Tortuga

by Rudolfo Anaya

  That’s all I want from you …

  The rusty sand of sleep and the mellow memories of bygone times covered our eyes and we slept. I remember Mike getting up to throw a blanket over Ronco, who had fallen asleep in his chair.

  That little evil smoke gets him every time, he mumbled in the dark, then he tumbled into his bed and was instantly asleep.

  The room was warm and peaceful and quiet, but outside I heard the screech of great warring owls as they swept across the valley; the feathers of their warfare swirled in the wind and turned the earth white. The wind howled as the storm worked its way back and forth across the empty desert. I tried to sleep, but the air was too charged with electricity, too full of strange sounds which cried like lost ghosts in the raging storm. It wasn’t just the marijuana or Ronco’s drink … it was something else … Something or someone seemed lost in the storm, working its way towards the hospital in search of one of us. But who? I wondered in my restless sleep … and suddenly my nightmare is alive with la Llorona, the old and demented woman of childhood stories who searches the river for her drowned sons … sons she herself has cut into pieces and fed to the fish … Now I see her again, as I saw her that day of my first communion … But where? On the trash heap of the town, along the highest cliff which dropped from the edge of the town towards the river below, there where the people of the town dumped their garbage, trash which burned perpetually as the coals crept beneath the rubbish and erupted in small fires and evil smelling columns of smoke. There on the narrow path which ran along the steep cliff … I walked, feeling my loss of innocence in the face of the first communion girls who had danced their spring dance for me while our parents picnicked down by the river. She appeared unexpectedly, dressed in rags, eyes streaked red from crying, fingers raw from tearing at her hair … You, my son! she cried as we met on the narrow path. She reached out to grab me, mistaking me for her murdered son, scratching at my face and eyes with long, black fingernails, crying like a wild witch … and I fighting back, driven by terror … No, no, I am not your son, I am my mother’s son, I live, I believe in the holy Trinity which I now call to dissolve you, to make you disappear! But she is too strong, she has cried too many times at night along the river, and I have sat awake and listened … and she has filled my soul with the dread of her stories. You are the son I butchered for love, she cries, you are the son I lost at war, the babe forced into my womb by the power of your father, abandoned child. She reaches out and her long fingernails cut through my flesh as I struggle and cry for help in the smouldering darkness of the ash heap. Do not fear me, she cries, I am your mother, your sister, your beloved … I suckled you at my breasts, sang lullabies for you, wrapped you in rags torn from my skirts … I am all the women you have violated …

  No, no, I cry and fight, pounding at her, stepping back and feeling the fires that burn beneath me and threaten to cave in and swallow us both. No, I am not your son. I am not your son. I step off the narrow path, totter at its edge, see the bright green of the river below, catch sight of the clean lines of corn fields which line the other bank, then I leap … tear loose of her grasp and leap off the cliff and fall and tumble into the air … fall until I can fall no more …

  Then I awaken with a start, gasping for breath. My body is soaked with sweat. Only a dream, I tell myself, only a bad dream. The room is dark, outside the storm has let up. The small radio on Mike’s nightstand buzzes with static. I lie back and catch my breath. In the silence I create I hear the room breathing. In the hallway all is quiet, but here in the room a strange presence breathes. My hair tingles, for a moment I believe that la Llorona has followed me out of the dream and into my room.

  Who’s there, I whisper in the darkness. There is no answer, but the cold night is heavy with a presence which is in the room or just outside the room. I cannot see in the darkness. I lie very quietly, listening for sounds which will explain the presence, waiting for a movement of shadows. I lie like that for a long time … and I think of Ismelda, is she safe, sleeping in her house by the river, does the wailing woman visit her dreams or is it we who are men the only ones tormented by that witch? Who visits Ismelda’s dreams? Do giant snowmen awaken from the drifts of snow and move to her window to admire her beauty? Is her soft, smooth skin smothered in warm goose down … her heart beating in the middle of the tempest which covers the desert as heavy as the paralysis which infuses each of us … Her eyes are closed in peace, the long dark lashes undisturbed by the shadows of nightmares, her lips slightly parted, as if in a smile … Is she dreaming of me? Am I the man in the white turtle shell who swims nightly in the liquid of her dreams … hungry for her love and the touch which can melt the cold away …

  Who’s there, I call again … and wonder if Ismelda is sister to la Llorona … daughter of the same womb … companion to those young girls which shared the altar with me the last day of my childhood and who return to haunt every dream which seeks to tell me that in my innocence lies the answer to the question I seek now. Why me? Who was I then? Who am I now?

