Amigoland (30 page)

The old woman half smiled and made as if she were gazing toward the sky. “Still, late or early, I give thanks to God that
He brought you all this way.”

Don Celestino stood up and held his hand out for Socorro. “I wish we could stay longer, but we only came for a short visit.”

“All this way and so quickly you want to leave again?” the old woman said. “I was thinking you would stay the rest of the
day, maybe even spend the night. We have room for all of you. Tell them, Carmen. Take them and show them where they can rest
after coming so far.” She turned to one side and then the other, as if unsure where she’d left her granddaughter.

Socorro was helping the old man to his feet. “We would stay longer, but now after four days we need to go back.”

“And how can you compare your four days to how long ago it was that they took the boy away from here?” The old woman shook
her head.

“Why not at least stay for lunch?” Carmen asked. “I can make more nopalitos con papas for everyone.”

“That would be nice,” Don Celestino said, “except we have a driver who brought us here and he must be in a hurry to get back.”

But when they looked toward the road, Isidro had reclined his seat and was sleeping peacefully behind the wheel.

Most of the small kitchen was visible with only the light from the faint bulb above the sink. Carmen lit the gas stove and
heated the two covered pans that sat on the burners. With a match she lit a third burner for the comal so she could make the
corn tortillas. On the counter sat a molcajete half full with a pulpy chile verde.

“If we had more people come to visit, maybe her mind wouldn’t get away from her as much.” She handed Socorro one end of a
tablecloth so they could spread it over the long wooden table.

“For things that happened so long ago?”

“More because she has trouble remembering what was good.”

Together they scooted the table across the cement floor until it was more toward the center of the room.

“But all of us pass through times like that, no?”

“Yes, I suppose, but it gets worse when it feels like all you can remember was what made you sad.”

Socorro took care of setting the plates and glasses on the table, and adding a fork and paper napkin from a roll on the counter
to each setting. When the food was almost ready, Carmen brought out a pitcher of fresh orange juice from the refrigerator.
She was about to call the others when Socorro asked to use her bathroom and then followed her upstairs, taking care with each
step since there was no railing or anything to hold on to until the cement stairs reached the beginning of the second level
and the door to the bedroom. A brand-new air conditioner, its thick cord lying unplugged to one side, jutted out from one
of the windows. On the night-stand sat a portable stereo the size of a small suitcase, and at the foot of the bed two fruit
crates held up a brand-new television. The music was turned down on the stereo, but the display panel continued to pulsate
with a prism of colors. The only other piece of furniture was a small dresser topped with six or seven framed photos.

“Is this your family?”

“My son and his wife in Chicago, but the baby I still need to meet. And this one over here is my husband from the last time
he came here for a few days.”

In the photo they were standing outside near the tree and he had his arm wrapped around her shoulder, though neither one of
them was smiling for the camera.

“It must be hard to be so far away.”

“I had to accept it. Worse was when my sons told me that they wanted to follow him. And what could I do, if already they were
men? Sometimes it feels like that’s all I do, wait and wait for them to come back.” She ran her hand along the edge of a smaller
frame.

After she showed her guest the bathroom, Carmen walked back down to finish preparing the meal. Socorro washed her face and
neck in the sink and then used a little water to pat down her hair. With the taxi ride and sitting out in the yard she could
feel the thin layer of dirt, most of which was gathering into a grayish soapy water in the sink. Before long she heard Carmen
calling everyone inside. As much time as it usually took Don Fidencio to eat, she wondered how long they would be here. She
thought that later, when they got back to town, she would go ahead and buy a phone card. Her mother would be upset that she
hadn’t called again, but more just because she had gone on the trip. She wasn’t interested in discussing this with her; she
was calling only to let her know that they were coming home tomorrow. Later she would have to promise never to do anything
like this again. For a few weeks she might have to come home a little earlier, before dark, just to not worry her. She could
take care of herself, but her mother must have still been concerned those times she arrived after dark, as she had been doing
for the last few months.

