The Seamstress (80 page)

“Safe?”

“Yes, safe.”

Eronildes shifted. Luzia noticed a black band around his jacket sleeve.

“Who passed?” she asked.

“My mother.”

“I’m sorry. Death’s hard.”

Eronildes snorted. “Is it?”

“Yes. Even for me.”

“I have trouble believing you, Luzia.”

“The theater was a mistake.”

Eronildes shook his head. “People paid dearly for your mistake.”

“So did I,” Luzia said. “I lost many friends because of it.”

Eronildes held his stomach. He turned his head and spat.

“Are you going to be sick again?” Luzia asked.

“No.”

Luzia stared at the tape’s uneven tick marks, its incorrect numbers. “A while back you talked about rebreaking my arm. Curing me. Would you still do that?”

“Why?”

“Would you?”

“It won’t do any good. You will still be recognized.”

“You used to encourage me to leave this life.”

“That was a long time ago. It’s too late now.”

Luzia’s hand tightened around the tape. “I live by the gun, so I’ll die by the gun, is that right?”

Eronildes wiped his brow. “You made a decision, Luzia. You must live with your choice. We all must.”

She nodded. “January twelfth, then?”

Eronildes looked relieved. “Yes.”

“I won’t go in your house.”

“You won’t have to,” Eronildes replied and slowly made his way back to his ranch.

In the days after this meeting, Luzia studied the measuring tape. She recalled Antônio inserting his silver spoon into a suspect plate of food and watching as the spoon tarnished and turned black. They could not trust that food or the person who served it. Emília’s tape, like Antônio’s spoon, revealed a traitor.

At night, while the other cangaceiros slept, Luzia’s heart beat fast. Her fingers felt cold. How many other coiteiros were ready to turn her in, to trick her? Luzia felt as though she were back in Padre Otto’s schoolyard, surrounded by children who’d once been her friends but suddenly began to prod her crooked arm and call her Victrola. Padre Otto had witnessed this. As a girl, Luzia had watched the priest move toward the crowd and she’d believed that he would be the only one to redeem her. “Children,” Padre Otto had yelled. “Leave Victrola alone.” When she thought of Dr. Eronildes, Luzia felt the same stab of disappointment and anger she’d felt toward the priest. And now, in her scrub camp as well as in the schoolyard, she trusted only Emília.

Luzia worked the measuring tape between her fingers. Her sister had cared enough to warn her.

3

They buried the soldier whole. Luzia left his head on his neck out of respect for his honesty, but also because she did not want his death to be attributed to her group. She didn’t want anyone to suspect that the Seamstress had captured a monkey and that he’d given her information. Luzia burned the soldier’s green pants, leather hat, and canvas satchel. She waited until the items disintegrated completely so that curious farmers or vaqueiros couldn’t sift through the ashes and find the remains. The blaze was hot. Luzia squatted before it. She opened her bornal and took out the pile of newspaper photographs at the bottom of her bag. Luzia felt a stab in her chest, near her heart, as if something had snagged there, like a hook on a line. It was painful to resist its pull. Quickly, before she could look at the photos, Luzia threw them into the fire. The images of Emília and Expedito blackened and curled. If she was killed, soldiers would take her bags; Luzia couldn’t let them find the images and associate the Seamstress with the Widow Coelho.

Luzia kept only the measuring tape—proof of Emília’s loyalty. She thought of her sister’s warning. She recalled Dr. Eronildes’ boots, covered in vomit and sand. And Luzia remembered fragments of the dead soldier’s confession:
five hundred rounds, the “better seamstress,” a ranch near the Old Chico.
Separately these memories seemed disparate and random but—like the paper pieces of a sewing pattern—when considered together they connected to form a recognizable entity.

“The meeting’s a trap,” Luzia said. “Eronildes wants to see me at the same time there are monkeys waiting by the Old Chico. Who do you think they’re waiting for?”

Ponta Fina and Baiano joined her beside the fire. They fixed their eyes on Luzia.

“The new weapon’s with him,” she said. “Eronildes has got that ‘better seamstress.’”

Baiano shook his head. Ponta Fina spat.

“Damn him,” Ponta said. “He’s worse than the rest.”

“January twelfth,” Luzia continued. “If .we hurry, we can make it.”

“Mãe?” Baiano said.

