A Santo in the Image of Cristóbal García Page 15

  “Are you dreaming, Flavio?” Guadalupe asked.

  “Yes,” he answered.

  “You would have to be so strong. Like your grandfather.”

  “I will be,” Flavio said. “What happened to my grandfather?”

  “He died,” Guadalupe said. “What else could have happened? When he did, this village fell back to what it once had been. And later, after Cristóbal was lost at the church and Emilio was hung, whatever reason this place had even to exist was gone.”

  For a moment Guadalupe fell quiet. Then she said, “There was a santero here not so long ago, and what his knife carved in the wood brought some peace to the valley. He was named Antonio Montoya and he lived alone in the house Tomás built at the base of the foothills. I don’t know what became of him, but I do know that the priest gathered all the santos this man had given to the people of Guadalupe and burned them beneath the cottonwood beside the church. From my house I saw the smoke rising black above the roof of the church, and if I had closed my eyes I think I would have heard the Ladies screaming.”

  “I would have stopped him,” Flavio said. “I would have taken them away from the priest.” He could see himself walking up the hill from the church. Behind him, gathered together and walking on such small feet, came a number of santos, all of them smiling but their heads bowed.

  The moon had risen above the mountains by now, and the valley was so bright it seemed to be covered with snow.

  “I know you would have,” Guadalupe said. “Someday you will. Someday you will be a hero, Flavio,” and she turned and walked away so quietly that he never heard her leave.

  Nine

  FROM ANOTHER ROOM and through his sleep, Flavio heard the kitchen door in Ramona’s house creak open and then, after a few seconds, it slammed shut. He heard the sound of footsteps shuffling across the floor. A part of him thought that this might be something that should be of concern to him. But at that moment, most of him didn’t seem to care much about anything. In fact, he had no idea how long he’d been sitting slouched on Ramona’s sofa or whether he’d actually been dozing or just staring straight ahead in a trance. Whoever had entered the house was moving slowly and breathing with difficulty. He heard a muffled cough followed by a low groan and then the room flooded with the odors of burned meat and of old, rotted wood left out in the rain. Flavio pushed himself up on the couch and glanced over his shoulder. Standing in the doorway between the two rooms was Delfino.

  “Eee,” Flavio said softly. “What now?” He was still groggy from sleep and he knew what he was seeing couldn’t be.

  “Flavio,” Delfino croaked out. His overalls were charred so badly that the cloth on one side was leeched of color and splitting apart. There were ragged burn holes through his shirt where embers had fallen on him, and his boots were warped and cracked from too much heat. He had lost his baseball cap, and his bald head was streaked with soot and filth and clumps of something that looked like red paste. His bad eye was wide open and bulging and as white as marble. Below it, Flavio could see a trail of clean skin as if Delfino had been weeping.

  “Flavio,” Delfino said again. He took a few steps forward and then fell to his knees.

  “Delfino?” Flavio said, suddenly wide awake. He swiveled off the sofa and knelt beside Delfino. Delfino’s hands were flat on the floor and his head hung down. Beneath the dirt on his scalp were large flat blisters. Some of them had broken, and clear fluid ran down one side of Delfino’s face. A smell rose from his body that nearly made Flavio gag. “Delfino,” he said again. “What in God’s name has happened to you?” He could feel a wave of panic start up in his belly and begin to flutter up into his chest.

  “Water,” Delfino gasped. “I need a little water, Flavio.” He lowered himself onto his elbows and rested his forehead on the floor. Flavio realized that if Delfino were to lie down, he might never get him up.

  “Let me help you.” Flavio took hold of his arm gently. “You can sit here on the sofa and I’ll get some water.”

  “Maybe if I rest a little,” Delfino said.

  “Come, Delfino,” Flavio said as he slid his arms around Delfino’s waist. “Let’s sit you up.” Lifting him was like lifting air. As soon as he had Delfino on the sofa, Flavio ran into the kitchen and turned on the tap. While the glass filled, he glanced out the window. The fire had moved so far north now that it was just a mile from Ramona’s alfalfa field. Smoke rolled in waves ahead of it, and for a second it seemed to Flavio as if it had actually followed Delfino across the foothills. The air outside was dusty and gray and the sky was orange. There was a drone of planes from overhead and a low, muted sound of sirens. The thought that this was not just some little fire went through Flavio’s mind, and then he let it go, turned off the faucet, and hurried back into the other room.

  Delfino was sitting back against the sofa, his eyes half closed, his arms flung out to the sides. Flavio sat down beside him. “I’ve brought you some water, Delfino,” he said. There were tiny blisters on Delfino’s lips, and his breath was thin and shallow.

  “I breathed fire, Flavio,” Delfino said. “I tried not to. I tried to hold my breath and breathe into my hat, but my hands hurt so bad that I dropped it, and then I couldn’t find it with all the smoke. It was so hot, Flavio, that the air was on fire and I breathed it.”

  “Don’t talk so much, Delfino,” Flavio said. “Drink a little water.” He brought the glass to Delfino’s mouth and held it there while he drank. After a few small sips, Delfino leaned his head back.

