The Hummingbird's Daughter (13 page)

He extended his hand.

Adriel looked at it for a moment, then took it.

“I will miss you, pinche Padre,” Tomás said.

“And I you.”

“Care to come to Sonora?”

“Oh no,” Adriel said. “That’s Jesuit territory. The Society of Jesus will take care of you.”

They shook hands again, then stood there looking at the ground.

“Well!” Tomás said, finally.

“Yes!”

“I suppose it’s time.”

“Yes, well. Go with God.”

Tomás startled the priest by saying, “You too, Padre. You too.”

He reached out with his right hand and laid it on the priest’s arm and gave him a gentle squeeze.

He stopped in the middle of the street and turned back. He walked back up the steps to the young priest and said, “Padre?”

“Yes?”

“If I ask you a question, will you answer me honestly?”

Adriel didn’t know if it was one of his tricks or not.

Still, he said, “If I can. Certainly.”

Tomás sighed.

“Doesn’t all this . . . ,” he said. “Don’t you ever . . .”

“What, Tomás?”

“Don’t you ever just get tired of religion? Isn’t it all just exhausting?”

Padre Adriel considered him for a moment. He crossed his arms, then put a finger to his lips.

“My friend,” he said, “no one is more tired of religion than a priest.”

Tomás was startled. He smiled. Nodded.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Don’t mention it.”

He started back down the steps.

“If you think of it,” he said, “say a little prayer for us.”

Adriel watched him walk away.

Tomás called over his shoulder:

“If you do mention me to God, be kind!”

And these were the ones and these were the things that would go into the desert:

Tomás.

The Engineer Lauro Aguirre.

Huila.

Three cooks, two housemaids, and a milkmaid. Three laundrywomen. Their children.

Antonio Alvarado Segundo with a full complement of cowboys and hired riflemen. Also, Guerrero and Millán, two miners from Rosario, in case Tomás decided to attempt a new enterprise. They rode borrowed horses, Millán famous for his good looks and ferocity, Guerrero famous for his long hair, said to be longer than any Indian’s, both men drunk.

Buenaventura on his swayback nag.

Forty of the best horses and three hundred head of cattle, twenty-three dogs, one wagon-riding cat, thirteen pigs, twenty herded goats and six tagalongs, three Brahman bulls, an army of recalcitrant mules, jolly burros, mindless oxen, ducks, turkeys, chickens, and roosters in wicker cages, an evil-tempered and half-bald swan, a turtle in a washtub, and one llama appeared from nobody knew where. And the People.

Fourteen

THE MAIN HOUSE’S CARRIAGE was followed by the ranch wagons, in turn trailed by more than fifty overloaded carts. Each wagon and cart had a driver, including Huila’s wagon, whose mule driver was Don Teófano. There was also a wagon with one hired cook, to spare the household help any undue strain on the journey.

Wagons carried beds, stoves, the sewing machine, weapons, salt, slabs of jerked beef, wheat, maize, several hundred pounds of beans, salt cod, dried shrimp, chile peppers, bags of brown sugar, pots, pans, soap, tubs, water, vinegar, olives, rice, green bananas, limes, oranges, candy, tobacco, medicines, Huila’s vast storehouse of herbs, onions, garlic cloves, clothes, guitars, machetes, trumpets, caged parrots, dolls, rifles, huaraches, underpants, spyglasses, love letters, Tomás’s library packed in crates, picks, shovels, scythes, whetstones, bridles, harnesses, a rocking chair, the grandfather clock.

Straggling along behind this mobile flea market came the ragged children who could ride, some of them on ponies, one or two on old plow horses, one on a big pig, and Teresita, on a burro.

The edges of day were pouring mercury, burning, upon the hills.

Don Tomás, at the head of the column, sat tall on his horse and felt, like arrows, like bullets, the eyes of all his people focused on his back. He had never felt so alone.

