeds and put them on the train so they could be shipped back to Mexico where they belonged.
And half of these people weren’t even Mexican. They were full-blooded Yuma Indians who’d never been south of the border before. This had been their home, here along the Colorado River for hundreds of years.
ABOUT 150 MILES EAST of Yuma in the little nothing place of Chuichu, right outside of Casa Grande, Arizona, a wind came up so strong that Salvador and Lupe had to pull off the road and take shelter by an abandoned barn. Things went flying out of their truck. Lupe’s purse with all their money in the world was ripped off of her hand and went flying through the air along with anything else that wasn’t nailed down.
Lupe screamed, “Our money, Salvador!” And Salvador—who’d been tying things down—went running after the purse, which was quickly disappearing into the dust storm.
Lupe was left alone with their daughter alongside a barn that was now being pulled apart, too, by the terrible winds of the dust storm. Lupe was sure that she’d sent her husband to his death. She began to pray, asking God to please not let Salvador get killed or lost in the storm.
He was gone for what seemed like hours. Lupe was just about to give up all hope, when here came Salvador struggling back against the wind, grabbing hold of fence posts to support himself.
Getting back inside of the truck with her, Salvador told Lupe that he hadn’t been able to catch her purse, no matter how many times he’d seen i
But then miracle of miracles, the next day when the storm died down and Lupe was out trying to trap quail, something in the distance on a little knoll, caught her eye. She called to Salvador, and together with Hortensia in hand, they walked out to the little knoll, and there caught on a lone piece of barbwire fence was her purse and their money was all intact.
Tears of joy came to Lupe’s eyes. God loved them and was looking after them!
That night, under the Stars Salvador and Lupe built a fire, marinated the quail, that Lupe had caught, in the cactus-fruit-sauce like the big, barefoot Indian grandmother had taught them, and they roasted the little bird. It was a delicious feast. Heaven smiling down upon them.
THE NEXT DAY, Salvador and Lupe had the confidence to make one of the most terrifying and important decisions of all of their lives. They decided to drive—not south as they’d been doing—but up north to the big town of Phoenix, so they could wire a message to Archie.
This was scary. They’d be wiring to the sheriff’s office itself, exposing their whereabouts. My God, Salvador and Lupe were now wanted not just for bootlegging but maybe even for murder—if any of those men he’d shot in Yuma had died.
On the other hand, the whole country was going to pieces and so maybe Salvador and Lupe wouldn’t even be noticed, especially since they no longer had a grand automobile and fine clothes and looked just like all the other poor Mexican workers.
On a blanket, Salvador counted out the bullets that he had left for his .38 Special and his .45 automatic. On the same blanket, Lupe counted out their money, including all of their change. Salvador had twenty-three .38s left, but he only had seven .45s. He’d need a couple of boxes of each, he figured, before they crossed over into Mexico, because once in Mexico, it would almost be impossible to get any ammunition unless, of course, you were in the military or a policeman.
Lupe counted their money and they had less than twelve dollars left. Where all their money had gone, she didn’t know. Sometimes she just couldn’t understand her husband, like when he’d given those six dollars to that gas station owner for those people’s transmission.
My God, those were the same Okies who’d beat Sophia’s husband in Santa Ana and had come in with clubs, trying to kill them by the river in Yuma!
“Lupe, Lupe, calm down,” said Salvador. “We’re going to be all right. There’s nothing wrong in helping people here and there as we go.”
“I know, I know,” she said. “It’s just that, well, I guess that I just miss my familia so much, Salvador! And now it looks like we’re never going to be able to come back, because of that shooting you did!”
“But they were going to kill that old lady, even as she screamed, trying to protect her grandchild,” he said. “It was my mother and sisters all over again, Lupe! They’re lucky I didn’t shoot them in their tanates!”
“Yes, I know!” said Lupe in frustration. “You did good, I see that, but only—I just don’t know, Salvador. Where is all this going to end?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“And,” said Lupe, tears coming to her eyes, “I’m pregnant again, Salvador, and I don’t want to be carrying all this fear around inside of me along with my new baby. I’d thought we’d left the Revolution behind us when we’d left Mexico.”
Salvador smiled. “Don’t worry, we’ll find peace someday, Lupe, I swear it, we’ll find peace, and make a home for our daughter and this new child.”
“God, I hope so,” said Lupe, making the sign of the cross over herself, then kissing the back of her thumb which was folded over her index finger.
DRIVING IN TO PHOENIX, they saw more Indians than they’d ever seen before, and these Indians were as poor and desperate as beggars. Going to the Western Union office, they wired Archie. It cost them a fortune, sixty cents for the telegram and then one dollar to have it hand delivered to Archie at the sheriff’s office in Santa Ana.
They waited and waited, but they got no answer. They decided to risk everything and wire the same message to Oceanside to be delivered directly to the police station there.
They fully knew that they were playing with fire, trying to contact Archie at the sheriff’s office and the police department, but they hadn’t been able to come up with any other way of doing it.
