The Journal of Antonio Montoya Read online

  “Did you know, Flavio,” she heard herself say, “that our father as a boy drew pictures of fish with legs and one day leaped from the small attic of this house and hurt himself severely? This happened during a terrible winter, and for days he wore a bandage across his forehead.”

  Flavio looked down at his sister. He knew that he had drunk too much whiskey, and it was possibly because of this that he did not know how this conversation with his sister had suddenly turned to their father, whom Flavio thought of seldom and never as a child. In his mind, he saw his father as he always had, with his shoulders, which were broad and heavy, dipped toward the ground and his head slightly bent. He remembered that their father spoke little and seemed to be out of place in their house.

  “Your father did not do well here,” Albert said. “I knew him all his life.”

  Both Ramona and Flavio turned to look at Albert. Ramona could see that Albert’s left eye was the color of milk and that without his teeth the flesh on his cheek sagged. “He did not do well where?” Ramona asked.

  “Here,” Albert said, and he moved one of his feet slightly. “He did not do well with life. It was difficult for him.”

  “Where did my father want to be?” Flavio asked.

  Albert shrugged his thin shoulders. “Elsewhere,” he said. “Nowhere,” and he lowered his eyes. “Flavio,” he said, “my teeth are in my lap.”

  “Yes, Albert,” Flavio said. “You put them there.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” Flavio said. He turned and looked at Ramona, who could see the redness in his eyes. “Ramona,” he said, “we are all that is left of our family.”

  And Ramona, who had never once considered this, said, “We are,” and she could feel how warm her brother’s hand was in hers, and again she saw her father make his way slowly across the snow.

  Nine

  WHEN RAMONA WALKED INTO the kitchen, her grandmother was standing at the sink, and although her hands were in the dishwater, she was standing motionless and staring out the small window. Epolito was sitting at the kitchen table, and across from him sat Alfonso Vigil. Ramona had not seen him since she was a child and only recognized him because of his large ears, which seemed to have grown larger over the years while the rest of his body had not. Her grandfather glanced at her and then looked back at Alfonso. Epolito spoke in a low voice. “We have been left behind, Alfonso. It is not like when we were young. There is nothing of importance now. Then, the alfalfa would grow to your waist.”

  Ramona walked across the room to the sink. “Grandmother,” she said.

  Rosa Montoya turned and looked at Ramona. “Hija,” she said in a voice that made Ramona think that her grandmother had been somewhere far away.

  “Grandmother, why am I reading this book?”

  “That is the journal Antonio Montoya wrote,” Rosa said.

  “Yes, I know that, Grandmother. But why am I reading it?”

  “You need me to tell you that?”

  “Grandmother,” Ramona said, “please.”

  “It is something you needed to know, Ramona. It is a story of this village.”

  “It is more than that, Grandmother. What happened to the man who wrote these things?”

  Rosa turned and looked at her granddaughter. “Where have you been all this time, Ramona?” she said softly. “Your face is full of dirt.”

  “I’ve been in the village office.”

  “Everyone was here, hija. We had a feast. I tell you to sit outside in the sun for a little while, and you come back hours later.”

  Ramona closed her eyes. She felt like shaking this old woman who was tormenting her. “Grandmother,” she said.

  “There is food in the refrigerator, Ramona. I want you to eat now.”

  For a moment, neither woman spoke. “The sun is setting, Ramona,” Rosa said. “I wish to do the dishes quietly. Go wash and come and eat. Later we will talk.”

  In the other room Ramona saw that her brother and Albert had fallen asleep on the couch and that Albert’s teeth had fallen to the floor but the whiskey bottle was still stuck firmly between his legs. In the bathroom, she washed the dirt from her face and hands, and when she returned to the kitchen, a place was set at the table for her.

  Rosa, who was still at the sink, said without turning, “Sit, Ramona, and keep your grandfather company. You remember Alfonso Vigil.” Raising her voice, Rosa said, “This is mi hija, Alfonso. You remember.”

