The old man grunted. “There’s no ballplayers in this village,” he said.
She glanced over at him. His head was trembling slightly, and his tongue was playing with his teeth. “Someone played here,” she said.
“That was a long time ago,” he told her. “A long time ago there were teams all over this part of the country, even Indian teams from the pueblos. All summer long they’d go from village to village playing their games. That was back when I was a boy, but nobody remembers things like that anymore.”
“My granddaddy played with the South Cairo Grays back in Illinois,” Rachael said. “He traveled about his whole life playing baseball. And when he stopped, he came here.” Off in the trees, the ravens were hopping from limb to limb, slowly making their way back to the backstop.
“Maybe you remember him,” Rachael said. “His name was Madewell Brown.”
The old man reached up and rubbed the side of his face. “No,” he said. “I don’t think so.”
The field was sitting in shade now. A soft breeze pulled at Rachael’s hair and moved off into the cottonwoods. From a distance came the sound of water flowing. She wondered if she had come all this way for just this one moment, and if that would be enough for her to take home. She took a few steps away from the old man. “I know the game,” she said softly. “But I’ve never been on a field before.”
“Well, it’s not much of a field now,” the old man said. “But when I was a boy the outfield was green grass and the base paths were raked with sand from the creek. People would come out with their families and sit back in the trees. My father played out there.” He pointed his arm. “At shortstop. He played in his overalls and his work boots.”
Rachael glanced over at him. “My granddaddy played shortstop, too,” she said. And then she shook her head, wondering at what she was saying, at how she could ever confuse her grandfather with Obie. “But mostly,” she went on, “he was a pitcher. He threw so hard that he shattered bats and once broke an umpire’s hand at the wrist.”
“I would have liked to seen that,” the old man said, smiling, his mouth full of gray teeth. He bent over awkwardly and put the rifle down on the ground. Then he moved closer to Rachael, shaking his hand as if it had gone to sleep.
“There’s no ballplayers here anymore,” he said, “but back then this village had a fine team. Alfonso Vigil and his cousins played the outfield. Over at third base was Frutoso Martinez. Victor Ruiz played second and his son Juan played first. We only had one pitcher. His name was Francisco Garcia.” The old man brought a hand to his face again. “I don’t remember our catcher. I can see him, but I forget his name.”
“Our catcher was Syville Smith,” Rachael said. “By the end his ankles were so swelled up they looked like ankles on an old, fat lady.”
“Eee,” the old man breathed out. “My Tia Rose had ankles like that. They were so fat they spilled out of her shoes.” He shook his head. “I haven’t thought about her for a long time.”
At the far edge of the field, three dogs came out of the trees along the creek. They paused for a second, their noses in the air, and then sauntered across the outfield. Rachael looked over at the old man. He was staring blankly straight ahead, his hand still rubbing his face.
“I see them, hija,” he said in a low voice. “I’ll get them when they come back.” He dropped his hand and looked up at her. “I don’t want to shoot a dog in front of you.”
“What about your lambs?”
The old man shrugged. “My grandson’s there. He’ll watch out.”
By now the dogs were gone and the field was sitting quiet in the shadows. Behind her, Rachael heard the ravens fly out of the trees and settle down on the rim of the backstop, almost as if waiting for a pitch to be thrown. For the first time, she realized what Madewell Brown had meant by there being safe places on this earth where no one could find you. And where the game of baseball is played is one of them. She could almost picture poor Earl out there by the creek waiting anxiously for a ball that would surely be hit to him. Her granddaddy, his cap shading his face, standing easy on the mound. And off to his right would be Obie, muttering his curses and making a mess with his spit.
The old man went to where he had left his rifle. He picked it up, groaning as he bent over. “Well,” he said, “I’m going back in the trees to wait for those dogs,” but he stood where he was. After a moment, he said, “You can stay as long as you want.”
“Thank you,” Rachael said. She took one more look around as the old man walked away. When he reached the edge of the trees, he turned and called out to her.
