Listen to the Mockingbird

by Penny Rudolph

  I turned in wordless bewilderment to Tonio, who stood in the doorway taking in the scene. Winona was trying to sponge Nacho’s face with water from a dented cooking pot, but he knocked the towel from her hand, groaning, “No, no. Papa. No. El verdugo. Nooo…” His voice became a shriek and he writhed as if in combat with Satan himself. “Ahorcarse!” he screamed. Then he repeated the same word in a voice of utter desolation.

  Herlinda’s eyes widened with horror, and she stared at Winona. Then she reached across Nacho’s writhing body, grabbed the straps of Winona’s apron and shook her like a rag doll.

  “Bruja!” she screamed. “Bruja!” She threw herself at Winona.

  By the time I could cover the few feet that separated us, the straps of the apron had torn and Herlinda was wrapping them around Winona’s throat.

  “Stop!” I shouted, wrestling with her. With the brute strength of the demented, she gouged my face with her fingernails. Then her hands, fingers still rigid, were moving away.

  Tonio had grasped her by the forearms and pulled her to her feet, where he held her immobile until she stopped struggling. Then he pulled her to his chest, crooning something in comforting tones; and she sagged to her knees, made the sign of the cross, fingered the rosary she always wore around her neck and began to pray. Tears spilled down her face and dripped on the floor.

  Winona had returned to mopping Nacho’s face with the towel. The poor man tried to twist his head away. He opened his eyes then covered them with his hands.

  “La luz,” he groaned. The light. I understood the word but couldn’t fathom the meaning. He opened his mouth, and a greenish bile spilled down his chin. Then his body went still, and I screamed.

  Tonio probed Nacho’s neck then put his ear to Nacho’s chest. I closed my eyes against the certainty that he would find no pulse, hear no heartbeat.

  Tonio’s head remained that way for a long time, the silence broken only by the murmur of Herlinda’s prayers and the little splash of water each time Winona’s towel returned to the pot.

  Gently, Tonio pulled away the shirt and raised Nacho’s arm. Winona and I stared. The lump in the armpit seemed as big, the flesh as red and tight, as an over-ripe crabapple.

  Tonio was staring, too, his eyes narrowed to slits.

  “Is he dead?” I whispered.

  He shook his head, then gathered Nacho in his arms as one picks up a child. “Get a bed ready,” he said, rising to his feet.

  Herlinda looked up at him fearfully then scurried ahead of us to the room she shared with Nacho.

  999

  Tonio and I sat in the kitchen with cups of bad coffee trying to regain some sense of normality. I had taken him in the wagon to the cuevas, where he collected a half-dozen packets of herbs and powders. At my cook-stove, he’d prepared some concoctions that he forced between Nacho’s lips. Most had rolled down the leathery chin, and Winona mopped it away while Herlinda’s frantic eyes darted from face to face. She had seemed on the very verge of trying to stop us, but she didn’t.

  I daresay Tonio’s certainty, his command of the situation, lent all of us a scrap of security. He had given firm orders that no one was to leave the sickroom without scrubbing hands and arms with lye soap. When the bedclothes were removed, they were to be burned. Herlinda had gasped at that, but the look on Tonio’s face brooked no argument.

  A knife, fork, spoon, cup and plate were to be set aside to feed Nacho and boiled in hot water for the better part of an hour immediately after he finished. And we were all to eat as much garlic as we could get down.

  Now Herlinda and her son were with Nacho, Winona was seeing to Zia and Tonio and I sat mute and weary on the slat-backed chairs in the kitchen, sipping coffee neither of us wanted.

  There was death in the air. I could fairly smell its bitter scent.

  “What in the name of God is it?” I asked dully, wondering if we would all die of this awful sickness. Putting a name to it might somehow put it in our grasp, make it manageable. “It can’t be pox.”

  Tonio shook his head and stared at the ceiling. His bleak brown eyes traveled slowly to mine.

  I waited. Then, “What is it? For God’s sake, tell me!”

  “Plague,” he said. “It is bubonic plague.”

