“I didn’t count them, but,” I patted my crotch, “I’m told that I have a cannon for a garrancha . . .” The behemoth bulge, even beneath my “lay brother’s” robes, was embarrassingly obvious but confirmed my assessment, “. . . and cannonballs for cojones.”
She started laughing as if she knew something I didn’t. No woman had ever laughed at or derided my machismo before, and my vanity was pricked. I flushed with anger.
“See for yourself, woman!” I slipped off my robes and dropped them to the ground.
She gasped at the immensity of my member.
“¡Dios mío!” she cried out, crossing herself and looking away.
In the back of my mind I prayed that our sainted padre would not happen by. Who knows how many Hail Marys, Our Fathers, and countless other acts of contrition he would sentence my benighted soul to. We were both hopelessly compromised: Marina, her knife pointed at me, and me bare naked with my member at a raging right angle, an angry flag posted at half-staff yet arrogantly erect in a gale-force wind.
I quickly pulled off my boots. I didn’t have to force the knife out of her hand. With a sudden turn and a shockingly swift throw she stuck her knife in the frangipani tree, impaling two gaudily fragrant frangipani flowers. She then fell into my arms as eagerly as I collapsed into hers.
With my lay-brother’s robes for our sacred bed, we dropped to the ground. She spread her legs wide as paradise.
My garrancha—hard enough to cut diamonds—was furnace hot, thrumming and throbbing like her vibrating knife. Hovering over her own beauteous blossom, however, I was racked by a desperation I had never before felt, and agony of lust so painfully urgent it frightened me.
I had kissed women before but never like her. They weren’t kisses so much as a tumbling into an abyss. I had never known lips so soft and a tongue so hot and inventive and lithe. I could have kissed her forever and never enjoyed consummation . . . that was how deeply I felt.
I did enter her though, and her flower was lava hot between her legs. I felt her body respond, even as my mouth devoured hers, my tongue ramming at hers as if simulating the ramming of my cañón. The bodily tremors increased in intensity and frequency, and I accelerated the power of my stroke to accommodate her pumping, gyrating hips.
The deeper, harder I probed, the more the black fuzzy bush between her legs tickled my lower pelvis. Penetrating deeper, harder, my pelvis palpated her prickly pear, rotating, revolving on and around her clitoral star like a planet orbiting a black yet blazingly hot sun, until running amok, I crisscrossed and crosshatched the little orb, driving her maniacally mad. Rubbing and scraping my pelvis against the heated seed of her now trembling frangipani, I ground at it until not only her budding sprout flowered, but her whole being burgeoned and blossomed, exploding ecstatically into gaudily hued flowers of flamboyant fire.
I was erupting now as was she. All the previous spasms were put to shame by a climactic collective fireworks, an infinite succession of demented detonations blasting us apart, freeing us, as if all the harpies in hell and the demons in our souls were fighting to get out, bringing us ineffably closer together.
None of this slowed or softened my garrancha. He had been so long without a woman—and so embittered by prison—I only worried he might never go down again. He and his flowery friend came again and again. Was it a thunderous thousand-gun salute to heaven’s gate or a colossal cannonade from the jaws of hell? I could not say, but my garrancha and his friend were making up for lost time and making their presence known. They clearly had a joint mind of their own. It was as if Marina and I had no say in the matter.
Shuddering with me as the spasms racked her—in time, in tune, with mine, over and over and over—she clenched me tighter, kissing, biting, gnawing, chewing at my lips, like she would never stop, could never stop. Fingernails clawed at my back, thighs, hips, haunches, ass, reaching into the crack of my ass, down to my cojones.
Only once did she make me stop that afternoon, to “cool her frangipani off,” she said.
Leading me by the hand into the pond, we gently rubbed each other all over, particularly our tender and much abused . . . friends. She wanted to kiss my manhood, “make it better,” she said, fearing she had injured the little bird.
