by Carla Kelly
He stopped and stared down at his hands.
“You will stay here until Marco has returned,” Joaquim said, then plunged on, “And stay until we find your daughter and Marco’s wife. Then, and only then, do you have my permission to leave this district.”
“Are we on a fool’s errand?” Señor Ygnacio wanted to know, asking the question no one wished to hear.
“Not until we have scoured every inch of this side of the colony,” Joaquim replied, hoping his words would put the heart back in his own body. “Not until then. And even then, if you care to stay, I doubt Señor Mondragón would object. Santa Maria could use an accountant. The town is growing, but so many do not read and write. You could compose correspondence for people, and take some of that burden from our priest. There is much you can do here.”
“I suppose I could,” Señor Ygnacio said, his voice a little stronger. “Would the juez agree?”
“More than likely.” Joaquim held out his hand to the little auditor, wondering—not for the first time—where Catalina got her height. “Come now. There is food waiting for us.”
The auditor rose with some effort, then stopped and rummaged around on the nearly spotless desk. “Ah, here it is. Do you recall Señor Mondragón’s list of tasks you were to do, once you … after—”
“After Eckapeta and I found our dear ones?” Joaquim finished, using the blunt words to lacerate his own misery at coming up so short.
“Yes, that.” The auditor held out the list.
Joaquim took it, glancing at the words written in Marco’s firm, up-and-down writing. The first item caught his eye. Before Señor Ygnacio is entirely finished, send some of your men back to those houses where they left broadsides, just to see if anyone has suddenly “remembered” animals unaccounted for, he read silently.
“I’ll return to the presidio after dinner and give the necessary orders. Thanks for calling this to my attention. I had forgotten.” He heaved a sigh of relief for something else to do. “Let’s go to dinner. Perla doesn’t like her meals to be unappreciated.”
The little man nodded and touched the paper in Joaquim’s hand. “It’s a short list.” He pointed to the final item and clucked his tongue. “And lucky is the man who gets to return to the Durán brothers and snoop around in their barns and corrals and ask pointed questions!”
“That’s why it’s last,” Joaquim said, and smiled a little, knowing that task would fall to him, if Marco hadn’t returned by the time the two jobs above it on the list had been accomplished. “Apparently our fearless juez is of the same opinion. Personally, I never mind putting off dealing with idiots.”
“No one does,” Señor Ygnacio said.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
In which Paloma misses an opportunity but finds a friend
A routine is a routine, no matter how terrible the circumstances, Paloma decided, after her second day in the kitchen of the Duráns. Waking up before Catalina, she had scraped a little more of the adobe from the shed wall down near the dirt floor. If she could cook in the morning and find some excuse to return to the shed, she would have the afternoon to work. The kitchen was not up to her Double Cross standards, but still far superior to yesterday’s cesspit.
Or was it the day before? Time was beginning to have no meaning, which worried her almost as much as the weight she had shed every day since their abduction. Four days of hunger was already changing her body. Her breasts were dry sacks now, with none of their usual firmness and bounce.
She needed more than yesterday’s bowl of cornmeal and pork to stay alive—all the more reason to retreat to the shed and dig with the stolen knife.
To her surprise, old Maria sat at the kitchen table with something resembling a smile on her face and hefting the iron pot, which she held out to Paloma. “See there? I cleaned it.”
The laundress had scraped off the worst of the burned-on cornmeal at the bottom, but Perla la cocinera would never have called the pot clean enough for Double Cross purposes. Maria looked so pleased with herself that Paloma would never have asked her to try harder. She took the pot from Maria and smiled her thanks.
When it was filled with cornmeal, water, and chilis, and thick bubbles were starting to plop and wheeze, Paloma added what bits of smoked pork remained, and after searching in the storeroom, an onion. She wanted more meat in the stew. That would only call attention to the vanished knife, so she said nothing.
That knife will haunt us all, she thought, when Pedro came into the kitchen, looking over his shoulder, fearful.