  “That’s a little better,” he said, though his voice was still harsh and each word he spoke sounded like he was spitting dirt. “I lost my teeth, también, Flavio. One minute they were in my mouth and the next thing I know, they’re gone. I had those teeth a long time.”

  “You weren’t wearing your teeth, Delfino,” Flavio said.

  Delfino turned his head. “No?” he said.

  “No. When I saw you earlier, you didn’t have your teeth.”

  “That’s good. I tell you, my teeth were lucky they stayed home.” For a moment, Delfino sat without speaking, staring blankly out the open door across the room from him. A slight wheeze was coming from his chest, and there was a glazed look in his good eye. Flavio felt his stomach knot up again, and he realized he had no idea how badly Delfino was hurt. The last thing they should be doing was sitting in Ramona’s house. Then he suddenly remembered that he had left Felix alone in his pickup.

  “Eee,” Flavio said, and he stood up. “Felix is in my truck.”

  “I was wondering where he had gone,” Delfino said. “But then I thought he was like my teeth.”

  Flavio walked across the room and looked out the door. He could see Felix’s head bumping up and down just above the dashboard. “Felix,” he called out, “I’ll get you in a minute.” Inside the truck Felix lifted his head a little higher and said something that Flavio couldn’t make out. “I can’t hear you,” Flavio yelled back.

  “Flavio,” Delfino said. “You were right, Felix can talk.”

  “I know he can talk,” Flavio said.

  “It’s like a miracle,” Delfino said. And then he began to cough, a wet, grating sound. His body shook and he held a hand to his mouth as if to stop himself. It reminded Flavio of the noises his father had made just before he died. It had been one of the few times that Flavio and his brother, José, and Ramona had all been together. As always, they had had little to say to each other. At the news of her father’s illness, Ramona had returned to Guadalupe from the city in which she lived. Flavio remembered her cooking alone in the kitchen or sitting beside their father’s bed and gazing out the window at the same mountains their mother had once looked at. José had paced the house nervously, and whenever their father’s coughing had become too severe, he would go outside and sit by the woodpile, his shoulders hunched and rounded, and smoke by himself. Flavio had only sat across from Ramona with his head lowered and his eyes closed tightly, trying to shut out the sound of his father’s death. When
he and Ramona had spoken, which had been seldom, it had been about nothing that mattered to either one of them.

  As quickly as the spasm had come upon Delfino, it left. And when Delfino dropped his hand there was a smear of blood across his face. “I don’t feel so good, Flavio,” he said.

  “We should go, Delfino,” Flavio said, “and get some help for you. We can take my truck.”

  “Go?” Delfino said. His voice broke and for the first time the dazed look in his eye left and he looked frightened. “I don’t want to go anywhere. Who’ll feed my pigs? Besides, I saw this fire jump the highway. There isn’t even a road now.”

  “But we can’t just sit here.”

  “Do you think driving around on bumpy roads will help me? I tell you what. You go get Felix and we can all have a little talk. Then we’ll see.”

  Flavio stepped outside and went down the porch steps slowly. The sky was flat and white with smoke, and the air beneath it was thick with haze. There was no sign of Felix in the cab of the truck, and Flavio thought that he must have lain down on the front seat to rest. The fire, as Delfino had said, had jumped the highway leading south out of the valley, and Flavio realized that it had nearly made a half circle around the village. The wind had died down, but flames and smoke were slowly eating their way down the slopes. He watched a plane dip low, empty itself of water, and then fly south, probably to refill at the small airport in Las Sombras. A squad car drove past on the highway, and Flavio recognized N. Oliver. Oliver glanced out his window as he drove by and, though he looked again when he saw Flavio, he kept on driving.

  When Flavio came to the irrigation ditch, he stopped walking. It was cool beneath the cottonwoods, and there was the gentle sound of water running in the ditch. For a second, Flavio thought it was possible that everything that was happening around him was not real. He had gotten out of bed that morning, just like any other morning, and, with his shovel, had driven to Ramona’s to irrigate. There had still been stars in the sky as he drove across the village, and he had slowed once so as not to hit Alfred Trujillo’s dog, which always slept on the warm pavement. He had parked where his truck now sat and walked out into the field. The day had promised what it always had, and not once in his life had Flavio ever asked for more. Who was he to say that he still wasn’t standing in his sister’s field, leaning on his shovel, and dreaming a dream of fire?

  “I’M FRIGHTENED, FLAVIO,” Ramona had said to him, and then she reached across the table and placed her hand on his.

  It was exactly a year before Flavio would find her dead in her kitchen. The two of them were sitting at the table in the same room. It was late spring and outside there was rain and mud and a chill in the air that was too late for the season. Ramona had made a pot of coffee, and then she had filled two cups and sat down across from her brother. Near the window, just in front of the sink, was a canvas that Ramona had been working on. It seemed to Flavio to be only a painting of color. The surface was a dark, burned red. The paint was applied so thickly that it seemed aged and cracked. Beneath the surface were faint drawings as if of things moving about. Flavio wondered why anyone would go to the trouble of drawing a picture and then cover it up with so much paint. He had no idea of the meaning of Ramona’s painting or even if it had any. The thought went through his mind that if he were to spend his time doing such things, he would draw pictures of sunsets and snow-crested mountains and alfalfa fields in bloom. Never would he paint something that seemed to ask more than he was willing to give. He glanced at the painting once more and then moved his chair slightly so that it wouldn’t bother him.

