The Brick People

by Alejandro Morales

  “I’m going to buy some fruit and milk for the girls,” Malaquías said.

  “¿Adónde se fue Mario y su familia?” Lorenza asked, surprised that during the time they walked from the depot to the Delgado house she had not noticed that Uncle Mario and family were no longer with them.

  “They went to Uncle Epifanio’s house,” Malaquías answered and felt disappointed for not having a house for her. “Don’t be upset, Lorenza. In two weeks we will have our new house.” He left and she turned to make a home for her family in two small bachelors’ rooms. Lorenza found herself sitting on the edge of a bed covered only with a sheet. Her two oldest daughters played behind her. Her youngest cuddled her blanket and felt cozy and warm. Lorenza was secure and safe now that she was with her husband. Throughout the trip north she never felt safe. Always she dreaded what might happen to her daughters. But now there was a future, hope and a promise of a good life.

  She told Paquita and Nana to ask Maria Delgado for a broom. Lorenza wanted to clean immaculately the two rooms. She began to unpack the few bundles of clothing. She folded and looked around for a place for the family’s clothes. She folded the only material objects she had saved from Mexico. The worn clothing blurred in her vision as she remembered her neighbors in tattered apparel. Ripped clothes were a metaphor of Mexico’s peasants. The tears were so deep and great that they could no longer be repaired. Either they must be destroyed or new ones must be created. Mending and sewing new clothes from old material was a gift and talent she enjoyed. Lorenza separated the salvageable from the wearable. Nothing would be thrown away.

  Lorenza sat quietly on the side of the bed. She put her hands on her lap and stared out the open door of the room. The early afternoon sunlight softly caressed her feet and ankles, climbed her legs and swelled in her hips and between her thighs. Her soft brown eyes gleamed with a sure power in the warmth of the sun. Lorenza sensed her life was important. She was not just a woman sitting on the side of a bed. Her brown eyes searched beyond the door to the side of the Delgado house and to the fern garden. Her face was transformed into a cactus leaf and her daughters into cactus plants growing strong and thorny. Her insides were a tightly-knit net of cactus thorns. Her husband had penetrated her body, had painfully broken through the thorns, and surely she would give birth again to another cactus child.

  In the garden Maria Delgado flung water from a bucket on the hard red clay. The water spread like cold ice on the ground. Lorenza and her three daughters stopped before the watery plain and saw an image, a feminine face trapped in the shiny ice water. The face contorted, opened its mouth and screamed silently. They heard no sound, yet Lorenza understood that the woman had screamed. Lorenza and her daughters could do nothing as the image twisted into a drowning agony. It had traveled terrorized through the water and wetness of the universe. Lorenza moved forward. The three women stepped on the image and it disappeared.

  Lorenza and the children walked toward where the builders constructed the de León family house. It was only a matter of a few days until Gonzalo Pedroza would turn over the key and the house would be theirs. Only two days to pack.

  Finally the day came. Malaquías rented a horse and wagon from Gonzalo and arrived after work at three in the afternoon to move the family. He loaded the wagon with boxes full of clothes and kitchen utensils which Lorenza had packed that morning. At last Malaquías drove his family to their new home on Jalisco Street in the middle of the Simons mandala. Nana clutched her doll as she proudly observed the world pass by from the back of the wagon. She was proud of her father, her mother, and her sisters. She felt special to live in a beautiful new white house.

  That evening Lorenza located the girls in their bedroom. Malaquías had brought back from the general store two new beds, five chairs and a table for the kitchen, blankets, rubber mats for the side of the beds, and a small wooden chest with three drawers to store the food he had bought.

  “Tomorrow early they will bring the icebox and the stove,” Malaquías announced to his family.

  “Papa, I want some pots to plant some flowers in front of our house,” Nana said clearly and confidently.

  “Yes, of course, m’ija.” Malaquías smiled and put his arms around Lorenza.

