Muckers

by Sandra Neil Wallace

  * * *

  I don’t share the town’s view of the Father, and Cruz doesn’t, either. Cruz says if you’re a Mexican you’re not supposed to doubt God, though. That a parish priest is His anointed ambassador, or the go-between—like a shift boss—working in the middle of the Lord and the rest of us. That’s why Father Pierre can get away with anything. Ernie isn’t Mexican but feels the same way—he’ll say this call’s on the house. Something about it being like giving God a bill.

  “My burro!” Leon wails. His lower lip quivers as Faye leads the Brewers into the furniture store.

  “I’ll bring him by,” I say. The Brewers’ house is on the way to the field. But I’m not sure what to tell Ernie about the Buick. It could be a straight tow, or we could lose more than a fender if it takes a nosedive as we haul it out. Either way, I’ve got to get to practice.

  “He’s coming!” Frankie shrieks, his breath blowing shallower. The younger kids aren’t sure what to do—Father Pierre’s all nice when you’re little, but just wait till you become an altar boy (or choose football over Mass) and get conked on the head with his cane.

  The yelping from Father Pierre’s dogs comes lightning quick, riding the wind in angry bursts, first one and then the other a split second later. They keep echoing each other, picking up speed and tumbling loose as red rock down Nefertitty Hill.

  I reach for Bear, but the barking startles him and he skitters away like the rest of the kids, who leave their burros to fend for themselves, ears cocked, cowering on the sidewalk.

  The black sash holding Father Pierre’s cassock in place swishes like a cranky snake every time Father stabs the umbrella he’s holding into the cobblestone. Father’s eyes—a bullet-gray—catch mine even a hundred yards away. Seeing me makes his lips tighten, and his wire-rimmed glasses slide down his nose, so the lower half of his face seems all beard, clotted yellowy-white.

  It’s nearly ninety degrees out, but Father’s wearing his woolen shoulder cape and the hat—a beaver cappello he had shipped over from Rome. Said it was blessed by the Vatican. I forget by which pope. And I know what’s underneath the silky lining—a liturgical comb at least as old as the conquistadors who discovered our valley. Father Pierre bought it from an ivory trader in the Belgian Congo. With what, I don’t know. And I’m sure priests less ornery combed their hair with it before Mass four hundred years ago. But Father had me douse its teeth with Barbicide every Sunday before Mass so he could comb those African lion hounds with it. Relieve them of any mites or fleas. I didn’t want to burn in hell so I did what I was told. Now I know that’s just a crock. And I’m not his altar boy anymore.

  The dogs have sniffed out Bear shivering at the corner of Hull Avenue. They’re lunging and snapping at the burro, the Roman crosses Father had branded on their ribs rising and falling with every bark.

  They should have been destroyed a while back when they bit the fleshy part off Baldo Gallegos’s thumb. People like Leon’s mom and Ernie think that’s just a rumor, but seeing the dogs like this, you know it could be true. I heard Baldo aimed at shooting them in the middle of the night, but Father Pierre got wind of it and that’s the reason he took the nameplate off Baldo’s pew.

  I grab Bear’s halter, ready to take a kick at those snarling dogs if I need to.

  “Benedictus! Fidelis! Come!” Father says to them. The two dogs stop barking and sit statue-still on either side of the Father while I lead Bear toward Miller’s and tie him to the railing.

  “You weren’t in church last Sunday,” Father says.

  Which is true.

  “No, I wasn’t,” I tell him. I’m almost always at church, by the way, but last Sunday was different. Not that I go to church because I think it’ll help or because of Father Pierre. He’s so certain there’s a direct pipeline to God reserved just for him. I go because of Maw. I made her a vow. “You’ll get to church now, won’t you, Felix?” she’d pleaded before they took her away. “And sit in Bobby’s pew.”

  I reach for the keys still dangling in the ignition, and the rosary comes with them. Cruz was an altar boy once, too, until he swung at the Easter piñata before Father Pierre said we could and got pummeled across the neck with this rosary. Walked right out of the churchyard and never assisted at Mexican Mass again. And I suppose Cruz still goes to church every Sunday because of his mother, too.

  “Hours for the Sacrament of Penance are still the same at the Sacred Heart of Mary,” Father says, prodding my throwing arm with the tip of his umbrella.

