by Kage Baker
“It figures.”
“Quite a standard pathology, actually,” said Imarte, stirring the pot busily and frowning as she considered the seasoning. “And of course it broke Porfirio’s heart. He seems to have loved the child and assumed the role of father in his life. He taught the boy to ride, he remembered his birthday with presents, he read to him from Cervantes. This, however, only brought about greater feelings of resentment and alienation from the actual father, and in time precipitated the final crisis. The tragedy occurred on one of their colorful fiesta days, the one with all the skeletons.”
“The Day of the Dead.”
“The family had made some attempt to celebrate, with decorations and candy for the little boy. The father, driven by his usual compulsion on festive occasions, began to drink early in the afternoon. Once again he was unable to deal with his rage, and by twilight he was fairly violent. The incident with the child’s hand was apparently provoked when the child hid from his father behind a chair.”
“I’m glad Porfirio shot the son of a bitch.”
“Oh, he didn’t shoot him in retaliation for the boy,” Imarte said, sorting through the little cans of spices she’d set out. She found one she liked and dealt out a few dashes into the stew. “The wife was able to emerge from her passive role long enough to take the liquor bottle from her husband. He turned on her, accusing her of betrayal. He said he’d kill all three of them, then thrust the muzzle of his pistol in her mouth. At this point Porfirio and the brothers, who had just ridden up, intervened. As they burst through the door, the husband turned and shot at them. He wounded one of the brothers mortally. That was when Porfirio drew his own gun and shot the husband dead.”
I drew my shawl over my head.
“As is usual in these cases, the woman blamed everyone but her abuser. She threw herself on her husband’s body, shrieking incoherent lamentations and protestations of eternal love. The surviving brothers found Porfirio a horse and helped him to escape. The Company was obliging about stationing him as far away as possible. That was ten years ago. Last night, the young man made his attempt on Porfirio’s life.”
“He can’t blame Porfirio for what happened!”
“You think not?” She gave me a sadly tolerant smile. “But you yourself are a product of Hispanic culture, you ought to understand. These male-dominated societies all follow the same code of honor. Porfirio killed the father, therefore the son must kill Porfirio. It’s de-pressingly simple.”
The immortal uncle was accustomed to solving the problems of this classic dysfunctional family, but he hadn’t quite brought it off this time, had he? Poor man. Briefly I thanked God that my blood were strangers to me, if indeed the line hadn’t died out.
“How do we explain to this kid that he can’t finish his vendetta, because his target’s an immortal?” I asked. Imarte shrugged gracefully.
Just then Porfirio emerged from the inn, carrying a blanket and a bag, and went straight to the stable without a word. A few minutes later, he came out, leading a saddled horse, and approached us. His face was blank, curtains drawn and shutters closed.
“I’m taking off,” he said. “I’ll be camping up the pass, if you need me. What you’re going to tell Tomas is, I was just the blacksmith here, and you didn’t know I was wanted for murder in Durango or anything else about my past. Tell him Einar runs the place, and when Einar found out what happened, he went for the sheriff in Los Angeles, but I ran away before I could be arrested. You have no idea where I’ve gone. Help him get well again and then put him on a stagecoach and send him back to Durango. Okay? I’ll send you my location coordinates so you can let me know how he’s doing.”
“You want us to bring you supplies?” I asked. “Food, aguardiente, anything?”
He just shook his head and swung up into the saddle. We watched him urge his horse to a swift canter, and away he went down the canyon.
Imarte sighed deeply. “The grim history unfolds,” she intoned. “How thoroughly characteristic of the American West, yet analogous to clan feuds in Corsica or Scotland. How unfortunate, but how fascinating, don’t you think?”
“Unfortunate,” I replied.
Tomas was out of danger pretty quickly, with no infections to complicate things; no fever, no ravings, only a pale polite boy with enormous dark eyes asking us if we knew where the blacksmith went. We told him what Porfirio told us to tell him, and he accepted that quietly enough, and was unconscious again. His body needed the sleep. Young mortals heal almost as fast as we do.