Luzia recalled her first shooting lesson with Antônio, back on Colonel Clóvis’s ranch—how heavy the revolver was, and how holding it had hurt her wrist. She recalled the argument she’d had with Antônio afterward.

“We’ll surprise them,” she said. “I want them to see that I know. That I knew all along.”

“If we don’t show, they’ll see that,” Ponta Fina said. “The doctor’ll look like a fool.”

Luzia shook her head. “I won’t run.”

“It’s not running,” Ponta replied. “We can go back later, when the doctor doesn’t expect us. Why walk into a trap?”

Luzia stared at the fire. The photographs were gone, transformed into a dark pile beneath the flames.

“I want that gun,” she said.

The men were quiet. Baiano wrapped his hands together, as if praying.

“Five hundred rounds,” he said. “If that soldier wasn’t fibbing, it’s better than all our Winchesters put together. But it’s a risk, going there.”

“If we don’t go, the risk is worse,” Luzia said. “They’ll use that gun on us some other time, and we won’t know when or where. Now we know. Now we have the advantage.”

“So we show up early?” Ponta asked.

Luzia shook her head. “We show up when we’re supposed to and break into two groups. One will angle around, behind the monkeys. The other will go to the meeting spot. I’ll go with that group. Gomes wants me; as long as I’m there, they’ll think we don’t know. I’ll be the bait.”

Baiano and Ponta Fina stared into the flames. Luzia examined their faces. She saw both worry and excitement there and wondered if her own expression revealed the same emotions. Luzia stuffed the measuring tape into her trouser pocket; there was no avoiding this fight. Pregnancy hadn’t weakened her. The drought hadn’t killed her. Gomes’s many brigades of troops hadn’t caught her. The Seamstress’s head remained firmly upon her neck. Luzia couldn’t let this new gun, this “better seamstress,” change that.

4

On January twelfth, Luzia’s group arrived on Eronildes’ ranch. There were fifteen men and women with her, including Ponta Fina, Baby, Inteligente, Sabiá, and Canjica. The rest of the cangaceiros—the best shooters and attackers—went with Baiano into the hills around the river valley. They would find Gomes’s troops and surprise them when Luzia gave the signal: a sharp whistle that resembled a hawk’s call.

They camped in a dry gulley not far from the doctor’s house. The sun slowly fell behind a ridge, filling the scrub with shadows. Luzia stared into the hills. Soldiers hid there, observing her and the cangaceiros. Baiano, in turn, observed the troops. They wouldn’t attack until first light; Luzia felt certain of this. The monkeys couldn’t risk having cangaceiros escape under the cover of night. And, most of all, they would want to clearly see the effects of their new weapon. The troops would want to witness the Seamstress’s death. As soon as the sun rose, the soldiers would have a clear view. Until then, Luzia would put on a good show.

Three of Eronildes’ ranch hands delivered baskets overflowing with manioc flour, beans, pumpkins, an entire hock of beef, and several bottles of wine. In one of the baskets was a note from Eronildes:

Meet in the morning. I will bring them to you.

Luzia put the note in her pocket, beside the measuring tape. She stared in the direction of Eronildes’ house. The doctor underestimated a mother’s instincts: Luzia’s boy wasn’t in that house. Neither was Emília. If they had been there, Luzia would’ve felt their presence the way she felt the presence of the São Francisco River a few hundred meters south—she could smell the river and hear the rush of its waters. Eronildes’ house was closer than the Old Chico, yet Luzia couldn’t smell smoke from a cook fire or hear pots clanging in Eronildes’ kitchen. The house was empty.

Ponta Fina insisted on testing the food Eronildes had sent. He sniffed the meat and the pumpkin. He dipped Antônio’s silver spoon into the dry goods and the wine. When everything came up clean, the group looked into the hills and cheered. Luzia ordered them to erect a spit and build a large fire under it. Beef fat dripped into the flames, making them hiss and crackle.

“Pour the wine!” Luzia shouted. Then, in a whisper: “Don’t drink. We need to keep our wits.”

The cangaceiros obeyed, taking long swigs from the bottles but pursing their lips before wine could enter their mouths. Above them was a new moon. When the fire’s last ember died, the gulley became instantly dark, as if a shroud had been thrown over it. The cangaceiros pretended to sleep. Couples whispered nervously to one another. A few solitary men shifted upon their blankets. Luzia remained standing. Far away, in the hills beyond the gulley, she saw circles of orange light. They glowed and bobbed like insects.

