The Woodcarver's Secret (Samantha Sweet Mysteries)

by Connie Shelton

  “They have their own church,” Carlito responded absently. “Maybe they think the same thing about us.”

  Sometimes he wondered whether Ramona’s idea of educating the children at the Catholic mission school was a good one, although he had to admit that the three who were old enough to attend impressed him with their reading and writing, despite the strong ideas they brought home. He had heard the stories of battles between the English and Spanish along the Caribbean coastal areas—battles for territory and natural resources. He supposed they would sort it out somehow. Meanwhile, he wondered whether he might find work in that area, might have access to some of those beautiful hardwoods.

  Little Enrique had stroked the box in his father’s hand and Carlito suddenly felt the wood growing warm. He stared at the object and quickly set it back on the table, out of the youngster’s reach. Enrique began to whine.

  “Come, boys, let’s see what Mamá has made for lunch.”

  Fights among nations, artifacts that demonstrated strange tendencies … he wanted to ignore it all and simply get back to his art. He had never seen the sea but an artist he had worked with on the church at San Antonio a few years ago had described it—vivid turquoise water with waves that broke over the reefs. The man had showed Carlito two paintings he’d done when he journeyed there, breathtaking scenes of a land Carlito could barely imagine from his experiences in dusty desert lands. He would talk to his wife later about the idea of moving, just one more time.

  “No! No, no!” Ramona screamed. “We have five children, three of them in school. I do not want to uproot the family again, only to go to a place we know nothing about. I am tired of starting over.”

  By this time tears were pouring from her eyes and the four children who were able ran from the room. The baby squalled on Ramona’s lap and she stood abruptly and carried her to the bedroom. A moment later she came back, wiping her cheeks with her apron. Taking up a towel, she protected her hand and lifted the metal coffeepot from the cook fire in the corner of the kitchen. She poured the black brew into two cups and took her seat across from him. She seemed much calmer and Carlito took hope.

  “Neither I nor my children will leave this place,” she announced in a voice that was quiet and far more frightening to him than her earlier hysterical shouts. “Not until the children have received proper schooling. When they are older and can make their own choices about staying or going, then we might discuss this again. Until then, my answer is still no.”

  It was the first time he’d ever struck her and the violence of his reaction shocked them both. The cup she had lifted to her mouth flew across the room, shattering against the adobe wall.

  “You, woman, have no say in the matter,” he said through clenched teeth.

  And with that, he stomped out the door. The chilly air in the yard cooled his emotion immediately. Overhead, stars sparkled brilliantly in the clear desert sky. Their small rented house stood a hundred yards from the home of their landlord, separated from the larger one by a chicken coop and a pen of wooden stakes that held three goats. At this time of year, with the doors and windows closed, no one had likely overheard the altercation. With his fingers, he raked his hair back from his face. Exhaled deeply.

  They fought, certainly, as all married people did. But the fire in their arguments almost always sparked the flames between them in the bedroom and a disagreement nearly always ended in passion of the other sort. He feared it would not be so this time.

  He set out walking, trying to reconcile his deep inner desire to move along, to be in a different place, with his wife’s practical ideas about raising a family with stability. Up the road, toward the center of town he trudged. His heart ached with the yearning to leave, to explain again to her how important this was to his very soul. He came to the church, pressed his palms against the still-warm adobe, laid his forehead there for a moment. He could not bring himself to go inside and share his anguish with the priest.

  A sob escaped. He quelled it, turned and started the half-mile walk back home. With each step he felt his spirit drain away. The artist inside had become dulled with the lack of inspiration in this tiny Mexican town in south Tejas, the same disincentive that inevitably fell over him once he had completed the project for which he’d chosen the locale. He could only paint bright flowers on so many plates and cups, make one or two murals in the home of the town’s one wealthy man, talk the priests into a certain number of Biblical scenes to adorn the walls of the predictably small local mission church. And then each town lost its allure and he was ready to move on. Perhaps his mother had been right when she cautioned him about taking a wife. A family was not for the man with wanderlust.

  Chill bumps rose on his arms as he walked the two-track road; he’d not thought to grab his serape or a hat. His pace quickened although he dreaded to see Ramona again. Had his slap raised a welt on her beautiful face? And what harm would it do to stay awhile longer? San Ignacio, the next town down the road, could be new territory for his wares. He could force himself to paint plates and cups for a few more years.

  Years. The thought depressed him. But he walked on.

  In the kitchen, the fire was banked for the night, the dishes cleared and cleaned, the broken cup nowhere to be seen. Ramona stood with her back to the door, placing clean plates in a stack on the narrow storage shelf. On the floor the children’s pallets were neatly laid out and four sets of large dark eyes watched, waiting, it seemed, to pull their blankets over their heads if his foul mood had followed him home. Ramona turned, ready to protect her babies if that were the case. Carlito gave each of them—Miguel, Lorenzo, Francesca and Enrique—a smile and a wish for good dreams.

  To Ramona he said only one thing: “We will stay.”

