A Santo in the Image of Cristóbal García Page 14

  She was facing away from Flavio and Felix, and they watched as she stooped over and picked up a large stone. She held it up to her face as if talking to it and then cocked her arm and let it fly at the small window on the side of the house. It smashed through the thin wood slats and billowed out the cloth hanging inside. Again, the boys heard the sound of breaking glass.

  “Mira, Flavio,” Felix said hoarsely. “That’s Victoria Medina. Look what she’s doing.” The girl stood still for a moment, her arms hanging slack at her sides and her legs slightly apart. Then she shook her head gently and bent over again. This time the stone she threw struck the wall so hard it chipped loose a chunk of adobe from beside the window.

  “Did you see that?” Felix said. “She even throws like a boy.”

  Victoria Medina lived a few miles south of the García house where her father operated a small gravel pit on his land. He sold piles of small stones and fine sand to the county and hauled it in trucks that bled oil and grease and groaned like animals too old even to walk. Victoria was an only child, and she lived so close to the gravel pit that she carried with her the sweet scent of gasoline and exhaust. In her hair, close to her scalp, were tiny grains of sand. Like her father, her face was dark and a sullenness often shadowed her features. When she spoke, her words were sharp. She was a year older than Flavio and a classmate of his and Felix’s. She was not someone either of them was fond of. At school, she sat far apart from everyone else, and when Flavio’s eyes would sometimes wander toward her, she would stare back at him blankly until his face grew red and he lowered his eyes. What she was doing so far from her home and why she was throwing rocks at Guadalupe’s house, Flavio had no idea.

  He remembered his mother had told him that children were known to throw stones at the old García house. At the time, he had given it little thought for the simple reason that it was not a thing he had ever been inclined to do. But now, as he stood beside Felix, he found himself flinching each time a rock struck the wall, as if each one were being thrown at Guadalupe herself. He pictured her sitting at the table in her kitchen, her hands flat on her thighs, and, like him, without the slightest idea of what to do.

  “Guadalupe should come out and yell at her,” Felix said.

  “She would never do that,” Flavio said, and though what he said was true, he didn’t know why. “Maybe she’ll just go away.” His voice, like Felix’s, had dropped to a whisper.

  Felix grunted. “I know that Victoria,” he said, looking at Flavio. “She won’t ever go away.”

  On the last day of school the year before, Victoria had slapped Felix on the side of the head so hard that he had cried. It had happened outside the school, and there had been no one about to do anything. Flavio had been standing nearby, and when Felix had begun crying, he had looked off somewhere else. Victoria had let out a soft laugh and then told Felix that it had been a gift she had given him. When she saw him again, she said, she would give him another.

  “Maybe you should go there and tell her to leave,” Felix said.

  “Me?” Flavio had little desire to go to the García house when just Guadalupe was there, let alone Victoria Medina.

  “Maybe she’ll listen to you,” Felix said. “It’s not right what she’s doing. I could get help if she doesn’t stop.”

  The sun had fallen below the horizon, and shadows now stretched from the foothills to the east end of the valley. There, the mountains were still washed in sunlight and the slight breeze that had blown earlier was still. From far off came the low bellow of a cow, sharp and clear in the air.

  “But I don’t want to go up there by myself,” Flavio said. Felix’s hands were in his pockets, and he moved his foot around on the ground without answering. Flavio stared at him for a few seconds and then looked back up the hill. He could see that Victoria was still standing in the sage and that she was once again bending over to pick up another rock. Then, his eyes passed by her and fell on the figure standing at the edge of the road above the house.

  At first, Flavio had no idea who it was. She was dressed in black and a shawl covered her head and fell far down her back. Her arms were wrapped around her body, and she stood motionless gazing down the hill. She was too far away for Flavio to see her face clearly. As he looked at her, she lifted her hand out from under her shawl and raised it as if greeting him.

  “Grandmother,” Flavio said beneath his breath. She stood in the darkness that lay beneath the cottonwood trees that grew near the road.

  “What are you talking about?” Felix said, glancing up.

  “My grandmother’s here,” Flavio said, and without looking at Felix, he took a step away from the church.

