“Don’t blame me,” Felix said. He pulled his hand back and placed it in his lap. “They’re not my keys.”
“You were alone in my truck,” Flavio said. “Maybe you took them and forgot.” Suddenly, he could picture Felix grabbing the keys out of the ignition and then, for a reason not even Felix would know, throwing them out the window.
Felix looked down at his hands and tried to fold them together. “I don’t know nothing about your keys,” he said. “Why is it my fault when things go wrong? Maybe you lost them somewhere in Ramona’s house. Or maybe that policeman took them. Who knows who he was, anyway. Maybe he took your keys when we weren’t watching.”
Flavio let out a long, tired breath. “Why would he take my keys?” he asked.
“How should I know?” Felix said. “You think I know everything?” He looked at the santo on the seat beside him as if he’d never seen her before. “Why is she coming with us, Flavio?” he asked. “She looks like she’s been drinking too much whiskey. She looks like she wants to go to a party with a bunch of other borrachos.”
“My nephew José made her when he was little,” Flavio said. Then he felt a rush of sadness when he thought that all his nephew had ever been in his life was little. He looked down at the Lady and put his hand on top of her head. He could feel the thick clumps of paint beneath his palm, and he remembered the first time he had seen her.
José had been gone from the house that day, when Flavio had walked into the kitchen. She had been standing in the middle of the table. For being so small, she seemed to take up the whole room, and for a second Flavio thought that she might wave her arms and begin to sing.
“Ramona,” he had said. “What is that?”
Ramona had been at the sink, and when she saw the expression on her brother’s face, she began to laugh. The small room seemed to fill with light, and the breeze coming through the screen door was warm on his face. When Ramona finally stopped laughing, she dried her hands and wiped her face and then, still smiling, she had leaned back against the sink.
“She was waiting in the wood all these years, Flavio,” Ramona said. “And Little José found her there. She’s so beautiful, isn’t she, Flavio?”
“But what is she, Ramona?” Flavio had asked, and then he and his sister both looked at the santo.
“I don’t know,” Ramona said. Sunlight was coming through the small window above the sink, and the breeze stirred the curtains and pulled gently at his sister’s hair. “All I know is that our nephew made her and when I look at her, she makes me happy.”
Outside Flavio’s pickup, the wind suddenly gusted, and it beat down the flames behind Ramona’s house, sending up a whirlwind of smoke and cinders. Flavio brought his hands to his face and rubbed at his eyes. “I am missing too many things, Felix,” he said.
“Yo también,” Felix said hoarsely.
Flavio grunted softly and let his hands rest on the steering wheel. “You are so lucky, Felix,” he said, “to have such a son as Pepe. All these years while you sat sick in the café, he took such good care of you.”
“Did I tell you?” Felix said. He reached out again and touched Flavio’s leg. “When he was little, he would help me with my tortillas. He would beat on them hard with his spoon and all the time he would talk and talk. Sometimes I thought my little boy would make me crazy with his talking. He would sprinkle water on my tortillas and wrap them in towels, and I would let him put the spices in my beans. When we were done, we would make a little breakfast and go sit by the big window in the café. It would still be dark out, and while my son ate, I would smoke a cigarette and we would wait for the village to wake up.” Felix fell quiet for a moment, and then he took in a deep breath and it shuddered slowly out from his mouth. Then he raised his eyes and looked out the windshield. “We should go, Flavio,” he said. “This fire is getting too big.”
The brush and thin saplings behind the old chicken coop were bowed and moving from the heat of the fire. Smoke was coming from the grass that ran from the edge of the alfalfa field up to the house. My sister’s house is going to burn, Flavio thought, and her paintings that she cared so much about, and the Ladies on the sofa, and the bed where my grandparents slept.
“My whole family has come from this house,” he said softly. “My father was born here.” The front door moved a little in the wind, and for a second, Flavio thought he saw a figure standing just inside the doorway. He leaned forward and wiped at his eyes, and then whatever it was he had seen was gone.
