He pounded the desk with a gavel. “I won’t have any display of feminine vapors in my court room,” he warned in a stern voice. “Pull yourself together, Mrs. Gelford, so we can get on with this trial. I’d like to catch the 3:00 back to Albuquerque.”
At the word, Albuquerque, Salia stirred, lifting her head slightly. Between strands of hair she examined this gringo, this Samuel Stuwart who left Drew Goodson tongue-tied, the albino, Whitie Smithson, green in the face and most importantly, had put Pacheco in his place.
The patrón had dark-brown hair and dark-blue eyes. Long sideburns covered the sides of his well-manicured face. As expected for a rich man, his nails were clean and his navy blue suit expensive. He had a patrician nose and strong jaw. He was rugged looking, with broad shoulders and an arrogant look to his light-skinned face. His voice was masculine and deep.
She shrugged her shoulders, dismissing him. As far as men went, she supposed he wasn’t bad looking.
Samuel spun his head to Salia. “Is this true? What this woman says?”
Silence.
“I’m talking to you, young woman.”
“Don’t look her directly in the eye, Judge,” Drew yelled. “Be careful!”
“You’re making a fool of yourself, Goodson,” Samuel said, frowning.
“Never look a witch in the eye,” he mumbled.
He snorted, turning his head to Salia.
She rose to her feet, rocking slightly on her injured leg. She arched her back and breathed heavily, letting out an audible sigh. She slowly lifted her head. She tossed back her hair and fully exposed her face, staring back at Samuel with glittering, blue-grey eyes, framed by thick black lashes.
He sucked in his breath, clutching the desk with white fingers. Her beauty was the thing poets write about. Before he had taken ill with tuberculosis, he had been a world traveler and met many beautiful women, but none of them could compare to this young woman.
“Address me as Miss Esperanza, then I shall answer you,” she said with a slight, Aristocratic Spanish accent which seemed to sing in his ear.
“Very well, Miss Esperanza, what of Mr. Gelford?” he said, gritting his teeth.
She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know if Mr. Gelford was a good worker or a bad worker. I do not work in your mine, Patrón. Unlike the rest of Madrid, I am not dependent on you. You do not own me.” And the look on her face told him that he never could own her.
He fought the urge to fly across the desk, and slap her. This girl. This woman was no more than a bratty child. He snarled at her, “Did you kill Mr. Gelford?”
“I did not. His wife killed him.” She turned and smiled sweetly at Mrs. Gelford.
Mrs. Gelford threw up her hands, screaming.
Samuel threw up his own hands. “You,” he pointed at Mrs. Gelford. “Shut up. And you, Miss Esperanza, get that damned grin off of your face. Do not mock my court room.”
She raised one eyebrow.
His heart skipped a beat. He felt a reluctant admiration for her courage. Unlike Mrs. Gelford, shivering with fright, Salia acted unafraid of him. He was a man who inspired fear because of the power he exuded, not just because of his money, but due to his commanding presence.
He had to literally drag his eyes away from her and clear his head. He coughed. “Now, Mrs. Gelford, what do you have to say for yourself?”
“I loved Mr. Gelford. Salia Esperanza is wicked. Wicked, I tell you. She deserves to be punished for the evil she’s done to my John.”
“This loving wife,” Salia spat, “Owes me money. This farce of a trial is so she does not have to pay me.”
“What does she owe you money for?” Samuel said, frowning.
“I read her chili seeds and told her she would be a wealthy widow.”
“You lied! I am still poor, only worse off now that John is dead. What shall I do? What shall I do?” She cried into her handkerchief. “Oh, God, what shall I do?”
“You’ll pay me the money you owe me, cheater! Or you’ll need more than God to help you.”
She threw her handkerchief in the air and screeched like a banshee.
Samuel pounded his gavel. “Order. Order in the court room. I won’t have you using that kind of language, Miss Esperanza. Try to act like a lady. Try.”
There was total silence in the courtroom, except for Salia whistling faintly.
