The Journal of Antonio Montoya

by Rick Collignon

  “Yes,” Rosa said. “It has been a long day, hija, and I’m tired. If I lie down for a little while. . . .”

  Ramona helped her to her feet, and the two of them walked slowly to the house. It was almost completely dark now, and no light was lit inside the house. As they approached the front door, it swung open and Alfonso Vigil and his son, Albert, came out, leaning against each other as they walked, and Ramona noticed that they were the same height. She could hear the squeak of the rubber tips of Alfonso’s canes as they slid a little on the front porch. As they passed Ramona and her grandmother, Rosa reached out and touched Alfonso’s arm. Alfonso nodded, but neither spoke as they walked by, and Ramona thought it was as if she and her grandmother were not there.

  The first thing Ramona saw when she entered the house was that her brother was no longer on the couch, and the blanket that had covered Flavio and Albert was lying on the floor.

  “Flavio,” Ramona said in the darkness, and she thought that her voice sounded loud and that her home had become enormous and empty.

  “He’s gone, hija,” Rosa said.

  “He’s gone where?”

  “Home. He and Martha have gone home.”

  “But his truck is still here, Grandmother.”

  “He has left, Ramona,” Rosa said again.

  Ramona could no longer see her grandmother’s face. “Why is this house so quiet?” she asked, and then she called José’s name.

  Ramona felt her grandmother’s hand tighten on her arm. “He’s with his mother, hija,” Rosa said, and suddenly Ramona felt a soft wave of panic.

  “Tell me where they’ve gone, Grandmother,” Ramona said, and even in her own ears, her voice sounded harsh.

  “Help me to my bed, hija,” her grandmother said.

  Ramona helped her grandmother lie down and then sat on the bed beside her. “Grandmother,” she said, “tell me.”

  “I’m going to rest now for a little while. And then maybe we can talk more, Ramona.” Rosa folded her hands together on her chest. As Ramona rose from the bed, her grandmother said, “Cuidado, mi hija. Please.”

  “Careful of what, Grandmother?” she asked, but Rosa Montoya did not answer.

  Ramona went into the kitchen and switched on the light. The room was empty. Everything was in its place, the dishes put away, the floor swept, a dishtowel folded by the sink. She thought that it looked exactly as it always had, as if nothing had changed. “Where is José?” Ramona spoke the words aloud.

  She walked back through the house to the front door and stepped out into the August night to call him. She walked down the steps and away from the house, and about her was a coldness, and falling from the sky was snow.

  Ten

  RAMONA FELT THE SNOW turn to water on her bare arms, and when she looked up she could see only stars through the snow. In that second, she knew she was lost, and she felt in her soul that she would remain so and that there was no longer a path leading to where she had come. She turned back around quickly with the thought that she should escape back into the house, and in the window she saw the face of a woman staring out at her. She could see the youth in this woman’s face and the paleness of her features and how her black hair was undone from its braids and fell in shadows past her shoulders. Their eyes met, as if spanning a great distance. Ramona said her grandmother’s name and knew that the house before her, which had once been hers, was now truly her grandparents’, and in it there was not a place for her.

  Ramona turned and stepped toward the road, and she stumbled slightly over the ridges of frozen mud beneath her feet. Across the road through the snow she could see the village office, and from the one small window a yellow light was burning. On the road, which was no more than ruts, the shadow of a man walked toward her, and as he neared she heard him speak her name in a voice she knew. He drew closer and stood before her, and she saw how tired his eyes looked. His hands were in his pockets, and his shoulders slumped.

  “Ramona,” he said. “What are you doing here, Ramona?”

  Ramona opened her mouth, her throat and chest so knotted that she thought she would never be able to speak. “José,” she said, and she reached out to touch her brother’s face.

  “I can’t stay, Ramona,” he said, and he smiled a little. Ramona could see the white, straight edge of his teeth. “I’m almost there.”

  “José,” Ramona said again. “I’m so glad to see you, José,” and she rested her hand on the side of his face.

  José took his hands from his pockets. He took his sister’s hand in his. “Did you know, Ramona, that our grandfather’s great-great-grandfather came to this village when there was nothing here but a few poor houses, and with his hands he built the church, and it took him years, and when he was done, he named it the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe?”

  “No, José,” Ramona said, and she held on to his hand tightly. “I didn’t know that.”

