The Journal of Antonio Montoya

by Rick Collignon

  Now, only moments later, Ramona slid carefully out of the cot and, still in her slip, went to the living room, where she could see into her grandparents’ bedroom. The room was empty. The bed was neatly made, and light—not yet with sun—was coming in through the small, crooked window. Ramona took a pair of clean blue jeans and a white blouse from her dresser and went into the bathroom. She stood under the shower for a long time before she dried herself slowly and dressed. She stared at herself in the mirror while brushing her hair. Although wrinkles crowded the corners of her eyes, the rest of her face was smooth and clear and dark. Her hair fell unevenly to her shoulders, and there was maybe more white than black, and it came in streaks as if painted in. Putting the brush down, she leaned closer to the mirror. She thought she looked good for a woman of middle age who had spent the last twenty-four hours in confusion. After a moment, she raised her eyebrows slightly, and then she smiled at herself.

  In the kitchen, a pot of coffee had been made, and on the table was a note. It read: “Ramona, your grandfather and I have gone for a ride. Make sure, if we are not back, that José eats well. There is coffee. Your grandmother, Rosa.”

  Ramona walked into the living room. She looked out the window and saw that the sun was still an hour away from rising above the mountains. She saw that the sky was a soft blue and that there was no wind. She also saw that her truck was gone.

  Ramona poured a cup of coffee and sat down at the kitchen table. The journal was where she had left it the night before. She slid it close to her and turned the page.

  JANUARY 31:

  It is the last day of this month, and the temperature during the day rose above freezing. With his tractor, Filemon Rodríguez plowed snow from the houses where many of the older people live and also the road through the center of town. The sun melted much of the snow where he had plowed, and I could see dirt that hopefully will not yet turn to mud. Late in the day Filemon came to my office, and I paid him three dollars of village money for his work. We talked, both of us happy to see the end of this month. Just before dark, Horacio Medina came for his cows.

  FEBRUARY 3:

  The children returned to school on this morning for the first day since Christmas. Lito, the only son of Epolito and Rosa Montoya, joined me, as he often has, on the way from his house, which sits just west of the village office. We walked together, with Lito walking ahead of me. He is a small boy with clipped hair and a face that is open and round and not serious. His father is my first cousin, and although I can see Epolito in the boy’s face, it is his mother I can see in his eyes, which are dark and seem to look everywhere. I asked him about his father and his mother, and he did not answer. When I asked once more, he turned and, still walking, said that he had been drawing pictures of fish and wondered if they had legs could they walk. After a moment, I told him that I had never before seen a fish that grew legs, but that if they did, it was possible they would walk everywhere. Lito agreed. There would be fish in the alfalfa fields, he said, and in the mountains, and if they had claws for their toes, they would climb trees. I told him that this was something he should discuss with his father, and he said that he had, and Epolito had told him if fish had legs they would use them to swim. I watched Lito walk down the hill, and two times he fell. Each time he rose, he would run. In his hands he carried a tablet.

  Ramona stopped reading and stared at the page until the words became a blur. The journal, until now, had amused her. She had read as if reading about a distant and familiar place. To have her grandparents and the boy, Lito, who drew pictures of fish and who was her father, appear on the page was like a blow to her heart.

  Ramona’s memory of her father was not altogether pleasant. He had drunk too much, always, his drinking becoming even worse after the death of his wife. When Ramona thought of him, which was seldom, she remembered the smell of whiskey and stale tobacco and an expression on his face that was always somewhat baffled. Much of the time, her father did not return home until late in the evening, when his children were already long in bed, and when he did come home early, he had often been drinking heavily and would sit alone in the kitchen as if lost in his own house. He was not the father Ramona would have chosen, even if he had had the good grace to not be ill tempered.

  Ramona recalled a time just after Flavio’s birth when her mother had fallen ill with a disease that affected her eyes and caused her to see only the shadow of things. Her father had driven his wife and baby Flavio to the hospital in Las Sombras. When he returned, he was alone and told Ramona that her mother would soon be well but that she would be gone for a while. Ramona, who always felt shy and awkward when near her father, had then spent five endless days with him.

