by Dave Boling
When they first returned to the stream, Miguel knew not to ask Justo if he needed help baiting his hook. Even with just two fingers and part of a thumb on each hand, Miguel was quicker at some things than Justo. Baiting a hook was one. After mutilating dozens of grubs and worms while trying different ways of stabbing them with the hook, Justo arrived at a method that disgusted Miguel, although it did not surprise him. When he found a fat grub under a rotting log or downed branch, Justo would pop it into his mouth. With his teeth and lips pinching the worm in place, he brought the hook up to his mouth and threaded it through the plump body. Once he hooked his own lip, causing him to howl. Often Miguel would see blood or worm guts on Justo’s mustache and found he had to turn away.
“What?” Justo asked when Miguel groaned at the vision.
“Nothing.”
“The taste is not that bad, Miguel. It is not worse than some of the things we have been eating and calling dinner. If we don’t catch anything today, it might just be our dinner.”
But there remained scattered fish to be caught. Unhooking them was somewhat less disgusting, although hardly artful. Justo would lay the fish on the ground, step on it with his left foot, and yank the hook out with his right hand. Sometimes the string broke or the hook bent or the fish’s lip ripped off with the hook. The weight of his foot smashed the fish soft, leaving it with a mealy texture. But no one was choosy.
Miguel was slightly more deft, but a number of times, as he tried to unhook the fish, it would flop out of his hands and land back in the stream.
“We’re a fine pair,” Justo said.
“We are,” Miguel said. “One hand and, what, maybe nine fingers between us.”
“And three ears,” Justo added. “Do you have all your toes?”
Yes, Justo’s ear. Miguel had not expected to have so much trouble with Justo’s ear. When Father Xabier sent word to Errotabarri that he was bringing Justo home, Miguel did what he could to prepare, cleaning the house and restoring order as he remembered it. He wanted to have a meal prepared, too. Miguel had gone to the Mezos’ when he returned to see if there was any help he could provide, but the home was empty. He knew that Roberto was likely still in jail somewhere, but he had not heard of the fate of Amaya and the seven children. When he walked up to their baserri, he saw in the garden a mound of dirt bearing a cross of scrap wood. In charcoal writing across the horizontal board was the word AMA.
Mother.
What happened to the children was another of the many mysteries. Miguel looked through the house to be certain there was none left to help. And when he saw no one, he looked for anything that might help him survive. No food was visible, but to his surprise, he discovered a bottle of wine in a drawer in the kitchen.
He saved it for the meal to celebrate Justo’s return. One of the rabbits in the downstairs stalls was sacrificed. Miguel had a fire burning and dinner cooking when the Ansotegui brothers arrived. It was an immediate disaster. Justo saw Miren’s braid and broke down. Miguel saw Justo’s ear and thought instantly of Catalina. They sobbed in the same rhythm as they hugged, and Xabier put his arms around both and recited prayers. He hoped it would calm them and that maybe it would call down spiritual assistance, but mostly he prayed because he could think of nothing else to say.
Xabier saw the wine on the table and broke from their embrace to pour three glasses. There was no toast, no osasuna. And there was very little talking. Miguel stepped to the hearth to remove the pot simmering with rabbit and a few vegetables he had collected to make stew. Justo rose to help, looking at the apron hanging from the nail.
When it was time for bed, all three slept in the main room. When fresh out of the hospital, Miguel had brought in a small and ratty cot from the lambing shed, and he had been sleeping on that. He offered that to Father Xabier, who saw no benefit in arguing over it. Miguel and Justo slept seated in the two padded chairs.
Xabier visited Santa María church the next morning before returning to Bilbao, subtly urging his friends and colleagues to keep their eyes on his brother. In Xabier’s absence, Justo and Miguel were left to find their paths around each other’s grief.
Renée Labourd’s parents, Santi and Claudine, were still spry and clever enough for the work. But they had taken fewer jobs as the civil war in Spain caused the border guards to be supplemented by Franco’s military forces, who were quicker to perform impromptu executions for sport. The contraband was more precious now, as Basque, Catalan, and Republican refugees sought ways to seep across the border into the relative peace of France. But the boundary was increasingly less permeable and the Labourds were recognizable as frequent crossers.
Mostly it was Renée’s operation now, Renée’s and her new partner Eduardo Navarro’s. Eduardo had overcome his disastrous apprenticeship to discover an innate talent.
“Papa, you’d be so proud of Dodo; he’s coming up with new ideas,” Renée said at dinner.
“Tell us, son,” Santi Labourd said. “We are not too old to learn.”
“No . . . you are the heroes of the mountains,” Dodo protested. “I’m new to all this. If I have any advantage it’s that I have a better idea how the Spanish guards think. You French Basques try to use logic on them, but your logic doesn’t apply.”
“How so?” Santi asked.
“Spanish guards are predictable,” Dodo said. “If it is a hot day, you may be certain that the shaded areas will be fully staffed and impeccably guarded. You are mostly free to do as you please out in the sunshine. If it’s rainy, they will be vigilant in their attention to all covered areas. If it’s cold, they will surround the stove and protect it with their entire force. So you can outthink them and outwork them. They’ll cluster in the easiest paths, where they assume you will pass. In their minds, it’s inconceivable that anybody would walk a steep, rocky trail when a gentle path is available.”
