A Santo in the Image of Cristóbal García Read online

  On the opposite wall were two large paintings. In one, a thin, muddy creek lined with bleached stones ran through a steep arroyo. Stunted sagebrush grew out of the steep sides and the roots of a dead juniper hung bare. And where the arroyo curved out of sight were the shadows of things Oliver couldn’t quite see. In the other, three horses stood still in the rain. Breath came from their nostrils and the mountains behind them were draped in clouds. Oliver moved his foot slightly, and one of the santos spun a slow half circle on the floor. Where am I? he wondered. The room breathed with things he had only glimpsed in the years of driving through the villages of northern New Mexico. He felt that if he were to go close to the paintings, he would feel heat on his face from the bleached rocks or hear the sound of rain and the heavy breath of horses. Even the three old men sitting across from him seemed more like figures from a long time ago than anything else. He stared at the paintings for a few more seconds and then lowered his eyes.

  “Mr. Montoya,” he said. “I’m afraid I have some bad news for you.”

  Flavio had heard the squad car pull up to the house, and when he had seen Oliver walking up the path, he had actually said a small prayer of thanks that someone was coming to take care of this mess in his sister’s house. At the mention of bad news, Flavio rose slowly from his chair and stood before the sofa. He took off his hat and held it in front of him with both hands. He thought that with no family left and what friends he had either dead or in this room, there was little news anymore that he could actually consider bad.

  “I have to ask you and Mr. García to come with me,” Oliver said.

  For a moment, no one said anything and then Flavio felt Felix’s hand brush the back of his leg. Flavio raised his face and gazed back at the police officer. “This is my house,” he said.

  “No,” Oliver said. “This is your sister’s house. Someone has set fire to your house. It’s burning now. For your own safety, I’m asking you to come with me.”

  At first, Flavio couldn’t even grasp what Oliver had told him. He stared blankly at the police officer and then moved his eyes away and looked out the open door. Outside, all he could see was the thick haze of smoke. My house is on fire, he thought. He had been born there, as had his sister and his little brother. As a young man, his father had built the place solidly out of adobe and stone, and then he had plastered the walls with mud and laid the thick planks for the floor. In that house, Flavio’s father had drunk whiskey by himself late into the night. He and his wife had died years apart in their small bedroom where, later, Flavio and Martha would make love so often and so well that Flavio would occasionally think of himself as someone else. The letters Martha had written him were on the table by the side of his bed, and there were photographs in all the rooms.

  Flavio felt his knees weaken, and he sat heavily back down in his chair. “My house is on fire,” he said.

  As soon as Flavio fell back into his chair, Oliver, for the first time, looked closely at the two men on the sofa. One was the old man he had met earlier at the café, but the other, he had never seen before. The man’s legs were stretched out almost rigid, and he was breathing harshly. His clothes were torn and frayed, and what looked like blood was smeared across the lower part of his face. Oliver inhaled sharply and then took the few steps across the room. When he stopped beside Flavio, he knew what the odor was in the air and where it was coming from.

  “What happened to this man?” he asked sharply. He stooped down and touched Delfino’s knee. Delfino’s hands tightened around the santo and he let out a low groan. Oliver could see the flat blisters on his scalp and that beneath the soot and blood on his face the skin was burned white. He, too, let out a soft moan and then straightened up. He looked down at Flavio. “Who is this?” he asked.

  “His name’s Delfino Vigil,” Flavio mumbled, without even looking at Oliver. Then he turned to Felix. “My house is burning down. This is your fault, también. Now I have no house. Not even any place to put my things.”

  Felix was leaning forward, his head nodding, his eyes staring straight ahead. His hands were clasped in his lap and he was rocking a little back and forth. “Felix,” Flavio said loudly. “Did you hear me? My house is burning down.”

  Oliver had no idea what was going on in the room. While one man sat charred on the sofa, the other one was yelling at a stroke victim who was brain dead. On top of that, Oliver realized that Delfino was the old man supposedly lost in the fire, and here he was in the Montoya house. “What’s happening here?” he said to Flavio. “I was told this man died in the fire. How did he get here?”

