The muscles in Lucero’s face tightened, and his hand slapped hard on the car door. “I don’t want to hear about your problems,” he said. “I just lost my house, hombre. I got home to find my wife holding a water hose and my kids scared to death. You don’t have no problems.” One of his boys began to cry. Lucero half turned and put a heavy hand on his son’s shoulder. “I don’t want to hear you cry no more, Mario,” he said. “You hear me, hijo?”
“Yes, Papa,” the boy mumbled.
“You’re too big to be crying like a little girl.”
Oliver brought his cigarette to his mouth and looked out the windshield. An empty field stretched away from the edge of the parking lot. Sitting in the middle of it was an old adobe falling in on itself. The roof had collapsed and the walls had bellied out, swelling open the one small window and twisting the thick, wood door frame. For a second, it seemed to Oliver as if everything in this village was old and abandoned. It didn’t surprise him at all that the emergency crews hadn’t even bothered to come into the valley. He thought that this place had died a long time ago. Everyone seemed to know that, except the people who lived here. Thin reeds of grass were growing out of the roofing paper on top of the adobe, and the viga ends were rotted and as soft as wet paper. High weeds and stunted sagebrush grew all about the place, and strewn throughout were the carcasses of discarded machinery. Old village tractors and rusted-out ploughs and burned engines coated with oil and dirt and piles of gravel and black asphalt. Oliver could hear Lucero talking in a low voice to his son, and again, he brought his cigarette to his mouth. He inhaled deeply and then let out a long, slow stream of smoke.
Bordering the far edge of the field a quarter mile away was the rutted road that ran in front of Ramona Montoya’s old house. One wall of the adobe was crawling with fire. The high branches of the cottonwood trees were swaying in the wind, and the leaves were trailing smoke. Flavio’s truck was still parked beneath the trees. Oliver could picture the two old men sitting asleep inside the house while it burned about them. He shook his head and groaned softly. He took one last drag off his cigarette and let it drop out his open window. Then he looked over at Lucero.
Donald was staring past Oliver at Ambrosio, who had passed out a half mile before. “What are you doing with him?” he asked. “Is that the problem you got?”
“No,” Oliver said. “I found him on the highway. He was too drunk to walk and I didn’t want to leave him there.” Ambrosio’s chin was now resting on his chest, and he was snoring raggedly. Every so often his body would jerk and he would mutter loudly as if arguing with himself.
“He’s a mojado,” Lucero said. “His name’s Ambrosio Herrera, but most people called him Bocito because when he gets drunk he won’t shut up. He mops the floors at the café and sweeps garbage out of the lot, and he lives in a little shit hole of a trailer Felix gave him. He’s been here so long he got to thinking he was one of us, but he’s just a wetback out of Mexico.” Lucero lifted his hand as if to wave something away. “What you should do is drive about four miles north and on the east side of the road you’ll see the Sanchez ranch. I’ve been sending everybody there to wait this fire out. My wife and the rest of my kids left for there an hour ago, and I don’t know anyone dumb enough to still be here. You take him out there and put him under a tree and let him sleep it off. He don’t have nothing in this place anymore.” Lucero leaned his head out the window and spat. His saliva was stained black, and Oliver could taste the grit in his own mouth. Lucero wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and then jerked his head back as if slapped.
“Why’s he smell like that?” he asked.
Delfino had been lying for so long in the backseat that Oliver had almost grown used to the smell inside his vehicle. But now, as if for the first time, he caught the odor of burned clothes and singed hair and the thick scent of charred skin that was so strong he seemed to taste it rather than smell it.
“He doesn’t,” Oliver said and glanced back at Delfino fetaled up on the backseat like a child that had been forgotten. “I’ve got Delfino Vigil in my backseat,” he said. His voice cracked and he coughed to clear it. “He got burned in the fire. I was trying to find some help for him, but he died on me.”
Lucero didn’t say a word. He stared at Oliver and his fingers rubbed gently on the metal of the door. Finally, he said, “You trying to make a joke or what? I saw Delfino get run over by this fire hours ago.” The boy beside him slid a little closer to his brother. He turned his head away and looked out the far window.
