“And Carlos?” Thompson asked. “How did he respond?”
Benito shook his head. “Quit his loom. Abandoned his sheep. Disappeared.”
“Where to?” Thompson asked.
“Into the badlands, I suspect.” Benito looked up from his hands and waited until Thompson turned to him. “Shame is an unforgiving master. It can drive you far from home.”
“I know shame,” Thompson said, and Benito saw remembrance welling behind his eyes, sorrow and remorse. Thompson started to speak and stopped and shook his head slowly back and forth as if dismissing the thoughts that rose in his throat, denying them voice, forcing them back into some inner vault.
“I suspect at some point all men feel remorse,” Benito finally said.
Thompson shrugged.
“And here,” Benito motioned with his hand. “Is this a place of banishment or of second chances?”
“Depends on the day,” Thompson said. “Some days I wake up and walk outside and it’s like I’m standing at the gates of hell. But other times I seem a part of the valley. I feel almost at home.”
“What about this place makes it feel like home?”
“It’s difficult to put into words,” Thompson said. “The endlessness of its want, perhaps.”
“Yes?”
“The river wants for flow, the land for rain. The sky for days almost seems in want of clouds. Without clouds, there is nothing to define the sky. The horizon wants for end.” Thompson paused, and it seemed to Benito that he waited for validation, for permission to have these notions. Benito gestured with his hands, go on.
“My cabin,” Thompson said. “On that rise no more than twenty feet above the river.”
“Yes.”
“When I look east, on clear days from that vantage I can make out a stand of trees surrounding a spring out in the plains.”
“I know that place,” Benito said.
“Once, I walked there. A day and part of the second morning it took.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Almost a day and a half.”
“Yes,” Benito nodded. “This is a vast, empty place.”
“And that emptiness gives me comfort. Some days. I don’t know why.”
“It is good to find comfort wherever one is able.”
“But such a peculiar succor.”
“Comfort, nonetheless,” Benito said, “and that is a start.”
21
Days shortened. Each new snow lingered in the shadows. Ice thickened along the riverbank and in wagon ruts. Winter constricted the world—low skies pulled horizons near, walls closed in, rooms shrunk to the size of a tomb.
Benito noticed Teresa withdraw inward. One morning, carding wool by the fire, he watched her hands go still. She took up a fluff of wool from the paddle and studied it, absently pulling at the fine threads as she stared into the flame snaking between two lengths of piñon. Benito knew she was remembering the Plaza, the women who would gather to card and spin and share coffee and gossip. In the months since they’d arrived, no word from Plaza del Arroyo Seco, and little free time to wonder. But now, winter, a time for reminiscence. He looked about the room, empty save for him, the quiet crackle of fire and the wind slashing against the window shutters the only conversation. He struggled to find some words of encouragement, something to brighten her spirit, but nothing came. He pulled on his jacket and went outside. A wan sun offered feeble comfort. He walked. Fog hung above the river—a heron glided through the diaphanous ether. He returned to the placita. Across the courtyard his sons tossed table scraps on the ground for the chickens and collected eggs from the coop. He went to Paloma’s door and knocked. Her room shared a common wall with Benito and Teresa’s and originally had been connected by an archway inside. But when Paloma was made to take in the boys, she insisted the archway be plastered over and a separate entrance be installed opening onto the plaza. Benito had little spare time for additional work, but decided acquiescence offered the greatest opportunity for familial harmony. He knocked out and framed an outer opening and used the reclaimed bricks to wall the interior.
Benito rapped again more forcefully and Paloma opened the door but did not motion her father inside.
“Your mother requires your help in preparing the wool,” Benito said.
“I am helping her,” Paloma replied. She opened the door wider and pointed to her hearth, the stack of raw wool and the carding paddles on her chair.
“I think she’d like your companionship as well,” Benito said.
“The only time I have to myself is when the boys are at chores,” Paloma answered without apology.
