Book of the Little Axe

by Lauren Francis-Sharma

  I met Stephen before I met Alexander and Gregory. Three men who come to Tejas cause the United States of America didnt feed the mouths or souls of poor boys. Stephen, a good-lookin fella with smooth skin, was takin a siesta the afternoon I come up on him. I was watchin the big house for some days thinkin how I might like to ask for work, and I followed Stephen to where I knowed he’d be alone. He woke mad. Grabbin his musket. Glared til I proved myself like him, tellin my story not much different than his. He introduced me to Gregory and Alexander then took me to his boss, Meleanos, who was in for the week from what Stephen told me was a real fancy house in San Antonio. Stephen also told me that two hundred years earlier the Spanish Crown had asked Spanish presidial soldiers in the Canary Islands to settle in New Spain with their families. When the peace settlement between the Apaches and the Spanish was ratified, the Meleanos family began makin real money.

  Marqués Meleanos didnt bother shakin my hand. He asked me if I could work hard. I told him yes and he clapped me on the back and told me that in New Spain, keepin my scalp was gonna be a full-time occupation.

  New Spain

  1810

  “I hear Meleanos is comin for a visit,” Stephen said. “Arrivin today.”

  Alexander sat up. We shared a cabin—Stephen, me, Gregory, and Alexander. There was other men on the ranch too. Lots. But we was split up like how Meleanos had his land split. We was on our first break when Stephen come in and leant himself up against the door. The housekeep who worked at the main house was sweet on him. He had just come from seein her and was chewin a piece a fresh bread she give him.

  “When Meleanos comes from San Antonio trouble always gotta follow him,” Alexander said.

  “Naw, he come just to check on things and take a quick ride out with us.” Stephen swallowed the last of the bread.

  “You forget about Kent?” Alexander was speakin about a fella who left off soon fore I got there. “Didnt even get to pack up.” Alexander turnt to me and said, “Meleanos caught him rummagin through garbage. Said Kent was markin like a dog and Meleanos told him he was gonna chop off his dick. What kinda man dont wonder why his workhand gotta go through rubbish?” He turnt to Stephen. “You member what he said to him? ‘The only pijo that should mark near this house is mine.’”

  “I hope a cock inside that housekeep dont count as a mark!” Stephen shoved his hand into his britches. “Whew! Pijo still here. Be hard to chop this big ole bastard off!”

  Alexander didnt laugh with us. Took himself too damn serious was what it was. He was in charge of all the ranch horses but worked hard only when somebody was lookin. “Everything aint a goddamn joke,” Alexander said.

  “There aint nothin to worry about. Aint no crops dead, aint no cattle missin, and aint nothin we could do about it no how. He cant fire all us,” Stephen said. “It’ll just be you, Alex.”

  Alexander cocked his middle nail at Stephen and we kept at our chores til late afternoon when the groundskeep come to fetch us.

  We was wearin our best shirts when we made our way the three miles to the main house. Shirts and boots Meleanos give all his workers. The housekeep come to the door. She had a square body and hair that grazed her fleshy waist. She was brown colored but not Indian. At least not like the Indians I seent. Her eyes was narrow like the edge of a knife blade. Stephen winked at her. Somethin about that surprised me. Maybe cause it was so quiet and almost polite-like. Her right cheek shook under the skin.

  We walked through the house. My pulse flickered, hopin I could get a full-belly lunch or maybe a Dutch oven biscuit and a proper cup a coffee. Sometimes I felt like I was a sideshow animal livin out there, eatin when I was told and not when I was hungry.

  We found ourselves waitin in a room lit with lanterns, so Stephen filled the time with stories. Told us Marqués Meleanos was the grandson of one of the first fifteen families to leave the Canary Islands. That when they got to New Spain they built the Church of San Fernando. He said the Meleanos family was like royalty.

  When Marqués Meleanos finally walked into the parlor, he smelled like a fine cherry cigar. A nother man with a reedy nose and wide head walked behind him, alongside a thin boy.

