A Santo in the Image of Cristóbal García

by Rick Collignon

  He closed his eyes and when he opened them, he saw standing together, not far from where he stood, his wife and children. With them were Hipolito and Francisco and their own families and also the three priests who had been murdered by the Indians and others from Las Sombras whom he had known only slightly. For a moment, no one spoke a word. Then, suddenly, everyone spoke at once and the valley filled with noise.

  “For two years,” Guadalupe said, “Cristóbal lived in this valley surrounded by no one and everyone, and when Hipolito and Francisco finally returned, they found Cristóbal clothed in rags. Throughout the valley were small dwellings made out of mud and sticks.”

  “Were they ghosts?” Felix asked.

  “No,” Flavio said sharply and even he was surprised at the anger in his voice. “Don’t you listen? He was crazy. He was seeing things that weren’t real.”

  “Was he?” Felix asked Guadalupe.

  Guadalupe shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “All I know is that after Hipolito and Francisco returned here, Cristóbal saw two of almost everyone and, worse, he saw the village and the valley not as it was, but as he imagined it to be. He thought he had two wives and his house overflowed with children. Cristóbal saw people wandering everywhere, and if there was a problem in the village, he would deal with it in strange ways that always seemed to make it worse. If you spoke with Cristóbal, which most people stopped doing, he would tell you about things that had happened but hadn’t and about villagers you thought you knew but didn’t. For the rest of Cristóbal’s life not only did he carry confusion with him, but whenever someone died, another of them always remained.”

  FLAVIO’S MOTHER HAD SPENT the last two years of her life secluded in her bedroom. There, she would lie in her bed or sit in a chair by the window and look out on the mountains. Sometimes, Flavio would take her the food Ramona had prepared and she would smile and touch the side of his face and ask him a few questions about his day. Then he would sit beside her while she ate, and the two of them would gaze out the window without talking. When she was done eating, she would say, “Thank you, mi hijo, now leave me for a little while by myself.” By the time she died, in her bed while her husband slept beside her, Flavio felt that she had been gone a long time.

  Four days after her death, Flavio found himself sitting in his grandmother’s kitchen. Before him on the table were a bowl of menudo and a tortilla that he hadn’t touched. Rosa was busy at the sink washing the pots, pans, and platters that were stacked high on the counters.

  No one else was in the house. Flavio’s father, Lito, after days of drinking so much whiskey that his mind had become dull and empty, had returned to work at the mine. Epolito, Flavio’s grandfather, had gone to the lumberyard with baby José to buy baling wire, and Ramona was gone. She had left the village earlier that morning to live somewhere else, taking with her only a small brown suitcase that held a few clothes and her brushes and paints. Rosa and Flavio had watched her bus leave the village in a cloud of black exhaust and grinding gears. When it had crested the hill and passed out of their sight, Rosa had lowered her head and grasped her grandson’s hand tightly. Then the two of them had walked back home.

  Flavio picked up the tortilla. He took a small bite and then laid it back on the table. “Grandmother,” he said, “is it true you can die of a sad heart?”

  Rosa’s hands fell silent in the sink for a few seconds. Then she shook her head slowly and said, “Flavio, where do you hear such things?”

  “Ramona told me. She told me we couldn’t catch what our mother had because she died of a sad heart.”

  Rosa dried her hands, walked to the table, and sat down across from her grandson. She let out a long breath of air. “Finish your menudo, hijo,” she said. “It’s good for you.”

  “I don’t like menudo.”

  “So you want to hear all the things I do that I don’t like? Maybe you think I enjoy washing thousands and thousands of pots? Now eat. I have a gift to give you from your mother and I want you to listen.

  “I knew your mother, hijo, her whole life. I remember her as a young girl playing in the irrigation ditches and throwing rocks as if she were a boy and didn’t know any better. I watched her grow into a woman, and she had such a soft smile and quiet ways that I was happy my son had found her for himself.”