After a few days he was able to ask Einar to go recover his trunk, which he’d hidden in a bush in Encino after leaving the stagecoach at Garnier’s. It contained two other suits of clothes, a shaving kit, and several small personal items, including a daguerreotype of a woman and child. His mother, no doubt, because the child standing stiffly beside her chair was certainly Tomas. He had a wistful little smile for the camera. She was dressed in black, and her eyes were black too, cold and angry. Was there maybe a resemblance to Porfirio in the shape of her face, the chill in her eyes?
Tomas asked for his gun back. We checked with Porfirio, who was hiding out in a high narrow canyon on Mount Hollywood; he sighed and then transmitted his okay to give it back to the boy, cleaned and loaded. This was Los Angeles, after all. We hung his gun belt over the bedpost. He woke up long enough to see it there and gave us his little grateful smile, just like the child in the picture. Then he slept again.
So there was this kid, in Porfirio’s room, with his luggage and his weapon and his mystery. Imarte hovered over Tomas, attending to the tiniest details of nursing with perfection, hoping he’d murmur some part of his story in a delirium or gasp confidences into her motherly bosom. He didn’t. He barely spoke at all, to any of us, and when he did finally speak, it was to Juan Bautista.
I was sitting by the bed, reading a back issue of La Estrella and waiting for Imarte to take her turn at vigil, when Juan Bautista entered the room. Tomas opened his eyes at the noise, and then opened them wider. It’s not every day you see silver-haired Indian kids with condors perched on their heads.
“That guy came and wanted to talk to Imarte again, so I said I’d take over for you,” Juan Bautista told me in Cinema Standard.
“Fine,” I said, and rose from the chair. I was starving. As Juan Bautista sat down and I left the room, I heard Tomas asking shakily, in Spanish:
“Why do you have a bird standing on your head?”
I fixed myself a plate of Imarte’s goat stew, that’s how hungry I was, and sat down with my back against the wall to eat it. As I ate, I became aware that there was a conversation in Spanish going on in the room on the other side of the wall. Sharpening my reception, I was able to pick it up.
“ . . .and I feed her fish when I can get them,” Juan Bautista was saying. “Mostly sardines, you know, in those little square cans with the funny openers?”
“That’s really neat,” I heard Tomas reply.
“Yeah. I thought about getting her some canned oysters, but they’re way expensive.”
“I had some oysters in Santa Fe one time. I didn’t think much of them. What do you feed the other ones?”
“Just seeds and stuff. You know. Except for the little owls—I catch crickets for them. Watch out. He’s telling you he needs to go to the bathroom. Here, give him back a minute. Good boy! See, I’ve trained him to let me know. Now you can hold him again.”
“He’s, like, the biggest parrot in the world or something,” Tomas said, giggling weakly. “Boy, I’d love to have one of these guys to wear on my shoulder when I walk around the ranch. Condors don’t talk, huh?”
“No. Only the Psittacidae, Corvidae, and Sturnidae talk. The Sturnidae are just mimics, though, they don’t understand speech like parrots.”
“We used to have a parrot when I was a kid.” Tomas’s voice was a little sad. “My father bought him for my mother. He was . . . a real man, my father.”
“And he was killed by that blacksmith who worke
d here?” Juan Bautista said, cautiously. I frowned at my empty plate and wondered if he was going to let slip any details he shouldn’t know.
“The same man who shot me.”
“You came looking for him?” Juan Bautista asked.
“I didn’t think I’d find him, I didn’t think he would still be alive, not the kind of guy he was. I thought . . . if I could just find his grave or something, I could spit on it and go home and tell my mother I’d done that, at least. I was going up to San Francisco to look for the grave, because I’d heard they had a lot of criminals up there. But then the stagecoach stopped here, and there he was, and I knew I had to kill him. For my father.”
“You loved your father?”
“I was only a kid when that son of a bitch killed him, but I remember we used to do stuff. He taught me how to ride. His favorite book was Don Quixote, and he used to read to me from it, and one year for my birthday, you know what he did? He made me a whole set of wooden figures from the book, he carved them himself. There was a Don Quixote with these long jointed legs, you could sit him on Rocinante or you could make him dance or turn somersaults. He had a lance and shield and helmet. There was a windmill with vanes that really turned, and there was a giant’s face carved on it. There was a Sancho too, but he didn’t do anything, he just sat on his mule. They were the best toys My father loved me better than anybody else ever did.” Tomas’s voice grew a little muffled.
