Listen to the Mockingbird (13 page)

I felt stupid. “Of course. I’ll bring the wagon Sunday, Winona with me. We can go together to Mass.” I hadn’t been near a church in many months; but Nacho had reported that with the Baptist house of worship empty since Joel’s death, some of the Protestants had decided their immortal souls were safer with the Catholics than with no service at all.

Tonio’s shoulder twitched and he shifted his weight, like a man who had found cornmeal in his bedroll. He looked down, then back at me. “All right.”

A strong gust of autumn wind caught my back, and I staggered a little before getting my feet braced. I’d been so intent on persuading him I hadn’t noticed the livid bruise that had crept across the sky.

He turned to examine the thick clouds that had vaulted over the mountains. “It should pass quickly. Come in. I’ll make some tea. Put your horse over there.” He nodded at where two huge rocks formed a sort of stone lean-to.

The cave was cozier than I had imagined possible. A low rock ledge circled the room, forming a bench on one side, a hearth on the other. A small pile of burning logs radiated warmth and a rosy glow. He offered me a blanket of sewn-together rabbit skins.

I sat near the fire where the ledge was warm.

He soon had water boiling in an iron pot and tossed in a few pinches of something from one of the tins stacked neatly against the wall.

“Is that really tea?” I asked, unable to imagine how he could afford it.

“As good as,” he said, handing me a cup made from horn.

I took a sip. It was warm and smooth and left a trace of fruit after you swallowed. “It’s wonderful. What is it?”

“If I told you, you could make it for yourself.”

That was the first time I saw him laugh. The firelight caught his eyes, and I remembered the Indian woman and felt a surge of something that made me nervy. I dropped my gaze and took another sip of the tea.

“You look dubious,” he said. “Is it too strong?”

“No.” I sighed and rubbed my forehead. “I never thanked you for your help with the fire.”

“It’s well we halted it before it took the house and barn.”

“I don’t know what I would have done. It hasn’t been an easy year.” The muscles in my back and neck began to relax and I wondered if it was the tea. “It may be that fire was no accident.” I told him of the oilcan Nacho had found in the burnt brush and watched his face for a tightened muscle, his hand for any hint of shakiness; but he showed no sign of disquiet.

His face seemed so open, his eyes so unguarded, his concern so genuine, the rest of my worries began to spill out like a dam giving way. “The Texans took some horses. They pretended to be gentlemen about it, but it was clear I had no choice but to hand over whatever they wanted. I keep wondering if they’ll come back and demand more. And the Yankees may come back, which might be worse. Some Union officer could blame me for helping the Texans, could declare me a traitor. And truth be, I haven’t had an easy moment since that poor Mexican boy was shot.”

“Did you ever learn who he was?”

“No.” The wind was whistling around the rocks outside, but not even a breeze reached the interior of the cave. I never decided to tell him, it just slid off my tongue with the rest: “There’s also the matter of the map.”

“The map.” His face remained still. Only his eyebrows crept a bit higher.

I drew the pouch from my shirt, where I had kept it since the day after the fire, and unfolded the paper it held. “The kid with the bullet in his head had this.”

A tired, haggard look crept across his face. He bent close to the paper and examined it in the firelight for a long time. Then, his features blank, he handed it back.

“It’s a map of my land—or part of my land. Even the cuevas is marked.”

“It does seem to be.” Tonio rubbed his eyes.

“What can it possibly mean?”

He was silent a long moment. “Two things. He could have gotten this map anywhere. In a saloon. He could have won it in a poker game. He might even have been flimflammed into buying it.”

“But why? Why was this map drawn? Why would anyone want it at all?”

He opened his hands as if to say he didn’t know, but something in his face denied it.

An icy thought brushed the back of my neck and tingled to the top of my scalp. Was he lying? But before I could consider that, another notion flared in my head like a comet and a rush of hope nearly overwhelmed me. My words came out in a rush. “It’s silver or gold or something. That map shows where it is.”

Tonio had gotten up and was stirring the fire with a stick. I couldn’t see his face.

“That has to be it,” I said. “Doesn’t it?”

He turned to me. Most of his face was in shadow, but the eyes looked unbearably sad, and strong as iron—as though they had peered at Satan and stood their ground, as though anything else was meaningless. “Perhaps,” he said.

