by Jory Sherman
David took Ursula in his arms. “I don’t believe that,” he said.
His words only made Ursula break into tears. She clung to David, sobbing so loudly Wanda heard her and walked over from the house.
“Is there anything I can do?” she asked.
“You can marry my son,” Ursula said. “Maybe he can learn to love and not hate.”
Wanda sighed. She looked at Roy, who was still walking away, and frowned. “He loves you, Ursula,” Wanda said. “It’s your husband he hates. I think he’s jealous of David.”
“Why?”
“Maybe you loved your son too much,” Wanda said. “And maybe his father didn’t love you enough. Roy will have to work all that out for himself. And he will, given time.”
“I hope so,” Ursula said. “I don’t want him to hate me. Or David.”
“Just be patient,” Wanda said, and then she left them and started walking after Roy.
“David, I’m sorry this happened,” Ursula said. “I don’t want you hurt.”
“I think it’s time we moved into town and let Roy solve his problems.”
“Perhaps you’re right. I hope Wanda can help him see how wrong he is.”
“If she can, she’ll make him one hell of a wife,” David said.
“She’s the strongest woman I’ve ever known,” Ursula said.
“No, you’re stronger than she is,” David said. “You’ve stood up to two very tough men. Jack and Roy both.”
At that, Ursula broke into tears again. David held her very tightly against him and slowly began to lead her away from the unfinished well and toward the house.
10
ESPERANZA DREW AWAY from the window of her casita, floating from it on tiny sandaled feet that left faint impressions in the dirt floor. Lazaro heard her move and turned his head toward her as if he had eyes to see.
The small house had one large room which served as a place to sleep and eat. There was another small room that Esperanza used as a kitchen, even though she took most of her meals at the big house. But she had a small iron stove on which to cook and it kept the rest of the house warm in winter. There was another small room that she used for storage of her few things. She and Lazaro had spent most of their days and nights in the Baron house, but this was her retreat, her safe haven, a place where she and Lazaro could go to stay out of the way of others, a place where he could play his guitar and they could speak to one another without prying eyes and ears. It was a modest little house, but she kept it neat and clean and she cherished it as something that belonged to her.
“What passes?” he asked, in Spanish.
“Martin is coming. And Anson. Do not say anything. If I tell you to go, leave this house. Do you understand?” Her voice was a raspy whisper in the quiet of the small front room.
“Have you fear?”
“Yes. There is much to fear when Martin begins to ask the questions. You close your mouth and keep quiet.”
“Yes,” Lazaro said, and he listened for the pad of boots outside. He turned toward the door and heard the men coming. He could tell they were angry by the way they walked, by the sound of their bootheels. “I hear them coming. They are very angry.”
“Your ears have the sharpness to hear much,” she said.
“There are three men,” Lazaro said.
“Three?”
“Martin and Anson and one other I do not know.”
Esperanza shuddered. She wanted to go to the window again and look out, but she was afraid. Instead she shuffled across the room and stood in front of Lazaro as if to protect him from any who came through her door.
The knock made both Esperanza and Lazaro jump.
“Esperanza,” Martin called through the door.
“What is it that you want?” she said in English.
“I want to talk to you. Now.”
“Enter,” she said.
The door swung open and Martin filled the small doorway. He ducked his head and walked in, followed by Anson and Dr. Purvis. The room grew smaller with the presence of the three men.
“I have but two chairs,” Esperanza said.
“That’s all right. We won’t be here long.”
“Hello,” Lazaro said, an innocence to his soprano voice that lingered in the silence that followed, like some haunting fragment of lyric one can never put a name to or keep from running incessantly through one’s brain.
“Lazaro, maybe you’d better go outside,” Martin said. “I want to speak to Esperanza privately.”
“Is it about me?” Lazaro said.
“You ask too many questions,” Martin replied. “Outside. Please.”
Lazaro hesitated, then put out a hand and grabbed a handful of Esperanza’s dress.
