A Santo in the Image of Cristóbal García

by Rick Collignon

  “Help me out of the truck, Flavio,” Felix said; his lips were parched and his legs were shaking badly. “I have to take a piss.”

  Flavio stood with his arm around Felix’s waist. Felix fumbled with the buttons on his pants and, after what seemed like a long time, urine began to dribble half on the ground and half on the legs of Felix’s trousers. “Eee,” he breathed out. “I thought you forgot about me, Flavio.”

  “No,” Flavio said. “You were sleeping. And then Delfino came.”

  “Delfino?”

  “Sí. He’s in Ramona’s house. He was burned by the fire. When he coughs, blood comes from his mouth.”

  Felix looked down at the ground. He shook himself off and buttoned up his pants. “I don’t understand,” he said. “The fire is in the mountains.”

  “So was Delfino,” Flavio said. “Don’t you remember? He went up into the hills with a shovel.”

  Felix sagged slightly and leaned against Flavio. “I should have stayed asleep,” he said. “I should have stayed asleep and never woken up.”

  “Come, Felix,” Flavio said, and keeping his arm around Felix’s waist, he walked the two of them slowly back to the house.

  “Felix,” Delfino said, and he raised his hand and smiled. Flavio and Felix stood in the doorway together and looked inside the house. Light from outside ran across the floor to the sofa and up Delfino’s outstretched legs. In his lap was a santo and he held it cradled in one hand. The Lady’s face was smudged with soot and blood, and she stared back at Flavio and Felix. “I borrowed her, Flavio,” Delfino said.

  “You shouldn’t have moved, Delfino,” Flavio said as he took a step inside the room.

  Delfino gave a slight shrug. “I saw her looking at me.” He dropped his hand and rested it on the Lady. “She didn’t want to be on the floor.”

  For a moment no one spoke, and then Delfino said, “You don’t look so good, Felix.”

  Felix raised his eyes. They were red and bleary, moisture gathered in the corners. “You don’t look so good either, my friend,” he said.

  “I WAS DOING PRETTY GOOD for a little while,” Delfino said. Felix was sitting close beside him on the sofa. His hands were in his lap and his neck was so bent that he stared down at the Lady in Delfino’s lap. Flavio had dragged a chair out from the kitchen and sat leaning forward just a few feet away. “And then,” Delfino went on, “a wind came and, I tell you, everything went to hell.”

  By the time Delfino had stumbled his way up to the top of the foothill, his bad eye had begun to throb and his vision was wavering so badly that it seemed as if the juniper and piñon were walking along with him. Below him, in the valley, vehicles were beginning to drive away, and he realized that if he were to wait for help, he would be waiting a long time. Off to the south he could see that the fire was rounding back toward the highway. At the top of the hill, the road was blocked with police cars. Not far from him was a wall of smoke that towered hundreds of feet high and, buried in it, Delfino could hear the rush of flames. For a moment, Delfino stood leaning against his shovel, catching his breath. On a rock near his feet were two small lizards. “This is a bad fire, no?” he asked them and watched as they darted down the side of the rock and disappeared beneath it. Then, for some reason, Delfino thought of his pigs and how, at this moment, they would be smelling smoke and staring through the twisted wire of their pen, wondering what had become of him. He had named all of his pigs, and though their fate was to end up, one by one, in his freezer, he was always careful never to mention this to them. They, like himself, had done nothing to deserve such a thing as this fire. He pushed off of his shovel and looked at the wall of smoke.

  “I used to hunt rabbits in these hills,” he yelled, “and cut fence posts, and my pigs are all alone because of you, you jodido.”

  “Then I started to shovel,” Delfino said, looking at Flavio. “Whenever a little fire would start on the ground near me, I would beat it to death with my shovel. I thought to myself that if I could turn the fire west it would burn itself out at the river.”

  Delfino didn’t see the fire engulf him so much as hear it. One moment he was madly throwing dirt over embers, and the next there was a great roaring noise all about him and all he could see was smoke. The sparse weeds and scrub oak ignited and flames crawled up the legs of his overalls. He covered his face with his hat, and the few hairs on his head singed down to nothing. He stumbled about blindly and when the heat scorched the back of his hands, he dropped his hat and fell to his knees.

