Listen to the Mockingbird

by Penny Rudolph

  Simon nodded. “When this one fall, he take his arm.”

  “What did the second man look like?”

  Simon thought about this a long time. Finally, he shook his head. “I do not know. I do not remember. I am not even sure the other is the same as this one.” He jabbed the drawing. “It is a long time ago. We have many strangers in town since then.”

  “Just the goddam Confederate army,” Mapes grunted. “Hot up that damn towel, Simon, and let’s get on with it.”

  Simon hurried to do as he was bid; and I, knowing my welcome was wearing mighty thin, at least with Mapes, thanked both men and left.

  999

  In front of the bank, thick vigas supported a roof that extended all the way to the hitching posts. The building, like most of the others that lined the plaza, resembled a squat, heavy-browed peasant peering toward the dusty square in the center. The single window was barred but the bars were wood, and anyone with a good saw could have cut through them in minutes.

  Jeremy Neuman was a rather stodgy fellow with closely cropped pale-brown hair and a chin as free of stubble as a baby’s. I’d seen him a few times around town; but as I didn’t trust banks much, I’d put no money with him.

  He wore the only starched shirt I had seen in some time and a neat little string tie at the collar. He looked up and blinked watery blue eyes at me from behind the lenses of his little round spectacles. He had the look of a man who was born at about the age of forty-six and never aged further.

  “Ma’am?” He managed to make the single word sound remotely suspicious.

  I unrolled Julio’s cloth drawing. Neuman frowned and recoiled as if I’d drawn a pistol. “It’s just a picture, Mr. Neuman. Have you ever seen this man?”

  He didn’t bother to look at it closely. “Mexicans do not generally use banks,” he said coldly.

  “But I’ve seen Mr. Garza coming from here, and Mr. Castillo.” There were several Mexican merchants in Mesilla.

  “They are older,” Neuman said frostily, as if age transcended race. “That is obviously a young Mexican. I don’t believe a young Mexican fellow has ever set foot in this bank.”

  “Okay.” I rolled up the drawing and left, doubly certain that I had been wise to keep my money at home.

  999

  The general store had the smell of a brand-new barn, before the odors of dust and aging fodder overcome the aroma of wood and leather. Wooden buckets stacked in towers flanked one side of the door, a table full of bright yellow Mexican dishes stood on the other. A man who looked like he needed a bath more than he needed one of the tin cups he was examining seemed to be the only customer.

  Garza was sitting on an upended barrel next to the counter where people paid for their purchases. I picked my way around sacks of cornmeal and wooden boxes of nails. He stood as I approached, a mere wisp of a man, probably wiry and quick when he was young but now stooped at the shoulders so that he had to cock his head sideways to look at me. Bushy eyebrows seemed about to take over his face.

  Garza and his brother had opened the store the same year people had come to Mesilla in hopes of a land grant. The brother had up and disappeared with their serving woman sometime before I arrived in the valley. Or so I had heard.

  There was another, smaller general store in Doña Ana; but sooner or later, most anyone who spent any time at all in the Mesilla Valley came to Garza’s for supplies.

  “Good morning,” I sang out cheerily.

  “Si, si, it is, it is,” he agreed in a gravelly voice and waited. Long years of dealing with people had given him the patience of Job.

  I unrolled the cloth and asked my well-rehearsed questions. He left his perch on the barrel. Despite his spine, which seemed to have fused stiffly at the shoulders, his movements were quick. His hand darted out and took the sketch from me.

  “Ah,” he said. “This hombre, he is from México.” He pronounced it Meh-he-co, with the accent on the first syllable.

  “You know him?” I asked quickly.

  “No.” He shook his head, the bushy eyebrows drawn down around the beak of a nose. “He come in the store and we talk a little, I think.”

  “When?”

  “Many month ago, I think.” Then he shook his head. “No. He was not from México. His mama and papa come from México. He say he was born here. He come back.”

  “From where?”

  Garza cocked his head at an odd angle and studied the dusty vigas, the round rafters that held up the roof of his store. “Texas, I think. San Antonio, maybe.”

