Paloma and the Horse Traders

by Carla Kelly

  “How clever,” Graciela said. “Do you bathe your babies here?”

  “They are still small enough for the wooden tub in the laundry room beyond the kitchen. Perhaps that will be one of your chores. Here now, when the tub is full, you lower the dam again.”

  Paloma walked to the acequia, but one of the guards was already there to raise the dam. She thanked him, and walked along the plank-lined ditch as the water moved toward the shed and under the wall. Graciela hurried ahead and opened the door. They watched the tub fill with clear, cold water from Rio Santa Maria. When it was nearly full, she sent Graciela running to close the dam.

  “See here? You build a little fire under the tub. Blow it out when the water is warm enough.” She chuckled. “Wait a bit so you don’t burn your bum, then you can lock the door and soak. Towels there, soap there.”

  “I have no other clothes,” Graciela said, bending down to start the fire with flint and steel. In a moment, she had a small fire, which she blew on until it caught the kindling. “All I have is this deerskin.”

  “It’s going in the burn pile, like it or not,” Paloma said. She went to the door. “Watch the fire, and I’ll find you something far better to wear.”

  “Thank you, dama.”

  Humming to herself, Paloma went into the house and to the storage room, where she took out an apron, petticoat, skirt and bodice and put them over her arm. Marco had wondered about her decision to stock the hacienda with simple clothing for the servants, or someone else in need. “My mother had a room like this,” she told her husband. “She never turned anyone away.” He questioned her no more.

  Marco was leaning against the wall, watching her, when she came out. He hefted the money pouch in his hand. “For horses and expenses at the inn, and general acknowledgment of my stupidity. Is it enough?”

  He handed her the pouch and she lifted it. “You left enough in your strong box for those shoes with red heels you promised me, and a silk nightgown?” It was an old joke between them, and she could tell he needed to laugh.

  He obliged her. “Especially that silk nightgown! Maybe this will do for now.”

  From behind his back he took out something soft wrapped in cotton and tied with twine. “I got it for you in the Taos market. It’s for those nights coming up when you’re in bed nursing our next one, and your shoulders get cold.”

  With a cry of pleasure, Paloma handed Marco the clothing for Graciela and opened the package. “My goodness, it’s lovely,” she whispered, holding the shawl up to her cheek.

  “Mohair and merino wool, knitted by one of Felicia’s cousins in the pueblo,” he said. “You don’t mind if the red shoes wait for a while?”

  She kissed his cheek. “They can wait. And we don’t really need silk nightgowns.”

  They walked outside and Paloma saw that the men still stood and looked to the north. “Someone else?” she asked. “Oh please, not Pepe Calderón!”

  “Toshua and I just returned from there. They lost a few sheds outside the hacienda, but they were forted up.” He crossed himself.

  “I think all of us will be more careful now. For a while,” she replied.

  He walked with her to the door of the bathhouse. “Will she do?” he asked, tipping his head toward the door.

  “Time will tell,” she said, then shooed him away.

  She knocked, heard no answer, but opened the door a crack. Graciela sat in the water, her hair damp and shielding her face. Her shoulders shook, and Paloma knew she was crying. Paloma knelt by the tub and did nothing more than scrub her back.

  “It’s been so long,” Graciela said when she could talk. “I worked so hard for Great Owl’s women—carrying water, tanning hides, skinning buffalo. All they did was beat me.” She shook suddenly. “Then at night, it would be one man or another.” She grabbed the washcloth from Paloma’s hand and stuck it in her mouth, her eyes wide with terror.

  “Those days are over,” Paloma said, grateful to every saint she knew of that as hard as her lot had been in the house of her uncle in Santa Fe, no man had violated her. She gently removed the cloth. “That is our pledge to you.” She stood up. “Finish washing and try these clothes. I do not have any shoes for you, but when it is safe to go to Santa Maria, there is a cobbler.”

  She left the bathhouse, shaken to her heart’s core and wondering at the great cruelty in the world. Her taste of it had been bitter, but not as bitter as Graciela’s.