  Where am I, I call … and thinking of the vegetables sleeping in their cold iron lungs … and Salomón, reading long into the night … dreaming what all of us will come to be … Salomón, I say, can you hear me. Tell me what will become of all of this.

  Someone moves in the dark. A bed squeaks. Who’s there? Who moves in the dark? Ghost … or man … or both?

  I listen closely and hear a sound which is unmistakable … It is the same sound my grandfather’s mules made as they thundered across the llano as he came swooping down on us, calling out his hello, slashing his whip and making it pop over the heads of the gray mules … Grandfather, I say.

  I hold my breath and tremble. I hear the blue hooves chop into the frozen earth and turn the clods, then the rider pulls up outside, a rider with a remuda of horses, sliding to a stop, pawing at the ground, lathered hot with spume and froth, jerking at their halters … thick woven blankets of earth colors beneath the saddles … the air is sweet with their lather and urine smell … Grandfather, I say again, I had not expected you …

  I hear my cry mix into the heavy silence of the night, then a shadow moves to the window and opens it. Cold air bellows up in the room, icy snow explodes like a cloud, the horses whinny to be away, and overhead the owls are screeching … their blood and feathers fall softly on the white earth. The rider waits motionlessly. He has called, but in another tongue. It is not the llano Spanish of my grandfather, it is not his cry of vámooooooo-nos! Away!

  Who? I ask in the dark, and it’s then I hear the sharp hiss of the well-thrown lariat as it snakes swift and deadly around the hump of the mountain. The rider on the red stallion has cast his lasso on the mountain, and now he is tugging at the huge hump, softly pulling the massive weight aside, slowly letting the streaks of light clothe the pre-dawn sky. I hear a song. Jerry sings at the window. It is his morning song.

  Jerry, I whisper.

  Jerry turns and stands like a warrior over my bed. He is dressed in buckskin now, rich and tanned buckskin which fills the room with its sweetness.

  It is my turn, Tortuga, he whispers, my grandfather has found me. I leave this place forever. His voice is full of joy. His breath is warm as he speaks. His words are like yellow tendrils of light which reach out all around me to lift the dark rock of night.

  A drum beats. He sings

  I walk in the path of the sun

  My grandfather commands

  I walk in the path of the sun

  He calls me to walk in his path

  As he once called the turtles from the sea …

  Yes, Tortuga, long before his word was flesh the sea covered the earth, and men and turtles were brothers in the sea. Together they ruled the world of the fish … But the world was dark and so our grandfather called them forth from the sea. He opened a hole in the waters and for the first time man and turtle saw the bright sun and the clear sky. Man stood upon the back of the turtle and climbed into this world of light. Immediately he was
blinded by the sun, he lost his golden scales and his skin turned dark and hard. But he was determined to walk upon the earth and to explore this new land of the sun. He called his new life ‘walking the path of the sun’ and he sang its praises. He wanted to share the new beauty with his brother the turtle, so he reached back to pull him through the hole in the dark water. But the turtle was afraid. Only a few came upon the land, and they were so frightened by the sun and the cold winds that they grew thick shells to protect themselves … and when frightened, they always retreat to the safety of the water. We cannot retreat into the darkness, Tortuga, we cannot build shells like the turtle … our commandment is to live in the light of the sun … to walk in the light of the sun …

  “Jerry,” I called.

  “Goodbye, Tortuga,” he whispered, “perhaps we will meet again, on the path of the sun …” He placed his open hand on my cast and with a black crayon he traced its outline on my shell. Then he turned and walked quickly to the window.

  “Jerry!” I cried, fully awake, desperately, suddenly knowing that he was determined to go home. Outside I thought I heard the uneasy snorting and pawing of horses.

  “On the path of the sun,” he smiled and stepped out the open window. He disappeared into the morning shadows. I held my breath and listened for a long time. I heard the sound of horses riding away, shaggy horses crunching the thick snow, moving towards the river where they would turn to the west, towards the lost tribe.