She ran her fingers through her hair one last time and was about to use a plastic clip, but then remembered that he preferred
her hair down. As soon as she had it down, though, she wanted it up. She brushed it back and for a while tried to find some
way to keep her hair up but also down, neither one of which was pleasing to her now.

They sat on long wooden benches that were on either side of the kitchen table. Sunlight now flooded in from the side door,
which had stayed open with only the screen to keep the flies out. Carmen served each of the plates with the nopalitos con
papas, then pulled the last two tortillas off the comal, wrapped them in a kitchen towel, and placed them at the center of
the table. Her grandmother waited patiently for her to explain where everything was on her plate.

“There’s no comparing a meal made at home,” Socorro said once she had taken her first bite. “All these days we were going
to restaurants or buying food to take on the bus.”

“Maybe this will convince you to stay longer,” Mamá Nene said. “We have waited such a long time for this man to return and
you want to take him away again so soon.”

“Believe me, I am in no hurry to leave, not after what it took us to get here,” Don Fidencio said.

“Then stay the night and you can rest here. Carmen will fix up the other bedroom for you.”

He looked to his brother.

“Remember that we need to get back, Fidencio.” He motioned toward the side door and the road, where Isidro was still sleeping
in the taxi.

“But this afternoon?”

Don Celestino glanced over at Socorro and then finally looked back at his brother. “No, probably not today. But for sure in
the morning.”

“So you come for him early tomorrow, now that you know how to find the house, and from here you can leave to the bus station.”
The old woman cuffed the table with the palm of her hand. “That way at least we can hear more of his story.”

“There isn’t that much to tell really,” Don Fidencio said, and continued chewing.

“The Indians take you with them and you come back here so many years later, and there is nothing else to say?”

He tried to stall, think of some way to change the subject, but the old woman was holding her milky gaze on him. He wondered
how he thought he could ever get away with pretending he was his grandfather. And then he realized he had just accepted the
old woman’s offer to spend the night.

“I wish there was more I could still remember, but so many years later.” He shrugged with his palms open to everyone else
at the table.

“You remembered how to get back here to this place,” the old woman said.

And what was he supposed to say to this? He kept chewing his food, hoping that if he took long enough the old woman would
forget she’d asked him a question.

“The other day you told us some more of the story,” Socorro said. “Maybe you can tell her how you rode on the horse with the
army chasing you.”

The girl must have thought she was being helpful. He set down his fork and looked toward the door at the light streaming into
the room. A moment later he shut his eyes as he began to speak. “They had run the horses most of the night and stopped only
two times to let them drink water. I had to ride on a horse with the same Indian who had shot my father with the arrow. This
one must have been the leader because he rode in front and told them what to do. I wanted to jump down and run away, hide
somewhere in the dark, but a little girl had screamed earlier when she saw that the army was following us. She stopped screaming
when they cut her throat and threw her body down. I could hear the other horses trampling over her, how it sounded when her
bones were breaking under the hoofs.”

“Desgraciados,” the old woman said. “For that reason they had wanted to run them off. That, or kill them all. Nobody wanted
them around, not here or over on the other side.”

“And later when they stopped, maybe because of what happened with the little girl, the rest of the children, they wouldn’t
let them get down from the horses, not to drink water or just to stand up, for nothing. And what could we do, if none of us
spoke their language?” Don Fidencio quieted after this. The others assumed he was trying to recall more details of his story,
but after a long pause he opened his eyes.

“And the rest?” the old woman asked.

“Who knows?” he said. “That’s all I can remember, after all this time.”

“But you said the other part like it happened only yesterday.”

She had stopped eating and was facing him again. It was clear to him that she wasn’t going to let it pass until she heard
everything that happened, whether it actually did or not.

“What I can remember is that as soon as they crossed the river, they left me there and rode off. And from then on, my life
was on the other side.”

“And the others?”

“Those ones, they took with them to the north. I stood there and watched the dust rise from the horses galloping away. The
army crossed the river later, but they were still too far behind.”