  Marco stood by the acequia now with Emilio. He didn’t carry the pouch, but he didn’t look at peace or relieved.

  She jumped right in. “Did you pay Señor Diaz?”

  “I did. He is feverish, but the wound seems to be healing. No red streaks.” He leaned toward her to create their own private moment in a busy hacienda plaza where a farrier bent over a horse’s raised hoof, and the stone grinder rumbled as a small boy fed corn into it. The wind had picked up, setting ristras of chilis chattering as they hung by the kitchen garden.

  “Check on him, will you?” Marco said. “He thinks he will be well enough to travel tomorrow, but I told him that was crazy.” He gave a little laugh. “I took away his leather trousers. “He’s not going anywhere.”

  “Did you—”

  “Apologize? Por su puesto que sí. He just shrugged. You are right, my love: there hasn’t been much kindness in his life.” He patted her shoulder. “Toshua and I are going to the Calderóns again, to see if they might feel safer here, and offer our hospitality.”

  “Just the two of you?” Paloma couldn’t help her alarm.

  “You think we would take one guard from this place?” he asked, faintly amused. “Paloma, sometimes you are a goose.”

  She couldn’t help the tears in her eyes, which made him look at her in a husbandly kind of way that told her without words not to fret. “Two is better than many, at times. This is one of those times.” He made a small sign of the cross on her forehead, and another on her belly, gave her a pat and strolled to the horse barn, where Toshua was already waiting.

  She was weeding around the peppers when Graciela, dressed and smelling faintly of lavender, knelt beside her and started weeding, too. “Mama had a small garden in the garrison, before Papa left us,” she said, her eyes on the hanging peppers. “She had another one in the Cloud Land, but The People trampled it with their horses.”

  “They won’t trample this one,” Paloma said. She stood up and dusted off her fingers on her apron. “Finish this row for me, then please come inside. I will tell you about my children.”

  They spent a quiet afternoon in the sala. It was a room not used as often in the summer as the kitchen, but it provided a quiet place for conversation. Paloma sat Claudio close to her on the floor as they sorted pinto beans from speckled Anasazi beans. Soledad joined him and sat with her ankles carefully crossed and her dress tidy, like her mother. Shy at first, Graciela joined them, and they all sorted beans. When the children lost interest and retreated to the other side of the room where a stack of colored blocks beckoned, Paloma quietly told Graciela her own story.

  “My dear husband insisted on hanging those sandals over there to remind him that I was brave when I didn’t have to be.” She pointed to the two crossed brands, one the Double Cross, with its elaborate M and two crosses, and the equally grand star and V for vega, or meadow. “That is my family’s brand, Star in the Meadow.” Paloma ran the beans through her hands. “It’s a story for another time.” Paloma got to her feet and picked up the bowls of sorted beans. “Stay here and play with them. Get to know my darlings.”

  Leaving the beans in the kitchen with Perla, she went down the corridor to the room across from her room. She knocked, wasn’t sure if she heard a muffled acknowledgment, and went inside anyway.

  The smell of the man struck her first, so she left the door open, the better to air out the room. He still lay with his back to her. “Diego? Señor Diaz? I am Señora Mondragón.”

  “Just Diego,” he said finally. “And really, you do not need to be in here. I
n fact, I am strong enough now to go to the horse barn maybe. Anywhere but your hacienda.”

  “Don’t be absurd,” she told him. “When you feel better tomorrow, I will have one of the men help you to the bathhouse. You can wash, and someone will cut your hair and trim your beard. We have new clothes and—”

  “I don’t need to be a bother!” he said with more force. He tried to move, and only groaned.

  I don’t care what you think you are, Paloma said to herself. Mostly you are stubborn. She put her hand lightly on the tight skin around his wound, stitched now with black thread. His skin was hot to the touch, so she felt his forehead, relieved to find it cooler.

  “Are you in pain?” she asked. He said nothing. “Of course you are. I am going to give you some of these sleeping powders. When you wake up, you may eat. More broth?”

