by David Xavier
His father died that same year, sitting among his nothings at the Rancho del Rey in the ragged chair by the window. A lifetime of service in the military, and decades spent building coastal missions in Alta California, and he died with little possessions. Salomon’s mother, Maria Ysabel, moved to Monterey, the capital, the city they visited so often, and took Salomon with her. His brothers were older, and stayed to work at the ranch. While they were sweating among the cowhides and butchered meat, the cold bladders and intestines stuffed with tallow, waving their arms at the cattle in the fields, Salomon sat among other students or read aloud from his textbooks at the front of a classroom.
When class let out, he and Arturo Leyva ran across town to sit with their legs and arms dangling through the presidio fence slats, and watch the army drills. They watched the field taken in a bitter smelling roll of smoke at the crack of a dozen rifle shots, and the targets rip apart downrange. They watched the lancers ride in formation, wheeling about in the field, one after another, in a precise display of horsemanship.
“I’d be a swordsman,” Arturo said. “If I was in the army.”
Salomon’s eyes blinked once as he turned back to the field. “I’d be a marksman.”
The boys fell from the fence as one and wrestled in the dirt. Halfway through town they split their separate ways. Salomon entered his home through the secret door he had cut in the floor of the raised storage room. He crawled under the house stilts, slithering at one point with his arms at his sides, and came up beneath the storage room to find his panel had been replaced. He pressed on it but it had been secured from inside. He stepped across the porch on his toes and eased the screen door open.
“Salomon.”
He swallowed and went into the next room where his mother’s voice had come from. She was standing over a basin, washing clothes. He stepped in, playing with his hands.
“Yes?”
“Our house has a front door on it,” she said softly, her eyes never leaving her work. “Built specifically for people going in and out.” She looked up and touched her sleeve to her lips. “Just use the door, son.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
He stood there, unmoving. The clock on the mantle clicked away. His mother said, “Wash up.”
As a widow, Maria Ysabel had gained new wrinkles. What was once an ageless face had become tired in a year. Her black hair now divided with strands of gray that shown white. She draped her head in a shawl, tied beneath her chin. She spoke in whispers. Yet men pursued her. They came to her door on Sundays wearing uncomfortable suits and bearing flowers, which she accepted with a smile to avoid being rude. Salomon observed one day a man with dark moustaches swept to the side of his face, wearing boots with medallions on the toes, sweep his hat off his head and bow so low his head dipped below his waist, his arm lifted to the side in gentle dramatics.
“Your father was the kindest, gentlest man on earth,” she told Salomon with her back against the door. “He had no need for romantic fusses. And I didn’t either.”
“Then how does a man get the attention of a woman?”
She looked at him. “Just be who you are. She will see the passion in your eyes. A woman can see through any disguise anyway.”
With this new advice, Salomon went to school the next day and sat beside the girl he liked. She always wore her hair pulled behind her neck or tied up on hot days, never in a braid over her shoulder as the indian children did. On this day, she wore her hair twisted in a bun at the back of her head. Salomon did not understand how the twist worked, where it began and where it ended, and he had spent much time looking at it from the other side of the room with his head cocked. Now, sitting next to her, he did not look at her or even ask a simple question of her. He was himself. When this did not work, he fixed his eyes on her and did not blink so she could see into them. She raised her hand and told the teacher that his stares made her uncomfortable. The next day he wore an old hat of his fathers, and brought one of the many gifts of flowers that Maria Ysabel had placed in a pile on the corner desk. He tried to duplicate the flourish he had seen the man with the moustaches perform. This time Juana Vasquez laughed. He looked up, and she was smiling.
While her mother thought she was playing with her friends, Juana followed Salomon to the presidio to see the military drills and the horses. He looked on with wide eyes, but Juana yawned. And when the soldiers knelt in the field and fired their rifles, she blinked and covered her ears. He led her by the hand to the pond he had found behind the schoolyard, where he and Arturo waded in up to their waists and scooped at tadpoles. Juana sat in the grass, and when Salomon finally turned, smiling, with his fist raised and dripping, she had her head back and had been looking at the clouds.
“She will never marry you,” Arturo told him later in the field. They marched together in the tall grass, chopping down thistles with carefully chosen sticks.
“Why? Does she not like me?”
“Because she has older brothers.”
“So do I.”
“But yours will not choose your wife for you when you are older. That is what my brothers did for my sister. They did not like the first man who asked my father if he could marry her. My father did not like him either, and told him so. But the man continued to ask. He came to the house late and talked to my sister through the window. My other sisters share a room with her and they told. My father was afraid the man would run off with my sister, and my sister continued to beg him to bless the marriage, so he finally told her yes. But the next day my brothers chased the man away with clubs. The man came back, and my brothers broke his arms. He came back again months later, and they cut his face. He did not come back again, and my sister married another man who owns land and cattle. She does not like him, but my father does.”
Arturo looked back. Salomon had stopped.