Every few minutes, Salvador would walk out of the Western Union office to make sure that their truck was still free at the end of the street, so they could just jump in and take off if they needed. He had both weapons under his shirt in his pants. God, he didn’t want to shoot at anyone anymore. Only little, scared cowards resorted to settling matters with guns. A strong man, who was aprevenido, could always find another way.
Inside the office, Lupe was holding calmly.
Seeing two cars full of men park across the street, Salvador quickly walked up to Lupe, took her by the arm, and he told the Western Union man that they’d be back in a little while for their answers.
Leaving the office, Salvador was surprised to see that these two cars full of men did not come after them as he’d expected, but, instead, they went into the bank across the street.
“My God,” said Salvador, “it’s going to be a bank robbery. Let’s get the hell out of here!”
And they’d no more than gotten into their truck and were taking off, when the shooting started. They didn’t go back that day to the Western Union office, and they didn’t go back the following day, either.
When they did return on the third day, figuring that things had finally cooled off and maybe there’d even be a different man in the Western Union office, who did they run into, Domingo, Salvador’s brother—and he was all dressed up and had his arm around an older, rich-looking woman with tons of makeup and lots of jewelry.
“Where the hell have you been?” asked Domingo. “We got here yesterday. Here, I want you to meet Socorro. We would’ve taken off and left if you hadn’t come by today!”
Salvador was overjoyed to see his brother. He looked sober and happy and well.
“And here,” said Domingo, taking his brother aside, “is the hundred dollars that you wired Archie for.”
Salvador hadn’t wired Archie for one hundred dollars. No, he’d wired Archie for all the monies that were still owed to him for the barrels of whiskey that he’d given to people on credit. If Archie had at all done his job, he should have wired Salvador close to three hundred dollars, after pocketing a hundred for himself.
“Are you sure that this is all the money that Archie sent me?” asked Salvador.
Suddenly, just like that, Domingo was red-faced, and raging mad like a bull! “Are you trying to say that I stole some!” bellowed Domingo, with his neck muscles coming up like thick ropes!
“No, I’m not saying that,” said Salvador. “I’m glad to see you and that you brought me this money, but you see, Domingo, Archie owes me close to three hundred.”
“Oh,” said Domingo, calming back down as quickly as he’d gone up. “I now remember, he said something like that. Something about not having collected it all yet, and so for you to wire him again in about a week.”
With that settled, Domingo was all happy again and so they went up the street to get something to eat, passing a whole bunch of Indian women who were squatted down on the boardwalk with a colorful blanket in front of them, showing off their wares of handmade turquoise jewelry.
Socorro’s whole face lit up like a happy little girl’s and she wanted to buy some of the beautiful silver jewelry. But Domingo was starving and so he just laughed and hugged her close.
“Look, you fool,” he said, “you already look Indian enough. What you want is some gringo jewelry, not this Indian stuff!”
“But it’s so beautiful!” insisted Socorro.
“Oh, all right, but after we eat,” he said, pulling h
“Besides, it’s my money,” she said.
“Oh, no, don’t start that,” he said, suddenly getting angry at her. “You agreed to call it ‘our’ money, if I allowed you to come in with me to open up my gold mine in Mexico!”
“All right,” she said, “but, then, if I’m willing to call it ‘our’ money, then why do you always call it ‘my’ mine, instead of ours?”
“Because, as I’ve told you why a thousand times,” said Domingo, grinning a handsome smile, “a gold mine is worth much more than this little bit of money that you’ve brought into this deal of ours, see?”
And saying this, Domingo winked at Salvador as they went into the restaurant at the end of the street. He was happy showing off to his brother how he’d just handled this situation with his woman so cleverly.
After eating, Socorro did, in fact, buy several pieces of jewelry for herself, then one very plain piece for Lupe, which Lupe had been eyeing. Lupe told her no, that this wasn’t necessary, that she’d just been looking, but Socorro insisted. She was a very child-like, generous person who just wanted to make everyone happy. God, for her, was a Gift Giver.
Lupe put the plain silver bracelet on her left wrist and it looked so elegant on her. Socorro, on the other hand, adorned herself with the biggest, most elaborate bracelets and earrings they had!
They drove out of Phoenix and headed south back down to Mesa Grande where Salvador and Lupe were staying a little ways out of town.
Domingo and Socorro were driving a big beautiful Packard, one of the finest automobiles of the day. Salvador and Lupe could hardly keep up with them in their little truck. At Mesa Grande, Domingo treated Salvador and Lupe to a room in a hotel with him and Socorro. Lupe took a long, hot bath, and it was Heaven! She and Salvador had been living in the brush ever since they’d left Santa Ana.
Once the two women were settled in, Domingo took Salvador outside to talk with him. Domingo was in great spirits. He now had money, money, money, not just to open up that gold mine in Navojoa, Sonora, but to live! To breathe! To feel FREE once again!