The Seamstress (34 page)

“If those troops are lucky enough to find us,” he said, “they’ll see that we’re no vagabundos.”

Luzia recalled the photograph of Captain Higino and felt uneasy. The newspaper picture had been blurry and badly printed, but the young man stood out. His uniform was simple, his boots polished. He was short but was not dwarfed by the train or the surging crowd. He kept his hands comfortably at his sides instead of placing them rigidly on his belt, like the older officials beside him did. He seemed at ease. Smiling even, as if he was in for a great adventure. Luzia consoled her fears with Ponta Fina’s stories. Perhaps this Captain Higino was like the others—eager for a show but not a fight. And how would a battalion of ill-equipped city boys withstand the scrub?

Luzia did not know how many weeks they’d walked when, suddenly, Ponta Fina let out a high-pitched howl. When she and the cangaceiros climbed the ridge where the boy stood, she saw a great blur of green in the distance and beside it, a wide expanse of water. The mirages she saw in the scrub gleamed like metal plates, but this river had no shine, no glimmer. It was the color of coffee and milk. It was the São Francisco. The Old Chico, as Aunt Sofia used to call it, and it flowed through the scrubland hills, making them green and bright, dividing the state of Pernambuco from the state of Bahia with its wide, brown waters.

“We’ve arrived,” the Hawk said, taking a deep breath.

Luzia breathed, too. She could smell it. It had the scent of moss, of wet earth. The air softened in her nostrils. She heard birds in the distance. Houses clustered near the river’s banks. Two clouds of black smoke rose from dark mounds stacked before a massive, whitewashed building. Captain Higino and his troops were forgotten.

2

The river town of São Tomé had no clay-and-stick shacks. All of its houses were made of brick and covered in a thick layer of whitewashed cement. There was a telegraph office, a schoolhouse, and beside the two smoking piles of cottonseed was the second largest gin in Pernambuco. All of it belonged to Colonel Clóvis Lucena.

The old colonel spent his days on his ranch, dressed in a pair of blue pajamas. A peixeira, its blade sheathed in a leather case, was tucked into the pajamas’ drawstring waist. It was rumored that, years ago, a capanga had tried to strangle him with his own necktie. After that, the colonel refused to wear suits. Luzia had heard this story back in Taquaritinga but was never certain of its truth.

When he greeted them, Colonel Clóvis smiled. Like a goat, he had only a top row of teeth. The bottom was gums. His only son, Marcos Lucena, stood beside him. Marcos was middle-aged and resembled a cururu toad: his legs short, his stance wide, his eyes heavy lidded and sleepy, but watchful.

Like any good host, Colonel Clóvis strove to make his guests happy. Upon their arrival, he ordered one of his best cows killed. He had several cabritos skinned and roasted. Despite his cook’s protests, Colonel Clóvis gave Canjica full reign of the kitchen. The colonel’s house had a wide veranda shaded by rows of blooming ipê trees. Yellow petals covered the roof and ground like a golden blanket. Next to the house was the largest goat corral Luzia had ever seen. In one of its many pens, kids bayed and jumped wildly, butting heads and nudging each other’s thin legs.

“You’re still an ugly son of a bitch,” the old colonel said, smiling at the Hawk. He jutted out his chin at Luzia. “Got yourself a wife?”

“A charm,” the Hawk replied. “For luck.”

The colonel laughed and turned to Luzia. “My wife, God rest her soul, was a large woman. Strongest woman who ever lived. My Marcos wants to marry a little chicken from Salvador.” The old man kicked his son’s shoe roughly. “She won’t survive out here.”

“When we marry,” Marcos muttered, “she won’t live here.” He focused his sleepy gaze on the Hawk. “Come to collect?”

The Hawk smiled. His good eye glittered.

“No!” the Colonel quickly intervened. “I know why you’ve come. I heard about the mess you made up in Fidalga! It’s about time you started feuding with Floriano Machado—that sack of shit. Sends his cotton all the way to Campina Grande instead of selling it to me. He’s always been jealous of my gin…of our gin.” Colonel Clóvis smiled, then tapped Luzia. “That Machado is a cabra-de-peia. You know what that means, girl? He’s an old goat with no character. No word. He don’t respect the old ways…has to cry to the governor to get troops instead of settling things himself.”

“According to the
Weekly,
” Marcos interrupted, “they want to haul you and your group to Recife. The governor needs good press.”