  Delfino grunted and then looked at Oliver. “I don’t know you,” he said. “You’re not from this village.”

  “I’m a police officer,” Oliver said. “We’re going to get you some help.”

  “I don’t need no help,” Delfino said. “I need a little rest and then I’ll go home.” He looked at Felix, who was rocking a little faster now. “To my pigs. Wait until they hear what you did.”

  Oliver walked out of the room. He glanced in the kitchen and then went into a side bedroom. He pulled the blanket off the bed and then hurried back into the living room. He draped it over Delfino and tucked in the sides tight around his body. “I’m going to lift you up now,” he said, “and get you to a doctor.” Then he bent down and lifted Delfino in his arms. Delfino kicked his feet weakly. His head rolled from side to side.

  “Flavio,” he called out, and then he began to cough. “I don’t want to go.”

  Flavio stood and put his hand on Delfino. He could feel the hard wood of the santo beneath the blanket. “It’s just for a little while, Delfino,” he said. “Me and Felix will come and see you.”

  “Where?” Delfino said, and then Oliver carried him past Flavio, across the room, and out the door.

  Flavio followed them and stopped in the doorway. “I’ll watch out for your pigs,” he yelled. All he could see of Delfino was the top of his head sticking out past Oliver’s shoulder as they walked to the squad car. Oliver pulled open the back door and laid Delfino on the seat. Then he hurried around to the driver’s side and climbed in. He started the car and, with the lights on, backed out of Ramona’s drive. Out in the middle of the valley a thick plume of smoke hung in the sky. Flavio leaned against the door frame. I had a house once, he thought. And in it was my whole life.

  Ten

  THE ROOM WHERE THE SANTO STOOD was small and bare and without a window. The ceiling was cobwebbed and danced with shadows from the kerosene lamp that Guadalupe García held. The vigas overhead were so bowed from the weight of the roof that Flavio thought they might snap at any moment and bury Guadalupe and Felix and himself under so much dirt that no one would ever find them. The walls were a rough mud plaster, and the floor, like every other floor in the García house, sloped with the ground and was dirt.

  In the center of the room was a narrow bed, the steel frame pocked and rusted. The blanket that covered the mattress was thin and tucked in tightly on all sides, the surface gray and covered with dirt. Beside the bed was a small table, and on it stood the santo. She was the first thing Flavio saw when he entered the room, and the sight of her startled him. When he inhaled sharply, Guadalupe placed her hand on his shoulder.

  “Pay her no attention, Flavio,” she had said. “If you do that, she won’t bother you.”

  “Is she the one Cristóbal made when the storm came?” Felix asked. His voice was hushed and thin, and Flavio could tell that Felix, like himself, was uneasy being so deep inside this house.

  “Yes,” Guadalupe said. “She has stayed in this room since my great-grandmother Percides died years ago. I don’t think about her often, but when I do, I think that it’s better if she stays here. Maybe then she won’t cause trouble.”

  “How would she cause trouble?” Felix asked. His voice was a little stronger now.

  Flavio glanced again at the santo. “She keeps looking at me,” he said.

  “She’s looking at me, too,” Felix said.
/>   Guadalupe walked over to the table. She put the lantern down and then turned the santo so that it faced the wall. “There,” she said, smiling slightly. “Now she will look at no one. Besides, we didn’t come here to visit her. We came to see the place where Emilio García is buried.” She raised the lamp and held it close to the wall. “Do you see?” she asked.

  Flavio and Felix crowded closer and stood beside Guadalupe. At first, neither boy could make out anything, but as their eyes adjusted to the light, they could see that just above the bed a section of the wall was sunk in a few inches, as if the space behind the mud was hollow.

  “I see them,” Felix said in a whisper, and he glanced at Flavio. “Eee, you’re looking too high. Down lower.”

