A Santo in the Image of Cristóbal García Read online

  He had hurried to her side and crouched down. Her dress had pulled up above her thighs and so he pulled it back down to cover her legs. Then he touched her face with the back of his hand. Her skin was still warm, but beneath it he could feel a chill like a pocket of cold water.

  “Martha,” Flavio had whispered, as he shook her shoulder gently. He moved her hair from her face. Her eyes were half open and her mouth was slack. “Martha,” he said again.

  MARTHA MONTOYA HAD BEEN A SMALL, round, quiet woman who, much like her own mother, had been blessed with a good nature. She had been an only child, and her mother, besides having an even temper and a soft smile, had entered the world speechless. So the sounds Martha remembered of her childhood were not voices, but the sounds of things. She remembered the scraping of spoons, the dry limbs of juniper cracking in the woodstove, the swish of her mother’s dress as she moved through the house.

  Martha’s father was much older than his wife, and he had left the village in search of work far to the north before Martha was born. He was a miner and had left on foot one morning, carrying with him only a worn leather bag that held a few tools, a change of clothes, and a framed picture of his wife. No one in the village ever saw him again, but on the first Monday of every month a letter would arrive for Martha. In it would be a few dollars in coins and a note, the words printed in a childlike hand on yellow paper. It almost always read:

  To my daughter, Martha,

  I am fine and still far away

  and the work I do is very hard.

  Always I think of you and your mother

  and of the day I will finally come home.

  I know you will be a good girl

  And in my prayers I am with you.

  Your loving father

  Martha and her mother would sit at the kitchen table as Martha read the words aloud. They would sit close together and count the coins, and then Martha would take a pencil and paper and write to her father. She would tell him how far she walked to school each morning and if it was cold or windy or if there had been snow. She would tell him how she and her mother made tortillas and biscochitos and, in the autumn, picked gooseberries and sour cherries and apricots for jam. Even if she was ill, she told him that she was well so that he would not worry. She said that she missed him and hoped that he would finish his work soon and come home to them. Later, at night, Martha would lie awake in bed and see her father far away, with a piece of paper clasped in his hand.

  The last letter Martha received from her father was the day after her mother’s death following a long illness. Martha was a grown woman herself, married just one month to young Flavio Montoya, and she had found the letter on the small table beside her mother’s bed.

  To my daughter, Martha,

  I have grown old and I fear

  that this is my last letter to you.

  And if that is so, I want to say that

  I am so proud to have you as my daughter.

  I pray that you will always lead your life well

  And never forget me.

  Your loving father

  Beside the open letter on the table were scattered a few coins and a pencil.

  …

  IN ALL OF MARTHA’S FIFTY-SIX YEARS of marriage to Flavio, she had not one regret. She had married a man who cared for his cows and kept the house in good repair and who never once raised his hand in anger. While it was true the two of them seldom spoke of things of importance, other than the lack of rain or a cow that would not grow, the silence in the house comforted her. She would listen to the sounds of their forks while they ate or the hiss of the beans on the stove, and she would feel that the fullness in her life always came from the things not said.

  Each morning, she rose with Flavio to prepare his breakfast: eggs and chile and a warm tortilla with butter and honey. She would drink a cup of coffee by herself and look out the window at the apple trees that grew along their drive. Then she would begin cooking dinner. When it was done she would cover the pan with foil and leave it on the counter to cool. She would straighten the kitchen then and sweep the floors and make the bed. In the summer months, she tended a small garden near the house where she grew corn and yellow peppers and small red potatoes.

  She sometimes thought that her life with Flavio was like a season, although she wasn’t exactly sure just what season it was. Not spring with its winds and late snows, or autumn when the aspens streak gold across the mountains and the light is too thin. Martha’s life was more like the thick heat of summer, or the flat frozen days of winter when it seems as if nothing will ever change.

  If there had been any difficulty in their marriage, it was the absence of children, and even that was not for lack of trying. In truth, she and Flavio had tried so hard and so often to conceive a child that eventually their efforts became a habit. Far past middle age the two of them would make love quietly and Martha would close her eyes, her hands light on Flavio’s hips, and listen to the sound of his breath. Sometimes she would cry softly at the thought of Flavio’s seed swimming lost inside her, and Flavio, who seldom knew the right thing to say, would pat her arm awkwardly until they both fell asleep.

  On the morning of her death, Martha was preparing Flavio’s favorite food, enchiladas with cilantro, when her heart caught in her chest. She stood by the stove for a moment as if waiting for someone, and then she felt her knees buckle. As she fell slowly to the floor, she thought that there was something she should tell her husband, but she couldn’t quite grasp what it was. Her eyes closed and she could smell the scent of garlic. Through the open window she heard the wind moving in the leaves of the apple trees.

  TWO DAYS AFTER MARTHA’S DEATH, her Rosary was held at the church. Flavio sat alone in the front pew, just a few feet before the altar. He was dressed in a black suit that was a size too small for him and black boots that pinched his feet. His head was bowed slightly and his hands were in his lap.

