Madewell Brown

by Rick Collignon

  Hey now Hightop said leaning forward. Look out there. The light had changed all of a sudden in a way that made me think of some of those photographs I’d seen. The air was yellowed and you could see every damn move everybody made sharp and clear. Far off to the west the clouds were resting down on the ground and they was webbed with lightning.

  Look at that Hightop said like we couldnt see for ourselves. I never saw such a thing. He got himself up and peered past the edge of the dugout. All there was above us was a patch of blue sky. We blessed he said. We sitting in a hole of sunshine.

  As for Madewell he just drew in his feet saying that someone was going to get hurt if this game wasnt called. He got up and walked past me to the far corner of the dugout.

  I never did say a word. I was looking out at the home plate umpire. He was standing off staring up at the sky just like us. Beyond him I could see the crowd. They were mostly white folks with a few coloreds bunched together far down the right field line. There was a stir among them all and it wasnt hard to see that they too was uneasy with what might be coming. I watched that umpire standing out there with his hands on his hips. Finally he gave a kick at the dirt and raised his hands wide over his head like to say this game is done. But I tell you a thing. Before he could utter one word that lightning ripped out of the sky with a thunder that deafened us all and it hit that boy.

  For a little bit no one did nothing. The ball that the boy had thrown was still sailing lazy through the air like nothing had happened. But there wasnt a soul to catch it. The other two outfielders were down on the ground squirming. Their feet was kicking grass and their arms were wrapped around their heads. As for that boy the backside of his uniform had caught fire. His feet were bare and scorched and the air smelt like it had been burnt. Then someone let out a howl from the stands. It was a mid aged woman in a white flowered dress. She threw herself over the wallboard behind home plate and went running wild. She ran across the infield her dress flapping and out to where that boy lay burning.

  Thats his mama Hightop say in a hushed voice. I knows it.

  Those stands they began to empty with some people heading out onto the field and the others heading for the gate. Syville he took a step out of the dugout like he had a mind to go lend a hand. And that was when Madewell stepped forward and spoke.

  Get your stuff he said looking down the bench at all of us. This games over and we not wanted here.

  Out on the field fat drops of rain were kicking up dust in the infield. Some of the crowd were milling about on the outfield grass and staring back at us. I could hear that boys mama wailing. A blanket had been thrown over him by then and a haze of smoke hung just off the ground.

  Syville Madewell said louder this time. You hear me. We got to go.

  In all the years I played ball I dont remember there ever being trouble with any team black or white. Its true that now and again thered be a player whod come in with his spikes high or say things that shouldnt be said. But all in all once that first pitch was thrown there was just the game and the playing of it. The trouble that would come upon us was like that lightning. A thing from outside that didnt give a damn about nothing but itself.

  When I think back on that sandy haired boy I see him lying out on the grass all curled up. I see his mama bent over him leaning close in her white flowered dress. And I see that crowd watching us leave like it had been us that had brought such a thing upon them.

  Six

  Cipriano woke up stiff and cramped and hungover on a lawn chair beneath Rufino’s portal. It was early morning, the sun still low behind the mountains. The sky was a dull blue, and there wasn’t a breath of air. He sat up and threw off the sleeping bag he’d slept under. His mouth was stale with tobacco, the odor of sweat and beer was on his clothes. He rubbed his face with his hands and threaded his fingers through his hair. And then, with a groan, he stood up and went inside the house.

  He walked over to the sink, turned on the tap and let it run. When it was cold, he put his head beneath the flow of water and kept it there until his scalp ached. As he straightened up, he heard the door creak behind him. Startled, he swung around quickly. Tranquilino was standing in the doorway looking around the room, his hands in his pockets.

  “Jesus,” Cipriano said. “Where’d you come from?”

  “My house,” Tranquilino said. “Where do you think I came from?”

  “How long have you been standing there?” A stream of cold water ran down his back and he shook his head hard.

