by Glover, Dan
The trap door to her hiding place rattled as if someone was pulling upon it in an attempt to open it and in a fit of fear Evalena opened the tiny vial she held in her fingers and poured out the contents to rub into her hand just as father had said.
Or had he? Maybe he had said not to handle it. She couldn’t remember and the terrifying noises sounding over top of her made her head hurt when she tried to recall his words... from outside the house she could hear her father crying out as if in pain, something she'd never before heard. Shuddering with fear and not knowing what else to do she poured the sand back into the vial and put the tiny lid back on it.
Shutting her eyes and putting her hands over her ears Evalena stayed as still as she could for fear the men above might hear her breathing. Though she thought it impossible she must have fallen asleep for when she opened her eyes sunlight was leaking through the cracks in the foundation telling her that a new day had dawned.
Perhaps she'd gotten dust in her eye for when she rubbed her face to clear it of sleep her right eye tingled for a brief moment and then it went black. Or was it in fact a bit of sand from the amulet? Had she been blinded? Why didn’t her father warn her of that eventuality? She'd have taken more care. Later, though, the eye began to see... only not what the good left eye saw.
Sitting still for a long while Evalena listened for any sign of movement above her... the creak of a floorboard, a door opening, or a footstep... anything to alert her to the presence of the enemy... finally after what seemed like hours she went to the trap door and tried to open it. It was blocked, however. Someone had set something large and heavy over top of it making it impossible to lift.
Panic blossomed like a cloud of butterflies suddenly taking flight in the pit of her stomach replacing the hard knot of fear that had been tied there the night before. She was trapped. Father would've never done such a thing to her so it had to be one of the intruders. They knew she was down here and had place a heavy piece of furniture over the trap door so that she would slowly die of thirst. Or perhaps they planned on coming back for her later...
If light could find its way into the cellar, she could find a way out. The walls which seemed solid were in fact upon examination comprised of flagstone heaped upon one another with but a smattering of mortar in between. Many of them were loose enough to pry out and within a few minutes Evalena was free of the musty cellar and weeping in the woods where she lay hidden in the tall iron weed to mourn her father.
Her right eye itched terribly. The sight was slowly returning but not like before... it was as if she could perceive the undercurrents of the way the world was put together, not simply the surface of things like she was used to seeing.
Hidden in the undergrowth and afraid to raise her head until night fell lest she be seen she could nonetheless by holding a hand over her left eye and allowing the right one free range determine with wisdom the nature of that which lay behind the heretofore obscuring veil of physical matter.
It was as if she was in a dream yet she knew she was awake by the way she could hear the ever-present sussurating sea, sense the buzzing of insects, and feel the bite of the Cuban sun on her unprotected skin. Shaking her head she tried but failed to dispel the certainty she felt over the death of her father.
A body hung from the oak tree in front of their house swinging like a macabre pendulum with its neck twisted into such an unnatural position she knew that he was dead. Swarms of flies buzzed around him covering his face and his clothing that had brown patches coloring them... doubtlessly dried blood and urine. Evalena wanted to run to her father, to chase away the flies, and to cut him down, but she knew better. The men who had done the deed might return at any time and if they did she would be hanging next to her father.
At the same time, however, she couldn’t be sure it was him. The corpse was so beaten and bloated it could have been any one of the islanders. She hadn’t the courage to go close enough to verify the identity of the hanged man and instead when night finally fell she turned and fled, eventually making her way to the shoreline.
Though she called to him as loudly as she dared the cat didn't appear. Had he been frightened away by the mayhem of the night before? It distressed her to leave Adame behind yet she had always heard it said how cats could fend for themselves. Besides, he had been touched by the stone. Perhaps its power would protect him until they might one day meet again.
Father had always told Evalena that life and death were but different sides of one coin twirling through the murkiness of night... there could never be one without the other. It had sometimes irked her that her father often spoke to her in metaphors and parables which she was unable to work out for herself and now that he was gone, the mystery of his knowledge was lost forever.
"Cuando una puerta se cierra, otra se abre."
When one door closes, another opens... he was right. All her fathers had always been right. Trapped inside the cellar she'd found another opening and if as he had said life was but to die it too was a truism not to be disregarded as merely so many old folk tales sung by washed out old women and men with no teeth.
She couldn’t help but notice how Church was much like all her fathers and there were many times when Evalena wished the boy could have met the men before they took leave of the world. Perhaps in that meeting Church might've come to see his place in the grand scheme of things, his own personal tale.
She knew the big man from the hacienda would come for Church. Rancher Ford was too proud not to know his son when the boy was living but a chicken's flight from his father's grand palace. If the man had left well enough alone, Evalena told herself she would've been content being who and what she was. But when Rancher Ford began to insinuate himself into Church's life she saw the opportunity to enrich her own personal destiny beyond any measure.
She imagined that everyone was born for something though from her experiences in the world most people walked about in a daze without any idea of what their fortunes entailed. They worked at jobs they hated, stayed with people they detested, and for fear of dying they keep walking upon the well-traveled roads while shunning any opportunity to discover who they really were.
