Extract from Like a Flaming Red Horse

I am in the process of writing my third collection of short stories. The opening story and the title of the book are "Like a Flaming Red Horse". Included below is an extract from the story.

LIKE A FLAMING RED HORSE

In 1825, Manuel Mateos Mateos was born to humble parents on a small tract of land between León and Guanajuato, Mexico.

He and his even younger wife had two children before Manuel reached the age of 18. At the young age of 16, Luz gave birth to their first child and 17 when the second arrived.

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Manuel’s father, “Rabbit” had bulging eyes and huge, vertical ears that came to a point at the top much like those of a jackrabbit. To top it off, he had buck teeth with the top teeth sticking out and protruding downward over the bottom teeth. Nobody knew his real name. In fact, he had forgotten his own name.

Rabbit showed indifference, barely ever touching Manuel, as if one or the other could transfer or contract a terrible affliction through mere human contact.   

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Mano used these physical traits and skills to invent a job for himself, much like that of a private security guard.

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People called him “Mano” for a couple of reasons. First, it seemed to be a natural shortening of his first name. Second, he had quick and skillful movements with a gun. He could draw either one of his pistols very quickly. He might not use it, but the gesture served as a grim and stern warning to others.

Mano did have one odd physical characteristic. His left leg was shorter than his right. Consequently, he walked with a hobble.

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Mano carried with him a small leather-bound notebook, which he had purchased from a vendor at the busiest end of the Mazatlán dock. With a knife, he had carved his initials “MMM” deeply into the leather on the inside of the front cover.

His workers would occasionally see him with the book late in the evening, quietly sitting by the dying fire. They might see him scribble something in the book. The small book looked oddly out of place in his hands.

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He liked the larger city of Guadalajara, its food, its flavor, and its vibrancy.

One of Mano’s younger brothers, Oseño, became an accomplished musician focusing on the Guitarra de Golpe. By 1862, Oseño had formed one of the most prominent mariachi bands in the area, Oseño y los Pedros.

Oseño y los Pedros regularly performed in a small but very popular restaurant, known as Adriana’s, near the center of Guadalajara. On each of Manuel’s visits to Guadalajara, he would take the opportunity to watch his brother and the group perform at Adriana’s. On his first visit in 1862, he quickly befriended the restaurant owner and operator, Adriana Kennedy Olveda.

Manuel had a love and perhaps even a talent for writing. Not a single living soul knew this, except Adriana. It would have been beyond embarrassing for anyone to discover that a feisty and aggressive character like Mano tried to write a story.

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In 1822, at the young age of 12, Adriana’s father, Michael, had immigrated with the rest of his family from Ireland to Mexican-Texas. The family felt an affinity for the Mexicans, fellow fervent Catholics like the Irish. The growing tension convinced the Kennedy family to move farther south into Mexico, and in 1828, they settled in Guadalajara. 

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Shortly after arriving in Guadalajara, Michael met the strikingly beautiful Belinda Olveda Torres of Spanish descent.

Belinda and Michael married in 1831, and over the next few years had three children. Adriana came last, born in 1835. In the renowned Battle of Churubusco in 1847, Michael died, and many of his Irish counterparts met death or capture.

Michael's death left the family reeling, but as Irish luck would have it, Adriana’s brother, Agustín, had become an accomplished scientist. He and his two partners developed a technique which allowed for distilling the blue agave plant into tequila on a large scale.

In 1860, Agustín built the remaining family members an opulent home near the center of Guadalajara, a short walk from the Cathedral. In the front two rooms of this house, Adriana and her mother, Belinda, operated their small restaurant. Locals and travelers alike crowded the restaurant, partly because of the quality of the “tortas ahogadas” which made the two ladies famous.

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When Mano visited the restaurant, after a few drinks and after Oseño y los Pedros finished their evening performance, Mano would sit and talk quietly with Adriana. Eventually, she would lead him deep into the entrails of the house. Once there, he would unbind the book and show her and read to her what he had written. 

The first time he opened the book for her; he had only written the title “Like A Flaming Red Horse,” on the top of the first page and one sentence below it: “When she ran, the wind blew through her auburn hair. From a distance, she blazed in the sun like a flaming red horse.”

On a subsequent visit in March 1865, Mano opened the book to show Adriana that he had added a little more to his story. It impressed her to see that his writing had evolved, as had the story. While she suspected that she likely might be the inspiration for the story, Mano had turned the focus onto that of a young girl named Otilia (“Tili”) who, in fact, had flaming red hair even at a young age.   

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On a particular encounter in March 1865, toward the end of the U.S. Civil War, Mano asked Adriana if she would keep the book for him until he returned.