  “Thank you for coming.” Meleanos pointed at the boy to pour drinks then ordered the boy to sit at the desk while the four of us drank, thirstily, our faces wrinklin after the odd and spicy taste we aint have no name for.

  “I have brought my sons here with me.” Meleanos nodded at the boy and I took it that he was one of em. “They will ride out with us in the mornings.” Meleanos took a nother swig. “My wife has not been well. Now that our house in San Antonio is quiet, we are hoping she will recover.”

  “We wish her a long life.” Alexander lifted his glass.

  Meleanos thanked him then went on. “I have had news that the missions have continued to confiscate cattle.”

  Stephen had told me that the missions and private ranchers was always at odds. The missions believed that since they brung all the livestock to New Spain that they owned all their progeny (that means babies) and each time the ranchers fled from the Indians, the missions took back everything. But then in 1794, the Crown gave big chunks of mission land to the heirs of them first Canary Islanders and put all them folks in competition with each other.

  “How is the branding proceeding?” he asked.

  “When you fired Kent, Señor, you aint never tell us who should keep at his work,” Gregory said.

  Meleanos closed his eyes and his face got all tight. “You understand the laws. If there is no brand, the missions can claim any livestock I own.”

  “Señor, we thought you hired Rampley here to do that work,” Alexander said.

  Meleanos and the reedy-nosed man looked at me. I shrugged and Meleanos waved his small lil hand like to shoo me away.

  “Señor Vokel will be in charge from this point forward. He has come to us from one of the missions, now closed after that miserable Apache attack. I expect that you will give him your attention and respect,” he said. “Be ready to ride out in the morning.”

  “Christ, if I gotta take the lil muck-thrower on my horse again!” Alexander threw the damp rag to the ground. Meleanos had ordered us to wash every day. Said his boys shouldnt have to smell outside on us but I aint never seent Alexander move to water on his own so I knowed he was gonna be angriest of us all. “And he pinches his goddamn nose too. I wish the lil sorner would fall off!”

  We laughed but Alexander didnt find nothin funny.

  “That lady friend of yourn,” he said to Stephen. “Tellin them boys that men aint supposed to smell like men.”

  “She likes the way I smell.” Stephen raised his eyebrows teasingly.

  Meleanos, Vokel, Teodoro, who looked to be his oldest boy, Raul, who looked to be the youngest, and Pietro, the one who poured the drinks, arrived round dawn. We rode cross fields and up a bluff then down the other side. Grasshoppers was plentiful. Some clung to our stirrups and brittle locust skins got crushed under hooves. We smelled mesquite coals on the wind and suspected travelers layin low but Meleanos said not to bother with em. So instead we checked the soil and noted spots where the earth was weak. Vokel complained about broke fencin while Gregory marked cows ready to calf. After we took count of the livestock, the boys said they was hungry. I caught em two squirrels and a rabbit and Alexander called me a show-off but I wasnt really showin off til later, when under a midafternoon sky, I taught Teodoro how to skin em with a pared branch.

  “Pietro, Raul, go stand near your hermano and learn from the mountain goat.”

  Everyone but me and the boy Pietro laughed.

  “Pietro! Atención!” his father shouted.

  Stephen cut in before Pietro moved closer. “Keep your distance from that one,” Stephen said.

  By the time a boy reaches eighteen he thinks he knows somethin about the world. Even if he aint been farther than he can spit. But when I got to New Spain I felt I didnt know nothin. How did them Canary Islanders learn to grow beans, oats, m
elons, and chiles all in the same square plots? How do you get horses to do what you want? I wanted to know about people too. There was Irish people, English, French, even one or two negras, and all them tribes I knowed along the Northern Divide and in the plains was different from the tribes down south where they had Numunuu and Niukonska and Lipan. And there was Spaniards too. And lotsa men like me who aint know or aint wanna say who their people was. And what I learned was that everybody was suspicious of the other and that there was a certain kinda mistreatment for almost every kinda people. Course, people pretended they aint know that, pretended they aint see a lot, and it was this lyin kinda blindness that kept me from losin my mind at the way people behaved. So when I seent Pietro sittin next to Gregory under a cottonwood, I aint sure I wanted to admit that it left me uneasy. It woulda been too much trouble to tell somebody I seent them together whisperin, and that the boy was smilin a hard kinda smile. And that the questions in my mind all just landed like wind-blown leaves at the pit of my belly.

