The Hummingbird's Daughter (44 page)

“Do you fish?” he blurted.

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing.”

They rocked. The noise around them was muffled, as if by cotton. Bits of metal flared in the light. Everything seemed as if it was across a wide valley. Bees inspecting the madreselva vines on the wall were louder than the voices of the People.

She said, “I do believe, señor, that this is the easiest test I have ever taken.”

He cleared his throat.

“Don’t worry,” he reassured her, “you are doing well so far.”

She accepted a mango from a drunkard who patted her head.

“How do you stand it?” Cruz asked.

“What?”

“This,” lifting his hand to the wall of faces before them.

“It is my work,” she said. “Do they make you nervous?”

“Many,” he said. “Son muchos.”

“Not so many pilgrims in Tomóchic, I imagine.”

He blew air out through his lips.

“Four hundred,” he said. “Five hundred live there. Pilgrims? Perhaps ten, twenty at a time.”

“And do many come to seek counsel with you?” she asked.

“A few.” He looked away. “Not many.” He tapped on the floorboards with his rifle butt. “Not like this.”

“Ah. Well, this.”

She sighed.

“These are nine, ten thousand. I never thought of it, Cruz Chávez, but I had never before seen this many people in one place.” She stared out at them. “It’s really quite interesting.”

“I saw this many,” he said. “In Guaymas. Didn’t like it. Went back to the mountains.”

He looked at her. Grinned. She smiled.

“I don’t like it much, either,” she noted.

They rocked.

“Lemonade, Señor Chávez?” she offered.

“No.”

“Bueno.”

“But,” he said, “how can you stand this, this crowd? How can you sleep? Eat? All these sick people calling to you.”

“Those who presume to save, señor, win a cross.”

He’d heard that one before.

“You are not here to save?”

“I am here to serve. But I am also here to live. I offer my work to God, and I stop when I am finished for the day.”

“Some could die,” he protested.

“I have been dead. I will die again.”

He looked at her for a moment.

“What if one dies while you sleep?”

“Then they were supposed to die. I can only do what I can do. To try to do more would be a lie. A lie is worse than doing nothing.”

“Is this God’s will?” he said.

“God?” Teresita sighed. “For you, God is a notion. Not for me. You must remember, great Tiger, that unlike you, I have met God.”

He pushed the swing with his rifle.

“And what is God like?” he asked.

She turned to him and smiled.

“He’s not as serious as you.”

He nodded.

“Ah,” he said.

“God doesn’t carry a gun,” she said.

They laughed.

“Cruz Chávez.”

She nudged him. He didn’t feel any kind of electrical charge or miraculous energies.

“A hundred years from now, when they remember you, they will all say,
He was so serious.
”

He frowned.

“Is this a word of prophecy?” he asked.

She shook her head, then punched him on the arm.

“I’m getting some lemonade,” she said. “I will bring you some. Don’t worry, you don’t have to drink it.”

She jumped up and went back to the door, and when she rose, their voices rose with her, and her name floated higher into the air, and they cried, they pleaded, they begged. Softly, as if hoping not to insult them, she closed the door behind her.

Cruz set the sweating glass down on the boards of the porch.

“What do you think our work is here on earth?” he asked.

“Love for God, love for each other. Reconciliation. Service.” She poked him with a finger. “Joy!”

“Joy,” he said. He squinted into the distance and said, “See those armed riders out there? Do you know what gives them joy? Killing the People, taking scalps. That is what makes them happy. Did you know that when they burn a village, or shoot the men and take the women, they always laugh? You never heard so much laughter as when those men are killing the People.”

She crossed her arms.

“I have heard that laughter.”

“No you haven’t.”

You don’t know me, she thought. But Huila had taught her well: men postured and wise women let them.

“They pierce infants,” he said, “and they laugh. They cut off the heads of women, and they laugh. That is joy to them.”

“I see,” she said.

She sipped her lemonade, turned to him.

“I will consider adopting a theology of misery, then,” she said. “In honor of you.”

He hadn’t meant to sound so harsh. He felt like an idiot talking to this willow of a girl. He wondered if she knew he was smelling her.

“So,” he said. “You are finished for the day.” He waved at the pilgrims.

“For the day, yes. Even Jesus ate supper. Even Jesus slept. Jesus probably—I don’t mean to upset you, Tiger—took baths and went to the bathroom.”

Cruz did, in fact, draw breath. An unwelcome picture of Jesus and the apostles urinating on roadside bushes invaded his mind. He had never, not once, imagined the Lord pissing. This girl was bold, he was sure of that. Possibly a heretic.

“I will eat supper,” she said, “and I will go to bed. I’m tired. I cannot do the impossible.”

“God can do the impossible,” he proclaimed.

“Really?” she said. “Then why does He not cure all of these suffering people, right now?”

“I don’t know.”

“Tell me which is worse, Pope Chávez—is it that God
cannot
cure them all, or that He
will not
cure them?”

Cruz was silent. He had no answer. He resented the question.

“This,” she said, “is what I live with.”

He shrugged.

“You should know the answer,” she said. “You should know what it is you really think of God.”

She got up from the seat.

“Then,” she continued, “you should decide why the president of Mexico does not help these people.”

She drained her glass with a long swallow, set the glass on the plank floor, and held out her hand.

