by Glover, Dan
"In the bank, I guess."
"You're a fool. Go on with you... go and play with the other imbecile. Church is in back. But remember... if you ever come across a strange stone, bring it to me and I'll reward you with wealth beyond imagination. Ask your idiotic brother about it sometime... he may be eager to tell you what he refuses to share with me."
The migrant workers filtering through the Triple Six often gossiped over their lunch of tortillas and beans and working with them over the years Billy had come to a rudimentary understanding of Spanish though his speech was lacking in that same fluency.
He noticed how the men kept talking about a beautiful senorita who lived in a chabola at the edge of the property with her sister and her nephew and how it was best to go by every so often and pay their respects to her lest she might cast one of her spells over them.
In a flash of insight Billy Ford realized the woman the men were talking about had to be Evalena, Church's aunt, the one who had given him the evil eye and caused his horse to run off with him on the first day he rode out to the shack to take the boy riding. Apparently she was a woman of some renown and not one to be trifled with.
Not long after his initial misadventure at the tiny cabin two of the more trusted compañeros at the ranch, men who'd worked there for years, were found dead in an arroyo some miles from the hacienda. Apparently their death had been particularly gruesome and though some of the migrant workers attributed it to a cattle stampede others told how no one could find any sign of animal footprints on the dusty ground where the men were discovered.
Rumor had it that they were not Mexicans, those two men. Instead they hailed from Cuba. The men at the ranch talked in hushed tones telling tales as to how wild dogs or perhaps coyotes had pulled out the insides of the bodies and left them lying upon rocks and stones the way no one could ever remember seeing before. The talk tended toward it happening while the men yet lived though Billy Ford wondered if that was simply the vaqueros joshing one another, scaring the younger men among them and even the elder ones. In time the talk of the strange deaths dissolved into the same nothingness of the land from which it sprang.
The rumor persisted, however, that Church's aunt and his mother were not Mexicans either. They too were originally from Cuba. One of the migrant workers had told Billy Ford with a sigh not to repeat it how the aunt, Evalena, was steeped in Santeria, or La Regla Lucumí, a term which Billy didn't understand. He'd heard of Santeria, however.
Billy Ford once happened across a book called The Satanic Bible. One of the older kids of a man in the employ of his father had loaned it to Billy when he expressed an interest in reading it. Not wanting his parents to see the book he read it late at night under a tent he constructed with the covers of his bed and with the help of a flashlight to illuminate the words. It spoke of dark doings, the devil's doings, and something called Santeria. Apparently the religion came to Cuba and other Caribbean islands from Africa.
It was related to Catholicism in ways which intrigued Billy Ford into studying both religions more in depth. Apparently something called the Philosophers' Stone was given to Adam—the first man—by God. According to legend the Stone was passed down through the generations giving the biblical patriarchs their extended longevity... some of them lived a thousand years or more.
The Stone was said to be the rejected cornerstone in the Temple of Solomon, something called 'first matter,' a fabulous jewel by which the holder could know the will of God as well as the ways of Satan.
Apparently the Stone was given to Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican friar, in the thirteen century after being discovered in a ruined abbey in Italy by one of his mentors. Aquinas was honored in Catholicism as a Saint not only for his extensive writings but for his religious reformations, especially for his doctrines on heretics and how the Church should not seek to imitate God.
After the death of Aquinas the Stone seemingly vanished. For centuries it was rumored to be kept at a secret location under a Coptic temple in Africa and was the object of various quests by many people and even nations. Failing to find the Stone, alchemists sought to replicate it by various means all of them failing in the end.
Billy Ford wondered if like Santeria the Stone had come to Cuba from where it was hidden in Africa and if it had, perhaps Church's family were involved somehow. After considering his theory for some time he put it off to nonsense... if Church's family were in possession of the Philosophers' Stone they would be wealthy beyond belief, not paupers living in a shack at the edge of a Texas wasteland.
Still, there was something decidedly strange about Church's aunt Evalena and her effect upon the migrant workers who seemed to worship her. She scared him so badly that for many months after his first encounter with the woman Billy Ford wouldn't go to that shack alone even though he recognized Church as his brother.
That too was a bit of an accidental discovery. Billy had been leafing through one of the many family photo albums late one night while sleep wouldn't come and he'd happened across a picture of Church. The find startled him mightily until he realized it wasn’t Church at all... it was him... a photo taken of him at the same age as Church. But for the differences in complexion and the color of their hair they could have been twins.
Though he'd never told Church that they were brothers, at least not in so many words, the boy must have known it too. When his father finally decided to make a trip to the tiny shack where the boy lived and asked Church if he knew who he was, the boy replied that he was his father.
Billy remembered how his father didn't acknowledge Church either affirmatively or negatively, only laughing and offering him a job at the hacienda taking it for granted that he would now become the boy's mentor as well as his father.