  Rosa leaned slightly over the table. “And their wedding, hijo, you should have been there. So many people came that the church couldn’t hold them all. And, afterward, there was a party with enough food to feed the village for a year—stacks of enchiladas to the ceiling and soft pork tamales and carne asada and sopapillas with honey and bowls of fresh butter. Your grandfather killed three lambs and dug pits for them and cooked them in cedar all night under the ground. Pablo Mascarenas came down from the north with his two brothers and brought their fiddles and guitars, and your mother danced in her white dress until long into the evening. Her face was shining and laughing, and she danced every dance with your father.

  “It was almost dawn by the time everyone had left, except for Alfonso Vigil, who was too drunk to do anything but sleep under the cottonwood by the road. Your grandfather, and you know how he is always so quiet with his words, sat with your mother and he told her that our family would always be hers.”

  Rosa leaned back in her chair and smiled at Flavio. “I was so proud that day, hijo,” she said.

  Flavio had stopped eating and was staring at his grandmother. “I remember my mother dancing,” he said, though he was almost sure it wasn’t true. He had actually never seen his mother dance, let alone dance with his father. His parents had lived in the same house together, and although there was not once a harsh word between them, they had gone about their lives as if they lived a great distance from each other.

  “Do you, hijo?” Rosa said. “It makes me happy you have that memory to keep. But I’m not done with this story. Now eat a little more.

  “It was not long after the wedding that your sister Ramona was born. Although Ramona was such a beautiful baby, she was also very difficult as an infant. She slept little and never liked to be held closely, as if, even so young, your sister wished to be elsewhere. Your mother had a hard time then, and I think there was also a little sadness in her that she had not had a son. For many years your parents tried to have another child, but there was no luck, and your mother came to believe that, like herself, Ramona would be an only child.

  “One day, eight years after Ramona was born, your mother walked alone across the valley to this house. It was a cold cold day with snow frozen on the ground and wood smoke hanging thick in the air. Your mother’s hair had turned to frost and her legs were so weak her body trembled. I made her come quickly to the stove, and I rubbed her hands, which were like ice. Over and over I asked her why she had done something so foolish. Finally, when she could speak, she took my hands in hers. She smiled and to this day I still remember each word she said. Would you like to know what that was, mi hijo?”

  “Yes,” Flavio said.

  “‘Rosa,’ your mother said, ‘I am going to have a baby and this baby will be a son. If anything ever happens to me and I cannot tell him these words myself, I want you to speak them for me so that he’ll know. Tell him that now, even before I can see him, he fills my heart with such joy. Tell him that his mother loves him more than anything else in this world and that no matter where I am, I will always be watching over him.’ Then, hijo, your mother laughed and cried, and we sat together by the stove, and I listened to all her dreams for you.”

  Rosa took in a deep breath and let it out softly. “So, Flavio,” she said, “that is what your mother said and that is the gift she wished me to give to you.”

  Flavio was looking down at the bowl of menudo. Grease had cooled on the surface, and he idly moved his spoon through it.

  “Look at me, hijo,” Rosa said. “Your mother was a good woman, and she tried her best. There was a part of her, though, that could be lonely even in the midst of her family. It was no one’s fault, not
even her own.”

  “If she hadn’t died,” Flavio said, “then everything would still be the same.”

  Rosa leaned across the table and took her grandson’s hand. “Everything is the same, if only you don’t forget.” She squeezed his hand hard and then patted it. She sat back in her chair. “Now go. Go outside and do something.”

  Flavio stood up from the table and walked to the doorway. Then he stopped and looked back at Rosa. “Why did Ramona leave, Grandmother?” he asked.

  “She left here for a little while, hijo.”

  “She said she would never come back.”

  “She will come back someday,” Rosa said. “You wait and see.”

  “I will never leave,” Flavio said.

  Rosa smiled. “No, mi hijo,” she said. “You will always be here with me.”

  …

  “IF I SAW TWO OF EVERYONE,” Flavio said, “then my mother would still be here.” He looked across the table at Guadalupe García and for a second their eyes met. Then she closed hers and leaned back in her chair.

