The Seamstress (24 page)

Luzia was not shocked by the men’s nakedness—she had seen all kinds of bodies when she’d measured the dead—but these men were alive, their faces shining with sweat, their limbs loose, not rigid. They reminded her of the onion beetles that invaded Aunt Sofia’s house each summer; when trapped, the bugs spun helplessly on their backs, exposing skinny legs and pale underbellies.

Beside her, Ponta Fina giggled. Around the square, all window shutters remained closed. She’d heard that Colonel Machado did not allow his tenants to carry firearms. Still, the cangaceiros took precautions: Chico Coffin and Sabiá squatted behind feed barrels and aimed their new pistols. Jacaré crouched beneath a warty-trunked angico. Jurema and Coral, their Winchesters cocked and aimed, hid in doorways.

Another group walked along the road. Luzia squinted to see Inteligente, his shadow long and slender across the ground, herding three more men toward the square. Canjica followed them. Unlike the capangas, these new captives had been allowed to change out of their nightclothes. They wore rumpled slacks and coarse canvas tunics. One of the men cradled a wooden accordion. Another carried a cowbell. The third held a triangle.

“We’re going to have a quadrilha,” the Hawk shouted, then turned to the naked capangas. “I hope you like quadrilhas.”

Across the square, a shutter opened. Another followed.

The Hawk greeted the musicians, patting their backs. The men held tightly to their instruments. They kept their eyes focused on their feet. The Hawk smiled so widely that even the scarred side of his mouth lifted slightly. The slack side of his face looked pleased, as if he had just shared a sly joke, while the active side stretched wildly, its teeth bared, its eye wide.

“Play,” he ordered.

The first musician nervously shook his cowbell. The accordion player followed the bell’s rhythm, tugging apart the handles of his instrument and pushing them back together quickly. The accordion released a series of shallow, frenzied gasps. The triangle player hurried to catch up.

“Slow it down,” the Hawk instructed, then faced the naked captives. “Round and round.”

Luzia had never liked quadrilhas. Ever since she was a girl, she’d hated the burden of choosing a partner and following the announcer’s shouted commands. She could never perform the twirls and turns as fast as the announcer called them out.

“Round and round!” the Hawk yelled.

The naked men bowed their heads. They shuffled slowly in a circle around the statue of Dona Fidalga. The stone bust seemed to watch them, her under bite stern and disapproving. With their free hands, the cangaceiros slapped their thighs in time to the music.

“Compliment your partner,” the Hawk said.

The capangas bowed stiffly to one another.

“Alavantu!” the Hawk yelled.

The men fumbled for each other’s hands. The colonel’s son hesitated, reluctant to uncup himself. Sweet Talker flicked him with his silver-studded riding crop. The hit left a red welt across the man’s pale thighs. He shuddered, then quickly took hold of a capanga’s hand. The naked men lifted their arms up and down halfheartedly. The Hawk nodded to Baiano.

“Balancê,” Baiano drawled.

The men released hands and stumbled into one another, picking partners. They held each other gingerly, staring at the ground or at the sky. The colonel’s son was left without a partner. He shuffled back and forth, alone.

One by one the other cangaceiros called out moves, telling the men to twirl, curtsy, and bow. Giggles came from an open window. Some townspeople watched from their doorways. Others had lost their initial fear and stood in the street, clapping.

The morning sun had invaded the doorway where Luzia stood, warming her face. Yet she felt a shiver within herself, like drinking a cup of water and feeling it—thrilling, cold—course through her and settle in her stomach. There was a chilling satisfaction in the knowledge that those men were being bossed, prodded, and shamed. Just as they had shamed Lia.

“One thumb in your mouth,” Little Ear yelled. “The other up your ass!”

The naked men did as they were told.

“Switch thumbs!” Half-Moon called out. The cangaceiros pealed with laughter.

Luzia’s stomach cramped. She closed her eyes.

“Stop,” the Hawk said. “Stop playing.”

The men quieted. The accordion wheezed to a halt. Luzia opened her eyes. His face had changed; his smile was gone. His cheeks were flushed red except for his scar, which remained white and jagged, like a bone protruding from his skin. He unsheathed his punhal.

“Kneel,” he said.

The blade was as long as a rifle’s barrel. Sunlight reflected off its squared sides. The Hawk stood behind the first kneeling capanga. He guided Tomás behind the second.