  Alfonso raised his bleary eyes and looked at Ramona. Then he said something that Ramona did not understand.

  “Yes,” her grandmother said from the sink, “she has grown. She is the oldest of my grandchildren.”

  “Where is your brother?” Epolito said.

  “He’s in the other room,” Ramona said, and she sat down at the end of the table. “He is napping.”

  Epolito grunted. “Napping,” he said. “He and your son,” and here Epolito looked across the table at Alfonso, “have done nothing but drink whiskey. They will nap all night.”

  “Where is little José?” Ramona asked. “Where have Loretta and Martha gone?”

  “How should I know?” Epolito said. “At least they’re not drinking whiskey.”

  “They have gone for a little walk, hija,” Rosa said. “Not too far, I don’t think.”

  Ramona could smell the cilantro on her plate. She took a bite and realized she was starving. Alfonso again turned his head to look at Ramona. He spoke in such a whisper that Ramona heard nothing.

  “He asked,” Epolito said, “if you still draw people of this village naked?”

  Ramona, who had not blushed for a great many years, felt her face grow warm. She wondered how it was that so many things she had always thought were hers alone seemed to be known by so many. Without looking at Alfonso, she said, “No, I do not do that anymore.”

  “I’m glad to hear that, hija,” Rosa said from the sink.

  “Alfonso says,” Epolito said, “that he has never wished to see what is beneath his neighbor’s clothing.”

  The kitchen fell silent but for the sound of water in the sink and the soft noise of Ramona’s fork against the plate.

  “He says,” Epolito said, although again Ramona had not heard Alfonso speak, “that he has outlived almost all of his children and his children’s wives and three of his grandchildren. That of his children only Albert remains. He says that it is not bad to be old but that it is not so good to become too old.”

  Alfonso’s head was bent and was but inches from the table top. She remembered him as a younger man who, in the evenings, would sit outside with her grandfather and talk and sometimes, if they drank, would dance in small circles. She realized that even so long ago, she had thought of this man as old.

  “He has much to be proud of,” Ramona said, and when Epolito said this to Alfonso, Ramona watched him nod his head in much the same way Albert had.

  Ramona finished eating and rose from the table and brought her plate to the sink. “Grandmother,” she said.

  “As a young woman, Ramona,” Rosa said, “I stood in this same place before this same window. So many years.” She turned and looked at Ramona. “All my life, I think.”

  “Yes,” Ramona said.

  “Come, hija. We’ll sit outside where we won’t disturb your grandfather.”

  Ramona followed her grandmother from the kitchen and stood beside her when she stopped before Flavio and Albert, who were both still asleep. “When your grandfather was a young man, Ramona, he looked much like Flavio. He was so handsome and so strong.”

  Flavio’s mouth hung open, and he was snoring gently. His head hung awkwardly to one side. Rosa walked to the bedroom and came out carrying a heavy blanket, which she laid over the two sleeping men. “There, mi hijo,” she said softly, and Ramona thought that her brother and Albert would swelter beneath the quilt.

  Rosa sat in the wicker chair beneath the cottonwood, and Ramona sat not far from her in the grass. The sun had set, and only the tops of the mo
untains to the east caught sunlight. Rosa looked at her granddaughter.

  “Did you know, Ramona, that when your father married your mother, we held such a party here in this very place that the whole village of Guadalupe came? The cooking. And the dancing. And the children who ran everywhere. It was a joyful day, and the weather was like a crystal. Your father was so happy on that day, Ramona, and your mother, who always had a sadness about her, sat under this same tree, and her face shone like the sun.” Rosa stopped talking. She smiled and looked down at Ramona. “You have things to ask of me, hija?”

  Ramona suddenly thought that to sit in the grass with this woman was enough. She turned her head and looked across the road at the village office. She saw how there were weeds growing from the adobe where the plaster had fallen away from one wall. She looked back at her grandmother.

