PEG BOY (3 page)

If he could
have taken Santiago’s pain as his own he would have done so willingly. He loved
Santiago so deeply that he could have given his life for him. The sadness he
saw in his lover’s eyes brought him close to tears, but he also saw something
he had never seen before. It took him some moments to recognize that the fire
that blazed from those once-sweet eyes was of hate.

T
he
blackness that descended upon him was one so weighted with anger that Santiago
felt he was suffocating. Deep in his mind a voice urged calmness, as everything
had cause and reason. Overwhelmed with the intensity of emotion he experienced
for his father, he feared the devil had taken possession of his soul. He shook
with rage and was frightened at his wish to have his father dead. Santiago
could think of no other reason for Florienda Cali’s death! Don Emilio had been
in the village, drinking. He had been unable to help her when she had needed
him. Florienda would not have died if she had not been alone!

Santiago’s
hands were clenched so tightly that his fingers ached. He tried to hold back
the tears and the need to scream, but the tears came. At the center of his
being was an emptiness so vast that he felt sucked into it and the loneliness
was only pacified by the presence of his lover. He visualized himself pummeling
his father’s face until it lost all familiarity, wanting to hit him until all
the rage in him was spent.

Santiago had
resented his father’s drinking, but not until this day had he felt so outraged
about the matter, having refused to see the habit as a sign that a serious
problem existed. The anger had been carefully concealed and insidiously
nurtured and now it exploded from the darkness like an ugly beast looming so
that he could not turn from it but allowed it to spring forth, and he fed it as
it reached extraordinary proportions. It felt wonderful and terrible all at
once. Adrenaline coursed through his body and he felt overpowered. Violence
erupted and he heard a voice screaming in his ears and the voice was his own.

“Father...,
father..., you demon..., I hate you!”

He screamed
with such vehemence that Fidel was startled. The boy that sat beside him was
not the one he knew.

“You killed
her with your cursed bottle...! I hate you!” Santiago began to cry and made no
effort to hide his torment.

Fidel said
nothing. He took the reins from Santiago’s hands and drove the cart. With his
other hand he held his beloved around the waist. Fidel knew Santiago would need
to have time to sort his thoughts and knew too that Santiago was acting out of
a legitimate reason for his anger. The village had begun to talk about Don
Emilio’s drinking and that he often left his wife alone. The anger was not
unfounded. Fidel had wondered when Santiago would start to resent the way his
mother was being treated. Although there were no beatings, a behavior common
among Spanish men, leaving Florienda to her own devices for long periods was
considered neglect. Florienda Cali had once been active in the community’s
affairs but her seclusion resulted in many of the villagers considering her an
oddity.

Fidel knew the
subject was too sensitive to talk about and he allowed Santiago to come to him
if he wished consoling and comforting. For some time they did not speak.
Santiago’s silence was respected and he finally stopped crying.

“Santi, you
have me and all my love. Ask for whatever you need. I am here. Can I do
anything?”

“Yes,”
Santiago whipped around on the seat and faced him. “You could help me make him
pay for killing my mother.”

“But you’ve
always loved Don Emilio, and you’ve never had a disagreement with him. Why hate
him so much now? The drinking was his way of escaping the pain of Emilio’s
death and of her sadness.”

“Yes, they both
escaped! I lost my father to the bottle and my mother, to her silence.”

Fidel held him
tighter. “You are right, Santiago. She did not have his bottle. She had her own
inner-world. You know how seldom she knew what day it was. Remember the times
we would stop by her room to say hello and she would look at us carefully,
trying to recall where she had seen the faces that appeared somewhat familiar?
Santiago, she was unhappy. It was not because of your father. Don Emilio
treated her well. It was after Emilio died that she decided to stop living.”

As soon as
Fidel heard himself say the words, he realized they were the wrong ones.
Santiago’s face was ripped with pain and the tears that cane were not ones of
anger but of sorrow and deep-felt hurt.

“Yes, she stopped
living. That was fine with her! Didn’t she know she had an other son? How
little I mattered to her!”

