The Forests of the Night - J P S Brown

by J P S Brown

  Adán kissed her again and she moved away from him gently to pour hot water into a basin for him. She cooled the hot water and smoothed the folded towel hanging on its rack. She set a comb by the mirror. She straightened the mirror. "Now wash and comb yourself," she said softly. "Look at yourself and think of us." She picked up a bucket of fresh water to replenish the water in the large kettle that chirped on the hearth. She wiped her forehead with her hand, and if Adán had been watching her he would have seen the desperate look on her face that the dark patio outside her window saw, and he would not have recognized the look for he had never seen her afraid. She placed a chair by the fire for him when he turned around from washing and combing himself. She noticed that the only sign of health about him was his thick, black, water shiny hair. She put her soft palm, warm with the making of supper, to his forehead and felt the clamminess of him. "You're sick with the grippe," she said. "You come home sick again. Watching you lie sick and delirious is the way we have of celebrating your homecomings."

  "I'm over the worst of it," Adán said, taking a glass of mezcal. "I bathed and sunned yesterday and subdued it. I came home because Celestino found me at Gilaremos this morning and made a scandal about the poor woman of Las Animas. I hurried to get here, but I cut for E1 Yoco's tracks while hurrying."

  Lucrecia set the supper on the table and ate her own supper standing at the hearth.

  "Thank God for Celestino if it took his scandal to get you home," Lucrecia said. "Even cowards are of some use, I guess. They all seem to have good mouths for spreading bad news. I knew we could expect the worst scandal from Celestino, he who mouths to be, without working to be what he'll never be, a man. Celestino, the true fantoche, sent you home. Thank God for him."

  "Let's be thankful for Celestino." Adán laughed.

  "Yes, laugh. But I still am not sure that what happened the other night won't happen again. Night before last I awakened after the first sleep. At first I didn't know why I had awakened. I lay there and couldn't go to sleep and couldn't go to sleep, and then I realized why I had awakened. The quiet. The rooster had not crowed. His hour had passed without his singing. Some presence was causing the fear that kept him from crowing. I was so frightened I held my breath. I went into the boys' room. Adancito was sitting up in bed, listening too. I could hear no sound of any kind. My own feet made no sound. The breathing of the boys, which always sounds like four little trucks going, had no sound. I went to the back door. The door was ajar because of the closeness of the room. I smelled El Yoco. His smell had remained here the way the smell of dead flesh lingers in the nostrils for a long time, since his fight with El Toro Buey. I had not forgotten it. His odor was fresh again. At the moment I was sure he was near us again, the buckskin mare screamed in her pen. I ran to the front door and saw her break out of the pen and run toward the house. The tigre was so close to her I couldn't see him at first, then I saw him running close ahead of her flank, as close as her colt would run. He turned her away and dragged her down as she ran around the corner of the house. The skillet was the first handle available to me and I took it and ran to the mare. The tigre was on her. I threw the skillet with all my strength and hit the bone of him from about a vara away. The mare got free of him and I turned and ran back into the house."

  "Did he chase you?"

  "I don't think he did. I think he wanted to, but the mare tried to get away again and distracted him."

  "And El Toro Buey? Where was he this time?"

  "Man, people must have heard him in San Bernardo and Chinipas. I'm surprised you didn't hear him He came quickly, though not quickly enough to stop the animal from killing the mare. They closed once and El Toro Buey took a lot of punishment, but he must have given more because he ran El Yoco across the patio. He stopped in the patio and refused to chase El Yoco. He stood there challenging him. El Yoco stayed close to the house for about an hour, but El Toro Buey couldn't close with him again. El Yoco tore the stuffing out of the packsaddles, scattered the milo maize, uprooted the new lime trees, sliced up your tobacco plants, slashed the hide of the filly where you stretched it on the back of the house. He didn't come back to the patio because of El Toro Buey. I think he would have liked to come right in the house, though."

  "He would have been sorry. He'd have found another fiera, a fierce and haughty savage, in her den with her claws ready for him," Adán said, drawing Lucrecia to his lap.

