Maria's Trail (The Mule Tamer) (2 page)

“The pile on the left is ten centavos, little
one. The pile on the right is one hundred.” He stood up again and walked to the
front of the store. He turned the sign around and locked the door. He returned
and picked out a pretty blue dress hanging on a rack and held it up to her,
under her chin. “Lovely, lovely. And just the right size.”

She suddenly felt weak again, like her legs
were made of lead, like something had happened to them and she was afraid that
she would not be able to move them when it was time to leave. She didn’t like
this and wanted the man to stop. She found she could not speak; blood pounded
in her chest and ears and was giving her a headache. She could only watch him,
wait and see what he was going to do next. He sensed this, too, and continued.

“Little girl.” He held up his hands ever so
kindly. “I will not harm you. As God is my witness, I would never harm you. I,
I lost my little girl and my wife and, I, just want to be nice to you.”

She relaxed and he continued. “I will give you
all the money on the desk,” he looked at the two piles of coins, “and this
lovely dress and some shoes if you’ll just be nice to me.” He patted her gently
on the cheek, “And you can keep all your treasures.”

She regarded him. He
was
nice. She did
not understand his kindness. It was confusing, but she’d known some kindness
like this before. Wasn’t the old woman kind to her for the same reason? The old
woman took her in because she’d lost all her children, and her husband was
dead. Wasn’t this the same thing?

She felt the flutter again. It was going to be all
right. He’d even picked the dress that caught her eye when she’d first come
into the store. It was as if he knew what was in her mind. Then she thought of
the money. A hundred and ten centavos! And she could keep the goats and the
mirror and brush and the necklace.

It was overwhelming and she was more than a
little proud of herself. She’d make the old woman well and they’d be fine. They
could buy extra goats and more chickens and they’d be good through winter and
beyond. She smiled at the man and thanked him.

He jumped up and patted her gently on the knee.
“This calls for a celebration, my little one. A celebration!”

He looked about, not certain what to do next.
Then he remembered and, pushing the dress on her, pointed to a little room.
“Go, go change, child.”

She did and when she returned she looked very
pretty. She was quite pleased with herself, despite the fact that she was still
barefoot. He’d laid out some things on the desk, a fancy drink of yellow liquid
and some candy and a cake. She’d never tasted anything so wonderful in her
life.

He chatted constantly but she couldn’t respond.
She listened and ate and drank. She looked down at the pretty blue cloth
covering her legs and she became dizzy with the excitement; overwhelmed and
happy, warm and tingly all over. She wanted, for some reason, to sleep.

She awoke; it was hot and nearly dark.
Something wet was splashing her and, as she looked up, whatever it was
splattered into her eyes. It burned terribly. Whatever was being thrown on her
had gotten into her mouth and it tasted horrible.

She squinted and saw the man. She could tell
that she was in the desert. He was ranting and speaking so quickly that she
couldn’t make out what he was saying. She cast her eyes about to see who was
there for him to speak to but there was no one else, just his horse hitched to
a wagon.

He was wetting her down with coal oil from a
metal can and it was getting everywhere. She looked down and saw that she was
wearing her old dress. She wondered at that, as she remembered having the
pretty blue one on before she fell asleep. Her old outfit was now getting
soaked along with the rest of her.

He backed up and tripped, spilling coal oil
down his front. He brushed at it as if he could wipe it away. He no longer
looked happy and friendly. Now he was feral, like an animal she’d once seen
with hydrophobia and it scared her very much.

He turned and put the coal oil can in the wagon
and then came back. He picked at his vest pocket and found some matches. She knew
he was going to burn her up. She desperately thought about what to do. She
couldn’t run, he’d catch her. Her legs were full of pain and her feet hurt.

He was striking the match now. It would engulf
her. Suddenly she knew what to do. She learned from a young age how to throw
things with precision. She’d killed rabbits and chickens in the desert this way
since just about the time she could walk and she knew this was her only chance.
She picked up a fist-sized rock and threw with all her might, striking the man
in the forehead.

