Thirteen Senses (79 page)

Then with huge eyes, he uncorked the canvas water bag, took a sip, and it was the sweetest, coolest water he ever tasted. He drank down two good mouthfuls, but no more. Then he got in the driver's seat, wet a piece of cloth and reached across the seat, moistening Lupe's forehead. Little by little, his truelove came back around again.

“Here, Lupe,” he now said to her, “drink. We have water, but no, no, not so fast. I don't want you getting sick.”

Lupe drank and drank, catching her breath between swallows, then Salvador gave some water to Hortensia. She wasn't as bad off as her mother. Lupe had actually looked like she'd been dying.

“What happened?” asked Lupe after she'd gotten some color back to her face. “The last thing I remember—I'd thought we died, Salvador. Where did you get the water? It's so cool and delicious.”

“Kenny,” said Salvador. “Kenny came walking out of the desert from that direction over there, Lupe, and he gave me this bag of water, then he lifted up the whole truck and put it back on the road for us.”

“Kenny!?!” said Lupe. “Our Kenny White from Carlsbad who got killed?”

“Yes, our Kenny White from Carlsbad,” said Salvador. “But he's not old anymore, Lupe. He's young and he has long, dark hair, you know, like those pictures of Jesus.”

“Oh, my God,” said Lupe, making the sign of the cross over herself, “Maria told me that in her dream, Jesus came to save us, and that He was also the One who helped me push that door open and drag you out of that burning Hell!”

“Well, then Jesus has saved us twice in the last few weeks,” said Salvador. “And this time, He did it through Kenny, instead of through you.” He drank some more water. “Isn't this the sweetest water you've ever tasted?”

“Yes,” said Lupe, “just like our water back home that rained down the cliff of gold. Oh, Salvador, we are Blessed, aren't we?” Her eyes filled with tears of joy.

He nodded. “I think we've died, Lupe, and gone to Heaven.”

Hearing this, Lupe felt a cold chill going up and down her spine.

“What is it?” asked Salvador. “Do you feel sick?”

She shook her head. “No,” she said, “I have this feeling that maybe we really have died, Salvador, and now all of this is just a dream.”

He swallowed. “This is what my mother says that people actually do when they let go of all their Fears and start Living in the Grace of God—they Die and are forever then in Heaven.”

If anyone else had said this, Lupe would have dismissed it as wild talk. But feeling what she was feeling deep inside of herself, and hearing this had come from her mother-in-love, Lupe could see this had, indeed, been Salvador's mother's Power. The old woman had died and been reborn long ago, just as Jesus had done, only to ascend into Heaven three days later.

“
Mi hijita,
” she'd told Lupe once, “Jesus isn't some faraway unreachable Holy Being, but the Living Example of what We can all Be.”

Taking in a deep breath, Salvador started the motor, drove out of the little turnout, and got them back on the wooden-plank road. They were moving along at a good ten to fifteen miles an hour again. At this speed, they'd get out of these sand hills in no time and then they'd be at the Colorado River by sundown. They were good now, they were very good, they were a married couple who Knew of Miracles as well as they knew of
tortillas y frijoles.

Salvador looked at the sand hills all about him as he drove. They looked beautiful. They no longer looked threatening. They were now actually Singing, Dancing, Sending their
Amor.

Suddenly, Salvador knew how his mother had made the barrels of whiskey disappear. Truly, once a person gave up the ghost, then all of life was a dream and in dreams a human being could make of life whatever they desired—
con el favor de Dios!

21

They'd met Death and they'd found Death to simply be another Holy Opening to the Creator's Corazón—Beat, BEAT, BEATING throughout the UNIVERSE!

T
HEY DROVE ACROSS THE RIVER.
There was no one at the border to stop and question them. They'd gone from one state to another with such ease.

They drove into the tiny town of Yuma. They bought groceries and went down to the river to spend the night on the Arizona side of the border. They found a whole encampment of Mexicans and local Indians by the river's edge. Most of the Mexicans were headed back to Mexico, but others were simply playing it day by day and working in the fields outside of Yuma, trying to figure out what to do next.

When the Sun went down, the mosquitoes got so bad everyone went crazy. Salvador drove back into town and bought half a dozen big cigars and had the men light them up and blow smoke on themselves and on their families. The mosquitoes never came near them again that whole night.

Salvador said that he'd learned this trick up in Montana from the only other Mexican up there, who'd been from Veracruz, and he'd told Salvador that in the jungles, the lead man always puffed on a big cigar so that the smoke would trail back over the others and keep all the bugs away, not just the mosquitoes.

For two days and nights, Salvador and Lupe mostly slept, getting over the terrible ordeal that they'd had in the desert. When they shared their story with the
gente,
many of them came forward with similar stories. It seemed that every family—who'd crossed the river—had at one time or another been helped out by a dead friend or relative coming to them in their hour of need.

One local Indian woman told Salvador that he'd come face to face with the Spirit of the Sacred Sand Hills when he'd seen Kenny White. And that this powerful Spirit they, the locals, considered much like the Christians considered Jesus.

Hearing this, Lupe made the sign of the cross over herself. It was all becoming more and more clear to her every day. Her mother's last words to her had been so wise. “And always remember above all else,
mi hijita,
miracles do happen. They are a mother's sustenance.”

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.