  “She wouldn’t be real,” Felix said. “She’d be a trick.”

  “She’d be real to me,” Flavio said.

  “Cristóbal named this place Perdido,” Guadalupe said, her eyes still closed, “because he knew that he and everyone else in this valley was lost. You have to be careful what you wish for, Flavio. It’s getting late now. Thank you for bringing me the fish. Go home before your families begin to worry.”

  “Can we come back?” Felix asked.

  “Yes,” Guadalupe said. “You can always come back.”

  It was late in the afternoon when Felix and Flavio left the García house. They walked for a while without speaking. Felix was staring down at his feet, and every so often they kicked at the high weeds. Just down the hill, Flavio could see the church. The walls were many feet thick and the corners were rounded and supported by massive buttresses. With the sun setting over the foothills, the mud plaster was bathed in a soft light. Beside the church stood an immense cottonwood, its trunk and branches gnarled and thick with bark. It was early autumn and the leaves, although still green, had faded. A breeze moved through the valley, and even from where Flavio stood, he could hear the sound of the leaves stirring.

  “They hung him in the rain,” Guadalupe had said. “From the cottonwood that grows beside the church.”

  Five

  FLAVIO WAS DOZING ON THE SOFA, and he didn’t wake so much as gradually become aware that his eyes were open and that he was staring blankly out the open door of Ramona’s house. He was slouched down on the sofa, his chin on his chest, his legs sticking straight out. Felix sat close beside him, and Flavio could feel the weight and the thin heat of his body. The sun had moved and the light coming in the doorway now fell upon the seven santos. They were spun with cobwebs and coated with years of dust and they stood together as they always had.

  For the first time Flavio noticed that most of them must have been carved by the same hand. There was the same softness in the features and almost a shyness in the way each lady held her hands together at her breasts. He wondered how it was possible to bring such things out of a piece of wood and what kind of man would put so much care into the making of one santo after another. And then, to have them end up standing in the dust and shadows of an empty house by themselves. He thought that maybe he should move them—take them to his own house or drive them to Las Sombras where they could be sold to tourists.

  In the midst of them was the Lady who was older than the others. She stood no taller than their shoulders. The paint on her gown was faded and flaking and a finger on one hand was broken off. Her features were hard and stern, and her eyes were open wide. She faced slightly away from her companions, and it seemed as if she either was looking for a way out or had spent so much of her life complaining that the others no longer listened.

  The one that stood before them all was far younger than the rest. But even she had been carved almost fifty years earlier by Flavio’s nephew, Little José. Flavio had never seen José work on it, but he pictured the boy in the kitchen with Ramona. While she painted, he sat with a large piece of wood in his lap.

  “It’s a miracle you didn’t hurt yourself,” Flavio muttered. The Lady stood a little lopsided and her features were askew. One eye was lower than the other, and the flames that ringed her body were more like toothpicks. She was smiling broadly and the paint on her gown was garish and smeared where one color ran into the next. She reminded Flavio of Lisa Segura, who was known to drink too much at Tito’s Bar and shoot pool and, when it closed, would leave disheveled and laughing with whomever she wanted.

  “What shall I do with all of you?” he said. They seemed to stare back at him as if it were he they had been waiting for all these years.

  “They’re nothing but trouble, Flavio,” Felix said. “I would chop them up and throw them in the fire.”

  In that instant, everything that Flavio had dreamed while dozing rushed back to him, and suddenly, he was wide awake. He pushed himself up straight. “What’s happening here?” he said.

  Felix was sitting quietly on the sofa beside him. His hands were folded in his lap, and his feet were crossed at the ankles. He was actually beginning to look like the Felix Flavio remembered, or at least the one he thought he remembered.

  “What’s going on, Felix?” he said again.

  Felix shrugged slightly. “I’m feeling a little better, Flavio,” he said. “My feet don’t hurt so much. While you were sleeping I thought about Pepe’s beans and if he still puts in cilantro and garlic like I taught him. I thought maybe we could take a little drive to my café and have him make us a burrito and a sopapilla.”