“But . . . what happened to your fingers?” asked Juan Bautista, bewildered. He didn’t get it.
“That was the other guy, the one who murdered my father. I don’t remember what happened, I was too little, but my mother said he’d been drinking. He was this lowlife friend of my uncles’. They used to work on our ranch, and they brought this friend of theirs. He was our majordomo for a while. But he was a drunk, always getting into trouble. I remember he’d yell and break things, and I’d be scared. I don’t know why my mother let him yell at her that way, she was so stupid. Wouldn’t you think she’d just have told my father? He wouldn’t have let anybody talk to his woman that way, if he’d known. But I guess he never found out about it, until that night.”
Had the mother twisted the story for her son? Or had she simply never answered his questions? What was wrong with the mortal woman, anyway?
“You want some of this tea?” Juan Bautista’s voice was a little shaky. “It’s good for you.”
“Thanks.” There was a pause as Tomas drank, and then he continued:
“Sometimes I can remember a little. We were having a party. I was scared. I remember the yelling. There was a fight. That guy was drunk, and he hurt my hand and killed my father and one of my uncles when they came in. He ran away, and nobody ever caught him.
“After the funeral, my mother sent the rest of her brothers away, because it was their fault that guy came to the ranch. She said she’d rather have me be the man of the family than any of them. Sometimes, I wish she hadn’t done that, because it’s hard running the ranch without help. She’s still angry after all these years.”
Poor boy. What a weight on his shoulders.
“Still angry?” asked Juan Bautista.
“Oh, yeah. She told me I had to find that guy as soon as I was old enough and avenge my father’s murder.”
“Well . . .” I could hear Juan Bautista shifting around uncomfortably. “You know what? You could go back and tell her you got him. He shot you, but you shot him first, see? And I’d be a witness for you. We could write a letter. You know, like a deposition? Everybody here would sign it, telling her how you killed him. Then you could go home with proof, and it would be all over.”
“I can’t lie to her,” Tomas said. “She always knows. . . . Anyhow, I don’t want to go home until I’ve killed him. It wasn’t until I saw his face that afternoon that I remembered how scary it used to be, how my mother cried. I have to kill him for her, but I also have to kill him for me, for taking away my father. I hadn’t even remembered how much my father loved me until I saw that man.”
“But he almost got you,” Juan Bautista said. “He’s a real good shot, and now he knows you’re after him. You’ll get killed next time.”
“Maybe I’ll kill him instead.” Tomas didn’t sound certain. “Or he’ll kill me, and then I’ll be in Paradise with my father. I don’t care which. What would you do, if you were me?”
“I don’t know,” Juan Bautista said. “I’m an orphan.” He sounded as though he was grateful for that. “But I wouldn’t want to die for no reason. I mean . . . what if your mother got some of the details wrong?”
“She never gets details wrong.”
“Have you asked your uncles about what happened?”
“How could I?” Tomas sounded tired. “She sent them away, and they never came back. I don’t know where they went or if they’re even still alive.”
“You need to sleep some more,” Juan Bautista said. “Your blood pressure’s too low.” I winced; this was the kind of cover-blowing remark young operatives make. He might as well tell the mortal boy he could scan him. “You can’t do anything anyway until you get well. So you should rest and drink a lot of tea, okay?”
“Okay,” said Tomas in a fading voice.
He rested and drank a lot of tea, and the color began to come back into his face as the days passed. Soon he was able to get out of bed and totter around the room, and then to put on his clothes and sit outside in the chilly November sunlight.
Tomas was a nice boy. He was quiet and courteous, for a seventeen-year-old; he didn’t brag or try to impress us with how tough he was. He spoke respectfully to ladies and deferred to Einar and Oscar. He was really taken with Juan Bautista’s aviary, and the two of them spent hours in there cleaning the cages and talking about birds. And wasn’t he a good son? Ready to roam the face of the earth to deliver blazing death to a stranger, or suffer blazing death himself, for his mother’s sake.