  “I’ve seen so much,” he said, and he squeezed her hand hard. “I have to go. It’s just a little further.”

  “José,” Ramona said.

  “I have a favor to ask you,” José said. “If you ever in your life see a cow on the highway, my .22 is under my bed. Have little José shoot it for me.” He let go of his sister’s hand.

  “José,” Ramona said, “stay with me. I’m lost here, José.”

  As he walked backward away from her, her brother said, “You were never lost, Ramona. Tell my son that I love him.”

  When Antonio Montoya opened the door of the village office, standing before him was a woman he had never seen before. She wore no coat, and her arms were bare. Her hair was damp and fell to her shoulders. Beyond her, he could see that the snow was still falling and there was no wind, and when the snow touched the ground, it turned to water. When he brought his eyes back to this woman, she was staring as if she knew him, and for a moment both stood in silence with only the sound of the fire in the stove. Then he asked her what it was he could do. She did not answer, and in her face Antonio Montoya could see that the line of her mouth and the darkness of her eyes were things he had seen before, but he did not know where. He asked her name, and she closed her eyes and shook her head. In that moment. Antonio Montoya thought she would turn and leave, but she stepped still closer to him, and the light touched her arms and face. He asked again what he could do, and she spoke for the first time aloud. In a low voice, she said that she had come to this place to ask a favor of him. She said that she knew him to be a santero. Antonio Montoya said nothing, and after a long moment, he stepped away from the door and Ramona walked into the room.

  The light of the lamp shone with a yellow cast on the surface of the small table, and on the table was a book that was new and was open. Ramona walked to it and looked down and read the words “It has begun to snow, and the flakes are heavy and fall slowly. In the sky there are no clouds, but stars and snow are everywhere.”

  She raised her eyes and could see the rest of the room in shadows. The mud plaster on the walls was smooth and thick, without cracks, and the adobe floor was clean and shone dully in the light. The vigas overhead ran straight, without sag, and the wood was white with drops of pitch that were the color of gold.

  Against the wall of the room where there was little light were the seven santos, one of which had been merely touched with the knife. They stood like children together, and their eyes were open and their hands at their breasts, and some were taller than others and none smiled, but there was a softness about their mouths. Ramona walked to them and knelt, and she touched each one as if she were blind, and she thought she might begin to speak aloud to these Ladies and that in their silence they would answer. She saw that one held strands of fine white hair in her hands, and at her feet was a piece of white cloth, and in the eyes of this one there was the hint of a smile, and of other things, and Ramona thought of Berna Ruiz and of her aged mother and how this Lady and two of the others had stood for weeks in a woodshed and looked out together over a field of snow.

 
Upon another she saw a stain in the bend of the right elbow, as if blood had flowed out from inside the arm. She saw the age in another and how the paint was faded and peeled upon her face and how there was a crack that ran through her body. On the tallest one, whose dress was painted the deep color of blood, Ramona ran her fingers down the arm to the wrist, and with her fingertips she felt the marks of her own name. She closed her eyes and thought she would fade away in this room and become no more than a shadow.

  After a moment, Ramona rose and turned and faced Antonio Montoya, who had not moved from the door. In his face she saw and did not see the faces of her brothers, and her father and her grandfather, and also little José. She saw the Montoyas in his face, and in his eyes she saw her own. Behind her, Ramona could feel the gaze of the santos, and she told Antonio Montoya that she wished to take all of the Ladies. When he did not answer, she saw that he was looking not at her but at the figures which stood against the wall. When he looked at her once again, he asked only one thing, and that was her name. At this, Ramona walked across the room and stood so close to him that she could smell the odor of smoke on his mouth. She took his hand and brought it to her face and said that in the night she had dreamed, and in this dream, the cemetery of Guadalupe was on fire, and the flames came together like water and engulfed the grass and the weeds, and when the fire was spent, the crosses and the stones stood out white against the burnt earth.

  At dawn, which came pale and warm, Ramona stood outside her house, and she could see how twisted the window in her house was and how the paint had come away and that the wood frame beneath was gray with age. She saw that her house needed to be plastered or it would turn to dirt.

  She walked up the front steps to the door and opened it and went inside her house. She walked through the living room to the spare room, and when she looked in, she saw that little José was sleeping on the cot and that he looked small beneath the blanket.

  In her own bedroom, she sat gently on the bed beside her grandmother, who lay as pale and still as death. Ramona touched her grandmother’s hair and then stroked her forehead. “Grandmother,” she said.

