The Journal of Antonio Montoya Read online

  The Journal of ANTONIO MONTOYA

  ALSO BY RICK COLLIGNON

  Madewell Brown

  A Santo in the Image of Cristóbal García

  Perdido

  The Journal of ANTONIO MONTOYA

  RICK COLLIGNON

  This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Unbridled Books

  Copyright © 1996 by Rick Collignon

  First paperback edition, 1996

  Unbridled Books trade paperback ISBN 978-1-932961-96-6

  All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

  Collignon, Rick, 1948–

  The journal of Antonio Montoya: a novel / by Rick Collignon.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 1-878448-69-2 (Hard Cover)

  I. Title.

  PS3553.0474675J68 1996

  813’.54—dc20 95-52618 CIP

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Book Design by SH • CV

  First Printing

  To my wife, Julie,

  And my children, Shana, Nick, and Ollie,

  And to my mother and father, who gave me the love of words,

  And maybe most of all to those who are the pages of this book.

  The Journal of ANTONIO MONTOYA

  One

  JOSÉ MONTOYA’S MOTHER AND FATHER were killed early one warm August morning by a cow.

  José’s father had once warned his son, when they were alone together in their trailer, that if he ever saw an owl he should watch out. José Sr. had drunk a few beers and was watching nothing on the television when he suddenly turned and told his son that owls were not birds, they were witches in disguise. They had no purpose but to bring news of death, his father had said, and if José were to see one around the house, he was to get the .22 from under the bed and kill the sonofabitch. José hadn’t known what to say to his father. He had looked at him until his father turned away, took another drink from his beer, and said, “I tell you, hijo, those owls are something.”

  In his seven years José couldn’t recall ever having seen an owl, and he knew that he hadn’t seen one on the morning his mother and father died. The morning seemed to be just the beginning of another day and then, suddenly, without a cloud in the sky or the soft whisper of an owl’s wing, it went bad. It went bad like a bloody egg his mother would sometimes crack open.

  José’s Tío Flavio drove his truck slowly through Guadalupe and took the dirt drive that angled sharply up the hill just past Felix’s Café. He could see his brother’s trailer at the top of the hill. The curtains were drawn over the windows and the front door was closed, even on such a warm morning. To Flavio, who liked trees and running water and the sound of things, the trailer, sitting on its patch of barren earth and surrounded by stunted sagebrush and the twisted shells of José’s abandoned vehicles, looked like something that would be left after the end of the world.

  Ray Pacheco, the Guadalupe police officer, had called Flavio with the bad news that his brother and his brother’s wife, Loretta, were dead because of a cow. It had been over very quickly and no one had suffered, not even the stupid animal. The first thing to come into Flavio’s head was, Why this morning? I was going to irrigate this morning. He had hung up the phone and said to his wife, “José and Loretta are dead. Call Ramona. I’m going to get little José.”

  He parked his truck in front of the trailer and stayed sitting in the cab. He thought it was too bad he had quit smoking—this would be a good time for a cigarette. He had quit because his wife, in her quiet way, had never approved of his ruining his health, but now, he thought, a cow had killed his brother, and after he got José from the trailer, he would go to Tito’s bar and buy a carton of the cigarettes without filters.

  Flavio walked up the front stoop to the trailer door. He swung the door open and then waited for his eyes to become accustomed to the shadows inside. He could hear the low sound of the television, and gradually he made out José sitting cross-legged in front of the TV, staring at him. Flavio had never been close to his brother’s son. He did not know why this was so, as little José was his only nephew, but whenever they were in each other’s presence, Flavio would feel his thoughts slip from him, and when he did speak, the words sounded harsh and empty, even to himself. Flavio looked at his nephew for a few seconds and then said, “José.”

  José was still in his pajamas, and Flavio thought that his nephew must have just come from bed. “José,” he said again, “go put on your clothes.”

  José stood up slowly and looked at his uncle. “Why, Tío?” he asked.

  “Because your mother and your father were in a bad accident. We’re going to my house.”

  “Was it a car accident?”

  “Yes,” Flavio said. “Now don’t ask me no more. Go get your clothes and we’ll go.”

  José Sr. and Loretta Montoya drove to Las Sombras every Saturday morning. It was one of the things, José thought, that he did for his wife. He would get up early with Loretta, and with a splitting headache from too much beer the night before and a cigarette stuck in his mouth that tasted like dirt, he would climb into their car and drive the thirty miles south from Guadalupe to Las Sombras so Loretta could shop. She would hold her husband’s hand tightly and drag him from shop to shop, tormenting him. But she never bought a thing, only walked and looked and sometimes touched the garments in the shops. Loretta had decided to make these trips each Saturday morning when, early in her marriage, she noticed that every Friday night José would get staggering drunk with his cabrónes and come home at all hours. On those nights, he would carry to her bed the odor of tobacco and beer and sweat that made Loretta think of car engines. Loretta shopped every Saturday morning for revenge.

