A Santo in the Image of Cristóbal García

by Rick Collignon

  At dinner that evening, Rosa said that her rooster had escaped from the chicken coop and that with so many coyotes and savage dogs roaming about, she feared the worst. Flavio lowered his head and looked at the tortilla folded on the edge of his plate. Then, Ramona, with a faint smile for her brother and a lilt in her voice, said that she had watched Flavio kill it with a rock and that it now lay thrown in the weeds behind the shed.

  For a moment no one spoke, and then Epolito said sharply, “Why would you do such a thing?”

  “It was an accident,” Flavio mumbled, his eyes still facing down.

  “How do you kill a rooster with a rock by accident?” Epolito said. “The rooster was in a tree, and it jumped in front of my rock.”

  “The rooster killed itself on purpose?” Epolito said, and then while Flavio sat thinking that some things were impossible to explain and that Ramona had always been her grandfather’s favorite, he leaned across the table and slapped his grandson on the side of the head.

  That night, just before sleep, Rosa had come to Flavio’s bedroom. She sat on the side of the bed and touched his hair.

  “That rooster was always mean, hijo,” she said softly. The room was dark and warm air drifted in the open window. “Hijo,” she said.

  “Ramona said it would kill dogs,” Flavio said.

  “I think your sister likes to frighten you, hijo,” she said, and her hand brushed where Flavio had been slapped by Epolito. “Your grandfather gets angry sometimes, Flavio, but in his heart he loves you so much. Never forget that.”

  “I didn’t mean to kill it,” Flavio said, although he wasn’t sure if that was true.

  “I know, mi hijo. Now sleep and dream sweet things.”

  IN THE PARKING LOT outside Felix’s Café, Flavio opened his eyes to wind and smoke and to the two police officers standing a few feet in front of him.

  “Are you all right, Mr. Montoya?” Oliver asked, and his hand reached out, not quite touching Flavio’s arm. Although Flavio had only closed his eyes for a few seconds, there had been a sudden slackness in his face that made it seem to Oliver as if Flavio were suffering from a stroke, not Felix García.

  “Yes,” Flavio said and pushed himself off the side of the truck. He could see a concern in Oliver’s face that embarrassed him. “I’m fine. But I should tell you that I didn’t pick Felix up this morning. He came walking out of the foothills and into my field by himself.”

  Donald grunted and spit out a stream of air. “Felix García doesn’t walk anywhere,” he said to Oliver. “And he hasn’t for years. Everyone in the village knows that.”

  Oliver looked past Flavio at the old man asleep on the seat of the pickup. There were scratches on his face that could have come from piñon branches and his trousers were torn at the knees. But he didn’t look strong enough to climb out of the truck by himself. Suddenly all Oliver wanted to do was get back in his squad car and start driving. He would light up a cigarette and crack open the window and switch off the radio that only brought him news he didn’t want to hear. He would drive over roads and look at the mountains and not think about anything—not his wife or his daughters, who were only happy when he was gone, and not this village where everything was slightly askew and made less and less sense by the second. He reached in his shirt pocket and then dropped his hand.

  “When did this happen, Mr. Montoya?” he asked.

  “Just before the sun came to the valley,” Flavio said. “I could hardly believe my eyes. Then later, after Felix had rested, he told me that he had awoken from his sickness before dawn and that he and a woman who might have been the Virgin walked out of the café and into the hills. There, they made a little pile of sticks and started it on fire.”

  Donald took a step forward. “What the hell’s wrong with you?” he said. “Are you trying to make us look stupid? You know what happened down there today? I watched as this fire swept over Delfino Vigil. I saw it with my own eyes. One gust of wind and he was buried in fire, and you stand here making jokes.”

  For a second, no one spoke, and Flavio saw Delfino struggling up the foothill with his shovel. Not far from him was a fire that was much too big.

  “I told him to wait,” Flavio said in a whisper. Then, for some reason, he wondered who would feed Delfino’s pigs and what they would think when they heard the news. He raised his eyes to Donald and said, “I went to school with your grandfather. And when your mother died, my wife, Martha, brought enchiladas and posole—to your house. I am too old for you to talk to me like this.”