  "No!" she said, but she settled comfortably there. She lay her forearms over his, holding his arms close to her sides, her hand holding his hands over her stomach. He felt the strength of her inside his arms. "Don't think I wasn't ready for him. He thinks he's so audacious. Lucky for him El Toro Buey didn't let him in. He would have found a pair of testicles in here he couldn't swallow, and I don't refer to those little marbles of Adancito's."

  "Where do you carry those kind of weights?" Adán laughed, searching the place for testicles.

  "¡Ah, no! You just think I don't have them," Lucrecia said. She pulled his hands high between her legs. "Here! Right here! They might be invisible, but I have huevas too. He would have taken a pot between his eyes, an ax between his shoulders, a butcher knife between his legs, and a lighted pitch torch in his anus before he got out of here--if he got out alive."

  "His anus is not so still a target, woman. Maybe you should have just closed your doors."

  "I hoped he would try coming inside my house. I wouldn't have chased him while he was outside; but I had no doubt he would get the worst of it if he came into my kitchen."

  She laughed. "When he was up on top of the ramada where the milo maize was stacked, he was growling and ranting and attacking the stalks as though they were alive and the roof of the ramada gave with him. He fell into the pig sty and milo maize funneled in on top of him. He was silent for a moment as though he was hurt. El Toro Buey made a charge for the sty and it rained milo maize when El Yoco exploded out. He ran away growling with his ears back. I wasn't afraid he would come back that night, he'd made such a fool of himself.

  "This morning I was out skinning the mare when that cuckold, Celestino, slithered up to the patio. He shows up here every six months to see what he can smell. I've never told you, but he always seems to know when you are away."

  "I've always known it."

  "You have? Anyway, he used his buttocks on the stump in the woodpile while he watched me skin the mare in the sun. I got tired of his questions and tried to give him the knife so he could finish skinning and start gutting and boning. I was just butchering the mare on her hide. I wasn't strong enough to hang her.

  "When he saw I meant for him to do the job, he just laughed at me and said it was not 'convenient' for him to do so. He uses that word around me to let me know he wants me and I should be convenient for him, I guess. He said he had to go on. He could not stay here alone with me. I told him I thought this was funny for him to say because he never came to Las Animas unless I was alone, and he always stayed until he made a fool of himself by showing he wanted me and by my showing that I couldn't stand the sight of him. I said, 'Now you have a reason to stay and help me and you claim it is not convenient, as though it is you who would be compromised.' He leered at me. He's as ugly as a broken, smoked lamp. He said he would like to help me if I could make it convenient for him. I told him, yes, I would make it convenient for him--to see if El Yoco had left Las Animas. I took him and showed him the tracks from the pigsty.

  " 'You mean he has not gone yet?' he asked, looking around.

  "I said, 'There is the track, find out.'

  "He said, 'I have no weapon.'

  "I said, 'Use a rock. You people are more used to rocks and sticks anyway. You would be unsafe to yourself armed with a real man-made weapon. I'll loan you my skillet, my butcher knife, and a pitch torch. Those are the weapons I had last night.'

  "I said, 'I can't lend you any balls, though. You'll have to use your own to find El Yoco. If you have any. Don't hope to use them around here in any other manner. You seem to want to try t
hem when you come here every six months when my husband is away. Try them on El Yoco.'

  "This time when he said, 'No conviene', he meant it, and I told him, 'I bet, no conviene, you big goat with horns. You better go someplace where it is convenient for you to be, like with your loudmouthed fat wife who makes a fool of you with other men every time you leave home.' He left whining with his ears laid back."

  "And then?"

  "And then I laughed at him. He hurried away with his skinny buttocks squeezed together as though he was in a hurry to make caca. As though he had a terrible pain to caca and along, long way to get out of my sight and hearing before he could do it. For the first time in my life I couldn't keep my eyes off him and I couldn't stop laughing. He entertained me the best I have ever been entertained while I kept him in sight. When he went around the bend of the arroyo, I climbed the nacapúl so I could see him again. He was running. I shouted, 'Run, run, cabrón, your wife diverts herself at this very moment. Take a rock to defend yourself. Use it to wipe with when you soil yourself coming face to face with her lover.' "

  "Ah, wife, the man is afraid. Why provoke him?"

  "Why not provoke him?"