  Chapter Thirty-two

  I insisted that Tonio take one of the horses; and after making me promise to fetch him if there was any change, he departed for the cuevas riding clumsily, a little too stiff-legged but well enough.

  None of us slept that night. We moved about the rooms slowly and very quietly, speaking little and only in whispers, as if death were asleep nearby and we feared to rouse him.

  We spelled each other at the bedside. Herlinda had refused to leave Winona alone with Nacho, but she was so exhausted she fainted and Ruben carried her to the parlor.

  Tonio was back at dawn with more herbal mixtures. He listened long at Nacho’s chest then announced softly, “The lungs are clear.”

  Nacho continued half-awake, half-asleep, delirious. Whenever he opened his eyes, he muttered “la luz” in such distress that we finally understood that any but the dimmest light hurt his eyes. He did no more shouting. He was too weak.

  Herlinda and I were at the cook-stove preparing tortillas when Winona wandered into the kitchen with Zia. Herlinda stiffened. I put my hand on her arm. “She is a good woman. Believe me. She is no witch, no bruja.”

  Herlinda dropped the spatula she was using to turn the tortillas and began to weep. She drew up the skirt of her apron and hid her face. “Estára,” she sobbed. “Estára.”

  I put my arms around her and she clung to me like a frightened child. I led her to a chair. “Why?” I asked. “Why must Winona be a witch?”

  “Only bruja make him speak of el padre.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “His father, he hang. They say he was horse thief. Ignacio, he was there. He see it. Un niño. A child. La bruja make him see it again. La bruja make him see el verdugo. The hangman!”

  Herlinda gasped and burst into fresh tears. “Señora,” she wailed. “El favor de usted. You would not send us away for this thing?”

  “Send you away because Nacho is ill?”

  “Because the father was horse thief,” Herlinda wailed between sobs.

  “Good heavens, of course not! Nacho is the best man with horses I’ve ever laid eyes on. I don’t care what his father did. If he taught Nacho about horses, I’m even grateful to him.” I tried to keep my voice calm and cheerful despite the bitterness that rose in me. How could God make a man wracked with illness relive such a nightmare?

  999

  On the third day, Nacho’s fever fell. Still, he barely clung to consciousness. Tonio arrived just as the sun sent its first slanting rays down the mountain. He sent everyone from the sickroom and bade us rest. We all scrubbed our arms and hands raw and tried to nap.

  I was asleep as soon as my body touched the mattress. When I woke the window was already beginning to dim with dusk. Tonio was standing over me. His cheeks were hollow with shadow, but his eyes were bright.

  “He will live,” he said softly. “The worst is past.”

  Relief was like gravity, drawing me closer to the earth. I put my hand over my eyes to let the news absorb slowly, to be sure it was real. “Thank God.”

  Tonio stretched out his hands to me; and I rose, feeling light now from the empty spaces in my being where the fear had been. His arms opened, and I laid my head against his chest. His beard smelled of wood smoke mixed with something faintly like verbena.

  “Sorry I woke you,” he said. “I just wanted you to know as soon as I was sure.”

  I tightened my arms around him. “Thank you.”

  “Herlinda is with Nacho, Winona spelled me earlier.” The creases at the corners of his eyes deepened. “She does have a way with her, your Winona.”

  I frowned. “You didn’t let her do anything…odd…did you?”

  He chuckled. “It would have been worth my life to stop her.�
�

  “Like what? What did she do?” I asked cautiously.

  “Nothing harmful. A wax doll near his lips. To draw the demon, I suppose. Herlinda was asleep,” he said to the look on my face. “I didn’t leave the doll there.” He opened his hand, and a small dark lump gleamed on his palm. The doll seemed to be all misshapen head with many legs bent at the knees. It looked quite like Evelina, my tarantula.

  No one else had appreciated the spider’s company, so I had taken her outside, had a solemn talk with her and bade her goodbye. Whenever I saw a tarantula scurrying around a corner of the house I was always convinced it was Evelina still hanging about to keep me company.

  I shook my head at Tonio. “You’ve had years of Christian training. How could you let her do that?”