Samuel scratched his head and looked down at the desk to keep from laughing out loud. Chili seeds? She was merely a fortune teller who got caught at her own game. “How did your husband die?” he asked, covering his mouth with his fist to hide his grin. He felt no compassion for her or her husband, but it would never do to laugh in her face.
“Mr. Gelford died of lack of affection,” Salia said.
“I was talking to Mrs. Gelford. You will speak only when spoken to, Miss Esperanza. The law is no laughing matter.” His eyes belied his harsh tone of voice, his eyes sparkling at the girl’s spunk and wit.
“Okay, most honorable, Patrón,” she sang back mockingly.
He narrowed his eyes, and she lowered her eyes demurely to the floor. Trying to act like a lady would be a stretch for her, he thought, wondering when she lost her virginity, and how many had been with her since. Maybe telling fortunes was just a sideline, and she earned her living in the oldest manner, with her charm, her wiles, her beauty, and that peach between her legs. Men would pay a lot to see her naked beauty, her skirt hiked high above her hips, her other peachy leg wrapped around his waist. A man would pay a fortune to take a bite out of her peach.
He was confused by conflicting emotions and felt like hurling the gavel at Salia. He dragged his eyes away from her bouncing copper-red hair. He cleared his throat. “Mrs. Gelford, how did your husband die? Tell the truth.”
“Oh, Judge, my John had a terrible fever. He tossed and turned in his bed at night, dampening the sheet with his sweat. He soiled himself with the runs. He was wheezing so, that he couldn’t breathe. He complained his chest felt like he was buried alive, and there was no oxygen. I called to him, ‘John, John,’ but he couldn’t hear me none, like he had gone pure deaf. ‘My joints is hurting. My joints is hurting all over,’ he cried. He coughed up lots of blood. In the morning, he was dead,” she said, her shoulders shaking with tears.
Samuel shuttered, rubbing his forehead. “Mrs. Gelford,” he said in exasperation, “One quarter of Albuquerque’s population has the symptoms you describe. Tuberculosis is a deadly disease which usually kills its victim, if he does not seek treatment. You cannot irresponsibly go around accusing someone of causing your husband’s death, like it was some hocus pocus, unexplained phenomenon.”
“She was my husband’s lover,” she screeched, pointing a finger at Salia.
At last, Samuel had got to the heart of this witch hunt—a lover’s triangle. The thought crossed his mind that Mr. Gelford must have died a happy man.
Salia merely blinked her eyes at him.
He thought that her face, looking so innocent and young, must have been etched in some alley.
On second thought, Mr. Gelford must have lived a life of hell, if this wild thing had been his lover. He frowned, thinking there must have been quite an age difference between the two of them. The image of this young girl, lying naked in the arms of the faceless Mr. Gelford, infuriated him. He pictured her with her fiery hair spread out on the pillow, her naked body twisting wildly beneath…
“I am no man’s lover,” she said, spitting on the floor.
Samuel looked at her and swallowed, licking his lips. Was the girl telling the truth? Was she still a virgin? With a shaky hand, he raised a glass of water to his lips and drank. He wiped his forehead, feeling like he was burning up.
“They say, Miss Esperanza that you can transform into a coyote” he said.
She laughed, tossing her head. “Everyone in Madrid knows that I am a coyote. My father was Santo Domingo Pueblo Indian and my mother pure Spanish. Coy-o-te,” and she pronounced the word in Spanish, “Means half-bree
d. The good people of Madrid have called me a coyote,” and she said this with a slur, “Since I was a little girl.”
“Are there any other accusations against Miss Esperanza?” he asked.
“Yes,” a voice boomed from above.
He looked up at Pacheco.
“Julio Dominguez refused to serve Salia coffee at the restaurant.”
“That sounds to me like an insult to Miss Esperanza.”
“Julio is now lame.”
“Must surely be a coincidence.”
“She called a pack of coyotes to the jail yesterday, ordering them to kill Jimmy Flanagan.”
Samuel sighed heavily. Coyotes taking orders from a girl. He pounded the desk with the gavel. “The charges against Salia Esperanza are dropped. Whitie, unbound her wrists. She’s free to go.”
Pacheco pounded the banister with his fists, and Samuel glared up at him. “Do you have anything more to say, Sandoval?”