  “Food this time, dama,” he said. “How will I ever get better if I only drink broth?”

  “A wise consideration,” she said. “Here now. Let me help you sit up.”

  He couldn’t move quickly, so she helped him. He started to protest, but she ignored him. The shadows in the room made him difficult to see, but she couldn’t overlook his abundant beard and long hair, a sign of the rough men who bartered and bargained with Indians, often on the fringe of settlement.

  “There now. Please sleep,” she said, after she made him drink the sleeping powders. “I’ll promise you my special posole and tortillas when you wake.”

  “Thank you,” he whispered, as she helped him lie down. His eyes opened briefly, then closed. “Sorry to be trouble.”

  “You are no trouble, Se … Diego. Thank you for bringing me horses so I can take my children around in a little carriage. And thank you for Graciela.”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with ….”

  That was all; he slept. Paloma watched him a moment, then left the room as quietly as she had entered it. She heard familiar voices in the courtyard now and sighed with relief. Her husband and Toshua were back.

  * * *

  The moon had risen by the time he woke up. Señora Mondragón must have opened the shuttered window—maybe to air out the room of his stink—because he could see out through the bars to moonrise. Someone was playing a guitar in the courtyard, or maybe the servants’ quarters. The fragrance of piñon fires was nothing new to him, except that this was no camp in the middle of nowhere. He was in a home where people cared about one another. No one had told him that, but the evidence was all around.

  Carefully he eased himself onto his back, ready to grimace with pain and stiffen. Nothing. He straightened out, stretching his legs. He no longer needed that defensive posture, the one that wounded animals and people assumed when in pain. His shoulder throbbed, but the sharpest ache was gone. He knew he was healing. Something about this home reminded him of his own home years ago, so many years that they had all run together into a jumble of good memories and harsh ones.

  He needed to piss but he was unwilling to ask for help. Diego put out one leg from the sheets—sheets, imagine!—and then the other and stood slowly. Keeping his back straight, because he wasn’t sure what his wound would do, he knelt down and felt under the bed until he found the pot. Relief was immediate. He pushed the pot back when he finished, and sat on the edge of the bed.

  He wore a nightgown, something so alien that he nearly laughed. It was probably the property of that tall, long-nosed, high-cheeked Señor Mondragón, the same man who had come to him earlier, left a pouch of money on the table by the window and apologized for being an ass. He sounded sincere, but who could tell?

  Diego’s stomach rumbled. “I could eat lizards and snakes right now,” he said, even though the kitchen smells suggested something far better. Snakes, horned toads, a skunk even, had served him well before. He had learned a long time ago that anything which crawled or moved could provide some sort of meat to keep a man alive. As long as he could choke it down, he would live another day.

  As he sat there, contemplating his next move, Diego heard a man’s footsteps. A door opened and stayed open. Diego leaned forward until he could see a sliver of a room, probably a child’s because he thought he saw a crib. No, one crib and a little bed beyond it. He saw Señora Mondragón holding a small child, a boy because his dark hair was cut short. Señor Mondragón crossed in front of her. He carried another child and sat down on the floor, leaning his head against the bed where his wife sat.

  Diego wished they had closed the door. The scene was private and intimate, and he had no business staring like a starving man at the nearly forgotten sight of a family preparing little ones for bed. God help him, but he couldn’t look away.

  La Señora started to hum. The tune was familiar to him, but he had not heard a lullaby in years. He listened, a smile on his face. What was that tune? And then she started to sing, and that made all the difference.

  He knew the song, and he knew the words, a curious little dialect of the Canary Islands. He sucked in his breath and wiped his forehead, where sweat had suddenly popped out. His hand started to shake. “Keep singing,” he whispered. “Oh, please.”

  It was a pleasant little lullaby. “ ‘Papa comes soon, from over the sea, home with a king’s ransom for thee, only thee.’ ”

  She didn’t seem to know the words that followed, so she hummed them. Diego whispered, “ ‘He’ll be here for thy saint’s day, my child, my dear.’ ”

  She knew the chorus. “ ‘Sleep, sleep, fear nothing, my dear. The saints are around us this day, this year.’ ” He sang softly along with her.