Benito felt helpless. If he ordered his daughter to Teresa’s side, her company surely would prove worse than no company at all. And he had no idea how to appeal to Paloma’s sense of duty. Unable to comfort his wife or to command respect from his daughter, he pulled his jacket close and pushed open the gate of the compound and went to the goat pen. He busied himself sinking posts to expand the enclosure to accommodate the kids that his does soon would drop. The frozen ground made digging almost impossible. But he needed the challenge. Paloma’s self-imposed isolation was unhealthy both for her and for the family, and her simmering, open hostility toward the Americans could eventually prove dangerous in this new country. He must somehow persuade her to move past her misfortune. He remembered her before. Always strong-willed, she nevertheless was respectful and devoted to Teresa and to him. How to turn back time? Benito believed their future happiness depended on it, but he lacked a solution. He worked through the morning, the labor an eventual balm for his irritation and worry.
Alejandro and Benjamin joined Benito presently and they too lightened his mood. They took turns carrying posts and scratching with the pick. At noon, Benito returned with the boys to the placita and was buoyed at the sound of light chatter coming from the room when he opened the door. He found not Paloma but Hanna visiting with Teresa. Disappointed, Benito nodded to them and hung his jacket on the door peg while the boys scurried to one corner of the room to play with clay marbles that Thompson had molded for them from adobe mud earlier that autumn. Hanna helped Teresa by the hearth with the midday meal, and learned from her as well. Benito sat at the table and watched them.
Following the birth of her daughter, Hanna had refused the usual laying-in period and daily seemed to gain strength both physically and emotionally. Destiny riding her hip, she visited almost daily with Teresa, offering help with chores and peppering her with questions about ways of the Plaza. Reserved at first, fearing how Paloma might react to Hanna’s presence, Teresa gradually warmed to the visits and now openly welcomed Hanna’s friendship.
“And this, what is this called?” Hanna indicated the flat stone sitting on the hearth.
“A comal. For the tortillas.”
“How do you make tortillas?”
“Corn. Water. A pinch of limestone ash. Simple,” Teresa smiled. “But for every woman, a little different. How much of this? How smooth the masa? How hot the stone?”
“Do they keep well?”
“Si, but whenever possible fresh every day. No table is complete without tortillas, and a cold tortilla is really nothing at all. Serve fresh. Serve warm.”
Teresa took Hanna’s elbow and led her to the pot where the corn had been soaking and demonstrated how to skin the kernels and grind the pulp into masa using the mano and the metate. Good, thought Benito. A purpose for Teresa, and a distraction. With their backs to the room, talking, the two women did not hear the door creak open. Benito turned and motioned with his eyes for Paloma to come, sit. Paloma stood at the door for a moment watching Hanna and Teresa, glanced darkly at Benito, and left.
THE WINTER SOLSTICE APPROACHED, NIGHTS that seemed to flow one into another without break. Benito began chores before first light and ended in the murky afternoon darkness. Sunk deep into that interminable season, the celebration days arrived almost without notice. There was little to celebrate. Corn stores ran short and some days they went without bread, without t
ortillas. A ration of meat, some onions perhaps. Never starving, but persistently on the edge of hunger. On La Noche Buena, Thompson stopped by and presented the boys each with a hand-carved whistle, which they delighted in. Beneath his smile, Benito noticed in Thompson a solemnity, and he seemed distracted, his thoughts somewhere far off, and he refused to sup with them.
On Dia de los Reyes, John Upperdine arrived at the placita like one of the wise men bearing gifts. With ceremony, he handed Teresa a covered basket and beamed as she unveiled a mound of fresh lemons and oranges. She marveled at the fruit and examined each piece individually, each one a heavenly orb in miniature, admiring its color and the firmness of its flesh. Even Paloma became animated for a few moments before resuming an expression suggesting she’d tasted the fruit and found it sour. Teresa could not imagine such a bounty appearing at her table, and later, in private, Benito advised her to accept the gift without delving too deeply into how the fruit had been procured. He knew John Upperdine to be a shrewd and sometimes ruthless trader, and he had no doubt that the transaction had a history best left undocumented. But Benito gave thanks for the smile he saw come to Teresa’s face, a short respite from the challenges of winter.
