Scent of Tears

by M. Juan Knecht

  Chapter Two

  Tiburcio Vasquez disappeared from my life like a rattlesnake going down a squirrel hole. He was gone for now, but his presence was not forgotten.

  That summer I was sent by Don Topo to work on one of his many holdings. At this ranch, I found myself at odds with the majordomo, a contemptible Spaniard named Don Tomasino. For Don Tomasino hated Yankees, and although my mother was Spanish, I looked white.

  One morning, he intentionally handled a horse in a manner that would likely result in injury, and my hatred for him boiled over. He was mounted on a fine brown gelding that he rode in a silver inlaid spade-bit, and the mare about to get her neck broken was one I’d been trying to gentle. At night, I’d been sneaking out into the pasture where she was kept, where I’d sit on the ground with small offerings of grain. It might take hours, but the young horse’s curiosity would eventually get the better of her. She would come to me, extending her nose to sniff at the grain. After many nights’ effort, I could now walk up to her out in the open without her running away.

  And what a beautiful animal she was, with a perfect white triangle on her forehead one snip of white on her nose, and a thick mane and long tail that flowed in the wind as elegantly as a poem. She also had great speed and wonderful control of her feet. I ached to become a full-fledged vaquero and ride her over the hills and valleys to catch wild cattle.

  Don Tomasino had just missed his first attempt to rope her by her front feet. It was hard for me to believe he was going to forefoot the filly and risk breaking her neck when he could simply sort her off the other horses and let her out of the pen without damaging her. He shook out another loop from the sixty foot rawhide raita he carried, preparing to trip the mare with his lariat. The rage rose in my throat like vomit and it became hard to breath.

  My anger had been building for a long time. When I went with the crew to work cattle, Tomasino had made me ride a donkey—and not a good donkey either, but a stubborn and dangerous animal who kicked my feet out of the wooden stirrups and ran me under oak limbs to scrape me off his back. The donkey was ungovernable in all ways, even going so far as trying to bite me when I bridled him, and he caused me to be the butt of many jokes among the crew. Don Topo had intended me to be apprenticed as a vaquero, not the vaquero camp idiot, but when I complained about not being allowed to ride a horse, Tomasino told me that I was too clumsy to ride a finished bridle horse and too inexperienced to ride a colt, and so if I didn’t like the burro I should feel free to walk.

  But perhaps the greatest insult was that Don Tomasino stole from me. Don Topo had instructed him to pay me half the wages the grown vaqueros received, but I’d never seen so much as a peso. My wages ended up in the pocket of Don Tomasino.

  An Indian by the name of Genero was working at the ranch, and when he saw how Tomasino was abusing me, he took the time to befriend me. He was a fine vaquero who could gather more wild cattle by himself than most other men working together. Because Genero had nearly magical powers to get wild cattle out of the brushy canyons, Tomasino left him alone and limited his abusive behavior towards me to the times Genero wasn’t around.

  Genero had also helped me gentle the mare. He’d seen me walking to the headquarters one morning after I’d fallen asleep in the field where the mare was kept, and asked me what I was doing. I told him my plan, and so that Sunday, when Tomasino went to Monterey, Genero took a saddle horse down to the mare. He skillfully roped her and hazed her down to the middle of a creek. Horses are disorientated in water and have a harder time bucking, so after getting thrown off twice into the creek, I finally got her to accept my being on her back. By the time Tomasino got back from Monterey, I could saddle, climb aboard, and ride her in the corral. Tomasino merely sneered at my accomplishment, as if a fourteen-year-old boy taming a wild horse was beneath his notice.

  Now I watched as the filly turned to face Tomasino in the dusty corral. Tomasino whirled his loop backhand, letting the tip of the rope hit the filly in the soft part of her nose.