When she took my manhood in her mouth, teasing and torturing its tender underside with her tantalizing tongue, laving and sucking on its hell-hot muzzle, my inconsiderate male part punished her tender caresses with alabaster bursts of blazing cannon fire, milk-white against the nutbrown softness of her cheeks and lips as she gasped for air and my fusillades erupted volcanically out of her mouth, after which I quickly returned for more artillery practice.
Eventually, I returned the favor. Whether I feasted on her fatal flower at heaven’s gate or my tongue stroked and probed the yawning jaws of hell. I could not say. The caressing and kissing, driving and pounding would not stop, could not stop. We continued on and on, through the afternoon, even into dusk.
I’d like to say I taught her the way of a man and a woman, but the best I can say is I fought her to a draw. She was indeed a bruja, a witch, because for the first time in my life, a woman had me as much as I had her. It was as if our hips and loins, blossom and balls, indeed had lives, wills, and desperate desires of their own. If I had any concern at all, it was to question whether we would ever stop, whether anything on earth could interrupt what we had started, wondering in all sincerity whether death itself could penetrate and part our ecstatic embrace.
When at last we did lie still, in each other’s arms, quiet, exhausted, spent, innocent-yet-knowing in our nakedness, we said nothing for a long time. When I at last broke the silence, I did not even know I had spoken.
“It has been a long time?” I asked her.
“Yes, a long time, not since that bastardo husband of mine got shot with his pants down, but even then he was nothing like you.”
“Un hombre duro?” A hard hombre? I asked.
“Un hombre nada.” As a man he was nothing.
As she spoke, her eyes were closed. Opening them, she rolled on top of me. “You were wrong,” she said, as she pulled me back inside her. “Your manhood is bigger and harder than a cañón.”
Miraculously, my much abused amigo had returned to his duro stature. And we returned to our desperate dance.
TWENTY-SEVEN
BEFORE WE MADE our way back to her house, we cooled ourselves off in the pond. I enjoyed an ease and a comfort with a woman I had never before known. We talked casually of what we would do in the days ahead. I was enthralled by everything she said. I never even thought about the fact that she was an Azteca.
I must have cared for her, because I avoided the subject of when Lizardi and I would leave Dolores.
“I want to show you one of my horses,” she said. “I have a buyer for it, and I have to gentle him for saddle and ride.”
She walked the unbroken dun around the field for a time, stroking his neck, maintaining eye contact, whispering something ineffable to him. Suddenly swinging onto its saddleless back, she rode the unbroken horse bareback up and down her field. Bucking and kicking for a moment or so, snorting, whinnying, shying bites at her arms and legs, the dun quieted down by fits and starts. Finally he broke into a high lope, then a spirited canter, eventually a slow walk.
After a half hour or so of working the dun, she returned with him, now gentled. Throwing a saddle on him and cinching it up, she rode him back out into the field. Eventually she put a bridle on him, and he didn’t seem to mind.
I watched awestruck not only by her control over her horses but also by her ease, aplomb, and grace. Few vaqueros could match her horsemanship. None could match her assurance. And at one time I would have dismissed her as a woman. ¡Ay!
“How did you do that?” I asked.
“I just talk to him from time to time like this . . .” She whispered in the horse’s ear, stroking his ear gently, caressing his neck and nose.
“How long did you talk to him?”
> “A few days.”
I would have required a week of ungentle training to have broken the dun to my saddle: a week of spurs, spade bits, and a well-worn quirt.
After schooling the horse a while longer, she came over to where I leaned against the fence smoking my cigarro.
“Not your type of horse training, is it?”
I shook my head. “I train horses like I train my women—I ride them hard and put them up wet.”
She laughed so loud the horse took up the chorus, neighing and whinnying with her. Her up-from-the-gut laugh was utterly different from the crystal-tinkling bell of Isabella, but I enjoyed the sound of Marina’s laugh more.
I nodded at the horses. “I thought you’d given up breaking caballos.”
