by Carla Kelly
They crossed the plaza in front of the pueblo. Father Pio was sweeping the entrance outside the church. He waved to the three of them, calling out a greeting. Diego nodded to him, but did not stop to speak.
Maria hurried to keep up with the men. They walked along the river’s edge until they came to a small arroyo that fed into the larger stream. Except for a weak trickle down the center, the gully was dry, littered with smooth pebbles and many branches from the cottonwood trees lining the bank.
Emiliano gestured to the fallen wood. “See there, Maria? Go, find me a saint.” He sat on the river bank, nodding to Diego, who sat next to him, grinning at Maria.
Maria put down the bag and walked to the riverbed. She was grateful for Diego’s Apache moccasins as she walked over the stones, poking the wood, wondering what she was looking for. I am to find a saint, she thought, as she examined the jumble of twisted, drying wood. She raised her eyes to Emiliano, but he looked away from her, deliberately ignoring her.
A saint in the wood, a saint in the wood, she thought, walking farther away from the men lounging and chatting on the bank. Diego was pitching pebbles into the stream while Emiliano sharpened a small knife on a whetstone he had brought with him.
She turned her back on the men, looking down at the wood, picking up pieces and discarding them, tugging at larger limbs, turning them this way and that, wondering what Emiliano could have been thinking of, and feeling failure hovering over her like the buzzards at the supply caravan massacre.
Then she saw him, San Francisco. Maria knelt by a small cottonwood limb lying half under a larger piece of brush. Using both hands and one foot, she tugged it out and held it up.
It could only be San Francisco. The chunk of wood was small, less than a foot in length, but there was a smaller branch reaching down from the sturdiness of the main limb, extended like San Francisco blessing the small animals that were his particular delight. She ran her finger over the wood and looked at Emiliano, who was smiling at her.
“Ho, Maria,” he called, “have you found a saint?”
“I have,” she said, hugging the piece of wood to her.
“Come show me then.”
She tucked the cottonwood limb under her arm, grasped her skirts and climbed the bank to the men. “Look. It is San Francisco,” she said, holding out the wood to Emiliano, who took it, turning it over in his hands. Diego watched them. He tipped his hat forward and leaned back on his elbow.
Emiliano handed the wood back to Maria. “Tell me, where is the front?”
Maria frowned, pursing her lips. “Here,” she replied, after turning the wood over several times. “And see! He is blessing the animals.”
“Oh, Maria!” said Diego, “And where is the skull that San Francisco always carries?”
“This one will not,” she flashed back. “Not my San Francisco. If you insist on skulls, you must find your own.”
He laughed, and pitched another rock toward the water.
Emiliano handed her the knife he had sharpened, a small knife with a deer bone handle, worn smooth with many years of whittling and carving. “Strip off the bark, if you are so sure that San Francisco dwells within.”
Maria took the knife and set the wood upright in front of her. She carefully peeled the bark off the dry wood, marveling at how easily the outer shell fell away from the whiter wood underneath. She worked slowly around the down-pointing limb, guiding the knife with her thumb. When all the bark was removed, she handed the wood back to Emiliano.
“Perhaps you are right, my child,” he said, after running his hands over the cottonwood. “It could be San Francisco himself. Only think how long he has waited here for you. ”
She nodded. Emiliano cleared his throat, “What say you, Maria? Can we trust that ranchero over there with your San Francisco?”
“Perhaps,” she replied.
“Here then, Señor, you carry our saint.”
Diego took the wood. “With pleasure.” He put the small piece in his leather sack, then brushed his hand across Maria’s cheek. “You’re crying, chiquita,” he said.
“I know. Silly, isn’t it?”
To her surprise, he hugged her to him for a brief moment. When he let go of her, Emiliano took her by the arm to hurry her on.
“We must find the right colors now, Maria. No time for dawdling.” He led them along the riverbank and they walked for another mile. The saintmaker seemed to know just what he was looking for. Soon he came to a place in the river where the bank rose high above the water and a narrow path led down to the water’s edge.
