by David Xavier
“That trunk is not so far,” Vicente said.
Salomon holstered the pistola and pulled the second gun, his eyes never leaving Vicente. He pointed to a sugar pine in the distance. “See that cone hanging off the side all alone?”
“Yes.”
Keeping the pistola pointed downrange with his hand under the triggerguard, he handed the gun to Vicente. Vicente gave Salomon a look as he leveled the gun. Salomon raised his shoulder and hid behind it. Marisela plugged her ears. Vicente shut one eye and controlled his exhale. Everything silenced. He pointed the gun skyward.
“How about that one further out?”
“Which one?” Salomon said.
“That short one there. On the left.”
Salomon stood motionless. He pointed. “There?”
Vicente stepped close and looked down Salomon’s arm. “Which one?”
“That short one on the left,” Salomon said.
“That sounds like what I said. With the cone hanging. How far do you think that is?”
“Far enough.”
“You think you could hit something that far?”
“I don’t think you can.”
“I’ve hit farther things.”
“Go ahead. I will hit what you miss.”
“I won’t miss.”
Vicente leveled the pistola. He waited for the wind to die down, then squeezed an eye shut and exhaled.
“If you see a better–”
“No, just go with that short one on the left.”
“If you think there’s a–”
“Shoot.”
Vicente exhaled and fired. They waved the smoke and looked to the short sugar pine. The branch was settling in coneless bounce. Vicente was still smiling downrange when Salomon took the pistola from him and started walking back.
“You’re not going to shoot?”
“I said I’d hit what you miss.”
“You think you could have hit that?”
Salomon swung atop the pony and turned about. “Let’s go.”
They rode overlooking the traveled road, the coastal palms in view. The further south they went the closer they worked their way to the road until they found themselves on the hard-packed dirt. The clap of hoofs beneath them had been muted so long it sounded as if it would be heard for miles. Vicente and Salomon rode and halted and gave each other odd looks in the silence.
Salomon broke from the road and they crossed into the San Joaquin Valley. He looked about at the passing land, the draws and the creek crawling silverbacked through the grass.
“What are you smiling at?” Vicente said.
“I remember this land.”
They came to the ruins of an old adobe hacienda, the walls scorched black and bare. Nothing remained of the barn, and the rancheros’ quarters had a sunk roof and lay covered in crawling vines, as if it were being pulled into the earth. Salomon dismounted and searched the ground. The white picket fence his rancheros had placed around the graves was gone, and the wind and rain had erased the gravesites from the earth as if they had never been. Salomon walked about but could not remember their placement. The land had changed. He swung atop the pony.
“You don’t want to stay?” Marisela said.
“They would look here.”
They rode on and night seeped upon them. Lanterns in the distance gave a city its gray walls at dusk, looking like tombstones in candlelit memorial.
“San Diego,” Salomon said. “We have been on Pío’s land for some time.”
“Let’s go to him,” Marisela said. “He will hide us.”
“I am not asking for any more favors.”
Vicente nudged forward.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m hungry.”
They ate at a cantina where stray dogs sat outside the back door and every so often fought over scraps thrown over their heads. A mustached man stood against the jamb and smiled at the snapping dogs. He looked up at the three weary travelers approach and disappeared inside.
People passed their table without a glance given. A man in the corner snored across a table, his head and arms sprawled as objects left behind. Another stood with his back to the bar and Salomon and he caught each other looking. Salomon lowered his fork and Marisela saw this and looked about. Neither man blinked away. They sat unmoving in this strange stalemate until the man raised his glass and turned. They ate quickly and paid for a stack of tortillas in a thin towel and left.
In the street they passed the city law offices where two policia sat wide-kneed in the semidarkness on benches fastened to the walls. They wore matching jackets and smoked cigarillos and nodded at the passing travelers. Vicente looked back, riding with his head turned. He looked to Salomon and Marisela, then wheeled and trotted back. Salomon put his pony sidelong in the road and they watched the scene unfold.
Vicente looked down at the policia from his dun. They looked past him until he asked a question. The policia looked at each other and one of them leaned forward and spoke. Vicente gestured at his horse and the one laughed. He looked to his companion and they both laughed. Vicente spoke again and pulled the dragoon’s pistola, holding it forth in both hands like some relic to be admired. The one craned his neck for a quick look, then hung the cigarillo in his mouth and stood for a closer look. He turned the pistola over several times and dragged it angled across the sky as if aiming at a distant bird in flight. He gave the pistola back and shook his head as he sat again. Vicente spoke again, but the man shook his head still. Vicente gave a final word and rode away.
“What was that about?”
Vicente trotted past. “They won’t hire me.”
They took a room for the night. Marisela took the bed while Salomon and Vicente propped pillows in opposite corners of the room. Salomon lifted his head every time a step or shadow went past the door.
“If you don’t stop that,” Marisela said in the darkness, “I’m going to lock you out.”