“No, Patrón,” Pacheco said after a lengthy pause, and bowed his head, his chest heaving.
The Sheriff cautiously approached Salia. He quickly untied her wrists and jumped backed from her.
She sucked on one of her damaged wrists, glaring at him.
“Next time, Whitie, investigate all the facts, before you telegram me,” Samuel said.
The sheriff nodded his head.
“Please see Miss Esperanza is safely escorted to her home. If anyone in Madrid bothers her, they’ll have to answer to the court.” Of course, this meant Samuel, since he was both judge and jury in Madrid.
“I ain’t taking her all the way to Witch Hill, Your Honor. I’ll just take her part way. Nope. Ain’t doing that for nobody,” Whitie said.
Samuel rolled his eyes. “Very well, but run her by the doctor first and see about her wrists,” he gruffly ordered. “Have the doctor send me the bill,” he said, remembering the holes in her shoes and ignoring the gasps from the people in the courtroom. Samuel had never been known for either his generosity or his charity.
He looked at Salia and opened his mouth. He was about to give her some advice, some words of wisdom to avoid future trouble. His thoughts got all mixed up in his head when he noticed her shoulder, exposed by her shawl hanging down the side of her arm. The shawl had dragged some of her white blouse with it. His eyes traveled up her feminine shoulder to her chest. He felt a keen disappointment in the gut of his stomach that the tops of her breasts were hidden.
He then looked at her full, rose colored lips, and he swallowed, gulping in fresh air.
He pounded the desk with the gavel. “Court’s adjourned,” he barked, tearing out of the building, followed by an entourage of hangers on.
“What of the money Mrs. Gelford owes me?” she screamed at his back. “You call this justice, Patrón?”
Pacheco seemed to think the same thing as he stormed from the courtroom, followed by his entourage of Penitentes.
25
Salia walked stiffly down the Turquoise Trail with her head held high and her arms swinging briskly at her sides.
Whitie Smithson followed behind on his horse.
“You do not have to escort me, Sheriff. I can find my own way home.”
“But Mr. Stuwart said…”
“I don’t care what the patrón said. Go.”
“But…”
“Go!”
“Jesus, you almost bit my arm, you wild cat.”
“Go, Sheriff, or I shall bare my claws.”
Whitie turned his horse towards Madrid, and she marched up the road by herself. The villagers thought her power diluted because they believed there was nothing to hold her in Madrid, yet, she stayed and put up with their abuse. She would never be known as El Esperanza, like Mother had been. Mrs. Gelford had misread her fresh young face, and delicate body, and thought her weak.
When she got home, she grabbed a small shovel and dug behind the house by the outdoor oven. She shoved her hands into the hole and brought out a photograph. She blew on the picture, clearing the dirt and walked into the kitchen, setting the photograph on the table.
She removed her skirt, soaking it in the sink.
She dipped a misshaped, home-baked cookie into a glass of milk, smiling down at the picture which had been torn in two, the bride being missing from the photograph. The groom had his arm bent with his bride’s arm linked through his. Her arm was all the groom had left of his bride.
“How are you feeling today, Mr. Gelford?” she asked the picture. “Did you miss your wife while you lay there, feeling like you were buried alive? Mrs. Gelford spoke of your ordeal in court today but never said how long it took you to die. Surely, you wished for death, as you lay there on your bed, struggling to breathe. Did you know, Mr. Gelford that as you lay dying beside your wife, that she wished for your death? Until I dug you up, you had been buried for six weeks. I wonder what you look like after being dead that long. Surely, you are no longer the handsome groom, like in the picture your bride gave me. Has your flesh yet rotted off your bones, Mr. Gelford?”
She tapped the photograph, narrowing her eyes. “Well, Mrs. Gelford, if you do not want to pay me my money, then I shall just have to give you back your husband, won’t I?”
She smoothed the picture’s ragged edges. “Perhaps, I shall spy in an egg and be there at your homecoming, Mr. Gelford. It will be most amusing to see Mrs. Gelford greet her husband, newly raised from the grave.”
Mr. Gelford stared back at her with a menacing look.