“What about in town?” Claudine Labourd asked.
“I think you manipulate their perception; people are led by what they see, and you can make them believe just about what ever you want them to.”
“Yes?”
Renée laughed. “Let me tell them,” she demanded.
“He invented the illusion of the baguette,” Renée said. “It’s so simple and it never fails. You may have a sack spilling over with pistols and ammunition, but if you have a loaf of bread sticking out the top, you’re nothing more than somebody out shopping.”
“I just noticed how many people on this side of the border walk around with bread, and how I never suspect them of anything other than being hungry,” Dodo said. “It’s the cheapest disguise you can use.”
“And it’s edible,” Renée said. “Tell him about the sheep bells; my father will love this one.”
Dodo grinned. “We had tried to get some packages through several of our favorite passes but checkpoints had been set up,” he said. “The last chance we had that night was to try to get past the guard shack at one of the ports that is popular with herders moving between grazing lands.”
“How did you manage?”
“With sheep bells,” Renée broke in.
“It was cold and raining a little, so I suspected the guards in the shack would be patrolling their stove,” Dodo said. “I borrowed a few neck bells from a friend’s flock. We walked slowly up to the shack, rattling the bells every few steps as if we were grazing, and nobody ever looked out.”
To Justo, Miguel was guilty of unforgivable courtesy; to Miguel, Justo was cruel in his unrelenting thoughtfulness. It was as uncomfortable as a formal dance between two strangers. One could not attempt the simplest task without the other wondering if an offer of help would be an insult.
Except for the subdued joy they shared fishing, it became easier for them to avoid each other’s company. Justo went to the new market once it was reestablished, just to hear others talk. Miguel would stay in the hills even after his logging was done. Justo eventually took to sleeping in Miren’s old bed, and Miguel remained on the cot in the main room.<
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Both were habitual early risers, but Miguel generally heated weak tea and was gone before Justo left his room for the morning. Justo worked at Errotabarri, trying to grow enough to sustain them but not so much that it would cause others to think there was something worth confiscating. Miguel and Justo instinctively knew that the less contact they had with the plunderers, the better were their chances of staying out of prison.
The two generally reconvened in the evening for an unsatisfying dinner of what ever they had been able to forage, kill, or purchase with Miguel’s small income from logging. After several months, even the conspicuous courtesy faded, and days would sometimes pass when all that was said between them was “Good night, Miguel” and “Good night, Justo.”
A knock on the door one night after dinner brought a change.
“Justo . . . Miguel . . . it’s Alaia,” they heard from outside. “Are you home? Can I come in?”
They rushed to the door. Justo pulled it open the first part of the way, and Miguel then helped push it fully aside. Alaia had found her way to Errotabarri with her cane, having remembered the path.
“Have you eaten? We have some food left—if you want to call it that,” Justo offered.
“I’ve eaten already,” she said. “I don’t really eat that much anymore. Not like those huge meals Mariangeles and Miren used to make, with the lamb and asparagus and peppers.”
“You did have a fine appetite,” Justo recalled. “Mariangeles loved feeding you because you took such joy in eating everything. You wouldn’t even speak because you didn’t want to waste time talking when you could be eating.”
“Miren used to make fun of me all the time, but while she was busy gabbing away with her stories, I was putting away all that good food,” Alaia said as Miguel guided her to a chair at the table. “And that flan, oh, God, that fl an.”
“That flan,” Justo and Miguel added in harmony. “Ohhh.”
Alaia had been at Errotabarri only a few moments, and the names “Mariangeles” and “Miren” had been spoken for the first time in the months since Miguel and Justo had returned. While talking to Alaia, there was little discomfort. She somehow buffered the connection between them; they could not say the words to each other but were able to talk about their loves and even remember pleasant stories about them when she raised the topic.
“You gave me those wonderful bear hugs,” Alaia said, holding out her arms in Justo’s direction. Justo closed in and encircled her as completely as he could with his right arm. She pulled him close.
“Justo, I hope you don’t mind, I brought something for you,” Alaia said, placing a small wrapped package on the table. “If you don’t want it, I understand. I just thought it might be something you two might like to have around the house.”
Justo knew what it was at the sight of it. He unwrapped the waxed paper and removed one of perhaps half a dozen bars of soap.
“It’s their blend,” Alaia said, although she was sure that Justo and Miguel would recognize the scent. “The ingredients aren’t as easy to get anymore, but I won’t make it for anyone else.”
Justo handed a bar to Miguel. Both held the soaps to their noses for a moment, inhaling deeply and staring at the young woman who had brought the scent of life back into their house.
CHAPTER 22
The sign over the main door of the derelict rectory read WELCOME NIÑOS. The thousands of displaced Basque children who spent a year in the temporary Southampton camp were being redistributed across the British countryside in smaller groups, including the one here at Pampisford. As the government had not relented in its stance against providing support to the orphans, local citizens were recruited to help via a series of flyers and announcements in the newspapers. Those of a charitable nature began arriving to prepare for the children.
