A Santo in the Image of Cristóbal García Read online

  He opened his eyes and looked across the room at Cristóbal. “This valley was like a gift to us,” he said.

  Cristóbal grunted. “It was never that to me,” he said. “The first time I saw this place, I only wished never to see it again.”

  “Maybe that’s another wish the santo gave you,” Francisco said.

  “Be still, Francisco,” Hipolito said. “None of us has changed, have we? Even as tired old men, we sit and argue as if fifty years was no more than a moment. I think all this village has become is what we are. You, Cristóbal, and you, Francisco, and myself.”

  “No,” Cristóbal said. “It’s more than that. Beneath this place is something else.”

  “Maybe we brought it here with us,” Hipolito said. “What does it matter, anyway? It’s still not too late. The three of us can make this village as we wish. You, Cristóbal, should have learned that much by now.”

  Cristóbal stared up at the ceiling without seeing. He could feel Percides’ hand warm on his chest. It occurred to him that the last time he had heard Hipolito speak this way was just before he was dragged away from Las Sombras. He was happy that one of the benefits of old age was that people asked little of him.

  “What do you want?” Percides asked.

  “We want Cristóbal to come with us,” Hipolito said. “To take one last walk together.”

  Percides gasped. Then she began to laugh and Hipolito could see how young she was. “My grandfather doesn’t leave this house,” she said, staring at Hipolito as if what he had said must have been a mistake. “You are all old men.”

  “Cristóbal,” Hipolito said. “Pablo Medina and his brothers have taken your grandson Emilio to the church. The Medinas claim Emilio is a thief, and they mean to ask the priest’s blessing to hang him.”

  For a few seconds, there was not a sound in the room. Percides felt as if she had been struck a heavy blow. She bent over and wrapped her arms around her belly and fought back a surge of nausea. Then she stepped away from the bed and, dropping her arms, she cried Emilio’s name.

  AT THAT MOMENT, Felix began to howl. His fists were clenched and his eyes were squeezed shut, his face red and streaked with tears. His heels kicked wildly against the bed, and the noise was so sudden that Flavio’s heart caught in his chest and then began to race so fast that he, too, almost began to yell.

  “I don’t want anyone to hang Emilio,” Felix shrieked. “I don’t want to hear no more.” He opened his eyes wide and looked at Flavio. “Let’s go, Flavio,” he wailed. “I don’t want to stay here.” Flavio could feel his own eyes begin to fill, and panic began to seep into his throat. Guadalupe was sitting calmly on the bed staring at him. Her hands were folded together, and there was a small smile on her face.

  “By late afternoon,” Guadalupe said, “the clouds hung low on the foothills and swirled with black, and water began to pour from the skies.”

  Eleven

  WHEN I WOKE UP THIS MORNING,” Delfino said in the backseat of the squad car, “the sun was shining, and I thought this day would be like any other. I drank a little soda pop with my eggs, and then I fed my pigs.” He kicked at the blanket he was wrapped in and hugged the santo to his chest. The blisters on the back of his body rubbed raw against the seat. “This has been a bad day,” he said, his voice turning to the air. “Flavio and Felix should have known better.”

  Nick Oliver had driven north away from Ramona’s house, and now, after a couple of miles, he had left the village behind. On each side of the road was only stunted sagebrush and dried-out fields of alfalfa. Oliver shook his head and cursed. Then, barely listening to Delfino babbling behind him, he U-turned in the middle of the highway and headed back the way he’d come.

  “We’re almost there, Mr. Vigil,” he said, more to ease his own mind than Delfino’s. He had no idea where the Guadalupe clinic was or even if there was such a thing. He’d left the Montoya house in too much of a hurry, and he could picture himself driving this same stretch of highway over and over again with a man who should have been cared for hours ago.

  He glanced over his shoulder. Delfino’s legs were moving beneath the blanket, and his eyes were pressed shut. His face was blistered and damp, and a line of blood ran from his mouth. “Jesus,” Oliver said and looked back at the road. He reached for the radio and then cursed again and slammed it back when all he got was static. Behind him, Delfino began saying each of his pig’s names aloud and explaining that his family had always kept pigs, even his grandfather, Gabino Vigil, who treated them poorly and had a disposition much like his neighbor’s dog. Then, without even pausing for a breath, he went on to say that of everyone in this village, it was he, alone, who’d had the courage to fight this fire and that years ago things weren’t this way.

