Bless Me, Ultima (8 page)

“And Gabriel?” he asked.

“He is fine, and he sends you greetings,” my mother said.

“And your sons, León, Andrés, Eugenio?”

“The letters say they are fine,” and her eyes were full of tears, “but almost every day there is a tolling of the bells for a son that is lost to the war—”

“Take faith in God, my child,” my grandfather said and he held her close, “He will return them safely. The war is terrible, the wars have always been terrible. They take the boys away from the fields and orchards where they should be, they give them guns and tell them to kill each other. It is against the will of God.” He shook his head and knitted his eyebrows. I thought God must look that way when He is angry.

“And you heard about Lupito—” my mother said.

“A sad thing, a tragedy,” my grandfather nodded. “This war of the Germans and the Japanese is reaching into all of us. Even into the refuge of the Valle de los Lunas it reaches. We have just finished burying one of the boys of Santos Estevan. There is much evil running loose in the world—” They had turned towards the kitchen where they would drink coffee and eat sweet breads until it was time to go to my uncle Juan’s.

We always enjoyed our stay at El Puerto. It was a world where people were happy, working, helping each other. The ripeness of the harvest piled around the mud houses and lent life and color to the songs of the women. Green chile was roasted and dried, and red chile was tied into colorful ristras. Apples piled high, some lent their aroma to the air from where they dried in the sun on the lean-to roofs and others as they bubbled into jellies and jams. At night we sat around the fireplace and ate baked apples spiced with sugar and cinnamon and listened to the cuentos, the old stories of the people.

Late at night sleep dragged us away from the stories to a cozy bed.

“In that one there is hope,” I heard my uncle Juan say to my mother. I knew he talked about me.

“Ay, Juan,” my mother whispered, “I pray that he will take the vows, that a priest will return to guide the Lunas—”

“We will see,” my uncle said. “After his first communion you must send him to us. He must stay with us a summer, he must learn our ways—before he is lost, like the others—”

I knew he meant my three brothers.

Across the river in the grove of trees the witches danced. In the form of balls of fire they danced with the Devil.

The chilled wind blew around the corners of the houses nestled in the dark valley, brooding, singing of the old blood which was mine.

Then the owl cried; it sang to the million stars that dotted the dark-blue sky, the Virgin’s gown. All was watched over, all was cared for. I slept.

O
n the first day of school I awoke with a sick feeling in my stomach. It did not hurt, it just made me feel weak. The sun did not sing as it came over the hill. Today I would take the goat path and trek into town for years and years of schooling. For the first time I would be away from the protection of my mother. I was excited and sad about it.

I heard my mother enter her kitchen, her realm in the castle the giants had built. I heard her make the fire grow and sing with the kindling she fed it.

Then I heard my father groan: “¡Ay Dios, otro día! Another day and more miles of that cursed highway to patch! And for whom? For me that I might travel west! Ay no, that highway is not for the poor man, it is for the tourist—ay, María, we should have gone to California when we were young, when my sons were boys—”

He was sad. The breakfast dishes rattled.

“Today is Antonio’s first day at school,” she said.

“Huh! Another expense. In California, they say, the land flows with milk and honey—”

“Any land will flow with milk and honey if it is worked with honest hands!” my mother retorted. “Look at what my brothers have done with the bottomland of El Puerto—”

“Ay, mujer, always your brothers! On this hill only rocks grow!”

“Ay! And whose fault is it that we bought a worthless hill! No, you couldn’t buy fertile land along the river, you had to buy this piece of, of—”

“Of the llano,” my father finished.

“Yes!”

“It is beautiful,” he said with satisfaction.

“It is worthless! Look how hard we worked on the garden all summer, and for what? Two baskets of chile and one of corn! Bah!”

“There is freedom here.”

“Try putting that in the lunch pails of your children!”

“Tony goes to school today, huh?” he said.

“Yes. And you must talk to him.”

“He will be all right.”

“He must know the value of his education,” she insisted. “He must know what he can become.”

“A priest.”

“Yes.”

“For your brothers.” His voice was cold.

