Bless Me, Ultima (25 page)

“How was town last night, boys?” my father asked.

They glanced up at him nervously, and Andrew said, “Quiet. The men at the Eight Ball asked for you, send their regards—they were glad to see León and Gene though.”

“Ay,” my father nodded and sipped his coffee, “glad to see the wandering Márez brothers, huh.” His voice was bitter. I guess he knew they would be leaving again, and he couldn’t accept it.

“We’ve been working, father,” Gene said.

“Uh-huh,” my father nodded. “I was just thinking, we used to work together. Hey,” he smiled, “it wasn’t so long ago we built this house, huh. Well you boys did most of it, and I’m proud of it. I would get off work on the highway in the afternoon, and far down the goat path, near the juniper where Narciso died, I could hear the hammering, and no matter how tired I was I would hurry, come and help you. It was a wonderful time, huh, a man working, planning with his sons—”

“Yeah,” Andrew said, “sure.”

“Yeah,” León agreed and nodded.

“Gabriel—” my mother’s voice pleaded.

“Ah,” he smiled, “just remembering old times, no harm in that is there. And remember the summer I took you to work with me on the highway? I wanted you by my side, I was proud of you—” he laughed and slapped his thigh. “You were so small those air hammers just tossed the three of you around like rag dolls—” Tears streamed from his eyes.

“Yeah, those were great times,” León said vigorously. His blue, melancholy eyes lit up. Even Gene nodded his head in agreement.

“We remember, father,” Andrew smiled. Then they were quiet for a long time as they looked at each other, the sons seeing the father suddenly old, and the father knowing his sons were men and going away.

“Well,” he cleared his throat and blew his nose, “I guess those days are gone forever, in the past—” He laid down his cup. “I’ll go fix that windmill now,” he said.

“But the wind, Gabriel,” my mother said with some anxiety.

“It has to be done,” he shrugged. The wind was blowing hard and the ladder up to the platform that held the housing would be thick with ice. He looked for the last time at his sons, but they avoided his gaze. Then he went out.

“He should have waited for the wind to die down,” Andrew said uneasily.

“Or until it froze over and stopped itself,” León added lamely.

“Or until the damned thing broke off,” Gene whispered, “there’s no sense in risking your neck for a hick-town windmill—”

I went to the window and watched my father work his way up the treacherous ladder. It was slow and dangerous work. He worked his way onto the small platform and avoiding the cranking, spinning blades he grabbed the loose wire. Carefully he pulled it down, tied the loose ends and put the brake on the turning blades. When he came back into the kitchen his hands and face were frozen white and he was dripping with the sweat of exhaustion, but there was a look of satisfaction on his face.

Next day León and Eugene left. This time they took Andrew with them. He quit his job at Allen’s Market and dropped his plans for finishing high school and went to Santa Fe with them. My father was not there when they left; the roads were opening up and all the highway crews were working. My mother cried when she kissed her sons goodbye, but she was resigned. I waved goodbye to them with some misgivings. I wondered if I would ever really know my brothers, or would they remain but phantoms of my dreams. And I wondered if the death of Narciso had anything to do with Andrew’s decision to go.

A
fter Christmas I returned to school. I missed walking with Andrew in the mornings. At first the kids wanted to know about the murder of Narciso, but I told them nothing and soon the news was old and they went on to something else. My life had changed, I thought; I seemed older, and yet the lives of my schoolmates seemed unchanged. The Kid still raced at the bridge, Samuel nodded and walked on, Horse and Bones kicked at each other, and the yellow buses still came in with their loads of solemn farm kids. And catechism loomed in the future for all of us.

I talked only once to Cico. He said, “We have lost a friend. We shall wait until summer to take the news to the golden carp. He will tell us what to do—” After that I didn’t see him much.

I kept, as much as possible, to myself. I even lost touch with Jasón, which was too bad because I learned later that he would have understood. Of course, the dreams that I had during my illness continued to preoccupy me. I could not understand why Narciso, who did good in trying to help Ultima, had lost his life; and why Tenorio, who was evil and had taken a life, was free and unpunished. It didn’t seem fair. I thought a great deal about God and why he let such things happen. When the weather was warmer I sometimes paused beneath the juniper tree and looked at the stained ground. Then my mind wandered and my thoughts became a living part of me.