“I want to stay,” Lazaro said. He clung to Esperanza’s dress and pressed up against her leg, fastening his body close to hers in a desperate attempt to avoid being sent away.
“I’d like to examine the boy,” Purvis said.
“Examine? Why?” Esperanza asked.
“I think he may have a disease. Does he have a disease?”
“He is blind,” Esperanza said, a note of desperation in her voice.
“I can see that. Does he have sores on his body?”
“Sores?” Esperanza was wild-eyed.
“You know what he means, Esperanza,” Martin said. “Let the doctor examine Lazaro.”
Lazaro began to whimper softly.
Doc Purvis swept the room with his gaze, saw the other two salas. “Perhaps I could take the boy into one of the other rooms and have a talk with him?” Purvis directed his question to Martin.
“Yes,” Martin said. He nodded to Esperanza. “Lazaro, go with the doctor.”
“I do not want to,” Lazaro said.
“Go, or I’ll take my belt to you,” Martin said.
Anson looked at his father with surprise. In all the years of growing up, his father had never made such a threat, nor taken a belt or any other punishment tool to him.
Lazaro tugged at Esperanza’s dress. She pushed him away. “Go with the doctor,” she said, her voice soft-toned but firm.
“Come,” Purvis said to Lazaro, and started toward the little room that served as a kitchen. Lazaro released his grip on Esperanza’s dress and followed on shaking legs.
“Now, Esperanza,” Martin said. “Take a chair and we will talk.”
Esperanza sat in a chair. Martin pulled one toward him and sat down opposite the woman. He looked straight into her eyes without flinching.
Anson stood by, his weight shifting to one foot. He could hear the doctor speaking to Lazaro but could not understand what he was saying. He could barely hear Lazaro’s replies. But, a moment later, he heard the rustle of clothes and knew that Purvis had asked the boy to strip for the examination. He avoided looking into the room, although he was curious.
“Esperanza,” Martin said, “I am going to ask you some questions, and you’d better—by God—answer every one of them. Do you understand?”
“I will try.”
“You will damn well answer me. I want to know how my wife got the pox. I think she got it from that blind boy in there.”
“I do not know,” Esperanza said, but her voice was quavering and she dipped her head as she sighed. “Truly.”
“Yes, you do know. Did Lazaro ever sleep in Caroline’s bedroom? Did she sleep with him in her bed when I was not there?”
Esperanza’s lips drew back on her teeth and quivered. “Yes,” she said. “Sometimes the boy sleep with his mother in her bed.”
Martin swore under his breath.
“Pa,” Anson said, “you don’t want to go any further with this. Let it be.”
Martin whirled to face his son, his eyes blazing with the fire of anger and madness.
“Goddamn you, Anson. Stay out of this.”
“No,” Anson said, the flesh on his face tautening as his eyes narrowed to thin dark slits. “Whatever happened in Ma’s bedroom with that blind boy is between him a
nd her. It ain’t rightly none of our business.”
“It’s my business, by God, if that blind boy is responsible for her death.”
Esperanza shrank away from the anger in the room, her eyes moving antically in their sockets.
“Lazaro ain’t any more responsible for Ma’s death than you or I are. And if he is, then so are you.”
“What?”
“You heard me plain,” Anson said, his voice steady, without rancor. “You turned your back on her a long time ago. If she found comfort in sleeping with Lazaro, then you’re as much to blame as he is for what happened to her. But you’ve got to leave this alone. She’s dead and gone and that boy in there was like a puppy to her. She doted on him and he loved her as if she was his own mother.”
“Damn you, Anson. Do you know what I’m talking about, here? Do you know what that little bastard did to my wife?”
Martin balled up his fists as if to strike Anson. Anson did not back away, but stood firm on his spot, his narrowed eyes masking whatever feelings he had at the moment.
“You can curse all you want to, Pa. You ain’t going to bring her back, and if you mean to punish Lazaro, you’ll have to whup me first.”