  Behind him, the church was filled with his friends and their families, but among them was not one relative of his or Martha’s. For the first time, he realized that somehow he had managed to outlive his entire family.

  Martha lay in her coffin on the altar, and as the priest led everyone in prayer, Flavio raised his head and looked at his wife. He could see that her eyes were closed. Her hands were folded together on her chest. She was wearing a soft white dress that had once been her mother’s, and her hair was brushed in a way that Flavio couldn’t remember. She looked younger in her death and also different, as if she were someone he had once known but then forgotten.

  The thick wood planks beneath his feet had worn to a shine from people kneeling for so many years, and he remembered all the other Rosaries for the dead he had attended. Then it occurred to him that when the priest was done, everyone in the church would pass by him to give their condolences. He had no idea what to say to so many people. Flavio suddenly wished he was in his fields staring at the mountains, listening to the water in his ditch and knowing, without thinking, that his wife was home waiting for him to come for dinner.

  For months after Martha’s death, it appeared to everyone in Guadalupe that nothing had really changed in Flavio’s life. He still rose early each morning and went to his fields. He kept the house clean and neat. He even watered and weeded the small garden that Martha had planted in the spring. The talk in the village was that it was good Flavio had recovered so quickly from the death of his wife, rather than complaining constantly and weeping by the side of the road as Onecimo Romero had done, making everyone else feel bad. It was best to let go of the dead, most people thought, not let them hang around and cause trouble.

  At one time, Flavio would have readily agreed with all of this. He had always been a man who thought little about things, content to go through his life much as one of his cows would have, wherever his feet took him, which was usually from his field back to his house. Unfortunately, although it was true that on the surface Flavio appeared to be fine, not only had he quietly become lost, as if in a p
lace he no longer knew, but he began to dream without sleeping.

  Flavio would be in his fields with his cap pulled down low on his forehead, his arms loose, his shovel leaning against his body. He would stand by the ditch and suddenly he would find himself having long conversations with people who were not there. What made it worse was that when he was done visiting with these people, he would barely remember just who it was he’d been talking to, let alone what it was they’d been talking about. He would think that he had dozed while standing, but when he glanced about he would see that the field was wet and his boots were stained with mud and water.

  Flavio began to feel as if he were living in two places at the same time. Although he took some pleasure in the knowledge that his body was smart enough to keep irrigating in his absence, it made him uneasy to think that his mind could leave without him knowing it. All that would remain with him when he came to his senses was a faint memory that was more like a scent. Sometimes it was the vision of his father splitting wood in the winter, his breath a cloud, his large hands chafed, or his brother walking backward as an infant, his eyes seeing only where he’d been. Sometimes what he could remember was only something he had once heard: the sound of coyotes in the winter when the air is dead. The harshness in his sister’s voice when they were children. His grandmother calling his name just before dark. Flavio was living in the past, and the present had become lost to him.

  On a day in late autumn, Flavio left his field earlier than usual. He was tired and there was a deep ache in his bones. He thought that rather than stand in his alfalfa and feel poorly, he would go home and rest. Although it was not cold that day, there was a hollowness in the air and a thin feel to the warmth. The leaves on the aspens and cottonwoods had already fallen, and the gray patches of woods high up on the mountains wavered like smoke.

  As Flavio climbed into his pickup, he realized two seasons had passed since Martha’s death and he could barely remember either one. He also realized that October had come and gone and he was still irrigating plants that had no use for water, but only wanted a little peace before the onset of winter.

  Halfway home, as he drove through the center of town, Flavio began to cry. As tears ran down his face, he suddenly found himself making strange gulping noises. When the road became blurred, he slowed the truck and then lowered his head so no one passing by would see him in such a state. He could not remember the last time he had wept, and a mile later when his tears ended so abruptly, it seemed to him as if it had happened to someone else, some other old man driving alone in his pickup.

  Outside his house, Flavio stood in front of Martha’s small garden. Although there was not a weed to be seen anywhere, the corn and peppers and potatoes had been left unharvested. The stalks on the corn were yellow and brittle, and they moved slightly even with no wind. He would take a nap, he told himself. When he woke, he would come back outside and dig up the potatoes his wife had planted just before she died.

  When Flavio pushed open his front door, he saw a shoebox sitting in the middle of the room. It was a gray box with a faded blue lid. The last time he had seen it, it had been sitting on the top shelf of Martha’s closet. It had once held a pair of small red shoes with slender black straps that Martha had ordered from a city in the east just before their marriage. She had worn them only once, then put them away, saying they made her feel foolish, not like a woman who was about to be married. She had taken the shoes off carefully, placed them back in the box, and covered them with delicate white paper. Then she had placed the box on a shelf in her closet, where it had sat for five decades.

  Flavio wondered if someone had entered his house while he was gone. If they had, why had they done nothing more than move a box that was worthless from one place to another? Then it occurred to him it was possible he had actually moved the box without remembering, for himself to find later. The thought made him even more tired than he was, so he shook his head and closed his eyes.

