by Jory Sherman
“Fire me?”
“Without pay.”
“Shit,” Peebo said.
“Shit is right. So, what’s it going to be?”
Peebo grinned, shifted his weight on his feet. “Okay. We camp here. Leave early in the morning.”
“That’s better,” Anson said. “Smarter, too.”
“Well, I don’t know about smart. But, the way I figure it, them Apaches are holed up, too. They can keep a while longer.”
“Good. Now, let’s find a place to bed down before it gets too damned dark.”
Peebo threw a hand up in the air as a sign of surrender and the two men began to seek out a place to lie down. Anson led Peebo well off the trail and they cleared a spot surrounded by mesquite trees. They couldn’t see very far, but Anson knew they couldn’t be seen very easily, either.
“You ever camped out by your lonesome before, Anson?”
“Some.”
“’Thouten bedroll or blankets?”
“I reckon not.”
“You got yourself a knife?” Peebo asked.
“Yeah.”
“Well, dig out them rocks until you got a soft sandy bed. Like this.”
Peebo hollowed out a shallow depression on a perpendicular line to a mesquite tree. Then, he began to cut boughs from trees and laid them in the dug-out pock. Anson followed suit, stacking the limbs up.
“Looks like a grave filled with tree limbs,” Anson said.
“We ain’t finished yet, son.”
Peebo began to stack cut limbs next to the bed he had made and Anson did the same, without argument.
“Them branches’ll give you a springy bed after you get used to it. You put them other cut limbs over you after you lie down. Keep you warm and out of sight.”
“You’ve done this before?” Anson asked.
“Yep. An old-timer taught me the trick. He could build a shelter out of dirt or sticks or old boxes. A man could live in such, he said, until hell froze over.”
“It looks like lying on a bed of nails,” Anson said.
“Crawl in there, and I’ll pile up your limbs. Next time, you can do your own.”
“I hope to hell there ain’t no next time.”
Anson lay down in the burrow and Peebo piled leaves and brush over him. Peebo walked away, leaving Anson alone, staring through the limbs and leaves at the night sky, the stars. He loosened his cap and ball pistol in its holster, moved it so that it did not press against the side of his leg. He knew he would have a better chance with the .44 caliber pistol at close range than he would with the rifle. A feeling of aloneness and claustrophobia swept over Anson until he closed his eyes and calmed his thoughts. His rifle lay at his side, but he wondered if he could bring it to bear if an Apache appeared standing above him. It almost felt as if he had been put in his own grave and he was just waiting for someone to throw dirt over him and bury him for eternity.
He heard Peebo lie down and pull brush over his own bedding ground and then it was silent except for the occasional swick of a leaf or limb as Peebo changed position. Anson opened his eyes again and glimpsed the few stars visible through his canopy of vegetation.
He forgot about Peebo and the horses as he lay suspended in a lassitude between wakefulness and sleep, a state he had nurtured before, when Juanito Salazar had been alive, and told him how to shut out the worries of the world and just let his mind drift off into space where all was calm and peaceful.
Juanito had taught him so many things, but they were not easy to explain. Mostly they were things he kept inside him and did not talk about. That was how it was with Juanito. Anson could talk to him about feelings he did not understand himself and Juanito would know what he was talking about. Not only that, but Juanito knew so much more than Anson ever would. Yet, when he thought about the Argentinian, he would remember the important things.
Juanito had told him that each man and woman had a center, and that when troubles arose, a man could go inside himself, to that deep center and find peace and calm and great knowledge.
Anson let himself sink into that place and his weariness drifted away, along with his wild thoughts as his thoughts became calm, orderly and in his mind, with his eyes closed, he saw bright lights, like stars, but he knew they were not stars. They were what stars had once been, balls of energy blazing silver flames, fires that shot through the heavens and created other shapes and images that his mind could traverse while his body lay on the ground in a state that was like death, but powerfully alive.
