Dreams Beneath Your Feet (27 page)

Sam pulled his eyes away from Isabella to shake hands with Strong, a Brit with an amiable face and a nose that suggested he enjoyed his liquor.

Sam had to force himself not to stare at Isabella. He tried to gauge which of the sisters was older but couldn't tell—both in their midthirties, he supposed, Carlotta round as a walrus, Isabella slender as a the stem of a flower. From their eyes, both of them were endowed with an over-abundance of sass.

“Sam,” said Carlotta, “don't look at my sister like that. Her husband died, her son got shot mortally robbing a house, and her daughter married a Greek and went to Olympus or somewhere dumb. She's mad at God, and she's feisty enough to take the Old Man on.”

Sam decided to try to be gracious. “She's also lovely.” When Carlotta whispered a translation into Isabella's ear, she gave Sam a merry glance.

“Watch out. We Casale sisters don't stand on ceremony around men. You might say our experience, different as it is, has taught us not to.” Carlotta's speech still bore an aroma of her native isle.

Grumble pitched in to rescue everyone. “Sam,” Grumble interrupted pleasantly, “I formally ask you to be my best man at the great event.”

“I don't have any clothes,” said Sam.

“That's grand. We shall expect you in your finest buckskins. At our wedding the common shall dance with the aristocratic.”

“Long as I'm the bride,” said Carlotta, “the common will be conspicuous.”

“And Carlotta was about to tell you that Isabella will be her maid of honor—”

“Not that either one of us is maids,” said Carlotta, “though only one of us was a bawd.”

“When I bought The Sailor's Berth,” Grumble said, “I put Carlotta in charge of the ladies of the evening. Now she will be in charge of me.”

Carlotta gave him a look that said,
You better believe it.

Hannibal and Lei brought the boys up and all were introduced.

“So,” Grumble rumbled on, “let us all have a grand luncheon at Murphy's tomorrow, that's a fine new eatery in town, and make plans. You two have some work to do. Hannibal and Lei, too.”

Sam couldn't bring himself to look straight at Isabella. She seemed to be trying not to laugh at his self-consciousness.

“That's a deal,” Sam said, turning away.

“Not so fast,” said Carlotta. “You'll have one obstacle putting wedding plans together with Isabella. She doesn't speak English.”

Sam gave Carlotta a look that said,
Wha . . . ?

“I been speaking it since I got here on a boat ten years ago. She just arrived, so I have to translate for her.”

“She has about two weeks' worth of Spanish,” put in Grumble.

“Let me finish my story,
mio caro.
My family hasn't had anything to do with me since I took up the whoring trade. Only after Isabella took up arms against the Almighty and I sent money for the passage to California did she decide her sister might be worth a visit.

“So if she doesn't say much, don't think she's demure. She's just as brassy as I am. But only in Italian.”

Sam found his tongue enough to say, “So what is it you want us to do?”

“Now you're getting into it,” said Carlotta. “We have invitations. The printer has them ready now. The engraving is beautiful, I designed it myself. We want the four of you, Sam and Isabella, Hannibal and Lei, to deliver them to everyone who is anybody in town.”

“Us?”

“It's a service. Sam, you and Hannibal are acquainted with the people who count—the highfalutin people are the same as when you were here last. Hannibal and Lei can deliver invitations to the couples, Sam and Isabella to the single men. That will give you a chance to introduce my sister to them.”

“Enough,” Grumble said.

Carlotta didn't even pause for breath. “Isabella needs a new husband. I want her to meet the
comandante
of the presidio, also Mr. Larkin, Captain Cooper, the owners of the French Hotel, everyone who matters. Especially the single gentlemen.”

Grumble interrupted louder. “Tomorrow. Now, Sam, I want to talk to Azul. Remember, I aided at his birth.”

Sam would never forget that terrible afternoon. Stormy with weather and with violence of man against man, it still produced a new human being.

 

O
UTSIDE
M
URPHY'S, AFTER
the luncheon, which was just an excuse for wine and conviviality, Carlotta handed Sam and Hannibal a carton each of formal invitations. “We'll be on our way,” said Sam.

“We will, too,” said Julia. “Can you tell us where the shop of the saddle maker is? Flat Dog wants to see it.”

Grumble gave directions—Flat Dog and Julia walked that way.

Sam took Isabella first to a shop that bore the sign G
IDEON
P
OORBOY
, G
OLDSMITH
in a fancy script.

A teenage boy met them at the front counter. “May I help you?” he asked in Spanish. Sam supposed he was one of Gideon's
Mexican nephews, helping out. He could see his friend the artist bent over and hammering metal against an asphalt block in the back shop. The metal looked like a gold plate.

“Tell Mr. Poorboy,” Sam said loudly, “that a Rocky Mountain beaver trapper has come to give him his leg back.”

Gideon peg-legged out of the back room as fast as he could, raced around the counter, and embraced Sam. They held on to each other. If you cut and saw off another man's leg, if you take his blood and his life in your hands, you are forever joined. Not to mention riding from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean with him.

Sam handed Gideon the invitation, and the goldsmith exclaimed that he would be glad to see all his old friends.

While they traded news she couldn't understand, Isabella looked around at the fine things. In the display cases were many beautiful things made in silver—drinking bowls, spoons, frames for mirrors, and pictures, candlesticks, and plates, some of them with a design raised by embossing. Her family had never been able to dream of such luxuries, although her friend Abby now could and perhaps one day Carlotta could. . . .

In a corner Isabella found liturgical objects. She reached out and touched a silver chalice. She had once been devout, but she thought that the church's money should be given to the poor, not spent on fancy implements for communion or statues for the poor to bend their knees to.