“Do you know your mother’s name?” the Hawk asked the man on the ground before him. Luzia recognized him—it was the older, dark-haired capanga who had compared her to a horse. His hair was wet from sweat. His eyes were fierce.

“Maria Aparecida da Silva,” the man called out.

“Do your know your father’s name?” the Hawk asked.

“To hell with you.”

The Hawk bent his elbows. He lifted his punhal. The knife was like a long needle. Luzia recalled Ponta Fina’s knife lessons—if placed in the correct spot, the punhal could pierce straight into the body, skewering heart, lungs, stomach. There was an indentation at the base of the capanga’s neck, a natural dip between collarbone and shoulder. The Hawk pressed the tip of his punhal to it.

“Who do you work for?” he asked.

“I work for Colonel Machado,” the capanga replied. “A real man, not like you, cangaceiro vagabundo!”

The Hawk smiled. He kept his arms rigid, his knife perfectly still. “Do you know why you’re being judged?” he asked.

“Only God will judge me!” the capanga shouted.

The Hawk straightened his arms. The blade moved into the shoulder’s indentation, then disappeared. A fine, dark spray shot upward. It spattered the Hawk’s cuffs. He let out a long breath, then leaned forward, as if whispering into the capanga’s ear. The man’s eyes opened wide. He wobbled, then slumped forward. Gently, the Hawk eased out his punhal and handed it to Tomás.

The process was repeated with the next man, except Seu Chico’s son asked his questions nervously. The Hawk stood beside him, coaxing him to slow down. The boy felt for the dip between collarbone and shoulder, then steadied the punhal. An instant before leaning forward, Tomás shuddered. The punhal lost its placement. Partway down, it stuck. The capanga moaned. Tomás tugged out the knife. Ponta Fina ran from the doorway.

Ponta handed Seu Chico’s son a thick-bladed facão; the same knife he used to sever the heads of goats and scrubland lizards with one clean hack. Tomás, his face shining with sweat, took the new knife and aimed for the neck. Luzia covered her eyes. The clay door frame felt cool against her face. She slumped against it. There was a thud—like the hollow, splitting sound of a pumpkin chopped open—then silence. Luzia heard coughing and the splatter of liquid. She lifted her hands from her face. Colonel Machado’s son had vomited. Tomás had missed again and the capanga before him was still alive, wobbling on his knees. The man’s eyes were glazed over and his mouth bobbed open. A string of saliva fell from it. There was a gash on his back where Tomás’s poorly aimed swing had struck. A lung, pink and shining, swelled through the wound. The Hawk looked annoyed.

“Never shut your eyes when you aim,” he said to Tomás. “It makes it worse.”

He took his punhal and leaned over the injured man. In the Hawk’s hands, the knife moved in easily, cleanly. The capanga fell forward. As they moved on to the next man, the Hawk’s face remained placid. He tapped his cartridge belt with his fingers. He told Tomás to go quickly, to be efficient.

The gossips in Taquaritinga had said that the Hawk craved blood, that he loved it. But Luzia had butchered goats and chickens and teú lizards; she knew how easy it became to snap a neck, to sever a tendon, to slice open a belly. How tedious. Blood was a mess, an afterthought. It appeared after everything important had already occurred. She recalled the Hawk’s face during the quadrilha and the questioning—its intoxicated giddiness, its manic smile. He took pleasure in their shame and in his showmanship. Everyone did—even Luzia herself. Hadn’t she felt a cool thrill when he’d ordered them to strip, to bow, to kneel? Hadn’t her breath caught when he’d produced his punhal and gently, easily slipped it into their necks?

Luzia’s stomach knotted. The second man’s lung had deflated, disappearing back inside the gash. The other men slumped on the ground like flour sacks. Luzia’s saliva became thick and warm. She ducked from the doorway and ran.

12

Behind the square was a dirt road lined with more clay houses. Chickens calmly pecked at the ground, oblivious to the proceedings in the square. Luzia stumbled; her body seemed to move without her mind’s guidance. The chickens scattered.

She knocked on a nearby door. Inside, she heard shuffling and low voices but no one answered. She hit the door with the heel of her hand and then ran to the next, then the next. At the end of the row of houses, she saw the back doors to Fidalga’s chapel. It was a small entrance blocked by a set of wrought-iron gates. Luzia squeezed her hands though the curling iron. She shook the gates. A small man peeked from behind the chapel door. He wore brown robes and had a shaved, circular friar’s haircut.

