Shame the Stars

by McCall,Guadalupe Garcia

  “Keep your voice down,” Papá said, putting a hand over my mouth. “You don’t want to wake up your wife.”

  “I’m awake, Don Acevedo,” Dulceña said, sitting up in bed and taking my rifle away from me to set it down on the opposite wall, away from my father.

  Papá glanced around the room for a second, “Just making sure no one was listening,” he said. “Come with me, Son. I need to tell you something.”

  “What is it? What’s going on?” I asked, but my father didn’t answer me. He turned away and wandered out of my room. “Where are you going?” I asked, following him as he scuffled down the stairs.

  He weaved in and out of the shadows through the house like a specter, until he got to the kitchen. “Are you hungry, Don Acevedo?” Dulceña asked from behind me. But my father didn’t answer her either. He walked over to the pantry, picked food off the shelves, piled it in his arms, and hugged it to himself like he’d just found a treasure trove.

  “No time to eat, no time to sleep either,” Papá said, ripping into a box of crackers. Crumbs fell out of his mouth as he ate standing up.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, taking the crackers out of his arms and gently guiding him to the table. “What’s happening? Why don’t you have time to eat or sleep?”

  “I’m going to need to borrow some of this food, Joaquín. I need to take it back to the men in the brush. We’re starving, m’ijo!” He struggled to open a can of sardines. His hands were trembling so much that I took it and opened it for him.

  “You don’t borrow food,” Dulceña said, getting up to light the wood stove. “Food is nourishment. You don’t need to borrow your own food, much less offer to pay it back.”

  “What are you doing?” I whispered so that only Dulceña would hear. “He’s sleepwalking. He doesn’t understand what you’re trying to tell him.”

  “Yes, I know,” she whispered back. “But you have to be careful what you say to him. You can’t startle him awake. That could hurt him — mentally. It’s best to just go along with the delusion. He won’t remember any of this when he wakes up anyway.”

  “Money can’t buy you food when you’re holed up in the brush,” Papá said. “We haven’t been able to get our hands on any provisions for over a week now.”

  “Want the rest of this?” I asked, handing the open can of sardines back to my father. He contemplated it like he wanted to cry. Then he pulled the tiny, delicate fish out of the container one by one and ate them slowly, silently. Then, as if he’d just remembered something of great importance, he reached over and grabbed me by the collar. Leaning over and pulling me in, he whispered, “We have to help him, Joaquín. We have to help your brother.”

  “I know,” I said, trying to ignore the dementia reflected in my father’s eyes.

  “We have to talk to your mother,” Papá whispered, as he let me go and got back to eating sardines. “She’ll know what to do. She always knows what to do.”

  “Mamá?” I asked. “Mamá’s dead.”

  “She’s dead!” Papá’s voice boomed across the room. His body trembled, and his balled fists whitened. Then he reached across the table again and grabbed my shirt, twisting it in his hands, choking me. “Your mother’s dead, Joaquín. You hear me? Dead! We can never be a family again. Do you understand?”

  Dulceña came over and tried to pull my father off me. “Please, don’t hurt him,” she begged. Her hands shook as she pried my father’s fingers off one at a time until I could breathe again.

  “¡Venganza!” Papá said. “Bloodthirsty, cold, calculating revenge is what we need here. I know men who will do it, men of honor and integrity. They can help us, Joaquín. We’ll go in there with guns blazing and take out every one of those demonios! We’ll string them up — lynch the lot of them. Give them a taste of their own medicine.”

  “You’re tired,” I said, getting up and going around the table to help my father out of his chair. “You should go back to bed.”

  “¡Desgraciados!” My father slammed the table with both fists. He swept his arm, and the can of sardines went flying across the kitchen. Then he did the same thing with the pots and pans on the counter. “I won’t stand for this! Do you hear me? I won’t stand for this!”

  “¡Cálmate, Papá!” I cried. I put my arms around my father’s waist and pulled him back across the room, guiding him back to his chair. He sat down, panting and crying, his body quivering with emotion.