Billy Ford had always assumed that as the only child of Rancher Ford he'd one day inherit everything the man owned. Though he didn't begrudge Church's soft spot in his father's heart he couldn’t help but wonder at times if he was being displaced somehow... if perhaps he didn't measure up quite as highly in his father's estimation as he'd once done.
Church was hard not to love, however. The boy had a gentle hand with not only the ponies but all the animals around the ranch making pets out of the horses as well as the goats, the sheep, and even the pigs. He openly wept when the cattle were butchered and refused to eat meat of any kind.
Finally, Billy decided it didn't matter if they were to share in his father's legacy though he wouldn’t relish being related to a woman like Evalena. Still, the woman had a certain pull on him that he wasn't proud of and often chided himself for the thoughts he had when she was around.
One night he dreamed of her. She came to Billy Ford the same way he had noticed how his father's women came to him, all love and kisses. When she removed the eye patch she wore over her right eye it revealed a red eyeball only not an eyeball at all. It was a stone colored white yet constantly shifting into all the hues of the rainbow.
Upon waking the next morning Billy Ford sensed he was being called.
Chapter 15
Seeing the boy up close and personal for the first time had awakened something deep inside of him that he'd forgotten ever existed.
His own father had been a distant man from his family—hateful really—and a hard person to love. Rancher Ford swore that he'd never be the same way toward any son of his... and yet other than the vicious beatings the man handed out like so much candy he discovered he repeated the cycle nearly verbatim.
"Tell me about your day, Billy."
"I met a boy on the bus this morning, father."
He still recalled Billy's exact words from that day years ago when Rancher had asked him an innocent question about school and how his first day back had been. He knew the boy that Billy had met but for the life of him he couldn't understand how the two brothers were drawn together despite Rancher's attempt at keeping them apart.
He should've sent them away. The thought occurred to him more than once yet the thought of never seeing Yani again caused his heart
to ache in ways it'd never done before. The girl meant more to him than he cared to admit and the boy...
There was no doubt the boy was his. Rancher saw shades of his own father shining in Church's eyes as he bent down to shake his hand and introduce himself to his son for the first time.
"Do you know who I am, Church?"
"You are my father."
The boy said it as if it had been preordained... as if he'd always known it and had waited for that day for an eternity. Perhaps he had. It bothered Rancher Ford a good deal that he'd procrastinated for so long before coming to the boy but as always he rationalized it by telling himself it had been for the better.
Lorraine had left the Triple Six hacienda about that same time. At first, she said she was going east for a month to help her father in his Senate campaign which occurred with regularity every six years. The man had been a fixture in the government for so long he was virtually assured of reelection yet the old buzzard still campaigned like he was the underdog.
The month turned into another and then a third. When they spoke on the phone things were cordial as always yet Rancher Ford thought he could hear a distance in Lorraine's voice that had never been there before. He put it off to their long absence from one another.
As time wore on he found he had less and less to say to his wife and she in turn seemed at a loss for words as well. Sometimes it seemed as if they spent an hour simply listening to each other breathe.
A year later—or was it two?—she wrote to tell him she had purchased a townhouse in Georgetown to be closer to her father's Senate office. It didn't trouble him as much as he expected it might have when she informed him she had put off coming back to Texas indefinitely. In fact, it gave Rancher Ford more time for his dalliances with the ladies of Guthrie.
He couldn’t help noticing how Billy was spending more of his days and nights with a girlfriend too. Though the boy hadn't brought her home to meet his father, Rancher Ford trusted to his son's good instincts and breeding. He wouldn't take up with just anyone.
Billy had several offers to attend Ivy League universities out east yet he had come to him with a request to put off going away to college for a year. Since Rancher Ford had never found the time to get an education other than the one offered at the ranch and from itinerate hobos he could see no real purpose in Billy doing so either though he knew his wife had long set her hopes upon his going to the same university where her father was an alumni and an ardent Yale supporter.
"What are your plans, son?"
"So far as...?"
"You're too smart to play stupid, Billy. You know what I mean."
"You've been talking to mom again."
"You're nearly twenty now. She's just concerned about your education... so what are your plans?"
"I'm not ready to go away to school yet, father."
"I'd hate to see you put off something that you may never take up again unless you've good reasons."
"I just bought the old Craven place, father. I thought I might try my hand at ranching, like you."
Lester Craven had rebuffed every offer Rancher Ford brought to him over the years. The place was as run down as any ranch in the state of Texas... the barns were beyond salvaging and from the looks of it so was the house.
None of that mattered. He wanted the property for a practical reason... it would tie together two vast tracts of land that were otherwise separated from one another by an interstate highway. The Craven place had a tunnel bored under the highway making it possible for livestock and farm implements to traverse beneath the ever-present traffic.
"How on earth did you get old Craven to part with his ranch, Billy? I've been trying to buy it for years."
"It was Evalena's doing... she made a suggestion on how to approach the man and it worked."
"Evalena, Church's aunt? Is that the girl you've been seeing, Billy?"
