The Woodcarver's Secret (Samantha Sweet Mysteries) (38 page)

Bertha remembered the tingle in
her arms. She thought of the box stored under her bed. She knew where the gift
came from. She also knew she must never speak of it.

*
* *

A saucepan of chocolate bubbled
over the gas flame on the stove. Bertha reached for the shelf and adjusted the
volume on the radio, turning down the upbeat horns of Glenn Miller’s orchestra.
It seemed a constant battle of wills—her mother wanting everything louder,
Bertha longing for quiet. The jazzy notes continued, softer now, and Theresa
grumbled a little as she shelled pecans at the kitchen table.

A pan of fudge would be their
contribution to the gathering at the church this afternoon, a festive time when
everyone in the community pitched in to decorate for the Christmas season.
Bertha stirred the mixture, judging its consistency.

Jorge Espinosa had asked her to
go with him, but she’d demurred on the pretext that her mother and grandmother
needed her assistance. Theresa was certainly capable of driving the Ford truck
to town by herself; Bertha’s real reason was that she had not yet decided
whether she wanted Jorge’s interest. All these thoughts must be kept to
herself, of course. Theresa and Ruben hinted constantly that it was about time
Bertha find a husband. Practically every other girl over twenty was already
married and most had their first child already.

Abuela
alone understood. Bertha had studied with her grandmother
for eight years, learning the methods of the
curandera
—how to consult with a patient to learn their ailments,
which herbs and roots worked for which illnesses, and when it was best simply
to listen. Sometimes, that in itself was a cure. Although the two women never
specifically discussed the future, there was a
simpatico
between them, reading each other’s feelings, knowing what
was in the heart.

The Glenn Miller piece
transitioned into a Benny Goodman number and Theresa’s foot tapped under the
table. Bertha checked the fudge again and decided it needed a few more minutes.
She could step out of the overly warm kitchen for a moment and make a quick
trip to the outhouse. Maybe she should marry someone and move to town where
nearly everyone had indoor plumbing these days. But she hadn’t cleared the back
step before a shriek from the kitchen grabbed her attention. She spun around to
see what was wrong with Theresa.

“Turn it up! Turn the radio up!”

Her mother’s expression showed
alarm; Bertha complied.

“. . . day that will live in infamy . . .”

Bertha felt her insides go cold.
Consuelo stepped in from the living room where she had been sorting herbs.

An announcer came on, repeating
what the president had said, giving statistics. There were practically tears in
his voice. The three women stared at each other.

“Get your father!” Theresa cried.

Bertha glanced toward the pan on
the stove, turned off the burner. She pulled her jacket from the peg by the
back door and shoved her arms into the sleeves as she ran toward his workshop.

It wasn’t yet dark, and well
before the planned hour for it, but everyone in the community had begun to
drift toward the church. Father Pedro greeted them and led prayers for the dead
sailors in Hawaii, for the country itself. The pine boughs and candles that had
been gathered for decoration lay in the vestibule, untouched. After the priest
finished, people gathered in clumps, some crying, most wearing stunned
expressions. Jorge Espinosa approached Bertha and reached for her hand.

He pulled her to the back corner
of the room and stared earnestly into her eyes.

“We’re all enlisting,” he said.
“Me, Miguel, Jaime ... pretty much all the fellows in town.”

Bertha wasn’t surprised. She’d
already heard the whispered conversations.

“I figure we need to, us younger
guys, to keep our fathers from going. We’ll get over there, show those Japs a
thing or two, and then we’ll be back.”

A sudden and terrible vision came
to Bertha. It wouldn’t be over that quickly or that easily, she knew. But she
didn’t say anything.

“So, anyway, I was wondering,
Bertha ... while I’m gone ... will you wait for me? I mean, would you—?”

