The Seamstress (37 page)

6

A brittle net of branches crisscrossed their path. Dried vines coiled dark and snakelike around the trees. As they moved through the scrub, the Hawk leaned against Luzia. A sheen of sweat glistened on his face. His breath was quick and jagged. They moved slowly. The sky became the color of tin. Birds let out short, hesitant chirps, as if making certain they still had voices. When the sun rose, they were quiet again.

Luzia found shade under a spindly juazeiro. Earlier, the Hawk had slipped off his bornal bags and tied his jacket tightly around his injured calf. Blood had soaked through the canvas. It trickled into his alpercata, staining the sandal’s leather and coating his foot. Luzia knelt beside him. She unbuttoned her jacket. She was embarrassed by the shirt she wore beneath it—she’d cut the bottom half from her old nightgown but still used the top. It was yellowed and fraying. Luzia did not let herself dwell on it; there was no time for vanity. She untied the stiff, blood-soaked jacket from his leg and replaced it with her own. The Hawk shuddered when she tied the sleeves tight.

“Here,” he said, sliding his short peixeira from its sheath. “Use this. Bury the bloody jacket.”

Luzia took the knife and began to dig. The Hawk coughed. His upper lip glistened with sweat. She wanted to run her thumb across it but stopped herself.

“The river’s not far,” he said. “About two hundred meters. We need to get across. We’ll be safe in Bahia.”

Luzia heard the São Francisco. She smelled it. They’d walked parallel to the river all night but had not gone near it, cautious of the remaining troops. They would move downstream until the Hawk deemed it safe to cross. When she finished burying the jacket, they split a chunk of dried meat. With shaking hands, the Hawk taught her how to carve open a monk’s-head and eat its soft insides. Luzia wanted to clean his wound; she still had mercurochrome in her bornal from her first months in the scrub. The Hawk shook his head and insisted they keep moving.

He leaned on her throughout the day. Sometimes his skin burned. Other times, when she placed her hand against his neck, it was clammy and moist, like a frog’s. By late afternoon he could not kneel but he still prayed, propping himself against a smooth-trunked tree and grabbing hold of his saints’ medallions. When he was finished he slumped to the ground. Luzia pressed her water gourd to his mouth; fever made him thirsty. He drank and closed his eyes. His lips moved in prayer or perhaps delirium. Luzia could not tell which. He swallowed hard and spoke.

“When I was a boy, before they gave me this,” he said, pointing to his scar, “I threw a rock at a beehive. It was a stupid thing to do. They were Italians, not uruçus, so they had stingers. I heard buzzing. I felt wings in my ears, my nose. Everywhere. Then it burned. Burned so bad. I slapped my arms, my neck. I felt them crunch under my hands, like it wasn’t my skin anymore. It was some other skin. A skin of bees. People poured water on me. Carried me home. My mother promised my soul to every saint there was. The water, the neighbors, the prayer—I don’t recall any of that. I only heard buzzing. That god-awful buzzing. I hear it now.”

His voice grew fainter with each word. Afraid, Luzia leaned close to him. His rheumy eye was crusted and tearing. Luzia wiped it with a handkerchief. When his eyes suddenly fluttered open, she backed away. He grabbed hold of her hand.

“Do you know why I took you?” he asked.

His grip was not as firm as it had been before, when the bullet hit him and he’d pulled her into the scrub. Now he held her fingers lightly and Luzia wondered if it was out of weakness or affection.

“For luck,” Luzia mumbled.

The Hawk gave her a slow, lopsided smile. “‘God help me.’ That’s what I thought when I first saw you on that ridge. ‘God help me.’”

He moved his eyes away from Luzia’s, staring instead at her hand in his. “Before I climbed that mountain to Taquaritinga, I’d been feeling this…this thing inside me. A dark thing. Bitter. Like I’d eaten a pile of cashew fruits. I was tired, that’s all. Seemed everyone I came across wanted something from me. But not you. You looked at me on that ridge and didn’t want a thing. Not mercy. Not money. Not protection.