  When I saw his riata strike her in the nostril, my hatred became a blackness that was more than I could control. I raced for the corrals, leapt over the top rail of the fence post and launched myself at Tomasino, unsheathing a small knife my dead father had given me in mid-air. I fully intended to stab Tomasino, but, like many last-minute plans, things didn’t work out quite like I’d hoped. When Tomasino’s gelding saw me flying off the fence, he moved sideways, so instead of landing on Tomasino like I intended, I landed face down in a pile of cow manure with the breath knocked out of me.

  By the time I regained my feet, Don Tomasino had stepped off his horse and reversed his quirt. In one fluid motion, he clubbed me in the temple with the lead handle , knocking me unconscious.

  I woke up lying on a cot in the bunkhouse. Genero, my Indian mentor, was wiping my face with a wet rag.

  “You have courage, Charlie. When you get older you may wish you had brains too.”

  “What will happen now?” I asked, for there was no law to speak of in Monterey during that period.

  “Tomasino knows that what he was doing with the filly was wrong. He’s not paid by Don Topo to kill ranch livestock. Besides, a pendejo like Tomasino respects someone who stands up to him.”

  Genero paused and smiled at me.

  “My knife,” I said in alarm.

  “I don’t think Tomasino will give you the knife back.”

  “He has to give me the knife back. It was a gift from my father.”

  “You might have thought about that before you tried to stab him with it.”

  Genero was no doubt correct about that.

  The old Indian shrugged. Genero was a half-breed like me, but instead of being Spanish and Angelo, he was Spanish and Indian. He didn’t know how old he was either, having never learned to count, though he knew his mother was raped by a Spanish Soldier around 1810. He’d lived with his tribe until one of the many diseases the Europeans brought to California wiped them from the face of the earth. He thought his Spanish blood had made him less susceptible to the illness, and hence his philosophy of never knowing for sure if something was bad or good. After his tribe was killed off by disease, he’d gone to the Mission to live. Then, when the Missions were secularized, he went to work on for Don Topo.

  “Do you think I’ll get run off?” I asked, gently touching the place above my eye where I’d been clubbed by the quirt.

  “Tomasino works for Don Topo,” Genero said. “Everyone knows that Don Topo thinks of you as a son. After Tomasino knocked you out, he turned the mare back in the field with the other horses without roping her. That has to be good, no?”

  “I’m happy he didn’t break her neck,” I replied.

  In the end, Don Tomasino never anything about my trying to stab him; the blow to my skull with the leaded quirt had evidently satisfied his honor. The next day I was sweeping out the bunk house when my greatest wish came true, for I heard a wagon coming along the road and ran out to see my benefactor approaching.

  I ran out to greet Don Topo, and was stopped in my tracks. Don Topo’s favorite daughter, Lucinda sat next to him in the wagon. The beauty of the tall, proud fifteen-year-old rendered me speechless, but she neither greeted me nor looked in my direction. When I’d lived in the house in Monterey, she’d acted as if I wasn’t there, so I wasn’t surprised she was also shunning me at the vaquero camp. Despite her rudeness, I couldn’t divert my gaze. She sat ramrod straight, her long black hair flowing down her back and arms crossed over her high-set breasts. She looked neither left nor right.

  Lucinda’s two older sisters stepped carefully around her, but her younger sister and I looked upon her with absolute terror. The sisters claimed that when Lucinda became angry, the color of her eyes darkened, but I couldn’t say, for when Lucinda lost her temper I was usually too busy finding the door to study her eyes. The only one who wasn’t outwardly afraid of her was her mother, Dõna Inez, though when they were in the same room, you could smell friction, like ro
cks grinding together in a mill stamp. Don Topo never acknowledged anything but the good in Lucinda. She would smile shyly, speak to him sweetly and get whatever it was she wanted. This did not endear her to her sisters or her mother.

  “Charlie,” said,“how come you have a broom in your hand? And your eyes are blackened. Have you been injured in some way?”

  “I have a broom because Don Tomasino has not allowed me to ride any horses,” I said, “And I have been given no saddle, only a worn out blanket that I am expected to cinch on with ropes. All he allows me to ride is a worthless and dangerous burro.”