  “I breathed fire,” Delfino said. “At first it tasted cold, like my lungs had swallowed ice. The kind of ice that smokes. It was like being born and in the first breath you take you know things will never be the same.” Delfino paused for a second and wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand. “And then that chingadera plane came.”

  As Delfino knelt on the loose rock, his hands covering his mouth, he suddenly found himself in a cloud of red dust. It fell from the sky like a dense rain. It put out the fire burning his legs and soothed the blisters on his scalp and on the back of his hands. And for a moment, it caused the fire to pause, as if it, too, was startled by what it had inhaled.

  “I started to run,” Delfino said. “I ran like crazy. It was just my good luck that I ran the right way. When I could finally see clearly again, I was north of the fire and I could see your field, Flavio, and Ramona’s little house.”

  Delfino stopped talking and though he hadn’t moved, his body sagged farther into the sofa. He coughed gently and then swallowed what had been in his mouth.

  Flavio had no idea how someone in Delfino’s condition had managed to come so far. He sat looking at Felix and Delfino sitting side by side, and he thought that somehow these two viejos had, on the same day, done the exact opposite thing in the same place. Just hours after Felix had started a small fire out of grass and sticks, Delfino had walked up there with his shovel and tried to put it out. Then they had both come to Ramona’s house. Flavio rubbed his face hard with his hands. “How could this happen?” he muttered.

  “I ran fast,” Delfino said. “That’s how.”

  Felix stirred and raised his eyes. “It was the Lady,” he said. “I think she helped you.”

  “Qué lady?” Delfino said. “There was nobody up there but me.” Then he reached out and touched Felix’s leg. “Felix,” he said. “It’s so good to hear your voice. What, all these years you didn’t have nothing to say?” Then he smiled at his joke and brought his hand back to the santo. His thumb moved gently against the side of her face.

  “You just didn’t see her, Delfino,” Felix said. “She was probably standing behind you all that time.”

  Delfino moved his eyes away from Felix. “What’s he talking, Flavio? Why would there have been a woman wandering about the foothills?”

  “He’s still a little confused, Delfino,” Flavio said. “After all, he was sick for so long.” Flavio knew exactly what Felix was talking about, and he had no desire for the conversation to go where Felix was taking it. “We should talk about getting some help for you.”

  “She was wearing a black dress that fell to her feet,” Felix said softly, “and her head was covered with a shawl. At first, I thought she was the Virgin, but now I don’t know.” He was looking down at the santo in Delfino’s lap, and she looked back at him, a slight smile on her face. “I didn’t see her face so good, but I think she was someone I once knew. I don’t know from where. She came to the café before it was light and sat with me. We watched dawn come to the village, and then I followed her into the foothills. How could I have said no to her when she told me what to do?”

  The day before Flavio’s grandmother died, Flavio had walked quietly into her bedroom and found his grandfather sitting beside the bed. Rosa had been talking to him in a whisper, and Epolito’s head was bent low. He held his wife’s hand in his own. Rosa’s eyes had moved to her grandson and she had smiled weakly and said, “Leave us for a little, hijo.” The curtain over the window was d
rawn open, and sunlight was lying upon both his grandparents. Epolito had turned his head to look at Flavio, and on his face was the same expression Delfino now had.

  For a little while, Delfino stared at Felix. Then the muscles in his face grew slack and he closed his eye. He drew the santo tight against his chest and held her there. “I don’t want to hear no more,” he said. “I should have stayed home with my pigs.”

  …

  NICK OLIVER SWUNG HIS SQUAD CAR off the road and parked beside Felix’s truck in front of Ramona’s house. He switched off the ignition and sat for a moment listening to the clicking of the engine. The radio started up again, and he leaned forward and switched it off. “Talk to someone else,” he said. “I’ve got enough problems.” He reached in his shirt pocket, pulled out a cigarette and lit it. The smoke was clean and sharp in his lungs. He leaned his head against the top edge of the seat and looked at the Montoya house. The plaster on the walls was cracked and mottled where it had been patched over the years, and the tin roof was rusted and coated with tar. One side of the house sagged and the porch was cocked at an odd angle with the ground. The front door of the place was wide open, but all he could see inside was darkness. It looked like every other old adobe Oliver had ever seen, tired and sad and used up.