  One morning, she had awakened later than usual. She wandered into the kitchen, still in her nightgown, and saw her father outside chopping wood. It was early November, and that morning had been cold with small flakes of snow falling. The clouds were low and thick on the mountains, and to Ramona it seemed that all there was to the world was this valley. She watched her father swing the ax again and again, the pile of split wood growing. She could feel the cold from the floor on her bare feet. Her father swung the ax hard and then let it remain stuck in the stump of wood. He lowered himself and crouched down on the balls of his feet. Ramona watched him bring his hands to his face. She saw that he was breathing hard and that there was snow in his hair. When he finally took his hands away, his eyes met Ramona’s, startling them both. Ramona, in the kitchen, took a step back, and then her father smiled, almost shyly, and gently waved his hand. Ramona lifted her arm slowly, embarrassed, but not quite high enough for her father to see.

  Sitting in her own kitchen thirty-seven years later, seven years after the death of the round-faced Lito, Ramona began to cry. She hiccuped and wept, and a part of her that was watching all this felt as if she were in the current of a river that was slowly pulling her downstream.

  Little José chose that moment to climb out of bed and walk through the living room and into the kitchen. He saw his aunt weeping quietly at the kitchen table and thought that it would be better if he went back into the other room. Ramona raised her head, and José could see that her face was wet and swollen and that her lips seemed to be bigger than before.

  “José,” Ramona said in a voice that sounded like a cough. “José,” she said again, more clearly, “where are your clothes?”

  José was wearing his pajamas, which had blue stripes. He waved his arm behind him. “I’ll go get them,” he said.

  “Not the ones from yesterday,” Ramona said. “Clean clothes.”

  José stared at her for a moment as if she were speaking in a language with which he was unfamiliar. Finally he shrugged his shoulders and said, “I don’t have any clothes.” He spoke in a voice that suddenly began to waver, and Ramona thought that he too might begin to weep.

  Ramona grunted loudly and then rose from her chair and went to the sink. She splashed cold water on her face and then looked out the small window. The sun had finally risen, and the shadows looked cool beneath the cottonwoods. She took in a deep breath of air and let it out in a soft hum. She turned and looked at her nephew.

  “Come, José,” she said, “let’s eat.”

  Ramona brought him a large box of cereal and a half gallon of milk. She also brought a loaf of bread and jam and the platter of enchiladas left over from the night before. “There,” she said.

  “This is a lot of food, Tía,” José said.

  “Yes,” Ramona said, “because you are a growing boy. And I want you to eat all of it.”

  José looked up at his aunt, who was standing near the table with her arms folded across her chest. She was smiling slightly. “I don’t eat this much usually,” he said. “I just eat cereal.”

  “Cereal is like eating air,” Ramona said. “But if you eat two bowls, maybe that would be enough.”

  “Is there sugar?”

  “There’s sugar in the cereal,” Ramona said.

  “It’s better with
a little more.”

  “There’s sugar in the cereal,” Ramona said again, and José decided that he would be quiet. “Two bowls, José,” Ramona said. “I’m going to call your Tío Flavio and see about your clothes.”

  On her way into the living room, Ramona heard the phone ring. When she picked it up, the voice on the other end said in a whisper, “Ramona, it’s me, Flavio. Are they still there?”

  “Where are José’s things?” Ramona said.

  “What?” Flavio said. “What things?”

  “His clothes.”

  For a moment, Flavio was silent. Suddenly an awful fear went through him, and then he said, “Which José?”

  Ramona closed her eyes and shook her head. Slowly and clearly she said to her brother, “Little José. That José. Your nephew. You were to bring his clothes yesterday.”

  Flavio thought that his sister had lost her mind. She was speaking in angry tones about a change of clothing when the dead were roaming her house. To placate her, he said, “Yes, yes, I’ll get them. I’ll bring them by this morning. Now, what of our grandparents?”