I leapt to my feet. “Don’t you see? It must be. What else could it be?”

He gazed at me. “If it is, what would you do?”

“It would mean everything,” I gasped, my mind darting among the possibilities. “Everything. I could leave this dreadful place. I could go…” I hesitated. “…home.”

“Where is that?”

“Philadelphia,” I lied.

“Why can’t you go now?”

“I need more money. I’m only trying to build up the horse breeding so I can sell the ranch for enough to get out of here.”

“Your land could be trampled by every ne’er-do-well in the Western Hemisphere desperate for a quick fortune. Have you not heard what happened in California?”

I sank down again on the ledge. I hadn’t thought of that. “But if it is on my land…” I drew my feet up under me and leaned back against the warm stone wall, my mind addled by the possibilities of such a dose of luck. I felt like the gods must have felt when they realized they might make it rain or knock down mountains. If only it were true.

Tonio gave me a small unhappy smile. “It is not so simple as that. Men would camp on your land, some would steal your horses, there would be brawls and killings. You would need an army of guards a thousand strong just to continue your life as it is now.”

We both fell silent, staring at the chunks of glowing embers, the remnants of fire-consumed wood.

We are prisoners of what we want, I thought, and murmured, “It might be wiser to live like you, warm and dry with nothing to lose.”

He sat a few feet from me, his shoulders hunched together, still staring at the fire. “There is always something to lose. Always.”

My mind was going feeble with the strain. I had to stop thinking about it. I folded the map, slid it back inside its leather jacket and seized on the first thought that came to mind. “Who was the woman I saw leaving?”

His eyes never left the pouch until it had disappeared inside my shirt. “A Tortugas,” he said. “Her man is ailing, shaking with ague. She wanted something to slake the fever.”

Of course. Why had I leapt so quick to other, shameful, conclusions? “How did she know about you?”

He shrugged. “Word travels fast as wind among the natives. They are good healers themselves, especially the women; and they’re always seeking more and better ways.”

“How did you learn which berries or leaves or stems to use for which ailment?”

“From a man called Mario. Brother Mario.”

“At the monastery.”

Tonio nodded. “He had a special house of glass where he grew hundreds of species from all over the world. I thought he was the greatest man on earth because he could relieve suffering—sometimes it seemed that he could even prevent death.”

I imagined a ten-year-old Tonio contemplating such miracles and smiled. “Why did you leave, then?”

He leaned back against the stone bench. His beard, I saw, wanted a trimming. The firelight danced in his eyes as he stared at the blackened wall above the coals. “Brother Mario said there were many more plants that might be useful. When I came of age, I decided to find some of them for him.”

“So your decision to leave had nothing to do with religion.”

“There was a time when I wanted to be a priest,” he said slowly. “But I wanted to see the world. I always intended to go back.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Something in his eyes seemed to drown the fire’s twinkle. He looked down, and the pause that followed stretched out and became heavy. “I still send a packet of seeds to Brother Mario now and then.” His tone had shifted to that of casual tea conversation.

I wanted to touch his shoulder; but instead, I put my feet on the floor and rose. “I should be getting home.” Then I remembered something. “When I showed you the map you said there were two things it could mean, but you only mentioned one. What was the second?”

“If I am not mistaken,” he said solemnly, “the path marked on that map leads right through the nest I told you of. The nest of rattlesnakes. Just above that are a number of very excellent herbs.”

“You’re joking.”

He smiled. “Of course.”

Outside, the wind had swept away both clouds and rain, and the sky was blue crystal with streaks of white. I mounted Fanny and walked her along the rock.

Just before I reached the place where the rocks give way to open space, I looked back. Tonio was standing at the gap in the rocks that marked the entrance to his cave, staring after me. He raised a hand in a wave.

Something inside me stirred, something I had thought was as dead as the steer we had just butchered and hung in the smokehouse. I suddenly glimpsed myself, a tot grasping my skirts and smiling up, an infant in my arms; and on my shoulder, a hand, with fingers narrow, not tapered, the knuckles larger than the rest. Coldly, I smothered the image, aghast that my mind would conjure such a thing.