“You know that
is not true, Santiago. Remember the love that would show in her eyes when she
would
recognize you?”

“Not enough to
stay with me!” Santiago bowed his head and his shoulders hung in despair. “But
I loved her so much..., so much.
Mamacita..., mamacita…,
why did you
leave us?”

In the
distance Fidel saw the familiar tile roof of the Cali house. Only part of it
still stood. Half the structure had fallen into the courtyard. Don Emilio’s
workshop, located at the rear of the house, had also been demolished. Two
people were working in the rubble, carrying rocks and timbers to a small cart.
One of them was Don Emilio and the other, a woman he had brought in to care for
his wife. Both stopped what they were doing and looked up the road when they
heard the approaching wagon. Don Emilio came to meet them. Santiago sat
upright, his back rigid, his face set, hands clenched. Don Emilio noticed his
son’s unfamiliar expression and was alarmed.

“You’ve heard,
then?”  Assuming the boys had been told what had happened in the village.

Santiago
looked down at him, his eyes ablaze with hate. “I heard she was killed because
she was left alone!”

The words cut
through DonEmelio like knives, wounding him deeply.

“What have you
heard? What were you told?” Don Emilio took the reins from Fidel’s hands and
led the wagon and mule back to what was left of the stable.

“Come, tell
me, son. What is it that you heard that has made you so angry?”

Fidel felt
himself an intruder and knew Don Emilio was restraining himself from saying
much.

“Santi, I will
leave now. This is not the place for me. Perhaps I should return to my mother.
She will need my help.”

Don Emilio
nodded in agreement.

“Fidel, take
the horse. You have been on him before and he knows you. You may ride him back
tomorrow.”

“No!” Santiago
stepped between them. He had said the word with such force that all were
surprised.

“No, I want
Fidel to stay with me.”

Fidel came
closer to him. “Be reasonable! He wants to talk to you. He can not do that with
me here. I will return tomorrow.”

Santiago’s
eyes flashed cold as stone. The set of his jaw told Fidel that he would not be
moved and was close to eruption, so he thought it best to obey.

“Then stay,”
Don Emilio said. “But give us some time alone.”

“I will go
help the Señora.” He bowed and left.

Don Emilio
approached his son and tried to lay a hand on his shoulder. The boy pulled
away.

“Please,
Santiago, come with me. Come…, let us talk together..., please?”

Santiago
followed his father several paces behind as the man began to climb the
foothills behind the house. The path was well worn and had been walked often by
the two boys in recent months, as it led to the promontory that offered a
spectacular view of the countryside. And it had become Santiago’s place to
think.

They walked
slowly for a long time. Reaching the crest of the hill, they saw the steeper
hills of the Andes where the range began. Neither said a word. Santiago made sure
to stay far enough behind his father that it would be an inconvenience should
he want to speak. It was late afternoon and the sun had gone behind a bank of
clouds so that the air was chilled. All around, they saw evidence of the quake.
Trees were toppled and parts of the hillside had fallen to the valley, below.
There were indentations in the ground where large boulders had once stood and
had been dislodged. They followed the paths made by the boulders that had
crashed downward, barely missing the Cali house, and saw that any of them could
have plowed through the structure with little effort and have destroyed it.

Don Emilio
reached the flat stone at the top, and sat. Santiago remembered he had been
taken often by his father to this place, when he had been a small child. He
remembered how his father had held him and bounced him on his knee and that his
brother, Emilio, had been left at home. Don Emilio had wanted the time with his
younger son to be a special event between them. He had wanted Santiago to feel
that he
was
special for fear that the boy was not receiving the
attention from his mother that she was giving her eldest son.

Santiago had
relished these times. Once, they had come to this place and he had felt the
premonition that it was to be their last and he had been correct. Don Emilio
came to lose interest, and Santiago had not questioned why, knowing the reason
had something to do with his mother’s steady deterioration. Now he turned to
his father and confronted him with a sense of authority and justification and
asked the question as though he had the absolute right to do so.

“Why did we
stop coming to this place?”