“Qué es?” she asked, dreading his reply but needing to know how much trouble was heading their way.
He shrugged and sat down, his hand to his ear as though it hurt. His eyes went to the pot simmering over the fireplace coals, and he wiped his mouth.
“Tell me,” Paloma coaxed. “Are you in trouble over the knife you misplaced?” Which I swiped, she thought, feeling more than one pang of conscience, because she was generally an honest soul. It doesn’t matter. There are lives at stake here, she reminded herself.
“That damned knife!” he exclaimed, slamming his hand on the table. “Our masters have said nothing about the knife, but I fear they will.”
“Are the knives kept here in the kitchen?” she asked.
He pointed to the long drawer directly underneath the shelves holding dishware and cups. “It’s locked, and I don’t know how to jimmy it. There is another knife in there that looks like the one I lost …” his voice trailed away. “I know I left it on the table.”
Paloma glanced at Maria, whose eyes seemed to fill with dread and more dread as she watched.
“They can be so cruel,” Maria whispered, when Pedro stomped outside.
“I need the knife, Maria,” she whispered back. “Have they … have they ever done bad things to you?”
Maria nodded, and rested her chin against her scrawny chest, unwilling to meet Paloma’s eyes. “Don’t do anything to make them angry at you, señora!”
“I will not,” she said, chilled to her bones and more desperate to return to the shed and scrape away. Perhaps she could steal a large spoon, sharpen the edge, and use that instead. She could return the knife, and no one would be wiser, especially those two addled men who drank, and slept, and made their servants’ lives miserable.
Paloma went into the storeroom, just to stand there a moment and collect herself, then look for flour and more cornmeal. She could make tortillas—maybe enough to distract the Durán brothers from the paltry amount of pork in today’s stew.
Maria knew where the griddle was, and soon Paloma was slapping tortillas between her hands. Maria watched with interest. The two of them worked efficiently, Paloma shaping the dough and Maria cooking it.
By mid-morning, they had accumulated a respectable mound of tortillas—moist, slightly salted, and steaming in a bowl under a cloth that might have been clean years ago.
“That should be enough for now,” Paloma said. “I’ll take the griddle off the ….”
She stopped, listening to a sudden banging on the main door down the dusty hallway. Maria squeaked like a mouse, her eyes wide with terror, and clutched Paloma, who shook her off and started toward the closed kitchen door.
She opened it a crack to see the Duráns hurrying past. Roque stopped and barked an order to Miguel, who jerked open the kitchen door and grabbed Paloma, clapping his hand over her mouth. He dragged her away from the door and sat down with her, never moving his hand from her mouth.
She knew better than to offer any resistance, even though she wanted to clamp her teeth down on his fingers. She would have, had she not looked at Maria, helpless old woman, who would probably suffer, no matter what Paloma did.
Paloma sat still and listened, forcing herself to hear beyond Miguel’s labored breathing. To her dismay, she heard small snatches of sentences. “Has anyone here seen …. We’ve been ordered to look for …. Missing more than one week and a driver dead …. If you see anything …. Adios.”
Pal
oma closed her eyes and let the tears fall on Miguel’s hand. She grieved that she had not leaped up and run into the hall when she heard that first knock, screaming and waving her arms, anything to end this ridiculous abduction by lunatics.
The kitchen door opened and Roque smiled at her in that maddening way, the way a bully would treat a small child.
“Señora, I pulled a sad face to hear you and that skinny one had been abducted. Told him to let us know when you were found. I even said I would say a prayer or two tonight for your safety.”
Miguel removed his hand. Paloma leaned as far away from him as she could. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” she said softly.
“We haven’t had so much fun in years,” Miguel replied. He sniffed the air. “What’s cooking?”
“Posole and tortillas,” she said, determined to match them calm for calm. She turned to Roque. “Give Pedro your key. I want to return to the shed. I will cook no more for you today.”
She started for the kitchen door, which Miguel blocked with his arm. “What will you do when your precious husband winds up in a Mexico City prison because he has been cheating us for years?” he taunted.