  Rosa opened her eyes. “Ramona,” she said in a whisper, “you’re back.”

  “Yes,” Ramona said.

  “And you weren’t gone too long.”

  “No,” Ramona said, although she felt as though she had been away an eternity.

  Rosa reached for her granddaughter’s hand and said, “We have had a pact all these years, mi hija. All my life, it seems.”

  “Yes, Grandmother,” Ramona said.

  “I have a favor to ask.”

  “Another?” Ramona asked, and smiled.

  “Yes,” she said, and was quiet for a moment. “Go to the window, hija, and tell me things.”

  Ramona rose from the bed and looked out the window at the still, sunless morning. “I can see the field from here, Grandmother, and the tracks of Grandfather and Flavio and little José’s feet in the mud.”

  “Your hijo is such a good boy, Ramona,” Rosa said softly from the bed.

  “Yes,” Ramona said, and she smiled again. “Beyond the field is sagebrush, and past that the foothills begin, and they’re thick with piñon and juniper, and on the top is a wide grove of aspen whose leaves even so early in August are beginning to yellow. The sky, Grandmother, looks white without the sun, and there are no clouds. It will be a warm day without wind. A day to do anything.”

  Ramona stopped talking, and when she finally looked away from the window at the bed, it was empty. She walked from her bedroom to the room where José was sleeping. She pushed him to one side and then climbed into the cot beside him. She lay there with her arms around him, and the last thing she could recall before sleep was that this boy in her arms smelled like mud—and he would bathe first thing.

  Eleven

  “JOSÉ,” RAMONA SAID, “I think you should leave those alone and eat.”

  José was sitting across from his aunt, and he was pushing Albert Vigil’s false teeth around the surface of the table with his fork. “Tía,” he said, “how do you forget your teeth?”

  Ramona looked at José’s plate and saw that he had eaten almost all of his food and that his glass of milk was empty. “You drink too much whiskey,” she said. “That’s how.” José picked up the teeth, which were white and pink, and held them in his hand.

  “How do these work?” he asked.

  Ramona leaned back in her chair and folded her arms across her chest. She looked at the teeth in José’s hand. She thought that Albert would be eating soup. “You put glue on them and stick them in your mouth.”

  “They look like toy teeth,” José said. “Like those teeth that talk.”

  “When Albert has them in his mouth, they talk.”

  José looked up at Ramona. “My mother is gone, isn’t she, Tía?”

  “Yes, José,” Ramona said. “I think she is.”

  “She said she would turn to smoke.”

  “Yes.” Ramona leaned across the table and took José’s hand. “Like smoke, José. Now come with me. There’s something I want to see.”

  There was an old wooden ladder behind the shed where Ramona kept her paintings, and she and José dragged it out from the weeds and stood it against the south side of the house. It was past noon, and the sun was high in the sky and hot, and there was no wind. Ramona could see how the trapdoor where her father had once climbed and leaped into the snow was nailed shut, and she could see the tracks of rust where the nails had bled for years upon years.

  “What are we going to fix?” José said.

  “Nothing,” Ramona said. “We’re going to open that door and see what’s inside. Now run to my truck. In the back is a steel bar. Go get it and bring it here.”

  The wood was rotten, and the small trapdoor pried loose easily. Ramona swung open the door and could feel on her face the rush of warm air and the strands of spider webs that wove from the back of the door to the rafters inside. There was the smell of age and old dirt. José yelled something from below that Ramona did not hear. A few feet inside stood seven figures, layered in dust as if clothed in shrouds. They stood close together, and at the foot of one was a small piece of cloth that was no more than a rag. Ramona shut her eyes tightly, and she could feel the sun on the back of her neck.

  She passed each one down to José, who stood them by the ladder in the sun, and to him these things looked like creatures that had come from a place far away. Ramona climbed down the ladder carrying the last Lady, which was the tallest. When Ramona stood her with the others, she thought that her life was so full it might explode.

  Little José felt his Tía Ramona’s hand come to rest on his shoulder. He looked at the unfinished santo that seemed more like wood than anything else, and he thought of the time his father had showed him how to carve a small crucifix out of wood. His father had said to him, “You carve, José, with the blade away from you always. And you take only a little away at a time. If you do that, mi hijo, you will see things in the wood that have been there forever.”