  It was the boy who come to me a few months later. I was writin in this diary mindin my own business when he come up spittin mad, talkin to me about how I needed to stop watchin them. Sure, maybe I watched them a few times, I told him. He wanted to know what I saw, wanted to know why I was there, why Id come to Texas. I knew he wouldnt understand nothin about no rafter-hipped mustangs, the ones I believed had crossed flames in Kullyspell to save me. But I told him anyway. “I was followin horses.”

  “That’s Alexander’s work. But I will make Father give you work with the horses,” he said.

  “When you get what you want, sometimes all you want is more.” Gregory said this to me after learnin that Vokel had took horse chores from Alexander and give em to me.

  I told Gregory that where I come from more wasnt bad. He scooped a handful of nuts and put it to his mouth.

  “Meleanos is leavin soon. He got a friend prospectin in Spanish West India,” he said. “Writes to Meleanos bout gold as plentiful as the sea in this place called Trinidad.” He stumbled over the word then said it again. “Treen-ee-dad,” he said. “Writes bout how rich he got from all that gold. Meleanos is from the Canary Islands and knows a lil somethin about sugar and figures he could make a livin even if he dont find gold. He hired Vokel hopin he could leave. But then his wife got sick.” Gregory snorted like he knowed somethin else about the wife.

  “You know this from the boy?” I said.

  He stared at me oddly then said, “I wanna go there.”

  “To that place? To Trin-i-dad?”

  “Wouldnt you?”

  I aint knowed what to say cause I aint knowed nothin about that place that seemed too unreachable and too hazy for my mind to hold on to it.

  First, the cattle went missin.

  Fifty-seven. We searched day and night, splittin the acreage into sixths only to confirm early the next mornin that they was really gone.

  Stealin that much cattle wasnt easy and Meleanos was pissed.

  Gregory and Alexander got questioned first. After that Stephen got took for half a day. When Stephen come back he said to me, “If you got the guts you best leave now.”

  I aint need more than one warnin. I started packin like I was goin somewhere then Vokel and the groundskeep come and asked me to follow em.

  The slaughterhouse was way down at the edge of the property. It had big wood doors that was flung open and all I could see along the walls was heads of cattle on hooks with droopy eyes and a sea of white spit where there shoulda been lips.

  “Is this where you put it on me?” I said.

  The bile was risin in my throat and up into my brain like in a rainlogged cave. I looked through them big doors and spotted some hip-high Texas dandelions on the other side, and I thought that maybe havin them in my sight with them long, thin stems and wide yellow faces wouldnt be the worst a person could see takin his last breath. So when Vokel started askin what I done with them fifty-seven cattle, I was relaxed. I looked up on the walls round me and seent the bloodstained napes of the brothers and sisters of them missin bosses and I just started laughin. Laughed like a ball of funny done exploded inside me and this made Vokel so piss-angry that him and the groundskeep pushed me out to the other side of the slaughterhouse and marched me over them choice dandelions, where we come up on a mighty big hole, fresh dug, wide enough to hold a man or two my size and deep enough that not a soul would hear me if I chose to scream or even laugh from inside it.

  Vokel asked me again, “Who took the cattle?” He had his hand on my back and I thought I could feel them damn cattle eyes still lookin at me and I thought what a thing that I was the next one fittin to lose my neck and that thought too brung up more laughter. The groundskeep pushed me forward and I seent that the hole wasnt six feet but eight and instead of feelin worried, I aint feel none of the right feelins and I thought maybe I was losin myself, like maybe I come all that way to find out that at the end you dont feel nothin good, and sometimes nothin at all, and that I aint have no memory outstandin enough and solid enough to make peace with feelin nothin. And there was just somethin real pitiful about alla that.