Two weeks following the New Year, Benito led his cart to Upperdine’s house with a load of kindling the boys had collected from the river bottom. He found the Captain checking tackle on a pair of horses hitched to a light freight wagon.
Thompson emerged from the barn shouldering a bag of sugar, which he loaded onto the wagon. Benito took inventory of the freight: two hams from the cold storage, a keg of whiskey, pouches of tobacco, several glass panes arranged in a box with straw padding, and a stack of hand-milled lumber the length of the wagon bed. How Captain Upperdine came to possess such items never ceased to confound and impress Benito. He silently eyed the hams. With corn supplies low, they had been consuming more meat.
“A journey?” Benito asked.
“An exploratory trip,” Upperdine answered. “To the mining camps along Cherry Creek.”
“I thought you stated that nothing good would come of those settlements,” Benito said.
“Nothing will,” Upperdine said, “for ninety-nine out of every one hundred ill-equipped, scruff-necked prospectors and for one hundred out of one hundred Indians.” He patted the bag of sugar approvingly and smiled. “But for a merchant, that’s another story.”
Upperdine climbed onto the wagon and took up the reins. “I expect to move smartly and return before the month is out.” He pulled a buffalo robe around his shoulders and slapped the reins against the animals’ haunches, and the wagon creaked from the yard and followed the river trail downstream.
“I offered to accompany him,” Thompson said. “He declined. Said he was meeting up with some of his old boys out from Bent’s Fort.”
“He does grow anxious when duties or weather keep him home-bound for long,” Benito said.
“He’s not a natural landsman,” Thompson said.
“No. Land for him is a means to an end, not the end itself.”
“Yet he’s laid claim to a large tract.”
Benito looked over at Thompson, paused and breathed deeply as if to begin a story. But he said only, “Yes. An impressive holding.”
“But not impressive enough to keep him,” Thompson said.
“John is drawn to the trail,” Benito said, “and that is partly why we’ve been invited here. To keep Genoveva company.”
“I thought the land for the placita was offered in exchange for your service.”
“Si, everything is an exchange for John. A field to ensure my continued assistance, but also his wife’s contentment.”
TRUE TO HIS SCHEDULE, UPPERDINE returned on the last day of January, invigorated of spirit and full of news. He summoned Thompson and Benito to dine with him and when they took a place at the table, he emptied a purse full of gold flakes on the plate in front of him. Thompson moved around to sit beside Upperdine and they both leaned close over the plate to examine the small mound, Upperdine with a self-satisfied grin, Thompson wide-eyed with surprise. Thompson took up a pinch of gold and let the flakes drift down through the flickering light from the hearth fire.
“So, the prospectors have found success,” Thompson said.
“Hardly.” No sizable deposits, Upperdine explained. A little placer gold, yes, and rumors filling the air like flocks of pigeons. He described the camps strung along Cherry Creek and the South Platte as shabby clusters of huts and tents inhabited by ragged men desperate for supplies and willing to part with the whole of their meager earnings for basic necessities.
“Many have ate their own mule. Will have to walk home.”
“So, how were you able to sell your wares?” Benito asked.
“A few of the experienced ones, the veterans of forty-nine, knew what to look for, actually sifted a few nuggets from the gravel. Others have backing from the states. They were excited to see glass windows and plank boards. Rushed to outbid one another for bragging rights. Eggs, a dollar a dozen, and more, and I thought to bring none.”
“Tobacco?” Thompson asked.
“Two dollar a pound.”
“Whiskey?” Thompson asked, his voice rising.
“Handed out a goodly amount free,” Upperdine said. “Grease for the hub, so to speak. Loosens the purse strings. The rest, whatever the market would bring. A nickel a cup, sometimes ten times that, depending on the mood and the luck of the miners.