  Nana went outside and sat with her doll on the front porch, calculating where she would place her potted flowers. She sat there listening to the conversations of neighbors strolling by the house. She noticed the children who would soon become her play and schoolmates. Lorenza had prepared Nana and Paquita for these new experiences. Two women stopped five feet away and argued about a church that Mr. Simons had ordered built. The women fussed over the location of the church. The last statement Nana heard made sense to her.

  “Our sacred church will be very beautiful,” one woman shouted as she moved away from the other woman who looked at Nana and strolled to the house next door.

  Nana watched the woman enter as she returned to imagining where she would locate her beautiful flowers. She was happy and promised that she would take special care of her colorful flowers. At that moment the woman next door came out and flung water out into the dirt street. Nana saw in the window of moisture an image of a suffocating, drowning woman. She shivered but held her ground and stayed in the middle of her imagined garden.

  The original granite cornerstone for the Catholic church was placed on May 1, 1913. One week later it was removed by orders of a priest who stated that the Church would not support any Bolshevik dates. The priest profusely condemned the stone for fear that it might inspire subversive activities among the Mexicans of Simons. Father Zarrutia warned of the subversive actions of many Bolshevik sympathizers in Mexico and reminded the Simons brothers that the Mexican Revolution was at its most violent stage. Every day thousands of Mexicans died and thousands of refugees entered the United States to escape the atrocities of Bolshevik madmen.

  Rosendo and Gonzalo listened to the man dressed in black and interpreted what they heard as some exotic fairy tale about devouring monsters called Bolsheviks. For Rosendo and Gonzalo, these political monsters were far from real and represented no threat to them. Walter comprehended the priest’s great fear as mere cowardice and considered him the greatest of hypocrites for failing to offer his God as a source of security against the Bolshevik monsters. Joseph listened carefully, constantly nodding, seemingly agreeing with the priest’s words.

  “We must not give them any indication that they will find sympathetic ears here!” Father Zarrutia said and kicked the cornerstone. “I don’t care where, but destroy it. Bury it somewhere. Get it out of our sight! Prepare a new stone with a different date.” He went to his wagon and rode away, knowing that his word would be obeyed.

  Joseph had ordered William and Gonzalo to have the stone destroyed. Rosendo shook his head and laughed. He did not understand the urgency to do away with a date and a block of granite.

  “The priest is right. There is a danger. We don’t know who’s coming from Mexico,” Joseph remarked to Walter and the other men.

  “Poor desperate people who want peace and a job are coming from Mexico,” Walter responded to his brother.

  “You have a problem, Walter. You want to be everyone’s father. Not this time. The stone shall be destroyed or else no church,” Joseph answered to the point, impatient and angered. “Let’s go, Rosendo!” he ordered.

  The wind stirred up dust that surrounded Walter, alone, looking toward where his brother Joseph had disappeared. This is the last time you tell me what to do, or for that matter, tell my men what to do. Not here, Joseph. This is my yard and you don’t rule here, brother! ...

  The wind whirled around him. The red dust thickened. A wall of violent dust prevented him from seeing the world. ... Someone will be entombed, Walter thought spontaneously and wondered from where and why that idea had come to him so clearly. He approached the railroad tracks, crossed the Santa Fe rails, moved to Rivera Road and entered the general store, still thinking and now trying to escape the image of someone buried in
whirling red dust.

  Libra, the seventh sign of the zodiac, is like the cross and the sword and symbolizes equilibrium on both the cosmic and the psychic planes. However, October of 1913 was total disharmony and the month of an unexplainable, insane and tragic event. What occurred late one cold night in the middle of October left Melissa Simons in a psychological stupor. She later functioned and spoke normally, but her gaze was always as if her pupils were fixed on a vision that was not present in this time or space. It seemed as if she were blind yet seeing.

  The night was unusually quiet; wild animals prowled closer than normal around the Simons homes on California Street. Joseph observed coyotes near the entrance to Walter’s house. Their shiny eyes fixed on him and steam from their hot damp mouths formed a cloud around them as the pack moved into the nearby fields and on to the hills. Up there beyond, against and inside the mountain, light flickered from electricity caused by the hot and cold winds and unstable conditions that floated on the surface of the great moving mounds of earth.

