The Seamstress (36 page)

“Take a walk with me,” he said. “Put the paper away.”

Luzia stood. She shoved the Society Section into her bornal. If he questioned her about keeping it, she would lie. He’d met Emília in Taquaritinga, but Luzia wasn’t sure he recalled her sister’s name. If he did remember it, Luzia didn’t want the Hawk to know that Emília had married a wealthy city man. She felt the need to protect her sister—from what, Luzia wasn’t sure. There was no proof that the woman mentioned in the papers was
her
Emília. But Felipe Pereira—the colonel’s son from Taquaritinga—had also appeared in the article. Luzia sensed this wasn’t a coincidence; Mrs. Emília Coelho had to be her sister.

During their walk, the Hawk didn’t bring up the newspaper article. He did not speak at all. They took a long route, past the goat corral. The released goats had scavenged the area, chewing away any stray leaves or vines and leaving it bare. In the distance stood a flowering ipê. The tree’s blooms glowed yellow. The Hawk stopped ten meters before the trunk. He unbuttoned the clasp of his shoulder holster and removed a revolver. With a flick of his finger he opened the circular chamber and inspected it. He slipped two small bullets from his cartridge belt and pressed them into the chamber’s empty holes. There were six shots. Luzia stepped back. The Hawk clicked the chamber shut and pointed the revolver toward the ground. He handed it butt first to Luzia.

“It’s no good to own a gun you can’t use,” he said.

“I don’t own a gun.”

“You do now,” he said and stepped beside her. He held her good arm and placed the revolver in its hand. His fingers were warm. He lifted her arm. The gun was heavier than she’d expected. Luzia’s wrist bent. The Hawk clamped his hand around it.

“Keep your munheca stiff, like wood,” he said, then prodded her locked arm. “Use the crooked one to prop up the good one, to keep it steady. With practice you’ll get strong enough to shoot one-handed.”

She felt his breath on her neck. Luzia’s hand sweated. The butt felt slick in her grip.

“If you shoot, hold your breath,” he said. “Don’t forget or the bullets won’t go where you want them to.”

She nodded. He clicked back the safety.

“Look at that tree trunk,” he whispered. “Shoot.”

The gray trunk and its yellow flowers were blurs. Luzia closed her eyes. He smelled of brilliantine paste and cloves. And sweat. His hand loosened around her wrist.

“Shoot,” he repeated, louder this time. He moved closer, his chest pressing against her back.

Luzia squeezed the trigger. There was a loud pop. A jolt moved through her hand and up her arm. She’d moved without meaning to.

“You took a breath,” the Hawk said sternly. “Don’t waste bullets with simple mistakes. Bullets are precious. Now shoot again.”

Luzia clicked down the safety. With her locked arm, she gripped her good arm harder. Still, the revolver’s recoil made her hand move upward. The Hawk sighed.

“You have to befriend your gun,” he said. “You have to know it like you know yourself. How far it will shoot. How much it moves your arm. Your gun will save you, but only if you know it.” He moved away from her, keeping to her side. “That will come with time. Right now,” he said, smiling, “we have to work on your aim.”

Luzia pointed the revolver toward the ground. The Hawk fumbled with his belt, unhooking the leather slingshot he used to kill rolinhas and other scrub birds. He squatted and picked up pebbles.

“Why are you teaching me this?” she asked.

He shrugged and sorted pebbles, picking the roundest ones. “It’s useful to know. Especially now.”

“Why now?

“Troops will be here soon.”

“When?” Luzia asked, her voice louder than she wanted it to be. “How do you know?”

The Hawk sighed. He dropped the pebbles on the ground. “Back on our first night, the night of Santa Luzia, Marcos left. He went into town and sent a telegram to the capital. ‘Cows in the pasture,’ that’s what he sent. Trying to be clever.”

“How do you know?”

“Baiano talked to the telegraph clerk. Those goddamn machines are a pestilence. The clerk’s just a boy; he told us everything. Even if it weren’t for that, I would’ve guessed. Clóvis keeps telling us to stay. Usually he can’t wait to be rid of me. He pays me before the cotton even goes downriver. Now he says he doesn’t have the money. That we should wait all these months.”

Luzia’s mouth felt dry. The revolver dangled heavily from her hand. “You’re waiting until he pays you?” she asked. “You’re risking the men for money?”