  What do I have to confess? I didn’t do anything wrong. So I say, “There doesn’t appear to be any damage to the interior,” pointing to the whipcord seats. But my voice is tight, giving away how I feel, and I can see Father bristling already. I won’t let him poke my shoulder with that umbrella one more time, so I try another line. “Looks like that chrome fender must’ve cushioned the blow, but you’ll still need a tow so Ernie can take a better look at the damage.”

  And it’s only happened twice in five years that I skipped. Once this past Sunday, after the Purdyman baby got the whooping cough—his family’s seats are next to ours—and once when Maggie Juniper needed to get paid. I had to go find Pop and I did, hauling him out of Pete’s Tavern and taking his billfold while he slept curled up on the sidewalk, too tired to be in a mood. Not that any of that is Father Pierre’s business.

  “I’m driving to Prescott tomorrow, so it must be ready by noon,” Father says, like it’s a commandment or something, when all he had to do was use the emergency brake. That’s what I should tell him, but I don’t want to be run out of town. I know how news travels. They’d be saying how I smarted off at Father Pierre and what happened to the O’Sullivans? What a sorry lot they’ve become.

  “I’ll work on it after practice,” I say. “And show you how to use the emergency brake, too.”

  Father’s eyes narrow and his throat starts swelling up. “Who are you to tell me how to act in an emergency?” he bellows. The dogs heel closer on either side of him. Father’s personal patron saints. “You think you can be the savior of this town,” Father says, picking up my helmet with the hook of his umbrella like it’s got stuff on it from Purdyman’s cows, “but Hatley doesn’t need football, it needs an exorcism.”

  “Your Buick hit Leon Brewer,” I tell him. “He’ll be all right, but he might not be able to help you on Sunday.” I toss Father the keys with the rosary and take back my helmet.

  “Leonard is obedient,” Father says. “He will attend.” Then he tells Fidelis and Benedictus to follow him.

  “I expect to see you in church tomorrow,” Father says. “Didn’t you promise her? You wouldn’t want your poor mother to be in worse shape than she already is, knowing that you lied.”

  * * *

  10:05 P.M.

  The paint cans are rattling as we head out of the cemetery into the darkness up the hill, and it sounds like thunder. We’ve got the cans of whitewash strapped to our three burros, Kiss, My, and Ass. Cruz named them. Guess who’s being led by the Ass and feeling pretty low because I played so badly again in practice.

  I took a nap after practice with a wet blanket over my head, trying to stay cool. I dreamt that when I went to shave, Bobby’s death notice wasn’t on the mirror anymore. Then when I got to school, Bobby’s locker had disappeared and nobody knew who he was. And Maw and Pop kept staring at me with strange expressions on their faces when I mentioned his name. I tried shaking them out of it, but Pop ran away and Maw kept staring at me like she was a zombie.

  “Jesus, Rabbit, would you watch where you’re going?” Cruz says. “Your burro’s ass just stopped dead in my face.”

  “Can I help it if I got the slow one? Why don’t you and Kissy go up ahead?”

  “Or maybe I can get in front of Cruz,” I offer, snickering. “So he can kiss my Ass.”

  I think that’s really funny and Rabbit does, too, but Cruz looks back and gives me this dirty look. “We gotta be quiet, man,” he whispers.

  “For who?
All the dead people?” Rabbit jokes.

  Rabbit’s wearing his father’s straw hat, even though it’s dark out. We’ve barely made it through the cemetery but he’s already stripped down to his undershirt since those scrawny pits have worked up such a sweat.

  “Just get up that hill without opening your mouth, you two,” Cruz says. “You know how sound carries up here. You wanna get found out?”

  We’re coming at the H from the side so we won’t be obvious, climbing the mountain through the cemetery and past the open pit—which is where the town ends or begins, depending on how you look at it.

  It’s hard to see, so I bring my burro alongside Rabbit—he’s in charge of the flashlights. The night is heavy and the clouds are hanging low, covering the stars and cutting off any light from the moon. “Hand me one of those,” I whisper, reaching for a flashlight. They’re hooked on a tool belt that’s hanging off Rabbit’s bony hips and slapping his thighs with every stride.

  “Too soon, Ugly,” Cruz warns. “They’ll see us for sure.”

  Rabbit hands me one anyway.