  “Maybe no one’s home,” he said out loud. He brought the cigarette to his mouth and blew the smoke out slowly. Once again he was tempted to start the car back up and drive north out of the valley. He could drive with the windows open until the smell of wood smoke was gone and the sun set and it grew dark. He could stop in a town far from New Mexico and change out of his uniform and into the dress clothes he kept in a bag in the trunk of the car. Then he could take a bus to a place where no one knew him and no one would think twice when they saw him—a place where cows don’t stumble out of the mountains on fire making noises cows aren’t supposed to make and where old men don’t start fires for no reason.

  He took another drag off his cigarette and glanced out his side window. The entire south side of the valley was cloaked in smoke, and the fire had burned so low that four houses and a couple of trailers had already been lost. Flames were beginning to lick up against alfalfa fields. Sheep and cattle that had been corralled were now roaming loose, and Oliver had watched a flock of chickens run scattered and mistakenly up into the hills, their wings flapping, the hard claws of their feet clicking on rocks.

  He had spent the last two hours driving from house to house on the entire south side of the valley with Donald Lucero. Most of the places they had stopped were already empty, and the vehicles that had once been there were gone. At each place, they would pound on the door and, after waiting a moment, would push it open and go quickly from room to room making sure that no infant had been left in a crib and that no one was sleeping off a hangover. Then, they would go out the back and check the outbuildings for livestock.

  At one house that sat amid huge cottonwoods and willows, they had found an old woman sweeping red ants out from the hard-packed dirt beneath her portal. The fire was just a hundred yards behind her property. The plumes of smoke had dwarfed her home and reminded Oliver of pictures he had seen as a child, paintings of the apocalypse. She was sweeping with a broom that was only bristles, and every so often she would curse and bend over and brush an ant off the side of her bare leg. Her thin gray hair was tied with a bandanna, and her legs were heavy and veined and mottled with red welts. They were standing in the shade, but Oliver could feel the heat of the fire on his face, and his shirt, damp with sweat, was warm against his back.

  “Venga, Mrs. Flores,” Donald had said. At each place they had stopped, Oliver had hung back a few feet behind Lucero. He had lived long enough in northern New Mexico to know that, along with his name, his presence could sometimes make things difficult. He had let the Guadalupe police officer do the talking. Even then, as Lucero had told them that they must leave their homes until it was safe, Oliver could feel their eyes on him as if it were he who had brought this calamity to the village.

  “Cuándo mi hijo venga aquí,” Mrs. Flores said, without looking up, “yo voy.” Her voice was deep and the words came out of her mouth mumbled. Ants were swarming over her feet, and she swept at them with her broom. “I have enough trouble here as it is,” she said.

  “The fire is getting too close,” Donald said. “Everybody must leave. It’s no longer safe here. Tomorrow you can come back and sweep ants.”

  “The fire won’t bother me,” she said, glancing up. Her face was flushed and when she spoke only one side of her mouth moved. “The ditch will stop the fire.”

  Donald took off his hat and wiped his forehead with his sleeve. He fanned his face and took a step closer to the house. “Then there’s nothing for you to worry about,” he said. “Come. I’ll give you a ride to your son’s house.”

  “I don’t know,” Mrs. Flores said, and she moved her eyes to Oliver. “Who is that man?”

  “He’s nobody,” Lucero said. “He’s here because of the fire. We should hurry. I still have your neighbors to see.”

  “I don’t want to leave my house,” she said, and her voice suddenly broke. “My husband’s clothes are here. And his shoes. All those little stones he liked to carry in his pocket for good luck.”

  “I’ll try to send someone back to get them,” Donald said, and he lowered his head and stepped beneath the portal. He stooped down beside Mrs. Flores and brushed her legs gently with his hat. “If you stay here,” he said, “the ants will eat you.” He stood up and took the broom from her and leaned it against the wall of the house. Then he took her arm. “Come, Ascensia, your son will be happy to know you’re safe.” He tugged her arm slightly and the two of them came out from under the portal.