  Dulceña picked up the can of sardines and tossed it in the trash, then came to stand on the other side of my father. “You need your rest, Don Acevedo,” she said, trying to calm him down.

  “Aztec blood runs hot and fierce through our veins, Joaquín,” Papá said, a murderous spark glinting in his tear­stained eyes. “Our ancestors were warriors! They plunged their knives into the chests of their enemies, carved out their hearts, and ate their flesh. Join us, Joaquín. Join the rebellion! We’ll make pozole out of lawmen!”

  “Papá, listen to me,” I said as I pulled my chair to sit directly in front of him. My father’s hands were cold, clammy, as I held them fiercely in mine. “Can you hear me? Are you somewhere in there? Please, look at me.”

  “Here,” my father whispered, touching his temple as he sank down in his chair again. “I must endure a living hell. Here. In here.”

  “Yes,” I said, putting my hand on his shoulder. “Do you understand what’s going on?”

  “Going?” Papá’s eyes were luminous as he stared through me at the wall.

  “You’re delusional, Papá,” I said. “Please stop this nonsense and look at me.”

  “He can’t see you,” Dulceña whispered, rubbing my back gently.

  Hot tears started to pour down my face. “Why can’t you see me, Papá? Why can’t you let me in? Don’t you know how much I love you? How much I need you right now? You’re the only parent I have left. Please, please, come back to me. I love you.”

  “Love is a curse.” Papá got up and started to walk out of the kitchen. “Love is infernal. Love is a white banderita.”

  Excerpt from Joaquín’s journal, Thursday, September 16, 1915

  ANTI-ODE TO DEATH

  Ladrona de alientos — what do you want with breath?

  Your empty lungs cannot sustain it, yet you claim it

  from every creature you climb upon. A dog snarls,

  growls, and barks before it whimpers and shivers

  and scratches at the door, begging to get inside.

  Then a black bird cries and takes flight, and we,

  afeared, lock doors and slam windows shut.

  Too late, we come back to the deathbed to find

  our loved one’s breath has been sucked out.

  Estafadora de amores — what do you want with our beloved?

  They cannot with their closed eyes behold you,

  in their crossed arms enfold you! Deny yourself this

  malevolent indulgence and from our humble homes

  be gone. Let us dwell peacefully in this, our earthly

  heaven, without your treacherous, malignant touch.

  Chapter 23

  He’ll be all right,” Doc Hammonds said, handing me a small brown bottle of tincture of opium. “I gave him a bit to knock him out for a few hours, just so he can start resting properly. Don’t give him too much. A small teaspoon before bed every night ought to do the trick. Once he regains his normal sleeping pattern, you’ll start seeing a change in him.”

  I gave the bottle to Dulceña and she put it in the cabinet. “So he’s not too far gone?” I asked, feeling apprehensive at the idea that my father might need to be committed. After the night before, I was afraid we might need to take him to a sanitarium.

  “No, no,” Doc Hammonds said. “Let’s see how he reacts to restored sleep and medication first. I suspect that’s all that’s wrong with him. Your wife said she hasn’t s
een him sleep all the way through the night since your Mamá’s funeral. That’s all that’s wrong with him. His nerves are wide awake up in his brain. We need to shut them down. The opium will take care of that. You’ll see.”

  “Thank you, Doctor.” Dulceña stepped aside to let Doc Hammonds through. We walked the doctor down the hall.

  As I opened the front door, Señor Luna was standing there. “I have an idea,” he said, squeezing past me and the doctor.

  I saw the doctor out, closed the door, and escorted the lawyer into the library. “What is it?” I asked, when he’d settled onto the leather couch. “Did you find a way to save my brother?”

  Luna waved his hand in the air. “No, no,” he said. “That’s not the way it works. We don’t have enough time to get the sentence overturned.”

  “Then what’s all the fuss about?” I asked, sitting on a high-backed wing chair in front of the attorney. Dulceña sat on the armrest of the wing chair.