  A caravan of cars and pickups swung off the highway and stopped at the edge of the parking lot. In the lead vehicle were Sippy Valdéz and two of his brothers. Their mother was in a car just behind them with relatives Flavio had never seen before. The other vehicles were full of people from the village, and pulling up behind all of them was the hearse carrying Petrolino.

  “Hey, Flavio,” Sippy called out, half leaning out the open window. “I hope they lock you up and throw away the damn key.” He raised a beer to his mouth and took a long drink. The birthmark on his face was flared a dark red.

  Oliver took a few steps toward the cars and stopped. He shrugged his shoulders and raised both his hands. “Why don’t you guys keep moving,” he said. “There’s nothing to see here.”

  “Fuck you, jodido,” Sippy said, and his brothers both laughed. “I don’t even know who you are. Hey, Donald, what am I supposed to do with my tío? Park him in my driveway?”

  A couple more vehicles pulled up behind those already stopped. A few truck doors swung open, and men stepped out of the cabs. One of them called out, “Why did you do this, Flavio?”

  “See what you started,” Donald said, his voice a harsh whisper. “You Montoyas always thought you were better than everyone else. You think I don’t remember your sister? And the stories how she would drown little children and how she would call them into her house?”

  “No,” Flavio said. “Those things never happened.”

  “Hey, Flavio,” Sippy yelled out. “You killed Delfino. You know that?”

  A few more car doors swung open and Oliver turned back. “Donald,” he said, “I could use some help here.”

  “No one here forgets,” Donald said, “even if they don’t remember.” Then he walked away. He brushed past Oliver and went up to the side of Sippy’s truck. He stooped down a little, and although Flavio couldn’t hear what was being said, he could hear the rise and fall of Sippy’s voice. After a few minutes, he straightened up and slapped his hand on the hood of the truck. “Bueno,” he said. “I’ll come by later.”

  Sippy looked once more at Flavio, and then he pushed the vehicle into gear and drove off slowly. One by one, the other cars followed behind him.

  Donald watched them drive up the hill, and then he folded his arms and turned to look at Oliver.

  “I want you to go home, Mr. Montoya,” Oliver said. Sweat was running down the side of his face and his skin was ashen. “I want you to stay there. I’ll come by when I can, and we can straighten this out.” Then he turned away and walked over to Donald. They spoke for a few seconds and then climbed into their cars. Oliver flicked on his lights, and they both drove back down the hill.

  FLAVIO DROVE WITHOUT SEEING back to Ramona’s house. He parked in the shade beneath the cottonwoods and switched off the engine. He could hear the sound of ditch water running. The windows in the house shimmered black, and he could see the wavering reflection of the trees and his truck. Overhead came the drone of an airplane, and he watched as it passed low over the foothills. As it neared the fire, its belly slid open and a cloud of red, like dirt and dust, washed into the smoke. Then the plane veered sharply west and disappeared over the hills.

  The sky is bleeding on Delfino, Flavio thought, and he let out a long, tired breath of air. Felix stirred on the seat and Flavio looked at him. “This has been a hard day, Felix,” he said softly. He reached out and brushed dirt from the side of Felix’s face. Felix’s eyes fluttered open and Flavio
leaned closer to him. “Delfino is dead,” he said. Felix stared back at him blankly and then closed his eyes again.

  “Why did you do this, Felix?” Flavio asked, and for the first time, he truly believed that his old friend had actually set the mountains on fire. And worse, he knew that he had played a part in it, but for the life of him, he didn’t know what it was.

  NOT LONG AFTER FLAVIO’S BROTHER had died in a car accident, Ramona had begun working on a series of paintings. Each painting had been of the Guadalupe cemetery, and in each one the cemetery was on fire.

  “Cemeteries don’t burn,” Flavio had said to her one afternoon.

