The Woodcarver's Secret (Samantha Sweet Mysteries) (17 page)

Before the birth of Miguel, however, he had received word that another
mission settlement needed wood workers and they moved south, six days over a
road that was barely a track through the high-desert terrain. They had stayed
there long enough to welcome Miguel, conceive Lorenzo, and finish a beautiful
altar piece. It only made sense now that Lorenzo was ready for solid food they
would pick up and move again. She sighed.

“They are calling the new place San Antonio,” Carlito said as he
spooned portions of beans into bowls for the two of them. The boys were already
asleep on their pallets in the corner. “There will be a mission church, so I
can use my woodworking skills. And this time I want to convince the priests to
allow me to paint a mural. I can see it in my head, a series of pictures
depicting the life of Christ, one leading to the other so that it spans a long
wall. Maybe even two walls. Such a project would give me work for a very long
time.”

“Do you think we might stay there, then? Long enough for the children
to settle down, perhaps even to learn a little reading and writing from the
priests?”

He shrugged and chewed a large mouthful. “Maybe so. San Antonio might
be the place.”

She didn’t think he said it with much conviction and she was beginning
to remember the little comments from her mother-in-law. Josephina had hinted at
Carlito’s need for adventure and change.

She made up her mind to accept it—what choice was there anyway?—and
then she informed him she was once again pregnant.

* * *

Carlito reached for the carved box on the high shelf of his studio,
lifting it down and regarding it closely for the first time in years. How
differently he saw it now than he had at twelve. The workmanship was not good—his
own skill at woodworking had far surpassed that of whoever made the box—but
still, it held a place in his heart. He remembered his fascination with it as
old Señor Aragon had told of its history, his boyish enthusiasm when his father
gave permission for him to own it. He cradled it in his arms the way he did as
a boy then set it back on the shelf.

“What is that, Papá?” came the small voice of Enrique, his
four-year-old.

“Ah. Well,
hijo
, I used to keep my
paints in it when I was a young man, when Mamá and I first married.” Since
those early days he had accumulated more art supplies than the small box could
hold so he had fashioned a larger one with compartments and a tight-fitting
top.

He took the old box down again and placed it on his worktable where
brushes and paints were strewn in disarray. Sitting on the stool where he often
worked, he took the child on his lap and picked up the box.

“It is very old,” he said, “and the man who owned it told of how it
came from Spain and then went to a town on the coast of Mexico, a place where
there were pirates!”

Enrique’s eyes went wide, more from the tone of his father’s
storytelling voice than from any knowledge of what a pirate was.

Miguel walked into the room just then. “There are pirates on the coast
still,” he said. “Father Dominique told us that they are evil Englishmen who
come to cut the wood and kill Spaniards. They steal logwood from the forests
and take it away in their ships. Father says the English will be doomed to hell
because they don’t belong to the Church.”

“They have their own church,” Carlito responded absently. “Maybe they
think the same thing about us.”

Sometimes he wondered whether Ramona’s idea of educating the children
at the Catholic mission school was a good one, although he had to admit that
the three who were old enough to attend impressed him with their reading and
writing, despite the strong ideas they brought home. He had heard the stories
of battles between the English and Spanish along the Caribbean coastal
areas—battles for territory and natural resources. He supposed they would sort
it out somehow. Meanwhile, he wondered whether he might find work in that area,
might have access to some of those beautiful hardwoods.

Little Enrique had stroked the box in his father’s hand and Carlito
suddenly felt the wood growing warm. He stared at the object and quickly set it
back on the table, out of the youngster’s reach. Enrique began to whine.

“Come, boys, let’s see what Mamá has made for lunch.”

Fights among nations, artifacts that demonstrated strange tendencies …
he wanted to ignore it all and simply get back to his art. He had never seen
the sea but an artist he had worked with on the church at San Antonio a few
years ago had described it—vivid turquoise water with waves that broke over the
reefs. The man had showed Carlito two paintings he’d done when he journeyed
there, breathtaking scenes of a land Carlito could barely imagine from his
experiences in dusty desert lands. He would talk to his wife later about the
idea of moving, just one more time.

“No! No, no!” Ramona screamed. “We have five children, three of them in
school. I do not want to uproot the family again, only to go to a place we know
nothing about. I am tired of starting over.”

By this time tears were pouring from her eyes and the four children who
were able ran from the room. The baby squalled on Ramona’s lap and she stood
abruptly and carried her to the bedroom. A moment later she came back, wiping
her cheeks with her apron. Taking up a towel, she protected her hand and lifted
the metal coffeepot from the cook fire in the corner of the kitchen. She poured
the black brew into two cups and took her seat across from him. She seemed much
calmer and Carlito took hope.

“Neither I nor my children will leave this place,” she announced in a
voice that was quiet and far more frightening to him than her earlier
hysterical shouts. “Not until the children have received proper schooling. When
they are older and can make their own choices about staying or going, then we
might discuss this again. Until then, my answer is still no.”

It was the first time he’d ever struck her and the violence of his
reaction shocked them both. The cup she had lifted to her mouth flew across the
room, shattering against the adobe wall.

“You, woman, have no say in the matter,” he said through clenched
teeth.

And with that, he stomped out the door. The chilly air in the yard
cooled his emotion immediately. Overhead, stars sparkled brilliantly in the
clear desert sky. Their small rented house stood a hundred yards from the home
of their landlord, separated from the larger one by a chicken coop and a pen of
wooden stakes that held three goats. At this time of year, with the doors and
windows closed, no one had likely overheard the altercation. With his fingers,
he raked his hair back from his face. Exhaled deeply.