“I will go with him,” she replied.
“You could stay with us and cook,” Roque said.
“Never. Give Pedro the key.”
She stared into Miguel’s eyes long enough to see uncertainty begin to grow. “Be careful you do not turn into a mushroom. Help me, help me!” she said in a small mushroom voice, doing her best to imitate Catalina.
Miguel gasped and stepped aside. She walked past him, pleased to note the change in his complexion from merely grimy to pasty white. She continued down the hall, listening with satisfaction to a rattle of keys and then Pedro loping along beside her.
“Mushroom?” he asked, keeping his voice low.
“Ask Gaspar, if you dare,” she said.
When she was locked in the shed again, Paloma leaned against the wall and closed her eyes, weary with fear and hunger and anger now that she hadn’t the presence of mind to jump up when someone—it must have been Joaquim Gasca’s soldiers—banged on the door.
“You cannot change what you did not do,” she told herself firmly. She picked up where she had left off, scraping until she broke through the adobe, which made her smile. The afternoon was passing, so she carefully sculpted a U-shaped hole right at ground level, where no one could tell. Tonight Catalina would tell the drunken fools the story of the evil brothers with their guts looped around a fence and a Comanche lance through their ears. She could almost hear Catalina making all the different voices and recreating the screams of the dying men.
As she scraped and sculpted with increasing intensity, Paloma imagined such a fate for the Durán brothers. Who were they to think they could destroy her husband’s life and see him cast into a Mexico City prison? Poor man, he must be searching for her everywhere and out of his mind with worry. “Marco, I will never whine again,” she promised as she lay down by the hole and closed her eyes. “Please don’t be angry with me for causing all this commotion.”
Paloma woke up as the puny shadows stretched longer through the gap between the wall and the roof. For the first time, she didn’t start and wonder where she was. She knew. Nothing had changed.
Almost nothing, except for an odd odor, which made Paloma long yet again for a bath, or even a damp cloth. She sniffed and wondered. Surely that wasn’t her.
As she lay so silent, curious now, Paloma heard raspy breathing, followed by a little snuffle. It came from the general direction of her middle, which felt warmer than usual. Curious more than frightened, she gently placed her hand lower and felt the softness of fur.
“What have we here?” she asked, her voice soft. The little kitten or whatever it was started as she began to stroke it, then relaxed again and snuffled some more. She turned her head away from the smell.
Paloma traced her hand down the small creature’s back, burrowed so close to her, and felt a fluffy tail. She lay there, petting the animal and letting her eyes grow accustomed to the gloom.
When she could see better, she took a closer look at the animal. It was her turn to start in surprise, which made the little beast rear up and press small paws against her chest.
“And I thought matters could not get worse,” she said, when she felt calm enough to speak. More cautious now, Paloma ran her finger gently against the skunk’s furry throat and down his chest. “I really hope you will not spray me, because it’s been a trying few days.”
She slowly reached into her apron, where she had hidden two tortillas. She sat up carefully with no sudden moves and broke one of the corn tortillas into small pieces. Setting them beside her on the ground, she said, “Unlike some around here, I share my food and wouldn’t dream of frightening you.”
To her delight, the skunk took his paws from her chest and ambled slowly toward the tortillas. She smiled when he nosed about, then began to dine on tortillas. “I know they are good, Señor Zorillo,” she said, more interested than repelled. “I made them and no one ever complains.”
When the little creature finished, Paloma drew her legs up closer to her body, curious to know what he would do next. “We have any number of worms and bugs in this hut,” she told him as he nosed around the dirt floor, snuffling as he went. “You’re welcome to stay, I suppose. Mi casa es su casa?”
The notion of Double Cross hospitality in an adobe hut with a skunk as guest made Paloma chuckle. She felt her shoulders relax as she leaned against the wall, wondering if he would stay or go. With a pang, she thought of the lives of the saints book she was reading to Soledad and Claudito, and the dichos about San Francisco de Asís, that gentle friend of animals.