It was odd, but Anson could still hear the night sounds, the frogs, the crickets, the sizzling insects, the very rhythm of the stars pulsing in the velvet black sky, and yet he was away from all of that and in his own quiet secret place where no harm could come to him.
There was still turmoil in his mind and Anson knew the reason. Peebo. Peebo didn’t have any quit in him. He sensed that Peebo would track the devil himself into hell if he thought something had been taken from him. But, he also sensed that Peebo didn’t know much about the Apache, did not know how hopeless it was to go on foot after a band of savages on horseback.
“Settle down,” he told himself, and he tried to shut out the images of death that swarmed in his brain like moths to firelight. It seemed he could still hear the cannon’s roar, see it spew flame and iron and tin at charging Apaches, see them twist grotesquely as they fell, see arms and legs flying everywhere, all spewing blood, heads ripped open, chopped off, smashed. And, now the son of Cuchillo had returned to avenge the death of his father, his uncles, his brothers. Culebra, the snake, hissing and gliding in the grass, almost invisible, his face painted with the signs of death, his heart beating with the blood lust of revenge.
Gradually, the cyclone in Anson’s mind began to subside. He opened his eyes once to let the light of stars inside and closed them again, wishing for sleep to wipe away the rush of mortal images. He peered at the afterglow of stars in his mind and felt something inside him float off into space and he saw worlds beyond worlds, clouds of cosmic dust glowing like the pulsing coals in a furnace, caverns illuminated by unseen torches that closed and opened like the petals of a blooming flower, and in that floating, he wafted into a peaceful region of his mind and self and left the things of the earth behind.
He fell into a dreaming sleep that made no sense, but seemed real inside the hypnotic slow-motion imagery of senses buried so deep they could not be summoned once he awakened and behind it all was a threnodic hum that reminded him of water flowing over mossy stones and sandy creek beds in fall.
Sometime later, when there were no more dreams, Anson heard a gruff whisper and felt something grab his shirt and pull him upward and he was fighting brush and flicking away leaves and branches that scratched his cheeks and when he opened his eyes, he saw a terrible apparition in the dark that was wild-eyed and grinning like some jack-o’-lantern skull carved out of alabaster.
“Wake up, Anson,” Peebo husked. “Goddamm it, wake up.”
“Peebo?”
“Shh,” Peebo warned.
“What the hell …”
“They’ve come back. The Apaches. Get your rifle.”
Anson fought off the dregs of sleep that weighted his brain and fogged it to dullness and Peebo’s words gradually crept into his consciousness.
“Apaches?” Anson muttered.
“You’re goddamned right, son. Apaches. I got one of ’em and there’s more out there. Get your rifle. Quick.”
As Anson shook off the last wisps of the mists that smothered his thoughts, he bent down to retrieve his rifle from the hollow that had been his bed.
Then, he heard a terrible sound close by and the pad of running feet and before he could touch the stock of the flintlock, he saw, out of the corner of his eye, a dark shape hurtling toward him and he felt the air rush out of his chest and saw the stars spin in the sky like silver whirligigs blowing in a dark soundless wind.
18
THE BLIND BOY listened to the sunrise. He stood in front of t
he window and felt the coolness of the soil on his face as the sun pulled the heat out of the ground. He heard the crow of the rooster, the soft clucks of the hens in the henhouse. He heard the whippoorwill go silent and the chirp of the wrens, the trill of the meadowlark.
He always tried to put shapes to the sounds, make pictures of what he heard and smelled. Then, he would ask Esperanza questions, and she would tell him how a thing looked. But, he sometimes didn’t tell her what he saw in his mind, not only because he wanted to keep it secret, but because sometimes it was hard to explain to her what he saw. And, he knew that she could not tell him what colors looked like, but he knew he could tell her the shape of blue and yellow, the way purple looked and what red tasted and looked like.