Luzia recalled the theater fire: along with the dark flakes of ash that were produced by the blaze, there’d been cinders. The small points of light had risen quickly, escaping the fire’s oppressive heat like souls escaping the confines of their earthly bodies. Luzia remembered the immense weight of the theater door’s crossbar, and how her arms shook as she’d dropped it in place. Afterward the hinges had creaked and moaned but did not buckle. The fire inside grew hotter, the screams louder. Now, in that dark gulley, Luzia believed the cinders from the theater fire had never been extinguished. They’d followed her across the scrub, ready to consume her.

Luzia felt a chill across her neck, as if a cold hand had clamped it. She stepped back. Sand shifted beneath her feet. The land was so sensitive it responded to her most minute movements. They were small shifts, but important, like revising a target before taking aim. Like taking scissors to expensive cloth and deciding to cut outside the marked pattern. Instinct told the sand which way to shift, just as it told the shooter where to point, and the seamstress where to cut. Instinct told Luzia where a man would move before she shot him. It told her to sense changes in the air before a big rain. It told her how to sniff out the presence of water within the scrub. Now, instinct told Luzia what waited in those dark hills. It told her to run.

Luzia turned. Dark shapes covered the ground. Some cangaceiros still pretended to sleep but most of the men and women stared. Their eyes shone. They fixed their gazes upon Luzia like the saints in her girlhood closet, waiting for a prayer or a sacrifice. Ponta Fina and Baby were curled together on their blanket, facing her. Luzia contemplated kneeling beside Ponta and whispering to him, but what would she say? She couldn’t correctly explain the sudden coldness in her belly, or why her hands had begun to shake. These sounded like symptoms of fear or regret—feelings Luzia could never admit to having.

“Sons of bitches,” one of the cangaceiros whispered. “After we kill those filhos-da-puta, I’m going to steal their cigarettes.”

There was muffled laughter.

Cigarettes? Luzia looked back at the hills. The orange circles of light were miniscule. Some disappeared while others remained, glowing amid the scrub’s dark brush. They did not rise or ignite the trees around them, like cinders would. Luzia felt both relieved and angry—those monkeys were stupid enough to smoke! They were so confident in their hiding place that they believed the cangaceiros wouldn’t notice. Luzia’s chest burned. She wanted to scare those soldiers, to prove them wrong. Placing a hand upon her holster, she walked toward the gully’s edge.

A loud rattling erupted from the hill. It was calculated and jarring, like the ticking of a frenzied clock. There were faraway shouts and the orange points of light disappeared. Luzia felt an invisible force push her backward. There was a searing pain in her good arm, as if it had caught fire from within.

“Mãe!” Ponta Fina yelled. The ticking noise grew louder. He pulled her to the ground.

Luzia’s jacket sleeve was wet and heavy. When she tried to move her good arm, she felt a sickening jolt. Luzia angled her locked arm, placed its fingers in her mouth and whistled loudly. If he could not hear her signal, Baiano’s group certainly heard the shots and would attack. Next to her, Ponta Fina aimed his rifle and shot at the dark hills. With her crooked arm, Luzia reached for her parabellum. The ticking sound continued. In the trees, gunpowder released a faint glow. Luzia shot haphazardly at these pockets of light. She sensed how well the monkeys knew her position by the height of their fire: the bullets came low, moving so close that their heat warmed her back. Luzia wanted to dig herself under the earth.

Around her the cangaceiros cursed and screamed. Some crawled for cover. Others rose and shot at the hills. Luzia heard the thuds of their bodies hitting the dirt. She spun onto her back and searched for a way to retreat, but the dry gulley in which they’d camped rose up and held the cangaceiros on all sides, like a grave. Bullets clinked against Canjica’s metal pots and pans. Tree branches snapped and their limbs whirled off. Clumps of sand flew and disseminated, making Luzia’s eyes sting. She blinked away the grit and saw Inteligente sprawled across the dirt, his massive body tangled in the blanket on which he’d pretended to sleep. Sabiá was slumped against a tree, his pistol still clenched in his hands. Other bodies, already dead, shivered under the unending waves of bullets. Baby—Ponta Fina’s wife—inched forward on her belly, crawling toward him. The ticking grew louder. Baby rolled across the dirt, as if she were caught in a great gust of wind.