  “It’s bad, no?” Mrs. Flores said. “This fire.”

  “Yes,” Donald answered her. “It’s pretty bad. But men are coming to put it out and there are planes dropping water.”

  “I saw it when it was just a little fire,” the old woman said, “and I thought it was nothing. Someone burning grass by the cemetery or boys doing something foolish.”

  They passed by Oliver without so much as a glance, but he nodded to them absently and then stood for a moment staring at the house. It wasn’t much, he thought. Maybe four or five run-down rooms that would smell of mildew and age. The old wood floors would be covered with linoleum and would be warped and cracked and faded away. The roof of the portal was layered with old roofing paper, and it sagged badly from years of snow loads. The viga ends were rotted and crumbling. Weeds had grown high about the place and dried out. The only green he could see, besides the cottonwoods and willows, was behind the house where the ditch ran. He gazed up at the fire burning high on the hillside and then took one last look at the house. A couple of straight-backed chairs were set beneath the portal. Between them and at eye level, a nicho was carved into the wall. Even from where he stood, he could see the painted picture of a saint inside it. He grunted softly and reached for a cigarette. “Good luck,” he said to her and struck a match.

  When he turned around, Mrs. Flores was already sitting in the front seat of Lucero’s vehicle. Lucero was leaning against the door and shaking his head. A couple of miles away, in the middle of the valley, smoke was billowing up into the air.

  “Jesus Christ,” Oliver breathed out. For the first time it struck him that not only were the mountains around Guadalupe about to burn, but so was the village itself. “That’s a house, isn’t it?” he said to Lucero.

  Lucero turned his head and looked back. “It’s Flavio Montoya’s house,” he said and turned his head away.

  Oliver walked up to the car and stopped a few feet from Lucero. “You better get somebody over there,” he said. “Before it gets out of hand.”

  “It’s already out of hand,” Lucero said. The skin beneath his eyes was dark and his face was heavy and drawn. He pushed off of the car. “Well, either Flavio’s decided to burn everything up or Sippy and his brothers are out to get even. I tell you
what. I’ll get the fire department over there, and then me and Mrs. Flores will go talk to the neighbors. You can do me a favor. You know Flavio’s truck. Go by his sister’s old house north of town. If you find him, get him and Felix the hell out of here before someone shoots them.”

  On the drive across the village, Oliver was told that the first fire crews had arrived, but instead of coming into the valley they had been dispersed into the hills south of the fire.

  “They want to keep the fire away from all those big houses,” the dispatcher had said, his voice coming like tin through the speaker.

  “We’re about to lose some houses here,” Oliver had radioed back.

  “Don’t blame me,” the dispatcher said. “I’ll see what I can find out, but there’s more money in one of those houses than in that entire village. So you go figure.”

  NICK OLIVER TOOK ONE LAST HIT off his cigarette and let the butt drop out his open window. In the ten minutes he’d been sitting in his squad car beside Flavio’s pickup, he hadn’t heard a sound come from the house. His throat felt tight and his eyes were beginning to burn. He pushed himself up on the seat and rubbed his face hard with his hands. He’d been in this village for only a few hours, and it was beginning to feel as if he’d been here forever.

  When Oliver stepped through the doorway of Ramona’s house, the first thing that struck him was the smell. Although it was the same smell of smoke as outside, here it was heavier and thicker and carried something beneath it, as if the adobe walls themselves were smoldering. He breathed through his mouth and then stood still just inside the room, letting his eyes grow accustomed to the light.

  Gradually, he could make out the three old men sitting motionless in the shadows across the room. Two of them were staring back at him. The third had his head turned away and in his arms he was clasping something that looked like a small doll. On the floor near Oliver’s feet were small carved figures. Some were standing; others were strewn about. And one of them stared up at him. Her eyes were open and she was smiling slightly. Her face and gown had been painted, but the colors had dimmed from cobwebs and so much dust. Outside, the wind suddenly picked up, and a screen door in an adjoining room creaked open and then slammed shut. A feeling of unease passed through Oliver, and he fought off an impulse to turn around and walk out of the house.