Ask for Me Tomorrow

by Margaret Millar

  “Tomás.”

  “I have a chicken named Tomás. He doesn’t lay eggs and he’s mean.”

  “Boys don’t lay eggs.”

  “Chickens do.”

  “Boy chickens don’t.”

  “I know that. I just told you he doesn’t.”

  “Okay, okay. Whatever game we’re playing, you win.”

  She accepted her victory with the equanimity of a champion. “I’m grown up. Next year I might marry my cousin Raul. He lives in a real house beyond that hill over there.”

  She pointed. Aragon couldn’t see any house and there were half a dozen hills all exactly the same. He turned his attention to the boy with the withered leg. “What’s your name?”

  “Okay okay.”

  “Is that what they call you?”

  “Okay okay.”

  Suddenly the boy thrust his hand in the window of the car and honked the horn. The children began running away, shrieking with laughter, followed by their squawking barking baaing retinue of animals. He got out of the car intending to follow them, but a voice stopped him, the high cracked voice of someone very old: “Good morning. Is there anything I can do for you?”

  Aragon turned. A man was standing in the doorway of the crumbling mission. He wore a straw hat and the remnants of a brown priest’s robe tied at the waist with a piece of rope. He was tiny and shriveled as though he’d been left too long in the sun. One of his eyes was bloodshot and dripped tears that ran down the deepest groove in his cheek. Flecks of salt from previous tears glistened on his face when he pushed back his hat.

  “Are you lost, friend?”

  “This is Bahía de Ballenas?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I’m not lost. I’ve been looking for it.”

  “Not many people look for us. This is a pleasant surprise. What is your name?”

  “Tomás Aragon.”

  “Everyone calls me padre. I once had a real name, but it slips my mind now and then. No matter. Such things are not important where everybody knows everybody. Will you come inside where it’s cool?”

  “Thank you, padre.”

  “Padre is a courtesy title only. I have long since left the Church, but it has not left me. I am allowed to live here. The villagers and I have mutual respect. I give them comfort when I can and take it when I must.”

  The doorway was so low that Aragon had to stoop to enter. The man noticed his hesitation.

  “Have no fear for your safety, friend. These walls will last beyond my time and yours. Adobe is a very fine building material in a climate like this. It is strong. And more, it is friendly, absorbing heat during the day and giving it back during the night.”

  The room was only a little larger than the cabin Aragon had occupied the previous night at Viñadaco, but it was cool and comfortable, furnished with a cot, a table and chairs and an adobe bench in front of the altar. Dwarfing the room and its contents was a life-sized and extremely ugly statue of the Virgin Mary. It was all grey like an angel of death.

  The padre looked up at her with affection. “I made her myself. The original statue fell and broke during an earthquake, so I spent some years, ten, perhaps twelve or thirteen—tempus fugit—fashioning a replacement. It is the only gift I will leave behind for the villagers when I die.”

  “It’s very impressive.”

  “Yes. Yes, I think so. Inside, to hold her together, I piled stones which the children helped me collect. And the sculpting material is what we use to make our cooking stoves, water poured over hot ashes and mixed into a paste. Each day, every time I had a fire, I added a little, and there she is.” He crossed himself. “Now I don’t have to worry so much that the villagers will lose touch with God after I’m gone. They will have the Blessed Virgin to remind them . . . I was about to eat my midday meal. Will you be my guest?”

  “Thanks.”

  “Simple fare, a bit of mullet I cooked this morning and some pitahaya. The Americans in La Paz used to call it organ-pipe cactus, so it seems most fitting to serve it in my little church, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name. My memory has dulled with age.”

  “Tomás Aragon.”

  “Would it be suitable if I called you Tomás?”

  “I’d be pleased.”

  The two men sat down facing each other across the wooden table. The padre blessed the piece of mullet on the battered tin plate and waved away the flies buzzing around it. Though the fish had a slight greenish iridescence, it tasted all right, and the pitahaya was similar to what he’d been served at the café in Viñadaco, only sweeter and juicier. After the meal Aragon went out to the car and brought in several bottles of beer.

  “My saints and sinners,” the padre said. “This is a great surprise.”

  “It’s very warm, if you don’t mind . . .”

  “Oh, no no no. I like it any way at all. Tecate. I haven’t tasted that for a long time. This is an occasion, Tomás, yes, a celebration. We ought to make a toast. What do you suggest?”

  “To your health, padre.”

  “To your safe journey, Tomás.”

  “To your village and the future of its children.”

  “That’s the best toast. To their future.”

  The two men drank. The beer was the temperature of restaurant tea.

  “One of the girls has her future planned,” Aragon said. “She will marry her cousin Raul and live in a real house.”

  “That would be Valeria. Always planning, already like a woman.”

  “I haven’t seen any real houses in Bahía de Ballenas. Perhaps she is dreaming.”

  “Perhaps. Now if you will excuse me for a few minutes, I’ll go and bury the remains of our meal.”

  “Let me help.”

  “No. No, it won’t take long. Sit and contemplate the Blessed Virgin.”