  Four hours later, Flavio woke on the couch in the living room. It was almost sunset. The light coming in the windows was pale and flat. He sat up slowly and brought his hands to his face, feeling weak and tired, as if he hadn’t slept at all. He took a deep breath and rubbed his eyes with his fingers and realized that the day was nearly gone. He realized, too, that all the evening held for him were two tortillas, cold beans, and the same magazine he read each night before falling asleep. His eyes fell on the shoebox a few feet away. It bothered him again that it hadn’t stayed on the shelf in the closet where it belonged. I’ll put it away, he thought, pushing himself up off the couch, and then see about dinner.

  Flavio knelt beside the box and took off the lid. What he saw inside was not a layer of thin white paper covering Martha’s shoes, but six neat stacks of envelopes that completely filled the box.

  “What is this?” Flavio said aloud. “Where are Martha’s shoes?”

  The top layer of the envelopes that faced him were all identical. There was a stamp in the upper right-hand corner and printed on each of them in Martha’s handwriting was:

  To Flavio Montoya

  Box 17

  Guadalupe, New Mexico

  “What is this, Martha?” Flavio said again, as he reached down to pick one up. He slid his finger along the seal and opened it.

  To my husband, Flavio

  April 3, 1996

  The apple trees are full

  of blossoms this morning, and

  I can hear the noise of so many bees.

  It is a warm sweet morning.

  your loving wife, Martha

  Flavio stared blankly at the writing. His mouth was half open and he squinted, trying to comprehend not only the meaning of the words, but the fact that it was his wife who had written them. In all their years together he and Martha had seldom shared words such as these. Besides that, he couldn’t remember her writing anything other than a recipe or a few, hurried lines on a pad of paper that, more often than not, said, “Flavio, I have gone to the store and will be back soon, Martha.”

  Flavio placed the letter he had read on the floor. Then he reached into the box and took one from another stack.

  To my husband, Flavio

  January 6, 1952

  When you come home tonight,

  I will tell you I am

  carrying our baby.

  Be careful, my husband,

  it is so cold.

  your loving wife, Martha

  Flavio’s breath caught in his throat. He could remember that day forty-nine years ago. His cows had broken their fences, and he had found them walking the road at the south end of the village as if they had a place to go. It had taken him all day to chase them back where they belonged and then to fix the fence. By the time he had returned home, it was dark and his toes were swollen and purple from the cold. Martha had greeted him at the door, her face flushed. “I am pregnant, Flavio,” she had said laughing.

  “We made love that night,” Flavio said out loud. Afterward, they had lain close together and stared at the ceiling, neither of them talking. It was a few days later that Martha found out she’d been mistaken.

  Flavio put the letter on the floor with the one he had already read. Once more he reached into the box.

  To my husband, Flavio

  September 1, 1945

  Today I buried my poor red shoes

  beneath the apple tree.

  When I told this to Grandmother Rosa,

  she smiled and said that maybe an

  empty box is of more value than one

  with shoes.

  We have been married one month and

  it is like a second.

  your loving wife, Martha

  Suddenly, Flavio found himself standing. He ran into the kitchen and filled the coffeepot with water and enough grounds to make mud. He stood impatiently by the counter while the coffee brewed, every so often peering into the other room at the box on the floor. He ate a cold tortilla and, between bites, told the coffee to hurry. When it was finally done
, he took the whole pot and a cup and went back into the living room.

  Flavio began reading backward through his life with Martha, and in each letter he, too, had something to say. More often than not, he would remember what Martha had written about, but when he didn’t, he would shake his head and say, “Eee, you should have told me.” Once he began arguing with a letter and when he heard how loud his voice was, he lowered it to a whisper and chided Martha for making him so angry.

  Flavio read and talked until it was dark and then on through the night. When morning came, not only was Martha truly gone, but she was all about him. She was sitting on the sofa, her hands together in her lap. She was in the bedroom straightening the blankets and folding his clothes. She was in the kitchen at the small table by the window with a pencil and a piece of yellow paper. She was in the air Flavio breathed. From that moment on, although Flavio never stopped dreaming while awake, whatever it was he had lost in the months after Martha’s death, she had returned to him.

  INSIDE RAMONA’S OLD HOUSE, Flavio and Felix sat together on the sofa. They leaned heavily against each other and Felix’s hand still lay upon Flavio’s. Flavio’s chin had sunk down low on his chest and he was staring blankly at the floor. At first glance, the two of them looked more like brothers napping on a warm morning than anything else. Suddenly, Flavio took in a sharp breath. He blinked rapidly and then raised his eyes and looked out the front door. A slight breeze had picked up, and the leaves on the cottonwoods stirred. The door creaked a little back and forth. He could feel a cramped muscle in his neck and he moved his head gently until it eased.

  “I must have fallen asleep, Felix,” he said out loud. And for a second he almost remembered what it was he had dreamed, or thought he dreamed, and then it flew away from him. With a groan he pushed himself up to the edge of the sofa and sat there quietly for a moment. His hand still lay beneath Felix’s and he could feel the constant trembling of Felix’s fingers. He spit out some air and shook his head. “I dreamed you talked, Felix,” he said. “That’s what happens when you stand in the sun for so long. And then to be in this house.”