“I found a customer who’d buy a horse trained by a woman. The buyer is a woman, of course, the widow of a hacendado.” She studied me appraisingly with sharp shrewd eyes. “Speaking of hacienda owners, I understand Señor Ayala is still with us. He tells everyone you are a miracle worker.”
I shrugged, trying to look modest. “It was nothing. A brilliant medical procedure with God guiding my hand.”
“Then you won’t be disturbed if sick people line up at the church for your miracles.”
The look on my face started her laughing again.
“If you wish to remain in Dolores, you will have more business than you can handle.”
“Only one thing could keep me in Dolores.” I took her, rubbing her flower once again, and smothered her mouth with my lips.
Again, we fed our hunger.
Afterward I decided to do something constructive. This time I helped her feed her horses, again feeling strangely, inexplicably at ease with her . . . talking with her. We talked for a time about Father Hidalgo.
“The padre is a most unusual priest,” I said.
“And a most unusual man. He’s a great thinker, yet his head is not in books but with people. He’s caring and compassionate toward everything and everyone. He loves all people, not just his fellow Spaniards, but indios, mestizos, chinos, and African slaves as well. He says someday all people will be equal, even indios and slaves, but that it will happen only when the peons are permitted to use all their God-given talents instead of being treated like farm animals. And he respects women, not just for cooking meals and bearing children but for their minds, for the contribution we make in all things, including books and world events. He wants to change the world so that the underprivileged everywhere are treated equally.”
“That will only happen when God comes down and runs our lives Himself.”
Later, we sat by the creek that ran by her small rancho and fed our empty stomachs. I asked her about her name, curious as to why her mother would give her a name that was not well-respected by the Aztecs in the colony, that was honored only by the Spanish.
She told the story of Marina, the most famous woman in the history of New Spain.
The lover and translator of Cortés, who bore him a son, before the Conquest Marina had been an india princess, the daughter of a powerful leader.
“Doña Marina’s” father died when she was young, and her mother remarried. To prevent Marina from laying claim to her deceased father’s property, and to seize the estate for her own son, Marina’s stepbrother, her mother switched Marina for the dead child of a slave.
Her mother than gave Marina away to a Tabascan tribe. Later, when Cortés landed to conquer the Aztec empire, the Tabascans gave Marina—also called Malinche or Malintzín—to Cortés along with nineteen other women. His priests baptized the women and gave them Christian names—“Marina” was the young woman’s baptismal name—and parceled them out among Cortés’s men as concubines.
When Cortés learned that Marina had a natural facility for languages—that she picked up Spanish quickly, spoke the Nahuatl language of the Aztecs and the Mayan language of most of the southern region—he took her as both his lover and his translator.
“But she was more than just a lover and translator,” my Marina said. “She was a clever, intelligent woman. When Cortés negotiated with the Aztecs, she saw through their schemes and deceptions. While advising Cortés on how to deal with them, she bore him a son, Martín, and he later married her off to one of his soldiers, Juan de Jaramillo. When she traveled to Spain, she was presented to the royals.
“But the indios resented her as a traitor to their cause, arguing Cortés might not have conquered them had she not betrayed them by helping him.”
“Maybe they’re right,” I said.
“Were you ever parceled out to soldiers to be raped? Doña Marina was. Robbed of her inheritance, chatteled into whoredom, then concubinage—first for the pleasure of indios and then for the Spanish—her masters of both races passed her from man to man, forced her to spread her legs, and raped her. Victimized by both races, she turned the tables on her oppressors. She helped the Spanish, only because her own people betrayed and enslaved, raped and oppressed her.”
“Then why did your mother name you Marina?”
“My mother was a servant in the house of a Spaniard. He took her when he wanted her and cast her aside when she grew older. But unlike many of the other servants, my mother could read and write. She knew the story of Doña Marina. She gave me the name as a warning, for me to understand that it is a cruel world and that I needed to protect myself because no one else would.”
“What about your father?”
“I never knew my father. He was a vaquero who died from a horse fall before I was born.”