  "He's worse than la vibora, the viper. I wouldn't allow you to taunt the viper because of the danger to you. Celestino is more dangerous than a viper. A viper is a coward because of the way God made him. Celestino almost exactly resembles a man."

  "You should hit him with a stick then, Martinillo. I don't want him to come here."

  "He's too small for me to hit. I know I can do it, he knows it, you know it. What kind of a great man would I be, great tigre, to hit a Celestino?"

  "Celestino hates you and wants me."

  "That doesn't make me a poor man." Adán drew his wife closer so she would have to soften her voice. He caressed the lobe of her warm ear, his arms embracing her. He caressed the fine ridge of muscles beside her spine. He unbuttoned the front of her dress and warmed his hand against her breast. He kissed her carefully until she began to kiss extravagantly. He controlled himself and his wife until a sweet mist formed around them both.

  11

  The gray horse wandered frailly on the trail and Chombe spurred him impatiently. Chombe was angry and uncomfortable. He was hungover and sleepless and he had gorged himself on Bonifacio's provisions. He blew his breath away from a belch that forced itself against the sides of his throat. He spurred the horse cruelly, and jerked the girl's rope. The girl looked back anxiously at him, wanting most to do exactly what he wished her to do, willing to be correct and apprehensive about all his wishes. He had taken her. She was afraid to do him a wrong, though she had not yet learned which of her acts were wrong and which of them were right for him. She placed herself exactly in the middle of the trail ahead of him and held her pace so that the choke rope was as tight as she could stand yet not so slack as to make him whip it up and lash the knot against the back of her head. No matter how he had come by her, she knew that he possessed her now and her life depended on him.

  The gray horse could no longer respond to Chombe's gouging spurs. He could barely support Chombe's weight. Luz del Carmen could still jump in response to him and could force her swollen eyes to see him. She had no thought of resting them in the nice darkness of their tight folds. She still jumped at the renewal of her pain. The horse no longer felt or cared about his. The horse wavered off the trail and stopped at the pool of the duck and the hawk. He tugged carefully at the rein and waited for Chombe to give him slack so he could drink.

  "You can drink, little daughter," Chombe said kindly to the girl. "But only a little. Too much will make you sick." He dropped his reins and stepped off the horse, holding the choke rope tightly to the girl. The girl went to her hands and knees on the stone by the edge of the pool and strained with careful intent until her lips touched the sweet water. Chombe coiled the slack in the rope until he stood behind her. He pulled her head off the water to make her stop drinking. She trembled with her longing to drink, relaxing her body toward the water, waving her head, searching for slack so she could lower it to water. Chombe laughed. She amused him so much. She performed every human act with a grace he loved to watch. It surprised him to see how much she wanted plain water, she whom he had always admired as being so fleet, tireless, and strong. He had never thought she might need normal sustenance to make her body function. He let her head down so she could drink fully. He pulled it back so she could not. He let her down so she could barely sip and she had to suck noisily to draw water off the surface. He laughed and began dropping her head into the water and drawing it out before she could drink. Finally he let her drink, became impatient when she took too long and was showing the concern for water that he expected her to show him, and pulled her away. He tied the rope on the high limb of a tree out of her reach.

  He went to the stream and drank a sip or two because the water was there. He bathed his hair and wiped it forward and looked at his reflection in the pool. His face was swollen with sleeplessness and bristling with whiskers that seemed tougher now than any other man's. He was going to sleep awhile in the shade. He smiled with happiness at the prospect of sleeping soundly. He could sleep all day if he wanted to now that he was getting everything he wanted.

  The gray horse groaned, fainted, and fell headfirst into the pool. Chombe went into the water and found the reins to pull the animal's muzzle clear of the water. The horse had drunk too much and foundered. Chombe cursed him and pulled at the dead weight of him. When he saw the horse was dying and leaving his dead weight on top the rifle he went wild. He kicked the horse's belly, jerked on the reins. His underwater kicks had no force and the plunging of his legs sank him deeper into the water. He tired, lost his breath, lost his balance, and stepped off into a hole, completely immersing himself. When he came out of the hole the horse's bridle had come off in his hand and he had badly frightened himself with drowning. He forgot the horse and floundered to the shore. He lay on the hot, dry rocks out of the stream afraid and belching, while his father's gray horse drowned in two feet of water. He allowed his bladder to relax and his urine to warm his pants while he wept with the shock the fear of drowning had caused. He stopped crying when new fear was caused by a voice which asked him, "What class of idiot could drown a horse during a drouth with water so scarce?"