Martin took a half-step toward his son. Anson did not move. His arms hung at his sides; his hands stayed open and fistless.
“I ought to, by God. I ought to beat the living shit out of you and Lazaro.”
“You ain’t layin’ a hand on Lazaro,” Anson said. “I mean it. Let this be. If you find out what you are bound to know, it’ll only eat at you like what ate Ma up.”
“Where in hell do you get this? From Juanito?”
“I learned some things from him.”
“Like what?”
“He taught me that the first mark of a civilized man is his ability to forgive.”
“You forgive your mother for what she did? You forgive Lazaro?”
“I don’t judge, first off,” Anson said. “And if I know someone wronged me, I find a way to forgive it so whatever it was don’t eat me up.”
“You sound like some pious preacher, son.”
“Maybe.”
“You don’t want to know what your mother did?”
“No. Whatever she did, she has been punished enough. She died young.”
“And no damned need to.”
“That’s not for you or me to say.”
“There you go again, Anson. Preaching like a goddamn Bible-thumping parson.”
“Look, Pa, you can’t go back and fix what went wrong, no more’n I can. And you can’t see what’s going to happen tomorrow. All you have is what’s right now and that’s what you got to live. Just this one moment. Don’t go spoilin’ it.”
“Now you don’t make any sense at all, you sanctimonious whelp.”
Anson shrugged. He caught Esperanza’s glance out of the corner of his eye. She was watching him raptly, her mouth frozen slightly open, her eyes glittering like a pair of agates shot with sunlight.
Martin turned back to Esperanza. “So, are you going to tell me what that boy in there did to my wife when he was sleeping with her?”
“No, señor. I do not know what Lazaro and the señora did when they were alone together. I did not stay in her room with them.”
“But you know, don’t you?”
“Pa—Martin,” Anson said, “leave her alone. She did no wrong.”
“She let it happen. She knew what was going on.”
“Leave her alone,” Anson said again, and this time there was iron in his tone, and menace.
Martin turned around again to look at his son. “I got things to say, things I want to know.”
“You don’t have any say in what goes on at this ranch no more.”
“Why, you ungrateful—”
“If you keep on with this, I’ll have to take you down. I don’t want to do that. You’re still my father, but now you’re laying the quirt to a woman who works for me, who works for the Box B.”
“I’ll be a son of a bitch,” Martin said.
Anson again heard the rustle of clothes in the next room, and Dr. Purvis came into view, followed by Lazaro, who had a sheepish look on his face.
“Well?” Martin asked, directing his question to Purvis.
“Maybe we’d better talk outside, away from the boy.”
“Why? Lazaro can damned well hear it.”
“Not from me, he can’t,” Purvis said.
“Are you turning against me, too, Doc?”
“No, it’s just a matter of protocol. And ethics. The boy is very young. What I have to say can’t help him, and it might do him harm.”
“Esperanza,” Anson said. “You take good care of Lazaro. We’re leaving.”
Anson stepped over and grabbed Purvis’s arm and led him toward the door.
“Shit,” Martin said, but he followed the two outside.
“We’ll go on back to the house,” Anson said. “We can still eat some lunch.”
“I want to hear it from the doc,” Martin said. “Did the boy have the pox?”
Purvis scowled, kept walking. “He has lesions on his loins.”
“‘Lesions’? What’s that?”
“He has the disease. I would see to it that he has no further sexual content with anyone, male or female, in the time he has left.”
“Huh?” Martin caught up with Purvis.
Purvis stopped, looked the elder Baron straight in the eye. “Look, Mr. Baron, there’s no way to sugar over any of this. Both your wife and that blind boy got them a dose of what they’ve started to call by a fancy name: syphilis. You get the disease by sexual coupling.”
“You mean…”
“I mean you shouldn’t think about how your wife got it, but I’m sure it started out innocently enough. Some mothers and sons … fathers and daughters…”
“Jesus Christ,” Martin said.
Anson grabbed the doctor’s arm and dragged him on toward the house.
