W hen Jorge Rodriguez could, he walked into Baroyeca to meet the train. He couldn't always. Farm work had no peaks and valleys, the way soldiering did; you needed to keep at it every day. The damnyankees still hadn't let Miguel out of their POW camp. Jorge hoped he was all right. Maybe he'd been wounded, and word never got to Sonora. Maybe he was dead, and word never got here. He hadn't written since the end of the war, and things inside the CSA were falling apart by then.
But maybe he would get off the train one afternoon, good as new or somewhere close. The hope kept Jorge walking. He'd seen enough to know you never could tell. And if he stopped in at La Culebra Verde for a glass of beer before he came home, well, it was nothing his father hadn't done before him.
Every so often, nobody got out when the train stopped in Baroyeca. It wasn't a big city, and never would be. If not for the silver and lead mines in the hills back of town, it wouldn't have been a town at all. When the mines closed between the wars, the town almost died. Even the trains stopped coming for a while.
Jake Featherston had fixed that. He'd fixed lots of things. You couldn't say so, not unless you wanted to get in trouble with the Yankees. Jorge had enough sense to keep his boca cerrada. A couple of people who didn't…disappeared.
One afternoon, a tall, balding fellow whose remaining hair was yellow mixed with gray stepped down and looked around in wonder. Anybody with that coloring and those beaky features stood out in swarthy, mestizo-filled Baroyeca.
"Seсor Quinn!" Jorge exclaimed-not his brother, but another familiar face he hadn't seen for a long time.
"Hola," Quinn said, and then went on in his deliberate, English-accented Spanish: "You're one of Hip Rodriguez's boys, but I'm damned if I know which one."
"I'm Jorge," Jorge answered in English. "Pedro's back, too. I was hoping Miguel would be on the train. That's why I came. But the damnyankees are still holding him. How are you, Seсor Quinn?"
"Tired. Whipped," Quinn said. "Just like the rest of the country." The train pulled out of the station, heading south. Quinn and Jorge both coughed at the dust it kicked up.
Jorge looked around. Nobody was in earshot. In a low voice, he asked, "Are you going to start the Freedom Party up again, Seсor Quinn?"
"Not officially, anyway. I'd put my neck in the noose if I did," Quinn answered. He'd lived in Baroyeca a long time, building the Party up from nothing and nowhere. Also quietly, he continued, "As far as los Estados Unidos know, I'm nothing but another POW. If they find out I was an organizer, God knows what they'll do to me."
"They won't hear from me," Jorge promised. "My father, he always thought you were a good man."
"Well, I always thought he was a good man, too," Robert Quinn said. "I was sad to hear he'd passed away, and even sadder to hear how. I've wondered about that a lot, and it doesn't make much sense to me."
"It doesn't make much sense to anybody." Jorge didn't mention Camp Determination. The way things were nowadays, you kept your mouth shut about what went on in places like that. What could his father, a good Party man, have seen or felt that made him decide those camps weren't doing the right thing? It had to be something on that order. Jorge was sure no personal problem would have made Hipolito Rodriguez eat his gun.
"Tell you what," Quinn said, still softly. "If nobody down here rats on me, well, we'll see what we can do if the damnyankees step on our toes too hard. We may not be able to hold meetings and stuff, but that doesn't mean the Freedom Party's dead. It's not dead unless we decide it's dead. How's that sound?"
"Good to me." Jorge didn't say Freedom! or ЎLibertad! or give the Party salute. You were asking for trouble if you did things like that. But he knew he wouldn't be the only one watching the United States to see what they did.
And he also knew the United States would be watching Baroyeca, as they would be watching all of the CSA, or as much of the country as they could. If they sensed trouble, they would land on it with both feet. You played the most dangerous game in the world if you even thought about rising up against the damnyankees.
"Can I buy you a glass of beer, Seсor Quinn?" Jorge asked.
"No, but you can let me buy you one, by God," the Party organizer answered. "I've got plenty of money, believe me. Some of the people who think they can play poker haven't got the sense God gave a duck."
Jorge smiled. "All right. Do you remember where La Culebra Verde is?"
"I'd damn well better," Quinn said. "ЎVбmonos, amigo!"
It was dark and cool and quiet inside the cantina. A couple of men looked up from their drinks when Jorge and Robert Quinn walked in. It stayed quiet in there, but now the silence was one of suspense. Slowly and deliberately, the bartender ran a damp rag over the counter in front of them. "What can I get for you, seсores?" he asked.
"Dos cervezas, por favor." Quinn set a U.S. half-dollar on the bar. He sat down on a stool. Jorge perched next to him. The bartender made the silver coin disappear. He drew two beers and set them in front of the new customers.
"Thanks." Jorge put down another quarter. "One for you, too, or whatever you want."
"Gracias." Bartenders didn't always want the drinks customers bought them. This time, though, the man in the boiled shirt did pour himself a beer.
"ЎSalud!" Quinn raised his glass. He and Jorge and the bartender drank. "Madre de Dios, that's good!" Quinn said. Was he even a Catholic? Jorge didn't know. He'd never worried about it till now.
One of the men at a table in the back raised a finger to show he and his friends were ready for a refill. The bartender filled glasses and set them on a tray. A barmaid picked them up and carried them off, her hips swinging. Jorge followed her with his eyes. So did Robert Quinn. They grinned at each other. Once you got out of the Army, you remembered how nice it was that the world had pretty girls in it.
As the beers emptied, the bartender murmured, "Good to have you back, Seсor Quinn. We didn't know if we would see you again."
"Good to be back," Quinn said. "There were some times when I wondered whether anybody would see me again, but war is like that."
"Sн." Jorge remembered too many close calls of his own. The man behind the bar was about his father's age. Had he fought in the Great War? Jorge didn't know; again, he'd never wondered till now.
"What are we going to do here, Jorge?" Robert Quinn asked. "Are you ready to live quietly under the Stars and Stripes? Or do you remember what your country really is?" He hadn't been so bold in the train station. Could one beer have done it to him?
Jorge looked down at his glass. He looked around the cantina. His mind's eye took in the rest of Baroyeca and the family farm outside of town. All that made him feel less determined than he had over at the station. "Seсor Quinn," he said sadly, "I have seen all the fighting I want to see for a long time. I am sorry, but if the damnyankees do not bother me, then I do not care to bother them, either. If they do bother me, the story will be different."
"Well, that's a fair answer," Quinn said after silence stretched for more than half a minute. "You've done your soldiering. If you don't want to do it again, who can blame you? I wish you felt different, but if you don't, you don't." He drained his glass and strode out of La Culebra Verde.
"Did you make him unhappy?" the bartender asked.
"I'm afraid I did. He doesn't want the war to be over, but I've had enough. I've had too much." He wondered how Gabe Medwick was getting along. He hoped the U.S. soldiers had picked up his wounded buddy back in the Virginia woods. Was Gabe back in Alabama by now, or did he still languish in a POW camp like Miguel?
And what about Sergeant Blackledge? Jorge would have bet anything that he was raising trouble for the Yankees wherever he was. That man was born to bedevil anybody he didn't like, and he didn't like many people.