  He went to the door of his room, unmindful of his bare legs. He leaned against the doorframe and took a very good look at Señora Mondragón. He had been in too much pain before, and then too embarrassed at his disheveled, odoriferous state to really look at her. He did so now, noticing her profile, as she sat holding her son. Her hair was smooth and brown. When she laughed, he knew the laugh. It was so close to his mother’s. So was the profile.

  Diego put his hand to his mouth to stop the sob that rose in his throat. A woman in Texas had sung that lullaby, learned from her mother who was from the Canary Islands. Mama had sung it to his little sister in their hacienda, close to El Paso del Norte. No wonder Señora Mondragón couldn’t really remember the words. His mama had sung the lullaby to him, then to his younger brother Rafael, and then to Paloma, the one he knew had to be dead, killed in a Comanche raid.

  Diego took a deep breath and another. He moved quietly across the hall, shaky on his feet, but moving now by some force of will that went beyond pain or suffering or any emotion he had ever known. He stood in the doorway of the children’s room and opened the door wider.

  Señor Mondragón got to his feet immediately and thrust his daughter behind him, the protector of his wife and children, but Diego had eyes only for the woman. She looked at him, puzzled but not fearful or defensive like her husband. Yes, her eyes were as blue as his, the eyes of their father. She was a woman grown now, and not a skinny little sister, but he knew her.

  “Paloma Vega,” he whispered. “See me truly.”

  She did as he said, looking beyond the beard and the long greasy hair, and the scar on his cheek. She swallowed and her face paled. Slowly she set her little boy beside her.

  “Those words of the lullaby you didn’t know,” he said, as tears started down his cheeks. He sang softly, “ ‘He’ll be here for thy saint’s day, my child, my dear.’ ”

  “Claudio? Claudio?” she asked, her voice high and strangled. Her eyes rolled back in her ashen face and she fainted, falling sideways as her husband grabbed her, his face equally pale.

  “Who … who ….”

  He was too old for his voice to crack, but it did, anyway. “Señor Mondragón, I am Claudio Vega. I did not die.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  In which there is another Star in the Meadow

  Paloma regained consciousness with her head in her husband’s lap, her children in tears, and the horse trader on the floor beside her, hi
s head resting against her knees. She blinked, wondering for only a second what had just happened. Hesitantly, she put her hand out and rested it on that shaggy head. Washed, she knew his hair would be the same color as hers. She kissed her husband’s cheek, then leaned forward and kissed the scraggly hair on the top of her brother’s head. Her eyes closed as she rested her cheek where she had kissed.

  “This isn’t possible.” She knew the words sounded perfectly clear. What came out of her mouth was that Canary Islands dialect, a language she had thrust from her mind after that horrible day when everyone died except her.

  “But here we are,” her brother said, in the same dialect, his voice weary with the exhaustion of his wound, but triumphant in a way that suggested he might not be a man easily discouraged. They had both been through so much. Too bad they had not been through it together.

  He switched to Spanish, which banished the puzzled expression on Marco’s face. Paloma sat up carefully, still dizzy, and took a squalling baby from her husband, who also clutched Soledad.

  She held out her son to her brother. “We named him after you, Claudio.”

  “Thank you,” he said, and managed a grin. “He’s noisy.”

  “Told you he was your namesake,” she joked back, eager to tease this man she’d believed dead.

  She could tell he was functioning on his last bit of strength. Marco saw it, too. He set their tearful daughter close to Paloma and carefully helped Claudio from the floor where he knelt.

  “You are going back to bed, Claudio,” Marco said, in his juez de campo voice, the one no one disputed.

  “But—”

  “Paloma and I will get our little brood calmed down and sleeping. Let me help you across the hall. Now, now! We will join you when the children are asleep.”

  Claudio looked at her, mutiny in his eyes, but without the strength to do anything about it.