  His shoulders lifted, and a smile tried to happen around his mouth. “What possible harm could it do? Besides, there’s something to be said for hedging one’s bet.” He peered at me in the pale light. “What’s wrong?”

  A chill had passed over me. I struggled to smile. “Someone walking on my grave, I suppose. What of the rest of us? Will we catch it?”

  Tonio stepped back. His shoulders sagged, and he shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “We did exactly as you said. I made sure no one left Nacho’s room without washing. We burned his clothes; we’ll burn his sheets and nightshirt. We’ve eaten so much of garlic, I’m sure they can smell us in town. But is that enough? I know so little about plague.”

  “I’ve seen a few cases. Doctors who have treated it say people who are meticulous about those things won’t catch it from each other. They believe it’s spread by insects. Fleas.”

  I looked at him in dismay. “We haven’t had a flea problem recently, but we have so many animals…”

  “That’s why we are eating so much garlic. No one is certain, of course, but those who consume a goodly measure of the stuff don’t seem to sicken with plague.”

  “Garlic cures the plague?”

  “It doesn’t cure. But it does seem to prevent. Perhaps fleas don’t like the taste of garlic eaters.”

  I was about to say that couldn’t be true because the Mexicans use a lot of garlic when I remembered Herlinda preparing Nacho’s meals separately the past few weeks because spicy food was troubling his stomach.

  Tonio moved toward the door. “You can go back to sleep if you like. Nothing needs doing. We could use more water, but I’ll take the wagon and fetch some. I rested a bit earlier.”

  I didn’t want to sleep. Nacho was going to live. Death was no longer camped on my doorstep. I wanted to celebrate. “Let’s both go.”

  999

  By the time we reached the spring the sun had sunk into the ground, but the moon was putting out so much light it seemed to have gone quite lopsided with the effort. A fair rivulet was sloshing down the rock. I maneuvered the wagon as close to the spring as I could, as the jars weigh a good deal when full.

  “How do you haul your own water?” I asked Tonio, thinking the cuevas was a ways to walk from here if one was carrying anything heavy.

  “I have a flat jug that fits in a sort of harness on my back.” He handed me two of the empty jars. “I learned that from an Indian woman. Never did learn to carry anything on my head, though. Haven’t the neck for it, I suppose. The harness works well. I can carry enough for two or three days.”

  “I haven’t been here in a long time,” I said. “Last year, the arroyo over there flooded, and I was trapped. I was certain I was going to drown.”

  “Mmmm,” he nodded. “Soon after I got here.”

  “You must have been at the spring just before the flood. I saw a man’s boot prints.”

  “I don’t remember.” He handed me another jar.

  Glancing at his feet, I saw his boots had almost no heel at all—the sort worn by those who don’t spend much time in a saddle. Certainly, someone had been at the spring; and I’d been convinced that someone was nearby, close enough to hear me shouting. But none of that seemed to matter now. The deepening night was filled with the sound of splashing and the wonderful smell of damp earth.

  The clay jars filled quickly. When the last was done, I scooped up a handful of water and lifted it to my face, letting it run down my neck till it made me shiver. Tonio had turned to watch. The past days had written deep lines into his face. I scooped up more water and tossed it at him.

  A smile fluttered at one corner of his mouth. He stood stock still for a moment, his face damp in the moonlight, then nudged me aside and flung a handful of water on me. I giggled and pushed him away to fill my own hands again. Laughing, he dodged and ran, with me after him hell-bent for mud.

  Tonio, much faster than I, disappeared into the shadows of an old oak so bent it almost touched the ground. By the time I reached the tree there was no sign of him at all. I drew up and stooped to peer beneath the lowest limbs and found myself looking straight into his face. He’d stuck out his tongue, put his thumbs in his ears and was waggling his fingers. When I folded up with laughter, he sprang up and wrestled me to the ground, his baritone laugh booming while I yelped with fury.

  I dug my fingers into his ribs, and we rolled beneath the tree. He circled my ankle with one hand, made short work of my shoe and tickled my feet until tears trickled down my cheeks.