  “They’re not here, Flavio,” Ramona said to him, and she heard the line go empty.

  Finally Flavio said, “You mean they were never there?”

  Ramona wondered at the brain that was inside her brother’s head. “No, Flavio,” she said, “that is not what I meant. They were here, but now they are gone.”

  “They’re gone,” Flavio echoed, and he felt a surge of relief.

  “Yes,” Ramona said, and then, without trying to hide the smile in her voice, she said, “They’ve borrowed my truck and are out taking a ride.”

  After Ramona hung up the phone, Flavio stood in his own kitchen with the receiver still in his hand. Martha was standing at the sink with her back to her husband, washing the dishes. She had heard the conversation between Flavio and Ramona. The evening before, when Flavio had returned home in a state of shock and told Martha that his grandparents had returned from beyond the grave to haunt him, Martha hadn’t known how to respond. The thought that her husband, whom she loved dearly, had suddenly gone insane crept into her mind, and then she chased the thought away and smiled and went to the counter and baked cookies until late in the evening. Now, after hearing the talk between Flavio and his sister, Martha thought she would wrap tamales in cornhusks and make tortillas for the remainder of the day.

  Flavio put the receiver back on the hook. He took out a cigarette from his shirt pocket and lit it. He was tired after sleeping poorly through the night. He watched Martha open a large canister and sprinkle flour on the counter. “What are you doing?” he said.

  Martha smiled. “Making tortillas,” she said.

  “We have thousands of tortillas in the freezer, and you’re making tortillas.” He exhaled a cloud of smoke. “Martha,” he said, “my grandparents are driving around town in Ramona’s truck. I don’t know what to do.”

  For some reason, Martha thought that surely her grandfather-in-law must be too old to drive, and what would happen if he were stopped by the police? Without looking at her husband, she said, “What of his driver’s license?”

  Flavio stared at his wife and thought it was possible that everyone had gone crazy. He decided not to answer his wife’s stupid question. He brought his cigarette to his mouth. “I’m going to get little José’s things,” he said, “and bring them to Ramona. And then we will see.”

  Ramona made sure José ate two bowls of cereal and then made him eat three pieces of toast that she coated thickly with butter and jam. She sat quietly across from him at the table and watched him eat. José ate as quickly as he could. He stared down at the table throughout the meal because he was afraid that if he inadvertently glanced at the platter of leftover food, Ramona would notice and force him to eat an enchilada.

  When José had finished, Ramona told him to go ahead and dress in the clothes he had, but when Flavio arrived he would bathe and dress in clean clothes. José carried his bowl to the sink.

  “Tía,” he said, “where’s my grandfather?”

  “He’s gone for a ride, José.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know,” Ramona said. She didn’t want to think about where her truck might be at this moment.

  “He said we would irrigate again this morning.”

  “If he said that,” Ramona said, “then he should be back soon. Do you know what to do?”

  José shrugged. “You open the ditch so the water comes into the field.”

  “Yes, but it hasn’t been done in a long time. You have to lead it slowly so that it sinks into the earth. Can you do that?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “You’re not still hungry?”

  “No,” José said quickly and touched his stomach.

  Neither spoke for a moment, and then Ramona said, “So go then. When your grandfather comes, I’ll tell him you’ve already begun. And leave the mud in the field, José.”

  Ramona straightened up the kitchen and swept the floor. When she was finished, she went to the door and pushed it open. Across the field, she could see José digging with the shovel. The alfalfa had grown greener from the rain the day before, but it was still stunted, and there were patches of bare dirt. She remembered that when she was young, her grandfather would sometimes cut this field three times in a summer. She watched José move quickly to his right, scraping the ground with his shovel.

  Ramona poured herself another cup of coffee and sat at the table. She thought that if this were an ordinary day, she would get canvas from the shed and stretch it and gesso it, and by afternoon it would be dry and ready for oil. She thought that she would paint the sky as she had seen it the evening before, with such a myriad of colors that it dwarfed her grandfather and José. She had seen the sky as if it were alive, and she thought that if she could catch that feeling with her brush, her painting would move and breathe and not merely sit on the canvas and look back at her. If she were to let the brush go where it wished and not where she willed it. Then she looked down at the journal on the table. She brought her hand to her mouth and yawned and, as if it were of little matter, she reached out and moved the book closer.