Lucero was smiling slightly and his eyes were so red that they seemed to be bleeding. Although his face was dark and heavy, beneath his skin was a gray caste of fatigue or maybe sickness. Again, Oliver thought that all he had to show for a day of fire was a dead man in his backseat and a drunk Mexican who thought he was lost in a blizzard. A cramp started up in the back of his neck, and he swiveled his head trying to work it out.
Down the highway, smoke was billowing black and rolling up the road. Oliver thought that maybe Ambrosio wasn’t so wrong after all. It looked like a sudden winter storm had blown into the village from nowhere. The wind was howling and ash blew about like snow. Oliver realized that if it was any other day, his shift would have been over. Something stirred in the backseat, and he heard the santo fall from Delfino’s arms to the floor. Beside him, Ambrosio spoke a name and then fell quiet.
“I don’t have time for this, Lucero,” he said. “All I need to know from you is if Delfino has any family.”
Something shifted in Lucero’s face. Suddenly, he looked older, his face drawn, his eyes flat and empty as if he’d lost more than just his house in this fire. He swung open his door and told his sons to stay where they were. Then he went to the back window of the squad car. He leaned over and cupped his hands. He stayed peering inside for a little while and then he straightened up slowly.
“He don’t have no family,” he said, without even looking at Oliver. “He lived by himself about a mile north in a little house just off the road. I don’t know what you should do with him.” He looked down at Oliver. “Where’d you find him?” he asked.
“In the old Montoya house,” Oliver said, waving a hand toward Ramona’s. “He was sitting inside with Montoya and that Felix García.”
Lucero grunted. Then he passed his hand over his face and ran it up through his hair. Soot smeared across his face. “None of this makes any sense,” he said.
Just then, the gas tank in Flavio’s truck ignited and blew. The hood flew up into the windshield and the vehicle seemed to lift a few inches off the ground and then slammed back down. The cottonwoods above it were burning, and as Oliver and Lucero looked that way a heavy limb fell across the bed of the truck.
“That old man sure started something,” Lucero said to no one. Then his eyes snagged on something moving and he saw Flavio and Felix walking through the high weeds not far off. Ash and smoke drifted around them, and after every few steps, they would stop and rest, their heads drooped down, their bodies leaning into each other.
“I see them, too,” Oliver said. “They’ve been walking this way ever since I parked.”
Lucero stepped back from the squad car. Still looking at Felix and Flavio, he said, “You should go.”
“No,” Oliver said. “I’ll wait with you.”
“There’s no room in your car,” Lucero said. “I can put them in my backseat.” He looked back at Oliver and smiled. “That way I can slap them a little bit and you won’t have to watch.” He leaned forward and pounded the roof of the squad car. “Go,” he said. “I’ll be right behind you.”
Oliver reached out and started his car. Beside him, Ambrosio began to sing softly. “You sure?” he said to Lucero.
“What do you think I am?” Lucero said. “Go on, now. This is still my place even if there’s nothing left. I’ll see you at the Sanchez ranch and we’ll drink a beer.”
Fourteen
EUGENIO’S DEAD,” Flavio said.
“No,”
Felix breathed out. “Not Eugenio, también.”
“Oh sí,” Flavio said. “He died almost a year ago. I think it was a year ago. Maybe it was a little longer.”
Felix stopped walking. He creaked his head sideways and peered up at Flavio. “I thought Eugenio would never die,” he said. “When I would see him, I would think he was like a little motorcar that didn’t know how to stop.”
They were standing in the shallow ditch on the other side of the road from Ramona’s house. Weeds and dried-out sagebrush rubbed against their legs, and there were empty beer cans and rotted plastic bags lying on the ground. Flavio had one arm wrapped around Felix’s waist. Tucked under his other arm was the santo his nephew had carved. She dug into the flesh above his elbow, and sometimes she slipped as if trying to squirm loose. Although they had only come some twenty-five yards, already both of Flavio’s arms were aching and his heart was beating too fast. Sharp pains were shooting down into his belly and up into his chest. He could feel Felix’s ribs thin and frail against his hand, and he wondered how Felix could manage to lean so heavily against him and sag away from him at the same time. He straightened his back and wiped the sweat from his face with his sleeve.
