The Paranormal Story of a Dying Soldier: The 5Th of May 1862

By Rubén Amaro Soriano

Jose Albino Lucio Amaro!

A few minutes before his death, his grandson, a young doctor, called him by his name. Upon hearing it, the old man became confused and in his mind flashed the supernatural works of the gray and scaly angels of death he had seen lurking in the war eighty-three years ago, devouring dead French and Mexican soldiers. With these memories deeply etched in his mind, he had been preparing for death in the midtwentieth century. The somber sound of tolling bells from the atrium of Pueblas cathedral announced the death of a war hero and brought him memories of a distant day, May 5, 1862, when the tolling bells announced the commencement of the war. Without realizing that it was his grandson calling him, he cried out in response, Present, General Zaragoza!

The voice of the old man quivered in the last breath of life that remained in him. He answered with the same or perhaps greater amount of ardor in his words when he uttered the same words on that unforgettable day of his youth when he was among those forming rows of thousands of peasant soldiers that comprised the disadvantaged Mexican army. All of them held rusting weapons and swore their allegiance to the motherland in front of the Mexican flag that quietly waved in the thin air of the morning inside the strongholds of Loreto and Guadalupe on that cloudy and gloomy Cinco de Mayo.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palibrio
• Release date: Jun 30, 2016
• ISBN: 9781506515212

Rubén Amaro Soriano

Ruben Amaro Soriano was born in Puebla, Mexico. He received his primary education in Pachuca Hidalgo, Mexico. He later went to secondary number XXIII in Tlalpan, DF. Later went to high school number 7 in the same city. He then studied at the faculty of chemistry. Also he studied at the faculty of science on the area of physics at the UNAM. When he immigrated to the United States, he took up liberal arts at the University of La Salle, and it was when he began writing his first short stories. He has authored several books: “The Eternal Joseph” “The Punking Plant” “5 de Mayo de 1862” (the paranormal story of a dying soldier), “Cuhichilicoatl” (Gallo Reptil).

Book preview

Copyright © 2016 by Ruben Amaro Soriano.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2016909914

ISBN:   Hardcover   978-1-5065-1522-9

Softcover     978-1-5065-1520-5

eBook           978-1-5065-1521-2

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Rev. date: 18/07/2016

Palibrio

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Contents

CHAPTER 1 THE LAST WITNESS OF A HISTORICAL FACT

CHAPTER 2 THE BATTLE OF PUEBLA

CHAPTER 3 IN THE CROP FIELDS

CHAPTER 4 MOLDED WITH THE MUD OF COURAGE AND TEMPERED IN THE FLAMES OF WAR

CHAPTER 5 TWO ENEMY SOLDIERS

CHAPTER 6 A LETTER FROM GENERAL ZARAGOZA

CHAPTER 7 DAISIES AND PRAYERS

CHAPTER 8 THE VISIT OF A PERDULARIO

CHAPTER 9 JOSE ALBINO LUCIO MEETS JOSE ALBINO NICOLAS

CHAPTER 10 STAINED BY A DROP OF WARM BLOOD

CHAPTER 11 A GRANDSON HONORING THE MEMORY OF HIS GRANDFATHER

CHAPTER 12 AN UGLY PICTURE AT THE MUNICIPAL PALACE

THE PARANORMAL STORY OF A DYING SOLDIER:

The 5th of MAY 1862 was taken and modified from

LA MUERTE ESPANTÓ UNOS PÁJAROS both by Rubén Amaro Soriano.

Dedication

This story is dedicated to:

My family:

Julieta Arrevillaga Amaro

Josue, Denise, Carlos, and Ruben Amaro Arrevillaga.

Bernie Jeudy

Rennet Amaro

To my inspiration, my six grandchildren:

Caibryn Y. Yang

Cihualpillatocalzintlin Samma Amaro

Summar Jeudy Amaro

Elissa Jeudy Amaro

Jaden Jeudy Amaro

Nicklaus Jeudy Amaro

CHAPTER 1

THE LAST WITNESS OF A HISTORICAL FACT

Amozoc Puebla, 1945

The year was 1945, almost halfway through the twentieth century. Jose Albino Lucio, a former soldier of the Cinco de Mayo battle, was then 103 years old. I had known this astonishing man barely a few months ago in his own home and also got to know his lifelong friend Jesus Apango Rosas, son of Jesus Apango Texoyote, another soldier from the 1862 war.

Having gotten to know Jose Albino Lucio was by mere coincidence, for I only went to visit the little town of Amozoc Puebla, where my father and my grandfather were born. My aunts, Enedine and Brigida, requested that I accompany them to the house of the centenarian.

