Carlota (4 page)

"I didn't know that my great-grandfather was a captain of the sea."

"He was not," Don Saturnino said, and laughed. "We will try San Diego this time. Doña Dolores has invited the countryside, so we will need to make a good bargain. We will need to buy two barrels of
aguardiente
because all the Peraltas possess legs that are hollow. Some of the Bandinis and one or two of the Borregos, especially Don Alfonso Borrego, are hollow likewise."

My father also liked to drink the fiery
aguardiente.

"And we'll have music?" I said.

"Much music. And not from Dos Hermanos. We will search and find the best from everywhere. We will make the Peraltas envious. And all the rest. We will dance for two days and not pause except to fortify ourselves."

We came to the brow of the hill that lies between Dos Hermanos and the sea. Below us, in front of the big gate of our half-house, half-fort, fires were burning in pits the Indians had dug. The fires would burn for three days, until the night before the wedding. Then a thick layer of ashes would be sprinkled over the coals, and slabs of beef, half a cow, each wrapped in heavy wet cloth would be laid on the beds and covered with earth. The slabs would cook and steam all night and most of the next day. Already I was hungry, thinking about the tender meat.

My father said, "Are you pleased that it is Yris who marries the Peralta?"

"Yes, very pleased," I said.

"You have no regrets?"

"None."

"Someday I will hunt and find you a suitable young man. He will likely come from the North, where the young men, I hear, are more handsome than here in the South. And we will have a wedding such as no one has seen before. Would that please you?"

"When do you hunt for the young man?" I asked.

"Soon. Very soon. Not later than next spring. It may take some time before I find him, of course. Perhaps a year or so."

"Of course," I said, having a deep misgiving about my father and this search.

"Handsome young men of good character do not grow upon trees. Yet I will look throughout California, from one end to the other. If I do not find him here I will look elsewhere, even in faraway Spain."

My hand hurt and that made things worse. But I was fortunate. I could have been back there on the rotting deck of the galleon, in the grip of the giant burro clam. I could be lying drowned beneath the waves. Or I could be at home, like Yris, getting ready to marry Don Roberto.

The weather was fine and the wedding guests came from all directions. They came in
carretas
drawn by oxen, on horseback with dogs at their heels, young and old, dressed in silver and brocades. The women smelled of perfume and the men's hair shone with bear grease.

By noon the hitching rack outside the big gate was full and we built another. Carts fanned out across the mesa. We had room in the house for thirty-two, about a fourth of the guests. The others raised colored tents around the house. In all, Dona Dolores had invited one hundred and twenty. All came, and many besides who were not invited.

Yris wore a dress of fine white muslin with knots of pink flowers around the hem. Her skin was pale because she never went out without a parasol when the sun was shining. She also wore a lot of white powder, which she had bought from a gringo trading ship. In her pale skin and white powder and pink and white dress, she looked like a delicious dessert, like one of the sugary
buñelos
that Anita, the cook, made.

Yris said to me, "I hope you aren't put out because I am marrying first. He is a fine and wonderful man."

"He is, and he is also the best horseman in the countryside," I said, thinking about a white gelding he owned, which I would like to trade a brood mare for when the wedding was over and he was my brother-in-law. Thinking, too, how fortunate it was that I would not need to wait on him as his obedient wife. "No, Yris, I am only envious of you."

"I am glad you do not mind," said Yris, looking at her hands. "It will be good to be mistress in my own household." She raised her eyes to the spot where Doña Dolores sat welcoming the guests, and it struck me stronger than ever how difficult it must have been for her, being, as she was, the daughter of my father's unlucky second wife.

Don Roberto wore his hair in
the furioso
style, pushed up in front and long on the sides. His jacket was made of black velvet tricked out with silver braid and large silver buttons. His trousers were split up the sides, and when he walked you could see flashes of red. I crossed myself. I thanked the Virgin Mary that it was Yris, and not I, Don Roberto was marrying.

