Madewell Brown

by Rick Collignon

  Nemecio looked up at Cipriano. His eyes were swollen with the whiskey and a run of moisture came from one nostril. “Rufino left me here,” he said, as if Cipriano hadn’t said a word. “He ran off and left me. That’s what your father did. He ran off and left the both of us alone on this mesa.”

  Genoveva was sitting beneath her portal when Cipriano drove up. She was smoking a cigarette, her legs crossed at the ankles, her heels propped up on a block of wood. It was dark, and for the past two nights she’d been waiting for Cipriano to come. Martin was asleep inside and the lights in the house were off. The sky was clear and lit with a maze of stars. She watched his truck pull off the road, headlights splashing across dried grass and the thin, bitter cherry trees that grew along the ditch.

  “Cipriano, where have you been?” she asked, even though she knew the answer.

  It seemed as though half the village had seen him driving around with Nemecio Archuleta, and half of those had felt that this was something she should know. It was Esperanza Garcia who had called first to tell her that her son Ruben had seen them take the old road that led out to Perdido mesa.

  “Why do you think that is, hija?” Esperanza had asked. And by the sweet tone in her voice, Genoveva had known that no matter how long people kept things to themselves, there were no secrets in this village.

  “I don’t know, Esperanza,” she’d said, and then she’d hung up the phone gently.

  Genoveva leaned forward and stubbed out her cigarette. Then she leaned back in her chair and took in a long breath. It’s about time you came to me, she thought. She watched Cipriano park beside her car. After a few seconds, the door swung open and he climbed out. She could see the shadow of him move to the front of the truck and lean back against the hood. She realized that with the house lights off, he was unable to see her. She pushed out of her chair and stood.

  “Cipriano,” she called out, walking toward him.

  “Hey,” he said, startled. “I didn’t see you.”

  She stopped a few feet away from him. Close enough to see his face, close enough to smell the beer and whiskey and, beneath that, the odor of sweat and sage. “I’ve been waiting for you,” she said.

  “I know you have,” he said, and fell quiet.

  “Martin’s been asking where you were, why you’ve been staying away.” She stepped closer and took his hand. “Cipriano,” she said.

  He pulled his hand away gently and folded his arms. “I was out at Perdido mesa,” he said. “With Nemecio. I went out there to find out what happened.”

  “And did you?”

  From a distance came the sharp wail of coyotes. They went on for a few seconds and then suddenly stopped. They’ve caught what they were chasing, he thought. A rabbit or a cat that had strayed too far. He dropped his hands and shoved them in his pockets. “Yes,” he said. “I found out.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Cipriano grunted and almost smiled. “Now, there’s a question,” he said.

  At that second, Genoveva almost asked what he had learned. But then she realized that whatever the answer was, it wouldn’t matter to her. “Come with me, Cipriano,” she said.

  “I don’t know, Genoveva,” he said. “This whole thing is such a mess.” He thought that not far from where he was standing was a black woman and, although she didn’t know it, she, too, was waiting for him.

  “You’ve come here,” Genoveva said, and for the first time he looked at her.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” he said.

  She smiled and then reached up and touched the side of his face. “We’ve missed you,” she said. “How could you not know that?”

  Cipriano woke just as the sky outside was beginning to pale. He lay still for a moment listening to the sound of Genoveva’s breath coming deep and slow. She was turned away from him, her hair strewn over the pillow. He eased himself out of the bed and gathered his clothes up off the floor. As he was about to leave the room, Genoveva stirred and spoke his name. He knelt beside her and moved her hair from her face. In the dim light, he could see the outline of her body beneath the thin sheet.

  “Where are you going, Cipriano?” she asked, her voice full of sleep.

  “I’m going out,” he said softly. “I’ll come back soon.”

  A low hum came from her mouth and she drew one leg up. “Promise me,” she said.

  “I promise you, Genoveva.”

  She smiled. “Then go,” she said.

  The drive across the village took almost no time at all. No one was out on the road, most of the houses had a quiet, closed-up feel about them. The only person Cipriano saw out so early was Flavio Montoya, who was standing in his alfalfa field, the plants stunted and parched. His hand was resting on the handle of a shovel that was spaded in the ground beside him. Even with the ditches running dry, the old man was wearing his rubber boots as if there might be a chance his feet might get wet and muddy. He didn’t so much as raise a hand as Cipriano passed by.