The Hawk looked up. The brow of his good eye furrowed. His slack eye was glassy, making it look large and childlike. Luzia saw a flash of sadness, of hurt, dart across the Hawk’s face. Then he took a breath and closed his eyes. When they reopened, he seemed ancient and tired, as if he had never been a child at all.

“Money’s useful,” he said. “It’s what Clóvis loves. I’ll take as much of it as I can. If he loved his cattle or his goats as much, then I’d take those instead. He made a deal. I’m sure of that. I’m just not sure who with—Machado or the politicians. Either way, it doesn’t matter. We’ll stay and we’ll surprise them. I want them to see that I know. That I knew all along.”

“But you only have twenty men,” Luzia said.

“We know how to fight here. They’ll come through the front gate. As far as they know, this ranch has one entrance. And a place with one entrance is the same as a grave. I’m telling you because if they find you…” He paused and looked down. When he faced her again, he spoke forcefully. “They can’t find you. You know what they do to women. So you’ll have to shoot. Or you can leave now.”

Luzia’s hand tightened around the revolver’s butt. She took a long breath but could not keep from trembling. He wanted attention. He wanted to make the front page of the
Diário de Pernambuco.
She had left her family. She had ruined her feet, her hands, her reputation. For what? To escape, yes. To see the world. To be anything but Victrola. This was what she’d told herself all of those months, during endless walks and chilly nights. But she realized now that she’d gone for the silliest reason of all: because of him. To be near him. She had never forgotten about her height or her crooked arm; had never allowed herself romantic ambitions. She didn’t expect his love or even his interest. She’d simply wanted to watch him. To hear him call her name—her given name—and make it sound powerful and lovely. Now he told her that she could leave. That she held no value as a charm or as a woman.

“I will leave,” she said.

The Hawk stood. “Where will you go?”

“Home.”

“That wouldn’t be good. No man will marry you.”

“I don’t want to marry.”

“How will you live?”

“I’ll sew.”

“No one wants a cangaceira sewing their clothes.”

“I’m not a cangaceira.”

He jutted his chin toward the revolver in her hands. “You could kill me,” he said. “Give me to the troops.”

Luzia shook her head.

“Why not?” he asked, stepping toward her.

Her voice caught in her throat. She closed her eyes, furious with her body for betraying her.

“Why not?” he asked again, his voice a whisper.

“If you die, it will be God’s doing. Not mine,” Luzia said. “I may not be able to marry or be a seamstress. But you won’t damn me. I won’t let you.”

The Hawk moved back. He stared at her as he’d stared at the saint’s salt mounds, at his slips of prayer paper, at the makeshift crosses mounted on the walls of scrubland chapels—not with fear or desire, but with reverence.

Luzia handed him the revolver and ran.

5

Three years later, when she’d become a better shot than the Hawk himself, when President Celestino Gomes had started building his Trans-Nordestino Highway through the scrubland, when the drought was in its fourth long month, and when her legs ached and her feet swelled from carrying her third and final child, Luzia often wondered what would have happened if she’d left when he’d given her the chance. If she had run for the river instead of back to camp. If she had taken a barge and found her way to Recife, to the residence of the new bride, Miss Emília dos Santos Coelho. Luzia contemplated heading for the São Francisco, but she had no money for barge fare. She had no dress and no desire to wear one, either. She wanted to prove to him that she was not afraid. She would not leave simply because he had warned her. And she was curious. Luzia wanted to see if he was right, if the troops would come, and if they came, how he would beat them.

Two days after Luzia's shooting lesson, one of the colonel’s vaqueiros finally warned them of Captain Higino’s arrival. Colonel Clóvis and Marcos had left the day before on their cotton sales trip. The vaqueiro was herding cattle when he saw the brigade—the bright yellow lines still visible down the sides of their ripped uniforms. They were a forlorn bunch, with gaunt faces and slow, staggering walks. Their leader, he said, was a small man and the only one who moved quickly.

In the hours before the troops arrived, the Hawk and the other cangaceiros collected dried oricuri palm fronds. They arched the brown fronds in half, so that they resembled the half-moon shape of their hats. Then they placed the arched fronds in trees and stuffed them into termite mounds. He spread his men out, placing some inside the colonel’s fenced property and others outside, beyond the colonel’s front gate. The cangaceiros stationed before the gate would move in slowly, surrounding the soldiers in what the Hawk called a “retroguarda.” They would force Higino’s troops into the colonel’s fenced yard, penning them in. The cangaceiros within the colonel’s yard would stay at its periphery, ready to slide beneath the fence and into the scrub. The Hawk told his men to shoot barricaded behind rocks or trees, with their bellies to the ground. Then he ripped the brass-belled leather collars off twenty-two goats and handed them to his men. He gave one to Luzia.