Behind them all, a flatbed wagon whose mule driver was covered in a tent of mesh. It was the fellow from Parangarícutirimícuaro. Whining and humming behind him, seven hives full of bees. Tomás had concocted a smoker that pumped marijuana fumes into the hives, and the bees were relaxed and enjoying the ride. The wagon driver had red eyes and a foolish grin on his face, and he occasionally bent down and pumped a blue-white cloud of smoke into his own face.

Falls, then. Tripped horses, peones falling off their carts and splitting their heads. Ten escaped cows thundering through the willows. A wheel fallen off a wagon.

By noon, several of the cowboys had spied a lone coyote running down a dry wash, and they set out after him, firing their rifles as if to kill the devil himself. Spooking the cows, yet unable to stop, they flew over the hills like maniacs, like frantic dogs, only to slink back to the master, their heads bowed and their tails dragging. Nobody hit the coyote.

Over the hills until the ranch was out of sight. Every mind full of what it loved the most, each person certain he had lost that thing forever. Fresh mango. January sixth, the Day of the Three Kings. The Day of the Dead. Tejuino, the fermented maize beer. Fried coffee beans. Sex in the sugarcane field. Sex in the barn. Sex in the stock pond.

They made only nine miles that first day, and when they stopped, they felt as if they had traveled one hundred or more. They could have walked home and been there before midnight, yet they felt as if they were cast adrift in the most foreign land. They were grim and pale with trail dirt, their massive cloud of heraldic dust leaning far ahead of them on the evening breeze, already traveling three times the distance they had been able to go.

Crows, attracted by the stink and the tumult, spied on them from the treetops, hopping along from tree to tree, peeking out from between the ragged leaves. And buzzards, attracted by the flapping crows, hypnotized by all the wandering meat beneath them, circled and dreamed of putrescence and death, the deliciousness of rot. And unknown and unseen, to the north of the trail only five miles away from the rancho, three dead men grinned under the soil, shot by Rurales for their scant gold and their boots, buried hastily and half-eaten by beetles and voles, tunneling wildcats and foxes, these three leathery travelers vibrated underground as the people passed, shook in their paltry graves as if they were laughing, giggling, their yellow mouths wide in toothy hilarity. And in the trunks of the oldest trees, among the stones in the creek beds, buried in the soil, lying among the chips of stone kicked aside by the horses, the arrowheads of long-forgotten hunters, arrowheads misshot on a hot morning, arrowheads that passed through the breast of a raiding Guasave, gone to dust now like the bowman and scattered, arrowheads that brought down deer that fed wives and children and all of them gone, into the dirt, blowing into the eyes and raising tears that tumbled down the cheeks of Teresita.

Tomás, far ahead, weary and troubled, stopped with his head down. He raised one hand, and the group started to draw themselves around him. Segundo and the cowboys automatically rounded up the herd and moved the protesting animals toward the small seep in the field to the south. The wagons collected around the patrón: the cook pulling into the middle beside Loreto’s former carriage. The various big wagons circled, and the carts after them, all collecting around Tomás, layers of home shutting out the world. And out, beyond the ring of wagons, the bees stirred and exited their hives, delicately raiding the flowers of the fields, sipping the water of the green seep in the grass. Everyone dismounting, everyone asking, “Where are we?” The fires already lit, the smoke rising all around, the guitars starting to play, the darkness only a suggestion, a blue drip of shadows from the hills coming their way from the west, and a bruise spreading through the tissue of the sky from the east.

The children settled their steeds at the outermost edge of the encampment. They tied their animals to trees or to wagons, those who thought to take care of things. Others just dropped their reins and their ropes and went off crying for their mothers and begging for food. They were sunburned and dust choked and thirsty and bottom sore.

Teresita, so sore from riding her little donkey Panfilo, could barely walk. She made her way through the wagons, peeking at the families, greeting her friends, petting the dogs, smelling the smells. She worked her way through the maze to Huila’s camp. Huila was seated in her chair, a pillow fluffed under her buttocks. “My nalgas hurt,” Huila said. Teresita collapsed at her feet. Don Teófano had lit a small campfire, and he was brewing coffee in a blue, white-flecked pot.