  Everyone was safe and comfortable. Laura and James had retired. Walter and Sarah’s bedroom light was on and next door their mother had retired at her usual ten o’clock hour, while Orin Elmer probably worked, or read, or did whatever he passed the time away doing until early morning when he usually fell asleep. Often he did not change clothes and slept in what he wore that day. Joseph went to sleep a little after twelve in the morning.

  Perhaps the strangeness arrived about eleven-thirty and moved into Melissa’s home, passed by her room and found comfort near Orin Elmer. No one person of the family, nor friends, children, adults or Mexicans knew the precise moment when the strangeness embraced, penetrated and swallowed Orin Elmer. Quiet dominated the three houses when Orin Elmer turned off the lights and threw himself on his bed. He began to feel in his body a great thirst rising to his brain. The extremities of his body became active as if they had been possessed by an independent energy. They moved, twisted, and pulled against and away from the whole. He lay in bed not knowing what to do, afraid that his hands, arms, penis, legs, feet or head would drag him away. With this great fear, a fever arose that seeped out from the core of his flesh and mind.

  Orin Elmer sat up and heard the deep silence of the fever. He craved water to quench the fever that was beginning to devour his subconscious mind and his most internal flesh. He rose from the bed and found his way to the kitchen. In the dark he groped for a glass and placed it under the faucet, but to his desperation there was no water. He moaned at this unexpected, illogical condition. When he turned both faucets, a hiss emerged from deep within the plumbing. He needed water, if only a cup, to sip and dampen his lips and suffocating body. He uttered nonsensical remarks and turned toward the refrigerator.

  On the top was a small bottle of water. He could not recall why the bottle was there. He decided not to drink but to dampen a washcloth and place it on his face. He did this constantly, moaning louder and stumbling several times against the furniture, knocking to the floor pans and plates. He found himself leaning into the sink where unwashed dinner dishes had been left. He reached for one dish and turned it to find hundreds of crawling insects. He looked again and now the insects had completely taken over the sink and were dispersing onto the counter. He turned both faucet handles to wash the crawling bugs away. But from the mouth of the faucet came a louder hiss, followed by silence and a stream of thousands of insects which enveloped the bottle of water he held. He moved to protect the bottle. With each step he crushed hundreds of brown bugs. They now blanketed the floor, the walls, the ceiling.

  Orin Elmer’s delirious language became a terrifying scream. He staggered to his bedroom. The insects were taking over the house. His bed was covered with creatures. He could not escape them. The beasts were now crawling onto his legs. They fell from the ceiling. Orin Elmer crushed and pulled them from his hair as he screamed and struggled to exit this image.

  Melissa rushed to Orin Elmer’s room. Three steps into the hall, she felt the insects ankle high. In that instant a wave of bugs flooded her bedroom. Not even the bright lights made them disappear. The light caused the top layers of insects to sink down into the masses that were below. Melissa, covered with brown bugs, screamed to her son to leave the house. She grabbed his arm and forced him to step through the foot-deep layer of oozing life to the porch and out into the yard.

  Joseph and Walter arrived. Their faces were panicked by Orin Elmer’s screams and by their mother’s horrifying expression as she violently brushed the brown insects from her night gown.

  “What the hell!” Walter exclaimed, staring at the house from which came a strange papery sound.

  “Don’t go in the house! It’s full of insects!” Melissa screamed.

  “There’s no water! I’m burning and I need water!” Orin Elmer spat insects at Joseph.

  “Oh, God! Orin Elmer is contaminated!” Joseph prayed. “Walter, we must stop them from spreading to the other houses!”

  “I don’t think the insects will spread. They belong only to this house and they don’t want to go anywhere else. If you want to destroy them you must burn the house, and there’s no guarantee that will work!” Walter declared.

  “Ride to the yard for Rosendo and a crew to dig a trench around the house. Fill it with oil and fire it up. I’ll take Mother and Orin Elmer to my house,” Joseph said, helping Orin Elmer who cried for water and spat brown insects from his mouth.