  The words of the morning chant echoed in the room, and hung like an incantation which raised the sun, because instantly the sun was a red, glorious stallion leaping over Tortuga’s shell, and the rider was an old warrior dressed in brilliant head dress which sparkled and changed the pale pearl color of dawn into a fiery rainbow. He shouted his war cry and cast his burning spear which melted away the darkness and the ice.

  I listened as long as I could, listened to the sound of horses breaking snow. The war cry was a cry which echoed all over the desert, far beyond its reaches, far beyond the serpentine Gila range, and into the last nook of every iron lung which provided the precious air for Salomón’s vegetables. The cry and the light penetrated everything, even Ismelda’s room, where she turned and moaned in her sleep …

  “Mike!” I shouted. “Mike! Get up!” I suddenly knew Jerry would have to climb the mountain, and the passes would be covered and packed with snow.

  Ronco stirred in his chair. Mike yawned and shivered. He sat up and looked at the window. “Who in the hell left the window open?” he asked and turned to look at me.

  “Jerry,” I said, “Jerry’s gone!”

  “Gone? What the hell—” Mike jumped into his chair and rushed to the window. I knew he was looking at the tracks which led from the window down the hill. He turned and looked at me and I wanted to tell him what had happened, but he already knew. He turned and raced his chair out of the room and I knew he was going for Dr. Steel.

  9

  A few days later they brought in Buck.

  Ronco had wanted to move into Jerry’s bed, but the Nurse wouldn’t let him. She did her best to keep Ronco isolated from the rest of the ward. Mike said it was because in one of his horney moods Ronco had caught the big Nurse alone and had tried to put it to her. The Nurse came out of the wild attack with half her clothes ripped off and her legs scratched by Ronco’s braces. She vowed to get even with him, kept him sedated for a whole month, but afterwards Ronco only laughed and said, “She almost gave in, too, she was hot to trot!” Now they kept an uneasy truce, but Ronco couldn’t get any favors from her.

  Danny asked for Jerry’s bed too, but we turned him down. We didn’t want him in our room. Mike said the only reason Danny wanted to bunk with us was to be closer to Sadsack’s comic books. The story was that Sadsack had a treasure in comic books stashed in a discarded iron lung somewhere in the hospital, but nobody had been able to find it. The kids said Sadsack only went there late at night to check his cache and to count them like a miser counts his coins. Danny and his two cronies had searched everywhere in the hospital, but they never found it. Once, in desperation, they had tied up Sadsack and tried to torture him into telling where he kept his pile of comics, but Sadsack held his ground. They had tickled his feet with a feather until Sadsack passed out from laughing, but he didn’t give away his secret.

  So the new boy, Buck, was given Jerry’s bed. He had been in a bad car wreck and was completely bandaged from head to toe. After they brought him in the Nurse and Samson took a long time getting the traction ropes and wires running in the right position across the two poles. Buck just kept moaning.

  “He looks like an Okie TV antenna,” Mike joked.

  “Not funny, Mike,” the Nurse frowned. Samson grinned.

  “Bet every bone in his body’s broken,” somebody watching the hanging process volunteered.

  “Oh myyy—”

  “What’s his name?” Danny asked.

  “Buck—” the Nurse answered.

  “Buckeroo! Yahoo! Bet he’s a cowboy! Just look at that hat!” Ronco pointed at Buck’s cowboy hat.

  “Looks more like a ghost,” Danny whispered. He had drawn close to my bed. He wiped his nose with his withered hand. The dryness was spreading from the hand up the arm, tormenting Danny with an itch which he scratched until the dry, scaly skin bled and formed blood crusts full of pus. “Jerry’s ghost,” he said and stalked away.

  “Don’t bother him,” the Nurse said when she and Samson were finished stringing up Buck, “he’s been in isolation and he needs a lot of rest—” They went out.

  Mike nodded, but as soon as they were out of hearing range he was at Buck’s bedside. “How you doin’?” he asked.

  “Where’s my hat?” Buck moaned weakly. Mike took the dusty hat from the nightstand and placed it next to Buck; he seemed to rest easier with his hat in view. He sighed and moaned. “That was one bronc I couldn’t ride … and I’m man enough to admit it—”

  “A horse threw you?” Mike asked.