Napolean III appointed Maximilian as Emperor of the Emperor of the second Mexican Empire, He was the younger brother of Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria. Maximilian served in that position from April 10, 1864, until his execution by the Mexican Republic on June 19, 1867. Shortly after Maximilian’s arrival in Mexico in 1864, and because he was an admirer of tequila, he and his second in command, Gutiérrez de Estrada, quickly befriended Adriana’s brother, Agustín. Maximilian gifted Agustín with a stunning mahogany roll-top desk, which Agustín passed along to Adriana as a fitting piece for the Guadalajara mansion. Adriana took the leather-bound book of Mano and locked it away in this roll-top desk which she had placed in the corner of her bedroom.

After leaving the book with Adriana, Mano finally returned home on the evening of Tuesday, April 4, 1865. He walked toward the barn to feed and water his horse. Just as he reached the barn doors, they opened. For an instant he saw his wife, Luz Maria, the last thing he ever saw. She shot him twice in the face with his own pistol; the one that he had given her for protection.

Adriana eventually heard the news about Mano from Oseño. She showed little emotion over it, but she checked once to make sure the leather-bound book remained in the locked roll-top desk. She never opened the book or the desk again.

Adriana continued to operate the restaurant into her waning years until her death in 1895, only a few years before a major and bloody Mexican Revolution. Unfortunately, the leather-bound book containing the beginnings of Like a Flaming Red Horse remained locked away in the roll-top desk. The book lay untouched and forgotten. If it had a heart, neglect and loneliness would break it.

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Felipe Ortega had worked for Banco Nacional de México (Banamex) since its inception in the mid-1880s.

His travels often brought him to Guadalajara. He had developed a relationship with Agustín, Adriana and the rest of the Kennedy Olveda family. He loved the food at Adriana’s restaurant and the furnishings of the house. He had told both Agustín and Adriana that if they ever decided to sell any of those furnishings, he should be the first person to contact.

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He immediately made plans to visit Agustín at the house in Guadalajara. After a mere one-hour meeting, he agreed to buy every piece of furniture in the house, all 26 pieces, including the beloved roll-top desk.

Unfortunately, his plan to interject himself into the moving process did not go well. In 1897, Felipe suffered a debilitating stroke in Mexico City as the workers loaded the last piece of furniture onto the train.

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Throughout the period of Felipe’s deteriorating health, Mexico again experienced political turmoil, especially during the year leading up to the presidential election of 1910. Felipe had been a friend and supporter of Porfirio Díaz, but the dictator's long reign neared its collapse. 

There was also a Third Battle of Ciudad Juárez in 1919, a later major engagement where a combined Mexican and U.S. military force routed Pancho Villa's forces. The American intervention proved critical in routing Villa's forces. During and just after the third battle of Ciudad Juarez in 1919, the second largest battle of the Border War, the majority of Villa’s forces who survived were covered in dust and mud that enveloped their faces with only red eyes, a sunburned nose and chapped lips distinguishable. 

The "Border War" in Mexico refers to a series of military clashes along the U.S. - Mexico border between 1910 and 1919, during the Mexican Revolution. The conflict involved U.S. troops fighting with the Mexican Army against Mexican revolutionary factions and, with the most famous event being the Pancho Villa Expedition launched after Villa attacked Columbus, New Mexico. 

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Francisco Madero, a wealthy revolutionary became a primary figure in the ousting of Porfirio Diaz in 1911. Madero served as president of Mexico from 1911 to 1913. After assuming the presidency in 1911, he was assassinated in 1913.

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Victoriano Huerta, a general in the Mexican army, seized power after a period of political turmoil known as the "Ten Tragic Days". He participated in a plot with Félix Díaz to overthrow Madero, who appeared to many as weak and ineffective. Following Madero's assassination, Huerta became the provisional president. Inefficiency, authoritarianism, and repression characterized Huerta's rule. Soon, many turned on him.

Felipe Ortega’s conservative background and support contrasted significantly with the political leanings of his son Vicente. Vicente spoke out strongly against the Porfirian regime, and this led to a fracture in the relationship with his father. 

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In 1910, Vicente decided to move to the vacation home near Veracruz against his mother’s advice. The furniture delivered by the transportation companies hired by Felipe had been left in different parts of the first floor.

Oddly enough, even though the mansion had been built with money earned from the physical toil of poor Mexican laborers, Vicente used it as a meeting place for his fellow revolutionaries and as a base for recruiting fighting forces to counter the dictatorship.