He fell as the match ignited and lit his soaked
matching vest and trousers. He was suddenly a giant torch and he screamed and
ran in circles nearly running toward her then changing direction. He ran into
the desert and finally, after a hundred or so feet, dropped and continued to
burn. He was finally dead.

The horse pulling the wagon panicked and also
ran wildly into the desert and after a time she realized that she was all
alone. It was fully dark now. She did not recognize this place so surmised that
she had to be somewhere other than southeast of the town as that was the route
she knew and she’d never been on the road nearby.

She slowly got to her feet and stumbled to the
burning corpse which was by now devoid of most of its flesh, the face gone, now
nothing more than a red burning skeleton. She realized that this did not scare
her but actually made her feel good. He was a bad man and he was the first of
his kind that she’d seen get what he deserved. She couldn’t help being a bit
proud of the fact that she’d made it happen to a certain extent. No one could
say that she’d killed him or burned him up, she just stunned him with the rock.
But he was dead now and he’d died a fittingly horrible death and she was
partially the reason it happened.

She sat down next to the corpse, upwind because
she didn’t want to smell like greasy burning human, but she was suddenly very
cold and the corpse gave off a fair bit of heat.

She warmed herself as the coal oil dried from
her dress. She became sleepy and slept next to the shopkeeper until morning.

When she awoke it was full daylight and the
corpse was burned out. Nothing much was left but a skeleton and she regarded
him again. She could recognize him. His nice teeth were recognizable.

She needed to urinate and did and had to push
extra hard as things were bound up down there. Something popped or tore and she
looked down to see that her urine was reddish. She realized then that he’d been
up to no good but that she’d been so sleepy from what he’d given her to drink
and eat that she didn’t know.

She was glad of that and looked down to survey
her dress and saw blood on it and further surmised that she’d been bleeding at
some point. What he’d done to her made her bleed and made her very sore. He was
a wicked man and she looked on the corpse again and was glad to see him in such
a state. She was glad that he was dead.

She got her bearings and began walking toward
town. She was famished and had nothing but her soiled dress. She needed to get
her things. She wondered if the goats were still tethered to the post in front
of the burned man’s store.

She found some water and drank until she was
full and washed herself. It burned and stung very much and she felt down there.
She could feel that her body was torn and that it would scab over then open up
whenever she urinated and wondered how it would ever heal.

She soaked her dress where it was bloody but
the stain wouldn’t come out. The blood had dried and was fixed. She’d have cut
it away but her knife was gone, so she resolved to continue walking in her
bloody dress. There was nothing more that she could do.

She arrived at the town at midday and the goats
were gone. She checked the store and it was locked. She tried the windows and
could not open them. She sat down and was shakier than before. She started to
doze when a man on a horse rode up and dismounted. He tied his horse to the
post she’d used for the goats the previous day. He wore a uniform and had a
sword which bounced about on his side. He walked past her and pulled on the
store’s door, then peered in and knocked. He turned and regarded her.

“What are you doing here?”

“Waiting.”

“For what?” He looked around. “Where’s
Sanchez?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know who that is.”

“The shopkeeper.”

“He’s…I, he’s not here, but he has my things. I
need my things.”

The rurale regarded her. He looked at her dirty
bloody dress. “What have you gotten yourself into?”

She realized that she might not want to tell
him much. “Chicken blood.”

He shrugged and shook his head. “Big chicken.”

He began to walk away and she decided that he
was her only hope. She called out to him as he mounted up. “That man, Sanchez,
he has my things. I need to get inside.”

“You, peon, have no business with Sanchez. He’s
a respected shop owner. You come back when he’s here. Don’t bother me with such
things, child.”

“But he took…” she thought better of it. “He
has my things, it is my right. And my goats are gone.”

“Hah!” He sneered. “You have no rights, child.
Go back to your hole in the ground, go back home.” He was gone.

She did as she was told and by sundown was
nearly home. She walked without thinking and was so hungry that her stomach
ached constantly. She drank a few times through the day and that helped a
little. By full dark she was just too tired to go on and resolved to lie down
for a while. She thought that she would only rest for a little while and then
go on.