  “Was he with someone?” I asked and held my breath.

  “I see no one.”

  So much for that. I thanked him and turned to go. I’d already opened the door when I remembered something and turned back, but the old geezer who had been examining the tin cups was in my path. He smelled as bad as he looked.

  “Yo’re huntin’ someone?” he asked.

  Trying to stay out of the path of his breath, which reeked of onions and whiskey, I showed him the sketch.

  He nodded. His face was so filthy the grime seemed to crack when he moved. Wisps of greasy dark hair stood out at all angles from his head. He jabbed a dirty finger at the drawing. “That’s the kid was staying at San Juan. Sure enough, it is.”

  “Where is San Juan?”

  The old man raised a bony shoulder. “Tortugas, San Juan. Where them Injuns is.” He poked the sketch again. “I seen him. Said him and his friend had a fallin’ out an’ he was puttin’ up there.”

  I leaped at his words. “Friend?” I asked urgently. “What did the friend look like?”

  “Dunno,” the codger grunted. “Just he said there was two of ’em.”

  Garza had returned to his post by the cash register. I walked back and stood in front of him. “Did he buy anything, Mr. Garza? The boy who said he was born here?”

  “Si.” Garza’s head gave several stiff little bobs. “He buy a money bag. No, no,” he said to my stunned expression. “A little bag. To wear here.” He pointed to his throat.

  Behind me, the door opened, and I turned to see who had entered but glimpsed instead the disappearing figure of a woman. I frowned. I hadn’t thought anyone else was in the store. “Was that Isabel Tolhurst?”

  Garcia’s head was bobbing; his face bore a look of tolerant concern. “Si. Señora Tolhurst wishes for new dishes. But she has not the money.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  The village of Tortugas—or San Juan or whatever they called it—looked like an uneven honeycomb that had been shaped from mud then propped on its side in a field of cotton seedlings. A separate, squared-off triangular structure was flanked by a cross that gleamed brilliant white even in the shade of a cottonwood. An acequia, an irrigation canal, snaked off to the left toward the river.

  The wagon lurched when I pulled the horse to a stop; and on the plank seat next to me, Winona raised her free hand to shade her eyes. In her other arm, a wide-awake Zia was blowing spit bubbles.

  Now that we were here, I was getting nervy. “You think we’ll be safe?” My knowledge of Indians was limited. The women who worked with Herlinda were taciturn and cheerless, but they worked like oxen. And the occasional redskins I saw in town seemed harmless. But Tonio was not the only one with a tale of savagery. Since Winona had lived among them for a time, I was glad to have her along.

  “One bunch of Injuns is as different from another as cow’s milk and rat poison,” she said, eyeing the cluster of buildings warily. “Even the good ones can go along nice and easy like for a time then of a sudden hit the warpath. I don’t know much about these here Injuns, but I hear tell they is Christian. And I see they got the cross to prove it.”

  I had forgotten the Tortugas’ Christmas pilgrimage. “Yes. They’re very religious.” I released the breath I realized I’d been holding. “That’s comforting.”

  “Might be. Then again, might not. I hear tell some of ’em take the faith so serious they crucify folk.”

  I swallowed hard, wonderi
ng if it might be wiser to forget our notion about talking with them. An occasional Indian here and there was one thing, but a village of nothing but Indians was quite another. Nacho had said the people of San Juan de Dios were a peaceful sort and that they mostly kept to themselves. I fervently hoped he was right.

  Naked children who were playing in the sun-baked area in front of the disorderly tiers of dwellings had vanished before our wagon stopped, and now the place seemed deserted. Hoping the adults would at least be wearing loincloths, I started to get down from the plank seat; but Winona’s hand stopped me.

  “Somebody will come,” she said.

  Sure enough, a figure appeared at one of the ground-level doorways. Ladders led to the upper tiers. The man who approached was neither naked nor did he wear a loincloth.