  FEBRUARY 5:

  On this day, Lupita Valdez, the wife of Armando Valdez, gave birth to a baby girl who is to be named after her grandmother, Celestina Valdez.

  FEBRUARY 6:

  There was snow today in the mountains, but in the village there was only wind and cold. The clouds cleared in the late afternoon, and this evening there are stars.

  FEBRUARY 9:

  Elías Flores and his neighbor, Gilberto Tafoya, shot four elk this morning before dawn. All four were cows and thin from the winter. Elías and Gilberto shot them while the herd, which numbered more than fifty, grazed on alfalfa that Elías had placed not far from his home. The animals were butchered, and the meat from two of them was divided among those who helped, which were many.

  The carcasses were left in the field, and after dark there was the sound of coyotes.

  FEBRUARY 11:

  The road is now open to the south, as the weather has continued to be warm. Ramón Trujillo, who is my closest neighbor, left this village without his family at dawn. He is to seek work in the south, where planting has already begun. His family is to follow if things go well for him.

  When Ramona was sixteen years old, she walked from her house to her grandparents’. She carried baby José in her arms, and walking behind her and kicking stones was Flavio. It had been in the summer when there was no wind, and the days were too hot without clouds, and even the grass was dry and brittle and coated with dust. Ramona’s hair had been long then, far down her back, and she could feel the sweat on the back of her neck and against her chest where she carried José. As the three of them neared their grandparents’, they passed by the Trujillo house that had been empty forever. Now there was a truck parked in the high weeds in front of it, and from inside the house they could hear hammering.

  It was an old adobe,
and a long time ago there had been a fire. Years after that, the north wall had washed away in heavy rains and the vigas had fallen, taking the roof with them. Ramona knew that the man who once lived there had left Guadalupe years and years ago, leaving his wife and children behind. Soon after, according to the story Ramona’s grandmother had told her, the stovepipe had rusted through in the space above the ceiling, and the flames from the fire had licked at the latillas, and in the morning when the village woke, there was a cloud of black smoke hanging above this house. Inside, the wife and children of Ramón Trujillo lay dead in their beds, unburnt, their faces stained with soot. The house had sat empty ever since, and Ramón Trujillo had never returned to Guadalupe.

  When Ramona and Flavio and José reached their grandparents’ house that morning, their grandmother told Ramona that Juan Trujillo, Ramón’s grandson from a later marriage, had come to Guadalupe. He had come from a place far to the south to claim the house his grandfather had built.

  Sitting in her kitchen, so many years after that summer morning, Ramona was no longer looking at the book. Her eyes had gone somewhere else, and her hand moved slowly through her hair. She could no longer remember when she had actually met Juan Trujillo, but suddenly, in her life back then, he seemed to be everywhere around her. When she was at her grandparents’, he would walk from his house with an empty jug for water. Sometimes he would stay for dinner. He would help her grandfather irrigate and go into the mountains and haul firewood with her father. He would take Flavio fishing along the creek, late in the day, when he had finished working on his own house. He was older than she, but not so much. His hair was too long and his skin was dark, and when he spoke to her there was a rhythm in his language that Ramona had never heard before.

  One night, late, when the house was still, she drew Juan Trujillo. She drew the shape of his face and traced the line of his neck and the curve of his shoulder with her pencil. She drew until her body became tense and her face flushed. Ramona didn’t sleep that night, and a few hours before dawn she left her bed and walked across Guadalupe. There was no moon, and the houses were dark. She wore only her nightgown and nothing on her feet. By the time she reached the house where Juan Trujillo lived, her feet were scratched and her long hair was tangled down her back. She remembered, even now, that she stood outside his door and could feel the night air on the backs of her legs and on her bare arms.