  “Wait, Flavio,” Felix said. “Don’t leave me here by myself.”

  “Come on, Felix,” Flavio said, and he took another step and then another.

  “I can’t,” Felix called out to him. “I’ll come in a little while, Flavio. I promise you.”

  Flavio was almost to the García house when he stumbled over a small sagebrush. He tripped forward a few steps, and when he looked back up, his grandmother had vanished, leaving behind only a patch of wavering shadows beneath the cottonwoods. Victoria was no longer throwing stones but was standing still staring at him. She was wearing the same clothes she always wore, a worn sweater buttoned up to her neck and a dress that fell between her ankles and her knees. There was a beaten path through the sage where nothing grew, and Flavio could see that the calves of her legs were dark and hard and as thin as sticks.

  “What do you want?” Victoria said.

  She was less than twenty yards away, and Flavio thought that if he were smart he would either turn around and go back to the church or walk right by the García house and go home. Instead, he shrugged and said, “Nothing,” and then, as if his feet were thinking for him, he walked through the sage and stopped a few feet from Victoria.

  “Where’s your stupid friend?” Victoria asked. She was holding a rock, and her hands and the skin around her wrist were stained with dry dirt.

  Flavio shrugged again. “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Eee, you’re such a liar,” she said. “I saw you two hiding behind the church spying on me.” The hair around Victoria’s face was damp with sweat, and she was breathing a little too fast. There was a small knot of saliva at one corner of her mouth.

  “We weren’t spying,” Flavio said. “We were just looking.” He wondered all of a sudden how he had come to be by himself outside the García house with Victoria Medina. He felt the same way he sometimes did when he dozed off during the day and awoke unsure of where he was or where he’d been. He glanced back up the hill and saw only the empty road.

  “Felix went home,” he said. “And my grandmother was calling for me.”

  For a second Victoria was quiet. Then she said, “You can stay here with me if you want to. You can help me throw stones.”

  Flavio watched a beetle make its way over the dirt near his feet, leaving a light trail in the dust. He moved his foot and flicked it into the sage. “I don’t want to throw a stone,” he said. “My mother told me it’s bad luck to throw stones at this house.”

  “You don’t have a mother. Remember?” Victoria said. Her face suddenly fell flat and expressionless, as it often did at school when she would catch Flavio looking at her. She stretched out her hand. “Go on. It’s just an old house that everybody’s forgotten. It won’t hurt nothing.”

  Flavio stared at the rock in her hand. Her fingernails were uneven and torn down to the skin, and there were rings of black dirt deep beneath her nails. Suddenly, all he wanted to do was grab the rock from her hand and throw it blindly at the García house. Then he could go home.

  “I bet you can’t get it through the window,” Victoria said. “If you do, I swear I’ll be nice to you at school.”

  Flavio raised his eyes. The panes in the window had all been broken, and the wood slats between them were dangling from bent nails. The cloth hanging inside was almost torn down, and beyond
it, in the darkness of the room, he thought he saw a flicker of movement. In his mind, Flavio could see Guadalupe García inside looking out at him, and he knew if he threw a stone she would see it come toward her. And that would be difficult to forget. On top of this, it occurred to him that the bones of Emilio García were buried in a wall and it would be just his luck if his stone struck against those.

  “People shouldn’t mess around with this place,” he said. “My grandmother told me anything can happen here.”

  Victoria jerked her head back slightly. “You’re crazy,” she said. “Your grandmother just says that to scare you.” Then she gestured with her hand. “Throw the stone, Flavio. If you don’t, I’ll tell everyone that you did.”

  “What if it hits someone?” Flavio asked, and even he could hear the whine in his words.

  “No one lives here, stupid,” Victoria said. “Everyone knows that. My papa told me that all these Garcías were sick in the head and when they died it only made people happy. He says this house should be torn down so that it’s just dirt and all the wood should be burned.” She fell quiet for a few seconds. Then she smiled and said quickly, “Here, I’ll get you your own rock and we can throw them together.”