  “Then,” Delfino said, “this was some kind of village. People knew what they were, and there was never no trouble. This place has been turning to shit for a long time.”

  Oliver slowed the squad car as he neared the village office. The parking lot was empty, and a chain was looped through the handles of the front door. “Where the hell is Lucero?” he muttered, and a feeling of helplessness rose in his stomach. He had absolutely no idea what to do.

  “It doesn’t hurt so bad now,” Delfino said, and his voice was a little stronger. “But I can’t breathe so good. I breathed fire in that fire and it tasted like ice. How can that be?”

  “Rest yourself, Mr. Vigil,” Oliver said. “Don’t talk so much.”

  “If I ever see those two viejos again,” Delfino said slowly, “I’m going to beat them both with a stick, especially Felix. He always thought he was better than everyone else and his beans tasted like spit.” For a moment, Delfino fell quiet. Then he began to cough so badly that Oliver flinched and his jaw tightened. Then, a half mile later, he heard Delfino die. It wasn’t much of a noise Delfino made—just a sharp intake of air as if he had seen something that surprised him and then a sigh so long and slow that Oliver knew nothing would ever follow it. He found himself holding his breath, and when he let it out, he eased his foot from the accelerator and pulled off the road.

  As soon as he stopped, the interior of the car flooded with the sharp odor of Delfino’s burns. Mixed with it was the smell of mold and dust from the blanket Oliver had taken from Ramona’s bed. A fine mist of ashes was falling from the sky, and a light film was building up on the windshield. Oliver covered his nose and mouth with his hand and, breathing through his fingers, leaned his head out the window.

  Across the road and set back a ways was an old abandoned adobe. The windows were boarded up behind splinters of broken glass, and the door was wide open and hung askew off of one hinge. The plaster on the walls had fallen off in large flat slabs, and the roof was so bellied that it looked as though the place was about to fall in on itself. Weeds and sagebrush grew everywhere. Scattered in the midst of them were junked vehicles and strewn piles of warped lumber. Old pickups, their beds torched off ages ago, their wheels only rusted rims, had sunk into the dirt at odd angles. Sun-blistered sedans without hoods sat low to the ground, and where the engines had been were dark holes grown in with brush. The place looked as though it had been that way forever, and Oliver couldn’t imagine it being a house where people had once lived their lives. A soft breeze drifted through the open windows of the squad car, and the smoke it brought with it was so heavy that Oliver squinted to keep his eyes from burning.

  He dropped his hand from his face and reached absently for a cigarette. He stuck it in the corner of his mouth and then sat staring quietly straight ahead. There was a wall of smoke like a storm not far from where he was parked that stretched the entire width of the valley.

  “I don’t know where I am,” Oliver said softly, and for a moment he forgot about Delfino and watched in awe as the smoke lifted orange from the earth and then swirled gray and black as it rose higher and higher. He had never seen anything like it, and he wondered how in God’s name this fire could be moving so fast. Down the road, he could make out
the sign to Felix’s Café and, beyond that, Tito’s Bar and the lumberyard. It was impossible to tell exactly where the fire line was, but Oliver could see that it had moved well past the cemetery and was on its way to town. He knew that by now the fire would have washed over Ascencia Flores’ house and was burning across the valley itself. Half this village is gone, he realized. He took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then he reached in his pocket, took out a match, and lit his cigarette. A few vehicles passed by him heading north out of town, and he could see someone walking toward him in the middle of the road. He tossed his match out the open window, and when all he could smell in the car was burning tobacco, he swung around and looked in the backseat.