  “We ought to see where we’re going, or we might get bit by something poisonous,” I tell Cruz, aiming the beam at a thornbush. Two eyes glow. A ringtail. But it could have been something that stings.

  “Jesus, Ugly, do you have to be so dramatic?” Cruz says. “You’re scaring the hell out of Rabbit.”

  The hill probably is full of rattlers with no intention of hibernating yet, and it’s definitely loaded with vermin this time of night. Bottom-feeders like that ringtail and raccoons displaced by the mine. I don’t care much about any of those, but if you hit a prickly pear or a yucca they can pierce through anything and jab right into your flesh. Try not screaming then.

  “I’m not scared,” Rabbit says. “Doc Brown says you’ve got two hours to get an anecdote for snakebite before you die, and we’re a ten-minute climb down to the hospital from here.”

  “What the hell’s an anecdote?” Cruz says. “Isn’t that from Sims’s class?”

  “You mean an antidote,” I tell Rabbit. “The serum that counters the poison. An anecdote will just give you a few minutes of conversation.”

  We stop to catch our breath since it’s getting steeper, and they finally quit bickering. A few people are walking Main Street, not many, looking no bigger than a pinky finger from up here. Down in the Gulch there’s a faint glow from a fire. Somebody burning trash, I suppose. Then it swells up and grows large enough to be a bonfire. And I’d sure like to be down there enjoying it with Angie, rather than up here with her brother.

  “Hey, isn’t that Sims down there?” Rabbit points to our toy town and a man wearing a shiny suit crossing Main near the Sacred Heart of Mary.

  “Turn them off!” Cruz says, cupping his hand over the lens of my flashlight.

  “He can’t see us,” I whisper. At least, I’m pretty sure. We’re behind the spindly gables above Company Ridge, eye level with the mile-high markers, painted white across the clapboard houses.

  “He’s got a little kid with him,” Cruz murmurs. “Didn’t think he could make one.”

  “That’s not Sims,” I say. “He doesn’t have kids.”

  “He’s in charge of the crippled-children’s fund this year,” Rabbit whispers. “Maybe that’s one of the kids.”

  My burro brays, no longer interested in hiding, and we persuade them to go another fifty feet, then leave them there. It’s mostly crushed stone anyway, fiery red from lime and slippery, with only a few hairy patches of coldenia, scrubby and green, to break up the sandstone.

  Cruz gets the brushes out from Kissy and says he’ll paint the first L. We start crawling, following him with the paint cans. I’ve been up here twice before but still can’t believe how huge the H is. Must be nearly two stories high.

  “You think Sims has really lost it this time, don’t you?” Rabbit says to Cruz.

  “You’d have to be some kind of saint,” Cruz says, handing us the brushes, “or kill off the Red Army to get an A in Sims’s class. And even then he’d accuse you of being a commie, no?”

  “What if you put his name in the box?” Rabbit asks.

  “He’s the one reading it, stupid.”

  “Yeah, and weeding out which names to keep and which ones to tear up,” I whisper.

  “You want a big E or a little e?” Rabbit asks me, dipping his brush in the paint. “Little e’s faster.”

  “Little e then.”

  “Hey, the lights in the church are still on,” Cruz says, pointing to the bell tower with his brush. “What’s Father Pierre doing up so late? Counting all the sinners he can charge?”

  “Or their offertory money,” I say. “You’d think there’d be enough to fix the leaky roof by now.”

  “Sims can’t flunk everybody,” Rabbit says, eyeing those big pale boulders of basalt left in chunky piles. “Then what’ll they do next year?”

  “Send us to Korea.”

  I keep going over my L, not wanting to think about what Cruz just said. Or next year.

  A coyote howls, startling Rabbit, and he balks, losing his footing. Cruz catches Rabbit’s arm, pulling him back up. A spray of pebbles loosened by Rabbit’s stumble trickles down the hill like pennies shaken from a jar.

  “Stupid war,” Cruz says. Then he looks at me. “Even if you win, you lose too much.”

  I suck in some air but it shakes going down. “Bobby would’ve been twenty-six, you know—last week. He would’ve married Faye Miller. She was at the game last week, smiling and laughing. She has a kid already.” The back of my throat’s all moist and my voice breaks. “Should’ve been Bobby’s.”

