The Seamstress (40 page)

“I’m not afraid of dying standing up, in the scrub,” he said, “but God help me, I won’t die in a bed.”

Reluctantly, Eronildes outfitted him with a pair of wooden crutches. The Hawk swung his body forward between them. Sometimes he tried to put weight on his leg, then drew back in pain. Luzia stayed close beside him, steadying him whenever his stride became too long and he lost his balance. The Hawk brushed her away. He looked at Luzia harshly when she interfered, as if he would have preferred to fall.

Once they’d walked far enough away from Eronildes’ house, they practiced shooting. They started each lesson using his slingshot, aiming at lizards, rolinha doves, butterflies, and beetles. If she squinted hard enough, Luzia could hit her target. At the end of her practice, the Hawk handed her the revolver. Luzia admired the gun. She liked inspecting the chamber and clicking back the safety and knowing that any of those small and seemingly meaningless parts could paralyze the entire machine. She grew to love the loud crack of a shot and, afterward, the force of its jolt. Luzia liked the way it moved her, but the Hawk did not.

“Get this in your head,” he said. “Taking a shot without meaning to kill can kill all the same. So you’d better aim right.”

His words frightened her but his voice didn’t. It was stern but never angry. And each time he arranged the revolver in her hands, he was gentle, wrapping her fingers around the butt as if preparing her for prayer. At the end of each lesson, when they walked back to Eronildes’ house, Luzia let him walk ahead of her, swinging determinedly between his crutches. She watched him balance and hop. He stopped before a tree. It was gray and leafless, like all of the scrub trees that didn’t border the river. He twisted off a twig, and when he saw the green marrow inside, he nodded, reassured.

When they returned, Eronildes was waiting. He held a newspaper in his hand. He’d recently picked up his new batch and had spent his days reading. The Hawk lifted his crutches onto the porch, then swung his body up. Eronildes handed him the newspaper.

“I think they’ve written about you,” Eronildes said. “Nothing good, of course.”

The Hawk snatched for the paper. He nearly lost his balance. Luzia steadied him and read over his shoulder. It was an outdated edition, over a month old.

Diário de Pernambuco / Recife / June 23, 1929

Troublesome Cangaceiro Evades Troops

In the backlands, perversity reigns.

Captain Higino Ribeiro, one of the few survivors of a cangaceiro ambush near São Tomé this past April, has finally returned to Recife. Despite his loss, the captain asserts that he will not be deterred. “The Vulture is a bandit of the worst class,” Captain Higino declared, “and I am committed to catching him.”

“The Vulture,” as he is popularly called in the backlands, invaded the ranch of Colonel Clóvis Lucena in December. Mr. Marcos Lucena reported that the cangaceiros dominated the ranch for four months before aid arrived. Wanted for previous atrocities committed in Fidalga, including the slaying of seven innocent men and the terrorization of the town’s residents, “the Vulture” sought asylum in São Tomé. There, his audacity and ferocity did not diminish. He used perverse tactics to lure and trap Pernambucan troops. Reports indicate that the cangaceiros were colorfully adorned and were accompanied by a female consort.

The conditions that create the development of brigandage of this caliber are easily summed up: they are 1) poor administration by our leaders and 2) the possession of convenient hiding places. It is hard to stomach, but these malefactors are celebrated among the residents of distant farms, far from civilized lands. As Pernambucans, we cannot give prestige or protection to groups of popular bandits, men without scruples or faith.

Our leaders lead a weak campaign against banditry. Will only elections change the current state? When will the martyrdom of our fine, uniformed boys end? Why, this reporter asks, must we continue to lose them in those ungrateful backlands?

 

12

The Hawk stopped their morning walks. He did not debate with Eronildes in the evenings. At night, as Luzia lay in the guest bedroom, she heard the thumps of crutches against the wood floor and then a slow, dragging jump, as if a three-legged beast was pacing back and forth in the little room beside the kitchen.

When the Hawk finally spoke, he told Eronildes that he’d spent enough time convalescing. He was going to meet his men. Dr. Eronildes insisted that the leg had not healed and if the Hawk left, all of his work would have been in vain. When the Hawk persisted, Eronildes sat on the porch alone and smoked several cigarettes before returning to the room beside the kitchen.