  “This one does,” Ramona had answered him. She was standing before a large canvas on which she had painted charred sagebrush and melted flowers and burned grass. Only the crosses remained, and they stood untouched and as white as snow. Hanging on all the walls of the kitchen was the cemetery in various stages of being consumed by fire. In some, there was only smoke among the crosses. In others, the graveyard was washed in flames. Ramona had placed her brush down on a flat plate smeared with paints and looked at her brother.

  “I can do anything I want in my paintings,” she had said. “It’s where I go when I want to be gone.” Then she had smiled. “It’s like standing in a field with a shovel. Where are you then, Flavio?”

  Flavio had not known how to answer his sister. He had only grunted and then looked at the walls of her kitchen covered in fire and smoke.

  Now Flavio wondered where all of Ramona’s paintings had gone to. Sometimes she would wrap what she had painted in thick cardboard and then send them to a city where Flavio pictured them hanging, with their alfalfa fields and dry arroyos and tired adobes, in a world of glass and rusted steel. But these of the cemetery, she had told him, were meant for this village and would always remain here. He knew that some of her paintings were packed away in the small shed where his grandmother had once kept her chickens. The building now sat overgrown in weeds and shadows beneath the cottonwoods. The thin pane of glass in the one window had broken long ago, and nests of wasps and swallows coated the overhangs. Most of the shingles on the roof had blown off, and the exposed rough lumber was stained black from the weather. Whatever was stored inside was now rotting in dampness. Flavio thought that he had not been able to keep safe even the things his sister valued the most.

  One morning, Flavio had gone to Ramona’s house, and just as he had found Martha, he had found Ramona. She was sitting in her kitchen facing the small window over the sink. A slight breeze pulled at the curtains. On the table beside her were a cup of coffee, a pad of paper, and a few scattered pencils. Her hands were folded in her lap and her eyes were open. For a moment, Flavio talked to her as if it were any other morning. When she didn’t answer, he put his hand on her shoulder and said her name. And in that instant, he remembered his grandmother dying so gently it seemed to him that wherever it was she had gone, she had taken him with her. He had touched his grandmother’s hand and said softly, “Grandmother,” as if she might turn her head and say to him, “I’m here, hijo. I will always be here with you.”

  Ramona and Rosa and everyone else Flavio had ever known were all buried in the small cemetery that was now only ashes. It occurred to Flavio that he had been surrounded by fire his whole life and had been too blind to see it. He wondered why he was suddenly being flooded with memories that were so distant to him that they had nearly been forgotten. He took in a deep breath and pushed himself up on the truck seat. He shook his head and then rubbed at his eyes. He looked again at Felix asleep on the seat and thought it possible that this day, too, was just a memory.

  Six deer came walking out from behind Ramona’s house and stepped their way through the yard. They stopped by the irrigation ditch, close enough to the truck that Flavio could hear the rough sound of their breath and the dry grass beneath their feet. He cracked open the truck door, and all six froze. Then they ran scattered across the road and into the field on the other side. They made their way through the debris near the old, abandoned village office and then crossed the highway, making for the mountains to the east. If it had been any other day, Flavio thought, all six would be hanging by their feet in someone’s garage.

  Flavio left Felix sleeping in the pickup and walked up the path to the house. He took the steps up to the porch and swung open the front door. Sunlight swept across the floor to the opposite wall. Flavio leaned against the door frame and gazed inside.

  “What am I doing here?” he muttered. He suddenly pictured Oliver and Donald Lucero driving to his house and finding him gone and then who knew what would happen. “Who cares, anyway?” Flavio said to the empty room. “I’ve spent the whole day doing nothing and look at the trouble I’m in. How can it matter what house I sit in?” Then he pushed himself up and walked into the room.

  He sat down on the sofa, picked up the glass of water from the floor, and took a drink. Then he leaned back and stretched out his legs, holding the glass on his belly. He could see his truck out the open door and thought that if Felix were to wake, he would be able to see movement inside the cab and hopefully get to the pickup before Felix tried to drive away, which, Flavio thought, might not be the worst thing to have happen. He took another sip of water, and his eyes fell upon the painting of the two men and the small boy on the wall across from him.

