by Jory Sherman
“Whoa, that’s enough,” Martin said.
Anson took the iron off the calf and felt his stomach roil with a queasy sensation. “Ah,” he said.
“Take a look at it, son. Pretty clean.”
Anson forced himself to look at the fresh brand—a small capital letter B inside a tiny box. The flesh was whitish pink and the stench of burning hair still floated in the air.
“Is it good?” Anson asked.
“Perfect,” Martin replied. He stood up and loosened his hold on the calf’s neck. He motioned to one of the vaqueros to let the animal out of the corral. “I’ll get us another one. Put that iron back on the coals and get ready to grab another one.”
“Mmmmff,” Anson said, slightly out of breath.
Martin let Anson brand three more calves, then called another two vaqueros into the corral. Soon the air was filled with smoke and the aroma of burning hair and flesh. They had half a dozen calves left to brand when Anson heard a rider coming fast from the direction of La Loma.
“Somebody’s coming, Daddy,” Anson said.
“I see him. Looks like old Paco Serra.” Paco was in his forties, but looked to be at least eighty years old He took care of the goats and helped Caroline with the garden, made sure the water troughs were clean and filled at the ranch headquarters. He rode a moth-eaten horse he called Carnicero because the animal had once torn a coyote to bits with its hooves and mashed most of it into the ground.
“Must be trouble,” Martin said.
“He’s riding pretty fast, Daddy.”
“Yeah. Come on, let’s go see what he has to say. Boys, you finish up the branding.”
The vaqueros all assented in Spanish as Martin and Anson climbed out of the corral.
Paco was nearing them as the Barons mounted up and rode out to meet him. Paco reined in Carnicero and sat puffing like a worn-out bellows. His eyebrows were streaked with gray, as were his sideburns. He wore a battered straw hat full of holes and frayed around the brim.
“What passes?” Martin asked in Spanish.
“Aire,”Paco gasped.
“Get your breath and then tell me why you’re wearing out that horse.”
“It is the woman, your wife, patrón. She is very bad, much sick, I think. You come quick. Juanito says you come quick.”
“What’s the matter with her?” Martin asked. The color drained from Anson’s face until it looked covered with paste.
“Está enferma con el niño, creo.”
“Jesus,” Martin breathed. “Paco, you rest up, then go on back to the rancho. Anson and I will go there pronto.”
Paco was too winded to speak anymore, so he lifted a hand and mouthed a silent farewell.
“Come on, Anson, let’s go.”
“But, Daddy, don’t you want to—”
“No. I may need you. The boys will bring back our gear.”
It struck Anson then how worried his father was. He understood what Paco had said. It had something to do with the baby his mother was carrying in her belly. But Paco didn’t know what was wrong or how bad it was. Still, Juanito wouldn’t have sent the old man unless there was something very wrong with his mother.
Father and son struck out across the grassy plain. Martin did not set a killing pace, but kept his horse moving. When the animal began to breathe hard, he slowed to a walk. The land seemed strange to Anson, as if he had never seen it before. He felt as if he and his father were riding through an unknown country, across a deserted plain where no living thing grew, where buzzards waited just out of sight, perched on skeletal trees that were invisible except in his mind. He swallowed and knew his throat was bone dry.
“Daddy, what do you think’s wrong with Mother?”
“I don’t know, son. Must be pretty sick, I guess.”
“I hope she doesn’t die.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I mean, I hope it’s not real serious.”
“Serious enough, I reckon.”
“Well, I hope the baby’s all right.”
“Why shouldn’t it be? Your mother’s healthy. I’m healthy.”
“I don’t know. It’s just that she’s been awful sick a lot of the time.”
“I know, dammit.”
Anson wondered if his father was taking out his anger at him again. Whenever there was trouble, like when the storm came and he couldn’t make the drive to New Orleans, it seemed as if his father had taken his anger out on him. Anson said no more. He kept silent as they rode the long miles to La Loma. It seemed to him that his father was more angry than worried.