“Let it be, Pa,” Anson said. “For the last time, let it damned be.”
“You knew about this, Anson?”
“No. I did not know.”
“Christ.”
Martin had to walk fast to catch up, but he said no more as they neared the house. Anson turned to look at him and saw the stricken look on his father’s face. It tore at him to see his father in pain, but he had his own anguish to deal with. His stomach was knotted up and he felt queasy with the knowledge he had now, of his mother and Lazaro.
Still, he knew Juanito had been right. You could not live your life with anger, nor take vengeance on those who wronged you. If you were to live and grow, you must first forgive.
And it was a damned hard thing to do. He wanted to do what his father wanted to do with Lazaro: kill him in his tracks with knife or gun and wipe the slow smile off the blind bastard’s face.
11
WHEN MARTIN BARON buried his wife, Caroline, the whole town of Baronsville came to the funeral. Many of the neighboring ranchers attended the services held on the Box B Ranch, including Roy Killian, his mother, Ursula, and her husband, David Wilhoit. Also from Roy’s new ranch, the Lazy K, were his partners, Wanda Fancher and her mother, Hattie. Doc Purvis was there, along with his niece, Lorene Sisler, who could not take her gaze away from Anson Baron. Al Oltman stood near the back of the ground, a tall, lean figure of mystery, chewing on a grass stem while studying the faces of those who turned to look at him. Noticeably absent was Matteo Aguilar, who owned the Rocking A. Neither he nor his wife, Luz, who had just given birth a week or two before Caroline’s death, nor any of his hands—including Jules Reynaud, who did not work for Matteo, but was staying with him for another reason: he had vowed to kill Martin Baron.
Ken Richman, newly elected mayor of Baronsville, delivered the stirring eulogy. He brought along his special gal, Nancy Grant. Also present was the waitress from the Longhorn Saloon, Millie Collins, who had taken a shine to Martin shortly before his wife’s death. Now she wept profusely, along with everyone
else, as Ken told of Caroline’s grace and beauty and bemoaned her short life. There was no mention of what Caroline died of, and nobody in town really knew, but it was whispered that she had succumbed to a venereal disease, which was true.
There was one man who watched the somber ceremonies from a distance, however. And he had been sent there by Matteo Aguilar. No one saw him, for he did not want to be seen. Mickey Bone had ridden to the Box B the night before the funeral and had found a place where he could observe everything without being detected. He sat in a large oak tree he had climbed early that same morning, and he sat very still so he would not give his presence away. He was close enough so that he could hear every word, see the faces of those who came to pay their last respects to Caroline Baron.
Bone studied the tall man at the rear of the assemblage, the only man there who did not take off his hat when the prayers were said by the preacher, a thin bony man whose name he did not know, but who was dressed in black except for his white shirt.
He also watched Anson because the young man he had known for so long was no longer a rangy boy, but a man grown and Anson kept looking his way. Bone knew he could not be seen as long as he did not move, but Anson seemed to sense his presence, as if he was one who had unusual abilities, as if he knew without knowing that someone was watching him. He took his gaze off Anson for a time then quickly glanced back to see if Anson was still looking at the preacher and the wooden casket.
But no, Anson looked toward the oak tree as soon as Bone fixed his gaze on the young man. So, Bone thought, Anson has the gift. He is a hunter, a man who has a sense beyond the ordinary senses, a man who knew when things were wrong before anyone else did.
Bone sat very still until Anson stopped looking in his direction. Then he methodically began to count the entire crowd. He made a mental note of the number of people. Next, he counted the able-bodied men and remembered that number. Finally he began backing up on the limb, pausing often to remain still. When the coffin was lowered into the ground, Bone slid down the tree and kept it between him and the crowd. He bent over and smoothed away his footprints, kept backing away, rubbing his hands on the earth and placing twigs and leaves over his tracks. When he was far enough away from the tree, he hurriedly walked to his horse, hitched to a mesquite nearly a mile away. He mounted and rode off in the direction of the Rocking A.