“You leave my brothers out of this! They are honorable men. They have always treated you with respect. They were the first colonizers of the Llano Estacado. It was the Lunas who carried the charter from the Mexican government to settle the valley. That took courage—”

“Led by the priest,” my father interrupted. I listened intently. I did not yet know the full story of the first Luna priest.

“What? What did you say? Do not dare to mention blasphemy where the children can hear, Gabriel Márez!” She scolded him and chased him out of the kitchen. “Go feed the animals! Give Tony a few minutes extra sleep!” I heard him laugh as he went out.

“My poor baby,” she whispered, and then I heard her praying. I heard Deborah and Theresa getting up. They were excited about school because they had already been there. They dressed and ran downstairs to wash.

I heard Ultima enter the kitchen. She said good morning to my mother and turned to help prepare breakfast. Her sound in the kitchen gave me the courage I needed to leap out of bed and into the freshly pressed clothes my mother had readied for me. The new shoes felt strange to feet that had run bare for almost seven years.

“Ay! My man of learning!” my mother smiled when I entered the kitchen. She swept me in her arms and before I knew it she was crying on my shoulder. “My baby will be gone today,” she sobbed.

“He will be all right,” Ultima said. “The sons must leave the sides of their mothers,” she said almost sternly and pulled my mother gently.

“Yes, Grande,” my mother nodded, “it’s just that he is so small—the last one to leave me—” I thought she would cry all over again. “Go and wash, and comb,” she said simply.

I scrubbed my face until it was red. I wet my black hair and combed it. I looked at my dark face in the mirror.

Jasón had said there were secrets in the letters. What did he mean?

“Antoniooooo! Come and eat.”

“Tony goes to school, Tony goes to school!” Theresa cried.

“Hush! He shall be a scholar,” my mother smiled and served me first. I tried to eat but the food stuck to the roof of my mouth.

“Remember you are a Luna—”

“And a Márez,” my father interrupted her. He came in from feeding the animals.

Deborah and Theresa sat aside and divided the school supplies they had bought in town the day before. Each got a Red Chief tablet, crayons, and pencils. I got nothing. “We are ready, mamá!” they cried.

Jasón had said look at the letter carefully, draw it on the tablet, or on the sand of the playground. You will see, it has magic.

“You are to bring honor to your family,” my mother cautioned. “Do nothing that will bring disrespect on our good name.”

I looked at Ultima. Her magic. The magic of Jasón’s Indian. They could not save me now.

“Go immediately to Miss Maestas. Tell her you are my boy. She knows my family. Hasn’t she taught them all? Deborah, take him to Miss Maestas.”

“Gosh, okay, let’s go!”

“Ay! What good does an education do them,” my father filled his coffee cup, “they only learn to speak like Indians. Gosh, okay, what kind of words are those?”

“An education will make him a scholar, like—like the old Luna priest.”

“A scholar already, on his first day of school!”

“Yes!” my mother retorted. “You know the signs at his birth were good. You remember, Grande, you offered him all the objects of life when he was just a baby, and what did he choose, the pen and the paper—”

“True,” Ultima agreed.

“¡Bueno! ¡Bueno!” my father gave in to them. “If that is what he is to be then it is so. A man cannot struggle against his own fate. In my own day we were given no schooling. Only the ricos could afford school. Me, my father gave me a saddle blanket and a wild pony when I was ten. There is your life, he said, and he pointed to the llano. So the llano was my school, it was my teacher, it was my first love—”

“It is time to go, mamá,” Deborah interrupted.

“Ay, but those were beautiful years,” my father continued. “The llano was still virgin, there was grass as high as the stirrups of a grown horse, there was rain—and then the tejano came and built his fences, the railroad came, the roads—it was like a bad wave of the ocean covering all that was good—”

“Yes, it is time, Gabriel,” my mother said, and I noticed she touched him gently.

“Yes,” my father answered, “so it is. Be respectful to your teachers,” he said to us. “And you, Antonio,” he smiled, “suerte.” It made me feel good. Like a man.

“Wait!” My mother held Deborah and Theresa back. “We must have a blessing. Grande, please bless my children.” She made us kneel with her in front of Ultima. “And especially bless my Antonio, that all may go well for him and that he may be a man of great learning—”

Even my father knelt for the blessing. Huddled in the kitchen we bowed our heads. There was no sound.