“Flavio,” Felix said.
“I know,” Flavio answered, and after one last look, he pushed open the door to his truck. He walked around the front of the pickup and, above him, he could hear the dry, brittle sound of leaves blown in the wind. He pulled open Felix’s door, and the two men looked at each other.
“This has been a bad day, Flavio,” Felix said. His face was gray, and saliva had dried white at the corners of his mouth.
“Yes,” Flavio said. He could see that Felix’s head had stopped trembling and that his hands were still. For some reason, this worried him more than anything. “Venga, Felix,” he said. “We’ll take a little walk and find someone to give us a ride.”
“Where, Flavio?”
“I don’t know,” he said and almost smiled. “Let’s go see.”
“My legs have cramps in them, Flavio,” Felix said. “I don’t want to walk anymore. We should take your truck.”
“We’ve lost the keys, Felix,” Flavio said. “Come, I’ll help you. The highway is not so far.” He reached in the cab and took Felix’s hand.
Felix squeezed hard on Flavio’s fingers and then he pulled Flavio’s hand to his chest and held it there. “We never saw her again, did we, Flavio?” Felix asked him. His eyes were damp and bloodshot and the scratches on his face were red and crusted. His clothes were filthy and one elbow, white and all bone, stuck out where his shirt had been torn.
Flavio stood leaning into the truck and holding on to Felix’s hand. He thought that his old friend looked frightened and lost and far too small inside the cab. “Felix,” he said softly.
Felix moved his eyes away and looked past Flavio. “We thought she was dead,” he said, “and we never went back there again, did we, Flavio?”
For a moment, Flavio didn’t speak, and then he closed his eyes and shook his head. “No,” he breathed out. “We never went there again.”
FLAVIO HAD JERKED AWAKE and in his mouth was the heavy taste of kerosene. His eyes were burning from the smoke in the room. Across from him, he could see that Felix was sitting up and that he was crying softly. His head was bent and, every so often, he called out Flavio’s name. Guadalupe still sat on the bed beside him, but her head was now resting facedown on her knees. Her hair spilled white down her legs, and her hands were folded beneath her. She was so still that Flavio thought she was dead. Just then, the flame in the lantern spit and died out, and the room fell into darkness. For a few seconds, there was not a sound. Then Felix began to wail out Flavio’s name, and the small room filled with the noise of two boys crying.
Later, Flavio would remember vividly how he woke in the room where Emilio García’s bones were buried in the wall and where Guadalupe had once played while her great-grandmother, Percides, lay dying. Then, he would remember running wildly into the kitchen with Felix howling behind him and holding tightly on to the back of his shirt with both his hands. But how he and Felix had managed to find their way through the maze of rooms in the García house, neither one of them ever remembered.
For weeks after that day, Flavio would have vague dreams of too much darkness, and in it would be the faint outline of things that had been left alone for a hundred years: tall, thin trasteros cloaked with dusty cloths and crooked benches that squatted low to the ground and small painted cradles that rocked unevenly on the adobe floors. He would dream of Felix crying without stopping, and he would hear the frantic scraping of his own footsteps that sounded to him as if all the rooms he was passing through were fu
ll of people he couldn’t see. Flavio would dream fitfully of these things, and when he awoke they would stay with him for a little while until he wandered outside. There, like mist, they would be burned away by the sun or blown off by the wind. As autumn passed into winter that year, Flavio’s dreams eventually began to fade. By the time the first heavy snow fell on the village in November, they had left him altogether without his even knowing it.
When Flavio and Felix came running out of the García house, their clothes reeked of kerosene and their hands and faces were smeared with soot and dust, and cobwebs clung to their clothes. The sun had set and the mountains were soft and still. The sky hung low above them and was streaked red. The air was cool and clean on their skin, and it tasted of woodsmoke and of apples that had lain on the ground for too long. At the top of the hill, Rosa was standing on the edge of the road. She was wearing a black dress and around her head was a shawl. When she saw the boys come from the house, she waved her arm and called their names. As they ran toward her, she took a few steps down the hill, and then she stopped and stooped down.