  Cipriano drove past the post office and turned right on the dirt road that would take him to Rufino’s. A mile later, he turned up the drive.

  The door to the house was wide open and the sleeping bag lay thrown on the ground. His memory was that he’d shut the door when he’d left and put the sleeping bag up on the chair. But now he wasn’t sure. A vague feeling of unease went through him. He suddenly felt as though he’d been away much longer than a day and that somehow in his absence everything had shifted to another place. He took in a slow breath and then pushed open the door and climbed out of the truck.

  The air inside the shed stank of oil and rodent piss and rot. Heavy-bodied flies were crawling along the panes of the one filthy window. Madewell Brown’s bag lay on the floor a few feet away. It was stained and dirty and covered with a brand-new layer of dust. Everything Cipriano had found in it, other than the letter and the photograph, he’d put back in. He squatted down next to it and strung the straps carefully through the buckles so that the leather wouldn’t break. Then he grabbed hold of the handles and stood up.

  “Venga, Madewell,” he said. “It’s time to go home.”

  He threw the bag on the passenger seat of the truck and went to the house. The photograph was on the windowsill where he’d left it. He wiped it clean with his shirt and took one last look at it. One of you, he thought, his eyes moving from face to face, one of you came to this village and met two boys out at Perdido mesa. All of a sudden, the enormity of what he was about to do hit him and his breath caught in his chest. He lowered his head and closed his eyes, waiting for it to pass.

  “One last thing,” he said, and he spoke those words over and over again.

  Lucille’s Cabins stood off by themselves at the south end of the village. They were set back off the highway beneath a grove of dusty aspen trees. There were four in all, small cinder-block rooms that had been built by Lucille Romero’s husband back in the early 1960s. The plaster walls were water stained and the flat roofs were bloated with moisture. Sometimes hunters stayed there in the autumn, but, for the most part, they remained empty and closed up.

  Cipriano parked far enough away that he could see the front of each one. Paint was peeling off the metal doors and the window frames, bits of garbage that had never been picked up were scattered about. The curtains were drawn across all the windows, and there was the same abandoned feel to each one. But he knew there was no other place for her to be in this village. As soon as she had come down the hill, she would have seen Lucille’s faded sign by the side of the highway.

  Cipriano put his hand on the horn and then let it rest there. The sky was a pale blue and there was the faint scent of mildew and wood smoke in the air. He took his hand off the horn and placed it in his lap.

  Maybe she left, he thought. Maybe Donald Lucero caught up with her and she decided to leave. He glanced over at Lucille’s trailer. Although her car was parked in front, it, too, looked as if no one lived there and hadn’t for years. When he turned back, the girl was standing in the d
oorway of one of the cabins as if she’d been there unnoticed all along.

  She was tall and slender and stood with her bare arms loose at her sides, her head cocked just a little bit. Her hair was specked with color and hung in tight, thin braids down to her shoulders. But it was her skin that drew Cipriano’s eyes. It was black and flawless. Just looking at her made him aware of the places he had never been and would never go.

  “What do you want?” she said, her voice raised. Cipriano watched her eyes move up and down the highway before looking back at him. Her hand strayed to the door-knob. “I asked you what you want?”

  Cipriano sat looking at her through the windshield, at her hand slowly twisting the handle to the door, at how her eyes moved about as if there was more of him than she could see. Then she began to turn away, to shut him outside that room. He grabbed the canvas bag and the photograph and stepped out of the pickup.

  “I have something that’s yours,” he said, surprised at how calm his voice sounded.

  Rachael’s eyes dropped down to what the man held. She took a step forward, but came no farther. “What is it?” she asked.

  “It’s something my father had,” and he began to walk toward her, the canvas bag rubbing against his leg.

  Rachael saw that he was the same height as she. His skin was dark from the sun, and his hair was too long and flecked with gray. There was a drawn, haggard look about his eyes. There was something else, too, but she didn’t know what it was. He swung the bag and let it drop to the ground between them. Burnt deep in the canvas was the name “Madewell Brown.”