“Decide where you stand on the matter.”

He took her hand. Her grip was dry and firm, but soft. He resisted the urge to feel her knuckles with his thumb.

“God likes tools,” she said. “You and I, we are the tools of God. We cannot afford to rust or break. Do you see?”

She leaned in quickly and kissed his grizzled cheek.

“Good night,” she whispered. “Pope.”

Forty-eight

Cabora, Sonora

This Pinche Madhouse

Aguirre, You Cowardly Son of a Whore!

Aguirre, Quaking in Fear in Tejas!

Pinche Aguirre, My Dear Friend and Mentor!

Ay, cabrón, if you could see this madness! This insanity. Somehow, I have used my substantial and legendary loins to sire the Female Christ. By Christ! And oh, Christ. . . .

Have you ever noticed, you nearsighted visionary, how many words we have for “fool”? Idiota, simple, tonto, baboso, pendejo, mamón, buey, retrasado, imbécil, bobo, sonso, bruto, menso! A million phrases. But what words are there to describe religious fanaticism? I shan’t say “holiness,” cabrón, because I cannot claim my daughter is “holy.” But these mensos, etc., can only think of one word for this insane behavior of Teresa’s, and that is in the epithet “Saint”!

Saint!

Oh how rich! My bastard daughter a saint. What next? Will they see me as Moses, perhaps? Will I part the Sea of Cortés and walk to Baja California? Say, that wouldn’t be so bad, come to think of it. We could open a gold mine!

Oye! Pay attention to what I say!

Saint Teresa is now preaching bizarre antigovernment and antichurch sermons. If it weren’t so alarming, it would be pathetic. Circumspection dictates that I leave her mute on the page. You can infer what you wish.

And allow me this moment to thank you, you imbecilic piece of shit, for starting this new wave of mania with your little Texan fish-wrap newspaper! Who ever told you it would be smart to allow Teresa to endanger us all with written screeds about the Yaquis! Eh? CHINGADO, Aguirre.

Well, I must go soon.

The “pilgrims” (ha ha ha) have now destroyed two cornfields, have killed seven cows, and have overflowed the old outhouses. We have holy shit flooding the camps!

Perhaps it is one of your biblical plagues?

A rain of turds on Egypt.

We all miss you here, and I hope this finds you well. (Note, please, that I did not say “I pray . . . ,” eh!)

Tu Amigo Cansado y Casi Loco,

Tomás                                         

El Paso, Tejas

Later That Same Year

My Dear Saint Tomás, also known as the Doubter:

You heretic dog, you low rancher, you rural clod,

I greet thee from the metropolitan grandness that is El Paso. Thou dost not imagine the sophisticated delights of this fine city—the stink of cows, the turds of noble steeds that pass gaseous blasts as the horses totter down these dirty streets about to keel over in a swoon of hunger and neglect, the bowlegged Texan with his squinty eye and his globs of tobacco drool staining every post, corner, tree trunk, and stray dog. My great friend, pistoleros clump along the wooden sidewalks of this city, and sheriffs with six-guns upon their skinny hips eye the wanderer, and ladies with parasols turn their faces away from Mexicans! El Paso! Yesterday, some wicked fools fell upon an illegally employed Chinaman with rocks. The Americans are deeply offended by Chinamen crossing into their country uninvited. Ah, but the railroads must go on. Industry will foment the next Americano revolution, just as land reform and indigenous rights will fuel our own.

I beseech thee, my dear amigo de mi corazón, survive the dreary desert wastes! Give succor to the revolt! For surely the forces of the regime must topple! The noble Apache! The fierce Yaqui! The angry Papago and the pacific Pima and the yoked masses of the mestizo campesinos will rise! Down with Díaz. You must agree.

Teresita, the phenomenon of Teresita, is something we attend to from afar. In her lies hope, my brother. In her lies the flaming ember of liberation for all Mexicans. Revolt!

By the way, I tried a most interesting lime ice from Italy today. When you come, I will buy you one.

Loyally,          

In Revolt,        

Lauro A.          

Aguirre:

Are you out of your Goddamned mind? Have you considered what would happen here if the government intercepted your letter? A censor? You revolutionaries have no sense at all. No seas pendejo, buey! Show some restraint. Things are bad enough already. How would you like to sing the praises of your saint if she were hanging from a tree? Or is that what you desire? All of us killed for
YOUR
cause? Calm down, Lauro. Please.

Angrily,          

T                     

Mi Querido Tomás:

All kidding aside. The tide is turning, do you not feel it? All over the world, the People unite and fight. No fear, no doubt, no cowardice can hold it back. Do not fear the changes, my friend. And should we all be sacrificed, then it is for a greater, better day. I know you. I know your torments. When you fall into your fears and doubts like this, you become mesmerized. You see nothing outside yourself, my brother. It is as if you walked down a road forever gazing into a mirror, walking toward yourself and blind to the world. Have faith.

L.A.                 

FAITH. STOP. AGUIRRE YOU FOOL. STOP. THE ONLY FRUIT DANGLING FROM THE TREES WILL BE NAMED URREA. STOP. YOU WILL EAT ITALIAN ICE IN TEXAS AND SLAUGHTER US ALL. STOP. HYPOCRITE. STOP.