Our chapel would hold only half of those who wanted to see the wedding, so it was held outside, by the corral. Father Barones came from Santa Ysabel to read the service. He was an old man and spoke in a quavering voice that no one could hear.

"Just as well," my grandmother hissed in my ear. "It is likely the wrong passage that he is reading, from the Bible. When you are married, I will send to San Gabriel for Father Justo."

The musicians played many tunes during the wedding. There were five men and they played three guitars and two violas. When the wedding was over and one of the barrels of
aguardiente
was empty, everyone hurried down to the pits, where the cooks had uncovered the slabs of meat and placed them upon trestles.

My grandmother poured herself a handful of salt and dipped her meat into it. She always seemed to like the salt better than the beef. I think she ate the meat to enjoy the salt. Father Barones took some of the beans, some tortillas, and a scoop of chile and a slice of the beef. Then with his knife he stirred all the food together, round and round, before he spooned it up.

"He is very religious," my grandmother said. "He thinks it is a sin to eat good food, so he makes it look like something else."

I heaped my platter and ate where I couldn't watch Father Barones. The beef was tender and sweet on the tongue.

In the afternoon, after a long siesta, everyone gathered on the mesa for horse racing and sports. I rode to the mesa on my gelding, Sixto, following my grandmother in her silk-lined
carreta.
Tiburón was too much for me to manage. My swollen hand still would not grip the reins. I could manage the gelding with spurs alone, but not the stallion, who required a heavy Spanish bit as well.

My grandmother said, "The way you are dressed you must plan to ride in the races."

I had on a deerskin shirt dyed blue and deerskin trousers and blue-stitched boots. I wanted to wear a pretty dress with ruffles, which Doña Dolores had bought for me from a Yankee trading ship, but my father said I looked better in trousers than I did in a dress. I didn't like this remark very much.

Doña Dolores gave up, saying, "The harm is already done. By now everyone knows Carlota de Zubarán. A little more cannot hurt." She dabbed at her eyes and gave a little sniff.

I did promise her that I would not go in the rooster race, which made her feel better, but not much. I failed to tell her that I didn't like the race, anyway.

This was a race between four men. Six roosters were buried in the ground up to their necks, just their heads showing. Then the men set off at a gallop. The winner was the one who could reach the finish line first, with the most chicken heads in his hand. Sometimes there was a second race if it was a tie; even a third. It took a great deal of skill to reach down when the horse was at a gallop and at the right instant snatch off the rooster's head. My father was famous, I had heard, as a rooster racer when he was in his youth. I didn't like the race and never tried it. But it was very popular.

I took part in only one of the events. This one was for speed and endurance. The course started from the hitching rack. It ran for a league across the mesa and through a grassy marsh and up a rise and across a deep ditch and through some heavy chaparral and then back in a last straight run for the hitching rack.

I had an advantage because I knew the country, having traveled it many times. I was willing to give the rest of the riders a head start, but all of them, including the bridegroom, scoffed at the idea.

"I should give
you
a head start," Don Roberto said, casting a look at me, I am sure comparing me in my leather clothes with his beautiful white and pink bride. And I could hear him congratulating himself that it was a piece of good fortune that he had not married me. "Perhaps a hundred
varas,
halfway across the mesa," he went on. "I will advise the others."

"Don't bother, Brother-in-law," I said. "I'll race you even or not at all."

This did not please Don Roberto. Nor my father, who had bet heavily on the race and wanted any advantage for me that he could get. He said nothing, however, because he didn't want the men to feel that they were racing someone who needed a head start.

There were eleven riders in the race. The men were all young. I knew some of them by their first names. I was familiar with what their horses could do. If I had been able to ride the stallion I would have won easily. About the gelding, Sixto, I knew little, other than that he was easy to ride as long as he wasn't trailing the other horses.

My father bet all the coins he hadn't spent on the wedding, which were equal in value to three hundred cows and twelve riding horses.