  A soft sound came from Rachael’s mouth. “Where did you get this?” she asked, her voice not much more than a whisper.

  “I found it,” he said. “I found it in my father’s shed after he died. There’s this, too,” and he handed her the photograph.

  For a second, she just stared at it. And as she stood there so still, Cipriano could see the rise of her forehead and the high line of her cheekbones. He could see the slant of her eyes and how wide and easy her mouth might be. And he could see that her face was the same as that of the man standing in the back row of the photograph.

  Rachael held the photograph in one hand and, barely breathing, began to trace the faces in it with her fingertips. I know you, she thought, smiling. You’re Sully Greene, the one with all the women. And there’s Earl and Hightop and poor Syville Smith. Where Madewell Brown was she didn’t know, nor did she care. It was the man kneeling in front that she’d been looking for all this time. A scowl was on his face and his jaws had been moving back and forth when the picture had been taken. On the sleeve of his uniform was the number 9. Obie Poole.

  “There you are,” she whispered. “I found you, old man.” And her heart was so full she thought it might burst.

  Nine

  One day near the end of summer, Cipriano drove his truck down the rutted road that led to Perdido mesa. It was midafternoon, and the sun was still hot and high in the sky. In the bed of his pickup were a shovel and a wooden cross and a cooler filled with beer.

  He stopped near the edge of the clearing that lay at the base of the mesa. He shut off the engine and leaned forward over the steering wheel. High up on the ridge was the solitary twisted juniper where two boys had once stood. Cipriano sat quietly for a little while looking and then he climbed out of the truck.

  It took him until the sun had set to finish what he had come to do. By then his hands were raw and blistered, his clothes filthy with dry dirt. He went over to the truck and got a cigarette and a cold beer from the cooler. Then he walked to the edge of the slope and sat down.

  In the center of the clearing was a large mound of rocks. Staked in the ground before it was a cross that bore the name “Madewell Brown.” Hanging from one wooden arm was the small crucifix that Cipriano had found inside the wall in his father’s house.

  Cipriano raised his beer and took a long drink. Shadows had fallen over the valley and there was a cool feel to the air. Beyond the clearing was a sea of sagebrush that seemed to stretch forever.

  Hundreds of miles away, Rachael was sitting in Obie Poole’s house near the river in South Cairo. It had rained that morning and the air was heavy with moisture. Outside, Sewell was cutting back the flat grass that had grown wild up to the edge of the porch. Every so often, he would stop to wipe away the sweat and the bugs that rose out of the grass like a fine mist.

  The house was clean, and daylight poured in through a new window that she and Sewell had put in a few weeks before. On the wall beside it was a framed photograph of fourteen ballplayers.

  Rachael was sitting at a table in the center of the room. In front of her was a typewriter she had bought at the South Cairo discount house and a box of clean white paper. On the floor beside her chair was every page that Obie had written. For a moment, Rachael sat staring out the open door, at Sewell working away at the weeds and the flat grass.

  “Sewell,” she called out. “I’m going to start now, Sewell.”

  “It’s about time,” he called back.

  Rachael took in a deep breath. All right, she thought. I’m ready now. She leaned over, picked up a sheet of paper and placed it on the table.

  “Hello, old man,” she said, smiling. And then she began to type:

  This is to be a true story of the game of baseball

  and of the men I knew who played.

  Acknowledgments

  I’d like to thank

  Virginia and Ernie Couse-Leavitt for a place when I needed one.

  And thanks to Judy Jordan for a summer hideout

  and Charlie Bonfanti for the books, which I still have.

  I’d also like to thank Jennifer Ammann,

  Anne Costanza, Dagmar McTague, Chip Collignon,

  Kathi Carroll and my mother Marie Collignon.

  All of you read the manuscript in its various

  stages and you may never know how much

  I needed the encouragement. Thanks to

  David Leffel and Sherrie McGraw for your

  unending support and, of course,

  my editor, Fred Ramey, who can see when I can’t.

  Last of all, I want to thank my family

  who were along for the long ride to the end.

  Thank you Jennifer and Eli and Julian and Milo.

  And those I’ve forgotten, I thank you, too.