“Who are you?” the monk asked. His eyes moved across her face, her bornal, her water gourds, and finally settled on her trousers. “You’re with those men.”

“Please,” Luzia whispered, afraid of yelling. “Hide me.”

“You’re their harlot,” the monk replied. “You’ll ransack the chapel.”

Luzia shook the gate with all of her force. The hinges creaked. The monk’s eyes widened. He fumbled with the chapel door and slammed it shut.

Luzia leaned against the gate. Her body felt too heavy for her legs.

The slumped men in the square had reminded her of the Judas doll. Each Easter, the women in Taquaritinga sewed a cloth doll the size of a man and stuffed him with capim grass. Dona Conceição donated a torn pair of trousers and an old shirt. Some men made him a braided palha hat. They hung the finished doll in the town square. On Easter morning, all of the children gathered sticks and rocks. They hit that Judas doll until he slouched and fell from his rope harness. Once on the ground, they hit him more. They spat and kicked. The adults laughed. When she was a child, Luzia loved hitting that doll. She pressed between the mob of children. She used her good arm and hit the doll until her muscles ached. The snap of sticks against the doll’s cloth skin used to thrill her. The sharp smell of its shredded-grass insides used to make her giddy. Now the thought of them made her ill.

Luzia pressed her forehead to the chapel gates. The morning air had grown hot and dry. The heat had muted the scrub birds and awakened the cicadas. Their high-pitched buzzing rang in her ears. Beneath the sound of the cicadas she heard gravel crunch along the road, and a series of quick, shallow breaths. Luzia felt a tug on her arm. Ponta Fina stood beside her, winded.

“Where have you been?” he asked.

Before she could respond, he tugged at her locked elbow, trying to lift her from the ground. Luzia resisted. She pried free of his grip and stood. She walked quickly, not knowing where she would go, but wanting to move away from him, from the square, from that town.

“Wait!” Ponta called. He jogged alongside her, unable to match her strides. He unsheathed one of his knives. It was the blunt-ended pajeuzeira. Luzia stopped.

“If you go, he’ll say it was my fault,” Ponta said. His voice cracked. “He’ll blame me.”

His jaw line was squared but his cheeks were still round and fat, like a boy’s. There was a smear on his left cheek, near his nose. It was dark—the color of cinnamon, or of the chicken-blood sauce Aunt Sofia used to pour across their cornmeal. The smear was dry and cracking. Luzia took a handkerchief from her bornal. She pressed it to the lip of her water gourd and wiped his face clean.

13

They did not harm Colonel Machado’s son. Instead, the pale young man spent the long, cloudless day tied to his grandmother’s stone bust. The capangas’ bodies were removed from the square and piled on Colonel Machado’s porch. They lay face-to-face, their teeth clenched in strange smiles. Crusted lines ran from the two dark holes where their eyes had been, as if they had cried bloody tears.

Tomás sifted through the capangas’ clothing and belongings. He took a pistol, a leather hat, a crucifix, and a handkerchief. Everything else was burned. The Hawk knocked on Fidalga’s chapel doors until the trembling friar opened them and invited everyone—cangaceiros and townspeople—inside. Afterward, Ponta Fina went door to door, requesting the townspeople’s presence at a celebration in the square. Like most of the cangaceiros’ requests, it was an order rather than an invitation. The only ones not expected to attend were the capangas’ women, who’d placed black head scarves over their hair and congregated near the colonel’s house, to mourn their dead. They knelt outside the colonel’s gates and prayed for their men’s souls. They were not allowed to bury the bodies, as they would be a gift for Colonel Machado when he returned from Pará. Without burial, the souls would not rest; they would wander aimlessly. The Hawk tied white rags to each of the body’s legs so that the souls would not follow him, or his men.

That night, the air was cool but the fire warmed them. Baiano and Inteligente had butchered Colonel Machado’s best sows and Canjica had built a massive fire over which he skewered the meat. Local women grilled cobs of corn. A group of men smoked thick palha cigarettes. The three musicians from that morning sat near the fire and played the cangaceiros’ requests. Coins shone at their feet. Beyond the whine of the accordion, Luzia heard the fierce growls of feral dogs in the distance, feasting at Colonel Machado’s. Beneath it all she occasionally heard prayers, loud and steady, coming from the same direction.
Ave Maria, full of grace, our Lord is with thee.
Then the cowbell shook loudly and the triangle clanged, drowning them out again.