Don Emilio was
surprised by his son’s authority. The boy who stood before him now was taller
and had command. Santiago seemed more his equal.

“Father, why
was mother left alone? Tell me! Where were you when this happened?” Santiago
waved his arms to take in all the surrounding destruction and he held Don
Emilio with an accusing glare.

“Where were
you when she needed your help?”

“Santiago,
what I am about to tell you may not make much difference to you. You may not
believe me and I won’t be offended if you ask others to see that what I say is
true. I
was
in the village yesterday and I was in the cantina when the
earthquake struck. But I was not drunk! I ran home as soon as I realized what
was happening. I met Señora Celeste on the road. She had come to find me.

“Your mother
was not left alone. The Señora was with her and she told me your mother refused
to leave the house when the tremors started. Try as she might, Señora Celeste
could not persuade her to leave. The Señora saved herself when she saw your
mother was choosing to remain in the house so as not to survive.

“Santiago, I
know all this does not make much sense. I know it does not excuse what
happened. I suppose if I had been here, I could have prevented her from doing
it. But Santiago, your mother was not killed because she was left alone or
because I was drunk in some cantina, unable to help her. Son..., I loved her! I
did not want anything to happen to her.”

Don Emelio
looked deeply into his son’s eyes.

“I have known
that you knew things were not good between us. Your mother has been unhappy for
a long time. Believe me when I say that I have tried to make her happy. And for
a while I succeeded..., or so it seemed. When you and Emilio were little boys
she took great pride in each of you and she lived for you and through you. Your
mother and I were wed when she was a very young girl. I did not know it, but
she was unhappy even then. She had never wanted to leave her beloved Spain. She
ached to return every day of her life, and each day was a burden.

“The death of
your brother was one burden too many and it drove her inward so that she
escaped to the memories of her girlhood. There, she could enjoy the carefree
feelings she had come to miss. You suffered her loss of love, and I did not
know how to speak of it to you. Each day that passed, your sadness was a pain
in my heart. Then I saw that you were able to find someone who could give you
affection. I was happy you found a friend in Fidel. Good friends are small in
number, Santiago. Treasure this friendship for it is a good one. So, I saw that
your needs were met and that I was unable to fill the void left by your
mother’s withdrawal. Like her, I withdrew. My choice was the solace of the
bottle. Santiago, I could not bear to see her the way she was and of what she
had become!”

Don Emilio
turned to stare at the distant hills. Santiago, seated on the other side of the
rock, listened attentively. He heard the tremor in his father’s voice and he
knew the man was in tears. He had seen his father cry only once before, at
Emilio’s burial. He did not think he could stand to see his father cry again
and hoped this mood would change. As he was about to stand and walk away, his
father stepped down and came to him. Santiago felt a rage he could not hide and
Don Emelio was its target. Nothing could remove the fact that his mother would
still be alive if Don Emilio been with her.

Suddenly, like
a wave, Santiago felt nausea sweep over him so that he doubled with the pain as
cramps and the thought broke through like a storm and he felt the heaviness of
the revelation. Florienda Cali would still be alive if he had not gone to Lima!
Had he not gone with the primary intention of spending the time with Fidel? Had
he not gone so that they could make love? Had they been in bed in each other’s
arms at the very moment she had lost her life? Had she seen them?

Santiago’s
guilt has been buried beneath rage for his father, who had been a convenient
escape. All the way back from Lima the thought had been eating away at him,
barely recognizable and he had shied away from it each time it had come too
close. He had accused his father of the very sin of which he had been responsible.

Santiago
turned to Don Emilio, unable to look directly at him and the echo of the words
he had used to assail him sounded in his ears. Don Emilio approached and swept
Santiago up into his arms and held him tightly until each could not let loose
of the other.

“I love you,
papa!”

“I love you,
Santiago. So much of her is in your face! You are so much like her and it is
why you have always been closer to me than your brother. I know that it was
wrong for me to feel that way. Your mother recognized this and tried to
compensate by showering Emelio with her attention to make up for the lack of
mine. There was something about your brother that I could never understand and
it was something I did not like.