He knew it was difficult for Esperanza to explain the color of rain, the shape of a roadrunner, the difference between white and black. But, she was good about it, and she tried. She would let him touch a rabbit’s fur, feel its dead eyes, its ears and rub its soft belly and she would tell him the shades of color in a sunset, the shapes of clouds, the noises of different things.
So, he had learned a lot from Esperanza, but he wanted to know more. He had touched her face hundreds of times and wondered if her eyes looked like the eyes of a rabbit or a quail, and she would try and tell him the differences. He knew what water tasted like, and the smell of an apple or a persimmon, but he could not see the color blue in his mind, nor could he see anger on his mother’s face, nor did he know exactly what a smile or a frown looked like, other than the mouth was shaped differently and Esperanza would take his hand and let him draw in the dirt, then retrace the curvature of what he had drawn.
He knew something about his mother, Caroline, but he had never touched the face of don Martin and nobody would let him get close to the man. He could feel his anger, could feel don Martin’s eyes on him, but he could not read his face and did not know if he was smiling or frowning. Esperanza had made him freeze his own face and touch his mouth and teeth so that he knew more than drawing smiles and frowns in the dirt, but he could not freeze another’s face so that he could see if his or her countenances were like his own.
Some things that Esperanza could not describe to him were very real and visible. Lazaro could see words in his mind, and they all had shapes and colors to go with their sounds. He could see fat words, thin words, words that were liquid or solid, blue or red or white or green. While he did not know if the names he put to the colors were right, he knew that they were colors because he could see them in his mind. Grass was a green word, and sky was a blue word. Thin was a very slender and white word, while fat was round and red and had a belly like the one Esperanza said belonged to Francisco Garcia, one of the Box B hands. Water was a liquid word and flashed silvery in his mind, while dry was a brown word like a dead thrush, and thirst was reddish and razor sharp like a knife with blood on it.
So, in some ways, Lazaro created his own world and while he felt safe and secure in that world when he was alone, he liked for Esperanza to read to him. When she read from a book, he could see all the words dancing, flying, walking, running, tumbling, falling, rising, staggering, hissing, laughing, giggling, spraying, spouting, leaking, breaking, stumbling, soaring, diving, swimming, jumping as they poured from her lips and into his ear like sweet honey or warm milk.
During the night he had heard his mother arguing with the man who lived there, her husband, Esperanza said he was, and then he had heard voices outside and the creak of the barn doors opening. He had tried to make sense of the sounds, but he could only understand the curse words of the men, in both Spanish and English, and then the rumbling noise that sounded like a wagon. He knew it wasn’t a wagon, but something heavy being moved out of the barn and then it was quiet for a long time until the husband, Martin, came into the house. And then he had heard voices from his mother’s room and then the husband had left, with his boots still on, and had gone into the living room. Lazaro had strained to hear more, but the house had gone quiet again and he was once more blind to what was happening in the house.
Later, Lazaro had awakened and heard Esperanza making that funny sound through her nose that his mother, Caroline, called snoring and he wondered if Esperanza could hear her own sounds. He called out to her once, but she had not answered and she had not awakened when the husband had gone out to the barn and taken something away and come back without it.
Lazaro stepped away from the window and tiptoed to the door. He groped for the latch and when he found it, he fumbled to slip it from its notch so that he could open the door.
“Do not leave the room,” Esperanza whispered and Lazaro’s blood jumped in his veins.
He turned and bore down on Esperanza with sightless eyes.
“I want to go out,” he said, his voice soft, delicate.
“El patron is still asleep.”
“I know. I will be quiet.”
“No, el patrón will be very angry when he awakens.”
“Why?” Lazaro asked. He could hear Esperanza shift her weight on the bed and knew she was rising.
“Because he had to take the cannon away last night.”
“Where did he take it?”
“I do not know. Far away.”
“Not too far away. He came back.”