“Hija,” he said, coming just a little closer, “I just remembered something.” He was looking past her, his rifle hung forgotten in his hand.
“What is it?” Rachael asked.
He moved his eyes back to her slowly. “A long time ago,” he said, “there was a black man who lived in this village.”
After the late breakfast, Cipriano went outside while Lupita disappeared into her bedroom to lie down for a little while. He walked around the house picking up limbs that had blown from a wind a few nights before. And those, along with his aunt’s bags of garbage, he tossed in the back of his pickup. He cut back the weeds that had grown high along the ditch and the grass beneath the cottonwoods. After he was finished with the yard, he went back inside. He rehung a cabinet door that had come loose from its hinges and fixed the slow leak beneath the kitchen sink that Lupita had been complaining about for weeks. When he was done with that, he put away the tools he’d used and wiped the water from the kitchen floor. And then he went to Lupita’s bedroom door and pushed it open gently.
“Tia,” he said.
“I’m here, hijo.” The curtains were drawn and the small lamp beside the bed was on. Lupita was lying on top of the blanket, her hands folded on her stomach.
“I’m leaving now,” Cipriano said.
“Did you fix my leak?” she asked, turning her head.
“Yes,” Cipriano said.
“Thank you,” she said, smiling. “I’m just going to rest a little longer. Maybe you could come back later and we can talk some more.”
“I’ll try,” Cipriano said.
Lupita looked back up at the ceiling. “Cuidado, hijo,” she said softly.
“I will, Tia.”
The back road from Lupita’s house was rutted and shaded with cottonwoods. Cipriano drove his truck slowly, one arm hanging down out the window. When he hit the highway, he turned left and was in full sun. Even with the windows down, the air in the cab swirled with heat and the dry smell of dust. As he passed the post office, Donald Lucero’s squad car swung out of the lot and pulled up close behind him. In the rearview mirror Cipriano saw the headlights flash and Donald pointing to the side of the road.
“Eee,” he breathed out. “What now?” He downshifted and pulled off the road alongside a boarded-up trailer that sat back in the weeds.
Lucero climbed out of his car and stood for a moment stretching out his back. And then he walked up to where Cipriano had parked. He leaned over, one hand on the frame of the window, and looked in the cab. “Cómo está, Cipriano?” he said.
“Bien, Donald,” Cipriano said. “What’s going on?”
“You got a minute, I’ll tell you.” And without waiting for an answer, he went around the truck and a little ways up the drive that led to the trailer. Out the windshield the highway ran flat and straight for as far as Cipriano could see. In the distance a sheen of sun glared off the pavement. A hundred yards away a flock of crows worked on a dead animal that had been struck by a vehicle and thrown onto the shoulder of the road. Other than that, nothing was moving.
Cipriano pushed open the truck door. Cursing softly, he went and stood beside Lucero. “What do you want, Donald?” he asked again.
“I want you to send your nigger back where she belongs,” the Guadalupe police officer said.
A rush of air came from Cipriano’s mouth and he jerked his head back. “She’s not mine
, Donald.”
“Oh no? She’s not here to talk to me, jodido. Or Joe at the lumberyard or Gilfredo Vigil out in his field or anyone else she’s bothering.”
“Is this why you stopped me?”
“Why do you think?” Lucero said. “For your fucking taillights?” He turned away in disgust and shook his head. He bent over, picked up a rock and tossed it at the trailer. The stone struck a sheet of warped plywood that was nailed over the doorway. “This is Herminio Romero’s old house,” he said. “You remember him?”
“Yes,” Cipriano said. He could feel the sun beating hot through the back of his shirt. Dirt and bits of insulation dug into his skin. “I remember Herminio,” he said.
When Cipriano and Donald were boys, Herminio had shot and killed his wife for no reason anyone, even Herminio, could think of. He shot her in the cab of their pickup and then went inside his house to wait for his daughter to come visit. At the time rumors were flying about the village, but what Cipriano remembered most was that Herminio had ended up going on with his life as if nothing had happened.