“Down there, Maria,” said Emiliano, sitting cross-legged again, “you will see a wall of gypsum, of yeso. Fill your bag.”
She picked her way down the slanting path. At the river she looked back at the bank and saw the glittering wall of gypsum. The yeso peeled away from the side of the bank in flaking handfuls. She filled her leather bag with it, then toiled up the path, the strap of the pouch biting into her shoulder.
Emiliano patted the bag and nodded. “That should do nicely.”
They took another high path back toward the pueblo, away from the river this time. Emiliano stopped and pointed to a barely seen arroyo. “Over there, Maria, you will find color.”
Diego walked with her to the arroyo. The sun was high overhead now, and he took off his hat and put it on her head, pulling the cords up under her chin. Maria gathered the clay of red and yellow from the side of the arroyo, filling the small sacks the santero had given her. They returned to Emiliano, who was lying on the ground, his eyes closed. He woke and peered into the sacks, nodding. “The rest we can find at the pueblo. Do not dawdle, you two! We have much to do this day!”
“Let us see what we have now,” said Emiliano when they sat together again on the floor of his workshop. He shook the contents of the bags into small clay dishes on the low workbench. When he had poured in enough, he turned to the cooking fire and lifted off the pot of blue beans simmering there. Ladling out a fair amount, he put the beans in a cloth bag, knotted it tight, and handed it to Maria. “Here now, squeeze this over the pot.”
She did, even though the beans were hot and pained her blisters. Doggedly she squeezed the bag until the pot was half-full of blue-gray bean water. She looked over at Emiliano, who had dumped the gypsum into a larger pot and added a small amount of water. He put more wood on his little fire until it was crackling away, then set the pot on the flames, handing Maria a paddle. She mixed the gypsum and water together until it was the consistency of cream, smooth and slightly off-white.
“Now take it from the fire. Set it down like so. Follow me.”
They went outside again to the mission corral by the church where Father Pio kept a couple of milk cows with their calves. “Find me some bits of hide, horn and hoof. Especially hoof.”
She climbed into the corral. It was ill-kept and littered with parts of hoofs. She combed each corner of it, picking up bits of ragged hide. Next to the feed box she found a complete hoof, still soft inside and stinking. She held it away from her, wrinkling her nose. She found another like it, and a horn, as well, and returned to Emiliano, who peered close at what she carried and chortled like a small boy.
“Good! You shall have a fine San Francisco. Now let us cook this mess. But outside. I cannot stink up the entire pueblo.” Emiliano tossed Maria’s malodorous scavenging into another cooking pot, added water and instructed Maria to stir it over the flames of the outdoor fire he had started. “Until it thickens,” he said. “Diego and I will eat and take a siesta.”
She watched them go toward the pueblo, then turned her attention to the pot before her. The smell that climbed from the pot made her stomach heave, but she stirred the horn and hooves and hide round and round until the whole disgusting mixture boiled.
When she could hardly stir the mixture, Emiliano and Diego returned. Diego took his hat, which was hanging by its cords down her back, and set it on her head again. “Chiquita, we cannot have you falling into the pot with sun
stroke. I fear no one would retrieve you. Ay, what a smell!” Diego sniffed her hair.
Emiliano watched Maria’s face and laughed. “Señor Masferrer, you had better stand back. Maria feels little charity toward even you, at the moment. This is the hard part, Maria. You are almost through.” When she could turn the paddle in the pot only with real effort, Emiliano motioned for her to stop. He had carried out the pot of gypsum, which he had added to the glue. “Now stir this only a little, Maria. You will know when it is done.”
She did know. There was a magic point when glue and gypsum blended into a thick sparkling mass that caught the sun. She took the paddle from the pot and looked at Emiliano, who lifted the pot off the flames.
“Well done, Maria. Now, we will let Diego carry this up the ladder for us, and if he trips, we will laugh at him.”
