Strange and Dangerous People of the American Outback. Part Seven: Hilario

Victor Davis Hanson

Hilario was different altogether from either Burt or Rodrigo.

He reminds me even today, nearly a half-century later of Mapache (“thief”) of The Wild Bunch, played by the illustrious Mexican actor Emilio “El Indio” Fernández—an admittedly brave general, but crazy, corrupt, a drunk—and unpredictable.

For that matter, as I look back now, Joe and Manuel recalled the last scene of The Magnificent Seven—Joe perhaps playing the part of the brilliant actor Vladimir Sokoloff, as the old wise man of the village who ends his moving soliloquy with “Vaya con dios” or perhaps in Manuel’s more melancholy moments, the equally magnificent Frank Silvera of Hombre who kills John Russell (Paul Newman) and then dies saying, “I would like at least to know his name.”

The first time I met Hilario, he declared within five minutes of our conversation, “I killed a man in Brownsville, Texas, who pushed too far, so I don’t f–k around.” (Meanwhile he was giving lectures to my grandfather on the magic of Orafix for dentures).

Hilario spoke broken English and was saving for his final denture bridge, given he had a heart problem he said from losing most of his teeth.

I concede Hilario was a true jack of all trades, in the sense that he could do everything and anything, although none especially well. Wiring, he could manage, but dangerously so? Replace a head gasket? Yes, but with continued loss of pressure. Plumbing? Sort of, or at least enough to be dangerous.

What I remember about Hilario in the 50 years since I last saw him, was his toothless mumbling, his constant drinking, his chain smoking, and his venomous bitterness, that exploded with drink into open defiance of the sort that because we were going to college, we must therefore think we were “better” than he was.

So, I was variously told by the new man the first month that we didn’t deserve the farm. But he did by virtue of working it (for a month?).

Soon he felt it was his farm and we shouldn’t challenge him by telling him to do things on his property. He reminded me and delighted in doing so, that often in Mexico when you leave your house or don’t guard your land, squatters not only take it, have a right to it.

As my grandfather hit his early 80s and struggled with congestive heart failure, Hilario in the void of my parents at work, the five of us in college, Lila bedridden, and my grandmother struggling with Alzheimer’s (and still searching for her WCTU diamond ring), there were none to control Hilario who was smart enough to at least the first year finish the work.

Why was he not fired? In a freak occurrence after a month on the job he walked into the greatest grape crop my grandfather ever had, in a rare moment when wine prices even for Thompson Seedless were high, and the result was foreordained. Hilario who had done nothing with the crop he inherited, nonetheless played a Grima Wormtongue to my Théoden grandfather, claiming that the two alone made big money while we were the squatters and suitors.

My grandfather drove a classic 1944 International pickup, delivered belatedly after the war. It had a push pedal starter and a tiny but snappy 4-cylinder engine. We loved it and were treated once in a while with the chance to drive it to school and haul friends in the wooden bed.

So, of course, Hilario immediately wanted the truck and indeed expropriated it. For the first year, he drove it around the farm only, gunning it, never doing maintenance, and so dooming it.

For the second year he drove it to work from his home and back as if his own. For the third year, Hilario just stole it, ruined it, as he tried to put a hot six in place of the four. He painted it with spray-can paint and didn’t bother about the dents he had put in it. And by the fourth year, it was sitting rusting out on blocks in his driveway.

When Hilario had first driven it, it looked as new as it had when it arrived from the dealer. So, malice not just utility explains his confiscation.

Once I caught Hilario gassing not just his own car at the farm pump, but two or three of his kids’ cars, as if they were lined up at a filling station (He had cajoled a key to the pump.). He did not wait for me to say anything, as he blurted out, “So what?”

I went in town and heard from several farmers that Hilario said he “owned” the Davis place and made all the important decisions.

He soon demanded “loans” from my grandfather and told us to keep away from the big house.

What happened was inevitable as I hinted at earlier. At his penultimate stage of farm confiscation, the old B-29 central fire control gunner, as expected on cue, stepped in—you see we teens had not solved the problem nor protected my grandfather, given we were far away on the coast at college. And so Hilario was fired. His bluster, his threats, his brag all disappeared. My dad just said, “You’re through. Pack up. Get out. You’re done.”

So ended Hilario Martinez, the third—but not quite the last—disaster. I came home for Thanksgiving two years later and drove by his five-acre truck farm and heard he had drunk himself to death and never found another job.