“But the glass panes,” Upperdine shook his head in disbelief. “Those glass panes brought them to frenzy.”
Thompson and Upperdine talked on after the evening meal. At length, Benito excused himself and walked back to the placita. The night sounds quieted, only his footfalls on the frozen earth. What men were these, he wondered, who rush into the territory, his territory, shovel and pan valued over the plow. Men fueled by greed and false expectations, turned mean by disappointment and hunger. And what of Upperdine and Thompson, flushed with ambition at the sight of gold dust sparkling in the firelight, shining in their eyes?
22
Mid-March, a cold day of blustery winds and intermittent snow, Joseph presented himself at Benito’s door. Ice braided the hair left unprotected below his hat, and the white tip of his nose suggested frostbite. He held a brace of jackrabbits by the hind legs. Benito motioned him inside and Teresa ushered him to the fireplace.
“Look at you, no sense to be out in this.”
Benito understood why Joseph needed to be outside. Daylight reclaimed a few minutes each day, but no rhythm yet to the season. Clear skies, restorative warmth followed by ice storms pounding the tableland like fists. They all fidgeted to be out and beginning the work of spring. Even Benito’s animals showed restlessness: his does, low-slung bellies and swollen udders, had kidded, and now were anxious to graze.
Joseph went to the corner where Paloma sat at a chair, churning butter from goat’s milk. He watched her for several moments while she pumped the handle, the sinew in her forearms defined, her upper body bending to the task. Waiting for notice. She ignored him.
“Paloma,” Benito said. His harsh tone caught her attention and she paused, looked up.
“Thought you might like one of these.” Joseph held up the rabbits. The two young boys came up beside Joseph and stroked the soft fur underbelly. Paloma turned back to her work.
“I do not care for rabbit,” she said. “Stringy.”
“Soak it in milk. I could skin one out for you if you like,” Joseph said.
“What I would like is for you to take those rodents from my sight,” Paloma said.
“Paloma,” Benito said.
“Father, this boy is pestering me.”
Joseph stepped back, his face blanked, shutting down. Benito approached Paloma, bent near and hissed in her ear. “I will not have this rudeness, do you understand?” So intent was he on the reprimand, he did not notice Joseph back from the room and retreat into the sleet.
The following morning when Benit
o cleaned the goat pen and carried a bucket of droppings to fertilize the field, he came upon the torn carcasses of two rabbits. They had been decapitated, their heads stacked one on top of the other, and their bodies mangled, chopped. He toed the body of one and thought about the troubled boy and about the dark moodiness threatening to overcome everything decent about his daughter. He did not know the boy well and feared he had little guidance to offer him. But he did know his daughter, or had known her, and resolved not to surrender her to melancholy without contest.
After three days of pelting hail and battering winds, the quarrelsome weather lifted, skies cleared to an intense blue, sun warmed the fields, and gentle breezes carried the scent of budding sagebrush. March grass tentatively sprouted through last season’s brittle stubble, pliable shoots not yet sufficient to support the livestock of trade caravans or wagon trains. But the promise of renewal. Benito checked the skies, noted the direction of the wind, and loaded the cart with ax, saw, and a bundle of fodder for the burro.
Inside, he found Teresa and Paloma making tortillas, the rhythmic slapping of masa from hand to hand, the flattened discs hissing on the stone. Cornmeal supplies had diminished and Teresa made tortillas only four days a week. Other days they made do with stale leftovers or went without. Benito took a hot tortilla from the basket and folded it and ate slowly, watching them.
Mother and daughter working together, as it should be. But not conversing, not connected. Benito ached to hear the banter that greeted him daily from the Plaza when he returned from the fields. The boys playing with their cousins, the young women whispering between themselves while seated at their mothers’ elbow, learning the work. Where had the companionship gone? The belonging? Why did Paloma refuse even to attempt opening to her mother, reestablishing their bond? On impulse, Benito addressed his daughter.
“Accompany me?”
“Where?”
“To gather wood.”
“I’d rather not.”
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