  “Enough?” he yelled.

  “Yes,” I squealed, still writhing but quite helpless. He released my ankle, caught my face between his hands and looked into my eyes until I was certain he could see my soul. I realized I had never heard him laugh before. Chuckle, yes, but not really laugh. And lately, I’d done precious little laughing myself.

  Without releasing my eyes from his, he dropped his fingers to my collar and began to undo my blouse.

  Never before or since has it been quite like that for me, like a celebration of all that’s right in the world. When he raised himself above me in the final thrust, exquisite waves of joy thrummed over me.

  We lay lazy and spent, arms and legs woven together like the reeds of a half-finished basket. When he finally rolled away, an acute emptiness swept over me, a sense of profound loss.

  He tossed my blouse over my face; and when I pulled it down to my chin, his eyes moved slowly from mine to my nose then my mouth. His smile was like an ember from some somber hearth deep within him. Suddenly self-conscious, I turned my back to dress.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  The afternoon was unseasonably warm. The land was dry, and dust devils were twisting here and there. It wasn’t likely to rain again till midsummer. Fanny shifted her weight and snorted as I mopped my brow with a kerchief that still smelled of vanilla and gave chase yet again to a stubborn horse.

  The week before, I had made my first purchases at the stock auction without Nacho at my elbow. He had wanted to come along, but he still looked gaunt and was a little unsteady on his feet; so I bit the bullet alone and bought a couple dozen head of new horses. Nacho looked them over when they arrived, and his approving nod meant more to me than the money I’d spent.

  But one of the new arrivals, a black gelding with a white blaze, had run off. The colts would need another dozen months of feeding before they had much value and I wouldn’t begin to clear my expenses for at least another year, so I wasn’t about to lose that ornery black.

  Neck outstretched and running like the wind, he seemed determined to leave the territory. Already, I had chased him for miles. Along the way I had picked up a stray mule.

  The gelding was quick and clever, and I had lost my last bit of patience an hour before. I was getting better with a riata, having practiced on the calves; but cattle tend to run in a straighter line while horses dart from side to side as quick as squirrels. Four times I had swung my rope and missed. Mules are even cleverer than horses, and this one seemed to be enjoying a game of his own devising in which he nipped the horse on the rump to goad it on. I’d had about enough of it.

  The black flounced into an arroyo, and the thick brush swallowed him. No, you don’
t, I thought, urging Fanny down the slope after him. But there was no movement at the bottom at all. The rogue was smart enough to keep still. I rode into the brush and scanned every bit of scrub big enough to hide him. Nothing. But at least it was cool enough here for lunch. The black couldn’t get far without my hearing him.

  Not bothering to dismount, in case that consarned gelding took off again, I fumbled at the saddlebag and took out a chunk of cheese and some dry bread. Intent on detecting sounds from the horse inside the arroyo, I heard no sounds from above; and when I glanced up to the rim, the two men, clear and sharp against the sky, startled me.

  They both were mounted; both wore hats with broad brims. With the sun behind them, they looked like black cutouts on horseback.

  Both men seemed jittery. The smaller of the two was jabbing a finger at a paper he held. Every few seconds one of them would nervously twist his head around to scan the landscape. I sat there in plain sight, but neither saw me. The wind was carrying their voices away, and for a time I could make no sense of what they were saying; but some primal wariness stilled my urge to call out to them.

  Then the wind changed, and their words became quite clear.

  “…know damn well that woman has the map,” one of them was saying.

  I froze. Somewhere, I had heard that voice before. Where? Who was it? Both men had turned their backs to the arroyo, so I couldn’t even tell which was speaking. Hunching down in the saddle, I pressed a trembling hand against Fanny’s shoulder and, terrified she would choose that moment to snort or paw the ground, slowly backed her into the thick shadows.

  “How could you be such a goddamn fool as to lose it?”

  “That jo-fired, lickspittle idiot shot at me. Grazed my head. When she come running out, toting a pistol, I had to hide, didn’t I? When I went to check the body it was gone.”