  He went into the bedroom where tiny Aurelia lay asleep in the center of the marital bed. Normally he would gently pick her up and deposit her in the wooden cradle beside them—one of the few pieces of furniture that had followed all the moves of their lives together—and he would snuggle into the warmth of his wife and they would laugh together, to touch, to kiss. Tonight, he left the baby in the center of the bed, crawled under the quilt on his side, and turned to face the wall.

  * * *

  Carlito coughed and his paintbrush wavered, making a crooked black line across the bright yellow sunflower before him. He stifled the cough with the crook of his arm and then sipped of the honey and water mixture Ramona had left in a cup for him. A damp cloth removed most of the black smear on the current plate, part of a large set he hoped to sell to a shop in San Geraldo. He was nearly finished with the big job and the end could not come soon enough. He swore that if he ever saw another sunflower design he would kill himself.

  “Ready for your haircut?” Ramona asked, peering through the open door from the yard. “I’ve finished the boys.”

  “Papá! Papá! Look at my work from school,” Francesca shouted, brushing past her mother and holding up a small slate. “I can write all my letters now.”

  He set down his brush, more than willing to take a break from the tedious work. “That’s beautiful, hija,” he said to his seven-year-old. “You are making your papá very proud.”

  “Me too!” Little Aurelia could not hold still. She danced around the back stoop as he walked outside and showed him a collection of squiggles she had made with a stick in the dirt. “My letters!”

  He laughed and patted her head. “Very good. You will soon write a book!”

  Ramona pointed at the stool sitting near the door. Around the base of it were piles of hair clippings. In the winter she allowed the males of the family to let their hair grow, mainly for warmth but also because she did not relish doing the job inside the house and having to sweep for days to clean up the hairs. So this was a spring ritual—everyone got a haircut at once. She brandished the straight razor and then draped a towel around her husband’s shoulders.

  “Ah, Carlito, look at this gray in your hair since last autumn!” She cut off several inches and held out the stra
nd for him to see. “Are you becoming an old man, my darling?”

  “No more than you are becoming an old woman.”

  She laughed. Lucky for him she had not taken it as an insult. She took another strand of hair between her fingers, aiming with the razor to shorten it. Carlito held up a hand.

  “Momentito,” he gasped, a second before he erupted in another fit of coughing.

  Ramona stepped around to look at his face. “This is becoming worse.”

  “Es nada,” he insisted, working to hold another cough inside.

  “It is not nothing. Have you talked to the doctor?”

  “That gringo in San Geraldo? He wants to take my blood. The man is un idiota.” He cleared his throat loudly and forced himself to sit still.

  Ramona worked quietly for a moment before speaking again. “I have been thinking about this, Carlito. I worry for your health. I worry for your spirit. You are not a happy man.”

  He breathed very cautiously. Where was she going with this?

  “The son of Isabella Contarde came through town last week. He has been living in Belize, on the coast, for five years now and he says things have improved there and the country is becoming much more prosperous. British settlers have gone there, wealthy men and their families, to oversee the log cutting and to keep peace.” Her words tumbled out quickly now. “He says there are still problems at times but that the settlements of these wealthy men are providing work for many. I think we should go there.”

  He turned to look at her. Was this a joke?

  “Don’t move! I just cut too much from one place.” She placed her hands on each side of his head and forced him to face the goat pen.

  “Ramona, please do not joke about this.” He would not become hopeful again, only to have his dreams thwarted.

  She combed through his hair with quick strokes and then stepped around to stand in front of him.

  “I am serious, amor. It is time.”

  Obviously, she had been thinking of this for some days. He felt a flutter of joy in his chest. To leave the desert where the winters were cold and the summers blistering hot. He remembered the paintings he had seen, all those years ago, of tropical beaches and turquoise water.

  “Miguel and Lorenzo are old enough now to provide help,” Ramona said as she began cutting again. “Even Francesca and Enrique will be far less of a burden than they were at a younger age. Aurelia is still small. But she is strong and willful. She can be entertained by the others teaching her what they have learned from school.”

  Somehow he knew that was at the heart of Ramona’s decision. Finally, her children had the basics of their education. They would not grow up to be ignorant peasants in a dusty Mexican pueblo.

  “I am almost finished with the sunflower plates,” he said. “We can begin packing soon?”

  “Immediately. In fact, if the plates are not already promised, pack them. We can sell or trade some along the way for food.”

  He reached over his shoulder and took her hand, clearing his throat to cover the emotion that welled up. “Thank you,” he said simply.

  By the end of the day the children had picked up the excitement and were racing around underfoot. Ramona decided that they must be given tasks or they would make her crazy.

  “Enrique, stop running in and out the door! Help your father pack his art supplies. Francesca and Lorenzo, help me in the kitchen. Miguel, put my washtub in the wagon and then you can begin carrying out the items as we pack them.”

  Carlito watched with a certain admiration. His lovely wife had done this so often that she knew how to organize everything perfectly. He set to work making wooden crates for the pottery and instructed Enrique on packing everything safely in straw.

  Three days later, their accumulated household items were aboard the wagon, except for the most important cooking pots, a supply of food, and their bedding—the items that would be pulled out each night to make camp along the journey.