  It would have been difficult in that small room to contemplate anything else, so Aragon did as he was told. In spite of the strong beer, the statue of the Virgin remained ugly. There was a frightening determination about her face that reminded him of Violet Smith. It was now Sunday afternoon. In a few hours Violet Smith would be setting out for church to sing hymns—sharing her hymn book with B. J.’s first wife, Ethel—and stand up afterward in front of the assemblage to voice her problems and concerns. Perhaps she would tell about the young man who was hired by B. J.’s second wife to go on a confidential mission, giving names and places and dates and whatever other details she might have wormed out of Gilly or Reed, or overheard on an extension phone or through a thin closed door.

  When the padre returned, his breath was wheezing in and out of his lungs like the air through an old leaky accordion.

  Aragon said, “Do you teach the children?”

  “Whatever and whenever possible.”

  “I noticed one of the boys has a deformed leg and acts retarded.”

  “A child of God.”

  “His skin seems somewhat lighter than that of the others. His parents—”

  “He is an orphan.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “In Mexico all people love children. Pablo can live anywhere.”

  “But where does he live?”

  “It would break hearts if he were ever taken away. If you have any such thought, any reason—”

  “No. None.”

  “He is much beloved, a child marked by God.” The padre crossed himself, then frowned briefly through the open door at the sky as if for a fraction of a second he was questioning God’s common sense. “He lives with his grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins. A happy family. It would be a pity to disturb their tranquility.”

  “Where are his parents?”

  “Gone. They left here years ago. They couldn’t take the boy along because the authoritie
s wouldn’t allow it. You yourself are not from them, from the authorities?”

  “No.”

  “Then I don’t think I should answer any more questions. It might appear to be gossiping . . . When tragedy strikes, everyone likes to talk about it, that’s human nature. But it all happened in the distant past. Pablo doesn’t remember his mother. To him everything is ten minutes ago, or an hour, or at most, yesterday. Even if he were normal, no one would remind him of her. She fell from grace.”

  “Does she communicate with the family?”

  “No. She wouldn’t want to, anyway, but even if she did, we have no telephones or mail service. There was talk of mail service once when someone was going to build here. Nothing came of either the building or the service. No matter, we survive.”

  “What about the boy’s father?”

  The padre considered the question in silence, squinting out at the sky again, this time for guidance. “He was an American. You see, Tula went away for a while to America. She had an unexpected opportunity to make a fortune. A fortune around here is very little, and when Tula saw her chance to go and get a job in America, she reached out and grabbed it.”

  “Who gave her the chance?”

  “One Christmas a couple came along in a truck loaded with old clothes and bedding and things like soap and canned goods to distribute to the more remote villagers in Baja. Tula persuaded the couple to take her back with them. She was very pretty, not too smart, but she could talk the ears off a donkey. So the people agreed and off she went. We heard nothing from her for a year or more. Then she came back married to a rich American and riding in a veritable chariot. My saints and sinners, what a vision she was, dressed like a princess and waving from the window of the chariot. Some of the women began screaming. They thought Tula had died and gone to heaven and this was her spirit. Oh, it was a great day. Everybody got drunk.”

  “What happened to the chariot?”

  The padre’s excitement faded. The great day was finished, everybody was sober, the chariot in ruins and the princess a long time missing.

  “It never moved again. Its wheels got stuck in the sand and the engine broke down and there was no fuel anyway.”

  “And now it’s the ‘real house’ the girl Valeria referred to in her marriage plans?”

  “Yes. But you mustn’t go there, you will disturb the family’s tranquility.”

  “Does Pablo live with them?”

  “You most certainly can’t talk to him. He doesn’t understand. He is like a parrot, only repeating noises he hears. And the family will not want to discuss Tula, because she fell from grace . . . But I can see you’re not hearing me, Tomás.”

  “I’m hearing you, padre,” Aragon said. “I just can’t afford to listen.”

  7

  Only a few letters of the name still faintly visible on one side identified the ravaged hulk as Gilly’s Dreamboat. The wheels had disappeared into the ground and most of the windows were broken. The paint had been scratched by chollas and creosote bushes, rusted by fog and salt air, blasted off by wind-driven sand.

  On the roof was an old sun-bleached, urine-stained mattress. A lone chicken sat in the middle of it, casually pecking out the stuffing. It was the only living thing in sight. Yet Aragon was positive that there were people inside watching his approach with quiet hostility as if they’d already found out the purpose of his visit. It seemed impossible, though he knew it wasn’t. In places where more sophisticated forms of communication were lacking, the grapevine was quick and efficient, and the fact that he’d seen no one outside the mission while he was talking to the padre meant nothing.

  “Hello? Hello, in there! Can you hear me?”

  He didn’t expect an answer and none came. But he kept trying.

  “Listen to me. I came from the United States looking for Mr. Lockwood, Byron James Lockwood. Can anyone give me some information about him or about Tula?”

  If they could, they didn’t intend to. The silence seemed even more profound: Tula’s fall from grace had evidently been far and final.

