Dieciséis
After Christmas I returned to school. I missed walking with Andrew in the mornings. At first the kids wanted to know about the murder of Narciso, but I told them nothing and soon the news was old and they went on to something else. My life had changed, I thought; I seemed older, and yet the lives of my schoolmates seemed unchanged. The Kid still raced at the bridge, Samuel nodded and walked on, Horse and Bones kicked at each other, and the yellow buses still came in with their loads of solemn farm kids. And catechism loomed in the future for all of us.
I talked only once to Cico. He said, “We have lost a friend. We shall wait until summer to take the news to the golden carp. He will tell us what to do—” After that I didn’t see him much.
I kept, as much as possible, to myself. I even lost touch with Jasón, which was too bad because I learned later that he would have understood. Of course, the dreams that I had during my illness continued to preoccupy me. I could not understand why Narciso, who did good in trying to help Ultima, had lost his life; and why Tenorio, who was evil and had taken a life, was free and unpunished. It didn’t seem fair. I thought a great deal about God and why he let such things happen. When the weather was warmer I sometimes paused beneath the juniper tree and looked at the stained ground. Then my mind wandered and my thoughts became a living part of me.
Perhaps, I thought, God had not seen the murder take place, and that is why He had not punished Tenorio. Perhaps God was too busy in heaven to worry or care about us.
Sometimes, after school let out in the afternoon, I went alone to church and kneeled and prayed very hard. I asked God to answer my questions, but the only sound was always the whistling of the wind filling the empty space. I turned more and more to praying before the altar of the Virgin,
because when I talked to Her I felt as if she listened, like my mother listened. I would look very hard at the red altar candles burning before her feet then I would bow my head and close my eyes and imagine that I saw Her turn to God and tell Him exactly what I had asked.
And the Lord would shake His head and answer, the boy is not yet ready to understand.
Perhaps when I make my communion I will understand, I thought. But to some the answers to their questions had come so soon. My mother had told me the story of the Mexican man, Diego, who had seen la Virgen de Guadalupe in Mexico. She had appeared to him and spoken to him, and She had given him a sign. She had made the roses grow in a barren, rocky hill, a hill much like ours. And so I dreamed that I too would meet the Virgin. I expected to see Her around every corner I turned.
It was during one of these moods of thought that I met Tenorio one afternoon on my way home from school. The blowing wind was full of choking dust and so I walked up the path with my head tucked down. I did not see Tenorio until he shouted into the howling wind. He was standing under the juniper tree at the exact spot where he had murdered Narciso. I was so startled and frightened that I jumped like a wounded rabbit, but he made no move to catch me. He wore a long, black coat and as was his custom, his wide-brimmed hat pulled low. His blind eye was a dark blue pit and the other glared yellow in the dust. He laughed and howled as he looked down at me and I thought he was drunk.
“¡Maldito!” he cursed me. “¡Desgraciado!”
“¡Jesús, María y José!” I found the courage to shout back, and I crossed my thumb over my first finger and held it up to ward off his evil, for I truly thought he was the reincarnation of the devil.
“¡Cabroncito! Do you think you can scare me with that? Do you think I am a witch like your grandmother? ¡Bruja! May coyotes disturb her grave
—the grave I will send her to,” he added. His vicious face twisted with hate. I felt my legs tremble. He took a step towards me and stopped. “My daughter is dying,” he moaned, and the wind snapped at his pitiful, animal cry. “My second daughter is dying, and it is because of the witch Ultima.
She put the curse on my first daughter, and now she murders the second— but I will find a way,” he threatened me with his closed fist, “I will find a way to get to her and destroy her!”
Not even when he killed Narciso had I seen so much hate in Tenorio’s evil face. I seemed too small to stand in the way of a man bent upon destruction with such fury, but I remembered that my father had stood up to him, and Narciso had stood up to him, and even Ultima had stood against his evil; and although I was trembling with fright I answered him, “No! I will not let you!”
He took another step towards me then paused. His evil eye grew narrow as he grinned. He glanced suspiciously into the whirling dust around us then said, “I killed the entremetido Narciso! Right here!” He pointed to the ground at his feet. “And the sheriff did not touch me. I will find a way to kill the witch—”
“You are a murderer!” I shouted with defiance. “My father will stop you if you try to harm Ultima, and the owl will scratch out your other eye—”
He crouched as if to pounce on me, but he remained motionless, thinking. I braced to ward off his blow, but it did not come. Instead he straightened up and smiled, as if a thought had crossed his mind, and he said, “Ay cabroncito, your curse is that you know too much!” And he turned and disappeared in the swirling dust. His evil laughter trailed after him, until the wind drowned it.
I hurried home, and when I could get Ultima alone I told her what had happened.
“Did he harm you in any way?” she asked when I was through relating the encounter.
“No,” I assured her.
“Did he touch you, even in the slightest manner?” “No,” I replied.
“He didn’t leave anything by the tree, anything you might have touched, or picked up?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I answered, “but he threatened you. He said he was seeking a way to kill you like he did Narciso—”
“Ay,” she smiled and put her arms around me, “do not worry about Tenorio’s threats, he has no manly strength to carry them out. He murdered Narciso because he ambushed him in cold blood, but he will not find me so easy to ambush—He is like an old wolf who drags around the ground where he has made his kill, his conscience will not let him rest. He returned to the tree where he committed his mortal sin to find some absolution for his
crime. But where there is no acknowledgement of guilt and penance done for the wrong, there can be no forgiveness—”
I understood what she said and so I went away somewhat comforted in the knowledge that at least Ultima did not fear Tenorio’s plotting. But often at night I awoke from nightmares in which I saw Tenorio shooting Ultima as he had shot Narciso. Then I felt relief only after I crept down the stairs and went to her door to listen, to see if she was safe. She seemed never to sleep because if I listened long enough I could hear a swishing sound and then a humming as she worked with her herbs. I had been close to Ultima since she came to stay with us, but I was never closer or more appreciative of her good than those weeks when I was sick and she cared for me.