“Why must we suffer?” a woman said.

Don Teófano replied, “If you were born to be an anvil, you must bear many blows.”

Everyone nodded wisely.

“If you were born to be a nail, you cannot curse the hammer,” he intoned.

More nodding.

“If you —”

“Ya pues, hombre!” Huila scolded.

She prodded Teresita with her foot.

“Bring me that jug.”

“What jug?”

“The jug I want. You’ll know which one.”

Teresita got up and looked in the wagon. There was a jug under the edge of a blanket. She grabbed it and carried it to the old woman.

“For every bad thing in life, mezcal.” Huila uncorked the jug. “And for every good thing, too.”

The People laughed and said, “Ay, Huila!”

She took a swig, then passed it on. More laughter soon sprouted among them, and Don Teófano gave Teresita a mug of steaming coffee rich with goat milk and sugar. The fires crackled all around them. Teresita lay back, listening to the sayings everyone began to pronounce:
A little poison won’t kill you,
and
I’d rather be happy and poor than worried and rich,
or
Honey wasn’t made for the mouths of donkeys.

There came a stirring among the campers, and suddenly Tomás appeared among them.

“Are we all right?” he asked. “Everyone in one piece?”

“Sí, señor,” the People replied, looking away. “We’re fine, thanks be to God.”

“Huila,” he said, pleased to see her. “How are you holding up?”

“Don’t worry about me,” she said.

Tomás put his hand on Teresita’s head.

“I packed your clock,” he told her.

She laughed.

“I’m glad.”

“Well,” he said, “off to the next wagon.”

“Good night,” they called. “Buenas noches” and “Adios.”

Teresita was astounded to see Buenaventura trailing Tomás. She had looked for him all day, unable to spot him in the teeming flow.

She said, “Buenaventura, what have you done?”

He was wearing the most appalling suit she’d ever seen. His pants were too short, and his buttoned jacket was too tight. And a bowler hat squatted on his head like a dirty turtle. It was simply too outrageous.

He tipped his hat to her.

“I got a job,” he said.

She could say nothing—her mouth hung open.

He grinned at her. Then he leaned over and whispered, “I’m in.”

“They took you in?”

He held up the flaps of his silly little gentleman’s coat.

“You know it.”

He pulled a doll out from under his coat and tossed it to her.

“I stole it.”

Huila pretended not to hear this.

He stepped around Teresita and started into the gloom between the wagons. His head popped back out into the light, and he pointed at her. Then he winked. Then he left.

Tomás had spread out a bedroll by the fire. He leaned back on his saddle, his boots off and his socks soaking up heat from the coals. He sipped brandy and smoked a cigar and stared at Aguirre and shook his head. “What have we done?” he said.

“You have done what you must,” said the Engineer.

Tomás tipped another dollop of brandy into his friend’s cup.

“Salud, cabrón,” he said.

“Salud,” Aguirre replied, clacking his cup against Urrea’s.

“To a new life, Lauro.”

“To a new Mexico.”

Segundo stepped up to them and squatted.

“Engineer,” he said. “Boss.”

“Good evening.”

“Buenas.”

Tomás offered him a drink. Segundo pushed his hat back and smiled. “I shouldn’t,” he said. “But I will.” He took a swig from the bottle. Gasped lightly. “Ah. That’s rich.” He handed the bottle back to the patrón. “Everything’s settled,” he finally said. “I put out pickets to stand guard. I’ll take a shift at midnight. The People are settled. Todo ’sta bien.”

“Thank you, Segundo,” said Tomás.

“Doing my job,” Segundo replied. He stood, brushed off his trousers, and said, “I’ll sleep now, if you don’t need me.”

They waved him away.

“Sweet dreams,” Aguirre said.

Segundo turned back and said, “Be sure to shake your boots out in the morning. Scorpions.”

And soon, with the bottle drained, the two old friends pulled their blankets around them and fell into a deep, aching sleep.