  “The padre will tell you that I mean no harm. And I’m offering money in return for information. Doesn’t anyone want money?”

  No one did. Money was of little value to people without a place to spend it or a desire to change their lot.

  He waited another five minutes. The chicken pecking at the mattress stuffing remained the only sign of life.

  The padre was waiting for him. He had opened another bottle of beer and his color was high and his eyes slightly out of focus.

  “You’re back very soon, Tomás.”

  “Yes.”

  “Our people are normally very friendly to strangers. If you were the exception, I apologize.”

  “I was, and thanks.”

  “You remind them of bad things and they’re afraid. I am perhaps a little afraid myself. You’re searching for the American, Lockwood?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Lockwood’s wife wants him found.” Lockwood’s wife wasn’t too accurate a description of Gilly but it served its purpose.

  The padre looked shocked. “I thought Tula was—I didn’t know he had another wife.”

  “Two other wives. Only one of them wants him found.”

  “Then Pablo is illegitimate?”

  “Yes.”

  “All the more he is a child of God,” the padre said, but he sounded shaken. “Of course, we will not tell any of the villagers about this. It would serve no purpose and the little boy might suffer unnecessarily. It is not easy being a child of God.”

  “How long did Lockwood stay here in the village?”

  “Some four years or so. He was a nice man, kind to all the little ones and very fond of his son. He pretended the boy was normal, perhaps even to himself he pretended, I’m not sure.”

  “No, he knew the facts. The second Mrs. Lockwood had a letter from him referring to the boy.”

  “Then all the more he was a nice man, don’t you think?”

  “I think he must have been. Everyone I’ve talked to seems to have liked him.” With the exception of Smedler, who didn’t count because he never liked anybody. “Was he happy here, living under what for him were certainly primitive conditions?”

  “But he was going to change the conditions. He had great plans for the village, great dreams. The mission would be restored, haciendas built, and a town square and a new pier to attract tourists in big boats. Also streets would be put in, real streets with beautiful names carved on stone pillars. The streets were laid out and some of the pillars already carved when the authorities arrived. Then suddenly it was all over.”

  “What happened?”

  “He was arrested along with his partner, Jenkins, who was the real villain. But the authorities didn’t bother to apportion blame on a percentage basis, eighty percent Jenkins, twenty percent Lockwood. No, they arrested them both equally.”

  “What was the charge?”

  “It seems a lot of people were cheated. They sent money to buy lots on which haciendas were to be built, Jenlock Haciendas.”

  “A real estate swindle.”

  “I couldn’t believe Mr. Lockwood deliberately swindled anyone. But what I believed was unimportant . . . The whole village came here to church to say farewell prayers for him. He was all dressed up for the occasion in his best suit and tie with a diamond tiepin in it, his fancy wristwatch and gold wedding ring and the ruby ring he wore on his little finger. He looked very splendid, like the day he arrived in the chariot. No one would have imagined he was being arrested, perhaps he could not really imagine it himself. Is this possible?”

  “Yes.”

  “They took him away in a dirty old vehicle something like a bus with bars across the windows, a far cry from a chariot. When the bus left, he and Jenkins sat quietly, but Tula kept waving at
us from the window precisely the way she’d waved on the day she and Lockwood arrived.”

  “Why did Tula go along?”

  “I think to get away from the village, which bored her, and the child she was ashamed of, not so much to be with Lockwood.”

  “She couldn’t be with him anyway, could she, if he was being sent to jail?”

  “Oh yes, if she really wanted to. The jail in Rio Seco is very different from American jails I have seen in the cinema in Ensenada. Sometimes whole families live together, inside the walls. Or a prisoner, if he can afford it, may have his meals brought to him from outside or be visited by night ladies. The latter I don’t approve. But the other thing—what harm is done? It is a more humane way to conduct a prison than the American way, don’t you agree?”

  “I agree that it’s more humane for the prisoner, not necessarily for his family.”

  “Bear in mind that many of the men in prison have committed no crime, they are simply waiting for their cases to be heard. For most offenses no bail is allowed because under Mexican law there is no presumption of innocence such as in your country. Quite the contrary. A man is presumed guilty and is not entitled to a jury trial. His guilt or innocence, and his sentence, is decided by a magistrate. He can be kept in jail for a whole year before his case is even heard. This is very sad for the poor, who can’t afford to pay bribes, but everyone expected when Mr. Lockwood was taken away that he would be back any week. We thought he still had some money, or that he could at least borrow some from his American friends in order to pay the magistrate for a favorable verdict. Perhaps he did. Perhaps he was released from prison and simply chose not to return here. We never heard from him again.”

  “Or from the girl?”

  “No. A funny thing happened, though. Last fall, about a year ago, a sports fishing boat came down from the north coast and anchored in the bay. A man rowed ashore in a dinghy and left some boxes for the children containing clothes and toys and chewing gum and vitamin pills.”

  “Could they have been sent by Lockwood?”

  “Possibly, though I would think he’d have included some more useful things. The children broke the toys in a week and fed the vitamin pills to the goats.”