"Yes, Evalena's Church's aunt, father... she's Yani's younger sister. And no, I'm not seeing her like a girlfriend. We just talk. She gives me advice sometimes... good advice. Without her help I never could've bought the Craven place."
"Why on earth do you want that old place, Billy?"
"It's not for me... I know how badly you wanted that ranch, father. Now we have it. Give me another year to put it into shape and then I promise I'll go to school. Is it a deal?"
"I don't understand how you got the money to buy a place like that, Billy."
"Evalena helped me with that too."
"Are we talking about the same woman who lives in that shack at the end of Cherry Creek Road, Billy? I always got the impression she's itinerant. How could she come up with enough money to buy a ranch?"
"She had property down in Mexico that she wanted to get rid of. She told me how she's looking to invest it in land here. So we struck a deal with Lester Craven. He traded his ranch for Evalena's holdings in Mexico."
"So it's actually Evalena's ranch... is that what you're telling me, Billy?"
"She didn't want it to be in her name... something to do with her not being a citizen, I guess. So she insisted the ranch be put in my name, father. I added your name to the deed too. I hope you don't mind."
"What does Church think about you being partners with his aunt?"
"He's okay with it. He did say something strange, though. He told me that she's not really his aunt."
"So they aren't related? Is that what you mean, Billy?"
"Oh, they're related... Evalena is his grandmother, at least that's what Church said. I can't see how that's possible though. She's not much older than I am."
"Well, I have heard stories of girls down in Mexico having babies at an extremely young age... eleven, twelve years old. Maybe it's better not to spread gossip like that, Billy."
"You're the only person I ever told, father. I wouldn’t go around spreading rumors. You know me better than that."
"You're right, Billy, and I apologize. I shouldn’t have said that."
Rancher Ford found it strange as the years went by and the boys grew into men and his own hair turned gray that the two women who claimed to be sisters never seemed to get any older. Himself, he had turned forty more than a few years ago and fifty was fast approaching. He felt the rigors of time building in his bones and each look into a mirror reminded him he was no longer the boy who had ridden to Texas in a boxcar.
And now Billy came to him with the news he and Evalena had purchased the same parcel of land that he had been trying to buy for decades. It didn’t make sense. What on earth could Evalena have by way of property in Mexico that was worth more than the money he had offered Lester Craven for his rundown excuse of a ranch?
Something bothered him about the woman though he couldn’t quite put a finger on what it was. He assumed the girl had come to Texas to help raise Church... for the first few years of the boy's life another girl—her name was Maria—lived with Yani but she up and left so abruptly he didn’t know the girl was gone for six months.
"Rancher... I'm worried about Yani's boy. She leaves him all alone while she works. Did you realize that?"
Lorraine didn’t often voice her opinions about the doings of the hired help and she seemed unduly concerned over the lack of a babysitter for Church. He wondered not for the first time if his wife had gotten wind of the rumor blowing around the ranch concerning who the father of the boy might be.
"I imagine if Yani needed help she'd say something, Lorraine. I sure hate sticking my nose in where it doesn't belong."
His wife wasn’t one to argue... he had to give her that. Still, it soothed his nerves when Evalena appeared, moved in with Yani and the boy, and proceeded to help raise Church.
Though she was every bit as beautiful as Yani and while he did love the women something about the sister set the tiny hairs growing upon the back of his neck to standing on end. Perhaps it was the haughty way she carried herself, as if everyone owed her something, or maybe it was the way she had of looking at him like she was judging how good he might taste in her evening st
ew.
Either way he knew it wouldn’t pay to dabble with the girl. He wanted to someday be a part of his son's life and screwing the aunt was the quickest way he could think of to ruin any prospect of that.
Besides, he reckoned the price might be more than he was willing to pay. He had long ago grown used to betraying his wife but to deceive Yani was more than he could stomach.
It was strange how he felt more loyalty to Church's mother than to Lorraine, but there it was.
Chapter 16
It did no good to warn the boy.
She knew it wouldn’t. Evalena was too much the temptress for any man to resist, much less a boy like Billy Ford. She saw him getting carried away with the same obsession as she had done when Rancher Ford first came into her life.
Still, she had to try to caution him about seeing too much of her sister. If she didn’t she wouldn't be able to live with herself. Boys like Billy had no notion of what a woman like Evalena was capable of... he probably thought she was simply a pretty girl showing interest in him.
He spent nearly all his free time at the chabola now. It wasn’t that she minded... Billy'd often come to her home to take Church riding. Many nights when they returned late Yani fed them both a dinner of tortillas and beans before sending Church to bed and Billy back home to the hacienda.
She'd stepped outside with the boy. It was a cold night and the sky was alive with stars that hung so low she thought she might strike her head upon them. While walking with Billy down to the corral where his horse was tethered she took a chance at voicing her concerns though just as she suspected the boy only made light of it.
"My sister isn't who she seems, Billy. She'll take you to places you'd rather not go. Please take care around her."
"What do you mean, Yani? Is your little sister a heartbreaker?"