  “What happened to the man who wrote in the journal?” she asked. “His writing stops, Grandmother. He is in none of the other books. What happened to him?”

  Rosa looked at her granddaughter. “He left this village,” she said. “He left just days before Easter of that same year.”

  “You remember this?”

  For a moment, Rosa did not speak. She moved her eyes away from Ramona and said, “Do you think I could forget?”

  “Where did he go?”

  “So many questions, hija,” Rosa said. She moved her shoulders slightly. “I don’t know the answer to that, Ramona. To another town. To another village; I don’t know. He left one morning carrying a small bag, and I did not see him leave. He walked from his house and down the hill to the road, and he left this village. By chance, Eduardo Muñoz, who was a grown man but whose mind was that of a child, met Antonio on the road that morning. Eduardo had come to believe that it was Antonio Montoya who had put an end to that winter, and when they met on the road that morning, he thanked Antonio for this and then asked when the spring winds, which he said made his ears ache, would cease. Antonio replied that the wind would blow until the mud was gone and enough snow had melted that the ditches would run full. He told Eduardo that when this season passed, the alfalfa would grow like never before and the days would be warm and there would be the sound of running water everywhere. Eduardo was the last to see Antonio Montoya in this village.”

  “But why?” Ramona said. “Why did he leave?”

  Rosa opened and then closed her mouth. After a moment, she said, “He did not leave this village, hija. This village left him.” Rosa turned her eyes back to Ramona. “It took from him everything, and then it left him alone. And so. . . .”

  Ramona did not speak but only looked at her grandmother until Rosa turned her face away. “You wish there to be an end to this story, hija,” she said. “But there is no end. It is like everything else. I do not know what happened to the life of Antonio Montoya. He left our lives, and we became full of other things.”

  A slight breeze moved the leaves of the cottonwood. Rosa closed her eyes. “I can smell the wind, hija,” she said. “It smells of garlic and smoke. Do you have more questions to ask?”

  “Yes,” Ramona said, although she no longer knew what they were.

  “I have a favor to ask of you,” Rosa said with her eyes still closed, “before you ask me these things.”

  “What is it, grandmother?”

  “I wish you to read to me. From the journal. Will you do that, mi hija?”

  “Yes.”

  MARCH 18:

  There has been no freeze in the night for the past two days. The snow in this village is gone, and there is only mud that is everywhere. For the first time in months, I heard the sound of sheep in my neighbor’s field. I think the winter has finally left us.

  “That was a bad winter,” Rosa said. She was sitting straight in the wicker chair with her hands in her lap. “So many were sick. And the snow and the cold. That was the winter your father climbed into the small space above the ceiling of this house and leaped, as if he could fly, into the snow and struck his head, and when fires burned in the cemetery for days upon days, and the sky above it was black with smoke. You never saw such a thing, Ramona. The earth was like stone.”

  It seemed to Ramona that for a winter that had been so long and so cold, it had also been full of flames, and then she remembered that her grandmother as a young woman had said the same thing to Antonio Montoya.

  “The priest,” Ramona said, “burned the santos.”

  Rosa Montoya opened her eyes. “Father Joseph,” she said. “Yes. He did that. He burned them at night beside the church. It was a hard time, hija.”

  “And what of your dreams?”

  “My dreams passed, hija. Read.”

  MARCH 19:

  Today Demecio Segura walked to my office. He complained of the condition of the road, and his trousers were wet with mud far above his boots. He had come to my office once again to thank me for composing the letter he had sent to his daughter, who lives a number of miles south of this village. In a few days he is to leave Guadalupe and begin to live the remainder of his life where already the orchards are in bloom.

  “Eee, that man,” Rosa said. “He never had any luck that was good. His wife, who was of the García family, died in her midlife when she fell from a tree while gathering piñon. Imagine, a woman that old climbing trees. And then to fall. After his daughter, Estancia, ran away to marry a man no one knew anything about, Demecio moved in with his nephew, Luis, who did not speak in words but only grunted and later came to a bad end himself. No wonder Demecio wished to leave this village. Later that same spring, while fishing near his daughter’s home, he was drowned when the river overflowed its bank and carried him away as if he were a stick.”