  “Your wife,” Luna said, pointing at Dulceña. “Your wife is the answer to our prayers.”

  “My wife?” I asked, looking at Dulceña. “How?”

  The lawyer grinned for second. Then he looked straight at Dulceña and said, “She can write a long, scathing editorial letter addressed to the governor himself. An exquisite ballad, a corrido in English condemning the Rangers and glorifying your brother.”

  “That’s it?” I said, sitting forward in my chair. “That’s your big idea? How’s that going to help anything?”

  “Now, wait a minute, Joaquín,” Dulceña said, putting her hand on my shoulder to get my attention. “Señor Luna might have something here. Words are important, and passion lends them power. I truly believe that. If we do this right, if we get the public’s attention, we could very well force the governor’s hand.”

  “There’s no way of knowing until you try,” Luna said. “Just think of everything you could say here. You could finally unmask Munro. You could chronicle this whole town’s journey. You could really make a difference.”

  Suddenly, I knew exactly what needed to be done, what needed to be said. “You’re absolutely right! We’ve been fighting the wrong kind of fight. Going the legal route has gotten us nowhere. It’s time we went public.”

  “Exactly,” Luna said. “Munro’s biggest fear is exposure. So I say you expose him. I say you put your talents to work here. Your wife’s father is a printer. He has to have some connections. Someone must owe him a favor somewhere. Getting an important editorial in circulation shouldn’t be a problem for him.”

  My hope was so great that once our lawyer left, I sat at my father’s desk and pulled out some pages from a journal in the side drawer and started writing. The words that had been jumbled up inside me finally fit together, like a puzzle fully formed in my mind, and I knew what I had to say in this letter.

  “Do you need my help?” Dulceña asked as she stood behind me, reading over my shoulder as I scribbled away frantically.

  “No,” I said. The words were coming so quickly, in such a wave of emotion, that I couldn’t stop to ask her what she thought of any of it. “Not yet. I have all these ideas swirling around my head. I want to get them all down first; then you can revise it. You can help me with the details, put it all together for me.”

  Dulceña leaned down and kissed my temple. “Sounds good to me,” she whispered. Then she left me to it, only talking to me when she brought in coffee and pan dulce to keep me nourished.

  Feverishly, I wrote out our story, the story of a family trying to love and protect each other during difficult, treacherous times. The story of the firstborn, a man of faith, a man of honor and integrity, a man of God. I dubbed my brother the Martyr of Las Moras, Monteseco’s forsaken son, un Jesu cristo moreno, about to be crucified, hung by the neck until dead, to feed Munro’s pride.

  I wrote about my mother too, about her support of our people, which was the reason Tomás was in jail. He had come to our defense against her murderer, a man who had never been brought up on charges because the law was blind and mute in Morado County.

  Dulceña offered advice several times as I put pen to paper. It was she who added flare to the letter. Her words sparkled like diamonds and burned like fiery brands through the paper as I wrote them out. It was her ardent voice that said, “Don’t forget, you’re not just speaking for your brother. You are speaking for the people! You are their voice — you are their archangel.”

  I understood what she had been trying to tell me. In order to get the attention of great men, of politicians and lawyers, men of power, I had to be brutally honest. I had to be clear, but truthful. It was the best chance, the last chance I had to save my brother.

  As I scribbled furiously, passionately, I thought about what A. V. Negra and all those other fearless journalists would say at a time like this. How would they address the problem? What angle would they take? What angle would my own beautiful wife, the brilliant A. V. Negrados, take? Mimicking her style, I started by quoting the laws of man and the laws of God. I referenced history both recent and past, from both sides of the border.

  I condemned Captain Munro and Judge Thompson for fashioning nooses out of laws, wrapping them around our necks, and twisting them just tight enough to suppress our voices, forgetting little things like our right to a trial by jury and the necessity of evidence. I likened the lawmen to pharaohs, denying us our God-given right to prosper in the promised land, the land of our ancestors, the land they bought from under our feet without our permission. I alluded to unwritten laws — the laws of nature, the laws of humanity, the laws of brotherly love.