She nodded before he could
finish. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t already hinted around about marriage. She had
heard the whispers around town, about herself, the oddball girl who performed
cures and like to hang around with her grandmother more than her friends. She
knew the words ‘old maid’ and ‘spinster’ had been thrown around. And other
words, worse ones. There was a fine line between miracles and witchcraft in
many peoples’ minds and she had to be careful—so careful—in her practice of
healing the sick and injured. Having a husband and home of her own would add
legitimacy.

“We could go tomorrow for the
license,” Jorge was saying. “Have a ceremony at the town hall in Taos.”

She took his hand. “It’s all
right. I’ll wait for you.”

Across the room, a giddy shriek
told her that some other girl had decided to go ahead with a quick wedding.
Bertha didn’t mind. The extra time would give her a chance to get used to the
idea of sharing a life with Jorge. Although she didn’t love him in the way her
parents loved each other, she could imagine that it would work out all right.
She met his steady gaze, realizing that he was about to kiss her.

*
* *

Jorge Espinosa was among the
first reported casualties. Four letters—it was all she had to remember him by,
those and the photograph he’d sent of himself in a crisp white uniform and
cocky sailor hat. One week after completing basic training, his ship had sailed
out of San Diego and been bombed. So much for showing the Japanese a thing or
two.

The day she received the news,
Bertha went to the bedroom, pulled the carved box from under her bed, and held
it on her lap for a long time, absorbing warmth from it, healing the scraps of
pain even though they had never coalesced into full-fledged grief. Then she put
the box away and went on a cleaning binge through the house, moving furniture
and scrubbing the floors for three days, until her mother took her by the
shoulders and insisted that she go to bed.

Bertha accepted the condolences
of friends. Most of them wore a wary expression, as if by acknowledging that
her fiancé could die so quickly, their own loved ones might meet a similar
fate. Her parents seemed resigned—they’d come so close to seeing their odd
daughter married, and now that hope was dashed. Fewer men would be available
after the war and the prettier girls already seemed to have snatched up the
best choices.

Ruben sold another parcel of land
and they spent the money to install a bathroom indoors and to fit the kitchen
with a real refrigerator to replace the old icebox and to place new linoleum
tile on the floor and countertop. Bertha told no one that the convenience of
the refrigerator meant more to her than marriage. Only
Abuela
understood her detached attitude. Curing—that was her life
now.

Two years went by and news of the
war only got worse. Her father talked of enlisting—most of the men from town
had done so, but the farmers were encouraged to stay behind, to keep producing
food. The government paid well for his crops of corn and potatoes, and Ruben
commented more than once that perhaps he shouldn’t have sold that last parcel.
It was a moot point; the land was not theirs now, plus he had no hired men to
help with the work. Bertha and Theresa took turns working in the fields with
him and watching over
Abuela
, whose
health declined week by week.

“I’m old,
hija
. I will die. It is the
natural way of things,” Consuelo said from her bed, staring into Bertha’s face
with eyes that were nearly sightless now. “People die.”

Like Jorge? Like the men whose names showed up on lists of New Mexicans
who were killed or missing every week? Was that the natural way of things?
Bertha suppressed the questions for which she would never have answers.

“Go now,” Consuelo insisted,
“take Margarita Vasquez some of that sore throat remedy, and young Johnny
Rodriguez can use some
a
ñil
del
muerto
for his injury.”

Bertha smiled. G
oldweed could be a
wonder for sores and cuts, but Johnny’s wounds from the war were far more
serious. Still, she would offer whatever help she could. As always, before she
left to visit a patient, Bertha handled the wooden box and allowed it to
suffuse warmth into her hands.

“
Cada
remedio
tiene
su
virtud
,” said
Abuela
as Bertha put the box away.

Each remedy has its virtue.
Bertha wondered if Consuelo was referring to the box. Although she’d never told
her grandmother about her experience with it, the old woman was very
perceptive. She opened her mouth, the story wanting to come out.

“I will rest while you are
gone,” Consuelo said. “We can talk more when you return.”