  “I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night,” Ramona said, and she leaned a little toward her brother. “I’m frightened, and I don’t know of what. I feel as if there are always things around me in this house and I don’t know what they are.”

  Flavio, who never woke in the middle of the night—and if he had would have thought about his cows—patted his sister’s hand awkwardly and said, “It’s probably those stupid santos. They would be enough to frighten anyone.” Flavio hadn’t seen the santos in years, but he knew his sister well enough to know that they were lurking somewhere about the house.

  Ramona pulled her hand away and leaned back in her chair. “No,” she said, “it’s not the stupid santos, Flavio. If anything, they give me a bit of peace. It’s something else. I feel as if there was something in my life that happened and didn’t. Or else something that happened and shouldn’t have. At night, when I wake, I can feel the answer just within my grasp, and then, like smoke, it’s gone.”

  Flavio had absolutely no idea what his sister was talking about. He wished Martha were with him. While it was true she didn’t understand Ramona any better than he did, at least Ramona never grew irritated in her presence.

  “These things happen, Ramona,” he said, waving his hand.

  For a few seconds Ramona just stared at him. Then she said, “What things, Flavio?”

  “Well,” Flavio said, and then he stared down at the top of the table. There were faded smears of paint on the wood and bits of dirt that filtered down from the ceiling whenever the wind blew too hard. He could hear the dim sound of rain beating down on the old metal roof and, beneath it, the steady sound of Ramona’s breath. He raised his eyes and looked back at his sister.

  She was eleven years older than Flavio. Her face was deeply lined, and her hair was gray, though there were still streaks of black running through it. While age had brought a thinness to Ramona that bordered on frailty, her eyes had remained dark and clear and her hands were smooth and steady. Sometimes, when she brushed her hair back, Flavio would glimpse her as she had once been, and he would realize that not so long ago each of them had been young and that even after so many years little had changed between them. Now, there was a tautness in Ramona’s face, and she sat looking at him as if he had something she wanted.

  Flavio took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “We’re growing old, Ramona,” he said to her.

  Ramona sat staring at him and then her face relaxed and she leaned again across the table. “He was going to be a great santero, Flavio,” she said. “I could see it in him even though his hands were too small to hold the knife. Even though he often preferred to be outside doing the stupid things boys always do. He was given a gift, Flavio. I know that in my heart. Something went wrong and I don’t know what. For years I searched for him in my paintings, in the santo he carved for so long. I would stand outside just before dark and listen for his voice. In the mornings, when I would wake, I would lie in bed and wait to hear his footsteps. I would even study your face, Flavio, just to catch a glimpse of him. I knew he was lost, but I could feel that he was still here with me, just beyond my sight. Nothing else made any sense to me.”

  “What are you talking about, Ramona?” Flavio said. “It’s been almost forty years. Little José drowned. He was lost at the river. You told me yourself.”

  “Flavio,” Ramona said and took his hand again. “He was taken from us and I don’t know why.”

  “But you were alone with him, Ramona. There was no one else there to take him.”

  “It was not La Llorona, Flavio,” Ramona whispered. “It was Grandmother.”

  What Ramona had said shocked Flavio so much that he didn’t say a word. He moved his eyes past her to the small window over the sink. Rain was running down the glass, and through it, Flavio could see the blur of the field. It was now nearly all mud, but he knew that after so much rain slender shoots of alfalfa would begin to grow. “I taught José how to use his shovel,” he said to himself, “and he would use it to beat prairie dogs on the head.” He smiled and looked at Ramona’s painting, at the shadows beneath the surface. He realized that what was buried under so many layers of paint wasn’t really so difficult to see. If he closed his eyes, he would be able to see it even better.

  There was the smell of enchiladas layered with cilantro and garlic and hot green chiles cooking in the oven, and Flavio could almost feel the
heat from the stove washing against his face. He could hear the rustle of his grandmother’s apron and her footsteps sharp and clean on the kitchen floor. In the other room, his grandfather was sitting in his chair, and every so often he would clear his throat roughly and scold José for never being still. Flavio opened his eyes slowly, and sitting across from him was his young sister. She was rolling out tortillas, and her hands and her bare arms were dusted with flour. She was gazing past him, a distant look on her face, and even Flavio could see that wherever Ramona was, it wasn’t here with her family. Their grandmother paused by the stove, and Flavio heard clearly each word she spoke.

  “Be careful, Ramona,” she said. “You know how your grandfather likes his tortillas. And you, Flavio, make yourself useful and wake up your sister if you see her dreaming.”

  IN A DAZE, Flavio realized that he had heard his name being called for some time. “Flavio,” Felix yelled again, “I could drink a little water.”

  Felix was leaning his head out the driver’s window of the truck. The two men looked at each other for a few seconds before Flavio shook his head and then stepped over the irrigation ditch. He hurried over to the side of the pickup and pulled open the door.