Once inside the workshop, Maria leaned against the cool wall. Her back ached from bending over the pot, and her already blistered hands were rubbed raw. Diego set down the pot and looked at her, taking his hat off her head.
“Are we too hard on her?” he asked Emiliano.
“No. You cannot be too hard on a saintmaker. I think there must be a necessary pain in this work, eh, Maria?”
She smiled faintly, but said nothing.
“Now,” said the santero, “if I may have your attention. I have carved a ring about his shoulders and given San Francisco a neck. If you will carve down his back and make it straight, we can proceed.” Emiliano handed her the knife and she scraped the small bumps of wood off the back, smoothing it down with sand. She carved the saint’s waist so his long gown flared out.
Emiliano pointed to a small brush in a dish of water. “Made of yucca fibers, set to soak. Remember that, Maria. By rights, you should have made your own brush, but time is too short.” He paused and caught Diego’s eye. “Too short. Now, spread the white on your San Francisco. He has waited too long for this.”
She sat cross-legged on the floor in imitation of Emiliano and applied the thick, gluey gypsum to the statue, beginning at the head and working down to the hem of his robe. As the white flowed on, she smiled, forgetting how her back ached and how sunburned her face was. She paused when she finished and looked at Emiliano. “What about his other arm?”
“I have carved you one. Here it is, for you to paint.” He handed her a small piece of cottonwood, already smooth. “We will put a cross in it later.”
She painted the other arm, and when she was done, the statue was already dry.
Emiliano looked at her work. “It never takes long to dry, not here. And now, I will get an egg or two and some chicken feathers.”
Diego sat in the corner on the buffalo hide pile. Maria put down the brush and stood up. The pueblo was still, wrapped in the afternoon rest, but she heard a distant drum throbbing somewhere deep within the adobe walls.
“What does he mean, Diego?” she asked in a whisper after Emiliano left.
“Qué, chiquita?” Diego asked. His face had a distracted look, as if he were listening to the drums, too.
“He speaks of too little time, or that time is short.”
“He is old, Maria,” he said. His answer seemed evasive to her, and he shifted slightly, turning away from her.
“It is more than that, Diego mio, “isn’t it?”
He smiled faintly at her use of his name. “I do not know, Maria. But there is something here we know nothing of. I can only hope the unrest will pass as it always has.”
She sat next to him for comfort, and he put his arm around her. Their thoughts were on the drums, which had faded further, then stopped with a suddenness more disconcerting than their sound.
Emiliano returned with a handful of chicken feathers and two eggs. He cracked the eggs and separated the yolks from the whites, then looked at Maria. “I forgot something. Take the knife and scrape off the bottom of that pot. Put the shavings here in this dish.”
Maria knelt by the cooking pot and scraped the blackened bottom until bits of carbon floated in the air.
“Mix a little egg with the blackening and make a beard for our San Francisco de Asis. Use our Diego for your model. Of course, his vanity keeps his beard well-trimmed, but he will do today, when we have no one better.”
“Thank you, Old One,” grinned Diego.
Maria stirred a small portion of yolk into the blacking with a feather, soaking the feather with black paint. Her hand was unsteady as she raised the feather brush to the gleaming white statue. “It is like cutting out a piece of expensive brocade for a dress,” she confessed. “I fear the first step.”
Emiliano snorted. “And why should this act of beginning be any different than any other act of life? It is well that you fear. If you did not, I would take the brush from you.”
She glanced at Diego for reassurance. He winked. With another dip of the feather in paint, and another glance at Diego’s close-cut beard, she painted the beard on the empty white face, her hand steady. She put the brush down. “What do I mix for his robe?” she asked.
“A little more black, some of the red clay, blue bean, perhaps a touch of yellow. As you wish.”
She mixed the colors, blue predominating, relishing the small swirls of brightness that spun around and around and then vanished in the emerging blue-gray, adding their bits of color and contrast. When she had the proper hue for San Francisco’s robe, she stroked the color on with another chicken feather, pleased with the way the color soaked into the gypsum.