I did not believe at first that there existed a man of such age, and I did not intend to meet anyone from this little town renowned for its history and glory, whereby the courage that its residents exemplified decades ago thwarted a powerful invading army. My interest was only piqued when I heard my aunts say that this man they were visiting was apparently the last remaining survivor of that marked event in Mexican history.

At that time, my two aunts, so as several other women from Amozoc, visited him twice a week and helped him with the housework. When I agreed to visit him, I imagined that it would only last a few minutes. I did not know that it would last the whole day, but I felt very lucky to have talked to him that day. It changed my perception of that humble little town and the old man, so much so that I visited again several times.

During that first visit, the old man invited us to make ourselves comfortable on very old chairs around an anafre, a portable stove made of clay. On it was a pot he used to boil water for coffee. It did not take long before he invited us for dinner, where he talked mostly about his family life and minutely about the war. We stayed with him until late in the evening, just letting him vent his sadness over his grandson that he did not meet, but I eventually knew from his sources and references that his grandson was a doctor. I did not imagine that behind the experiences of the war he had gone through hid a deep and dark secret that he would most likely not tell me.

Next day, one which I remembered to be rainy, Jesus Apango requested the veteran to tell us an interesting story, particularly the paranormal event that he had experienced in his youth when he participated in the Battle of Puebla. He did not tell us that story that night, but made us wait several days until he gathered the courage to talk about it. I understood why Jesus Apango wanted the old man to tell us his secret, and it was because he knew that he would soon pass away and Jesus did not want those interesting experiences he had gone through in the war to go with him in the tomb, where they would be forever lost.

Now that many years had passed, I fondly remember this amazing man and, although I know that he is no longer with us, his deeds, my conversations with him when I was together with his friend Jesus Apango Rosas, one of the two pillars that hold the weight of this story, and the memory of the moment of his passing, will be remembered in this story in a special way.

The image that I have of him, of his home, of that cloudy rainy day and the people who visited him, will stay in my mind like a perennial photograph. His was a figure of a worn out man, bent by the weight of advance age - an old man with gray hair and kind gaze. How he looked like when I saw him for the last time standing at the entrance of his home was the first image that comes to mind when I think of him.

He was a noble, humble and gentle spirit whose words reflected his kindness and spiritual strength. When talking with him, it seemed like wisdom itself flowed out from his entire being. In his face remained the expression of the firmness of his character and the prudence that prevailed all his life until the day he died. The vividness of his brown eyes, a particular feature of his proud Aztec race, was noticeable. His dark skin was wrinkled as if all the one hundred three years’ worth of experiences he had gone through had rubbed on his skin and had creased it. Not even the fatigue brought about by his age, however, had marred his strong Aztec complexion. I believe that in the twentieth century, no one really knew that this man was one of the few or even the last surviving Mexican soldiers of the nineteenth century and one who had actively participated in the famous battle of Cinco de Mayo in Puebla - the struggle that had shaped the proud history of Mexico. Unfortunately, however, I have realized too late the value of his experiences in that war, for I only realized them many months after he had already passed away.

In his last years, this man lived a solitary life despite the fact that he was well known in the area of Sierra de Puebla. I would imagine that his only way of somehow easing his loneliness was talking to the people who visited him. Surely, he had a lot of friends, but not enough. It seemed like there were many times that the unmistakable look of sadness became etched on his face. He had always been friendly with everyone, including those who did not know him so well. Moreover, he never failed to wear a smile on his face despite his loneliness.

Perhaps the fact that he was still alive at the beginning of the twentieth century and has lived in a scarcely populated village made him obscure to the succeeding Mexican generations, who never imagined that he was one of the many Mexican citizens who stood up and put up a good degree of resistance against a powerful invading army in 1862.

Jose Albino Lucio understood that he should not keep to himself his experiences and secret, and that it was the right time to let people know. For our part, we were committed to listen to him and to treat him and his story with respect whether we believed it or not.

I want you to comprehend, the old man began saying, that what I’m going to tell you is something I have not been able to understand even until today. Although many years have passed, thinking about those bizarre events still forces me to be suspicious of what people would think of me and of the paranormal phenomenon.

"Those odd experiences also led me to closely analyze the mythical Aztec gods, because what I’m going to say is based on the real existence of those beings. Knowing that what is believed to be a myth is actually real made me believe that not everything we experience or see is what they actually seem. Many of the things that may not be part of our reality actually exist in a paranormal