  The men wore caps and while one of them worked his shovel, the other watched, his hands shoved deep in his pockets. The boy was crouched down peering at something on the ground. His skinny knees jutted out, and his own shovel was lying thrown in the alfalfa. The sky above was streaked a blood red and sat low over the field.

  “I know who those people are,” Flavio said out loud. “The two men are me and my grandfather. And the boy is my nephew, Little José.” Flavio brought the glass to his mouth and drank again. “I don’t know why Ramona painted the three of us together. It was something that never happened.”

  He looked at the two men in the painting, and although there was a difference in age, he could see how closely they resembled each other. They were solid men of the same height, and they stood somewhat flat-footed, leaning slightly forward. They even wore their hats the same, the brims pulled down low on their foreheads.

  “Ramona was always my grandfather’s favorite,” Flavio said. “With me he was always a hard man. Even when he said my name it made me feel as if something was about to fall on my head. But with Ramona, it was different.” Flavio shook his head. He had always thought that the older one grew, the more one would leave behind. But here he was, the same age his grandfather had been when he died, feeling as if he were still someone’s grandson.

  Resting his head back against the sofa, Flavio looked at the boy in the painting and, for a second, felt as if he had fallen into the field. He could hear the water running fast in the ditch and feel the air cool on his face. His grandfather grunted as his shovel slid into the wet ground, and Little José was mumbling softly to himself and tossing clumps of mud into the ditch. Suddenly Flavio’s throat felt tight and swollen and his eyes burned.

  “Little José,” he said, “was such a good boy. Some things should never happen.”

  FLAVIO’S BROTHER AND HIS BROTHER’S WIFE, Loretta, were killed on a warm August morning in a car accident. They had been on their way to shop in Las Sombras when they topped the first hill and ran into a cow that was standing in the center of the road, as if it were waiting just for them. José and Loretta had left their son by himself that morning and after the burial it was decided that Little José should remain with his Tía Ramona. At first, it had bothered Flavio that his sister, who had always lived alone and had had little to do with her family or anyone else for that matter, would take on the responsibility of a small boy. But, in truth, though Flavio and Martha had tried so hard and for so long to conceive a child, Flavio had actually become so accustomed to being alone with his wife that the thought of anyone else in his house made him uncomfortable. Little José moved into Ramona’s, and after a
while it was as if he had always been there.

  Flavio, Ramona, and their brother, José, had always been distant with each other, but it grew worse after the deaths of Rosa and Epolito. Flavio had lived quietly with his wife, irrigating and tending to his own cows, in the house that had once been his parents’. José, who often drank too much and preferred the company of his friends over that of his own family, lived in a trailer on a barren piece of land. His house was always full of angry voices and Loretta’s tears, which never changed a thing. And Ramona, who had returned to Guadalupe after being gone for years, lived her life as if she were truly from somewhere else. The three of them lived in the village of Guadalupe as if all they shared was their name. It was the deaths of José and Loretta that changed everything.

  “My whole family had to die before I remembered I had one,” Flavio said to Martha one morning. He was sitting in the kitchen watching Martha prepare a large platter of enchiladas to take to Ramona’s. They were going to have an early dinner and then drive into the mountains and fish one of the small creeks.

  “Don’t worry yourself, Flavio,” Martha said. She finished wrapping the enchiladas and went to the cupboard for another platter.

  Flavio shook his head. “But everything is so different now,” he said.

  “I am bringing sopapillas with honey,” Martha said, smiling. “And biscochitos for Little José.”

  Almost every day now, Flavio would stop by Ramona’s house. He would go there early with his shovel and walk to the field. The house would still be dark, and the light in the air would be gray. Before the sun had crested the mountains, Little José would come running from the house, dragging his shovel behind him. Ramona would stand in the doorway for a few minutes. Then she would wave to her brother and go back inside. Flavio and his nephew would irrigate the field together, and Flavio would show him how to twist the water to where you wanted it to flow.

  Afterward, Flavio would have a cup of coffee with Ramona while she prepared eggs and chile for breakfast. Sometimes Martha would join them, and she would sit quietly, listening to her husband and her sister-in-law talk. She would watch José eat, and her heart would be so full she thought it might break.