  Where the two children stood, the sagebrush was thick and tall, the top branches thin and knotted and dry. Willowed reeds of grass and pale wildflowers grew in the loose dirt between the sage. Scattered throughout were heaps of stone that had sunk at odd angles back into the earth. Dirt crusted between them like mud plaster, and it all lay beneath a layer of fine dust and small yellow leaves. Where Victoria reached for a stone lay a child’s shoe, the brown leather split and curled from many years of weather and the eyelets rotted out. It seemed small enough to fit in the palm of Flavio’s hand. Hanging in the air just above it, a cross was snagged in the brush. It must have been pulled out of the ground as the sage had grown.

  It’s a grave, Flavio realized. It’s a grave where a little baby’s buried.

  Suddenly, wherever he looked, he saw piles of stones half buried in the ground. Near some of them were wooden crosses, blackened from the weather, their arms bound together with rusted wire or nailed with spikes. The words that had been carved into them were almost completely worn back to wood, but on one, not far from his foot, Flavio could make out the inscription, “Manuelito García, 1802–1806, mi hijo, I give you back to God.” And on the top of the rocks and embedded in the dirt were small colored stones like marbles. But on the others, there was nothing, as if even they had forgotten who they were.

  “This is a graveyard,” Flavio said with panic in his voice. “We shouldn’t be here.”

  It was nearly dusk now, and the mountains were cast in shadow. The sky was streaked a pale red and seemed to hang just above the mountains. A flock of ravens picked up out of the foothills slow and heavy, and other than the whoosh of their wings against air, there wasn’t a sound to be heard in the village.

  Victoria was still stooped down. She let the stone drop from her hand. Then she rubbed a palm hard on her dress and stood up. “You don’t know that,” she said. “These rocks came from when they built this house.”

  “It’s a cemetery,” Flavio said, and he felt as if not only was the house full of ghosts, but so was all of the ground about it. Emilio and Cristóbal and Percides and every other García he’d been told about all lay about him under a thin layer of dirt and stone.

  Victoria rubbed her hand against her sweater, and Flavio caught the stale odor of gasoline. “You’re crazy,” she said. “People don’t get buried in sagebrush. No one does that.” Then she froze at the sudden noise of footsteps behind her and the sound of Guadalupe García’s voice.

  “Flavio’s right,” Guadalupe said. Her voice was thin and wavered like heat in autumn. “All of my family is buried out here.”

  She was standing at the corner of the house so still that Flavio had not seen her. He wondered if maybe she’d been there all the time. She moved a strand of hair from her face and smiled at him. She looked smaller to Flavio and out of place, as if she didn’t belong where there was so much space about her.

  “I would play here as a small girl, and my great-grandmother would sit in the shade against the house and tell me who was out here with me.” She closed her eyes and her face suddenly seemed younger than it was. “‘Lucía García, daughter of Soveida and Roberto García. Born October 2, 1839. Died February 29, 1842. Our hearts will remember. We give you back to God and keep you here with us.’ She was born with soft blond hair like silk and some people made trouble about that. But my grandmother told me that there are people who have nothing better to do. ‘Rosita García, daughter of Evita and Carlos García. Born August 17, 1801. Died January 4, 1816, when I was not watching. Your mother loves you.’” Guadalupe opened her eyes. “I don’t know them all, and sometimes I think it makes them sad that there is no one to remember.” She raised her hand and pointed to an area not far from the house where the sagebrush was not so high. “My great-grandmother, Percides García, is buried there. I helped my father dig with a small shovel, and my mother watched from inside the house. She wished for no marker for her grave because she wanted to forget.”

  “Where is Cristóbal buried?” Flavio croaked out, surprising even himself.

  “Cristóbal isn’t here,” Guadalupe said. “He was lost to us. My grandmother told me that at one time there were some who knew what had happened to him, but it was a thing no one ever dared talk about. Especially to us. If my grandmother was here now, she would tell you to ask your friend. She’s a Medina, she should know.”

  While Guadalupe had been talking, Victoria’s shoulders had been hunched up around her neck and her eyes had been darting back and forth. At the mention of her name, her body jerked and her eyes met Flavio’s. “I didn’t mean what I did,” she said. “I didn’t know they were graves. Tell her we’re friends, Flavio. Tell her I don’t even know any Cristóbal and that I swear he’s not at my house.” Then, without even a glance behind her, she walked past him stiffly, down the hill. For a brief second Flavio wondered what Felix would do when he saw Victoria walking toward him. I hope she slaps him a good one, he thought. Then his mind filled with other things when he realized that he was alone with Guadalupe García.