“
God help me
, I thought. Then I didn’t want to look at you anymore. I sent you away and I put my knife into those monkeys and capangas. I went to that damn colonel’s house and ate and drank. Played accordion. Nothing helped. I felt worse than before. Agitated, like the bees were on me again. Chasing me. Stinging me. Making my skin burn. I couldn’t sleep all that night. I had a colonel’s feather bed and I couldn’t sleep. I stood on that porch, looked over the town. Nothing seemed the way it should be. Even those goddamn bougainvilleas. I’d seen those flowers a hundred times in my life, but they were different that night. I couldn’t explain it. All I could think was: where is she? Where’s that seamstress? She’s somewhere, sleeping, and I don’t know where. I don’t know if it’s in a hammock or on a bed. If she’s alone. If she’s got a pillow under her head. I didn’t know any of it. And it put me in a foul humor, not knowing. I wanted to know. I had to know. And not just that night, but all nights. So I took you.”

Luzia let go of his hand. It was the most she’d ever heard him speak and she was ashamed by how eagerly she’d listened. “You didn’t take me,” she said roughly. “I left on my own.”

The Hawk puffed air through his nose. He swallowed hard and closed his eyes. “I’ve had prettier women want to come with me,” he said, “Lord knows I have.”

Luzia wanted to shake him awake. He always did this: gave her a gleam of hope, brought her to the edge of belief, and then disappointed her.

She unwrapped her jacket from his leg. The wound had stopped bleeding but his calf was so swollen that his pants leg clung to it like a second skin. Luzia looked through his bornais and found the golden shaving set. She removed his beard scissors and carefully cut along the pant’s seam. She loosened the trouser leg with water and then peeled it back. A brown and yellow crust covered the wound. Red, veinlike rays diffused around his calf. A sharp smell emerged. It reminded Luzia of rust mixed with a heady sweetness, like the smell of a meat market in the afternoon, when all of the prime cuts were sold and only the discolored, fly-ridden scraps remained. Luzia searched his bornal. She found salt and malagueta peppers left over from their time at Clóvis’s, when he didn’t trust anyone’s seasoning but his own. Luzia recalled Lia and how the girl had made a paste of ashes, malagueta, and salt to heal a newborn goat’s freshly cut umbilical cord. They did not have ashes but Luzia mashed the peppers and salt. The malaguetas made her eyes water. When the paste was ready, she poured mercurochrome onto the wound. The Hawk jolted awake. He gasped. Luzia held down his leg. The left side of his face twitched uncontrollably. The medicine loosened the wound’s crust and Luzia picked it off. The hole was as wide and round as a spool of thread. It had swollen pink edges. One palm down from the wound, beneath the striped red skin of his calf, was a massive lump. Luzia poured mercurochrome into the hole. The Hawk cursed and shuddered. She tamped the wound with the salt and pepper paste and wrapped it with a sewing rag. The Hawk slumped back, exhausted.

Inside his bornal, along with his gold shaving kit, she found his binoculars, his prayer papers, and a dozen rolls of mil-réis notes. There was enough to buy ten pedal-operated Singers, enough to buy a motorcar, a fine meal, a doctor’s care. But those bills were worthless in the scrub. All of his gold rings, all of his saints’ medallions and shaving sets could not rescue them. Luzia placed a water gourd beside him. She combed her hair with her fingers and re-braided it. Her hands were stained pink from the mercurochrome but she had no way of cleaning them. She snapped the long, shining revolver back into her shoulder holster, took a roll of mil-réis from his bag, and made her way toward the river.

7

There were several large properties along the São Francisco; wealthy ranchers prized the land near the river because water was always available. Luzia didn’t want to set foot on those ranches, however, afraid they were harboring troops. Fishermen’s shacks also dotted the riverbanks; outside one shack was a donkey. The animal chewed palma cactus beneath a tin-roofed corral. There were two boats beside the clay shack: a long canoe and a flat-bottomed raft, both grounded on the shore. Near the raft, a heavyset woman slapped laundry on river rocks. She stood ankle deep in water and scrubbed forcefully.

Luzia watched from the scrub as the cangaceiros used to do, looking for any sign of soldiers. She saw none. She inspected her pink hands, her bloodstained shirt, her trousers. For an instant, Luzia worried about what the washerwoman would think of her. She shook her head; she had no time for shyness or shame. Soon, the sun would set, making it hard to find her way. Luzia tugged her leather shoulder holster under her armpit, trying to conceal the revolver. She moved forward. The woman looked up from her washing. When she saw Luzia, the wet shirt she’d been scrubbing fell from her hand, plopping into the water. She froze. Her expression was a mixture of fright and astonishment, as if a spotted panther had stepped from the scrub. The woman opened her mouth. Luzia stepped closer and raised her hands.