They fought, certainly, as all married people did. But the fire in
their arguments almost always sparked the flames between them in the bedroom
and a disagreement nearly always ended in passion of the other sort. He feared
it would not be so this time.

He set out walking, trying to reconcile his deep inner desire to move
along, to be in a different place, with his wife’s practical ideas about
raising a family with stability. Up the road, toward the center of town he
trudged. His heart ached with the yearning to leave, to explain again to her
how important this was to his very soul. He came to the church, pressed his
palms against the still-warm adobe, laid his forehead there for a moment. He
could not bring himself to go inside and share his anguish with the priest.

A sob escaped. He quelled it, turned and started the half-mile walk
back home. With each step he felt his spirit drain away. The artist inside had
become dulled with the lack of inspiration in this tiny Mexican town in south
Tejas
, the same disincentive that inevitably fell
over him once he had completed the project for which he’d chosen the locale. He
could only paint bright flowers on so many plates and cups, make one or two
murals in the home of the town’s one wealthy man, talk the priests into a
certain number of Biblical scenes to adorn the walls of the predictably small
local mission church. And then each town lost its allure and he was ready to
move on. Perhaps his mother had been right when she cautioned him about taking
a wife. A family was not for the man with wanderlust.

Chill bumps rose on his arms as he walked the two-track road; he’d not
thought to grab his serape or a hat. His pace quickened although he dreaded to
see Ramona again. Had his slap raised a welt on her beautiful face? And what
harm would it do to stay awhile longer? San Ignacio, the next town down the
road, could be new territory for his wares. He could force himself to paint
plates and cups for a few more years.

Years. The thought depressed him. But he walked on.

In the kitchen, the fire was banked for the night, the dishes cleared
and cleaned, the broken cup nowhere to be seen. Ramona stood with her back to
the door, placing clean plates in a stack on the narrow storage shelf. On the
floor the children’s pallets were neatly laid out and four sets of large dark
eyes watched, waiting, it seemed, to pull their blankets over their heads if
his foul mood had followed him home. Ramona turned, ready to protect her babies
if that were the case. Carlito gave each of them—Miguel, Lorenzo, Francesca and
Enrique—a smile and a wish for good dreams.

To Ramona he said only one thing: “We will stay.”

He went into the bedroom where tiny Aurelia lay asleep in the center of
the marital bed. Normally he would gently pick her up and deposit her in the
wooden cradle beside them—one of the few pieces of furniture that had followed
all the moves of their lives together—and he would snuggle into the warmth of
his wife and they would laugh together, to touch, to kiss. Tonight, he left the
baby in the center of the bed, crawled under the quilt on his side, and turned
to face the wall.

* * *

Carlito coughed and his paintbrush wavered, making a crooked black line
across the bright yellow sunflower before him. He stifled the cough with the
crook of his arm and then sipped of the honey and water mixture Ramona had left
in a cup for him. A damp cloth removed most of the black smear on the current
plate, part of a large set he hoped to sell to a shop in San Geraldo. He was
nearly finished with the big job and the end could not come soon enough. He
swore that if he ever saw another sunflower design he would kill himself.

“Ready for your haircut?” Ramona asked, peering through the open door
from the yard. “I’ve finished the boys.”

“Papá! Papá! Look at my work from school,” Francesca shouted, brushing
past her mother and holding up a small slate. “I can write all my letters now.”

He set down his brush, more than willing to take a break from the
tedious work. “That’s beautiful,
hija
,” he
said to his seven-year-old. “You are making your papá very proud.”

“Me too!” Little Aurelia could not hold still. She danced around the
back stoop as he walked outside and showed him a collection of squiggles she
had made with a stick in the dirt. “My letters!”

He laughed and patted her head. “Very good. You will soon write a
book!”

Ramona pointed at the stool sitting near the door. Around the base of
it were piles of hair clippings. In the winter she allowed the males of the
family to let their hair grow, mainly for warmth but also because she did not
relish doing the job inside the house and having to sweep for days to clean up
the hairs. So this was a spring ritual—everyone got a haircut at once. She
brandished the straight razor and then draped a towel around her husband’s
shoulders.

“Ah, Carlito, look at this gray in your hair since last autumn!” She
cut off several inches and held out the strand for him to see. “Are you
becoming an old man, my darling?”

“No more than you are becoming an old woman.”

She laughed. Lucky for him she had not taken it as an insult. She took
another strand of hair between her fingers, aiming with the razor to shorten
it. Carlito held up a hand.

“
Momentito
,” he gasped, a second
before he erupted in another fit of coughing.

Ramona stepped around to look at his face. “This is becoming worse.”

“
Es
nada
,” he insisted, working
to hold another cough inside.

“It is not nothing. Have you talked to the doctor?”

“That gringo in San Geraldo? He wants to take my blood. The man is
un
idiota
.” He cleared his throat loudly and forced
himself to sit still.

Ramona worked quietly for a moment before speaking again. “I have been
thinking about this, Carlito. I worry for your health. I worry for your spirit.
You are not a happy man.”

He breathed very cautiously. Where was she going with this?

“The son of Isabella
Contarde
came through
town last week. He has been living in Belize, on the coast, for five years now
and he says things have improved there and the country is becoming much more
prosperous. British settlers have gone there, wealthy men and their families,
to oversee the log cutting and to keep peace.” Her words tumbled out quickly
now. “He says there are still problems at times but that the settlements of
these wealthy men are providing work for many. I think we should go there.”