They left the grassy pastures of La Plata and rode across a somber and desolate stretch of land that had been ravaged by the flash floods. The rotting carcasses of longhorn cattle lay strewn along a gully floor and the scent assailed their nostrils and made them wince with the smell of death. Rattlesnakes buzzed as they passed, and as the sun went down, the air whistled with the dark flights of bullbats on the prowl, their shapes stark against the empty, half-lit sky.
They rode on the edge of sunset, their shadows drawn long and grotesque toward the darkening east. Anson felt as if they were entering some dreamscape of the mind, floating through death’s ageless caverns of darkness into an eternal underworld of horror. He was terribly worried about his mother and his sense of dread grew until it turned the landscape into a nightmare where no thoughts could penetrate, no cry could be heard.
It was after dark when the Barons reached the ranch house. Lamps blazed in every window There was a buggy outside, and horses tied to the hitchrail, one of which belonged to Ken Richman. Martin slid off his horse and hit the ground running. One of the vaqueros stood on the porch, a rifle in his hands.
“Is the senora all right?” Martin asked.
“She lives,” replied the vaquero, whom Anson didn’t recognize. Anson tied up their horses and ran into the house. Ken met him just inside the door.
“Whoa there, Anson. Your mother’s in her bedroom. Don’t go in there. She’s pretty sick. I’ve got a barber with her and a couple of Mexican midwives.”
“I want to see her.” Anson tried to push Ken aside.
“You can’t. The baby’s coming, I think. You’ll just be in the way. Like me.”
“Jesus, Ken, I’m scared to death.”
“She’ll be all right. She’s in good hands.”
“What’s wrong with her anyway?”
“Baby was turned wrong or something. Mighty painful, I reckon.”
Just then Juanito came into the room. His face was dark and somber. He saw Anson and shook his head.
“Juanito, is my mother—is she …” Anson broke away from Ken’s grip and ran toward the Argentine.
“I—I do not know, Anson. I think the baby might not come out by himself. He does not try.”
Ken said nothing. He put a hand on Anson’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze.
Anson tried to breathe, but his chest was tight and he felt the walls of the house closing in on him. His palms became slick with a clammy sweat and he felt light-headed, giddy from a sudden hunger that overtook him. Even though this was the house he grew up in, lived in, it seemed suddenly alien, peopled with hostile strangers. He felt almost as if he were living inside a bad dream, a dream of changing faces and shapes, of warped walls and long dark corridors.
“Why can’t I go in there?” Anson asked Juanito.
“Because you would be a distraction, I think.”
“You mean I’d be in the way.”
“Yes. Just wait. Be patient. You cannot change things that are to be. Not these things.”
“Maybe I could help,” Anson said weakly. He felt as if no one was listening to the screams he could hear inside himself. Shadows raced across the landscape of his mind, like hooded figures with only shadows for eyes that could not hear him, would not listen to his pleading cries.
Ken sighed. “It’s in God’s hands.”
Juanito frowned, but said nothing.
Anson strained to hear what w
as going on in the back bedroom, but he heard only whispers, snatches of words, fragments of conversation. And then he heard his mother scream and felt his blood run cold. The scream tore through his mind like a bullwhip and cracked the air wide open as it snapped. He shuddered with the sound of it.
“Ken, for God’s sake,” Anson said. “What are they doing to her?”
“Kid, the baby’s coming. It hurts.”
Juanito started for the front door.
“Where are you going?” Anson asked.
“I am going to my house. I do not want to hear your mother cry out in pain.”
“That’s not the reason. You think she’s dying.” Anson’s tone was accusatory.
“No. I have heard her pain too much. There is nothing I can do. I am going to rest and think.”
Anson knew that Juanito often went off by himself to think. Once Juanito had told him that whenever he felt bad, he had to sit in silence and listen to his heart. “That is where the spirit lives,” he’d told Anson. “That is where my center is, where there is only me and God.”