  They didn’t look like bones to Flavio. They looked like small sticks, stripped of bark, that someone had stuck in the wall. A number of them were scattered about and, against the dark plaster and in the light from the lamp, they stood out smooth and stark and white. Felix reached out and ran his finger over one.

  “This one,” he said, “must have been his little finger, since it’s so small.” He pulled his hand back. “Touch it, Flavio. It feels just like a bone.”

  Flavio didn’t have the slightest inclination to touch whatever was buried in the wall. The only thing he could think was that if they were truly bones from Emilio García’s hand, why were they strewn about and not all in one place? For them to be like this, Emilio would have had to be placed in the wall in pieces. Flavio shoved his hands in his pockets and chased the thought away.

  “They’re sticks from an aspen,” he said. “They just look like bones.”

  “They are bones,” Guadalupe said, and she sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at both boys. Light moved on her face, and her skin seemed dark and heavy. “Maybe behind the plaster,” she said, “there are more. Or maybe there’s nothing but adobe bricks. No one ever told me how they came to be here, so I don’t know. I found them by accident, and my story is that they are the bones of Emilio García. He was carried up the hill in the rain and placed here where my grandmother could watch over him—where no one would hurt him again.”

  Felix traced a bone with his fingernail. A small piece of mud chipped away, and Flavio could make out a slight swell in the bone like the beginning of a joint. “Look at this, Flavio,” Felix said. “Sticks don’t do this.”

  “No,” Flavio said, and he lowered his head. The floor had once been mudded, and deep cracks now spread through it as if there’d been a drought in the house. “I don’t want to look at it.”

  It had been Flavio’s idea to come to the García house. He had filled a burlap bag with loose beans, a little flour, and a jar of lard and told Felix that his grandmother wished them to bring these things to Guadalupe García. He had walked in front of Felix and, until they reached the García house, the only thought in his head was about his own heroism and what it might turn out to be.

  When Guadalupe had opened her door, she had stared at the two boys and then taken the bag from Flavio without a word. Her hair hung flat against her scalp, and its color had faded to that of paper left lying in the sun. There were dark rings beneath her eyes and lines that ran from the corners of her mouth down her face. She stood a little stooped, and what Flavio had been thinking on the walk over left him.

  “What do you boys want?” Guadalupe asked, passing a hand over her eyes as if the sun were too bright.

  “We came to see the bones of Emilio García,” Felix said suddenly, his voice shrill even to Flavio.

  Guadalupe lowered her hand slowly, and after a moment she said, “Are you sure?”

  Before Flavio could say no, Felix stepped beside him. He stuck his hand in his pocket and brought out the burned piece of wood he had found beneath the cottonwood tree the day before. “We found this,” he said.

  Guadalupe squinted down at the thing in Felix’s hand. Flavio could see that Felix had washed it and then rubbed it hard with a cloth. Soot was still seeped into the grains of wood, but even he could see that it had once been worked with a knife.

  “It’s Emilio’s,” Felix said. “I brought it to give it back.”

  Guadalupe looked at it for a little longer and then she reached out and took it. When she looked back at the boys, she said, her voice low and tired, “Come, then.”

  Flavio and Felix had followed closely behind Guadalupe as they walked through the house. There were rooms off to each side of the narrow hallway, and every so often, by the light of the lamp, Flavio would glimpse a bed up against a wall or a small trastero, cloth hung over the shelves. Some of the rooms had windows, the glass broken or cracked, the panes streaked with mud and dust. In these, he could see blankets nailed to the walls, and in the nichos were the stems of dead flowers or wood boxes coated with dirt. In one room, he saw a doll lying on the bed looking out at him, her hair braided, her legs long and thin, and beside her was the figure of a carved horse. By the time Guadalupe had led them into the room where Emilio García was buried, all Flavio wished to do was leave. He felt that he had wandered too far inside something that he shouldn’t have, and he told himself that soon he would be outside where the sun was high in the sky and the breeze carried the scent of apples and bitter cherries.

  “You’re just scared,” Felix said. “Look,” and he placed his hand flat on the wall where the bones were buried. “They won’t hurt you.”