  “What about this, papá?” Enrique asked, handing Carlito the last few boxes they had filled together. He was pointing to a high shelf and the carved wooden box old señor Aragon had given to Carlito as a child.

  “Hmm … I don’t think I need it,” Carlito said, thinking of the wagon that was now crammed with their things.

  “Papá! It is special. If you don’t want it, I do!”

  Carlito reached for the ugly old box. He’d been equally insistent as a boy; he remembered his father saying that he would have to hold it on his lap since their carts were so full. He smiled indulgently and gave his own son the same advice. Enrique clasped the box to his chest and ran from the room.

  The journey took months but every step was worth it, Carlito decided when he caught his first glimpse of the sea. His Mexican artist friend had not begun to capture the fantastic shades of the blue-green water and white sand, or the curl of the waves as they rolled toward shore and gently broke in foamy trails. He walked to the water’s edge, let the swells break over his bare feet.

  A bubble of happiness welled up inside him and burst in a glorious outpouring of joy.

  * * *

  Enrique watched in fascination as his father exchanged words and gestures with the Englishman who wore multiple layers of outrageous clothing, garments that must surely feel like an oppressive mantle of death in the humid heat of midday. Neither man understood the other’s words—that much was obvious as they signaled what they were trying to convey. But at the end of an hour, the Martinez family had a small wooden house to live in and the Englishman with the improbable name of Mr. Clarence Smythe-Brookington (Enrique could not even pronounce this) had extracted a promise from Carlito to paint portraits of the man’s beautiful wife and two children.

  Enrique ran back to the wagon, excited to tell his siblings that he had learned two English words—house and slave. The latter referred to the great number of people he saw with skin even darker than that of the Indians of Mexico’s interior. These slaves moved with a frightened demeanor and they all had jobs moving the heavy logs being cut from the surrounding jungle. As for the house, it had a wooden floor and the family was specifically instructed to use only the designated fireplace for cooking indoors. There were two bedrooms, which meant the children no longer slept in the kitchen. He wondered how they would keep warm at night but discovered, after sundown, that the tropical heat never quite went away. Luckily, the windows in this new place could be opened to the coastal breeze which kept them from roasting in their beds—unfortunately, they also let in the mosquitos.

  Ramona and the children spent the first day unpacking and setting up the house, while Carlito was shown to the special room inside Brookington’s big house where he would work. Enrique caught glimpses of two children with extremely white faces and pale hair, both dressed in white clothing head to toe and trailing behind a stern-looking older woman like little ghosts. He smiled at them and received tentative smiles in return, although the woman quickly shooed them back inside from the wide porch of that huge house.

  Miguel and Lorenzo had piled their clothing on the big bed that the three boys would share, disappearing toward the shore, and Enrique found himself snagged by his mother who was setting dishes and cooking pots in place in the kitchen.

  “Put away all the clothing,” she instructed, “ and help Francesca tidy your bedroom. Francesca can watch the baby while I make lunch and you will go find your brothers.”

  He started to protest the unfairness of having to stay inside and work while the other two boys escaped, but it was simpler to do as she asked rather than fight about it. Plus, this way he could have control over the bedroom arrangement. He found Aurelia sitting up, a trick she had recently learned, in the middle of the narrow bed that would belong to the girls. Francesca had brought in the wooden crates their father made for the journey and she was folding her own skirts and shawl and placing them in one. Two more of the boxes sat on the floor.

  Well, if his brothers could not be bothered with work, then they would not reap the be
nefits either. He picked up Miguel’s extra pair of pants and the two shirts cast off by their father that nearly fit the oldest boy now; into the larger box they went, followed by Lorenzo’s things. He shoved it under the edge of the bed. In the other crate he set the carved wooden box that was now his prized possession then began folding his shirts. He’d told no one about his experience under the stars one night during their travels.

  It had been the darkest night of the new moon, with only the glow of the Milky Way and the planets above, when Enrique woke suddenly. All the others were asleep on their pallets under the wagon but he swore a voice had spoken to him. He listened, the hairs on his arms rising. No sound but the soft breathing of his family and a heavy sigh from the horse that was hobbled a few yards away. It came again—like a whisper. He lifted his head from the roll of clothing he used as a pillow. Cradled beside his stomach, the carved box felt warm. He saw that the colored stones on it sparkled faintly in the starlight.

  He slid out from under his blanket and edged away from the wagon, keeping the box with him. Barefoot, he padded through the dust to the fire pit his father had made the night before, where his mother had cooked their supper. The embers gave off a faint glow, visible only because the night itself was so dark. He sat cross-legged on the ground and opened the box’s lid. He imagined that the interior glowed slightly too, but that was impossible. The stars were simply giving out more light than one would imagine … it was because the desert all around was utterly black in the depth of the night.

  Enrique brushed a dusting from his father’s charcoal stick out of a corner of the box. The glow intensified. Hmm. His interest perked up. He ran two fingers around the interior edge of the thing. At the instant the fingers completed the circuit a jolt of energy shot up his arm and into his shoulder. His last thought was to keep the box away from the remains of the fire.