  It was the longest piece I’d ever written, an emotional piece — a story of faith and courage in the face of social injustice, subjugation, and prejudice. One which I hoped would make politicians and common men nod over in unison and clamor for answers. When we were done and Dulceña was satisfied with our efforts, I folded the pages, put them in my pocket, and we headed into town to see the one person we knew had the courage to help us publish our masterpiece.

  Chapter 24

  It’s the best piece of writing I’ve read in a long time,” Don Rodrigo proclaimed, taking his glasses off and putting them next to the lamp on the coffee table beside us.

  “Can you help me get it circulated?” I asked. “Do you know anyone with a printing press nearby? Someone who’s not afraid to put this in the hands of the people? Time’s running out, so I can’t go too far.”

  “You won’t have to,” Don Rodrigo said. “Come with me.”

  Using a lantern to light our way, my father-in-law led us through the darkened hallway until we were at the back of his house. He opened the back door and led us down a path. Past the secluded garden walls we went, until we were standing in front of a small shed. He unlocked the door of the shed and led us inside. Once there, he handed the lantern to Dulceña and moved furniture around until he cleared the area surrounding a bulky object covered by a dark tarp.

  “This was my first machine. I cranked out the first issue of El Sureño with this old thing,” he said as he removed the heavy cloth to reveal an ancient printing press, a relic compared to the one he’d had in his shop. “I bought it off a widow who was short on cash. It was old then, so it’s worn out and decrepit now, but it still works, if we baby it. I think it’s got enough life left in it to get the job done.”

  “Thank you, Papi!” Dulceña threw her arms around her father and kissed him.

  “Don’t thank me, cariño,” Don Rodrigo said. “The truth is I should have thought about this myself. But with Jovita’s funeral taking all of our attention, we were too distracted to consider resurrecting the paper. I’m sorry, Joaquín. I’m sorry I didn’t get the word out sooner.”

  I put a hand on Don Rodrigo’s shoulder and patted him gently. “There’s no need to apologize,” I said. “You’ve been a great help to me and my family.”

  “Well, we should ge
t started then. Do you want me to print this anonymously or did you want to use a pseudonym?” Don Rodrigo asked. “A. V. Negrados has a huge following. It would get the people’s immediate attention if we used that name. Or we could make one up for you, if you prefer.”

  “No,” I said. “This is my battle, my fight, and I want my name on it. The people may know and recognize A. V. Negrados, but they know Las Moras too. They’ll recognize our family name and sympathize more. I want them to see I’m not afraid to speak up and they shouldn’t be either.”

  It took us the rest of the night to get five thousand copies of my article printed before dawn. In the end, we settled on a two-page spread, an exclusive, just long enough to get the story out in both Spanish and English. Its enormous headline screamed out in bold letters the word Rebellion, and I couldn’t be prouder.

  Don Rodrigo got the local paperboys running from one end of town to the other. When the patrons of El Sureño woke up to the appalling news of Tomás’s secret sentencing, they offered to help distribute it to nearby towns. Hard metal and strong flesh drove the news out of town as men in vehicles and boys on horseback took to the roads in every direction to get the news of my brother’s impending demise out to the rest of South Texas.

  Don Rodrigo and Dulceña drove the paper up north as far as Agua Dulce, and I personally drove around Morado County and distributed the paper to every local merchant who would take it. By the time we all got back to Monteseco, there was a huge crowd outside the old print shop asking questions and looking for answers.

  “There he is!” Panchito, the boy who shined shoes in the streets on the weekends, screamed when I stepped out of my father’s automobile and into the street. “Joaquín!” they screamed. “Joaquín! Tell us what to do! What can we do to help Tomás?”

  I was at a loss for words. What could they do, other than stand behind me? “I don’t know what you can do,” I said. “I just know that I can’t let my brother hang.”