I thought about the way I had treated my servants over the years. I had often treated them harshly and unjustly to put them in their place. For the first time I found myself wondering what they had thought of me.
TWENTY-EIGHT
I’M LEAVING,” lizardi told me the next day.
I was surprised but reconciled. Despite my ardor for Marina, I knew he was right. Both of us had to move on. If we were captured here, the priest would be condemned for his hospitality to us.
Moreover, if I remained in Dolores and the worm left alone for Méjico City, his flapping lips would soon lead the viceroy’s constables back to me.
The more I considered that possibility the more I considered silencing the lips permanently but decided against it. Lizardi and I had been through a lot together, and perhaps we had forged a bond, a bond I was reluctant to acknowledge. And my presence threatened Father Hidalgo and Marina either way. Even if I killed Lizardi, I would have to leave.
The old Zavala would have done him in a heartbeat. Letting him live only increased my risk.
Something was happening to me, something that I couldn’t define. I just didn’t have it in me, and I didn’t want the padre or Marina to learn who I was. Strange as it might sound, I didn’t want them to think less of me.
Lizardi left, joining a silver train of over a hundred mules passing through Dolores. The train would link up on the road south of Guanajuato with even larger mule trains. Lizardi planned to use his family and friends to plead directly to the viceroy for mercy and a pardon. Everyone knows that justice can be bought, so Lizardi simply had to raise the price. His “sins” were far less expensive than mine. Forgiveness for Zavala would cost half the Inca gold.
In truth, I’d grown attached to Marina and did not want to move on. I could not call my feelings for her love—I had sworn to love forever only sweet Isabella, and that vow I would never break. But my feelings for Marina had passed far beyond lust, and with each passing day the depth and the degree of my caring grew more profound.
Marina had also been right about the consequences of my “medical miracle.” People flocked to the church asking for my services. I dodged those entreaties each day less successfully. Once I was backed into a corner and forced to minister to a sick child. Marina heard me tell the mother to give the child hot baths and called me aside to admonish me.
“You don’t give hot baths to a child with a fever. Hot water will drive the fever up; you’ll kill the child
.”
¡Ay de mí! Why did I become a medical man?
To clear my head and plan my next more, I saddled Tempest and set out on a three-day hunting trip. In the wilderness, by myself, answering to no one and fearing no one, I would find peace for the first time since Bruto died and left behind a plague of charges and problems.
I didn’t feel it sporting to drop a deer with a musket. Borrowing a good hunting bow and a quiver of arrows from a friend of Marina’s, I rode into the wilderness on Tempest.
I brought down a deer with an arrow that very morning, hung it from its hind legs, and cut its throat to drain the blood. I was so close to Dolores I decided I’d ride back and drop the carcass off with Marina so she could have it dressed out and hung in the smokehouse while I continued my hunt.
The sky was gray and overcast, the day damp and drizzly, when I arrived at the outskirts of Dolores. As I approached the padre’s vineyards, with the deer slung over Tempest’s withers, I saw soldiers and constables at the vineyards.
My first instinct was to wheel Tempest around and spur him out of Dolores. I had to leave quietly but couldn’t appear to run off.
I saw something that gave me pause. The mounted soldiers and constables began lassoing the trellised grapevines, dallying their saddle ropes around their pommels and pulling the vines out of the ground. While some of the viceroy’s men ripped out the vineyard, others were chopping down the mulberry trees. The sound of smashing pottery came from that facility. The constables hadn’t come for me; they were destroying the Aztec craft-works.
Lizardi had expressed surprise that the padre had succeeded for so long in improving the indios’ lot. Now the viceroy was ending those efforts.
Watching the viceroy’s men destroy years of hard work and seeing the sadness and despair on the workers’ faces fueled my anger. I wondered where the padre was, whether the soldados had already placed him under arrest.
Marina galloped up to the soldiers who were pulling out the grape trellises. She was too far away for me to hear what she said, but I knew the gist of it. She cursed them roundly for their stupidity.