"No mustangs," my father said to Don César, his dear friend with whom he was betting. "Horses of good breeding, not decrepit with old age. And the cows the same; no crow bait."

"But these coins," said Don César. "What are they?"

"Gold," Don Saturnino said.

"I know, but whence do they come?"

"From Spain," my father said, telling a lie.

"
Verdad?
"

"
Es verdad.
Grandfather Don Sebastián was a minister of the King's treasury."

"Your grandfather stole them from the treasury?"

"Undoubtedly, my friend. As you would do had you but the opportunity."

As they shook hands on the bet, my father gave me a wink and so did Don César. They were good friends, but both of them liked to win. My father had advice for me as I drew up to the hitching rack and waited for the
alcalde
to drop his handkerchief for the start of the race.

"Hold back and let them all lead across the mesa. I will approach Don César again while you are riding last, and increase the bet. That way we may double our winnings."

"The gelding doesn't like to run last," I said. "He'll sulk and I won't able to handle him."

"Run in the pack, then," my father said, "but do not run first or second or even third."

"In the middle," I said.

The
alcalde's
red handkerchief fell to the ground. I spurred the gelding into a gallop, but as soon as he was underway I pulled in on the reins and fell back. Don Roberto passed me and said something that I didn't catch. He rode the fastest horse in the race, a black gelding his father had bought him as a wedding present. It was a five-year-old that had won many races around the pueblo of Los Angeles. Don Roberto was a good rider, but it was the horse I had to beat.

The mesa was flat, with short-cropped grass, and sloped a little to the south. I was toward the last when we reached the trail that led steeply down into the river marsh.

I had been through the marsh when I had gone to the Blue Beach with my father. The shortest way across it was not through the center of the marsh, which was deep, but along the north edge, where the water was shallow. None of the riders knew this but me.

As we came to the marsh we were now out of sight of Don César and my father and everyone else. I touched the gelding with a spur, left the pack that was wading through the tules into deep water, and followed the north edge of the marsh.

Don Roberto perhaps thought that I was having trouble and was about to abandon the race. He raised a gloved hand toward me and shouted, "
Hola,
this way."

"
Hola,
" I shouted back, thinking that it was nice of him to be so considerate of me.

I reached the far side of the marsh before he did, before any of the other riders, including Don Palomares, who had been the King's soldier and was accustomed to marshes.

Don Roberto and the rest were now a hundred
varas
behind, too far away for me to shout "
Hola.
"

Halfway up the rise was a
zanja,
a ditch filled with water that came from the river and that we used to irrigate our garden of corn, frijoles, and chili. I could have jumped it with ease on Tiburón, but the gelding I was not sure of, so I waded through the ditch. This cost me time, for all the other riders jumped it except a boy I had never seen before, who landed on his back in the middle of the ditch.

At the top of the rise I was in the lead by more than a hundred
varas.
The gelding was running well and I was sure he had strength for the race across the mesa. He would not be so fast as Don Roberto's horse—no other horse in California del Sur was—so I needed a good lead to win.

When we entered the chaparral I slowed Sixto to a
pasotrote,
the best gait for threading your way through the dense thicket of manzanita, ribbon-wood, and mountain mahogany. When I came near to the last of the chaparral, I used spurs on the gelding and he responded, raising his head and snorting.

Tiburón would have spied the coyote hole. He would have shied away from it and reared on his hind legs, as he sometimes did when he saw a tumbleweed coming toward him. Or when he came suddenly upon a coiled rattlesnake.

Sixto did not see the hole. Nor did I. I was glancing back at that instant to see where the other riders were. Sixto went into the hole with his left forefoot and lurched sidewise and came to a halt. I went over his head, and the next thing I knew I was lying in a thorny tangle.

Much of my breath had been knocked out of me, but somehow I managed to get on my feet. The gelding stared around, wild-eyed. He had a notion to bolt, leaving me there, shoulder-deep in chaparral, but I went toward him slowly, and called his name softly. Fortunately, he was not hurt.