  “I don’t want to touch any bones,” Flavio said, and he lifted his face and looked at Guadalupe. “It’s not right.” She was still seated on the edge of the bed. Her legs were slightly apart and her nightgown rose to just above her knees. A strand of hair had wandered in front of her face and she moved it aside.

  “One night,” she said, “when I was a small girl, my father taught me to dance.” Guadalupe closed her eyes and stretched out her arms. She began to sway just a little back and forth. “It was late that night and my mother had gone to bed hours before. I had fallen asleep at the kitchen table. When I woke, I saw my father standing in the doorway. His hair was long and knotted, and his beard was heavy with gray. My father was a thin man. I can remember how his hands stuck out from the sleeves of his shirt as he stood there staring at me. Then he walked into the house to where I was sitting. He took my hands and pulled me from my chair, and he showed me how to dance. ‘Move one foot,’ he whispered, and I could smell his breath, ‘and then the other. Lift your arms higher, Guadalupe,’ he said to me. We danced in small circles about the kitchen, and all the while my hands were wet with sweat and my heart beat so quickly I could hear it pounding in my ears. The next night, though I waited in the kitchen, my father did not return home. The following night was no different. And all those after.”

  GUADALUPE’S MOTHER SAID that her husband had forgotten he had such a thing as a family and had chosen to become lost in the mountains. There was no bitterness in her voice, but only a satisfaction that what she had always thought was true.

  “SOON AFTER,” GUADALUPE WENT ON, “my mother fell ill. She stopped eating and grew so thin that her face was like bone and rock. She moved about the house without seeing. Her body became rigid and would not bend. One day she did not come from her room, and when I found her, her eyes were open and her face was restful as if whatever had been inside my mother had finally left.”

  Flavio and Felix watched Guadalupe swaying on the edge of the bed. Felix had taken a few steps back into the middle of the room, and his mouth was hanging open. Flavio could hear how fast he was breathing. It struck Flavio that he was deep inside the García house with a woman who was now dancing. If the kerosene ran out in the lamp, the light would be gone. Then the three of them would be in the dark where bones were buried and a santo stood facing the wall. If he hadn’t feared he would lose his way in the house, he would have fled—even if it meant leaving Felix behind.

  “I’ve frightened you, haven’t I, Flavio?” Guadalupe said. She had stopped moving and her hands were folded in her lap.

  “No,” Flavio lied
.

  “I remember things,” she said. “But none of them can hurt you. Your grandfather, Tomás Montoya, would not have been frightened. He helped build some of the rooms in this house. He carved the trastero that still stands beside the bed where Cristóbal García slept. And later, after the death of his wife, he left his young son here to be raised by my family.”

  Flavio could feel Felix staring at the side of his face. “Eee,” Felix breathed out, “Emilio García is like your tío, Flavio. If Emilio was my tío I wouldn’t be scared of nothing. I would be proud to have a bandit as my tío. Tío Emilio I would call him.”

  “They said he was a bandit,” Guadalupe said, “so that they could hang him without guilt. This village is full of so many lies that no one any longer knows the truth. Emilio and Percides were raised together, and they were born just weeks apart. And when he was hung, he was only a few years older than you two. The people of this village did this because his grandfather was Cristóbal García. My grandmother always said that the moment the rope was put around his neck, this valley truly died.

  “‘I can see him as a boy even now,’ she would say to me. ‘I see him crawling on his hands and knees across the floors of this house, the soles of his small feet black and caked with dirt. I watched him stumble as he learned to walk, and the first word he uttered was my name, Percides.’ And later, when the two of them were more than children, she saw him in other ways. ‘All my life,’ my grandmother would say, ‘I watched him until I was no longer sure where I ended and he began.’”

  “I don’t want Emilio to die,” Felix said suddenly. The flame in the lantern flickered, and the walls and ceiling moved with shadows and light. Flavio could smell the faint odor of apricots and then only the damp inside the house.