Maria set the figure down on the workbench, carefully turning it around with the tips of her finger. The bulto had none of the grace she associated with San Francisco. This figure was crude and primitive, carved quickly of cottonwood and painted with chicken feathers. A year ago she would have laughed and turned away from this small saint, but not now. This gentle representative of the faith had come to her, not from the belly of a great Spanish galleon, but from the earth itself. She had freed the saint from the tree limb.
The men in the room were silent, Emiliano’s eyes on the saint that blessed his workbench, Diego’s eyes on the woman who painted it. Maria was silent, too, looking at her saint. She picked up a clean feather and dabbed it in the blue bean paint. Her strokes were surer now as she painted the eyes.
“Maria,” asked Emiliano, “why do you paint his eyes that way? Should he not be looking straight ahead, contemplating some eternity we know nothing of?”
“No,” she replied decisively, “he is looking down at the bird in his outstretched hand. For this he must glance sideways. No one looks at a bird straight on. They fly away.”
“But Maria chiquita,” said Diego, his eyes still on her face, “there is no bird.”
“Diego, you will never be a saintmaker. As I found the saint, so will I find the bird.”
She took up the blackened feather and brushed hair on the gentle man of Assisi, careful to leave a bald area for his tonsure. She made short brush strokes, glancing at Diego as she did, trying to capture the curl of his hair on the head of the saint.
“You flatter me, querida,” Diego said, the endearment slipping out.
Maria heard him, but sighed. Somehow, it did not look right. “Emiliano, I want curly hair, but I don’t know how to do it. And I wanted to carve folds in his habit, but I do not know how.”
“So you must practice. I am fifty. You are fifteen. Do you think I learned everything in one day?”
“When you are old and toothless, Maria,” said Diego.
Her eyes twinkled at him as she picked up another feather, dipping it into the red clay-egg yolk mixture. She dabbed on a small mouth, a serious mouth. She could never have imagined San Francisco as a jolly sort of man. His beauty came from within. But how to paint that glow? She put down the feather. How indeed? The technique escaped her.
“He needs a knotted cord around his waist,” Emiliano reminded her.
With the whitened yucca fiber brush, she painted the cord around his waist, careful not to smear the blue-gray of his habit. Mixing a little mor
e white with a dab of brown, she painted San Francisco’s hands the color of work and summer fields, the color of Diego’s hands.
She set the bulto on the worktable and rubbed her back. Her legs ached from sitting cross-legged so long, and she noticed that the sky was darkening. But she had one more thing to do.
‘‘May I leave San Francisco here?’’ she asked.
“I was going to suggest it. I will carve a small cross for his other hand, and hinge the arm to the shoulder for you. Next time you come this way, he will be ready.” There was no word of compliment or praise from Emiliano, but she did not expect any. She could read his thoughts in the small glances he darted at the little saint gracing his workbench.
“Are you ready?” Diego asked.
“Almost. I have one more stop to make, if you will,” she said, getting slowly to her feet.
“Why not? We will miss dinner anyway.”
Maria stepped onto the terrace. The Indian women were preparing their evening meals. Wonderful aromas rose from the cooking pot, and she remembered that she had eaten nothing since early that morning in the dark kitchen. She looked back at Emiliano’s workroom and smiled. Her little San Francisco watched her through the open window, his hand extended.
Diego followed Emiliano out onto the terrace. The santero nodded to Maria and turned to Diego. “Go with God, Señor Masferrer.”
“And you, Old One.”
The saintmaker hesitated. "There is one other thing. Of late, your enemy the Apache has been visiting our pueblo. In friendship, they say. Now, is this not a strange thing?”
Diego watched him, looking for more information than the old man’s words provided. “It is a strange thing, friend of my father. And what do you make of such a curious circumstance?”
Emiliano shrugged. “I cannot say.” His tone was guarded. “Perhaps they choose to make friends. Perhaps they want an alliance. Who can say?”