“Please,” she said. “I need help.” She kept her shoulders back and her voice steady. “My…husband, he’s hurt. I can’t move him by myself.”

The woman shouted a man’s name. Her voice was shrill and loud. The man who emerged from the clay-and-stick house was a typical backlands type—short and thickly built, with tan skin and dark hair. The washerwoman moved from the water and stood beside him. Luzia repeated her request. He stared at her for a long while, his expression stern.

“Have mercy,” Luzia said, unable to keep her voice from cracking.

The fisherman nodded. “Let me get my mule,” he replied.

He tied a rope bridle around the animal’s snout and followed Luzia into the scrub. When they reached the Hawk, he was still slumped against the tree trunk. His skin was pasty and yellowed, the color of a spoiled egg. The fisherman scanned the body, the bandaged leg.

“He’s alive,” Luzia said. “Just hurt. We need to get across the river.”

The fisherman looked up to the sky, as if seeking guidance. He sighed. “You’ll have to help me load him.”

Together, they heaved the Hawk onto the mule. His eyes opened only once, when Luzia accidentally bumped his calf. They placed him stomach side down over the mule’s bare back. The animal was short legged; the Hawk’s feet nearly brushed the ground. The fisherman led the animal slowly while Luzia walked beside it, gripping the Hawk’s arm. His body slipped back and forth across the animal’s back. Once, they stopped to rearrange him. At the shore, they carried him onto the flat-bottomed raft and wrapped him in a blanket. Luzia could not see the other side of the river—everything was blurred. The fisherman steered them across, dipping a long pole into and out of the water.

The setting sun was bright and the river shone beneath it, like Colonel Clóvis’s yellow silk. The raft bobbed and shook, making Luzia queasy. Water sprayed her trousers. The shore on the Bahia side was rocky and uneven. As soon as they’d grounded the boat, the fisherman whistled. A young man emerged from a lone shack. Luzia forced herself to stand as tall as she could. She kept her stance wide, like a man’s, and did not lower her eyes when the young man approached.

“He needs treatment,” she said, pointing to the wrapped body on the raft.

“There’s a ranch near here,” the young man replied quietly, keeping his eyes down. “It’s got a doctor, a real one. I can show you.”

They placed the Hawk on top of the young man’s mare. Then the old fisherman stepped back onto his raft. Luzia stopped him. She took the roll of mil-réis notes from her bornal and offered it to him. The fisherman shook his head.

“I helped because I’m a man of God. I don’t want trouble.” He pointed to the roll of bills. “A man who takes stolen money is no better than a thief himself.”

Then he turned and pushed his boat onto the river.

8

Luzia expected an animal doctor or a curandeiro living in a shack filled with dried herbs and bark scrapings. When the young man led her to the gate of a large white ranch house, Luzia grew suspicious. She would not move past the gate.

“Have him come out here,” she said, grabbing the mare’s reins. “I won’t go in until I see him.”

She stood beside the gate’s pillars, wondering nervously if the mare could take both her weight and the Hawk’s. He lay belly side down, like a corpse, on the horse’s back. A middle-aged man emerged from the house with a kerosene lantern in his hand. He did not look like a colonel or a soldier. He was very thin, with hunched shoulders and a curving neck, as if his head weighed more than his body could carry. His hair was wet and lank over his ears. He wore a pressed shirt and brass-rimmed spectacles that shone like jewelry on his face. The lenses magnified his eyes, making them look round and bulging, like a newborn bird’s. He held the lantern high and addressed Luzia.

“You’ve interrupted my supper,” he said.

Luzia pointed to the mare behind her. “He’s shot.”

“I’m sorry. I do not treat animals,” the man replied.

“He’s no animal,” Luzia said, angry with the doctor’s impatience. She took the lantern from his hand and shone it over the horse. When the doctor saw the blanket-covered body, he opened the gate and motioned her inside.

They placed the Hawk on a long wooden table in the doctor’s kitchen. An elderly maid set a cauldron of water on the cookstove. When it boiled, the doctor dropped a set of metal instruments in it. The doctor filled another basin, rolled up his sleeves, and washed his hands. Like his head, they were exceptionally pale and large. When he finished, he unwrapped the Hawk’s injured leg. The old bandage stuck to the wound. The doctor slowly loosened it, then pulled firmly to yank it off. The Hawk flinched. He opened his eyes and tried to sit. The doctor pushed him down.