But she didn’t wake up and it was full daylight
by the time she got moving again. She worried over the old woman and wondered
and hoped that she was okay. She did not know what she’d tell the curanderas.
She wanted them to treat the old woman but now had nothing to give them. She
decided that she couldn’t worry about that now. She decided, after all that had
happened to her in the past two days, that she’d not worry about things that
she could not control. She resolved, from now on, to control as many things as
she could. She also decided to trust no one, as the old woman had told her,
except herself. She could rely on no one in the world and that was the way
things would be from now on.

She saw smoke off in the distance, in the
direction of the hovel, and she hurried on as best she could. Such a large fire
made no sense to her. She finally arrived to find the hovel burning, the mean
man and his wife and the curanderas looking on. The mean man sneered. “You are
late.”

“Where’s the old woman?”

The mean man’s wife pointed at the hovel and
the girl looked at them. “Why?”

The mean man spit tobacco at her feet. “She was
dead when they came to treat her. They said it all needed to be purified and we
burned it. She’s gone, child.”

The little girl watched it burn alone. The
curanderas left and the mean man and his wife went about their business. She
watched the little shack fall apart and looked on as the foundation was
revealed. She remembered everything she could about her time there. She could
not say that any of the times were really good, but they were her time and the
old woman’s time, and sometimes she was a little happy when she made the old
woman smile. She never went hungry and the old woman was good to her, better
than any other human being had been and now she was dead.

She thought about crying but didn’t. She lay
down in the shade and fell asleep until the mean man’s wife nudged her awake.
The wife was nervous and looked back at her own hovel often. Her husband would
be cross if he knew that she was helping the whore’s spawn, but the woman was
good and she could not help herself.

She had food for the girl and sat beside her as
the child ate. She reached over to touch the girl’s hair and the child
recoiled, pulling away and putting several feet between them. They were both
shocked at this behavior.

“Take these things, child.” She gave her a
bundle of old clothes wrapped in a rebozo along with a knife and a flint and
steel. At least the child could make a fire. She gave her a sack of tortillas
and some dried beans and a water gourd.

The little girl looked the things over and then
gazed into the woman’s eyes. “May I live with you?”

The woman looked away, at the burned remains of
the hovel. “No, child. You may not and you must not stay here. He won’t allow
it.” She regarded the child’s dress and the bloodstains. The bastard missed
nothing, she thought, looking back at the hovel where her husband was likely
eating, gorging himself while this little one suffered. His mean, beady little
eyes saw everything.

 “He says you are no good, that you are the
product of a whore and now you’ve been spoiled.” She looked away and the little
girl saw that she was crying. She felt sorry for the woman even though she was
not going to help her beyond the little bit that she had. She stood up and
brushed her skirt off. She looked down on the woman’s head, grabbed her new kit
and walked away.

She walked back to the town because she
remembered the necklace she’d hidden. She needed to get it as it was the only
thing she had left in the world, other than her kit and her clothing, which was
of any tangible value. She at least was not hungry and this helped her progress
a good deal. She killed a rattler with a rock on the way and made a fire and
cooked it. If she could do this regularly, she could save the tortillas for
when she was in the town as she did not know how long she’d be there or even
what she’d do after reacquiring her necklace.

She had reached the area just outside of town
by dusk and decided to bed down in the desert. She felt safe in the desert and
vulnerable in the town. That puzzled her. She thought a lot about her short
time in the town and the shopkeeper and rurale who were not good to her. It
seemed that the desert was safer as it had no people in it.

She made a fire and found water and filled her
gourd and settled down for the night. She’d made her camp in an arroyo so that
her fire would draw no attention. No one taught her this but it was reasonable
to think that it would be best to remain invisible. She found an armadillo and
killed it with a blow from a stick and ate it. At least she wasn’t hungry and
she was safe. She was alone and she missed the old woman, but the thought of
being alone did not bother her as much as she thought it might.

Before going to sleep, she had to urinate. It
still hurt but not as bad as before and she no longer bled. Her wound was
healing. She went to sleep.