“You know why nobody did nothing about Herminio?” Lucero asked.
Cipriano moved away a few feet and kicked a loose stone off into the weeds. He and Lucero were the same age, had been raised in the same village, and he was being talked to as if he’d just driven into town. They both knew why nothing had been done about Herminio. His wife was from a village south of Las Sombras and she’d had no family in Guadalupe to speak for her.
“Yes,” Cipriano said. “I know why. So what do you want me to do?”
“I don’t care what you do,” Lucero said. “I don’t need someone going house to house asking questions about someone who lived here a long time ago. Besides, someone’s going to mess with her if she’s not careful and then I got another problem. You’re the one who brought her here. You and Rufino. Go tell her what she wants and then she’ll go home.”
“And what’s that?” Cipriano asked.
“How the fuck do I know?” Lucero said. “That’s between you and her. Nobody else cares, jodido.”
Obie Poole
Let me tell you what happened to all those boys I once played with.
Ollie Swan he got sick with some lung disease from all the dust he breathed on those dirt roads. He wasted away to skin and bones and it got so even sitting down he sounded like he was breathing through wet sand. The last I saw of him was in a rooming house down in South Carolina. Before we could get away Ollie he grabbed hold of Madewells arm like he never going to let go. Thats right it was like he holding on for dear life.
Madewell Ollie said. Dont leave me here Madewell. I dont want to stay here without you boys.
This just for now Ollie Madewell told him squatting down low. Till you catch your breath. When we pass this way come spring well stop for you.
Yes sir thats what Madewell said. But we never did. We drove off and left poor Ollie shrunk in a chair like overnight he was an old man.
Bowman Crawford we lost in the back hills of Tennessee not long after he broke his pitching arm. It never did heal right from the get go and hung crooked down from the shoulder. He stayed on with us for a few months helping out with the gear and the bench talk. But even then you could see in his eyes he was somewhere else. One morning we woke to find him gone. His bag his clothes all of him. Bowman just lit out on us and where he went I never heard.
Walter Haynes and Slip Marcelle and Malcolm Cole and Tessie Turner were the next to go. They all left in a bunch saying they were done with all this. Saying they were going to play out the rest of their days in Mexico. Yes sir they going to marry themselves some fat Mexican girls and have some babies and leave this sorry country behind. Before they left Malcolm asked me to come along. But I told him no. I told him Obie Poole had his own plans and playing dirt ball with babies wasnt one of them. Dont ask me if they ever made it because I dont know. For all I know they mopping floors down in Texas or spitting shoes in some hotel toilet room.
James Lee Pittman and his little brother Earl got killed up north by a slow moving freight train. And Sully Greene he fell in with a white woman in Louisiana and didnt know enough to keep his mouth shut. Some white men grabbed him and took him out on a back country road. They cut his legs and left him bleeding in a drainage ditch full of snakes. Sparrow Higgens what he did was drink himself to death slow and steady. And theres not much more to say about that.
By the time Hightop took off there wasnt much to leave but me and Syville. Hightop he just walked away one day like he was a little boy taking a stroll. I seen him go picking up stones as he went and giving them a toss. Hey I yelled at him. Hey Hightop where you off to. He didnt even turn around and give a look. He didnt so much as raise a hand. He just went like there’d been a clock ticking since the day we all left South Cairo.
After that I didnt have much holding me. I just moved on to clown ball and made myself a pocket of money. I left Syville and those men wed picked up along the way outside a small town in Indiana. I said Just drop me off Syville. Just drop me off right here and thats what he did.
Ill see you somewhere Obie Syville said to me.
Yes sir I told him. You surely will. And when he drove off I see all those heads bobbing up and down in their seats and for one sweet second I think I see Ollie in there and Hightop and Earl and Madewell and all the rest of them. I watched that old bus go down the road and then I hefted my bag and went walking.