The colonel released a puff of air from his nostrils. “That little bastard Higino won’t set foot on my land! I’d like to see the governor force me. I gave him more votes in the last election than any other colonel. I raised voters from the dead! He’s having trouble with the new party. He can’t afford to make me mad.”

“New party?” the Hawk asked, creasing his brow into a confused look.

“How long you been in the scrub, boy?” the colonel shouted. “Down in Minas. Celestino Gomes is running for president and he got a local boy from Paraíba to run with him, to lock in the North. They’re promising a national roadway, and to give women the vote. I don’t like it. But as long as they stay out of my business, I’ll stay out of theirs. Of course, their party’s sniffing around us. Promising us this and that if we switch sides. I haven’t decided yet.”

“Can’t trust Southerners,” the Hawk said.

Colonel Clóvis nodded thoughtfully. He smoothed a hand across the few strands of hair above his ears. The sunspots on his bald skull were brown and plump, like ticks.

“Some say if Gomes wins, we’ll all be shitting gold,” Clóvis continued. “Others say it’ll be gloom and doom—the death of the colonels.” He sighed, then smiled at Luzia. “A colonel’s power is like capim grass, girl. The more you cut it, the more it grows. It’s like a cangaceiro.”

He’d befriended many great cangaceiros in his long life. Cabeleira, Chico Flores, Casimiro, Zé do Mato. He’d known them all. Every generation, Clóvis reminisced, had its great cangaceiros. Ever since his great-grandfather’s time—when there were no politicians, no god-awful fences, no telegraph lines—cangaceiros and colonels had their alliances and their feuds.

“They’re like the sagüi monkey and the angico trees,” Clóvis said. “One can’t live without the other.”

“The trees could live fine,” Marcos mumbled.

His father glared at him. The Hawk smiled.

“Enough of this loose talk,” the colonel said, waving his wrinkled hand. “Let’s have a drink.”

They moved toward the porch. A row of intricately carved rockers sat empty. Luzia fell back. She wanted to find Ponta Fina and Inteligente; they had her sewing machine. Upon their arrival, the men had scattered. Some searched the house and grounds, making sure they were safe. Others built camp and helped Canjica prepare their dinner feast. Luzia stared past the maze of goat corrals, looking for a sign of the men. She felt a firm tug on her bent arm. Colonel Clóvis stood beside her.

“Don’t be a matuta and run off,” he said. “Sit with us.” With incredible strength, Clóvis tugged again at Luzia’s locked arm, bringing her closer. Luzia leaned toward him.

“See that?” he whispered, pointing to the corral of kids. “Those are my cabritos. Purebreds. The sweetest meat you ever tasted. Their mothers are loose.” Colonel Clóvis winked. “Out to pasture, I mean. I don’t use shepherds. No need for them. I’ll tell you my trick: if I want to trap the mother, I hold on to her cabrito.”

Luzia leaned back. The old man’s breath was pungent, a mixture of rotted teeth and chewing tobacco. She stared at the porch. The Hawk had doubled back toward them. The colonel’s grip tightened.

“What’s your grace?” he asked.

“Luzia.”

“Ahhh,” the colonel sighed, as if she’d said something remarkable. “Tomorrow’s the thirteenth of December. Your saint’s day.”

Luzia hadn’t kept track of dates. She would be eighteen and would have to fulfill her promise to Saint Expedito. Her long hair was a burden in the scrub. Even in a braid, it snagged in the trees. She could rarely wash it and had to comb it with her fingers. Still, Luzia couldn’t imagine cutting it. Beneath the trousers, the blankets, the bornais, and the leather hat, she was a woman, not a cangaceiro. Saint Expedito would have to wait.

“What kind of luck do you give?” the colonel asked, interrupting her thoughts. “The good kind? Or the bad?”

“None at all,” Luzia replied, tugging free of his hand.

The colonel flashed his few, ancient teeth.

3

That night, in honor of Saint Luzia, the cangaceiros made a bonfire in the colonel’s yard. Farmhands and their families crouched near the fire but did not dance or sing. They watched the cangaceiros and shot worried glances at Colonel Clóvis, who swayed in a rocker on his porch. The hands’ wives brought out a wide tin basin, stained black with soot. They filled it with cashew pods and placed the basin over the fire. Flames rose alongside the basin, then dipped inside it. The seedpods burst open. Oil leaked from their shells and dripped into the fire. A few women stirred the flaming cashews with long sticks, keeping their faces turned from the venomous smoke.