The two were speaking English which Caroline had insisted they do. But, when they were away from the house, and alone, or with one of the ranch families, they conversed in Spanish, which Lazaro preferred. It was a more flowing language and it had stronger colors than English. He could hear melodies in Spanish that he could not detect in the English tongue.
“Esperanza? What does the word hate mean?”
“It means that you do not like something very much. Why do you ask this?”
“I heard Mama Caroline say to don Martin that she hated him.”
“That was just talk. It is nothing for you to worry about.”
“Why does don Martin hate me?”
“He does not hate you, Lazaro.”
“He never speaks to me.”
“Don Martin has many things on his mind. Now, you must get dressed. Can you find your clothes? Do you want me to help you?”
“I can find my clothes.” Thin to the point of being skeletal, Lazaro was wearing his cotton nightshirt and shorts, was barefoot.
He padded over to the wardrobe closet, a freestanding container that was large enough for his clothing and Esperanza’s. He dressed quickly, deftly, as Esperanza watched him, ever fascinated by Lazaro’s agility even though he was blind. It was difficult for her to explain to him who he was, and she had never used the word bastard in front of him. But, that’s what he was, the bastard child of Pilar Aguilar and Pilar’s brother-in-law, Augustino Aguilar. Lazaro was afflicted with syphilis, as were both of his dead parents. She wondered when Lazaro would begin showing the signs of madness that afflicted people who possessed the horrible disease.
“I want to talk to don Martin,” Lazaro said. “I want to ask him where he took the cannon.”
“You must not speak to him.”
“If I cannot talk to don Martin, then he does hate me, Esperanza, doesn’t he?”
“No, he does not hate you.”
“Is he my father?”
“In a way,” she said.
“I do not understand.”
“It is not an easy thing to explain to a young boy.” Lazaro was still a boy, almost five, yet sometimes she thought he acted older than he was. He was wiser than most boys his age, she thought. He certainly asked questions that would have been more appropriate from an older boy.
Lazaro went to his pallet, sat down and put on his sandals. He looked up at the place where Esperanza was sitting, tipping his head back.
“Come here,” she laughed, “and I will comb your hair.”
Lazaro arose with alacrity and clomped over to the bed. He listened as she rummaged beneath it for the big comb. He liked for her to comb his hair. He heard her pour water from the pitcher into a bowl and splash her fin
gers in it. She wet his hair as she did with the clothes when she was ironing, sprinkling water on his dry locks until they were damp enough to manage. Then, she began running the comb through his hair, stimulating his scalp, smoothing his unruly black hair down flat against his skull. She dabbed at the water with a cloth and patted his cheeks when she was finished.
“There. You can go outside and pee now. But do not disturb don Martin.”
“Esperanza, will you teach me to shoot a gun?”
“A gun? Why?”
“I want to learn how to shoot.”
“But, you cannot see. You would not be able to shoot a rabbit or a deer.”
“Oh yes, I would. I could shoot at the sound.”
“You might miss and hurt someone. You might even hurt yourself.”
“Please. Please teach me.”
“I do not know how,” she said, a frown on her face that Lazaro could not see, but knew was there.
“Then, get me a gun, a pistol or a rifle, and I will teach myself.”
“You are much too young to own a gun,” she said.
“But, when I am old enough I would be able to shoot. Please, please.”
“No. Your mother would not allow it. And, neither would I.”
“I will get a gun myself,” he said, and there was a disturbing tone to his voice that alarmed Esperanza.
“Why are you so eager to have a gun?” she asked.
“Because then I would be able to shoot those people I hate.”
“What? You, a boy, dare say such things?”
“I know what hate is now,” he said, his voice soft. “And when you hate someone, like the Apaches, you need a gun to kill them.”
“That is a terrible thing to say, Jesus, Mary and Joseph. You must not think such things. You must not talk that way, Lazaro. I wish we could go to the priest right now so that you could confess such a sin.”
Esperanza had spoken to him many times about sin, about bad thoughts, and bad deeds, but he still did not understand what she meant.