During his efforts to drum up support for the revolutionary forces, he spent time in some of Veracruz’s poorest neighborhoods and barrios, including La Huaca. There, in 1912, he met the intriguing Orelia Vargas and her father, Custodio. 

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Vicente was smitten with her immediately and spent more time than necessary in her home courting her under her father, Custodio’s watchful and ever-present eye. Vicente took long walks with Orelia in the afternoons, and even then, her father trailed behind but within sight of the couple.

Custodio was a tired, weathered, and bitter man.

He was bitter because during the long stretches of time away from home, his wife, Serafina, had become bored. A young textile merchant from Puebla, named Chaco, regularly made trips to and from Veracruz to sell or trade materials. By a chance encounter, he met Serafina while she and friends shopped in the wharf market for cotton and dyes from which they made clothes for their families. Serafina and Chaco began to meet clandestinely after Orelia fell asleep. One windy dawn in February 1904, when Custodio traveled for an especially long harvest season, Serafina fled to the west with Chaco in his two-horse drawn carriage, quickly disappearing into the Sierra Madre Oriental, never again to venture back to Veracruz. She left Orelia at the tender age of 12 to fend for herself.

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Vicente did manage to arrange many of the items of furniture in the home. Sadly, much of the furniture in the Ortega home in Boca del Río remained untouched. That included the roll-top desk placed in the far corner of one of the bedrooms. 

When he removed the stack, a leather-bound book wrapped in a small, frayed rope hidden deep in the depths of the drawer caught his eye. He extracted it, untied the rope, and opened the cover. He noticed “MMM” scratched deeply into the inside front cover.

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Finding the book was another life changing event for Vicente in Veracruz. Removing the book, he carried it with him to the main living area, the brightest room in the house.  He again read the pages.  He returned to the book several times over the next few days. 

For the next three weeks, he made a painstaking effort to add some new elements to the incomplete story. Ultimately, Vicente added the following: Tili had a happy life in the orphanage, and most of the kids and all the staff loved her. She made one very close friend, a boy named Renaldo. She and Renaldo invented their own style of sign and communication.

The writing effort exhilarated Vicente, and he anxiously awaited a time when he might present the book to Orelia. He had not brought the story to a conclusion, but he hoped he had added enough to impress her. If she accepted his proposal, he could continue to write and bring the story forward for her. 

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In 1913, Vicente had joined the local militia preparing to defend the city against U.S. naval and marine forces that locals feared would attack. During the Mexico War for independence from Spain, the city had earned the name Heroica Veracruz for the unyielding defense of the city from Spanish troops. True to that name, Vicente’s militia group joined with Mexican regular forces of naval cadets, under the command of General Gustavo Maass, in preparation to valiantly defend Veracruz. 

The notorious Tampico Affair precipitated the attack. Nine US sailors had come ashore without obtaining the consent of any Mexican military authority. Mexican authorities detained the sailors.

As expected, U.S. ships and forces began to attack the port in April 1914. The Mexican forces defended in vain. The U.S. troops, led by Admiral Frank “Friday” Fletcher, quickly overran the ill-equipped defenders, killing many of them brutally and quickly, including Vicente Ortega. Vicente died within the first fifteen minutes after the battle began.

Custodio heard the news from a shopkeeper for whom he worked. He rushed home to try to break the news as gently as possible to Orelia. She had already heard about Vicente’s death from the same neighbor who cared for her when her mother left. Two losses, her mother and now Vicente, proved to be too much for Orelia to bear. Her father found her rocking back and forth in the rocker in the tiny courtyard in front of the house where her mother used to knit and crochet. She gently whimpered but vacantly stared into the distance. She never spoke another word. 

To deaden the blow of the loss of his wife, the silence of his daughter, the ongoing political turmoil in the country and in Veracruz in particular, like many men in the area, Custodio indulged in two vices: attending and betting on cockfights; and buying love and attention even if only superficially and for an hour or so at a time.

During this time, the wharf district of Veracruz provided common access to cock-fights. Chairs and stools surrounded the cock-fighting pits from which the patrons placed their bets, smoked, cussed, and otherwise argued and shouted for or against one bird or the other. Most of the time Custodio lost, but other times luck granted him a win and along with it enough pesos to visit the Three Macaws cantina across the street from his favorite pit.

The Three Macaws was a bright and loud cantina, and almost as dingy as the cock-fighting arena across from which it sat.

The cantina offered cheap entertainment as well. A long bar perched at the back of the first level with tables scattered around a small, raised stage in the middle of the floor. From this stage, one might hear one or more of the three “macaws” singing and/or see them dancing.