  “I just got here,” Tranquilino said, stepping inside the room. He’d been to this house a few times before. What he remembered was an old man who had little to say and a house that was filthy and smelled bad. Now, with the straight mud-brick walls and the clean vigas overhead, he couldn’t even picture Rufino having lived here. “This doesn’t look like Rufino’s place anymore,” he said.

  “It’s not,” Cipriano said. “It’s mine.” He walked across the room and went outside. He felt better, the water having washed away some of the beer from the night before. “You know what I heard?” he said.

  “What’s that?” Tranquilino said, although he knew what Cipriano was going to say.

  “I heard someone got that letter I mailed.”

  “I heard that, too,” Tranquilino said, leaning against the door frame.

  Cipriano glanced over at him. “Who told you?”

  Just about everyone, Tranquilino thought. He’d heard about the black girl from Paco Martinez the evening before at Antonio Medina’s birthday party. “Hey, Lino,” Paco had said, grinning, a beer in his hand. “What’s this shit I hear about Cipriano?” It seemed that Paco had heard about the girl from a waitress at Felix’s Café where she’d gone to eat. And he’d heard about the letter Cipriano had mailed from his wife, who’d heard it from Tranquilino’s sister-in-law, who could only have heard it from Tranquilino’s wife. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tranquilino had said to Paco, thinking that this might all be his fault. “Besides, it’s none of my business.” No one else had mentioned it, but Tranquilino could feel the unspoken questions every time someone glanced at him or stared at Genoveva when she wasn’t looking. He didn’t know if Genoveva knew or not and, with so many people around, thought it best not to ask. It might be better to talk to Cipriano first.

  “I heard about her from Nemecio,” Cipriano said. “I ran into him at Tito’s. He said she was looking for me.”

  “That’s not what I heard,” Tranquilino said. “I heard she was asking questions about her grandfather.” He looked down at the ground. He wondered whom she would ask. What they would tell her. As far as he could tell, there was no one left to find but Cipriano. He pushed off the door frame and stepped beneath the portal. A halo of sun was just above the peaks of the mountains, and sunlight was beginning to bleed down the slopes.

  “What are you going to tell her when she finds you?” he asked.

  “She won’t find me.”

  “Oh no?” Tranquilino said, looking over at him. He thought that Cipriano looked worn out, his eyes bloodshot, his face pale. He also thought that his friend’s day wasn’t going to get much better. “You watch, jodido,” he said. “Someone will tell her. This village isn’t so good with secrets.”

  Cipriano grunted softly. He thought that there were some things this village never talked about. “I don’t know, Tranquilino,” he said. He looked toward the road and imagined the girl walking up the drive, the letter in her hand. The thought of it made him feel tired. He picked the sleeping bag off the ground and tossed it on the lawn chair.

  “I don’t know what I’ll tell her,” he said. “I don’t even know what she wants.”

  Lupita was at the sink in her kitchen. Her hands were wet with water and soap, and she was thinking about the day Rufino’s wife had come to her house.

  “Reycita,” Lupita said softly, her hands lying still in the warm water. “I remember now. Her name was Reycita.”

  Reycita Miera was a young woman, li
ttle more than a girl, when she and Rufino married. And where Rufino had found her, Lupita could only guess. She knew that there were no Mieras in Guadalupe, and the name had a vaguely Mexican feel to it. Maybe she had come from some small village near Las Sombras or one farther south, some other small village where the young girls stood staring out windows and dreamed. What Lupita knew to be true was that one day her brother was alone in their parents’ house and the next day he had a wife. Fourteen months later there was a baby. Cipriano.

  Lupita’s own husband had been dead a year when Reycita appeared at her door. She had walked through the fields along the irrigation ditch. A blanket was wrapped around her shoulders and a small, swaddled infant was in her arms.

  At first Lupita thought that it must be one of the neighbor children who had come to borrow a little sugar or some flour for tortillas. But when she opened the door she had no idea who this girl was or how that could be in a village so small.