Each of her fathers had taught Evalena what they knew including how to live a life of wealth and deal with one of dearth if need be. While he lived her last father made sure that his daughter wanted for nothing. With but a sacred touch he turned iron into gold and chunks of coal became diamonds in his grasp.
When he passed away into the great unknown she thought he might have provided for her from beyond his grave but it wasn’t to be. With her father gone Evalena gradually slipped into a life of poverty and in time she grew used to it.
She now suspected that a single grain of that oddly colored sand must have remained in the palm of her hand that night and when she rubbed her eye it became lodged beneath the lid or so it felt. Rubbing did no good nor did washing the eye. Gradually the grain of sand changed her eyeball into something all together alien and caused her to hide away from the world.
But she desired more than that. If the boon of the sand that took her eye hadn't occurred she might well have become a famous actress, a movie star seen by millions of people every day and night. She might've been endowed with the riches to buy a mansion in Beverly Hills where all the beautiful people lived.
Instead, she was forced to live like a flea-bitten dog in a chabola the size of a henhouse and she was fortunate to have that for a home. If not for the generosity of her idiot of a relative she might still be hiding in the brothel back in Mexico City. Even there she couldn't make a living. No one wanted to be with a one-eyed soothsayer of a whore.
Yet through all the hardships she endured she felt fortunate. She knew of the piedra and with its powers she could manipulate events both near and far. How much greater would her magic become if she once again laid her hands upon the long lost treasure and claimed it for her own?
"I'm going to the Triple Six hacienda, Tia. I'll be home before mother to start her dinner."
It was as if the child was rubbing her nose in the stink of his newfound freedom. Still, he was fifteen years old now and fast becoming the man he was destined to be. Each day he looked a little more like his father and sometimes she thought she caught sight of her own dark magic lingering in the boy's eyes. Evalena wondered if the powers might leak down through the generations and pool into Church.
One thing she knew: the boy would bring suffering to the life of everyone he met. Still, the world was made of hardship and sharp trials and anyone who walked the earth was bound for disaster in the end. Even with all their power her fathers couldn't forestall that eventuality.
It pained her a good deal that she had the gift of prophecy when it came to others yet her own personal myth was hidden from her as if a veil had been drawn over her one good eye by the dark gods she worshipped so fervently. Perhaps they teased her as her father had warned that they would... indeed as he did. It was the price one paid for the power instilled by the gods.
Evalena longed to change places with Yani. She desired—in fact she deserved—to live in the hacienda. She saw herself sleeping upon sheets of silk and rising to the soft tapping of the maid at her door informing her that breakfast was ready to be served in bed. Such splendor was wasted on men like Rancher Ford and his obese wife who was gone all the time and who'd never known one moment of wanting in her life.
Did Rancher Ford still have eyes for Yani? She suspected that he did though she also sensed how the man was fickle as a red headed sandpiper and was bound to alight upon any branch with a bird upon it that stayed still long enough. Still, the man had two sons now and her foresight told her only one would inherit the vast ranch and all its wealth while the other perished.
For her own part, Evalena always thought her father would give back to her the most treasured possession she'd bestowed upon him for safekeeping but somehow it was lost in the maelstrom of his death. Though she searched for years the trail eventually went cold. When she found herself again she was living in a whorehouse in Mexico City.
Evalena had no qualms about ordering the death of those deserving of it. She had all the villagers who she assumed had murdered her father put to death in particularly gruesome ways along with their entire families... the entire town, in fact. The guilt carried by those killers of her father ran deep and to root it out it was necessary to kill everyone they knew or might have known.
They called her La Doncelle de la Muerte, the men who came to see her and yet were too afraid to look upon her beauty and grace. They would rather crawl on the ground yet she knew with a certainty that they'd all hasten to do her bidding no matter how dark the deeds.
Even at the brothel in Mexico City she was known as the one who could get things done. She wasn't a whore like the others though she would have willingly given herself away to the right man.
"Have fun, mi chico... Tia will be waiting here all by herself."
It was useless to forbid the boy to go... she understood that. But perhaps a small dose of guilt might work where a deluge of denial didn't. Church stopped short as he turned to her and spoke.
"Come with me, mi Tia. There's no reason for you to sit here all alone. Come with me. We're going swimming today and not in that old creek either. We're going to swim in the new pool Rancher Ford just had installed. Come with me and bring your swimming suit."
She liked the way he called her his aunt and for just a moment she contemplated accepting his offer. She was after all a beautiful woman and Rancher Ford was said to enjoy indulging his every whim in such creatures... perhaps there was another way to the man's fortune than through guile and malice. Still, she didn’t wish to seem too easy, either.
She imagined it was the puta inside of her longing to be set free. Every day women sold themselves for far less than a ranch. Her own sister had given herself away for nothing as if that was all she was worth. Evalena thought how it might not be an altogether bad thing to teach the man a lesson.
"Oh, I better not go, mi chico... your mother might not like it if she saw I was enjoying swimming in the pool while she was working."