As for Madewell theres not much to say. We lost him on that field of play in El Paso Texas. He walked off and disappeared in the dry heat like he was never there to begin with. And where he went is anyones guess.
Yes sir thats what happened to all those boys I once played with. And I tell you a thing. The only one who ever came back was me Obie Poole.
Eight
The old Montoya house sat by itself on the west side of the valley up close to a foothill. All that was left of it were crumbling adobe walls.
The interior was wide open to the weather and heaps of dirt had washed up against the walls. Dry, brittle weeds were sticking out of the cracks between the adobes, and one wall was badly pitted from years of target shooting. Off to one side and not far from the house was a large hole that had been filled in with dirt and logs and rotten boards and sheets of metal and a bedspring and broken glass and empty cans and whatever else had been in or part of the house.
The old man was right, Rachael thought, looking around. There’s nothing here to see.
He had told her where the house was and that it had been torn down decades ago. He told her that if his memory was right a black man had lived there for a little while. But where he had come from or what had happened to him, the man didn’t know. By then he had been backing away toward the trees, shaking his head no at every question Rachael asked.
“Go see for yourself,” he said finally, waving a hand at her. “I told you too much already.” And what that meant, Rachael didn’t know. She watched him limp back into the cottonwoods, his head lowered, the barrel of the rifle almost dragging on the ground. And then she’d turned the way he’d pointed.
It had taken her a couple of hours to walk across the valley and find this place. Now the sun was falling and some of the heat of the day was gone. The air was still, and in it was the faint scent of sage.
There was no door to the old house, only a section of wall that was missing, to the side of that was a gaping hole where a window had been. Against the far wall was a burnt area as if there had been a fire at one time. Other than that, the interior wasn’t any different from the outside, just bare eroded bricks stacked one on top of each other. She walked a little closer and then, stepping over the rotted doorsill, went inside.
The house had once been two rooms. The one off to the side was smaller as if a bedroom. Rachael walked slowly around the perimeter, trailing her hand along the adobes. Every so often she would come across something, a cast-iron lid to a stove or a piece of colored glass or a latch to a door. She would clean each on
e with her fingers and place it in a pile in the center of the room. Beneath a small board in one corner was a piece of hard plaster the width of her hand. One side of it was painted black and marked with specks of white, as if someone had once painted a section of night sky upon the wall. And that, too, she placed with the other things she had found.
In the area that was burnt, a long shelf had been dug into the wall. The wood at the base of it was sooted and crumbling from rot. On the ground below it were charred pieces of wood. Rachael scraped the top layer away with her foot, and just below that she struck something that shifted the dirt around it. She squatted down and began to dig with her hands. A moment later, she had uncovered the carved figure of what she thought must be the Virgin Mary.
It was made of hard wood and stood about a foot high. Her eyes were closed and both her hands came together in prayer. A shroud hid her hair and fell all the way to her feet. Small, jagged pieces of wood were inset on each side of her and made it appear as if she were engulfed in flames. Rachael cleaned away the dirt and when she was done, she stood and held the figure so that it was facing the last of the day’s sun.
With the sunlight on her body, Rachael could now see the faint remnants of paint. There were flecks of red on the front of her dress, and blue on her shroud. She could see the rise of the Virgin’s forehead, the slight slant of her eyes and how, though she wasn’t smiling, her mouth was wide and easy. Rachael felt as if she had found something that had been waiting here for her, a gift left behind for her to find.
Rachael gathered up everything she’d found and carried it all from the house. She made her way through the sage, skirting the edge of an alfalfa field, down to the highway. The drivers who passed her now stared openly, but she kept her gaze straight ahead, not caring what they might think of her. By the time she reached the cabins at the south end of the valley the sun had fallen behind the foothills. The sky was a dull, faded blue and the mountains behind her were stained with red. From the other side of the highway came the sound of a dog barking and then the loud noise of a man’s voice.
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