“Mi hijos,” she said, and she hugged them both. “There’s nothing to cry about now. You are safe with me.” Then she pushed them both away from her gently and looked at them. “Look how dirty you two are,” she said. “What will your mother think, Felix?” She wiped at their faces with the edge of her shawl and the cloth came away black.
“We were lost, Grandmother,” Flavio said, and he almost began to cry again. “Why did you send us there?”
“Hush, hijo,” Rosa said and touched the side of his face. “You were never lost. You just went somewhere for a little while and now you’re back with me.”
“I don’t want to take her any more beans,” Felix said. “I think she has enough beans.” Then he glanced quickly over his shoulder as if he thought the house might be coming up the hill after him.
Rosa smiled and put her hand on Felix’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, Felix,” she said. “You don’t have to go there ever again.”
“She looked like she was dead, Grandmother,” Flavio said, and again he saw Guadalupe lying with her head facedown in her lap and not even a strand of her hair was moving. “She got all quiet, Grandmother, and then the light burned out.”
“Eee,” Felix said loudly and a shiver shook his body. “Don’t talk about that. I think she was just tired and needed a little rest.”
For a brief second, a shadow passed over Rosa’s face and her features tightened. She took in a long, slow breath, and when she breathed it out, she smiled. “No, hijo,” she said. “Guadalupe García is not dead. I would know it if she were. She is old and has had a hard life, and all that she told you was difficult for her. Later, I will ask your grandfather to go to her house and look in on her. Then we can leave her alone by herself.”
“You should have been me, Flavio,” Felix said, “when that light went out. I had to sit next to her and behind me Emilio’s dead bones were sticking out of the wall, and I could hear that stupid santo moving around like she wanted to jump on my head.” Felix’s face was smeared black, and under his eyes were white swathes of skin from his crying. His hands were shaking a little and a thin line of clear mucus ran from one nostril.
“Santos don’t jump,” Flavio said.
“Maybe not all santos,” Felix said. “Besides, who knows what they do when the lights go out. I tell you, when that light went out, I almost screamed like a little baby.”
“You cried like one,” Flavio said.
Felix’s lower lip suddenly began to tremble, and he bit on it with his teeth. “How do you know?” he said. “I saw you. You were sleeping. I only cried because the story was so sad. I didn’t cry because I was scared. I was never scared.”
“Quiet, hijos,” Rosa said, and she rose slowly to her feet. She straightened her dress and pulled the shawl tight around her head. “Come,” she said. “Your grandfather will be wondering where we’ve gone to. I have made a platter of enchiladas for supper and fresh tamales and sopapillas. Maybe you can eat with us, Felix, and then we will walk you home.” She looked down for a moment at the two boys, and then she turned and began walking back up the hill.
At the edge of the road, Rosa paused and looked out over the valley. There was not a breeze blowing, and the village looked quiet and empty and still. From far off came the sound of a cow, and its low moaning seemed to hang in the air below them. Felix stood close beside her, so close that the folds of her dress touched the side of his face lightly. He was staring down at the ground and moving a small stone about with his foot. Flavio stood a few feet away and, like his grandmother, stared out over the valley.
He could see the García house with its rooms that sprawled everywhere. The door was open and the small windows were dark. Twisted sagebrush grew all about the place. Not far down the hill was the church. The walls were thick and heavy, and all four corners were buttressed as if it might fall. The roof was pitched and sagged in places from years of snow loads, and it was layered with old wood shingles. Behind the building, Flavio could see the high branches of the cottonwood tree. As he watched, a small flock of sparrows flew into it and disappeared among the leaves. Flavio’s mouth hung half open, and his breath came slow and easy. The village that he had always known had become a place where young boys were hung from trees and where santos were carved in blizzards and painted in blood and where old men could become lost and never be found again.