“En el nombre del Padre, del Hijo, y el Espíritu Santo—”

I felt Ultima’s hand on my head and at the same time I felt a great force, like a whirlwind, swirl about me. I looked up in fright, thinking the wind would knock me off my knees. Ultima’s bright eyes held me still.

In the summer the dust devils of the llano are numerous. They come from nowhere, made by the heat of hell, they carry with them the evil spirit of a devil, they lift sand and papers in their path. It is bad luck to let one of these small whirlwinds strike you. But it is easy to ward off the dust devil, it is easy to make it change its path and skirt around you. The power of God is so great. All you have to do is to lift up your right hand and cross your right thumb over your first finger in the form of the cross. No evil can challenge that cross, and the swirling dust with the devil inside must turn away from you.

Once I did not make the sign of the cross on purpose. I challenged the wind to strike me. The twister struck with such force that it knocked me off my feet and left me trembling on the ground. I had never felt such fear before, because as the whirlwind blew its debris around me the gushing wind seemed to call my name:

Antoniooooooooooooooo…

Then it was gone, and its evil was left imprinted on my soul.

“¡Antonio!”

“What?”

“Do you feel well? Are you all right?” It was my mother speaking.

But how could the blessing of Ultima be like the whirlwind? Was the power of good and evil the same?

“You may stand up now.” My mother helped me to my feet. Deborah and Theresa were already out the door. The blessing was done. I stumbled to my feet, picked up my sack lunch, and started towards the door.

“Tell me, Grande, please,” my mother begged.

“María!” my father said sternly.

“Oh, please tell me what my son will be,” my mother glanced anxiously from me to Ultima.

“He will be a man of learning,” Ultima said sadly.

“¡Madre de Dios!” my mother cried and crossed herself. She turned to me and shouted, “Go! Go!”

I looked at the three of them standing there, and I felt that I was seeing them for the last time: Ultima in her wisdom, my mother in her dream, and my father in his rebellion.

“¡Adios!” I cried and ran out. I followed the two she-goats hopping up the path ahead of me. They sang and I brayed into the morning air, and the pebbles of the path rang as we raced with time towards the bridge. Behind me I heard my mother cry my name.

At the big juniper tree where the hill sloped to the bridge I heard Ultima’s owl sing. I knew it was her owl because it was singing in daylight. High at the top by a clump of the ripe blue berries of the juniper I saw it. Its bright eyes looked down on me and it cried, whoooo, whoooo. I took confidence from its song, and wiping the tears from my eyes I raced towards the bridge, the link to town.

I was almost halfway across the bridge when someone called “Race!” I turned and saw a small, thin figure start racing towards me from the far end of the bridge. I recognized the Vitamin Kid.

Race? He was crazy! I was almost half way across. “Race!” I called, and ran. I found out that morning that no one had ever beaten the Vitamin Kid across the bridge, his bridge. I was a good runner and I ran as hard as I could, but just before I reached the other side the clatter of hoofbeats passed me by, the Kid smiled a “Hi Tony,” and snorting and leaving a trail of saliva threads in the air, he was gone.

No one knew the Vitamin Kid’s real name, no one knew where he lived. He seemed older than the rest of the kids he went to school with. He never stopped long enough to talk, he was always on the run, a blur of speed.

I walked slowly after I crossed the bridge, partly because I was tired and partly because of the dread of school. I walked past Rosie’s house, turned, and passed in front of the Longhorn Saloon. When I got to Main Street I was astounded. It seemed as if a million kids were shoutinggruntingpushingcrying their way to school. For a long time I was held hypnotized by the thundering herd, then with a cry of resolution exploding from my throat I rushed into the melee.

Somehow I got to the schoolgrounds, but I was lost. The school was larger than I had expected. Its huge, yawning doors were menacing. I looked for Deborah and Theresa, but every face I saw was strange. I looked again at the doors of the sacred halls but I was too afraid to enter. My mother had said to go to Miss Maestas, but I did not know where to begin to find her. I had come to the town, and I had come to school, and I was very lost and afraid in the nervous, excited swarm of kids.