“But tell me why you, if they had taken so many other children?” she asked, her palms open now as if she were waiting to catch
something in her arms. “Why not one of the other boys or girls? You said there had been at least six more.”

Don Fidencio rubbed at the stubble on his chin. Now she was asking him questions he had few answers for. It seemed reasonable
to want to know and yet he couldn’t recall if his grandfather had even told him this part of the story.

“Sometimes God has a plan for us,” Socorro offered.

No one disputed this, but as the moment passed so did any of the influence her words might have had.

“Maybe it was so the army would stop to help when they saw a little boy that was left behind?” Don Celestino said. “They couldn’t
keep chasing after them and just leave him there. At least one or two of the soldiers would have to stop for him.”

The old woman crossed her arms. “Maybe so, but it still doesn’t answer why this little boy.”

“If he was older than the rest, maybe they only wanted to keep the younger ones that were easier to control,” Carmen said,
though barely loud enough to be heard.

“And tell me, since when has it been so difficult for a man to control a young boy?”

Except for the old woman and Don Fidencio, everyone had managed to eat all of his or her meal. Carmen offered to pick up his
plate with the others, and though he could have kept eating, he slid it toward her. What was the point? Without so much as
looking in her direction, he could feel the old woman’s eyes fixed on him.

“Ya, some more is coming back to me,” he said finally, then removed the paper napkin from his shirt collar and again closed
his eyes.

“I told you that they wouldn’t let us get off the horses. Riding and riding, it must have been more than twelve hours without
eating or sleeping or stopping to make water, and that last one was something I had needed to do for a long time. My father
had bought me an agua de naranja earlier that day. Imagine how hard this was, and then for me, who before then had never been
on a real horse. At first I thought that I could last until we got to wherever they were taking us, but things changed when
the sun started coming up.” He paused at this point, as if unsure whether to keep going. He could hear dogs barking off in
the distance, but otherwise the room was silent, waiting. “I meant for only a little to come out, only to relieve some of
the pressure from not making water for so long. But no matter how much I wanted to stop right then, it kept coming, until
I could see my pants filling up like a balloon. Maybe it would have passed, but the Indian felt the sides of his legs getting
wet. I had wet the horse, too, only it had been running all night and was already sweating. He grabbed me by the hair and
yelled at me, telling me something in his words that I would never understand, but I knew it was bad. I thought he was going
to hit me or throw me to the ground and I would get trampled like the little girl. How was I to know what he was capable of,
and then so angry? We rode this way for at least another hour, with my wet pants stuck to my legs and other places where I
could feel my skin rubbing against the sides of the horse. I thought there would be some relief when he reached the river,
but it took time because they were looking for a good place to cross. It had rained hard only days before and the river was
high. I could see the current was strong, taking with it tree branches and a large black dog that at first looked like it
was swimming but then went to one side. With all that water rushing in front of us, I felt that I wanted to go again. From
where, I don’t know, since they had not given me anything to drink and only an hour earlier I had let go a stream of water,
everything inside me. I was afraid of what the Indian might do if it were to happen again. Throw me into the river to drown?
I was lucky that before long one of them found a good place to cross and they all turned the horses in that direction. As
soon as we entered the water, my pants began to fill up again, only now it was washing away what had happened to me earlier.
The Indians were moving through the river slow and with much caution, waiting for the horses to get their footing before making
them go forward. The animals were struggling against the current. I remember the Indian wrapped one arm around my chest and
held on to me tighter than he had since he had put me on the horse. This man who had killed my family and now he was protecting
me. And me, after thinking all night of how I might escape, I was holding on to him as if he were my father, the one who had
brought me into this world.” He stopped to wipe the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. “The horses struggled more
when we finally reached the other side and they had to climb out of the river. By that time the army was not so far behind.
I thought the Indian wouldn’t be mad anymore because the river had rinsed everything away, but with the morning sun the smell
was still there. Then he grabbed me by the hair and dragged me to the ground, and there he left me.”