“Sunday,” I called.

Fanny slowly picked her way to more level ground. We hadn’t gone a hundred yards when the unmistakable bray of a burro made my eyes dart over the landscape in puzzlement. We had only one burro. Herlinda used it to fetch water from the springs. But the springs were half a mile closer to home. The burro brayed again, and I spotted two grey ears twitching behind a rock. I reined Fanny toward them.

Cisco, our burro, tossed his head as I approached. Hitched behind him was the water wagon, but there was no sign of Herlinda. I had no illusions about how she would interpret my past few hours in the cave.

Chapter Fifteen

When Winona met me at the door, I cussed myself for seven kinds of fool. She looked about eleven months pregnant. And something was drawing hard lines around her mouth and eyes. Any notion of her riding in a wagon all the way to church on Sunday evaporated like dew on a hot morning. I put my arms around her. “What’s wrong?” Then, even I could feel the contraction in her belly.

Clear brown eyes held mine as one small nod answered my unvoiced question. “I was starting to think there might be two of us waiting when you got back from galivantin’.”

I swallowed hard. I hadn’t seen Herlinda, but I had a good idea as to her whereabouts. Should I fetch her? Winona was already padding heavily down the hall to her room. I followed, feeling wholly unprepared for the task ahead.

The bed was open, its linen fresh. Next to it sat a straw basket piled with clean rags. A sheet had been twisted and run around the foot of the bed so that the ends lay together, like reins, in the middle.

“What’s that for?” I asked.

“To pull on, of course.”

“I’ve never done this before,” I faltered. “Not with—”

“I ain’t exactly an old hand, myself. But I figure it must come natural.” She turned, and I followed her to the kitchen, where every pot we owned was simmering on the stove.

I’d had what they called “a lady’s upbringing,” which sorely lacked even the merest hint about birthing. “I’ll fetch Herlinda,” I gulped. “She’s sure to know more than I do.”

“I already told that woman to stay clear.” Winona’s voice was thick, but her tone was adamant. “All them bad spirits peerin’ over her shoulder—I don’t want them in that room.”

“Tonio. You said yourself he’s a good healer. He may know what to do.”

Winona’s eyes fixed on me. They had turned a darker shade of brown. “I don’t want no man around, neither. This is woman’s doings. Eve knew a whole lot less than we do, and she got through it okay. If we can’t do as good as a lady who didn’t have nothing to wear but a fig leaf, we got no business procreatin’ in the first place.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” I said, my voice veering toward shout. “Eve had a man there. She had Adam.”

“Now you just tryin’ to get out of this,” Winona said quite evenly. “This is my party. And I gets to invite who I want.”

“I don’t know enough. What if I do something wrong?”

“You done horses,” Winona cut me off, fixing me with those brown-agate eyes. “This ain’t a lot different. Now, I already boiled all them rags in there and dried ’em in the sun.” She waved toward the bedroom. “You just be sure that anything that touches me or the young ’un has been stuck in that boilin’ water first.” She had begun to pace slowly, back across the kitchen, through the parlor and down the hall, where she turned and started back along the same path. I trotted behind her.

“Like what? What do I have to stick in boiling water?”

“Like the knife to cut the cord,” she said patiently, waddling past me in the opposite direction. “Now I already scrubbed myself with that new lye soap. You go scrub your hands and arms real good.”

“Okay, okay, just don’t you go and faint or anything. You’ll have to tell me what to do.”

In the kitchen, I poured a little of the hot water into a pan so it could cool enough for me to put my hands into it. “Go lie down,” I called over my shoulder. “You should get off your feet.”

“Nope.” She had come up behind me. “It’s the walkin’ that drops the baby into the chute.”

“You make it sound like riding a bronc,” I muttered, scrubbing my hands all the way up to the elbow.

“It ain’t unlike it, honey.”

Winona went on pacing for another hour, with me trailing behind her, holding my hands up so they wouldn’t touch anything.

“Okay,” she said finally. “I got to lay me down. You bring a couple pots of water and that knife I put on the chopping table.”

I was swinging one of the blackened pots from the stove when I heard a shriek, followed by a bellowed groan. I put the pot on the floor fast and ran to Winona’s room.