  “Cheer up, my son. I brought you a saddle,” he said and nodded toward the back of the buggy.

  Inside was a plain saddle of the old mission style. It had seen some use, but no matter the condition, I was dumbstruck with gratitude. Tied onto the saddle was a rain slicker and a worn rawhide raita. I pulled them from the back of the wagon and ran my hands over these precious gifts. My voice failed me. In this country, you were not a man if you had no saddle. If Lucinda hadn’t been there to stiffen my pride, I might have fallen to my knees in gratitude.

  “I must have some men represent me at a neighboring ranch,” Don Topo said, “to bring home any wandering cattle belonging to me. I am going to request that you and Genero be sent to perform those duties.”

  I smiled. Don Topo made all of his orders sound like requests. Those around him knew that however quietly it was said, a request had to be obeyed immediately with no questions asked, assuming the vaquero wanted to keep drawing a wage.

  Topo invited me up into the wagon to go along for a tour of the ranch and observe any cattle that could be seen. I awkwardly climbed in the seat next to Lucinda.

  Don Topo drove into the country, asking me about the availability of water and where the salt was being put out. Lucinda was very careful to sit erect and not bring any part of her body into contact with mine. I felt a shy smile spread across my face.

  She ignored my smile. Even sitting close enough to smell her hair, I remained invisible to her.

  At one point the wagon lurched and I bumped into her. Lucinda sharply jabbed me in the ribs and scooted closer to her father. Don Topo frowned at Lucinda and said something to her in Spanish under his breath, which, as far I could tell, meant he thought she looked like a woman but acted like a child.

  “I am not a little girl,” Lucinda said and glared at her father.

  “Only an immature child would be rude for no purpose. A true Spaniard treats all persons with kindness and respect,” Topo replied.

  “He is no person. He is an orphan who is here to feed the chickens and fetch the firewood.”

  “You are giving me a headache, Lucinda. I only brought you because your mother threatened to sail back to Spain if I didn’t.”

  “Well, she really needs to get out of the house more,” Lucinda said under her breath. Then, to my amazement, she glanced in my direction and gave me a quick smile.

  For a moment my soul was bathed in the light of her crystal-blue eyes.

  “What?” Don Topo snapped.

  In response, she just leaned her head against her father’s shoulder and nothing more was said.

  After a while, her proud nose went back into the air. I tried not to look at her, but then the wagon wheel ran over a rock and she was thrown against me. The warmth of her thigh penetrated the fabric of my thin pants. Being in close proximity to Lucinda gave me the feeling that I might lose consciousness and tumble from my seat.

  To my embarrassment, I began to respond to her leg touching mine in a very definite way. I leaned forward with my arms resting on my knees and reverently prayed she wouldn’t notice my aroused state.

  She didn’t notice, or if she did, she couldn’t figure out a way to make fun of me about it in front of her father.

  When our tour of the ranch finally concluded, Don Topo and his haughty daughter headed back to Monterey. It was an awful feeling, watching them leave. Despite my fear of Dõna Inez and my confusion about Lucinda, they were my family and I wanted to be in the wagon with them, headed back to Monterey. I figured I was too old to cry but it was a near thing.

  The next morning however, my funk abated. Genero and I rode out of the headquarters on two gentle horses while leading four others. My mare was one of those four. Genero had once seen the camels used by the army and was fascinated by their appearance. In the gentle teasing manner vaqueros used on each other, he took to calling my mare the Camel because of her long, arching neck and big eyes. I told him a long neck was needed if the mare was going to be a true bridle horse. Besides, I had another name for her.

  The moon had often lit up the pasture during those summer nights when I coaxed her to eat grain from my hand, and sometimes her large, curious eyes had reflected the moonlight. To celebrate those quiet nights, I called the mare Piquęna Luna, or Little Moon.

  As we trotted along the dusty trail, I couldn’t help but look back and grin at the mare trotting along behind. My mind raced with anticipation. I was going to become a real vaquero.

  Scent of Tears