  Bristling grey hair had been tied back and a sleeveless vest hung open on his hairless, shirtless chest. His legs were clad in the same sort of trousers you’d see on any ranch hand. He was built sturdy and close to the ground. His face looked like Adam’s must have looked when God was fashioning him from clay. The nose was like wax that has softened in the sun, the mouth seemed not quite finished. But the deep-set eyes were like sharp bits of glass. He stopped next to me and waited.

  “Ingles?” Winona asked. He shook his head and she said something in halting Spanish. He nodded, turned and shouted in guttural tones toward the dwellings. A woman’s head poked from one of the upper doorways. He called more words I couldn’t understand. She nodded and descended a ladder as gracefully as a caterpillar.

  She was small, dark and pretty, with black eyes set over high cheekbones. Her dress was simpler than ours—a single length of cloth sewn up at the sides with openings for the arms and tied at the waist with a sort of rope. Around the neck little figures had been made with thread, like embroidery. A zigzag design at the bottom of the skirt had been made the same way. Her feet were bare.

  She stopped next to the man and looked up at me, shielding her eyes against the sun. “Yes?”

  “I am seeking information,” I said slowly and clearly, “about a boy.”

  “At fifteen, sixteen, Injuns be men,” Winona said in a low voice.

  I corrected myself. “A man, then.”

  “Yes.” Two rows of very white teeth flashed between the girl’s lips.

  “He would have been here about a year ago.”

  “Yes?”

  “Pintura,” Winona piped up. “Show her the picture.”

  “Ah,” the girl nodded, as though this made sense.

  “Yes,” I said, “I have a picture of someone. And I wonder if…I would like to know if anyone here has seen him.”

  The girl nodded profusely and waited. I reached into the bag near my feet, found Julio’s drawing, unrolled it and held it out.

  The girl and the man both rose to their toes and peered intently at the sketch. Then they returned their weight to their heels and began to jabber at each other. The guttural tones sounded sharp and angry, and alarm began to creep across my shoulders. But the girl looked up and smiled again. “You are hungry?”

  I started to shake my head, but Winona jabbed me in the ribs with her elbow. “They ask you to eat,” she grunted, “you got to do it. That be a big thing with them.”

  So, I put on the most gracious face I could muster and thanked both man and girl.

  The man strode away toward the dwellings. A barefoot and quite naked boy of about nine appeared and took the horse’s reins. Winona and I stepped down from the wagon and followed the girl around the bank of dwellings to what seemed to be a small, rudely made castle of adobe bricks. There were even eight narrow towers, like little turrets. The entrance was low and perfectly square.

  “La Casa del Pueblo,” the girl said, smiling solemnly.

  I hesitated, hoping it wasn’t where they boiled their enemies in oil or some such thing.

  Winona nudged me. “Town hall.”

  We entered the low doorway and found ourselves in complete darkness. Another naked child entered behind us carrying a torch. Now we could see the many vigas that crossed the ceiling and, below them, the rows of mud benches. The girl led us to seats. I cast about for something to say.

  “Your English is good.”

  “Thank you,” she smiled. “I learn at the missionary school.”

  “What is your name?”

  “Catarina Torres.” She held out her hand. “I take the picture, yes?”

  I glanced at Winona, who shrugged; so I handed it over, and the girl disappeared. The boy with the torch still stood just inside the doorway.

  I whispered to Winona, “Can’t they just say they have seen him or they haven’t seen him?”

  “They got to do things exact, like they always done it for maybe a million years,” Winona said in a normal voice. “Things happen quicker and easier if you just go along with them. Might be this will take some extra time. I do believe they is flummoxed because we is women and we is black and white.”

  Zia was becoming restless, and I took her to bounce on my knee. “Think what you can tell your grandchildren,” I told her. “You visited with wild Indians. You’ll be in Philadelphia by then, of course, and everyone will think you very brave and bold.”

  Zia laughed. Winona said, “I hope you’re not countin’ on that.”

  “On what?” I asked, but the girl returned and Winona didn’t answer.

  The girl brought two clay plates that held what looked like small chicken legs, little balls of meat and corncakes. She handed us the plates, sat down across from us and ducked her head twice, urging us to eat. The meat was not warm, but the flavor was quite good.