Perhaps, I thought, God had not seen the murder take place, and that is why He had not punished Tenorio. Perhaps God was too busy in heaven to worry or care about us.

Sometimes, after school let out in the afternoon, I went alone to church and kneeled and prayed very hard. I asked God to answer my questions, but the only sound was always the whistling of the wind filling the empty space. I turned more and more to praying before the altar of the Virgin, because when I talked to Her I felt as if she listened, like my mother listened. I would look very hard at the red altar candles burning before her feet then I would bow my head and close my eyes and imagine that I saw Her turn to God and tell Him exactly what I had asked.

And the Lord would shake His head and answer, the boy is not yet ready to understand.

Perhaps when I make my communion I will understand, I thought. But to some the answers to their questions had come so soon. My mother had told me the story of the Mexican man, Diego, who had seen la Virgen de Guadalupe in Mexico. She had appeared to him and spoken to him, and She had given him a sign. She had made the roses grow in a barren, rocky hill, a hill much like ours. And so I dreamed that I too would meet the Virgin. I expected to see Her around every corner I turned.

It was during one of these moods of thought that I met Tenorio one afternoon on my way home from school. The blowing wind was full of choking dust and so I walked up the path with my head tucked down. I did not see Tenorio until he shouted into the howling wind. He was standing under the juniper tree at the exact spot where he had murdered Narciso. I was so startled and frightened that I jumped like a wounded rabbit, but he made no move to catch me. He wore a long, black coat and as was his custom, his wide-brimmed hat pulled low. His blind eye was a dark blue pit and the other glared yellow in the dust. He laughed and howled as he looked down at me and I thought he was drunk.

“¡Maldito!” he cursed me. “¡Desgraciado!”

“¡Jesús, María y José!” I found the courage to shout back, and I crossed my thumb over my first finger and held it up to ward off his evil, for I truly thought he was the reincarnation of the devil.

“¡Cabroncito! Do you think you can scare me with that? Do you think I am a witch like your grandmother? ¡Bruja! May coyotes disturb her grave—the grave I will send her to,” he added. His vicious face twisted with hate. I felt my legs tremble. He took a step towards me and stopped. “My daughter is dying,” he moaned, and the wind snapped at his pitiful, animal cry. “My second daughter is dying, and it is because of the witch Ultima. She put the curse on my first daughter, and now she murders the second—but I will find a way,” he threatened me with his closed fist, “I will find a way to get to her and destroy her!”

Not even when he killed Narciso had I seen so much hate in Tenorio’s evil face. I seemed too small to stand in the way of a man bent upon destruction with such fury, but I remembered that my father had stood up to him, and Narciso had stood up to him, and even Ultima had stood against his evil; and although I was trembling with fright I answered him, “No! I will not let you!”

He took another step towards me then paused. His evil eye grew narrow as he grinned. He glanced suspiciously into the whirling dust around us then said, “I killed the entremetido Narciso! Right here!” He pointed to the ground at his feet. “And the sheriff did not touch me. I will find a way to kill the witch—”

“You are a murderer!” I shouted with defiance. “My father will stop you if you try to harm Ultima, and the owl will scratch out your other eye—”

He crouched as if to pounce on me, but he remained motionless, thinking. I braced to ward off his blow, but it did not come. Instead he straightened up and smiled, as if a thought had crossed his mind, and he said, “Ay cabroncito, your curse is that you know too much!” And he turned and disappeared in the swirling dust. His evil laughter trailed after him, until the wind drowned it.

I hurried home, and when I could get Ultima alone I told her what had happened.

“Did he harm you in any way?” she asked when I was through relating the encounter.

“No,” I assured her.

“Did he touch you, even in the slightest manner?”

“No,” I replied.