  “I have brought you this,” Reycita said, raising her arms. What she held was so still that Lupita wondered if it was a doll or a bundle of rags and cloth. Then a small hand lifted from the folds and the thin fingers began to move ever so slightly. Lupita raised her eyes and saw that one side of the girl’s face was badly bruised and her lips were cracked as if she had gone without water. Her hair was long and lay flat and lank against her scalp. There seemed to be little of her inside the blanket that was wrapped around her shoulders.

  “I am your brother’s wife,” Reycita said, the words rushing out of her mouth. “And I am leaving.”

  This happened late in October. There was a deep chill in the air and a wind was pushing through the dry leaves of the cottonwoods. The sun was low in the west and the sky and the mountains were stained the color of blood. The fields were already brown and burnt from cold and frost. The girl looked too young to be anyone’s wife. But her face was bruised and her eyes darted about. Lupita thought that this was yet one more reason to have nothing to do with her brother. She could feel the cold against her skin and covered her bare arms with her hands.

  “It’s late,” Lupita said. “You should go home to Rufino before it gets dark.”

  At that Reycita shook her head and began to cry. And the infant in her arms began to whimper. “You keep him,” she said. “For a little while, you keep him.” The baby was crying louder now, and Reycita began to rock back and forth. “Quitete, baby,” she said. “Quitete.”

  It was then that the woman Lupita had always wished to be stepped forward and stretched out her arms. “Give him to me,” she said. “Give him to me and go while you can.”

  As Lupita stood holding her brother’s son, she watched Reycita walk away. Again she went through the fields, and every so often she would stumble and almost fall. Lupita watched until Reycita passed through a line of apricot trees and was gone from sight. Then she reached down and pulled back the cloth that covered the infant’s face. Nowhere in the child’s features could she see either the sallow young girl or her brother.

  “Shhhhhh, hijo,” she whispered. “There’s nothing to cry about. You’re with me now. Let’s go inside where it’s warm and I’ll make you some warm milk with sugar.”

  Not long after Reycita left the village, there was a rumor that she had been struck by a truck hauling hay. The impact, they said, had thrown her body into the river, where it was never found. Then, many years later, Lupita heard that Reycita Miera had managed to make her way to Mexico, where she had married a man who kept bees. Which of these stories was true, Lupita didn’t know. Nor did she care. She had come to think of Cipriano as her own.

  As for Rufino, it seemed he hadn’t noticed that for a brief time he’d had a wife and then a son.

  By now the water in the sink had grown cold and murky. Lupita pulled the plug from the drain and dried her hands on a dish towel. She had not slept well for nights, and she felt tired and lethargic. Ever since Rufino’s burial, she had kept to herself, seldom answering the phone. Most of the time now she lay in bed overwhelmed with memories, memories of her childhood, of her parents and her grandparents. And worse, with the memories of Rufino that sat in her heart like shadows. She would lie on the bed sheets with a table light on and wonder how the death of someone she had cared for so little could cause her to walk backward through time.

  “Oh, leave me be, Rufino,” she would sigh, as if he could hear her, as if he would listen. “I don’t want you in my house.”

  Lupita hung the dish towel on a hook and looked out the small window over the sink. The morning was full of sun. The grass was green beneath the cottonwoods, and beyond them, the foothills were still and hazed with heat. As she thought a little walk might do her some good, Cipriano’s truck pulled off the road and into her drive.

  “Hijo,” she said, managing a smile, “where have you been?” And then she hurried to the stove to put on water for coffee.

  Lupita was at the counter, her back to the door, when Cipriano walked into the kitchen. The room smelled of coffee and garlic and looked as it always had. The floors were mopped clean, and everything was in its place. On top of the cabinet against one wall were photographs of him as a boy and above them was a retablo of a saint stooped over a staff. On the table were two cups. Sunlight spilled in the window.