“Señora,” said Gideon, “I see you like ze beauty. May I show you some things?”

Isabella spread her hands helplessly.

“She speaks only Italian,” said Sam.

“The plate that holds ze wafers,” said Gideon, picking it up, “inlaid in niello.”

“The black lines against the silver,” said Sam, “are really beautiful.”

Gideon gave an extravagant Gallic shrug. “I have these church things,” he said, “because I had orders from three different missions
for them when the government seized all their lands. What a farce. All the mission lands, meant for the Indians but in possession of the
ricos.
Half the Indians are field hands, almost like slaves, and other half, zey went back to their tribes.

“So, I now have these wonderful objects I cannot sell. Neverzeless, my friend, I do very well. The
ricos,
their ladies, sometime a sailor who want a bauble for a woman . . . Very well.”

He noticed how Sam and Isabella stood close to each other.

“I t'ink you like zis woman you cannot even talk to. Sometimes it is good, a man can no understand what his woman say. If you decide you like her, or if ze wedding of Grumble, it make you feel sentimental, come back and I give you a small necklace or bracelet as a gift for her. Now I see her coloring, I can pick somet'ing most beautiful.”

“I'm not going courting,” said Sam. He slapped Gideon on the back, and he and Isabella headed for the homes of a substantial list of single men who might want to meet an attractive and eligible woman from Sicily.

 

 

 

S
AM
, F
LAT
D
OG
, Julia, and Esperanza sat in the old mission cemetery. The wooden marker at the head of the grave said:

 

MEADOWLARK MORGAN
1810?–1827
R.I.P.

 

“She was sick with you,” Julia said to Esperanza.

“Convulsions,” said Flat Dog.

Sam found himself unable to speak.

“We brought her in from the trapper camp to Monterey, where the best doctor might be.”

Esperanza barely knew what a doctor was.

“There was no doctor,” said Flat Dog, “but there was a good midwife, Rosalita. She helped your mother.”

“In the end the convulsions were so intense that Rosalita had to cut your mother's belly open with a knife and take you out. This is not uncommon in childbirth. It is a very old practice.”

“But the wound may fester,” said Flat Dog. “That's what happened. It festered, she got a high fever, and she died.”

“I woke up with her cold in my arms,” said Sam. He couldn't recognize his own voice, it sounded so pinched.

They all sat and looked at the rich, green grass on Esperanza's mother's grave.

“I was very . . . ,” Sam tried to go on. “I went into a kind of black hole.”

“Finally we made Papa Sam go away,” Julia said, “do something—do anything to jolt him out of his grief.”

“I left you with Papa Flat Dog and Julia and went to rendezvous. Damn near died getting there.”

“Several months later he came back for you and us,” Julia said, “intending to go back to the village to live. But my father had abducted us, both you and me, and taken us to his rancho. Papa Flat Dog and Papa Sam rescued us from him. You know that story.”

Actually, she hadn't, not until Grumble told her a couple of days ago.

They all looked at one another across the low mound. Esperanza finally found her voice. “But what was she like?”

“She was the best wife a man could have,” said Sam.

“She was a devil,” said Flat Dog. “She tortured her little brothers, mainly me.”

“She was beautiful and graceful and considerate,” said Julia.

Esperanza looked directly at Sam. “Tell me the best thing she ever did for you.”

“Love me,” said Sam, “and marry me.”

“I mean some particular thing she did,” said Esperanza.

Sam took a deep breath. He knew the story he had to tell and dreaded it. “Papa Flat Dog and her older brother”—Esperanza knew this meant Blue Medicine Horse and the name of the dead could not be spoken—“her brothers asked me for eight horses for
her hand in marriage. I wanted her bad enough to steal a hundred. I took her older brother and Papa Flat Dog on a raid against the Headcutters. At first we got the horses, but some Headcutters caught us and your uncle got killed.”

“It wasn't your fault,” said Flat Dog, in the tone of a sentence uttered a hundred times.

“I gave a sun dance, Papa Flat Dog and I took revenge on the Headcutters, but that wasn't enough. Your grandparents wouldn't have a thing to do with me.

“So your mother and I ran away together. And while we were there, we talked, for the first time, about me getting her older brother killed. I said some words from the white man's Bible that I remembered: ‘Give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.' Then she gave me an amazing gift. She forgave me.”

The tears flowed openly down Sam's face. He didn't wipe them. “I didn't know . . . about forgiveness.”

No one spoke for a while.

“That was the best thing she ever did for me.”

“Did she like California?” asked Esperanza.

“She loved it,” Sam said. “We came on the expedition because she wanted to see the big-water-everywhere. We camped a few days on a beach near the rancho where Julia lived. All day every day we played in the surf and explored the tide pools.”

“I saw some tide pools yesterday.”

“She loved the creatures that lived in them, the anemones especially. She would poke the squishy things with her finger and make them squirt. One day we even saw a sea horse.”

Then he had to explain what that was.

“I want to see one,” said Esperanza.

“We will,” said Sam.

Esperanza heaved a big sigh. “If my mother liked California,” she said, “maybe I will, too.”

 

 

F
LAT
D
OG AND
Julia stood at the baptismal font with Rojo and Paloma, the toddler holding Julia's hand. Sam and Abby stood beside them, with Azul, Grumble, and Anthony Strong in the rear flank.

“Flat Dog,” said Father Enrique, “this is a great moment for me. I have often thought of the days when I instructed you. Those recollections give me great pleasure, like fingering the beads of my rosary. You were an excellent student, and especially keen to read. How has your reading come along?”