“What are we going to do?” said Juan Bautista, late one evening when Tomas was safely asleep in Porfirio’s bed. “I never knew mortals were crazy like this. They look so normal. How are we going to stop him from going off to hunt for Porfirio, when he’s better?”
You can’t, transmitted Porfirio from the mountain. He sounded glum. He won’t go home looking like a fool or a coward. If I could take my head off and send it home with him as a trophy, I’d do it.
“Why not simply let the lad continue with his search indefinitely?” said Oscar. “It doesn’t sound to me as though his home is a terribly pleasant place. Perhaps he’s better off wandering the world and having adventures. Certainly he won’t expect you to come back here. We might see him on his way, and then you could come out of hiding.”
What kind of adventures is he likely to have, poking his nose into every den of thieves he comes across, looking for me? Because that’s what he’ll do, you know that, and the next time he gets shot, I won’t be there to hook him up to a life-support system.
“He’s stubborn,” Iniarte said. “I’ve done my best to explain to him how this kind of primitive revenge ritual invariably results in the destruction of all parties. Regrettably, he comes from a society where a greater value is placed on abstract cultural values than individual human life. One is reminded of the Japanese custom of—”
“I don’t suppose there’s any way you could tell him the truth?” I asked Porfirio. “That his memories are all screwed up, that his father was the real bastard and you were the good guy?”
Can you think of any way I could get him to listen to me? transmitted Porfirio bitterly. And even if I could, what then? He thinks he had a father who loved him and died in his mother’s defense. Her version of the story’s a lot more palatable, isn’t it? What happens when the pretty paper is stripped off my ugly present of truth? His mother becomes a liar, at the very least.
“She sounds like a crazy bitch anyway. Why should she hate you?” I said.
I killed the man she loved. She would have forgiven him anything, but she’ll never f
orgive me. And I shouldn’t be forgiven! I could have prevented this. If I’d been quicker, I might have stopped the bullet that killed Bartolo. I might have disabled Jaime without killing him. I might have been there for the boy all these years. God in heaven, see what she’s done. The family is broken, scattered, when I’d fought so hard to keep them together where I could look out for them. How will I ever find Juan and Agustin again? Are they even alive? And she, look at what she’s become, look at what she’s done to that boy. If I had only stayed. . .
“You couldn’t have, man,” Einar said. “You know that. You belong to the Company. First time Dr. Zeus had a job for you somewhere else, you’d have had to go. And even if you’d stuck around, do you think you could have kept on micromanaging their lives forever? We may be immortals, but we can’t control mortal destinies. We can help them when they want help, but that’s it. When they want to destroy themselves, not even God can stop them.”
“That is so true,” I said, with all my weary heart. “It’s that lousy rotten free will of theirs. All we do is run around cleaning up after it.”
“We’re the everlasting janitors in the Big Bathroom,” Einar agreed. “Our only consolation is knowing how much worse things would be if we weren’t part of the equation. Anyway, kids: here’s an idea, culled from my centuries of wisdom and cinema expertise: We’ve all seen films where a guy fakes his own murder.”
“I can think of several,” Imarte said. And then, “Oh.”
Let him shoot me?
“We’ll load his gun with blanks and fix you up ahead of time with a full suit of charges and stage-blood bags. He’ll think he’s blown you away and go home with the revenge thing all finished.” Einar jumped up in his excitement and began to pace. “Six Cawelti squibs, a sheet of body armor, some red dye and corn syrup—man, we can make you look like you had breakfast at the OK Corral!”
IT TOOK NO MORE THAN a week to prepare, during which time Tomas was getting stronger. Against Imarte’s entreaties, he set up a target on a tree and practiced shooting at it. Juan Bautista tried to talk him into going home, but there was no arguing with the boy: as soon as he was well enough, he planned to take the stagecoach out to Calabasas, famed locally for its bandit population, to see if Porfirio had gone there to hide from justice. On the day he was finally strong enough to ride, however, Einar came riding up from the bottom of the canyon at a dusty gallop.