Most of the patrons favored Zola, although in a pinch and in the heat of the moment with coins in hand, either of the other two would serve the purpose.

Zola was born in 1895, the year Adriana died. In 1911, Zola Jomo, at the budding young age of 16, had traveled with her parents to Veracruz from Jamaica.

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Zola’ mother’s name was Rubia. Her real name was Quasheeba Rubia. She had eyes the color of cinnamon, more vibrant and effervescent than brown. Calling them brown would offend them.

Rubia, an Afro-Jamaican woman, had pale white skin. She also had abnormally blonde, yellow hair.

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By chance, one morning in October when she was shopping for groceries and other supplies for the family in the wharf market, a heavy downpour replete with thunder and lightning suddenly blew in from the bay, a squall from a late-season tropical depression sitting haplessly in the gulf. She took shelter in the cantina, hoping the storm would pass quickly. Her beauty immediately sucked in the cantina owner.

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The almost-sickening, yet beckoning, smell of her sweet perfume wafted through the room before she ever set foot on the stage. Her entire persona took Custodio’s breath away, and from the second she appeared through those brief and few moments during which he might spend a little time with her, he forgot all the troubles that plagued him and swirled around him. 

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While rummaging through the drawers and cabinets of the tiny house and finding little, he decided to search Orelia’s room, and he found the book that Vicente had given her and took it.

He decided that he too might add something to move the story along.

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Custodio decided to give the book to Zola for 30 minutes of her time. He gave the book to her in 1917 when she was 22.

In 1918-1919, the Spanish flu hit Mexico and the Veracruz area with a wallop. The cock-fighting barns and the Three Macaws lounge closed, as well as many others.

The flu killed Custodio, two of the Macaws and Bernardo died as well. Custodio’s daughter and the neighbor lived through the flu.

She added the following part to the story:

One day a woman showed up at Tili’s door. Her biological aunt had tracked her down through orphanage records.

The aunt brought with her Tili’s friend from the orphanage, Renaldo, who had become a doctor. Together, he and Tili developed the new modern day hearing aid, which contained tiny transistors.

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Finally, she made the bold decision to leave Mexico. She booked passage on the ship, the U.K. Liberty, from Veracruz to Puerto Limon, Costa Rica.

The ship's Captain was …well, everybody just called him “Captain”. He had verdant, luxuriant green eyes. Shortly after arrival in Limon, Zola discovers she was pregnant from Captain who had already sailed onward to other ports.

At the age of 30, she gave birth to her daughter, Grin, on December 5, 1925. She named her daughter Grin, which has two meanings:

(1) in English, “grin” as in a large smile, but also (2) in Jamaican patois for the color “green”. Grin, born in Limón, had the same verdant green eyes as her father.

Grin has a dream and writes about it in the story. In 1943, she is only 18 when she writes.

Grin dreams that she is in the orphanage where Tilie lived, and like Tilie, she is deaf. She dreams that Zola is not her actual mother, but Zola adopted her. She dreams that her biological parents died in a horrible accident many years ago.

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In 1950, Grin takes the book to mercado central in San José and sells it for 30 Costa Rican colones to a street vendor, Antonio Herrera. Antonio has prematurely silver-gray hair in ringlets,reminiscent of some movie star that no one can ever place. 

Antonio read through the book many times. In 1952, he wrote the following two sentences in the book: Tilie and Renaldo marry and become rich. They have a daughter, Sagraria, in 1954, who grows to have red hair like the mane of a flaming red horse!

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In 1956, Antonio travels to Santa Marta, Colombia, and trades the book to an innkeeper, Josefa Contreras, for accommodations and breakfast for three nights.

In1957, Josefa gives the book to Rafael Torres, the owner of a small bookstore in Cartagena, Colombia.  

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Enrique stumbles across the book by accident and decides to add a small bit to the story and bring it to a close. He writes about Tili’s daughter, Sagraria.

In 2000, Enrique Torres, Rafael's son, continued running the bookstore. Enrique cannot stand silence, so he hums or whispers to himself when no one is talking. In mid-May, a young writer, Gonzalo, who loves to buy old books, shuffles into the bookstore by accident and begins a conversation with Enrique.

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Enrique tells him, “I have something you might like”. He goes to the back in search of something and eventually brings out a box of old books. Gonzalo glances at a few and ultimately buys the entire box. After taking this box home, he stores the box in his basement for 10 years before going through any of the books.

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Frustrated, he complains to his wife, Encarnación, that everything has already been written. Writers have already exhausted every original idea under the sun. She suggests that he start to examine the old books in the box. “Maybe you will get some ideas or inspiration.”