  “First my girl throwed me,” Buck drawled, “then my horse throwed me …” he groaned with pain, “but I’m still a cowboy and a mean sombitch … and I can whip any mother’s son that ses different—” He was still feverish. The Nurse said he had bled a lot inside, and a lot of bones were broken and bruised.

  “Yeah,” Mike nodded, “we know you’re a mean-ass stud, but what happened?”

  “I hated losing my hoss more than my woman—” Buck’s lips trembled.

  Mike shook his head. “Just wait till you’ve been here awhile, you’ll change your mind.”

  “I hurt all over,” he groaned.

  “You want me to get the Nurse?” Mike asked.

  “I’m okay,” Buck mumbled. “Is this the bunkhouse?”

  “Yeah, I reckon it is,” Mike nodded.

  “Well, I guess I’m in the raght place—”

  “Yup. It ain’t exactly home on the range, but it’ll do for awhile,” Mike winked at us.

  “Hotdoggie, they got me tied down like a crazy bronc, don’t they?” He smiled for the first time.

  “They have all of us tied down like crazy horses,” Mike agreed. “Every once in awhile one breaks loose, but they bring another one in its place—one after another to this crazy corral …”

  I knew he was thinking about Jerry, we all were. There had been no word since he left.

  “How did they happen to lasso you?” Ronco asked.

  “Well,” he drawled, “I was over to an FFA meeting in Gila Bend, jus’ havin’ me a grand ole opery good time, when a no account drugstore cowboy decides to throw his lariat on my little dogie—”

  “Hey hold on!” Sadsack interrupted. “Would you mind translating what all that means so we can all know what you’re saying? Damn, you sound like one of those cowboys on the radio! Har, har, har …”

  Buck glanced at us, swallowed, then relaxed. I guess he realized we were all in the same boat and he didn’t have to act the part of a big, mean cowboy.

  “I lost m
y girl,” he said meekly. “She double-crossed me for one of those city jocks that don’t know the difference between a bull and a heifer … so I got drunk. I bought me a case of beer and I headed home. It had snowed the night before and the pass was as slick as a whistle with ice. There wasn’t any traffic on it, the roads were closed, but I didn’t know that. I was drunker than a skunk by the time I started over Flechado Pass. Anyways, to make a long story short, I fell asleep somewhere in the middle of a Hank Snow and went over the cliff … shoot, I’da made it if I hadn’t fallen asleep. I spent all day at the bottom of that canyon, and it was cold as hell! I nearly froze to death. Lucky for me a search party found me—” He paused and looked at us. “Funny, one of them said something about looking for an Indian kid … and there was a doctor with them. They found me by accident. Any of you know anything about that?”

  Nobody answered. We would tell him later.

  “Anyway, it was lucky for me … I’da froze to death … oh, it was colder than hell … But Champ is dead.”

  “Champ? Who’s Champ?”

  “My horse,” Buck explained, “my horse is dead and that’s what hurts the most … I’d give anything to have him alive again, anything. I don’t mind me gettin’ busted up, I deserved it, actin’ like a damn fool over that big-assed FFA gal … but oh damn, Champ is dead … I had to kill him …”

  “What happened?” Sadsack asked.

  “He was thrown from the trailer … broke his legs, and probably a lot of other bones. I passed out for awhile, and when I came to the first thing I could hear were his cries as he struggled to get up … course he couldn’t. He’d rear up and just tumble back down. Then he’d rest awhile, look over at me, and I couldn’t move out of the cab, I was just as busted up … I knew right away, the minute I woke up and saw him all busted up, that he wouldn’t make it … that I had to kill him.”

  “How?”

  “I had a 30-30 in the gunrack. I managed to get it out … then I said goodbye to Champ … aimed … fired. Oh damn I can still hear that shot echoing down the canyon … like a bell. Some crows called, flew overhead, then it was quiet again. Only the wind moaned down that canyon … and I had to sit there all morning, feeling the blood freeze where it oozed from some of my wounds … watching the crows circling overhead … It wasn’t the cold I minded … it was that I had to kill my horse … I don’t mind telling you, I cried …” Even now his voice grew hoarse as he told us his story. His eyes filled with tears.