He came back to her taking her by the hand and leading her out the doorway into the bright sunlight where she blinked for many moments until finding her sense of sight once more.
"You've never been to the hacienda, Tia. Come with me and I'll show you how grand a place it is. If she wishes to do so, I'll see if Rancher Ford will allow mother to swim with us too. I'll ask him myself."
She hadn’t realized until that moment what a man Church had become.
Chapter 14
He always dreamed of having a brother.
His father surprised Billy Ford on a Tuesday by asking him to saddle up the horses for a ride, especially it being a weekday. Normally Rancher Ford spent the week in Guthrie working business deals and attending meetings with his various partners or else working the ranch often times leaving before dawn and not arriving home until after sunset.
Billy figured his father had forgotten about their talk concerning Church, the boy he met on the school bus and later learned was his brother. It'd been two years since he'd mentioned the little boy to Rancher Ford and how poor he lived along with his mother at the dilapidated shack hunkered by the confluence of creeks at the end of Cherry Creek Road.
He'd seen the boy as he climbed onto the bus... watched as Big John Gerhard began bullying him the way he bullied all the boys younger and smaller than him... and finally he had enough of it.
When he spoke up he wasn’t certain what Big John's reaction would be. They were the same age—ten—though John was built much bigger, fat, mostly. Billy Ford had seen boys like that go down with one solid punch to the nose—a roll of pennies clenched inside his fist helped—so he told himself if the boy took umbrage at him sticking up for the little guy then he'd set things to right without much effort.
Big John obviously deemed it better to simply do as Billy Ford said and leave it at that. Perhaps the boy had heard the rumors about Billy's propensity toward violence or more likely he was simply a coward.
After so quickly making friends with Church, Billy kept wondering why they were brought together as they were... both of them living on his father's ranch... one in a mansion and the other in an old one-eyed shotgun shack that should have been burned down ages ago.
He took to bringing Church gifts. Though he tried to give him money the boy always refused saying his Tia would be upset with him for taking it. Billy Ford wondered why the pretty woman at the shack disliked him so but soon discovered it was her predilection to frighten men and boys away, especially those she did not appreciate being around.
It seemed apparent that the woman didn't cotton to Billy. At first he thought she was protecting the younger boy from someone she believed might be trying to take advantage of him but soon he began to wonder if there might well be something far darker going on in that family.
She scared him more than a little.
After his first run in with the aunt Billy stayed away from the shack at the end of Cherry Creek Road for months. Finally he worked up his courage to go back on a weekend day when he hoped the woman might not be there. But she was. His horse nickered and whinnied but didn't run this time.
"Come here, boy."
She ordered him around as if he was hers to do with as she would. He had a fleeting notion to inform her that he was the de facto owner of the shack where she was living and should he give the word she'd be gone by sunset but something in the woman's demeanor stopped him cold.
It was hot for late October yet a chill ran up his spine as he climbed down off his horse and did as the woman told him. Walking closer to her Billy was struck by both her beauty and her youth... he'd heretofore thought she was much older but he saw that she couldn’t be more than a year or two his elder.
"Give me your hand."
When he hesitated she put hers out in a quick gesture that bade him do likewise. Taking hold of his arm she turned his hand palm upward holding it a
t just the right angle for the sunlight to hit it squarely and bending over she studied it intently. The touch of her skin upon his excited him almost more than he could stand and he nearly pulled away before giving in to the feeling and going with it.
Evalena seemed too absorbed in gazing into his hand to notice the eager want arising in his eyes and the way the crotch of his pants were suddenly too small. Then again, perhaps she did notice... he learned later that the girl had a way of holding back what she knew of the world until and if it was necessary that she spill her knowledge.
Most people that Billy knew were always trying to make an impact on others with their wealth, be it material or mental. Evalena had neither. He got the impression she'd never attended school. He doubted if she could read. She lived simply and her speech was plain and without the adornment of wisdom. She had nothing but the clothes upon her back. At the same time though, he knew without asking that the girl was more than a match for his own intelligence.
"It's here... that thing which I've lost. I can read it written in the wrinkles on your palm. Tell me, boy... have you ever seen something strange anywhere nearby... a stone that doesn't seem like it should? It belongs to me. If you know of it, tell me, and we'll share its power."
"No... I don’t think so... what does it look like?"
There was a sense of urgency in the woman's eye that he didn't like, feral and uncouth. He knew without a doubt she'd do anything he asked to get the stone back. He had an urge to lie to her... to tell the girl that he knew where the stone was and could obtain it.... for a price. Still, he thought it better to keep silent, at least for the present time.
The desires he was beginning to have... she'd satisfy every one of them and more. Once again the thought came to him at how young she was... and how extraordinarily beautiful... though the way she carried herself she seemed much older and he thought how the authority she assumed dulled some of her splendor.
"Even an idiot like you would know it if you saw it, boy. I'm certain you've been close to it... it's carved its presence into your hand. Perhaps it's hidden around here. Tell me... if you had a great treasure to hide, where would you put it?"
