“Señora,” he began in Spanish, “we have been waylaid by the Apaches, and they took everything from us, even our clothes.”
“Yes, it is true,” she replied. “Dios! I have never seen a man in such condition in sunlight.”
“We need help, señora. Por favor, could you find something for us to wear?”
She peered up at him, shaking her head. “Señor, finding something for you is a task beyond my poor ability. The amount of fabric! It would take a month to weave it and another to sew it. And what of the others?”
She hobbled slowly toward the rear of the cart, paused, peered in at the cringing occupants, who presented their backs to her. “Yes, they need covering also. The pale man looks burnt. The women endure the sun. It has been a long time since I have seen such nakedness.”
“You are our salvation, señora!”
“I wish I were thirty years younger,” she said. “I would have a body like those women. Then I would attract the smiles of men. I have not been smiled upon for longer than I can remember, now that my paps are withered. Ah, to be young and smooth!”
“We are all suffering from the sun, señora.”
She leaned on her staff, pondering. “Let us go to the church, and there will I find something for you. But you cannot let that monkey in. It would be a sacrilege.”
“The church! Where that crowd is burying someone?”
She nodded. “They are burying Manuel, my son-in-law.”
“Your son-in-law? Why aren’t you there?”
“Because he is my son-in-law.”
The last place Childress wanted to drive was the church.
“But that crowd—”
“Naked man, that crowd has only begun to bury him and they are on the other side and will not see you. He was a prominent man, so they will take their time hating him and wishing perdition upon him. They want to make sure he is good and buried, so that his bones will not escape and haunt us.”
“Ah … What will we find there? A sheet? Altar linen? I don’t think—”
“Come,” she said, and hastened toward the long adobe edifice, rapping her staff on the clay. Colonel Childress followed, grateful that the adobe walls and trees hid the graveyard beyond, and the reproachful eyes of that crowd.
At last they pulled up before the dark doors.
“I’m not going in there, mate,” Skye said slowly, peering over the top of the cart.
“Me neither, Skye, but she says it’s the place to get help.”
She paused at the hand-sawed plank door. “I have the honor of sweeping this holy place each day,” she said. “I know everything. Come with me.”
The women peered out of the cart but didn’t move. Childress felt glued to his bench. Finally Skye eased to the ground, and crabbed his way toward the door, hunched over with whatever modesty he could summon. He had found courage that eluded the colonel of the militia of the Republic of Texas.
Childress sighed, lowered himself to earth, and followed, his mind swarming with disasters and shame.
They watched the old woman enter, curtsey, then trot along the shadowed wall of the nave toward the sacristy, pass a bulto in its niche, and vanish around a corner.
“I can’t go in there, Skye. Not without a stitch.”
Skye grunted, plunged into the gloom, and knelt suddenly at the back of the nave.
Childress could scarcely imagine such an act.
“Forgive us this trespass, Lord, and we thank you for our salvation,” Skye said. “We mean no affront to you. We are desperate, and you have promised to help the naked and the poor.”
Skye was speaking for both, and Childress was comforted.
The privateer knew suddenly that Skye had inner resources that were quite beyond his own. Skye stood, with quiet dignity, and walked through cool shade, no longer crouching in desperate modesty. The chapel was a simple place, with pine benches. No candle flickered. A small dark cross stood upon the altar.
The old woman in black beckoned from the door of the sacristy, so Skye and Childress padded there. Not even Skye’s desperate prayer made it right to be naked in such a place.
The woman headed straight toward a closet where robes hung.
“See, señor,” she said. “He is a Franciscan who is the priest here, and fat like you.” She squinted at him, and pulled a brown-dyed woolen habit from the closet. “Though I doubt that his parts equal yours, but with a priest, who cares?”
It was a generous one, a monk’s attire, with a hood and a soft white rope at the waist.
Childress had a fit of conscience. “Is this right, señora?”
