The Hummingbird's Daughter (16 page)

“Go with God,” Teresita translated.

Tomás called out, “God bless you!” but they said nothing. He shrugged. “If there is a God, it can’t hurt to stay on His good side.”

Teresita and Huila walked toward their camp, holding hands.

“Spies,” Huila said.

The peaks grew heavy with night, the points flaring orange, then impossible molten copper. Red like a deep infection crept down the cliffs and the arroyos, heavy and somehow fluid, until it spilled purple across the plain, drowning wagon after wagon, crawling up the legs of horses until only their backs were left in light, like small oblong islands in a shallow sea. Horse by horse, night conquered the plain. Fires blinked to life, and soon the stars above and the fires below looked the same, as if a slice of the sky had been stretched out on a drying rack so they could eat it in the morning.

All around the llano, the Urrea ranch camped, pitching tents and laying blankets on the shadows of the ghosts who had gone before. Aguirre, unknowing, lay on the spot where riders of the Glanton gang had once laid out a line of salted scalps to dry in the sun; the spot where shell traders from the Sea of Cortes had slept in 1764, and near his left foot the spot where the leader of that party had copulated silently with his third bride; the same spot where Spaniards, searching for El Dorado, had rested before they’d walked ignorantly into a storm of Yaquis and died, punctured and slashed, tormented to death with fire and knives and thorns and ants.

Loreto’s fine tent—now housing Tomás’s kitchen—was pitched over the graves of infants, dead of the coughing sickness, buried here by Jesuit missionaries. Segundo would have been deeply offended to know he slept on an old toilet trench. Only Huila spread her blankets on a clean patch of ground: no bones, no ghosts, no copulations or abandoned stale dreams spoiling in the dirt.

Tomás led a young woman by the hand and walked up into the foothills. Millán, the miner from Rosario, had introduced her to the patrón, already buying points for himself. He was no fool. And the girl, no fool either, lifted her skirts for Tomás as he knelt before her, licking his way up her thighs—brown and sweet as candy, at the same time tart and salty, musky, silken and cold in the warm air, refreshing as the sorbet he’d licked in Culiacán back when he was a student. She was amazed that this small bit of her body could bring the great master to his knees before her. She was perhaps the most beautiful girl on that whole plain, but he did not know her name and felt no need to ask. He pressed his face to her underwear, redolent with the burning scent of her, and he pulled the cotton down, over the bright points of her hips, the shadowy curve of her belly, until the fog of dark hair came into his sight, soft in the moonlight, tickling his face as he bent to her again. He pressed his lips to the mound of her, breathing her in, tasting her like a dog, as her skirts fell over his head and her fingers pulled his head tighter to her, her legs moving apart in the dark, her beauty falling around him, her greatest gift to him, this flavor, this smell, her secret.

Teresita lay about ten feet away from Huila’s feet. The wagon rose above the old medicine woman, like the greatest headboard ever built, and her mattress was the earth itself. Snoring mounds snuffled and shifted all around her.

Teresita lay back and pulled the blanket to her chin. Her bottom hurt, though not as much as it had on the first days of her ride. Her thighs and calves were burned from rubbing bare across the burro’s fur. Her neck was sunburned, as were her cheeks. The ground hurt her back.

She sighed.

She focused on her legs, as she so often had, and the glow ignited softly there, the golden honey feeling she summoned from no one could say where. She pulled it up slowly, filling her lower legs with it, tingling warmly, the pain draining out of her, the glow filling all the tissues of her body.

There was no way to know when the dream began. She didn’t know, even, if she really was dreaming. It seemed to her that she’d lain there for a time staring up at the stars when something caught her eye. Far up there, some strange little flicker, some bit of gray color moving across the stars.

As she watched, that fleck grew larger, grew more solid, more colorful, until she realized that it was Huila, walking down the sky as if it were a stairway.

She sat up and rubbed her eyes.

Huila’s skirt blew out behind her—she was smoking her pipe, and the smoke ripped away behind her in the dry breeze. She walked down in a spiral, coming from a place far up in the night, and she saw Teresita and smiled down at her.

“Huila!” Teresita whispered.

“Child.”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m flying.”

Teresita put her hands over her mouth.

“You shouldn’t be watching me. It’s rude to watch people fly,” Huila scolded. “Look over there.”

Teresita looked toward the tents, and she saw skinny men in white running from sleeper to sleeper.

“Who are they?” she asked.

Huila hovered above the wagon, looking down at herself asleep on the ground.

“Son los Yaquis,” she said. “The Indians are dreaming about us again.”

Huila bent down and took hold of her own shoulders. She shuddered once, as if stepping into cold water, and pulled herself toward her own body. The body kicked once and rolled over. Huila was inside, hidden from view within Huila. Teresita watched her sleep.

The body said, “Good night, girl.”

“Good night, old woman,” Teresita said. Then, “Is this the dream?”