  On this particular Saturday morning Loretta had yelled at her son just before she and José Sr. had driven off. She seldom raised her voice to little José, but on this morning something had risen in her like a black bubble, and she had spit it out at her son. She’d stood in the doorway dressed in her tight blue jeans and fluffed white blouse with pictures on it of what she thought were armadillos but were actually turtles and had stared at José sitting in front of the television, a piece of uneaten toast beside him on the carpet. She had yelled his name so loudly that he started and looked at her wide-eyed. She didn’t say anything else but turned and stomped down the steps to join her husband in the car. When José Sr. saw the expression on her face, he turned the radio off, tossed his cigarette out the window, and thought that his life might actually get worse.

  A few miles south of Guadalupe, just as the highway topped a hill and began to fall back down sharply, Loretta began to cry. José, who was struggling to light another cigarette with a match that would not stay steady in his hand, reached over and touched her knee. His cigarette fell from his mouth to the floor of the car, and he grunted and bent over to look for it. Loretta, her eyes damp and now as bloodshot as her husband’s, saw a large animal standing in the middle of the highway. Loretta could see the jaws of the animal moving back and forth calmly, and even as she called José’s name, she saw that the animal was a large cow and that it had a look almost of curiosity in its eyes. By the time José straightened up, the front of the car had already struck the cow, knocking it off its four legs and rolling it through the windshield. José thought something had fallen from the sky. He saw the color black. He could smell the odor of grass.

 
Two

  IT RAINED THE DAY LORETTA and José were buried. The sky the day before had gradually become streaked with white, and in the night the wind had stopped and the clouds had become thick and heavy and had banked up against the mountains. At dawn the day of the burial, rain had begun to fall lightly. A gift to his pastures, Flavio had thought. But by mid-morning the clouds had fallen to the base of the hills in shrouds, and the air had become water.

  Loretta and José lay in their caskets in the mud at the edges of the two graves that had been dug side by side the previous day, when the earth had been hard and dry. Now the sound of the rain on the wood was so loud that Ramona had trouble making out the words of the priest. He spoke with his head bent, which made it worse, and it seemed to her as if he were mumbling on purpose.

  The road leading up the hill to the cemetery was so slick that before leaving the church, they removed Loretta and José from the back of Father Leonardo’s station wagon and placed them in the bed of Flavio’s truck, where the pine boxes slid and bounced into each other on the ride up. One last time, Ramona thought. At the cemetery the footing was so treacherous that when they unloaded José from the back of the pickup, one of the pallbearers slipped and the casket fell on his foot. The man, a Friday-night compadre of José’s of whom Loretta had never approved, remained to help carry both coffins to the edge of each grave and then limped painfully down the hill and got into his car and sat drinking whiskey by himself, watching how the rain fell. The mourners who remained huddled loosely together, not daring to lower the caskets into the holes for fear that the wet wood might slip on the rope, and who knew what would happen then?

  Ramona stood in the mud and felt the rain fall upon her bare head and run down the back of her neck. The black dress she wore hung flatly from her hips, the wet fabric pressing against her thighs. Her boots were caked with adobe that had splattered to the hem of her dress. She wrapped her arms around her chest and hunched her shoulders and felt a chill run through her body.

  It had been just two days since Ramona’s brother and her brother’s wife had died. Ramona had been washing paintbrushes at her kitchen sink and looking out the small, twisted window at how high the weeds had grown under the cottonwoods when she saw the ambulance pull out quickly from the village office. She wondered who had fallen dead from a bad heart. It wasn’t until an hour later that Flavio’s wife, Martha, called and said, “Your brother, José, is dead, and so is Loretta.”

  Since the death of her father, Ramona had made it a practice never to attend funerals. This had been fine when she lived elsewhere, but since her return to Guadalupe, it seemed as if someone were always dying, and if she hadn’t known the deceased, she had known their first cousin or their in-laws or some other relative. The act of ignoring funerals, not to mention marriages, baptisms, and church gatherings, had gradually made people feel as if Ramona Montoya were someone who had moved into their midst from the outside. This was a constant embarrassment to Flavio, who thought it his duty to say good-bye to all of Guadalupe’s dead regardless of how much he disliked them. Once, when Flavio had reprimanded Ramona for not observing community protocol, she had stared at him in stony silence until he left, leaving her alone in the house that had been their grandparents’. He never broached the subject again with his sister, and now a part of him was astonished that she had actually attended the burial of their brother.

  Few people had come to the cemetery, and those who had stood about as miserably as Ramona. No one had thought to bring an umbrella. In fact, no one in Guadalupe owned an umbrella. When it rained, you stayed inside. No one was foolish enough to go outside and stand in it.

  Father Leonardo finished speaking and laid his hands on the lids of both coffins. He raised his head and smiled and asked if anyone wished to speak. Flavio raised his hand slowly as if he were still in school, and when the priest nodded, he said, “My brother would not want us to catch pneumonia.” After he spoke, Flavio thought that he really didn’t know what his brother would have wanted, and in all honesty, if anyone were foolish enough to stand stupidly in the rain, it possibly would have been José.