She sniffed. “Would you prefer to offend little girls?”
That did it. He pulled the brown habit over him and knotted the rope at the waist. The presence of that cloth over him was as comforting as a keg of rum, he thought. She gave another to Skye, who gratefully slipped it on and sighed. It was a little long for Skye, and trailed in the dust.
“I have never appreciated what clothing means,” Skye said. “It is more than warmth and protection. It is dignity and safety. It keeps us from offending.”
Childress turned to the woman. “We cannot pay. We have nothing. The Jicarillas left us in a wilderness to perish. Is there something for the women?”
He eyed the embroidered vestments, chasubles and surplices, albs and stoles, but she shook her head. “Those belong to God,” she said. “God forbid that I surrender them. But these that you wear belong to our padre, and I will confess this to him.”
He hunted for sandals, and she saw his intent.
“The feet of Franciscans are bare,” she said. “It is a mortification of the flesh.”
Childress wanted to get out of there before the burial crowd broke up. “Señora, let us find something for our women.”
She nodded, led them through the nave and into the sunlight. Standing Alone and Victoria stared at the brown-robed men.
The old woman walked to the rear of the cart and clambered in. “I will show you, señores,” she said.
Childress steered the horse away from the little church and followed the woman’s instructions. They headed down a lane, and finally stopped at a flower-decked patio enclosed by a low adobe wall. Even in this raw frontier place, these people had fashioned serenity and beauty.
“A few things of my daughter will suffice,” she said, sliding off the red cart. The women followed her shyly, while Childress and Skye settled themselves in the courtyard.
“Do you realize, Brother Skye, that I was more famished for cloth over my carcass than for food?” he said.
“Brother Childress, that will pass,” Skye replied. “I am ready to eat lizards again.”
“Do you suppose we can find a begging bowl? If I beg in my bastard Spanish and you keep silent, we might be taken for a pair of mendicant monks.”
“With concubines,” Skye said.
“And a red cart with a Jolly Roger upon it.”
“Are your bare feet fit for walking, Brother Childress?”
“Alas, we will have to master the ways of this country.”
The monkey had fled the back of the nag, and was swinging through a peach tree.
“There is nothing there, Shine. It is much too early and they are green,” Childress said.
The monkey chittered and swung toward a string of red chiles. He bit into the end of one chile, spat out the vile contents, and scolded the monks.
When the women emerged into that courtyard, each wore a simple shift of unbleached linen, modest and plain. The dresses fit loosely, and the women looked pleased to be shielded once again. The covering would suffice. The women, too, had been transformed from crouching creatures to dignified persons.
The old woman appeared, this time with two round loaves of bread. “Take this, my friends. It is warm still,” she said, thrusting the loaves toward Childress.
Bread never tasted so fine.
“Señora, to whom shall we give thanks for this?” Childress asked, wanting a name.
/>
“I was christened Milagro,” she said.
twenty
Skye marveled. That very morning they had found themselves naked and bereft, a deadly circumstance that should have destroyed them all. But they did not perish. He could thank a monkey for that, and this old woman whose name, he gathered, was Milagro.
He looked at his brown habit and smiled; and Brother Childress was even more the fat monk. The women sat quietly, masticating chunks of fresh bread. The monkey was swinging everywhere, his tail wrapped around branches as he explored this little green courtyard of the most gracious house and garden in Arroyo Hondo.
The old woman sat on a split-log bench, watching them, her eyes bright. The monkey vanished inside the building, and when it emerged it carried something that looked like an earthen jug.
Skye leaped up. The monkey was stealing something and Skye would not abuse this woman’s kindness by letting that happen. But when Skye approached, it swung upward and sat on an eave, scolding Skye and waving the crockery jug.
The old woman laughed.
He turned to Childress. “Tell her I will get it, whatever it is. We’ll not be stealing this old woman’s food.”
The old woman nodded and said something.