“It is.”

Huila started to snore.

Teresita sat there thinking, feeling the strangeness of it. She looked around the plain: sputtering fires, the Yaqui dreamers flickering out of view, the sleeping bodies, the pale white lozenges of the tents. She turned and stared. There was a small glowing patch in the air, like mist. She saw people there, holding books and newspapers. Reading . . . and she knew they were reading about her. She leaned toward the light and looked in their faces. The readers were far from her, yet right beside her. She said, “Hello?” But they were too far in time to hear her.

Later, she awoke.

Sixteen

THEY MADE CAMP IN A GOOD VALLEY. A stream came out of the foothills, and it was shaded by cottonwoods. A fallen old trunk had formed a dam across the water, and the pool behind it was green and cool. The branches of the fallen tree had taken on a life of their own, and the rotting dam had a row of thin trees rising from it. Fat black fish lurked in the green pool, and the outflow of the dam watered a wide green swath of grasses and wildflowers.

Teresita parked her burro beside Aguirre’s horse and looked up at him.

“Engineer?” she said. “What year is it?”

“1880,” he said.

“Is that a good number?” she asked.

She did not yet know that Yoris did not count the numbers the way the People did, and they did not pay attention to fours or sixes, sevens or nines.

Aguirre thought for a moment, then replied: “It is the year of the exodus!” This greatly pleased him. She went off to ask Huila what that word meant.

Their lives were changing every day as they traveled. They did not know that the world all around them was changing, as well. General Sherman, to the north, had just wearily proclaimed, “War is hell.” Settlers in the state of Oklahoma, like Yoris in Mexico, had begun stealing Indian land. American companies not busy embezzling the Indian Territories were heading south and buying vast land holdings from the Díaz regime.

Thomas Edison had been experimenting with long-burning filaments. Wabash, Indiana, had recently become the first city entirely lit with electric lamps. Within a year, New York City would follow. George Eastman had patented the first roll of film.

The Irish gave the world the word
boycott.
France took Tahiti. Singer sold 539,000 sewing machines to replace its older models, one of which already awaited Doña Loreto in the great house in Alamos: a housewarming present from the Urreas of far Arizona. Alexander Graham Bell placed the first telephone call.

In New York, Thomas’s English Muffins appeared. Ice cost $56 a ton and 890,364 tons of it were sold to tropical countries like Mexico. Philadelphia Cream Cheese was invented.

It was beside the green trout pool that the People first noticed the pilgrims. Don Tomás had declared two days of rest to feed and water the animals, to attend to the axles, and to do a little hunting and fishing. The buckaroos immediately set out to slaughter deer, quail, turtles, fish. Meat smoked and sizzled on crude spits over nearly every campfire. The sound of singing and laughter combined with the lowing of the cattle. Tomás, lying in the shade of the horizontal cottonwood grove, idly watched the smoke rise, took in the lulling music of his rolling rancho, and nibbled the delicate meat of a trout.

“Truchas,” Huila said, spitting right and left, “are full of bones.”

Walkers passed the camp in small groups. They never accepted offers of hospitality. Segundo called them rude bastards for turning down his rum and beans. After the tenth scuttling crowd passed by, he took to siccing dogs on them and aiming rifles at them to make them trot.

“We are going to the messiah!” one tattered Indian called, as if this explained everything.

“The messiah!” Segundo bellowed. “What messiah?”

“Chepito!”

“Who the hell is Chepito?”

“Niño Chepito, the messiah!”

Huila listened to this with great interest.

Niño Chepito, eh?

“I will go inspect this messiah,” she proclaimed.

“Ay, Huila,” Tomás said. “Another pendejo with magic tricks getting the other pendejos excited.”

“I should see,” she said.

“A messiah?” Aguirre asked. “A heretic, perhaps. An Antichrist! There is but one messiah.”

Huila eyed him.

“Yes, well,” she said.

Certain members of the rancho had already started to walk into the foothills. They were converting before they even saw Chepito. Tomás watched this with some alarm.

“Why are they going?” he asked Huila.

She shrugged.

“Curious,” she said. And, “If you were them, would you live like this?”

“Like what?” he asked.

Huila shook her head.

“I will return tomorrow,” she said. “Do not leave without me.”

She set about gathering her bundle of things for the walk, her shotgun and some shells. Old Teófano loaded his shotgun as well, and he threw a roll of blankets over his shoulder. Teresita, uninvited, joined them.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“Into the hills,” Huila replied. “A place they are calling Sal Si Puedes.”

Get Out If You Can. It seemed like the wittiest name Teresita had ever heard for a place.

Teófano made a face and shook his head. “These desert and mountain people are crazy,” he said. “We don’t have messiahs in Sinaloa!”

