The Woodcarver's Secret (Samantha Sweet Mysteries)

by Connie Shelton

  A bell clanged and Bertha peered around the trunk of the big tree. Mamá stood on the porch, swinging the short rope against the brass bell that had been a gift at Christmas from Papá’s brother. Ringing it was a far easier way to get Ruben’s attention from five acres away than standing on the porch and shouting.

  “Cena!” Theresa called out. The scent of beans wafted from the open doorway.

  Bertha scrambled to her feet and ran toward the house.

  “Niña, estás creciendo otra vez.”

  Of course she was growing. She would soon be a big girl and would be allowed to attend classes at the one-room schoolhouse in Talpa. She had overheard the discussion between the adults, how now that New Mexico was a state the children would be required to attend school. The classes were conducted in English! The thought of learning the odd-sounding language frightened Bertha a little. Would she know what to do when she got to school?

  Abuela couldn’t seem to get over the idea that Nuevo Mexico was part of the United States and was called New Mexico by everyone now. The idea of statehood was slow to take hold out here in the territory. Why change the old ways?

  “Ah, Bertita, there you are,” said Abuela. “Wash your hands.” She put an arm around Bertha’s shoulders and steered her toward the wash basin near the back door. “Before your papá muddies the water.”

  Bertha swished her hands in the basin of water and started to pick up the scrap of rag her mother kept handy as a towel.

  “Eh-eh ... usa el jabon.”

  Bertha picked up the chunk of homemade soap and, feeling her mother’s watchful eye, worked her fingers around it until the bits of dirt and the green from the fistfuls of grass she had pulled this morning were gone.

  “Mucho mejor.” Theresa gave her daughter a pat on the head and pointed toward the table. “Don’t start until your father is here.”

  The freshly made tortillas smelled so good that Bertha nearly forgot her mother’s instruction. Her hand was halfway to the basket before she pulled it back. Her father’s footsteps sounded on the wooden porch, and Bertha planted her hands in her lap as a way of forcing herself to wait.

  “I’m done in the field today,” Ruben said as he washed his hands in the same water Bertha had used. “That burro and I, we are having words!”

  Theresa laughed and gave him a kiss on the neck.

  “This afternoon I shall go to town for supplies.” He glanced at Bertha as he dried his hands. “Maybe you would like to ride along?”

  Bertha was half afraid of the stubborn old burro, especially after her father’s ‘words’ with the animal, but the trip to town was a diversion from playing outside and far more fun than helping Mamá to sweep the floors or wash clothes. Her face lit up and Papá gave her a wink.

  Once he loaded his plate with pinto beans and corn tortillas and topped them with Abuela’s famous chile salsa, Mamá spooned beans onto Bertha’s plate and then the women served themselves. Although she’d felt ravenous earlier, in the excitement of making the four-mile journey to town Bertha couldn’t concentrate on food. She nibbled at a tortilla and finished her beans, not asking for more.

  The moment Ruben stood, Bertha was at his side.

  “Don’t forget your bonnet,” Mamá reminded.

  Bertha submitted to having the cloth strings of the homemade hat tied under her chin.

  “Before you start school, you must learn to do this yourself,” her mother said. Everything these days revolved around the big event, and Bertha realized she would probably be the first in her family to attend school. The idea gave her a small thrill.

  Papá grabbed her under the arms and hefted her up to the blanket on the back of the burro, then climbed up behind her. The animal seemed much happier with this burden than it had earlier with the harness and plow. They set off down the two-rut track that ran past their house.

  Talpa barely deserved the designation as a town, although everyone called it that. It consisted of a dirt road flanked by a general store, a repair shop owned by an old man who could perform blacksmithing duties or rebuild a piece of furniture, the one-room schoolhouse, and a half-dozen homes. Ruben brought the donkey to a stop outside the repair shop and tied the reins to the hitching post outside. From a canvas pouch he pulled out a broken piece of harness.