  Chombe raised his head but did not look at the speaker.

  He moved his eyes enough to see that Luz del Carmen was out of sight, hiding. His tears dried completely, immediately. His face became bloodless so quickly it seemed to sop all the moisture and puffiness from itself.

  "You had to come a long way, idiot, to find water enough to drown a horse," Adán Martinillo said. Chombe looked at him and saw that Adán was not pointing his rifle at him. He knows nothing about me, Chombe thought. Nothing at all. He got up smoothly and went to the horse. He took Bonifacio's machete from its scabbard under his stirrup leather. He walked to the bank and sat in the shade in a place where Adán must stand with his back to the girl if he was to watch Chombe.

  Adán rolled up his trousers and waded to the side of the horse. Chombe took off his boots and placed them side by side.

  Adán wondered why the idiot would take his new boots off after they were wet unless to empty them, which he did not. He should put them back on so they would not shrink, but he did not do it. Adán was leaning over the horse trying to uncinch the saddle when he found out the reason. Chombe walked toward his back quietly. Adán was watching him, knowing the range of the machete, not worrying about any weapon but the machete, when Chombe hit him between the shoulders with a rock. Adán saw it coming in time to go with it in a dive into the water. His act of taking a full breath to sustain him underwater was conscious after the rock struck him.

  Adán was surprised by the force and violence of the blow and the decision of Chombe to deliver it. Chombe had grown from a shy, admiring boy to a man-sized coward. Adán relaxed underwater while he waited for the shock of the blow to wear off so he could understand how seriously he was h
urt. He was not hurt. He held a full breath. He let his gear carry him deep. He swam, surfaced, and threw his gear to the bank. He dove underwater again when he saw another rock flying at his head from Chombe's hands. He swam to the opposite bank, ran across the stream over shallow water, and went into the brush on Chombe's side.

  Chombe had laughed when he saw Adán go into the hole in the pool that had scared him with drowning. He watched Adán sink toward the deep center of the pool, sure he had put the man under long enough to drown him. He took his time finding another rock big enough to finish the man if he surfaced. Adán could not save himself now. He was under Chombe's power. Suddenly, he saw he was too late to choose a rock. He saw Adán's white shirt close to the surface. Chombe clawed at rocks. The rock that came loose in time broke in half as it left his hands, missing Adán. He saw Adán swim for the other bank and he ran to pick up the machete. He took the machete and looked up in time to see Adán running down the bank. Chombe ran into the brush away from the girl. He ran on his bare feet over thorns until he whimpered. He went into the Tepochici corral and hid against the rock wall. He calmed his breath and examined his feet. He had not hurt them. He had not been wearing the boots he stole from his father's store long enough to make his feet tender. He was used to going barefoot anyway. He rose and went to the gate, remembering the rifle lying with the gear Adán had thrown out of the water. He was sure Adán would have to make a wide circle through the brush looking for him. This would leave Adán further from the rifle than Chombe.

  Chombe gathered himself to sprint for the rifle. He took both Adán Martinillo's heels in the side of his head. Adán had been waiting on top the rock wall. Chombe rolled and sat up. He turned and saw no man to hurt with the machete. He got to his feet and felt strong hands in his hair and on the wrist that held the machete. He was guided like a wheelbarrow for three running steps and his head was driven into the rock wall at the same time his shoulder was wrenched upward. He released the machete and saw it spin away. He relaxed on the ground against the wall. Hands again took him by the hair and the wrist, jerked him to his feet with no chance of allowing his pain to clear, and ran him back to the pool. He did not whimper. He was not angry. He was helpless with pain. He was being delayed, but he knew he was going to kill this man. He had known it all his life. Then he realized he was not being stopped at the edge of the stream. He screamed, flailed, and reached for the force he could not see, reached to find and feel and identify the force he no longer could be sure was a man as he was driven down under the surface of the water. He was drowned, revived, and drowned again, and then dragged to the bank.