  As Walter rode off to the Pasadena yard, neighbors walked over to the invaded house ... I hope they don’t panic when they see those bugs, he thought as he spurred the horse to full gallop.

  By three in the morning, Melissa’s house was surrounded by a ring of flames. Walter and Rosendo had returned with twenty-five men who immediately dug a one-foot trench, filled it with oil, and set fire to it. But at the time of their arrival at the house, the strangeness was gone. The insects had disappeared, leaving no trace of their existence. Nonetheless, not once did Rosendo doubt Walter’s description of the invading insects. Rosendo suggested that they proceed as planned and have the house surrounded by fire. Walter could not believe that the insects had gone without a trace. The house stood as if nothing had ever crawled through it. He searched and did not find even a dead insect. Walter observed Joseph’s house where their brother lay burning with a fever. The strangeness had burrowed itself in Orin Elmer, who throughout the daybreak hours gagged and coughed up pieces and at times, whole brown insects that came from deep within his body.

  Convinced that his brother had been bitten by some kind of animal, Joseph sent for a prominent Pasadena poison specialist. The horrible putrefaction of Orin Elmer’s insides could only be caused by a poisoning of some kind. As the doctor rode up in an elegant carriage, Rosendo and the men tended the last of the flames. Rosendo knew of this ostentatious doctor and was sure that he would not help Orin Elmer.

  An hour after the arrival of the doctor, Walter emerged from his house and went to check on the burning. He approached Rosendo who stood watching the front of Joseph’s home. Walter noticed Rosendo’s disharmony. With his hands Walter motioned to Rosendo to speak.

  “That doctor cannot cure your brother,” Rosendo said.

  “Why not? He’s the best!” Walter responded, angered.

  “Your brother is not ill with fever, nor is he poisoned. He is hechizado,” Rosendo said knowingly.

  “¡Hechizado! Who would want to put a curse on him?” Walter answered, bothered by Rosendo’s comment.

  “I do not know about that, but he needs to be seen by a curandero.” Rosendo spoke with an insistent tone.

  “Do you think Joseph would permit that?” Walter asked, giving into Rosendo’s idea. Walter believed that his brother was gravely ill and beyond the help of doctors.

  “If you want your brother to live, allow him to be seen by a curandero,” Rosendo stated firmly.

  Walter watched Rosendo strike a shovel into a burnt trench. Rosendo worked as if he were angry about the possibility that Orin
Elmer would not have the privilege of being cured by a curandero. He understood that Orin Elmer was poisoned spiritually and that the Anglo logic of one of the Simons brothers would not permit Orin Elmer’s salvation. Rosendo identified Joseph as the obstacle. Walter would allow a curandero to see Orin Elmer but Joseph considered curanderos quacks who thrived on the superstitions of the Mexicans.

  Rosendo became almost violent with the thought. He slammed his shovel into the trench and flung the dirt as if he were burying one of the patrones. The Mexicans who worked with him felt his annoyance and believed that the powers of the strangeness would be victorious. The brown bugs thriving inside Orin Elmer’s body were a result of a telluric-human curse. Rosendo and the men filled the trench and, as each one offered the last shovelful of dirt, he looked toward the house where Orin Elmer lay strangled by the insects pouring from his mouth.

  At eight in the morning Joseph came out to find the men watching, waiting for the terminal word. Joseph responded furiously at the men’s knowledgeable gaze.

  “What are you waiting for? For me to tell you he’s dead? You’re like vultures waiting for a corpse. Get out of here! Go back to the yard!” Joseph screamed.

  “Calm yourself, brother!” Walter urged. “How is he?”

  “Orin Elmer is dying,” Joseph declared softly as if speaking to himself.

  “Joseph, let me go for a curandero,” Walter suggested.

  “Damn you, Walter, neither Orin Elmer nor I nor mother believe in witches, in stupid Mexican superstitions! I will never allow my brother to be treated by ignorant Mexican Indian witch doctors,” Joseph said firmly.

  “But that’s the only chance he has! Maybe they can do something for him!” Walter screamed, trying to break the stubborn crust that covered Joseph’s mind.