  “He fought for what he believed in,” Rabbit whispers.

  “No he didn’t, you idiot,” Cruz says. “He fought ’cause they made him.”

  “So, we shouldn’t fight?” Rabbit looks at Cruz, then at me, his brush suspended over the e.

  “And get yourself killed?” Cruz says, stabbing at the L.

  “I’ll do the O,” Rabbit says, reaching for my brush.

  “No.” I push him away. “We’re stopping here.” I throw my brush down the mountain as hard as I can. It breaks a hunk off a banana yucca.

  “What if we get found out?” Rabbit whispers.

  “Shut up,” Cruz says. “You’re gonna work at your mom and pop’s bakery for the rest of your life. What do you care?”

  Something springs out from the darkness below then skitters away. An antelope or maybe an elk.

  “Antelope season’s starting up,” Cruz says, sitting down beside me. “First one we’ve had in years. I don’t like the taste of that meat, but I could kill a Cottonville Wolf.” He slices an imaginary slit across his throat with a finger, then aims it at the Cottonville smelter.

  “You don’t mean that,” I say. “You’re such an idiot.”

  He smiles and I go to punch his arm, but he leans back and I miss.

  “Let’s get going,” Cruz says, gathering up the paint.

  It’s starting to rain. Just a light drizzle. Misty and warm by the time it reaches us and I don’t think it’ll cool off the Valley, but it’s a start. We haven’t had rain in months. Cruz nickers at the burros to wake them up, tying the flour sacks onto the saddles. We head down the hill in silence, lulled by the rhythmic swaying of the sleepy-eyed burros as they navigate the inclines imprinted on their hooves. We get near the iron fencing around the cemetery and my flashlight finds the first monument, a tiny one sticking two feet up with a lamb on top of it. Below, it reads OUR BABY IS RESTING.

  “I joined,” Rabbit says.

  “Joined what?” Cruz reins in his burro.

  “The army.”

  “You can’t join the army.” Cruz laughs. “You’re too small.”

  “I already did. I got a number.”

  “You got a number.” Cruz waves his flashlight across a row of monuments. “Congratulations, Rabbit. Pick out your plot, ’cause this is where you’ll be. Six feet under with a pile of shit on top of you. W
hat should we put on your stone, Rabbit? THE IDIOT IS RESTING?”

  “Not everybody who goes to war gets killed,” Rabbit says.

  “You really want to take that chance?” I’ve caught Rabbit by surprise, and he cranes his neck to get a look at me.

  “Somebody has to fight the commies in Korea,” Rabbit says. “It’s the right thing to do.”

  “Says who?” Cruz lets his beam linger on the monuments. “How come you’ve gone changing all of a sudden, Rabbit? You’re acting like a stranger.”

  “Nothing’s how it was anymore,” Rabbit says. “In case you haven’t noticed. And maybe you never knew me in the first place.”

  “I know what won’t suit you,” Cruz says. “Like shooting things. You think having a gun in your hands makes you some kind of hero?”

  “You think catching a football makes you one?”

  “It’s not my fault you’re too small to play,” Cruz says.

  “Is that what you think? That I’m sore about not playing? I don’t care about football, and I don’t hate everyone who’s not from Hatley, Cruz.”

  “Stop it!” I say. “Listen to the two of you fighting like you were enemies.”

  “I just want to matter,” Rabbit says. “To count.”

  The ground has flattened out, giving up most of its incline, and my burro dips his neck to graze. Cruz gets off Kissy and unleashes a flour sack.

  “Gotta get rid of these brushes and cans,” he says, walking over to Rabbit.

  “I’m going into the service, Cruz. You can’t stop me. I’m gonna be a private. Private Salvatore Palermo.”

  Cruz drapes the sacks over his shoulders and slaps Kissy on the rump. The burro bucks out a little, then wanders off. “Just get to the bakery, Rabbit,” Cruz says, but he won’t look up. “And make like you’ve been baking while I’m gone. And you both better get that paint out of your fingernails and wherever else it’s on.”

  “Where you going?” Rabbit calls after Cruz. He takes off his straw hat. Even in the dark you can tell Rabbit’s hair’s been shaved down to the nub.

  “I’m gonna drive down to Cottonville and leave these in their schoolyard,” Cruz says. “Who else would want Hatley to go to hell?”