  “The legs are a mite small, but the chicken is right tasty,” I said.

  Winona was placidly chewing. She swallowed and shook her head. “Ain’t chicken. It’s lizard.”

  It was all I could do not to spit out what was in my mouth. She had given Zia one of the hard corncakes and the baby was happily gumming it.

  The man appeared in the doorway, muttered something to the girl, handed her my cloth sketch and left.

  When we finished, the girl stood. “Now I will tell you about the picture,” she said. “We know of that man.” She paused as if that was the full answer to the question I had asked.

  I leaned forward. “Please tell me everything you know about him.”

  The girl nodded, as though she understood perfectly, but then she moved gracefully toward the doorway and disappeared again.

  I looked at Winona. “What…?”

  Winona shrugged. “She answer your first question, now you done asked another. She got to get leave from the headman. He can’t come in here ’cause we is two women. But she can only say what he says is okay.”

  We sat for some time with only the boy with the torch for company. He kept shifting his weight from one foot to the other and the torch smoke was beginning to fill the room.

  Zia, past her nursing time, was getting cranky. I took the baby from Winona and tickled her. When she gurgled with laughter a sadness shot through me. This child was probably the closest I would come to being a mother.

  Finally, the girl appeared again and, standing straight in front of us but looking over our heads, began to recite, “The man in the pintura, he come to us eleven month ago. He was in bad fight and was hurted from a knife.” She pointed to her left side. “We put him in a bed and make him well again. Then he pay us and leave us and we never see him again.” With the last sentence, she brought her eyes down to my face.

  “Did he say who had hurt him with the knife?”

  “He say it was friend. Friend who now bad. Man he come from Texas with. He was happy to stay here because he say the man would get tired looking for him and go away.”

  “Did he say why they had the fight?”

  She shook her head.

  I thanked her, praised her people’s hospitality; and we joined the man, who had remained outside near the doorway. They escorted us back to our wagon. We mounted to the seats, and I
took the reins from the naked boy, who had apparently stood there in the dust the whole time.

  “Well, that’s that,” I muttered to Winona. “It’s not a deal of help, but they were very civil. Should I offer them some money?”

  “Don’t know. Maybe.”

  I found a coin in my bag and held it out to the girl. She peered at it then shook her head. “No, señora, I cannot take money for words.”

  I smiled then realized she had not asked me for my name. “I am Matilda Summerhayes. I own a ranch near the cuevas, by the springs.”

  “Si, I know.”

  I looked at her in surprise, but she offered nothing more. “If I can ever be of help to you or your people, please let me know.”

  “Gracias, señora.” She darted a look at the man, who gave the barest nod.

  When both only continued to gaze at me, I thanked them again and turned the horse in a tight circle, trying not to trample the cotton plants. Looking back over my shoulder I could see the girl still standing there, shielding her eyes from the sun. I handed Winona the reins, stood up and called, “Catarina?”

  The girl came trotting to the wagon, lithe as an antelope.

  “You said he paid?”

  She nodded.

  “What did he pay you with?”

  “Gold.”

  “Coins?” I asked. “Like this?” I held out the one in my hand.

  She shook her head. “No.” She pantomimed with her hands. “A…stone of gold.”

  Diego had been a mere infant when Tonio had blown up the mine, too young to remember its location. Either he had found it again, or he had kept a nugget all these many years.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Franklin was not at all as I expected. Texas was a full-fledged state, whereas New Mexico—or Arizona, as we were called now—was merely a territory; so I had thought to find a good-size town, if not a city. Certainly I reckoned it bigger than Mesilla. I hesitated to alight from the Butterfield Trail stage, thinking this could not be the right place; but the driver assured me it was and that another coach would be departing northward the following morning.

  It had been helpful to learn from the Tortugas that Diego Ramirez spent some time with them; but when it came down to it, that really didn’t tell us much. It wasn’t Diego I was pursuing. I knew where he was: under a pile of earth and rocks on my land. It was his killer I had to find.