  For a moment Flavio didn’t say anything. Then he shook his head and said, “That’s not what I meant. Whenever I’m not paying attention, you say something about the old García house.”

  Flavio hadn’t been inside the García house in more than seventy years, and whatever it was that had happened to him and Felix that autumn was so distant it might as well have happened to someone else. Although the García house was still standing, it was little more than a ruin and had been for decades. The roof had sunk in and sagged badly over the entire structure. The mud plaster had peeled away and weeds grew out of the eroded adobe. A long time ago, someone had nailed boards over the windows and doors to keep children out, and now the wood was black and warped from the weather. Mounds of dirt lay all about the place where rain had washed away the walls, and half buried in it were rusted beer cans and empty whiskey bottles and shards of glass. It was like any other crumbling adobe or old corral around Guadalupe. There wasn’t one reason Flavio could think of for him now to be thinking of the García house, or even of Guadalupe García for that matter.

  Felix looked up at Flavio. The skin beneath his eyes sagged and was discolored. There were streaks of dirt on his forehead and down his face where it had run with sweat. “We went to her house when we were little,” he said, “and she told us things.”

  Flavio spit out some air. “So? You think I can remember that? We were just boys then doing stupid things. Besides, that house has been empty so long that no one in the village even remembers who lived in it.”

  Flavio had once read in a magazine about people who believed that they had led numerous lives and could recall only glimpses of each of them. At the time, he had thought that they were crazy to believe such things. But then it occurred to him that even in his one life he could barely remember what he himself was like ten or fifteen or fifty years earlier and who was he to say what was what? He felt that way now, as if he were talking about another life that he and Felix might have lived.

  “I used to think that way, too,” Felix said. “Besides, this is all your grandmother’s fault. She tells us to take some beans to Guadalupe García’s house and now look what happens to us.”

  “Eee,” Flavio said. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.” He could feel a small knot in the back of his neck. He moved hi
s head from side to side. Then he leaned back against the sofa. “It wasn’t beans, either,” he went on. “Grandmother sent us over to Guadalupe’s with a bag of those little red potatoes.”

  “No,” Felix said. “It was beans. I can still hear the sound they made in the bag. Like a woman’s dress.” He was quiet for a few seconds and then he said, “At least I think it was beans. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Flavio. I only seem to remember these things when I’m remembering.”

  Flavio stared up at the ceiling and found himself smiling. He was beginning to enjoy this conversation and he had no idea why. “We got old, Felix,” he said. “There’s too much to forget.”

  “How do you know?” Felix said.

  Flavio grunted and stretched out his legs. “Maybe you’re right, Felix,” he said. “Maybe we should take a ride to the café and eat a little something.” And it was then that they were both startled by the sound of sirens starting up at the village office.

  Flavio stepped outside the house, wondering who had wrecked their car on the highway or dropped dead from a bad heart. There was a slight haze in the air, and he realized that, without being aware of it, he had smelled the faint odor of wood smoke from the moment he’d awoken. Across the road and just beyond an empty field was the village office. From where Flavio stood, he could see both the police car and the fire truck pull quickly out of the lot and head south down the highway. He watched as they disappeared down the hill and then, like a blow to the stomach, he saw the thick column of smoke rising from the foothills.

  Sometimes, in the spring, when people burned the weeds along the ditches or around their trailers, a wind would blow unexpectedly and the flames would spread to a neighboring field. Seldom did these fires do any damage, and more often than not, they were put out with water hoses and rakes. There had never been a fire in the mountains around or even near the village. But on one ridge, high above the foothills, was a large area where nothing grew but scrub oak. It was rumored that a fire had once raged there and that the ground was so full of the ashes of dead trees that only brush and stunted saplings would grow. But no one in the village remembered that fire or even remembered hearing stories of it. Occasionally, when the rains came in midsummer, lightning would slash the ground and small fires would spring up. But usually the rain that followed would drown them out, and if it didn’t, a few men hired by the forest service would hike into the hills with shovels and chain saws and stay until even the embers were dead.