“Eee,” Felix said. He shook his head and gazed down at the ground. Every so often, his legs would begin to shake. If Flavio had not held on to him tightly, he would have fallen. “I remember Eugenio when he was a little boy,” Felix went on. “We were all classmates at that little school. Me and you and Eugenio and Delfino and Telesfor Ruiz and Josepha Pacheco.” He fell quiet for a few seconds and then said, “¿Quién mas, Flavio?”
“Victoria Medina,” Flavio said.
“Oh sí,” Felix said softly. “Her, too.” He began to tremble and Flavio pulled him closer as if to comfort him. Behind them, the walls of Ramona’s house were burning. Flavio could feel heat pressing against the back of his shirt.
“Come, Felix,” he said, trying to keep the urgency from his voice. “Let’s walk some more and I’ll tell you about Eugenio.”
“I don’t think I can, Flavio,” Felix said. “Maybe you should leave me here and come back with some help.”
“Eugenio fell off his daughter’s roof,” Flavio said as he pulled Felix a little bit forward.
“No.” Felix took a small step.
“Yes,” Flavio said. “He landed right behind his daughter, who was hanging out her laundry.”
Eugenio Rivera had been a carpenter all his life and had never had much luck. He had lost fingers to saw blades on each hand. Vigas had rolled onto his feet, crushing his toes, and splinters of wood had pierced both his eyes. Once even a portal he had built collapsed, gashing his head and knocking him unconscious for two days.
“What surprised most people,” Flavio said, “—wasn’t that Eugenio had died, but that it had taken so long. At the Rosary, Eugenio looked like he always did. He was dressed in his overalls, the ones with all the holes, and his heavy work boots. And one of his grandchildren threw in a hammer for his grandpa to take with him that hit Eugenio on the side of the head.
“Eee, pobrecito,” Felix sighed. “Every morning, Eugenio would stop at my café and we would visit for a while.”
Felix was still moving forward, but he was taking such small steps that they had crossed only a third of the field. And now, as Flavio paused to catch his breath, Felix stopped walking altogether. His breath was ragged and whistled from his mouth, and when he spoke, his voice was all air. He tried to turn his head and look up at Flavio, but the muscles in his neck had weakened. His head fell forward, his knees suddenly gave, and he pulled free from Flavio. He knelt there, his back badly rounded—and then, as if he had seen something there, he reached out and put his hand flat on the dirt.
“We would run through this field as children, Flavio,” Felix said. “How did we get so old?” His voice was so low that Flavio didn’t hear a word.
Across the road, the gasoline in Flavio’s pickup exploded and a wave of heat blew over the field. Flavio staggered a few steps forward, and then he turned and looked back at where he had come. His truck was awash in flames that rose high up into the limbs of the cottonwood tree. The roof of Ramona’s house and all four walls were burning, and beneath the fire the house seemed to waver in the heat. As he stared, openmouthed, the wind pulling at his clothes, Flavio thought that he had seen this before. Then through the noise of the fire, he could hear his sister’s voice.
“Flavio,” Ramona said. Her voice was choked and she leaned across the table. Her hands reached out and took his. “All these years, I’ve been looking for him. In my paintings. In the field where the alfalfa grows high by the ditch. I listen for his voice at dusk when the light is so frail you could fall through it. Sometimes I feel that if I look fast enough I’ll see him. He’s here, Flavio, but I don’t know where.”
Beneath the fire, like the shadows in all of Ramona’s paintings, Flavio could see his sister’s house. The front door blew back and forth, and the window where his grandmother would watch out for him was cracked and splintered, the paint on the frame peeled and scorched. The ceiling inside the living room would be crawling with fire and below it, on the sofa, the santos he’d left would be sitting close together. “I should have taken them all,” he whispered. The wind suddenly gusted. A thick cloud of smoke rolled across the road and into the field. Flavio closed his eyes and, behind them, he saw his wife sitting at the table in her own kitchen.
“Martha,” he said. She lifted her head and smiled at him. On the table was a pencil and a small piece of paper. Sunlight spilled in through the open window and fell upon the table.
“I’m writing you a letter, Flavio,” she said. “So that you’ll know.”
“I’ve never known anything, Martha,” Flavio said.