Anson had brushed it off, not knowing what Juanito meant. But now he thought that Juanito must want to go to his center and be with his God. He hated Juanito for that. His mother needed help and nobody was doing anything.
Juanito walked outside and his footsteps faded on the porch. Anson’s mother screamed again and he forgot about the Argentine. He saw Ken cringe when the scream reached its highest pitch. When the scream trailed off, it was like a lash across Anson’s face. He felt her pain and wanted to be with her, to comfort her, to lay his head on her shoulder and speak soothing words to her.
“I’m going in there,” Anson said. Ken did not try to stop him.
“This might be the time,” Richman muttered under his breath. He drew a sack of makings out of his pocket and walked outside onto the porch. He built a smoke, struck a lucifer on his boot sole and lit the rolled cigarette. He wished he had a drink. Caroline had been in labor a long while and everyone’s nerves were on edge. He wondered how Martin was handling his wife’s pain. A lot of men couldn’t take a woman screaming, but Martin was hard to rattle. That man had a lot of iron in him. Still, a man was helpless at such times and he’d seen some of them crack under the strain of a hard childbirth.
Ken walked out to the railing, straining to hear what was going on in the back bedroom. He heard Caroline moaning loudly, but at least she had stopped screaming. Maybe that was a good sign.
Anson slowed his run when he got to the bedroom. The door was only slightly open and he could see shadows moving around through the lamplight. He heard his mother groaning and sobbing and the sounds tore at him. He pushed the door open and went inside his parents’ bedroom.
The barber, who was also the only surgeon in Baronsville, was holding something wet and bloody in his hand. Two Mexican women were holding down his mother’s arms and another stood at her feet, her back to Anson. His father was staring openmouthed at the object in the barber’s hands, his eyes wide in a fixed stare.
The barber turned the baby over and patted its back.
“Cut the cord,” he told the Mexican woman at Caroline’s feet and she held up a knife. Anson saw the cord then, a knotted, twisted mass of gray matter marbled with blood. It looked like an intestine, he thought. The Mexican woman cut the cord deftly, and it dropped onto her other hand. She pulled on the cut end of the cord and Anson’s mother screamed again.
Anson slipped to one side of the door. No one had noticed him, and he hoped they never would. Everyone in the room seemed frozen for a moment and then the barber turned the baby over. It was black, Anson thought, and smeared with blood. It didn’t move, nor did it make any cry.
The barber kneaded the baby’s chest with his fingers, held it upside down, then right side up. He pressed a hand to its chest and dug in its mouth with his index finger. Anson felt something squeeze his heart. The baby was not breathing, did not respond to the barber’s manipulations.
The barber held the baby up and pressed his ear to the center of its chest. He held it there for a long time, kneading its tiny throat with gentle fingers.
“The baby is dead,” the surgeon said. “I’m sorry.”
Anson’s mother screamed again, and the two women bent down to comfort her. Martin stared at the baby for several seconds, then turned his head to look at his wife.
“Maybe it’s just as well,” he said. “You’ll damn sure pay for your sins, Caroline.”
Caroline sobbed violently and Anson could not look at her. He saw only the terrible look on his father’s face as he turned back away from where his wife lay stricken with grief.
“Give me my baby,” Caroline wailed and the surgeon handed it to her quickly.
Anson’s mother took the child and held it to her breast. Then she began to cry, more softly this time, and rocked the child back and forth as if to give it life.
Martin charged past Anson, scarcely glancing at him, and stormed out the door. Anson hesitated for a moment, then followed his father, keeping a safe distance. He could almost feel his father’s anger as Martin’s boots pounded on the hardwood flooring.
Anson heard the front door slam and he ran across the front room. He waited until he no longer heard his father’s footsteps on the ground, then went out onto the porch. Ken Richman tossed a cigarette over the porch railing.