Annie Bingham, a timorous young woman with short red hair and a constellation of freckles across her nose and cheeks, wanted to help however she could. She was among more than a dozen volunteers working to clean and refurbish the building. By the time Annie entered the cold, dusty rectory, it was throbbing with the rhythm of hammers and the melody of saws. Because it burned like a beacon near the ceiling, she noticed the hair of a young man up a tall ladder. It curled out from under a painter’s cap. Where hers was more copper, his was flame. The young man belonging to the hair edged nearer the top rung of a ladder while fastening rods for curtains.
“Blast.” The red-haired young man dropped a bracket that clanked with an echo against the hardwood flooring. Annie stepped to the base of the ladder, retrieved the bracket, and tossed it back to the young man so he didn’t have to make a full descent. It took her three tries to get it close enough that it didn’t threaten to knock him off his perch or fall well below his reach.
“Cheers, red,” he said.
She nodded and smiled.
Charles Swan finished screwing in the bracket and climbed down to introduce himself.
“My friends call me Charley,” he said, offering a hand after wiping it clean on his pants.
“Annie Bingham,” she said, shaking the hand. “Of Pampis-ford.”
“And what brings you to this holy hovel?”
“I should say that it’s out of my charitable nature, and it is, in a way, but actually I hope to be an instructor of Spanish someday.”
He smiled.
“I thought I could help out with the little ones and practice my language at the same time. I came today to see how things were coming along here.”
“Maravilloso,” Charley said.
“Usted habla bien.”
“Yo no hablo tan bien como usted.”
“And you?” she asked, holding her palm up to gesture at all the work in progress.
“I just finished my first year reading engineering at Cambridge, but I’m going to take some time off to learn to fly,” he said. “A friend at school told me about what was going on here and I offered to help them get the project off the ground.”
“Fly what?”
“What ever they’re willing to teach me,” he said. “I want to learn to fly something.”
“Who? The RAF?”
“They’re looking for young men with engineering backgrounds.”
Or with good vision and a pulse, she thought. “What if there’s war?” she asked.
Charley had considered the possibility, of course.
“I’ve always been interested in the science of it more than anything else, since I was little,” he told her. “That’s the biggest attraction for me.”
“How a plane gets in the air?”
“And stays there.” He chuckled.
They shared brief biographies, and when volunteers arrived with a crock of hot soup and several plates of cold sandwiches, they sat side by side on a bench, with vapors from the cups of soup rising in front of them.
“Will you be coming back once the building is ready and the children arrive?” Annie asked, her glasses fogged slightly.
“I hope to,” he said, although he had not previously considered it. He had planned to return to his parents’ home in London those few months before starting reserve flight training school in Cambridge. “If I can work it out, I’d love to help these children.”
“I would, too,” Annie said.
“Would you mind if I came by to see you from time to time?” Charley asked.
Annie Bingham had done nothing to attract the boys at school. But here was one who knew what he wanted. Besides, she liked his hair.
She tapped her tin cup to his to toast the possibility.
Justo began disappearing. Now Miguel would awaken early and discover Justo was already gone for the day. Mendiola told Miguel several times that he had seen Justo in town, just walking or quietly sitting on benches on side streets at odd times.
But rather than making him more distant, Justo’s sporadic disappearances made him more purposeful. He had regained some vigor and was more engaged when he was at home. He was still subdued much of the day and was ne
ver as boastful and brash as he’d been, but he was going about his work at Errotabarri with more energy.
“You have to get out more, Miguel,” Justo said one day. Miguel could not have been more surprised if Justo had suggested he join the Guardia Civil.
“Get out more?”
“Yes, get out more. Get out of this house. Find some projects, something to keep you busy.”
“I’m out of the house from before dawn until after dark,” Miguel reminded him. “I’m working.”
“Here, smell this,” Justo said, handing Miguel a bar of soap from his pocket, as if that would explain his renewed vitality.
“Yes, I smell it,” he said. “I can’t go anywhere around here without smelling it.” And when he smelled it, he thought those thoughts, the ones he already had enough trouble controlling. He wanted to tell Justo, Maybe it’s comforting to you, but it’s killing me; everywhere I go in this house, finding those soaps, smelling that smell, thinking about where her neck met her shoulder, how it smelled after she washed Catalina. To Miguel, it was just another reason to be gone from Errotabarri.
On one of his visits, Father Xabier noted Justo’s improved attitude. He complimented his brother on his well-being. He said he would be sure to give Sister Incarnation a good report.
“Is he up to something?” Xabier asked Miguel when Justo was outside.
“He’s still quiet, but he keeps on the move; that’s made a difference for him,” Miguel said. “I haven’t heard that he’s spending time with people in town, but he’s at least working here and getting out. It seems to help.”
“And you, how are you doing, Miguel?”
“I do my work.”
“Have you visited Miren’s friend Alaia?” the priest asked.
“She came here once, but that’s all I’ve seen of her.”
“Should I go and see her, Miguel? I know that Miren would want somebody to look in on her.”