“It’s molasses,” Childress said. “Very precious, the only molasses in Arroyo Hondo.”
The monkey dodged Skye’s every effort until Skye began shouting at it. And then Shine leaped meekly to Skye’s feet and left the jug there. Skye carried it to the woman, who nodded and set it in her lap.
“Ask her how far it is to Taos,” he said.
Childress queried the woman, and learned that Taos could be reached in a day if one left at dawn and the weather was dry and the horse didn’t go lame.
“We should go,” Skye said, restlessly. He really didn’t want that funeral party to return and discover him in a monk’s habit and his women wearing someone’s dresses with nothing under them. There could be trouble.
Childress caught his urgency, and thanked Milagro profusely, and listened to her lengthy reply, whispered in a throaty, soft voice, punctuated with small smiles, and finally a giggle and a euphoric grin.
“What was that?” Skye asked.
Childress flashed one of his buccaneer smiles. “I told her I could not repay her, for we have nothing, and she said she was already repaid. I said, yes, you’re repaid by God, and by our gratitude. She said that wasn’t it at all. She’ll get another sort of payment from it.
“She said that when the family and neighbors return, she will tell them that she saw a red cart drawn by a huge horse with a monkey on its mane, and everyone in the cart was naked, and a skull and crossbones was painted on its side, and so she took the naked ones to the chapel.
“She says she will recite that with relish to young and old and that the family will stare at her as if she is daft, and pat her on the shoulder and tell her that she’s getting old and seeing things and listening to the devil, and saying things she has invented, and maybe she should say her beads more often.
“She says they would rather believe that Jesus Christ Himself had visited her than believe a red cart with naked people in it had arrived in Arroyo Hondo. And then she would giggle and laugh, and they would never know the truth, and she would have her secret the rest of her days, and it is an old lady’s joke.”
Skye laughed. He saw the old woman grinning primly, a finger at her mouth, anticipating the big joke she would play on her family, and how they would all think she was a loco old lady, and that was just fine with her.
They drove off with clothing covering their bodies, fed and comforted. At the last moment, Shine leaped aboard the Clydesdale, unhappy to abandon such a paradise. Skye sat on the bench beside Childress as the horse dragged the cart up the long grade and out upon the open plains once again.
“Now we’re monks,” Childress said. “Maybe that’s best.”
“No, mate, we’re not monks and if we pretend, we’ll be found out.”
“I don’t know how we can get into worse trouble than we’re in, Skye. We haven’t so much as a knife or a cookpot, no money, food, shelter, horses, boots or sandals, and I’m the only one who speaks the language. At least, as monks, we could beg a meal.”
“We could always hire out.”
“I’ve never worked a day in my life, Skye. I take what I want, but that requires an evil heart, a cutlass, some grapeshot, a few pistols, a dirk, and assorted instruments of terror. I’m not fitted out to be a monk or a laboring man. I’ve been a buccaneer for as long as I can remember, and it’s a family tradition. Skye, there isn’t a thing in my Galveston digs that I purchased. I take great pride in it. Everything’s stolen.”
“We can work.”
“Work! You can; I won’t.”
“First thing is to get to Taos and keep ourselves and the horse fed,” Skye said, not wanting an argument just then. “We have two Cheyenne children to find.”
“You still thinking about that?”
“I’ve never stopped thinking about it.”
“With nothing but the clothing on our backs, and that borrowed? And not an ounce of food?”
“Yes,” Skye said.
Victoria, who was listening, laughed. “When he sets his mind to something, it gets done,” she said. “That’s how he gets drunk.”
Dusk found them in an open flat. The mountains to the east caught the setting sun and glowed gold. They were far from water, and would have to make a dry camp. But Taos was not far away. At least there was bunch grass for the horse, and the last of the bread. They found a shallow arroyo that offered some protection from the rattling wind, and settled there in the twilight. Skye divided the bread, reserving a piece for Shine, who snatched it happily. He eyed the skies, worried about the clouds building up in the east over the great black mountains.