“Tell your men to come here,” Eronildes said, his voice low. “But tell them to comport themselves.”

“They aren’t animals,” the Hawk replied. “You are a friend and we treat friends with respect. The sooner they arrive, the sooner you’ll be free of me.” He looked at Luzia, then back toward the doctor. “Of us.”

The Hawk asked for a notecard and a fountain pen. With slow, awkward strokes, he scrawled his signature,
Captain Antônio
, on the card and wrapped it in his green neck scarf. Luzia sewed the bundle into the lining of a plain bornal belonging to Eronildes’ vaqueiro. The man put the bag over his shoulder and set out for the Marimbondo church.

Weeks later, nine men returned with the vaqueiro: Baiano, Canjica, Inteligente, Little Ear, Sweet Talker, Half-Moon, Caju, Sabiá, and Ponta Fina. The rest had died or deserted. The remaining cangaceiros were gaunt. Their clothes were stained and frayed. Ponta Fina wore his arm in a sling. Raised red bumps dotted the men’s faces, necks, and hands. They’d made camp away from the Marimbondo chapel, but the wasps had found them. The men circled the Hawk. One by one, he inspected their cuts, scrapes, sprains, and wasp bites, like a proud father. Then he clasped each of them in a hug. Eronildes stood on his porch. When the Hawk pointed to him, the doctor tucked his large, white hands into his vest pockets.

“This is Dr. Eronildes,” the Hawk said. “He is our greatest ally and friend. I owe him my life.”

Luzia had been happy until that point. Who had gotten them across the river? Who had found Dr. Eronildes? She looked down at her oversize and ragged dress. She wanted her trousers back. The old maid had washed and hidden them. As soon as the men made camp, Luzia decided that she would find them again.

The men were fed well. They scraped their bowls clean. They sucked on their wooden spoons. The elderly maid wove through the group, doling out more beans. The Hawk limped from man to man, crouching beside them and speaking hurriedly to each one. The men’s presence had reinvigorated him, making him more limber on his crutches. The men nodded and smiled at him, their mouths full. Occasionally they glanced at Luzia, then looked back at their food. They’d made camp near the house, stringing up all of Dr. Eronildes’ available caroá rope hammocks. The Hawk helped Canjica build a fire and then called them to prayer. Luzia knelt beside Ponta Fina, who looked at her nervously, then down at his palms. Afterward, she spoke to him.

“What happened to your arm?” Luzia asked.

Ponta shrugged. “Shot.”

“Is the bullet still inside?”

“No,” Ponta mumbled. “It went clean through.”

“Your bornal’s gone,” she said. “We’ll have to make a new one.” She missed her sewing machine and thought, angrily, that the maids at Colonel Clóvis’s house had probably left it in the scrub to rust.

“I don’t want a new one,” Ponta said. “Not from you.”

Luzia stepped back. She felt as if she’d been stung.

Ponta screwed his face into a stern grimace. “The captain got shot,” he said. “We lost half our group. That never happened before you came along. Women don’t belong in the cangaço.” He paused and stared intently at his hands, as if reading his next lines. “They’re bad luck.”

Luzia’s throat felt dry. She clamped her arms across her chest, steadying herself. If she cried, he’d think she believed him. He’d think he was right—that she was like the stones people picked up when they were sick or troubled. They spoke to those stones, told them about their ailments and fears, then kissed them and chucked them far away, believing that the stone would take on the burden of their misfortune and that they would be cured.

“It was your captain’s choice to attack the troops, not mine,” she said sternly, taking the tone Aunt Sofia had used when she was a child. “Real men take responsibility for themselves. They don’t blame luck. Or women.”

With rest, food, and Dr. Eronildes’ treatments of teas and proper hygiene, the men slowly recovered. Luzia made herself quietly indispensable, mending their torn clothes, serving their dinners, chiding them for forgetting to change their bandages. The Hawk still slept in the kitchen room, but he spent less time in the house. There were no more shooting lessons. No more late-night discussions. Eronildes frequently went to Luzia with his notepad and his questions.