“All right,
Abuela
. You rest.”

She climbed into the old Ford
truck after telling her mother she would be back in an hour or two. Down the
road two miles, she dropped off the throat remedy she’d made from mallow. And
in town, Johnny Rodriguez did indeed seem better than the last time she’d visited
with him. Touching his wounded arm, the warmth from her hands seemed to provide
some relief. His was a shattered bone and the surgeons performed a minor
miracle with repairs, rather than amputating, but a lot of the surrounding
muscle was gone now and no amount of exposure to the powers of the wooden box
would replace it. They had told him he would never have full use of that arm.

Cora, his wife, a girl Bertha had
known in school, came into the room and cleared her throat noisily.

“I can do that for him,” she
said, pushing past Bertha and laying a proprietary hand on her husband’s
shoulder.

“Certainly.” Bertha stood up. The
attitude was one she encountered often—from women who no longer turned to the
old ways of curing, who would rather have their babies in the modern hospital
in Taos than to call upon herself and her
abuela
as midwives. Times were changing.

“Cora, look—my arm is much
better,” Johnny said. The skin around the wound which had been an angry,
infected red when Bertha arrived, indeed looked nearly normal.

Cora stared at Bertha,
challenging her.

“I’m glad to hear it,” Bertha
said. She handed the woman a vial of the goldweed ointment and wished them
well.

As the Ford truck rattled along
the dirt roads, taking her home, she decided to dismiss the incident at the
Rodriguez house. Why women like Cora should feel jealousy toward Bertha was a
mystery to her. These were the girls from school who were pretty and they had
attracted husbands, men in whom Bertha had no interest apart from her curiosity
about how the body worked to heal itself with only the simple aid of the
curandera
. She supposed the occasional
antagonism came from lack of knowledge. People who did not understand the old
ways could not appreciate them. Words like
spells,
witchcraft,
and
conjuring
were
sometimes thrown about. Bertha and her
abuela
knew differently. That was the important thing.

She steered the truck along the
dirt track that over the years had become their driveway, pulling to the back
of the house. It wasn’t until she walked into the kitchen and heard voices from
the other room that she realized the priest was here.

Abuela!
Bertha ran into the bedroom and knew at a glance that she
would never have the chance to finish their earlier conversation.

*
* *

First
Abuela
and now
Papá
.
Bertha stared at the freshly filled grave, beside the older one. Theresa knelt,
the knees of her heavy stockings getting dirty as she placed a small clutch of
flowers at Ruben’s headstone. A month ago, neither of them could have imagined
this.

The new tractor he had purchased
after the war, the slicing blades of the discs, a freak fall at the wrong
moment—Ruben Martinez had bled to death before anyone knew he was in trouble.
Bertha, coming home from treating a child’s skin rash, had spotted the stalled
machine—first with curiosity, then with horror. If only she had been home, if
only she had seen the accident. Guilt and regret wracked her each time she
thought of it, each time she saw her mother’s ravaged face and Theresa’s
slumped posture in the all-black clothing she now insisted upon wearing.

They would get through it,
somehow. Money—the lack of it—was the big concern now. Bertha’s income from
performing cures was nothing. Five dollars was a typical fee, more often a
chicken or some fruit or vegetables from the patient’s garden. The nation might
be in an economic boom right now, but this was a poor county in a poor state.
People had nothing with which to pay. As a farmer, Ruben had not paid into the
new Social Security plan. They were two women alone, and they would have to
make do. Bertha needed to talk with Theresa about it, to have an earnest
conversation, but her mother could not yet speak of the future.

The closest she had come to
making a plan had been to insist that Bertha move into the front bedroom.
Theresa could not sleep in the big bed in the room she had shared for more than
thirty years with Ruben. They switched bedrooms, Bertha finding it strange to
leave the one where she and
Abuela
had lain in the two narrow beds, talking often into the night. But that was
gone now too, and maybe it was better to assume new roles.