They started walking along the obvious path cut through the grasses by the pilgrims. All kinds of interesting things lay along the path. An abandoned huarache. A bloody cloth. A length of hair tied to a tree, left as a manda to some saint—a woman trading her long mane for the health of a child, or the safety of a mate. Huila saw cast-off religious pictures of former messiahs the People had turned against.

They came upon a small camp with seven Mexicans gathered around a fire. Teresita was astounded to find Tía squatting here with her children.

“Auntie!” she cried.

Tía smiled.

“Isn’t it wonderful?” she said.

Teresita thought she was very strange. As if she were dreaming. Her eyes stared off over Teresita’s shoulder. Teresita turned to see what Tía was looking at, but she was staring at nothing.

“Isn’t what wonderful, Auntie?” she asked.

“Deliverance!”

The pilgrims hunched near Tía laughed and clapped and said, “Amen.”

Tía rose and tossed her cigarette makings into the flame.

“Deliverance,” she repeated.

“Adios!” Huila said and pulled Teresita along the path. “Está loca. Don’t look back, child. Let us go see for ourselves.”

“We should go back,” said Teófano.

“Don’t be a coward,” Huila muttered.

They went uphill, and then the path forked down into a steep canyon. They could smell the camp before they saw it. A stench of sweat and smoke rose out of the canyon. The little piñon pines were twisted in the midafternoon light, and smoke curled through their branches like little banners. Before they knew they were near, they broke through the trees and were in the camp. It wasn’t huge, but it was a mess. Broken carts and untethered mules filled the bottom of the canyon, and lean-to shacks seemed to collapse among busted wagons and drooping tents. Only about three hundred pilgrims were gathered. Huila strained and saw the Promised One seated on a small stage at the center of a moiling crowd. He looked like a fat boy sitting on a pillow with his legs crossed.

She grabbed Teresita’s hand and pulled her into the crowd, Don Teófano on guard behind them with his shotgun held across his chest. People parted easily to let them pass; blissful and starry-eyed, they hummed and rocked on their heels, said “Amen” quietly, and occasionally broke into giggles. Teresita’s neck hairs stood on end.

Near the stage, a small group of dancers whirled and whirled. Three men lay facedown in the dirt; one of them twitched and trembled as if he were being whipped by a savage wind.

“Does that man need help?” Huila asked.

A woman said, “No, hermana. He has seen God!”

“Ah, cabrón!” said Huila.

Niño Chepito was sitting on a small bit of carpet in the shade of a scraggly tree. His stage had raised him about three feet above their heads. His long hair was gathered behind his head and held in place by red ribbons. He had a generous double chin. He wore white peasant pants and a brightly colored blouse covered in woven designs: birds, cacti, black mountains, deer.

“If God is everywhere, my children,” he was saying, “then He is in everything. If He is in everything, then He is in me, then He is me. And I am God.”

Wood flutes were twittering away. Drums sounded an endless heartbeat.

“I am the God of this world, my children. The last time I came, you killed me on the cross. I have come back to this flesh to lead you to truth.”

A dancer shouted once and fell on his back—his feet kicked and hammered the dirt.

“He’s going to pee,” Huila noted.

And he did.

Chepito droned on. It was obvious he had been talking now for hours. Perhaps for days. Those around them were asleep on their feet.

“God is not God. I am God. The God who made this world, the God who rules you now, the Yori God, He is the evil one. This world is a trick. Only through devotion to Niño Chepito will this wicked incarnation end! The white man will die! The dead will then rise! A flood will cover the earth, and new soil thirty feet deep will sprout new corn and flowers! Have I not told you of the flood? Have I not promised to reincarnate all the dead? The deer will be fat on the flowers, and she will offer all true believers her sweet flesh!”

“Niño Chepito!”

“Chepito, Chepito.”

“The Yori must die. The mestizos must die. The angels will eat these souls, for Niño Chepito will not guide them to salvation, my children. No.”

“May we leave now?” whispered Teófano.

“Death is life,” Chepito said. “Do you see? Death is life. Death is life. Death is life.”

The drums sped up. Voices began to chant along with him.

Huila stared up at the messiah for a moment, then shook her head. “Let’s go,” she said.

As they pushed their way back out of the crowd, people laid hands on them, weakly grabbed at their clothes, tried to hold them, saying, “Where are you going?” and “The dark angels wait outside this valley to consume you.”

Teresita was frightened when she saw Tía weeping openly, raising her hands to the sun, crying, “Death! Death! Death!”

Tía saw Teresita and rushed to her, threw her arms around her and kissed her on the cheek.

“La muerte!” she hissed. “Niño Chepito nos lleva a la muerte!”

Teresita pulled herself out of her aunt’s grasp and ran after Huila.

She looked back. Tía fell to her knees and put her face in the dirt and rolled her head back and forth. The drums fell back to a heartbeat rhythm, and Chepito’s voice was small and dry, like the call of a distant crow.

She never saw Tía again.