  The blanket had come off of Delfino and was lying on the floor. The old man was on his side, with his knees drawn up to his stomach. He looked swallowed up in his overalls, not much bigger than a child. His good eye was open and dead still. Beneath it, there was a trail of clean skin. Both of his hands were wrapped around the santo, which was pressed so tight against his chest that the Lady’s face was buried in his clothes. For a second, Oliver wondered if Delfino had been talking to her all that time and not to him. He twisted in his seat a bit more and laid the back of his hand against Delfino’s mouth. Although heat was still coming from the old man’s face, there wasn’t a hint of breath. Oliver moved his hand to the santo, his fingers brushing the back of her body, and then he thought that she was probably better off where she was. He pulled his arm back and looked at the two of them lying together on his backseat.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “You deserved better than this, Mr. Vigil.” He tried to find some meaning in how a man as old as Delfino could drown in a fire and afterward walk miles to Flavio Montoya’s house only to die holding the carved figure of a doll in the backseat of a police car.

  He remembered driving his youngest daughter to the hospital one cold winter night. She, too, had been wrapped in a blanket and carried a small doll. It had been in the hours just before dawn. His wife and oldest daughter had left a day earlier to visit relatives. It was the only time Oliver had ever been alone with either of his daughters, and they had eaten their dinner awkwardly in silence. She had gone to bed early that evening and awakened after midnight crying and flushed. Her fever had been so high that when he’d bathed her in cold water, she stood thin and shivering in the bathtub and steam had come from her skin. He carried her from the house in a panic and laid her on the front seat of the squad car. As he drove the empty, snow-crusted streets of Las Sombras, the top of her head had pressed hot against his thigh and he had listened to her whimpering, knowing in his heart that she was going to die.

  An ache now gripped Oliver’s chest, and in his mind, he could see his two daughters standing close together and how they always seemed lost and out of place when he was near them.

  “I have two daughters,” he said to Delfino. “They’re good girls. Their mother’s name is Theresa. I loved her once, but that was a long time ago.” Delfino’s hands had relaxed their grip on the santo so that Oliver could see her face. Her features were stained black from soot, and there were thick blotches of red on her face. Her hands were together at her chest, and she was smiling slightly, staring up at Oliver. “Tell me,” he said to her. “Tell me anything.”

  A thread of cigarette smoke drifted into his eyes, and he jerked his head back, starting up a cramp between his shoulders. He grunted softly and eased back down a little in his seat. Then he shook his head and smiled. “I’m having a talk with a dead man and his doll,” he said out loud. He wondered what Sippy Valdéz had done with his Tío Petrolino. Maybe he could give Delfino to Sippy, and that way Delfino would have a little company.

  “I’ve been in this village too long,” he said. He took the cigarette from his mouth and flicked it out the widow. Then, after one last look at Delfino, he swung around in his seat and saw Ambrosio Herrera standing mute and drunk in the road just a few feet away.

  Ambrosio’s face was slack and his eyes were bloodshot and haggard. He was carrying two paper bags full of his things, and he was dressed in his boots and cowboy hat and a white shirt that was disheveled and stunk of whiskey. His mouth hung open and he was breathing thick and heavy, staring at the police officer without speaking. A pickup drove by going a little too fast. It swerved off onto the shoulder and then cut back sharply onto the road so that a cloud of ash and dust and smoke swirled around Ambrosio, and he staggered a few feet as if blown by a great wind. One of the bags fell from his arms, and wrinkled underwear and socks and colorful plastic toys spilled out onto the road. He stared down at them blankly and then looked back at Oliver.

  “I am leaving this place,” Ambrosio said so softly that Oliver didn’t know what he had said or even what language he had said it in. “This storm is too big and I have been in the wrong village for too long. My home has never been here.” He stopped talking and his eyes fell on the lights flashing silently on top of the police car. He stared at them, swaying gently back and forth and wondering if there was to be a parade.

  AMBROSIO HAD DRUNK SEVEN BEERS with Fred Sanchez and so many shots of whiskey that the bar in front of them had been littered with small empty glasses. By mid-afternoon, they were both so drunk that they began to argue loudly and incoherently about the color of chile and why the seeds, which were so small, held so much heat. When Ambrosio said it was because all true chiles came from a small pueblo in Mexico, Fred, who no longer knew what they were talking about, pushed him off his barstool. Tito, who had awakened that morning in the same bad mood he’d been in the past thirty years, had then thrown them both out of the bar. They had stumbled outside, blinking their bleary eyes at a world covered with ash and a sky black and churning. They had thought a storm bringing snow had come to the valley, and while Ambrosio had stood gaping, Fred had cursed and, with his shoulders slumped, gone home to cut firewood for his stove.