He looked up at Rosa. “Why did you send us there, Grandmother?” he asked again.
“From the very beginning there has been a sadness in this place that few chose to even see,” Rosa said softly. “It runs through the creeks and lies in the dirt and it comes with the wind in the dead of winter. We have lived with it so long that we don’t know any different. I have a debt to pay both of my families, and someday I will ask both you boys to do a little something for me.”
Felix raised his head and looked up at Rosa. “I don’t like to do some things,” he said. “Flavio is older than me. I think Flavio could do it by himself. Or maybe Delfino could help him.”
“It’s just a little thing, Felix,” Rosa said and she smiled. “You are such a good friend to mi hijo, and it won’t be for a very long time.”
“When I’m nine?”
“Longer,” Rosa said. “So long you won’t even remember.”
…
NICK OLIVER WAS DRIVING NORTH up the highway when he caught a flash of light in his rearview mirror and heard the loud sound of an explosion. He cursed and hunched his shoulders. In the middle of the road, a half mile behind him, was a gigantic ball of black fire. It curled and twisted up into the air and then it blew out in a cloud of smoke.
“That was a propane tank,” he said. “Right in the middle of town.” He looked over at Ambrosio.
Ambrosio was staring dully out the windshield. His eyes were glazed and a thin thread of saliva ran from his open mouth. He could see black clouds rolling above the valley, and on the highway, ash was sneaking across the pavement. A wave of dizziness rose in his head, and for a second, everything he saw began to waver. A long sigh came from his mouth as he watched the village move about him in swirls of smoke.
“Guadalupe is dancing in the snow,” he said, then he looked over at Oliver and spoke the words again in English.
“There is no snow, amigo,” Oliver said. “There’s only fire. Maybe you should sleep a little. This has been a bad day for everyone.”
“In Mexico,” Ambrosio said, “there is never cold and when it rains, the water is warm and forgiving.” He looked down at his hands and moved one of his fingers, and then he vaguely remembered breaking all the windows at the café. In his mind, he saw snow and dirt blow in on the linoleum floors that he had always kept so clean. He began to cry again, and then he began to sing a song about a man whose heart was broken from loss. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back, and as he sang, he wondered where he was and how long it would take to get wherever he was going.
; Oliver looked back at the road and then glanced again in his rearview mirror. All he could see now was an empty stretch of road behind him and a sky churned black with smoke. Off to his left, the fire was already a good mile ahead of him and beginning to turn back on itself. He could no longer see the foothills, and flames were washing across the fields. Out the side window he could see that down in the valley things were even worse.
There was nothing left of Flavio’s house but charred walls. The apple trees around it were black and skeletal and smoking. The fire that had been started there had spread in all directions, and Oliver could see houses and trailers on fire. Flames were sweeping across fields of grass. A few head of cattle were climbing the slope toward the road, their mouths foaming, their eyes wild. They screamed and bit at each other as they ran. The mountains in the east looked as if a storm were raging there, and even with so much fire all about, the day was turning dark. Oliver’s eyes were running with water and burning. It suddenly occurred to him that if he wasn’t careful, he could get stuck in this village and never get out.
Just up the road was the village office. Lucero’s beat-up vehicle pulled out from behind it and then slowed to a stop. Oliver hit his brakes, swung off the highway, and pulled up alongside. In the front seat with Lucero were two of his children. They were both young boys, and they looked small and skinny sitting beside their father. They didn’t even raise their eyes when Oliver stopped. But he could see that both their faces were puffy and blotched red from crying.
For a moment, neither man said a word. Lucero’s arm was hanging loose out the window, and the flat of his hand was slapping gently against the door. “I’m leaving,” he said finally. His shirt was soaked through with sweat, and the creases in his face were lined with soot and dirt. His eyes were bloodshot and the skin beneath them was sagging and discolored.
“I’ve got a problem here,” Oliver said. He pulled out a cigarette and lit it.
A Santo in the Image of Cristóbal García Page 23