  “Tia,” Cipriano said softly, so as not to startle her.

  “Come in, hijo,” Lupita said, turning around. “I saw you coming and made coffee.”

  “Thank God,” Cipriano said. He went to the table, pulled out a chair and sat down. Lupita came over with the coffee pot and filled both cups. Then she sat across from him.

  “How are you, hijo?” she asked. “I’ve been worrying.” His face was washed and his hair was damp. Although he was wearing a clean shirt, she could still smell sweat and beer on his skin.

  “I’m fine, Tia,” he said.

  “I can make you some breakfast.”

  “No. Coffee’s enough.” He picked up the cup and leaned back. There were dark shadows beneath Lupita’s eyes and her face was drawn and pale. She looked thinner than she had a few days before. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  Lupita raised a hand and shook her head. “I’m just tired,” she said. She took a sip of coffee and then folded her hands on top of the table. Just moments ago, she thought, her home had been full of bad memories. Now Cipriano was here and all that had changed. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said.

  “I can’t stay long, Tia. I just came by to ask you a question.”

  For a few seconds, Lupita sat quietly without speaking. Then she smiled. “What question do you have for me?”

  “About Rufino. About what happened to him.”

  “Eee,” his aunt breathed out. “I don’t know what happened to him.” She straightened her hands and moved her fingertips across the surface of the table. “Maybe it was his heart. Or a blood vessel in his head. You know how he was. Any little thing would upset him.”

  “No,” Cipriano said. “I don’t mean how he died. I mean what happened to him when he was a boy.”

  “When he was a boy?” Lupita shifted her body and looked past her nephew, out the open door. What sense of peace she’d felt when Cipriano had arrived was gone now. “I don’t understand what you mean, hijo,” she said softly. “He was just a boy like any other boy.”

  Cipriano thought that of all the things Lupita could have said about Rufino, this was the furthest from the truth. He couldn’t imagine his father ever being like every other boy. It struck him how little he knew about his own family. He’d been told some things, like how his mother had fallen ill soon after giving birth and been forced to leave the village, how his grandfather had died one harsh winter from pneumonia, and how his grandmother had died soon after from loneliness. He’d been told things that could have been about anyone. But not once had he heard anything that had to do with where he came from or who these people were.

  He stretched out his legs and cradled the cup of coffee in his lap. Lupita was still staring off at n
othing. Her coffee cup was forgotten to the side. A push of warm air was coming in through the open door. Cipriano thought that it would be so easy to just close his eyes and sleep for a little while here in this house. But instead, and without giving it a thought, he said, “I’ve got a problem, Tia. Rufino told me a story that’s haunting me. A story about a black man.”

  Four days after Rufino had come across Madewell Brown out at Perdido mesa, his father beat him.

  Lupita was six years old at the time this happened. She was sitting at the kitchen table drawing pictures on a piece of yellowed paper. Her mother was at the stove frying meat and chile and Rufino was outside splitting kindling. Lupita’s mother had just thrown a clove of brown garlic into the skillet when the door burst open and her father came in dragging Rufino along behind him. He had his son by one arm and in his other hand was a long, thin piece of oak from a wooden barrel that had fallen apart behind the shed. The look Lupita saw on her father’s face made her think that she didn’t know who this man was, that some stranger had come onto their property and caught her brother unawares. She thought that if she were quiet he might not notice her.

  Rufino’s face was twisted with fear and shame. His mouth gaped open. There was a red welt the size of their father’s hand on his cheek. As he was dragged past the kitchen table, he reached out as if to hold on, but then he was jerked by and thrown inside the small bedroom. For a second, Lupita’s father stood outside the room, his breath deep and labored. And then, saying nothing, he stepped inside, closing the door softly behind him.

  “Mama,” Lupita called out. Her hands were shaking and she was about to cry. On the paper before her was a mesa covered with scrawny sagebrush. And perched in the branches of each bush was a doll.