  “Stay here,” he said to Bertha after he lifted her down from the animal’s back. “I will be only a minute.”

  He called out to the old man and they started discussing what needed to be done to fix the harness, while Bertha stared at the school building. It seemed so big, with a wide front door. You had to climb three steps to get to it, and there was a little pointed tower on top with a bell in it, a bell much bigger than the dinner bell Mamá used at home. The adobe walls looked familiar though, thick and brown like theirs at home, and the window frames and door were painted blue. Abuela said that was for luck. She had personally repainted the ones at home when the old paint began to flake away. Bertha felt reassured that the paint on the school door was not flaking.

  “Lista, niña?”

  Her father’s hand touched her shoulder and she brightened, already envisioning the wonders of shopping at the place with the hand-painted sign saying The Store. She held her breath as they entered through the door where you could see inside through squares of glass with wood strips between them. If she was a very good girl and didn’t actually ask, sometimes Papá would buy her a piece of candy. If she was allowed to choose her own, she would pick the kind that were two for a penny. That way, she could eat one on the way home and have another for later.

  The store never failed to fascinate her—surely you could buy anything in the world here! At the front stood the candy counter, with bins of brightly colored jelly beans, fruit-flavored hard candy, peanuts covered with a dark reddish candy shell, dabs of chocolate shaped like stars ... so many that it was hard to choose only one. Bertha knew the selections by heart.

  Along an aisle to the right were the next best thing to candy—toys. Wooden tinker toys, shiny marbles, a fascinating wind-up carousel ... there was even a beautiful doll wearing a glamorous long dress, the like of which she had never actually seen on a real person. Bertha yearned for that doll but she knew they could never afford it. She had once asked her father if he would get it for her; his answer contained so much pain that she knew better than to ask again.

  Farther down the aisle, the store contained dishes and pans, lamps, bolts of cloth, oil lanterns, and hardware items. Her father was looking at some hinges for their broken gate. Bertha wandered to the store’s other side, where another aisle ran parallel, clear to the back. Tins of vegetables and loaves of bread seemed like funny items to buy at a store. Her mother put up the tomatoes, green beans, and fruit from their garden in glass jars, and who would consider buying bread when anyone could bake their own. She skimmed over the odd packages and looked ahead.

  Across the back wall of the store was a wooden counter with a window that had a metal grill across it. The post office. Her mother bought stamps here and sometimes mailed a letter to her brother, Uncle Patricio. They told Bertha she had met him, when he returned from the war, but she had no recollection of it. They said she was only a few months old then. Now he was married and lived in a big city called Chicago and went by the crisp-sounding name of Patrick.

  Heavy footsteps on the hardwood floor told her that her father had finished in the hardware area, so Bertha scampered to the front, ready at the candy counter where he would see her when he pulled coins out to pay for the hinges. She crossed her fingers that there would be a penny or two left over.

  “Mr. Martinez, don’t forget your mail!” called the proprietress, a thick-waisted blonde woman named Mrs. Frohlsen.

  She was moving around behind the postal counter and came out with a box, wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. Bertha’s eyes widened. A package! She remembered only one package ever arriving in the mail; it came at Christmas. She stared down the aisle as the woman came forward, sizeable hips near
ly bumping a display of kitchen towels, carrying the package. Her father’s eyes registered as much astonishment as her own.

  Mrs. Frohlsen handed the box to Ruben and he turned to Bertha.

  “Hold this, please, chica.” He held it out and Bertha took it while he reached into his pocket to pay for the hardware.

  On the top of the package were written some words in black ink. She felt amazement well up inside—if only she had already gone to school, she would know what they said. She held the parcel carefully balanced on her forearms. It was nearly as wide as her small shoulders but it wasn’t too heavy for her. She stared at every detail of the lettering, wanting to memorize it and remember this special moment.