  “I’m so glad you came to see me again, Flavio,” Guadalupe said.

  Flavio stood in the sagebrush. It wasn’t yet dark, but there was no color in the sky, and all he could see clearly of Guadalupe was her hair and the nightgown she always seemed to wear. He was beginning to feel as if he would never get home and would end up standing in the cemetery outside the García house until the moon rose and set and until the sun came up the next morning. He wondered what would happen to him then. Children will come and throw stones at me, he thought. Then he realized that Guadalupe was talking and that possibly, if he listened to her, he could run home when she finished and never again ever even wander close to this house.

  “Did you know, Flavio, that the first Montoya ever to set foot in this valley was your great-great-great-great-grandfather and his name was Tomás Montoya? He came alone out of the north where there is only the valley that stretches flat and empty forever, and no one ever knew where he came from or what had become of it. For five days and five nights before walking down into this village he stayed in the foothills. At night, people would see his fire, and they thought that it came from a band of roving Indians who only meant them harm. He came in the early spring, just after the first winter that Hipolito and Francisco and a few others had spent here. There was little to see then, only a few poor mud dwellings, and life had not been easy.

  “Only one room of this house stood, and in it were Cristóbal and his wife, Ignacia, and their eight daughters. Hipolito and Francisco had settled near the creek, and Francisco had lost his eldest son to a blizzard. The boy had been hunting deer by himself, and when the clouds fell with snow, he lost his way. Where he thought his home lay was only a small basin high in the mountains surrounded by ridges that he
could not even see. The others who came here with Hipolito and Francisco were scattered throughout the valley. All of them were ragged and hungry, and their houses did little more than block the harsh winds. What dreams Hipolito had once had for this place were only remnants of thoughts that he could barely remember. Many wished to leave that winter, and there were bitter arguments and hands were raised in anger. Some blamed Hipolito for bringing them so far from anything. Others blamed Cristóbal, as if he and the santo he carried with him everywhere had cursed this place with their presence.

  “Your great-great-great-great-grandfather was a tall, gaunt man who was no longer young. I think the reason he stayed in the hills for so long was that he knew if he entered this valley he would never leave. When finally he walked out of the foothills, those here were so relieved he was like them and not what they feared, that they greeted him openly. And for a little while the village became a thing that even Cristóbal would have wished it to be.

  “The stone foundation for the church was laid by your grandfather’s hands. He built the heavy doors that hang on the church even today, and he forged the hinges out of iron. He built the altar out of red spruce, and the stairway behind it that leads to nowhere. He, along with Hipolito, dug the ditches that Cristóbal had begun so that water flowed from the creeks to every field.

  “When he first came into this valley, he lived in this house and he married the oldest daughter of Cristóbal and Ignacia. Her name was Pilar and she died giving birth to their first son, Emilio. Soon after her death, Tomás built a small house near the foothills, not far from your own, and seldom did he come here. My grandmother told me that he married again, but who she was, she didn’t know. All she knew was that Emilio remained here in this house and, in name, he was a García.”

  It was now nearly dark, and still, among so many graves, Flavio stood in the sagebrush. His body was relaxed and his mouth was open and his eyes were half closed. In his mind, he saw the village full of sun and the sky such a deep blue that it almost swallowed him. He could see a figure walking out of the foothills, and it wasn’t Tomás Montoya, but himself. His pants were dirty and torn and his cap was pulled down low. His face was smeared with dirt and soot from five nights of fire. Although he was tired and his legs and arms ached from carrying all of his tools, he was whistling softly under his breath. He thought that the valley he was walking into was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He watched the villagers come toward him, and he tried not to stare at Cristóbal’s daughter—who vaguely resembled Victoria Medina but softer and fuller—as she glanced at him shyly with a half smile. Cristóbal and Hipolito and Francisco came up to him together. Before they could speak, he said, “I am Flavio Montoya and I’ll never leave here.”