Before sunrise they rode out of San Diego and made their way further south still. Salomon kept his eyes to the hills, occasionally glancing to the coastal waters. Further they traveled until San Diego was just visible behind them, and Salomon cut toward the hills, leaving the coast behind as well. He continued to cut around hills and they began to recognize trees they had passed only minutes before.
“What are you looking for?” Vicente said, sitting his dun.
“A small hacienda. My cousin lived outside San Diego as a young man.”
After another search he topped a rise and looked back. Vicente was leaning against a rock with the reins slung around his ankle. His sombrero covered his face.
Salomon put his hand to his mouth and called out. “Vicente.”
He lifted the hat. “Come get me when you’re done going in circles.”
“I found it.”
It was mid-morning when they approached the hacienda. They stood still mounted in the tall grass, regarding the small structure before them. Vicente leaned and spat.
“I could throw a rope around that.”
“He was not a rich man yet when he lived here.”
“I suppose not.”
“But this is his land.”
The roof had collapsed to a decaying crater inside the adobe walls, unattached and crumbled at the corners. The rustle of living things scratched beneath the rot. Old stones lay rainstreaked one atop the other, a chimney, the fireplace filled by the nestings of some critter.
Vicente peeked in an open hole in the wall and glanced back to Salomon. He moved on around the corner and kicked out a support beam that had fallen and stuck in the dirt. The crater collapsed further. He turned and mounted his dun.
“Well.”
Marisela slid from the pony and walked forward. Salomon watched her. She dragged her fingertips upon the jagged walls like fine art and touched the sunflower petals that grew inside and bobbed at the windows. She put a hand to the door and paused as if contemplating her passage to the new life on the other side. She w
edged it open and the door fell from the hinges. She stepped back.
“It is not much to look at,” Salomon said.
“It will be.” She turned. “And I am tired.”
That day they pulled the rotted rooftimbers from the adobe and dragged them one by one over the long grass into the field. Things scurried away as they lifted. Vicente hefted a crossbeam that broke away at the center and he dropped his half to pull his collar across his face.
“What is that smell?”
Salomon paused. “I don’t smell it.”
“Something smells wrong.”
They took sides of a piece still intact and cleared it away. Beneath the debris lay a pile of assorted bones. Ribs separated, arms and legs amputated and cracked. A snouted skull. A varied skeleton, some parts missing and some parts too many. All dried out and graypitted.
“Look at this,” Vicente said, squatting.
“Pick your side back up and quit fooling around.”
Vicente chose a single rib and ran it under his nose. He looked over his shoulder. “It’s not these. The smell.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“You think the roof caved in on whatever this was?”
“And broke it to a hundred pieces?”
“I mean, you think whatever this was left when the roof caved, or burrowed in when the roof was already down?”
“Your two-headed monster.”
“There’s only one skull I can see.”
“I see about a hundred ribs there.”
“Not that many. But you think whatever dog collected these pieces is here now?”
“Those bones look older than you.”
“Well.” Vicente tossed the rib to rattle among the other bones. “Whatever that smell is, it’s fresh.”
They cleared the remaining beams and crumbled shingles. Marisela swept the rooms clear with a pine bough. What was left were walls for three rooms, picked clean as if a flood had wiped the years clear and dried away.
“You all can have it to yourselves tonight,” Vicente said, still holding his collar over.
“There’s nothing here.”
“There’s a great big smell is what there is. You’ll have to lie in the creek a full day to get that off.”
Salomon stood in the adobe with his hands on his hips. “I don’t smell it.”
“It’s there.”
“It’ll clear out in a day or two, open like this. Whatever you smell must still be in those roof timbers we pulled.”
Vicente looked to the field. He glanced back to Salomon and made his way to pick through the wreck.
At night the stars hung like suspended globes above the adobe ruins. During the night Vicente came to the walls and lay in the corner. The shadow of Salomon’s head raised.
“It’s not that bad,” Vicente said.
The next day Vicente rode to San Diego and returned with a borrowed buggy carrying an ax and timbers. A saw and boards, a shovel. Nails and a hammer, some paint and rope. In a bag were flour, salt, and cornmeal. Salomon watched as the skinny dun pulled up.
“You can’t see this place from the road,” Vicente said. “I thought I was going to have to follow your circles to find it again.”
“How much do we have left?”
“Nothing at all,” Vicente said. “This all was on credit. They’re holding my pistola for me until I return.”
Salomon searched his hands through the buggy. Vicente leaned over.
“I bought two hammers.”
They set to work. Vicente climbed the chimney. Balanced atop, he reached an arm in and pulled a hardwoven nest. An owl shot upward and opened its great wings, yellow crazed eyes and a shriek, width like feathered arms.
“Shit.” Vicente threw his arms and fell back. He hit the ground with his feet beneath him like a cat and ran cradling his head. Salomon peeked over the wall, just his head showing.
“What?”
Vicente was pacing far out in the field. “A bird a giant could ride, that’s what.”
Salomon squinted around.
“Well, he’s gone now.”
“Is the chimney clear?” Salomon said.
Vicente threw an arm. “I didn’t see. Take a look if you want.”
“Check it.”