“Where’d he go?” Anson asked.
“Toward where Juanito lives, I reckon,” Ken replied. “What the hell’s the matter?”
“The baby’s dead,” Anson said.
“Is that why he’s mad?”
“I don’t think so.”
Ken said nothing. He just stood there.
Anson stepped to the edge of the porch. “I’m going after him,” he said.
“You might want to wait until he’s cooled down,” Ken said.
“Why is he going to see Juanito?” Anson asked, and his heart squeezed again. He thought he knew. He had seen the baby. Its skin was very dark, unlike his own, his father’s or his mother’s. He didn’t quite understand it, but he knew it must have something to do with Juanito. That thought filled Anson with a sense of dread. But he could not push himself to think the unthinkable. He only knew that he wanted to know what his father was going to say to Juanito.
The moon rode high on a thin strip of cloud gauze as Anson walked through the darkness to Juanito’s casita. Shadows striped the ground and the wind threaded its way through the barn, whining in the rafters like a child keening for a lost pet. The sound made the hackles on Anson’s neck rise and he shivered involuntarily.
When Anson was halfway to Juanito’s, all sounds faded away except for the wind. There should have been shouting and screaming and arguing. Instead there was a deathly silence.
46
MARTIN WALKED INTO Juanito’s casita without knocking. “Juanito,” he growled.
“You are here,” Juanito called from the main room, just off the small hallway at the entrance. “Do you have news?”
Martin strode into the room, his jaw set tight, his lips pursed in anger. “I want you to pack it up tonight and get out, Juanito.”
“But why?” Juanito’s eyes did not widen, nor did his eyebrows raise.
“Just get out, I said.”
“Is that enough to say between friends?”
“We are no longer friends. I am sorry I ever met you.”
“I do not understand, Martin. Have I done something to offend you?”
“You have violated my trust.”
“How so?”
“You know.”
“No, Martin. I do not know.”
“I want you out of here before the sun comes up. I don’t want you to ever set foot on Baron land again.”
“But is some of this land not mine, too?”
“You send me your address and I will pay you what your share is worth.”
Juanito walked over to Martin and stood close to him. His eyes bored into Martin’s. Martin did not break
his own stare.
“You are very angry, Martin. But I do not know why. Is something wrong with the baby? Is Caroline all right?”
“You sonofabitch, don’t ever mention her name to me again. And the baby is stone dead, the black little bastard. Now get out, or I will come back here with my gun in the morning and shoot you dead.”
Juanito sighed and shrugged. “Very well. If that is what you want. But I wish you would tell me why you are angry with me.”
“You know damned well why.”
“No, I do not.”
“Well, you’ll have a long time to think about it.”
“And so will you, Martin. There are circles of life, my friend. Big circles and small ones. You have just stepped from a big circle into a very small one.”
“I’ve said all I’m going to say, Juanito. Don’t make me kill you.”
With that, Martin turned and left the room. He did not close the door when he left. Juanito went to the door and watched his friend stride across the shadowed stretch of land between their houses. He shook his head sadly.
“Good-bye, my friend,” he said softly. He saw Anson emerge from the shadows and pick up the step with his father. He heard Anson’s voice, but could not make out the words. In a moment, the two disappeared into the darkness. All Juanito could hear was the keening of the wind in the barn and the lowing of cattle in the pasture.
47
MARTIN DID NOT sleep that night, but paced through the house like a caged lion. The barber, a man named Jim Shepherd, and Ken Richman had left hours ago. One of the midwives had taken the baby, promising to bury it, and two had stayed behind to comfort Caroline. Anson, angry that his father had sent Juanito away, had gone to his room. Martin supposed that he was sleeping.
Juanito had left two hours after Martin had told him to leave, taking only his horse and three others, the clothes on his back and some personal possessions. Martin had walked out to his casita and looked around, and a deep sadness began to grow in him.