  . . . I told him I would be sorry to see him leave this village where he has lived his whole life, but that it is good to be near one’s family. He agreed and told me he plans to do nothing with his remaining years but enjoy the apples his daughter grows and fish in the river near his daughter’s house.

  MARCH 23:

  I have spoken with no one for a number of days. The wind blows hard in the afternoon, and the days have become longer. In the evenings and the early mornings, smoke rises from along the irrigation ditches where some have begun to burn away the weeds and debris.

  MARCH 25:

  On the evening of this day, Epolito Montoya, who is my first cousin and the husband of Rosa Montoya . . .

  Here, Ramona stopped reading. Suddenly she did not want to know what was written in the journal. She felt as though she were gazing into the soul of things that had been hidden for a long time.

  “It is too dark to read, Grandmother,” she said.

  Rosa opened her eyes and smiled. “You cannot see the words?” she asked.

  “Barely.”

  “There is only a little left, hija.”

  . . . came to my house. In his arms, he carried the Lady that I had given to Rosa and that bears the name of my sister. Finally he said that he and Rosa were grateful that I had allowed the Lady to stay in their home but that they could keep it no longer. I told him I understood and then asked of Rosa’s dreams. He told me that she has been sleeping well and dreamless and that he hoped this would continue. When I asked him about Lito, he said that his son has improved but continues to be quiet and keeps to himself much of the time. He said that in the next few days, he will board up and nail shut the attic space from where Lito jumped so that no one ever again climbs up there. There was a silence after these words that weighed heavily on us both, and then Epolito wished me good-night and left.

  MARCH 26:

  This morning, Melquiades Cortéz was found dead by his neighbor, Pablo Quintana. Pablo told me that since the day Melquiades gave up his children to the care of his brother, he has been visiting Melquiades daily, if only for a short period of time. On this morning, he found Melquiades lying as if asleep outside his house. Beneath him upon the ground was only a thin blanket, and his body was naked to the weather. Pablo said that the face and skin of Melquiades Cortéz were the c
olor of chalk and were like ice to the touch, and his body was curled like an infant’s.

  Melquiades Cortéz, who was thirty-four years old and the father of four children, is to be buried beside his wife in the Guadalupe cemetery.

  Ramona stopped reading and looked up at her grandmother. Rosa was sitting with her eyes closed, and there was a slackness about her face. Her chest rose and fell slowly. “Grandmother,” Ramona said, and after a moment Rosa moved her lips without speaking. Ramona looked back down at the journal. In the fading light she could barely make out the words.

  MARCH 29:

  This morning, I watched Rosa Montoya walk her son, Lito, to school. Although we did not speak and I saw her face only briefly, I could see fatigue around her eyes and that she looked only at the ground as she walked.

  APRIL 1:

  From the door of my office this morning, I watched Father Joseph walk from the church and up the hill to this office. Before he had come halfway, he stopped and looked toward me. He did not call out or raise his hand, and after some moments he turned and walked back to the church.

  APRIL 7:

  I have spoken with no one for days. I write this in my journal, which is the journal of this village and which will remain here. Tomorrow I will leave Guadalupe, where my father and my sister are buried. I have brought the santos that are in my care to the village office and will leave them here for Father Joseph. They have stood in my house as if alone in the world and of no use, and I can no longer bear their presence.

  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.

  Ramona turned the page, and there was nothing. The page was blank. She turned it and then another, and she realized that there was no more to read. Antonio Montoya’s journal had ended. Ramona heard as if from far away her grandmother’s voice.

  “Hija,” Rosa said in a whisper, “help me to the house.”

  Ramona put the book down in the grass, and she stood and took her grandmother’s arm. “Are you all right, Grandmother?” she said.