“Do you know, mi amigo, that San Francisco said you can tell the measure of a person by how he treats small animals and children?” she asked. “Or maybe captive ladies? The Duráns do not shine. Have some more. I believe we will get along fine.”
Oddly content, all things considered, Paloma watched the skunk make a purposeful circuit about the shed, stopping now and then, with accompanying slurp and crackle sounds, as he encountered worms and bugs. When he finished grazing the constricted field, he waddled close again, turned around several times, and flopped against her leg. Paloma’s hand went to his head, which made him snuffle some more and then sigh.
Hours later, he perked up as he heard the key to the garden gate turn in the lock. Footsteps followed, then the next key turned in the lock on the shed. Paloma rested her hand on the skunk, gently rubbing the back of his neck. Feeling his rapid heartbeat, she prayed he would do nothing.
Catalina crouched into the hut and the door closed behind her. “Paloma, you should have seen their fright tonight,” she began, when the garden lock closed, locking them in securely.
“Speak softly, Lina,” Paloma told her. “We have a little guest in here and he is wondering about you.”
“Paloma, have your wits gone wandering?”
“If you’ll move slowly and speak softly, I will introduce you to Señor Zorillo,” Paloma teased.
“Good God,” Catalina exclaimed, then lowered her voice. “Could our luck get any worse? Zorillo?”
“Maybe it just changed, dear friend. I’m going to call him Francisco. We’ve been needing a guardian saint.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
In which worms start to turn
Catalina kept a respectful distance from Señor Francisco, Paloma’s patron saint, but did unbend enough to offer him some cooked cornmeal on a tin plate. The skunk snuffled around it, then ate, after what Paloma thought was a reproachful look at Catalina Ygnacio, who didn’t seem overjoyed to share their already smelly quarters with the little beast and his eye-watering aroma.
“He’ll bring us good luck?” Catalina asked, in a voice of no confidence.
“He kept me company,” Paloma said simply. “I needed him.” She changed the subject massively. “How did you manage to get a tin plate away from those dreadful men?”<
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“I scared them thoroughly when the Comanche lance went through the ears of both men, whose entrails were already being spooled from their bodies by an imp of some sort.” She gave Señor Francisco a wary glance and edged closer to Paloma. “I’ve noticed that when the twins are sufficiently frightened, little details don’t seem to matter much.”
“Are they frightened enough for La Llorona tomorrow night?” Paloma asked. “I’ve dug all I dare to into the adobe. A wider hole might attract attention. Now I should probably start digging the ground so we can squeeze out. That plate might help.”
“They’re frightened enough,” Catalina assured her. “I’ve run out of papers to shuffle about and have started over. Roque doesn’t seem to notice, but Miguel is a sly one.”
“Have … have either of them mentioned a missing knife?” Paloma asked.
“Miguel did, but I exclaimed loudly about something I had found that might implicate Marco or his father in some evil-doing, and I think I distracted him.”
“I worry,” Paloma said, as she tickled Señor Francisco under his ears. “I worry for old Maria.” Mostly I worry for me, she thought. Even wasted with drink, the twins would know their servants were too subjugated to steal a knife. “And for me,” she admitted aloud.
Lina squeezed her hand. “I worry, too. Tomorrow is the night for La Llorona.” She held up her third finger. “Three days of stories, and each more terrifying.”
“How long have we been here?” Paloma asked, feeling stupid because the days were blurring together.
Even Catalina had to think. “Five days, even though it seems like a month.” She shook her head. “Maybe it is more than that. Go to sleep now. We’ll plan tomorrow morning, when our heads are clearer.”
Paloma lay down, her cheek against the damp earth, remembering a warm bed with Marco in it and children peeking around the edge of the door in the morning, wanting her to wake up and motion them in. Her empty breasts ached for little Juanito. Don’t think about him, she ordered herself. Someone surely found him on the road and he is safe at home. Marco will find me. I know he will.