  Automatically, she followed her father outside and across the road where the burro remained tied. He spoke briefly to the man in the repair shop and came out with the harness he had left earlier. Taking the mysterious package from Bertha, he stuffed both items into his canvas bag and slung it over the burro’s back, then lifted Bertha astride it and resumed his own position behind her. She watched the rectangular lump in the bag, bouncing slightly with each step. It wasn’t until they were nearly home that she realized she’d forgotten all about the candy.

  * * *

  “Goodness, what could this be?” Theresa said when Ruben set the package on the kitchen table. She peered at the writing on the top. “It’s from Patricio.”

  Consuelo looked up from her metate, where she had been busy grinding corn.

  Ruben found a reason to go out to the small board shack he used for storage of the farm implements. He always seemed to leave the room when Patricio’s name came up.

  Theresa cut the string off the box with a kitchen knife, then carefully removed the brown paper and folded it neatly for future use. She lifted the flaps on the cardboard box inside and pulled out some wadded sheets of newspaper. These, too, she smoothed and folded. Out came an envelope with her name written on it. Below that, some sort of rectangular wooden item. She reached in and pulled out a carved box.

  It was not much larger than a cigar box, carved in a quilted pattern with some small, dusty stones mounted in each X of the pattern. Not exactly rustico, but not very finely done either. She lifted the hinged lid and saw that it was empty.

  “Maybe the letter explains,” she said, running her finger under the gummed flap and withdrawing a single sheet of white paper.

  “Dear Theresita . . .” she began reading. “He asks how we are doing,” she said, looking up at Consuelo, then to Bertha. Her eyes traveled side to side across the lines and her mouth made little movements.

  “Read it,” Consuelo urged.

  “He uses some English words I do not know,” Theresa admitted.

  Consuelo scoffed. “After the Army and now in the big city—he’s forgetting his heritage.”

  “It’s mostly in Spanish.” She began to read aloud.

  “My dear sister, please keep this box and care for it. A buddy—” Her brows knitted in puzzlement over the word. “A buddy in France gave it to me. Believe it or not, I think that this box saved my life during the war. I do not know how to explain it any better than that. Now, we no longer have a place for it in our home but it is dear to me even so.”

  Theresa looked up at her mother-in-law.

  “It’s that gringo wife of his,” Consuelo said. “You remember how she looked at us when they came to New Mexico after their marriage. The same way she must look at this old box.”

  “It’s not very pretty,” Theresa admitted. “Not the sort of thing most women would choose, especially in the big city where rustico is not the style.”

  Consuelo nodded grudgingly and went back to grinding the corn with a vengeance. “No place for it in their home. It’s that Deborah, having three children so quickly, who caused that problem. A wonder they have room for all of them.”

  Theresa winced.

  “I’m sorry, hija, I didn’t mean—” They never spoke anymore of the difficulties during Bertha’s delivery, of the fact that Theresa had nearly died. In five years it had become apparent there would be no more children in this house.

  “I don’t know what I will do with it,” Theresa said, reaching to place the wooden box on an open shelf above the cookstove.

  “Mamá, I can use it.” Bertha’s face glowed with excitement.

  “For what?”

  “Um ... for my treasures!”

  “What treasures do you have, little one?”

  Bertha registered a moment’s consternation. She raced out of the kitchen. Two minutes later she had returned with a feather, deep blue, from a jay.

  “This,” she said proudly. “. . . and I have some ... some other things.”

  Theresa looked at her daughter. “You’ll break it. You heard what Uncle Patricio said in the letter. It is an important thing to him.”

  “I’ll never break it, I promise, Mamá. It will be my greatest treasure.”

  “Where do you get such words—mayor tesoro? Hija, you will be a scholar one day.”

  “So, may I have the box?”

  Theresa reached to the shelf. “If you keep it safe in your room where Abuela can watch out for its safety as well.”

  From her mother-in-law’s studied indifference, Theresa doubted that this was a guarantee but at least she had somewhere other than the crowded kitchen to keep the box. If Patricio were ever to visit again, at least the box would not have the grease residue of fried tortillas on it.