He and Victoria settled against the warm slope. They were without blankets, and Victoria’s thin linen dress would not ward off the chill. He put an arm over her shoulder and drew her into his coarse brown robe. Childress vanished into the juniper brush for a while, while Standing Alone chose solitude. For her, a modest Cheyenne woman, the dress she wore meant everything, and especially an end to her suffering and the endless violations of her person by other eyes. The monkey was steering the Clydesdale from place to place, sometimes tugging on the lines when the horse lingered.
“You glad you came?” Victoria asked.
“Yes.”
“You think we’ll get out of here?”
“We’re in trouble.”
“I don’t know much about these Mexicans. But that Milagro, I like her. She helped us.”
“Yes, she did. But from now on, we’re going to depend on the Mexicans for everything—food, shelter, warmth, clothing, sandals, and … liberty. I hear they don’t take kindly to strangers.”
“What is liberty?”
The question startled Skye. Victoria had never known anything but liberty, subject only to the traditions of her people.
“The children we’re looking for don’t have it. They can’t live their life as they choose. They’re slaves. We may not have it if we run into trouble. I think we’ll be all right.”
“Some Apache has your rifle.”
“That’s one of the ways I’m feeling naked. But there’s this about it. Now we’re no threat to anyone. No alcalde—that’s a mayor, sort of—of any town here is going to worry about us.”
He wasn’t sure he believed that, especially with Childress obviously collecting military information. For all he knew, the Mexicans might have an exact understanding of Colonel Childress and his mission. But he wanted to hearten her.
Standing Alone approached, and after some hesitation, settled down beside Victoria in the lee of the arroyo.
“She says it’s cold and this is better,” Victoria said.
The women conversed softly, often using their hands, and Skye listened patiently, understanding very little of it.
“She says the old woman was kind,
and the Mexicans are good people,” Victoria said. “Food and clothing for us all. The old woman shared what she had. She likes Mexico. Standing Alone thinks maybe her children are comfortable here.”
Skye had no answer for that. If her son had been taken to the mines in the south, he had been subjected to a life of unremitting toil. He would be fed barely enough to keep life in him, and he would be naked, because the masters spared their slave labor nothing beyond what kept body and soul together.
“Yes,” Skye said, “tell her the Mexicans are good people, most of them. They have a beautiful spirit. They would help anyone in trouble. They have a great faith that teaches them good things, but sometimes they ignore the teaching of their church. Sometimes they treat their own people badly and sometimes they treat Indians badly too.”
Victoria did, and Standing Alone absorbed that bleakly.
“If her son was sent to the mines where they dig the metal, he is suffering and in danger. If he’s working on a plantation, hoeing and weeding, or herding cattle, he would be better off. If her daughter’s working in a household, she may be well off. But they aren’t free. They are either peons, held to the land by perpetual debt, or slaves.”
Victoria translated as best she could, and listened to the reply.
“Then they are savages, she says. The Cheyenne would never do such a thing. We must hurry, before it is too late.”
Skye pressed Victoria’s hand in the dusk. “We will, and it may take months,” he said. “But there will be a way.”
twenty-one
They rode into Taos so starved that Skye barely saw the bold beauty around him. Even the monkey had turned cross with an empty stomach, and clacked angrily. But in the midst of Skye’s suffering he beheld an adobe town snugged close to piñon-clad foothills under a bold blue heaven. Here were more earthen dwellings, wizened old women in black, warm-fleshed men in faded unbleached cottons, some wearing peaked hats of straw.
But he barely saw them. His stomach howled; a dizziness possessed him. The women were enduring their famine better than he, and even Colonel Childress was weathering the terrible hunger better than Skye. But Childress could somehow live on his fat, while Skye grew fainter with each passing hour as the horse and cart clopped slowly into the village.
The Deliverance Page 11