“Do her brothers like you?”
Salomon looked up. “I don’t know.”
Ismael Vasquez was a soldier at the presidio. He would know how to fight, he may carry a knife, and he would not be afraid of the sound a gun made when you pulled the trigger. Salomon had seen Ismael at church many times. The Vasquez family took up an entire pew and stood from tallest to shortest, Juana on one end and Ismael on the other. He never smiled, not even when greeting those around him. His face was always serious, as if angry.
But he was not as ugly as Raul Vasquez, the second from the end on the tall side, who worked as a hog butcher on the Ranchito del Playa Negro, a ranch that spread all the way to the coast. It was said the sands ran black with the blood of the pigs. These were pigs that Raul Vasquez tore open with a hooked knife and an unflinching face, a mouth that pulled his face down so the lines from his nose to the corners of his frown were so deep they were shadowed even on bright days.
It did not matter because Salomon did not sit next to Juana any longer. Manuel Santiago had taken his seat. When Salomon stood in front of her that first day, hoping she would have the answer for how they would sit together again, Manuel stood and looked down at him until he left.
The next day Salomon left his house while the streets were still moonlit, and sat hidden around the corner, shivering against the school wall, until he heard the teacher arrive and unlock the door. He walked in before the teacher could even set her things down, and took his seat next to Juana’s. He sat with a smile as the sun rose in the window and the other students trickled in. Manuel Santiago stared from the door but Salomon sat, head held high. Manuel told him to get out of the chair but he did not. Manuel stood over him and told him he had better get out of that chair before Juana arrives or he would beat him so badly he would never want to show his face in front of her again. Salomon did not move or speak, and the bigger boy eventually moved away but kept his eyes on him. When the teacher left the room, Manuel stood and hit Salomon across the face with the hard edge of his book, and broke a ruler against his forehead. When Juana arrived, Man
uel was in the seat next to hers, and Salomon sat in the back of the room with his head buried in his arms.
“You want to sit next to Juana?” Arturo asked him.
“Yes,” Salomon said.
“Then sit next to her.”
“But Manuel is bigger than I am and would be difficult to lift. Also, he is dumb, so he is not afraid to hit me.”
“You are smart and quick. And you have me.” Arturo smiled, “I am not so smart.”
While the other schoolchildren hopped down the steps to scatter in the streets, Manuel waited at the bottom with his arms crossed. Salomon sat against the wall in the plaza, watching. When Juana appeared at the door, he stood, and Manuel straightened up. Together they walked with her along the dusty pathway, and Arturo crept beside them in the bushes.
“My mother says I must run home,” Juana said. “She told me to run and not stop until I reach our door.”
“I will protect you,” Manuel said. “She will be happy to see that you are with me.”
“She doesn’t want to see me with anybody. She will know if I don’t run. She waits at the door and counts. You cannot let her see you.”
“You can run as she tells you,” Salomon said. “I will stop before she sees me, and I will watch you to safety.”
Manuel swung behind Juana’s back and hit Salomon’s arm. He gave him a stare and mouthed incomprehensible words. They continued walking. Salomon touched Juana’s knuckle and gave her a look. He told her to run, and as he shouted it, he swung on Manuel, doubling him over so he could no longer see his own arm. As quickly as a shouted word, Manuel was alone, coughing over the dust, Juana was running her way home, and Salomon was leaping through the bushes off the path. Manuel had attempted to grab at him, but Salomon was quick and out of reach before Manuel could figure out if he was going to fall over or give chase. He went after him, jumping among the swaying ragweed and rolled salt thistles, following a jagged trail of fresh footprints in the sand.
Salomon rounded out his run and ran ahead, and he came upon the path again in time to stand flatfooted with his hands in his pockets as Juana approached. She stopped her run for a brief moment, looked about, and sprinted to him. They ran hand in hand, not comprehending what they had just locked between them, and he watched from behind a wall as she made her final approach to her mother at the door. Before she closed the door, Juana looked back one last time, put her hand quickly to her mouth, and threw her palm in his direction, unable to see him, but knowing he was out there and would receive her kiss.
The next day Manuel did not show at school. The following day he was absent as well. When Manuel was not present when the teacher called his name on the third day, Salomon asked Arturo about it.
“He is not so injured that he could not show up for class,” he said. “He is faking. For sympathy.”
But when he did return Manuel was limping, and although his face was no longer swollen, it was lumped and different. The purple around his eyes was beginning to yellow. He winced every time he moved. There were small dots on his cheeks.
“I cannot help it if there are cactuses everywhere you step out there,” Arturo said. “He gave himself those dots. He did not pull them out correctly.” And he held up his own arm to show that he had brushed against cacti as well, however, he had the sense to soften his skin with warm water so the barbs slid out easily.
Manuel did not reveal what had happened to him or who had done it, offering his parents and his teacher the excuse that he had been playing in the cattle chutes and was trapped in with a mule. He sat at the back of the classroom and made very little noise.