“When I say so,” the Hawk said, “put this on. Until then, stuff a cloth into the bell so it stays quiet.”

It was dusk when the troops appeared on the road, marching as the Hawk had predicted, toward the front gate. The soldiers moved in several straight lines and kept their rifles pointed. The ranch house was quiet. Inside, the Hawk had left the lanterns lit. He and Luzia crouched at the far edge of the colonel’s yard, near the entrance to the goat corral. The Hawk held tightly to her bent arm.

The setting sun made shadows fall across the scrub. From far away, the arched oricuri palms looked like motionless cangaceiros, dozens of them, scattered in the scrub. A startled soldier fired into the trees. The shot cracked. In the corral beside Luzia, goats bleated wildly. Quickly, the Hawk opened the corral door.

With the second and third shots from the soldiers, the frightened goats moved in a great, confused wave from their confinement. The animals pushed and bucked. Their brass bells clanged like a large, deranged band. There were more shots. Beside her, Luzia heard a high-pitched buzzing. It whisked past her and entered the corral post with a thump. The Hawk pushed her onto her stomach. Dust—dry and gritty—entered Luzia’s mouth. The Hawk fastened a goat collar around his neck and ordered Luzia to do the same.

The other cangaceiros crouched and moved along the fence line beside the jumbled mass of goats. They, too, had put on the clanging collars, and in that shadowed dusk with the sound of so many bells, it was hard to tell man from animal.

The handful of cangaceiros outside the gates advanced, shooting at the soldiers from all angles and herding them inside the yard. The Hawk’s men were an invisible enemy. Bullets came from everywhere, from nowhere. In the darkening evening, it was easy to confuse the oricuri palm decoys with real men. The troops divided frantically. Soldiers stumbled against one another. Some fell. Survivors from the first round of shots aimed their ancient rifles at goats, at trees.

“Fuck you cangaceiros!” a soldier yelled.

“Fuck your mother, monkey!” Ponta Fina, laughing, yelled back.

The Hawk released Luzia’s arm. He aimed and cocked his Winchester. The rifle clicked, then discharged. After the blast, Luzia’s ears felt as if they were filled with water. The men’s yells seemed far away. Another rifle fired, then another. Luzia’s revolver hung, heavy and useless, from the holster the Hawk had given her. She had not practiced her shooting, and in the midst of those clanging bells, that smoke, those horrible blasts, Luzia could only focus on crouching near the Hawk.

As night fell, a green glow came from their guns each time they shot, illuminating the men’s faces. They lodged themselves behind corral posts, boulders, ipê trunks. They quickly uncocked their rifles and slipped more shells inside. Near her, Baiano cursed the hot barrel of his gun. He undid his trousers and crouched over the rifle. The gun’s barrel sizzled. The smell of urine wafted through the dust and smoke. Baiano redid his trousers and took up the cooled Winchester.

Luzia did not know how long they shot and crawled. Her knees were chafed raw. Her leg muscles burned and shook each time she moved. The ringing in her ears was deafening. Finally, the Hawk let out a shrill whistle. He’d planned it this way, knowing that they could not eliminate all of the troops. The cangaceiros would slowly retreat, separating into pairs, crossing the river, and eventually meeting at the Marimbondo church. The place was an abandoned chapel on the Bahia side of the river. Red wasps had built their nests in the chapel’s eaves, behind its altar, and beneath its broken pews; the church had become one huge hive. People rarely went near it, making the scrub surrounding the chapel a perfect hiding place.

Like the frantic goats, the cangaceiros shimmied beneath the lowest rung of the colonel’s fence. The Hawk ripped off his belled collar and grabbed Luzia’s. It was hard to see him in the dark, with so much smoke. She felt his fingers against her neck, tugging at the leather collar. When he finally pried it free, Luzia heard a familiar buzzing. A goat fell beside her. The Hawk froze. He took up his rifle. The buzzing whirred near them again, but when it stopped it thumped softly, like a fist against a pillow. The Hawk took a sharp breath. He staggered and gripped Luzia’s hand.