  Ambrosio had made his way slowly up the road to Felix’s Café. He had walked with his arms wrapped tightly around his chest and his body trembling from the cold. When he came to the small restaurant, he had stood for a long while staring at the outside of the place. Then, he bent over, picked up a large stone, and threw it through the plate-glass window. The sound of breaking glass had made him feel even colder and so he fell to his knees and began to weep. Through his tears, he could see the empty tables inside the café and the floor he had mopped for so many years. He remembered fondly the cracked linoleum in the kitchen and cooking beans with Felix, who had always treated him well. He knew everyone in the village and all of their families. But it had suddenly occurred to him that he cared for none of them, especially Felix, who had never treated him with respect and spoke Spanish like an animal might.

  “I am quitting you,” Ambrosio had yelled, waving his arms and rising to his feet. “Mexico is my home and my family waits for me. I have given you my best years, and I hope this blizzard buries you in snow and cold.” He picked up another rock. It went through the hole the first had made, and he stood wobbling in his tight boots. Then he had begun to cry again. “Forgive me, Felix,” he said. “You were my only friend and you have given me so much.” Then Ambrosio had stumbled back to his small trailer and filled two paper bags with his things. As he walked up the highway, he had sung a song about love and sadness.

  …

  HE WAS STILL STARING at the flashing lights on the squad car when the bottom of the second bag broke and what was in it fell to the pavement. He groaned and clutched the empty bag to his chest. Then, with some difficulty, he sat down in the road and began to stuff his things back into his torn bags. “My life has always been like this,” he slurred out, and then his hands fell still and he began to sing again softly.

  Oliver pulled out another cigarette and sat smoking inside the car. He thought he should say something to the man sprawled in the middle of the road, but he knew that he would have better luck speaking to a tree. He wondered again where Lucero had gone to and why there was such an utter lack
of emergency crews in the village. Overhead, he could hear the faroff drone of a plane, but it was so distant that it seemed to have nothing to do with anything. He let the cigarette drop from his fingers and pushed open his door. He walked over to Ambrosio and pulled him to his feet. Then, thinking this was a bad idea, he half carried the man around the car and helped him into the front seat.

  Ambrosio was still singing, but his voice had fallen to a murmur. He sat with his head hung low and his hands folded in his lap. His face was wet from tears. Oliver closed the door gently and went back out on the road. He gathered up all of Ambrosio’s things and stuffed them in the backseat with Delfino. For a moment, he stood outside the car looking at his passengers, and then, after letting out a long breath of air, he climbed in with them and switched on the ignition.

  “Cuidado,” Ambrosio mumbled. “There is wind and cold and too much snow.”

  “I REMEMBER,” Flavio said. “I just don’t know what it is I remember.” He was standing in the open doorway of Ramona’s house, and he could see the smoke rising from down in the valley. That smoke was my house, he thought, and Martha’s little garden and her letters to me and the apple trees my father planted which were full of bees every spring. He remembered one of the letters he had found in the box that had once held Martha’s shoes.

  “To my husband,” it had read. “Be careful, dear Flavio, and I love you so much.” At the time, he had passed over it quickly, thinking it said little, but now he realized that those few words contained everything his wife had ever wished to say to him. He looked up at the smoke that was his life, and he was filled with the ache of joy and sadness. “I miss you,” he said out loud, and his voice was choked and thick. Out on the highway, he saw the state police car driving fast back into town from the north, and he wondered what the police officer, whose name he had already forgotten, was doing driving Delfino back and forth over such bumpy roads. He said a little prayer for his old friend and hoped that he was asleep and resting easy in the backseat. Behind him on the sofa, he could hear Felix snoring lightly. Flavio cleared his throat.