He asked her about the men’s morning prayers. Did she believe in that crystal rock? Did she believe that saying the corpo fechado would seal her body from harm? Luzia did not know how to answer such questions. She was not ignorant—the crystal rock was a rock; the saints in her old closet were made of wood and clay; the bloody-toed Jesus above Padre Otto’s altar was gesso and wire. She did not kneel to those things. Her faith was not in wood or clay or wire. Since the Hawk was occupied with his men, each afternoon Luzia walked beside the river alone. She watched fishermen stretch their canvas sails on the shore to dry. She saw boys balance on the backs of narrow boats and steer them downriver with long, crooked poles. She saw the whitewashed altars of saints set beside the water. She saw the snarling faces of wooden carrancas carved onto mastheads to scare away river demons. It was a way of life she had never imagined existed. The fishermen had their superstitions, their demons, their preferred saints. And beneath the brown waters of the Old Chico was another world. A place inhabited by striped surubim fish and other creatures beyond her imagination. It was a world she could not inhabit or explain, but she knew it existed.

When she came back from her walk, she saw Dr. Eronildes on his mare, returning from a trip downriver. His vaqueiro rode beside him on a pack mule. In its cargo baskets the animal carried several parcels, two tins of kerosene, and a stack of newspapers. Eronildes’ elderly maid stepped off the porch and greeted him. The doctor climbed awkwardly off his horse. He waved to Luzia.

“I have something for you!” he shouted.

Eronildes walked briskly toward her. He patted his vest pocket and produced a small black case.

“A gift,” he said.

Luzia took the case hesitantly. It was hard leather, with a snap clasp. She flicked open the lid. Inside, the lining was soft. Velvet. Tucked into its dark recesses, like a seed in its pod, was a pair of brass-rimmed spectacles.

“I had them shipped from Salvador,” Eronildes said excitedly. “We did an eye exam not long ago, remember? It wasn’t completely accurate, but I think it will do. You’re nearsighted, like me. These will correct your vision.”

The spectacles were nearly weightless in her hands. Luzia was afraid to unfold them. She fumbled with their thin arms. Eronildes helped her wrap the rounded ends around her ears. The metal felt cold. It tickled the bridge of her nose. Behind Dr. Eronildes, Luzia saw each crack in the whitewashed walls of his house. She saw the crooked grain of the porch’s wooden beams, each oval leaf of the juazeiro tree beside his window, and the Hawk, standing beside the house’s white wall. He’d come to see about the newspapers, but he’d stopped short. He propped a thick-fingered hand upon the house’s wall and watched them. Luzia slipped off the spectacles.

“It’s overwhelming at first,” Eronildes said, “but you’ll grow accustomed to it.”

“Thank you,” Luzia replied. The Hawk was still there but blurred now, a shadow.

“Luzia,” Eronildes said. He paused and wove his white fingers together. “The men, the cangaceiros, are plotting to leave soon. Once they all recuperate.”

She nodded. Eronildes looked at her intently.

“My father taught me another useful saying,” he continued. “‘If you live by the gun, you’ll die by the gun.’ Have you heard that one?”

“Yes.”

“When the men leave, you’re welcome to stay. You have a place here. I hope you know this.”

“Yes,” she said. Luzia fidgeted with the spectacles, slipping them back into the case. “Thank you.”

Her room was dim. The days were shorter; the sun had already dipped below the river’s hills. Luzia did not light a candle. She stood before the mirror and opened the leather case. Aunt Sofia had instructed her to never look in a mirror after dark. If she did, her aunt warned, she would see her own death. But it wasn’t dark yet. Luzia hooked the spectacles behind her ears. The lenses were much thinner than those in Eronildes’ glasses. The brass frames were perfectly round, like hollowed-out coins. They shone around Luzia’s eyes.

Perhaps she would stay, she thought. Perhaps she would telegraph Emília. Perhaps she would go to the capital and become a famous dressmaker.

Behind her, the guest room door opened. In the mirror she saw the Hawk. Luzia saw each sun-baked crease on the good side of his face, each strand of hair pulled into a messy ponytail, each tangled saint’s medallion. She turned and faced him.

“What are those?” he asked, his lips crimped tight.

“Spectacles,” she replied.

The Hawk walked toward her. His hand snapped out. Luzia felt a flutter in her chest, as if a moth were trapped there. She braced for a hit but his fingers snatched at the spectacles. Luzia twisted out of his reach. She took the glasses off. Their hooked ends caught in her hair.

“What is the matter with you?” she yelled.