  Bertha held out her hands and carefully took the box. Holding it gently she set it on the table, opened the lid and placed the blue feather inside. She left the kitchen and walked slowly down the hall to the back bedroom.

  “She’s a smart girl, our little Bertita,” Theresa murmured. “I wonder how she thinks of these things.”

  “One day perhaps I shall teach her in the ways of the curandera,” said Consuelo. “I will soon need a protégé to take over my work.”

  * * *

  Bertha reached under her bed for the carved box. Her fingers, she realized, had grown long and slender, as had her legs and arms. Her breasts were emerging and a week ago she had been shocked to see blood in her panties, almost panicky until Abuela explained that it was a natural event. That day, she began her studies in the ways of the curandera and today she was to go along to attend a birth for Donna Salazar who, only a year ago, had been a bride dancing at her wedding and before that, a shy teen whom Bertha remembered from the days when they studied together at the one-room school. Donna in sixth grade had tutored Bertha, grade three, in reading English and doing mathematics.

  Bertha sat on her bed and opened the carved box, smiling at the little collection of treasures she had accumulated over the years—a red leaf and a shiny stone and a bird egg, in addition to the blue jay feather she had quickly picked up the day she talked her mother into letting her keep the box. Now, she could use the box for far more important things: her growing collection of dried herbs. She placed the childhood curiosities on the quilt and studied the box itself.

  A shaft of light from the window hit the very spot on her lap where the box sat and she noticed for the first time a very faint bit of carving on the inner edge of the lid, perhaps the letters V-I … But the word, or words, were so faint that she couldn’t make them out. As she had several times over the years, she wondered about the age of the box. She ran her fingers over the colored stones that decorated it, realizing now that they were not nearly as valuable as she had imagined them to be when she was five years old.

  The inside of the box had never been finely sanded smooth, she could tell, but from use and wear it had obtained a certain patina. As long as there were not deep grooves it would work for storage of her herbs. She ran her fingers around the edges of the box’s interior, checking it.

  Suddenly a jolt, like an electric shock, traveled up her arm. She fell to the floor and the room faded away.

  “Bertita—Bertita!” Mamá’s voice came down some far tunnel. “Consuelo—come quickly!”r />
  Abuela’s voice came to her and Bertha’s eyes struggled to open.

  “She was unconscious on the floor,” her mother was saying.

  “Let me see.”

  Bertha felt her grandmother’s gentle touch, the wise old hands cradling her head, subtly feeling for wounds. She cleared her throat and tried to speak but the words came out scratchily.

  “I’m okay. I think I am.” She rolled to her side and slowly sat up.

  Where was the box? She looked around, afraid it might have crashed to the floor and broken, but it sat beside her unharmed. Her mother fluttered like a nervous sparrow but Abuela looked deeply into her eyes, a knowing gaze. Something had changed.

  Bertha wanted to avert her eyes but couldn’t. She realized they would probably never speak of this.

  “Come, dear one. It’s time to go.”

  It took Bertha a minute to realize she meant that they were needed at Donna Salazar’s home. It was not lost upon her that Abuela had used a grown-up endearment. She stood up, willing back a wave of dizziness, and straightened her skirt. Abuela busied herself gathering her kit and finding the black wool shawl she’d worn in public since Abuelo had died, before Bertha was born.

  Papá had already hitched the donkey to the small wagon for them. He would have offered to drive them in the farm truck he’d acquired when Bertha was seven—she still remembered the day he came home so proudly in the used Ford—but the vehicle was perilously low on gas and there was no money right now to buy any.

  “Modern conveniences,” Abuela said, at her side. “Pah! The truck has no gas and the radio brings only bad news.”

  Bertha couldn’t disagree—no jobs in the cities, no money in anyone’s hands. She helped her grandmother up to the wagon and climbed onto the seat beside her, taking the reins. More often than not, when Abuela cured someone of a deadly illness she came home with a chicken or a sack of potatoes rather than cash. At least they were eating.