  “Someone must go in that hole.” It was Meleanos comin up from behind. His face was hard like a man who woulda been fine with puttin somebody like me in a grave and coverin him up.

  And I dont know that I understood anything about what was happenin til the groundskeep turnt me around and I seent Alexander and Gregory and Stephen and a wagonload of men up near the slaughterhouse doors lookin over that field of dandelions with their breaths heavy like theyd been runnin to get there to watch me die.

  And then they pushed me in.

  The fall was long and I hit the ground hard. It felt like I couldnt move my neck so my face was just stuck in that dirt and I smelt manure in the soil that rained down on my back. The rocks they was shovelin felt sharp on my skin and I heard their grunts like they was movin fast to get the job done with. Then I heard the boy arguin with Vokel. Couldnt hear the exact words he said to make Meleanos stop everything.

  “We will return here if we do not find my cattle,” Meleanos said, lookin down at me.

  Meleanos wasnt goin back to San Antonio til he found them thieves. He started workin shifts. Him and Vokel patrolled from just fore sunup to just fore lunch, me and Stephen from after lunch to near sundown, and Gregory and Alexander took the shift after supper ended to right fore sunup. I swore I was gonna leave every day after the count was made but there was somethin holdin me back like maybe I needed to make myself innocent again, like maybe if I ran and was caught, I wouldnt even have my innocence no more.

  It was the sixth mornin of the week and I knew the head count was gonna be the same. One week of round-the-clock shifts and somebody was gonna have to pay soon. All that week Meleanos had gave Gregory and Alexander an extra hour sleep in the mornin so I was surprised to wake and see Alexander headin out just after sunup.

  “Where you goin?” My voice was still soaked with night.

  Gregory shot up and looked at Alexander hard, got himself dressed quick.

  “To the house,” Alexander said. “Gonna see about the count.”

  Gregory followed Alexander out and I aint think nothin of it til an hour later.

  I had already got up and washed my face, ate the last of the cornbread and took a sip of the homemade grouse when I heard the knock.

  The housekeep’s face was flushed and wet. She shoved me aside and ran to the cot where Stephen was. “My God! Esteban! Stephen!”

  Stephen woke and asked her to slow down. To talk in English.

  “Someone come in the house while we are sleeping, looking—”

  “When?”

  “Last night, I think. After Señor found the missing cattle.”

  “They found the missing cattle? Where?”

  “You are not listening good! Señor was out for very long this morning and the boy wakes early. He likes to walk about. His father does not like this, has told him to stay inside, but the boy does not listen.
” She took Stephen’s hands like she was gonna pull him, like she needed to show him everything she seent. “He must have scared the robber.”

  “Did he say that? Did he say who it was?”

  I watched them go back and forth, hopin I was wrong.

  “Esteban, you are not understand … Pietro es muerto. He is dead!” she said. “His throat is cut.” She began weepin. “Alexander is with Señor, filling his head with lies. And a father in grief has no ears, no eyes.”

  “Wha-what does Alexander know?” Stephen said.

  “Alexander said the boy spent every morning with Gregory.” She was shakin her head like she couldnt believe the words herself. “He is telling Señor that Gregory used Pietro for information about Señor’s money and business. That he was with the boy the way of man and wife.”

  “He told Señor this?”

  “I heard Señor say that all of you must pay. That there is no one with clean hands. They will come.” She stood and fixed her dress and wiped her eyes. “Señor will not bother with the law.” She turnt to me and then said to both a us, “You must go. Ahora!”

  VI

  Salish Territory of North America

  1

  1830

  Spring with her warm, soft hand seemed to be knocking at the door of the valleys. It had been thirty-two days of travel when Ma and Victor tied Martinique to search for young wild plums. They made their way back to the pitch camp, their packs full, and there, two coyote pups waited alongside the path.

  Ma pelted them with pits and they scattered but quickly returned.

  “You didn’t have coyotes in Trinidad?” Victor said, noting Ma’s irritation.

  Ma shook her head and surveyed the low hills. “Their mother is close by,” she said.