“I’ll stick a pistola in there and clear it, how’s that?”
“You need bullets first.”
Vicente kicked and sent a stray rock.
They put a ceiling between the floor and the stars, and a door between them and the fall wind. Marisela painted the trim. At the waterwell overgrown by weeds they pulled out a fixed stopper covering the stone hole. A cool breath lifted. Spiderwebs crisscrossed over the blackness, billowing in the new wind.
“How do they get from one end to the other?” Vicente leaned over the top. His voice echoed within. “You think there’s water in there still?”
Salomon lassoed a rope around Vicente. “We’ll find out.”
“I’m not going down there.”
He fought the rope, but Salomon pulled it tight. “You’re skinnier than me.”
“No way in hell.”
“We need to drink something.”
“There are creeks all over.”
“Creeks go dry.”
Vicente peeked down again. “I’m not going down there.”
He sat against the well picking at the grass with the rope still around his chest while Salomon knelt atop the hacienda and hammered. Every so often Salomon looked up from the shingles to the well, and Vicente looked away each time.
In the hacienda Salomon built shelving and Marisela followed with paint. She took the shovel and began digging rowed trenches in the yard. Salomon measured the windows and started cutting for shutters. He paused in the windowframe at a sight reminiscent of one he’d seen so long ago, buried in his memory to be dusted off now.
“What are you doing,” he asked her.
She spoke to the ground. “Digging a garden.”
“A garden.”
She looked up. “We should eat, shouldn’t we?”
He watched for a few minutes as she continued, then he took up his measurements again with a smile.
After several hours against the well Vicente stood and threw down the grass stem he’d chewed.
“All right.”
Without looking over, Salomon set his tools aside and came to the well. Vicente put his sombrero down and reset the rope under his arms. As soon as Salomon put his hands on the rope, Vicente stepped in and dropped into darkness. The rope hummed over the stones as he lowered. His head soon vanished into the black. Marisela leaned over.
“Vicente.”
“Hold on.” The answer came back hollow. The rope jerked once, followed by faint rustling. A bat flew out. Then there was silence.
“Are you there?” Marisela called down. More silence. “Vicente.”
“Where else would I be? Give me some more slack.”
The rope hummed again. After another minute passed the rope tugged three times and Vicente called out. “Okay.”
Salomon had his foot against the stones and the rope around his back. “Is there water?”
“Get me out of here.”
Salomon walked the rope over his shoulder, leaning mulelike into the pull, until an arm came over the well stones and Vicente climbed out. He tumbled over the side and pulled at the knot at his chest, catching his breath against the wall. Salomon and Marisela crouched close and smiled. Vicente’s pants were wet to his knees.
“And it’s cold as ice too,” he said.
When the first winter breeze dragged its fingertips over the drying land and whistled through the shutters, Marisela’s garden already had the short leaves of lettuce and spinach sprouting from the cool soil. Carrot greens gripped orange heads in the dirt, and onion stalks tilted against the wind. A dozen hens huddled in a pen as a rooster pecked at the green beans. Two calves grazed nearby.
Salomon sat on his heels at the garden’s edge. He waved his sombrero and the
rooster went running.
“It was silly to plant green beans.”
Marisela came from the door. “Did you say something?”
He stood. “I said it smells good in there.”
She took his hand and put her head on his shoulder. They stood looking over the garden to the swaying grass and trees. “It’s just bread,” she said.
“By spring I will bring the calves to market. We will pay off our debt and start a small herd.”
“And I’ll get my pistola back.”
They turned. Vicente was smiling at the door. “The policia won’t hire me without a pistola.”
“How old are you?”
“Sixteen.”
Salomon nodded. “Maybe they will give you bullets when you are seventeen.”
Vicente pushed off the door and came at him. He lunged and caught Salomon at the hips. They fell over and raised dust. The rooster came to hop around the scuffle. Marisela circled and swatted at the two with Salomon’s sombrero.
“Get out of the garden.”
They rolled apart and sat opposite each other breathing. Salomon was leaning over garden greens in laughs. His sombrero rolled by as Marisela threw her hands in the air and marched back to the hacienda, and Vicente grabbed the hat and pulled it down around his ears, his gleaming teeth mostly hidden. He sat with his arms propped on his elbows. The dust wafted to nothing over them. Marisela came back with a makeshift broom she’d been using and they went running.
For weeks they could go without seeing new faces, tucked away in this rolling hideaway they discovered. Out there only wind crossed their path, only clouds stood over them, and the cluck and bawl of animals turned no heads. The calves grazed on strong winter grass and grew quickly. Cold rains passed over and tapped the hacienda rooftop. Lightning flashes at dusk reversed shadows for brief moments and set mirrors upon the wet world, and for hours afterward they lay in sleep atop the turning earth as rainsoaked air cleared the hacienda and renewed their dreams.
As the chill set in, Salomon and Vicente went to cutting wood and the chimney sat always under drifting smoke. The two of them alternated swings in the yard. They moved quickly and arched their axes high like railroaders, filling the air with wet pine.