  Father Leonardo nodded and said, “Es verdad, Flavio.” He stretched out his arms and blessed the small gathering one last time and then turned and walked away quickly. Ramona followed the line of people, and after a few steps, she took a moment to glance over her shoulder at where the coffins sat. She felt her body turn to ice. She felt as if her heart had stopped and there was no more breath in her body. Loretta was sitting up in her casket, her blouse wet and molded to her breasts. Her head was cocked a little bit, and she was running her fingers through her hair, threading out the rain.

  “It is not a very good day to be buried, Ramona,” she said. “In the mud. I hate the mud. How your brother would track it through the house like he was blind. Always making a mess.” Loretta shook her head, and Ramona could see drops of water fly from her black hair.

  “Loretta,” Ramona said.

  “Ramona,” Loretta said, “I have something to ask of you.”

  “Loretta,” Ramona said again, although she wasn’t sure she spoke aloud.

  Loretta dropped her hands down to where her lap would be. She leaned her body toward Ramona. “Ramona,” she said, “I want you to take little José. I don’t want him to be with my family. And I don’t want him to be with Flavio and Martha. I want you to take him, Ramona. Do this for me.”

  “Loretta,” Ramona said again, “You shouldn’t be talking to me.”

  Loretta smiled, and Ramona could see her youth. “What should I be doing, Ramona?”

  Behind Ramona, Flavio had climbed into his truck. He rubbed his hands together, thinking no one should feel this cold in August. He looked out the windshield at his sister. She was turned away from him so that all he could see was the back of her body. He could see her head move slightly every so often, and he wondered what she was doing still standing in the rain. He turned the key in the ignition and flipped on the heater switch. He wished Ramona would hurry so he could get home and drink a cup of coffee and smoke some cigarettes.

  Ramona did not know what to say to Loretta. She could hear the engine of Flavio’s truck turn and then start. She thought that this conversation with her sister-in-law had gone on long enough. “I must go,” she said.

  “Promise me,” Loretta said, still with a smile.

  “I’m not a young woman,” Ramona said. The ice that had gripped her body had receded, but now she could feel the dampness of her clothes against her skin, a warm feeling in her head like a fever. Even the thought of a seven-year-old boy made her feel like there was no blood in her body.

  Loretta waved her hand gently at her and shook her head. “I don’t want to sit in the rain forever, Ramona.” And when Ramona didn’t answer, Loretta said, “Thank you.” She lay back down in her casket, letting her body fall softly.

  “Loretta,” Ramona whispered.

  Loretta raised her head above the edge of the pine box. “Yes, Ramona.”

  “I don’t understand any of this.”

  Loretta made a slight shrugging motion. “How could you, Ramona?” she said. “You will get sick standing in the rain.”

  Ramona and Flavio drove from the cemetery in silence, not speaking even when the truck slid out of the ruts going down the steep hill and Flavio had to take his foot off the brake and pray the vehicle would pull back. When they made it safely to the highway, Flavio breathed a sigh of relief and glanced at his sister. Ramona was staring out her side window, watching the rain run like a small creek down the side of the road. Flavio looked back out the windshield. He wondered how he could have a sister so different from himself. Between them, even “good morning” seemed difficult. He thought of his brother and Loretta and then of how he would have to go to their trailer soon and board up the windows and shut off the gas and empty the refrigerator before things began to spoil. The idea of cleaning out the food from his brother’s house made Flavio feel sadder than he had at the news of their dea
ths.

  Ramona leaned against the door on her side of the truck with her cheek pressed against the damp glass. She stared blankly out the window and felt the heater splay hot air on her knees. She sat there feeling tired and empty and old.

  Ramona remembered when her mother had died of a strange illness that had caused her arms and legs to go numb, a numbness that spread rapidly to her heart. Ramona had stood in the Guadalupe graveyard and looked at her grieving father and her brother Flavio, who was eleven with the mind of a tree, and at her baby brother, José, who although three years old could only walk backward. Ramona, at nineteen, could suddenly see the rest of her life. That night she packed a small suitcase, and the following morning, she left town on the bus that stopped every day at Felix’s Café. Thirteen years later, after the death of her grandfather, Ramona had returned to Guadalupe on what she could swear was the same bus.

  Flavio pulled off the highway just past Felix’s Café and turned onto a gravel road that followed the creek as it wound through the valley. He drove past his fields and saw how green the alfalfa had become with just the morning rain. He hoped it would rain forever, or at least until it was time for him to cut the fields one last time before autumn. After a mile or so, he turned off the road onto his drive, long and narrow and thickly lined with apple trees.

  The house had been their father’s, and it was where Flavio and Ramona and José Sr. had spent their childhood. Their father had built it with his own hands early in his marriage. After his death, Flavio had waited a brief time and then moved into the house, giving his brother a great deal of the furniture and a beige cast-iron cookstove that at this moment was rusting in the rain behind José’s trailer. To Ramona, he had given their mother’s wedding ring and the chickens and turkeys that had lived in a shed behind the house.