Luzia sat far from the fire, but her eyes watered. She turned from the smoke and faced the porch. There, the Hawk sat with Marcos and Colonel Clóvis. They swayed back and forth in rockers. The colonel’s sandaled feet barely touched the floor. Marcos’s wide body spilled out of his chair. Uncomfortable with the rocker’s movement, the Hawk sat at the edge of the chair with his feet planted. The rocker’s back end lifted high off the floor; Luzia worried it would topple over. The Hawk was a wary guest. When a maid served a bottle of amber liquid, he removed a silver spoon from his bornal and placed it in his tumbler. The spoon was well polished; it shone in his hands. Previously, Luzia had seen him dip the utensil into bags of manioc flour in the colonel’s pantry and any other food he thought suspect. If the spoon tarnished, something poisonous had been added. The colonel’s whiskey proved safe, but even after the Hawk dried the spoon and replaced it in his bornal, he waited for his host to take the first sip.

That afternoon, at the colonel’s insistence, Luzia had sat on the porch beside the men, but she had not drunk. She’d only listened. They’d spoken of the price of uncleaned cotton, how much the gin had processed, how long it would take the cleaned bales to arrive in Recife, and how much the textile mills would pay. The harvest had overproduced, the colonel said, and the mills would surely pay less. The Hawk complimented the colonel’s negotiating skills. He said that their gin would surely turn a profit. Colonel Clóvis shuffled his jaw from side to side, as if rearranging it in his mouth. Marcos rocked faster in his chair. Luzia stared at the Hawk. He held his glass tumbler with both hands, like a child. He did not resemble a landowner, but that afternoon he had spoken like one.
Their gin,
he’d said to the colonel. And Luzia realized that the Hawk and his cangaceiros hadn’t gone to Clóvis for protection, but for profit.

From the beginning, she’d known that the cangaceiros were not isolated creatures of the caatinga. They depended on the scrub’s residents—rich and poor—for clothing, weapons, lodging, and protection. This web of connections was fragile: built upon the Hawk’s reputation as a fair man and easily broken if that fairness wavered. Other bandits might be needlessly brutal, but the Hawk and his cangaceiros could not afford to be. Their acts were never random. If the men sliced off a merchant’s ear, it was for rudeness; if they removed a man’s tongue, it was for talking to soldiers or defaming the cangaceiros; and if they used their punhais, it was for larger offenses against them or their friends. Most important, a woman’s honor was her family’s treasure, the Hawk often said. He and his men respected families. They relied on them. “Only birds shit where they eat,” he said. “And we are not birds. We are cangaceiros.”

That day, on the colonel’s porch, Luzia realized that they were businessmen as well. This gave her a strange feeling of reassurance. Businessmen had plans. They had futures. Cangaceiros did not. She recalled Ponta Fina’s account of entering the group; how the Hawk had warned him that it was a dead end. The hopes she’d heard the men express were fleeting ones: dancing, eating a fine meal, loving a woman. Beyond that, they hoped to die in a fair fight. But if the Hawk owned something, if he was a partner in the cotton gin, it meant he had influence and a yearly income. Steady earnings meant that he could plan ahead, could save, could buy land for himself and his men. And with land came respectability. With land came the hope of something beyond survival and certain death.

Near the fire, the cashews were ready. With quick precision the women placed their stirring sticks on either side of the tin basin and hoisted it from the fire. Then they flipped the basin over. The blackened cashews fell onto the dirt. Children surrounded the smoking pile and cooled it with sand. Near her, Sabiá sang without the accompaniment of an accordion. His song was quick, its rhythm choppy. He took deep breaths between each verse.

“Bodies are my garden

My pistol is my hoe

My bullets are like rain

I am a son of the sertão.”

 

Beside the fire, the cangaceiros danced. They stood in two rows, their rifles in their hands, their faces locked in stern expressions. In time to Sabiá’s song, they advanced three steps with their right feet, then stepped quickly forward with their left. They’d loosened their alpercatas so that the soles dragged in the dirt. The leather made a
sha, sha, sha
sound against the sand. Their rifles were their partners and they held them rigidly, as they’d held the timid girls in Fidalga.