“How could you, Flavio? It was in the rustle of my mother’s dress as she moved and in the breeze that blew through our apple trees. It was in all the things we never spoke to each other.” She looked at him for a little while longer, and then her hand reached for the pencil and she began to write.
As Flavio opened his mouth to call to her, a heavy limb from the cottonwood began to sag. Then, with almost a groan, it ripped loose from the trunk of the tree and fell across the back of the pickup. Flavio opened his eyes and saw a myriad of sparks fly into the air and settle in the weeds across the road. Small fires began to flare along the edge of the road, and the wind began to fan them higher.
He hurried over to Felix and knelt down beside him. He put his hand on his old friend’s back and shook him. “Felix,” he said. “The fire is getting too close. We can’t stay here.”
Felix raised his head in a series of small jerks. His nose was bleeding and blood ran over his lips and down his chin. His eyes were glazed and full of tears. “Those old women messed with us, Flavio,” he said. “We were just little boys who didn’t know any better. Why would they do that to us? She was your grandmother, Flavio.”
“I don’t know, Felix,” Flavio said. Behind him, he heard the tearing of another limb and heat crawled up his back. His own eyes were running with water and he wiped at them. “We have to go now, Felix,” he said quickly. “Let me help you.”
“No, Flavio,” Felix said. “Just let me be.”
Flavio wrapped his arm around Felix’s waist. He rose to a crouch and then, both of them moaning, he stood holding Felix against his body. On the far side of the field was the village office, and Flavio could see Donald Lucero’s vehicle by the highway. Parked beside it was the state police car. He hefted Felix a little higher.
“Mira, Felix,” he said. “Donald is waiting for us.” Lucero was standing outside his car, staring into the field. Then Flavio watched him turn back to the squad car. He slapped the car roof once and stepped back as it rolled forward and then swung out onto the highway. Donald watched it drive off, and then he walked to the rear of his vehicle. He leaned back against the high bumper and folded his arms. The wind blew at his hat, and he lowered his head and stayed standing there as
if it were just any other day in the middle of the summer.
Felix straightened his legs slightly and rolled his eyes up. “That’s Menard Lucero’s boy,” he said.
“He’s waiting for us,” Flavio said, but he felt a sudden misgiving. For some reason, he wished that the state police officer, even though he had only given Flavio trouble, had not been the one to drive off.
“I never liked that boy,” Felix said, and now that he was complaining, his voice seemed a little stronger. “When he was little, he would steal my candy.” He staggered a few steps forward. “And his papa wasn’t much better. His neighbor, Porfirio, told me he used to make his children stand in the snow without their shoes.”
“Did you know,” Flavio said, pulling Felix along a little faster, “that Menard once knocked down Porfirio’s wife?”
“No,” Felix gasped. “I never heard that.”
“It’s true. I don’t know how you forgot. She was just a little woman, and whenever Porfirio was sick in bed for too long, she liked to go into Menard’s field and chase his cows.”
Felix began to shake and Flavio realized that his old friend was laughing. “Eee,” Felix said. “This village was something. Tell me, Flavio.”
“Walk a little faster, Felix, and I’ll tell you what happened.”
As they made their way through the field, Felix would stumble along listening to the sound of Flavio’s voice. Flavio told Felix everything he could remember in the eight years his friend had been asleep inside the café. And when Flavio’s mind went blank, he would make up little stories, and it didn’t matter to either of them if they made no sense. Flavio talked until his voice grew harsh from smoke and his throat ached.
They skirted carefully around the carcasses of abandoned machinery and rusted-out engines and piles of gray lumber. Flavio could hear the fire burning through the weeds behind him, and he held Felix tighter, afraid that if one of them fell they might never get up. They walked past the ruined adobe, and from inside came the frantic skittering of rodents and the flapping of wings like pages of a book being blown. Every so often, Flavio would glance up, blinking the sweat from his eyes. He could see Donald still leaning against the back of his vehicle. The sky above him was low and dark. The highway was empty, and ash snaked across the pavement. Far off to the east, veins of smoke clogged the canyons. On the ridges, small bursts of fire would flare up and then die out.
A Santo in the Image of Cristóbal García Page 24