26
Mrs. Gelford visited her sister, Mrs. Wilson, who comforted her and fed her. It was now dusk. Arm in arm, Mrs. Wilson walked Mrs. Gelford home, a few doors up the street.
“Please don’t become depressed over this trial nastiness. It was most upsetting to see that…that creature, Salia Esperanza, set free. Oh, I am sorry I brought the subject up. I’ve distressed you, Sister.”
Mrs. Gelford held her fist to her heart. “A party will cheer me. You should invite the Widower Smith,” she said, batting her short lashes.
“I’ll come over early and do your hair. You mustn’t wear black or else you’ll scare the poor man off,” she said with a twinkle in her eye.
She giggled.
“You’ve always been rather silly when it comes to romance and turning 47 has not changed you.”
“Deep in my worn heart, I am still fourteen.”
She and her sister had once been the silliest young women in Tulsa, Oklahoma. They were now the silliest women in Madrid.
Mrs. Gelford sighed down at her gloomy dress. “Black is not my color. Well, we have arrived at my door.”
“Oh, Sister, I do hate having you stay here all by yourself.”
“Don’t worry. I’ve placed a cross of two sewing needles inside a broom and stood the broom behind the door. The witch won’t be paying me a visit. I stood up to her, putting the fear of God into her. No one before me ever brought charges against a witch in Madrid.”
“There, there, now. Don’t get riled up. Your eggs, Sister, have been delivered early,” she said pointing to a basket, prettily tied with a yellow ribbon, that was on the porch.
“I shall have me an omelet for a bedtime snack,” she said, picking up the egg basket.
The sisters waved good-bye.
Mrs. Gelford opened her front door. The broom leaning against the door fell over. It was dark in the parlor. Mrs. Gelford didn’t notice the sewing needles had rolled from the broom, one beneath the chair, the other under the sofa. She merely stood the broom back up against the door. The needles hardly mattered anyway because, unknown to Mrs. Gelford, she carried a witch into her home. She set the basket of eggs on her bedroom dresser and lit a lamp. She removed her coat and hung it up. She turned and screamed, “Oh, Mr. Gelford!”
Leaning against a crocheted, pink pillow was the torn wedding picture of her dead husband.
“Why, I…I never,” she sputtered. “You’ve returned to me.”
She picked up the picture, lovingly placing it against her breast. T
he photograph smelled moldy. Nevertheless, she kissed her groom.
She smoothed the picture as best she could. She picked up the frame imprisoning her bridal picture, only the picture was cut in half, and the groom missing. She placed the groom back where it belonged, with its better half. The two halves lay a bit crooked in the frame. The tops of their heads leaned towards each other, their hearts away from each other.
She carried the basket of eggs into the kitchen, not noticing she left behind one egg teetering on her dresser. The egg glowed yellow, and Salia became visible through the shell. She rocked in the egg, hunched over, with her hands clenching her knees.
She made two omelets, one for herself and the other for her dead husband. She ate both her share and his. “Waste not, want not. Food is the only comfort I have left, now that I’m alone,” she said, sobbing into her napkin.
After a good cry, she changed into her nightgown and climbed into her solitary bed.
“Good night, John,” she told the picture.
She lay for some minutes, with her eyes wide open, trying to remember her wedding day, but the only memory remaining was of the wedding cake her elder sister baked.
She tossed and turned, sleeping lightly, until the clock struck midnight.
She yawned, blinking her eyes, trying to adjust to the light and the fuzziness of her brain still drugged with sleep.
Someone had turned on the lamp on the nightstand next to the bed.
She heard footsteps, her heart fluttering, and tiny mews bubbling from her lips, along with saliva dribbling down her chin.
She burped and the stinky smell of rotten eggs wafted from her mouth.
The wooden floor creaked in the same manner as when John walked about the bedroom with a limp from his accident at the mine. His limp was the reason their son was killed. For months after their son’s death, she tried to communicate with her dead son through a medium, but in the end, the medium was a drunkard and thought Mrs. Gelford had lost a daughter. The séance had been most distressing.
The Witch Narratives: Reincarnation Page 16