“He didn’t leave anything by the tree, anything you might have touched, or picked up?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I answered, “but he threatened you. He said he was seeking a way to kill you like he did Narciso—”

“Ay,” she smiled and put her arms around me, “do not worry about Tenorio’s threats, he has no manly strength to carry them out. He murdered Narciso because he ambushed him in cold blood, but he will not find me so easy to ambush—He is like an old wolf who drags around the ground where he has made his kill, his conscience will not let him rest. He returned to the tree where he committed his mortal sin to find some absolution for his crime. But where there is no acknowledgement of guilt and penance done for the wrong, there can be no forgiveness—”

I understood what she said and so I went away somewhat comforted in the knowledge that at least Ultima did not fear Tenorio’s plotting. But often at night I awoke from nightmares in which I saw Tenorio shooting Ultima as he had shot Narciso. Then I felt relief only after I crept down the stairs and went to her door to listen, to see if she was safe. She seemed never to sleep because if I listened long enough I could hear a swishing sound and then a humming as she worked with her herbs. I had been close to Ultima since she came to stay with us, but I was never closer or more appreciative of her good than those weeks when I was sick and she cared for me.

A
leluya! Aleluya! Aleluya!

The Holy Mother Church took us under her wings and instructed us in her ways. By the end of March we were well on our way with our catechism lessons. There was no more exciting experience than to be on the road to communion with God! School work grew monotonous beside it. Every afternoon when the school bell rang we ran across the school-grounds and over dusty streets and alleys to the church. There father Byrnes waited for us, waited to instruct us in the mysteries of God.

The spring dust storms of the llano continued, and I heard many grown-ups blame the harsh winter and the sandstorms of spring on the new bomb that had been made to end the war. “The atomic bomb,” they whispered, “a ball of white heat beyond the imagination, beyond hell—” And they pointed south, beyond the green valley of El Puerto. “Man was not made to know so much,” the old ladies cried in hushed, hoarse voices. “They compete with God, they disturb the seasons, they seek to know more than God Himself. In the end, that knowledge they seek will destroy us all—” And with bent backs they pulled black shawls around their humped shoulders and walked into the howling winds.

“What does God know?” the priest asked.

“God knows everything,” Agnes whispered

I sat on the hard, wooden pew and shivered. God knows everything. Man tries to know and his knowledge will kill us all. I want to know. I want to know the mysteries of God. I want to take God into my body and have Him answer my questions. Why was Narciso killed? Why does evil go unpunished? Why does He allow evil to exist? I wondered if the knowledge I sought would destroy me. But it couldn’t, it was God’s knowledge—

Did we ask too much when we asked to share His knowledge?

“Papá,” I asked, “the people say
the bomb
causes the winds to blow—” We were hauling the piles of manure we had cleaned out of the animal pens during the winter and dumping it on the garden plot. My father laughed.

“That is nonsense,” he said.

“But why are the storms so strong, and full of dust?” I asked.

“It is the way of the llano,” he said, “and the wind is the voice of the llano. It speaks to us, it tells us something is not right.” He straightened from his labor and looked across the rolling hills. He listened, and I listened, and I could almost hear the wind speak to me.

“The wind says the llano gave us good weather, it gave us mild winters and rain in the summer to make the grass grow tall. The vaqueros rode out and saw their flocks multiply; the herds of sheep and cattle grew. Everyone was happy, ah,” he whispered, “the llano can be the most beautiful place in the world—but it can also be the cruelest. It changes, like a woman changes. The rich rancheros sucked the earth dry with their deep wells, and so the heavy snows had to come to replenish the water in the earth. The greedy men overgrazed their ranches, and so now the wind picks up the barren soil and throws it in their faces. You have used me too much, the wind says for the earth, you have sucked me dry and stripped me bare—”

He paused and looked down at me. I guess for a while he had forgotten he was talking to me, and he was repeating to himself the message in the wind. He smiled and said, “A wise man listens to the voice of the earth, Antonio. He listens because the weather the winds bring will be his salvation or his destruction. Like a young tree bends with the wind, so a man must bow to the earth—It is only when man grows old and refuses to admit his earth-tie and dependence on mother nature that the powers of mother nature will turn upon him and destroy him, like the strong wind cracks an old, dry tree. It is not manly to blame our mistakes on the bomb, or any other thing. It is we who misuse the earth and must pay for our sins—”