Daughter of Fortune (32 page)

“It was never so!” said Emiliano forcefully. “We
were not your king’s to give away. Can you own another, Señor?”

“We have these rights. From the king of Spain
himself.”

“Tell that to Cristóbal.”

Diego took Emiliano by the arm. “Have you seen
him?”

“I saw him. He left late last night for Taos. I know
nothing more.”

“Or you will not tell me more, Emiliano? But
remember, the king of Spain has given us rights over you in this
land.”

The old man looked around him pointedly. “Show me
where this king of Spain is. I cannot see him.”

Diego was silent. He let go of the saintmaker.
Emiliano straightened his cotton tunic. “I can truly say no more,
except this one thing, Diego Masferrer. Did not one of you ever
consider that what is so right for you might not be the wishes of
others?”

He turned back to his San José to apply careful
brushstrokes to the face. He held the saint up to Maria, who smiled
and nodded, captured by the painted gleam of kindness in the
saint’s eyes. Emiliano put down the saint and stood up.

“Come, my children. I grow older instead of younger,
despite my wishes to the contrary. With this in mind—because unlike
you rancheros, we Indians do not live forever—perhaps we should
educate this small saintmaker, if that is what she is.”

He took hold of Maria’s hands, turning them over
until they were palm up within his own. He traced the blisters with
his finger and looked at her, a question in his eyes.

“From the fire, Old One,” she explained.

“Do you fight Diego Masferrer’s battles with him?”
he murmured.

“She does not listen to me,” said Diego.

“Independence of mind, Maria, is a valuable gift in
a saintmaker. But can you pick the saint out of the tree stump?
That is what we shall see. Come.”

Emiliano rummaged in the dark corner next to the
workbench where he kept his pile of hides. He tossed out two
shoulder bags and picked up a handful of smaller sacks. Diego and
Maria each took a bag and followed the
santero
down into the
plaza, now sun-drenched and warming.

They crossed the plaza in front of the pueblo.
Father Pio was sweeping the entrance outside the church. He waved
to the three of them, calling out a greeting. Diego nodded to him,
but did not stop to speak.

Maria hurried to keep up with the men. They walked
along the river’s edge until they came to a small
arroyo
that fed into the larger stream. Except for a weak trickle down the
center, the gully was dry, littered with smooth pebbles and many
branches from the cottonwood trees lining the bank.

Emiliano gestured to the fallen wood. “See there,
Maria? Go, find me a saint.” He sat on the river bank, nodding to
Diego, who sat next to him, grinning at Maria.

Maria put down the bag and walked to the riverbed.
She was grateful for Diego’s Apache moccasins as she walked over
the stones, poking the wood, wondering what she was looking for.
I am to find a saint
, she thought, as she examined the
jumble of twisted, drying wood. She raised her eyes to Emiliano,
but he looked away from her, deliberately ignoring her.

A saint in the wood, a saint in the wood
, she
thought, walking farther away from the men lounging and chatting on
the bank. Diego was pitching pebbles into the stream while Emiliano
sharpened a small knife on a whetstone he had brought with him.

She turned her back on the men, looking down at the
wood, picking up pieces and discarding them, tugging at larger
limbs, turning them this way and that, wondering what Emiliano
could have been thinking of, and feeling failure hovering over her
like the buzzards at the supply caravan massacre.

Then she saw him, San Francisco. Maria knelt by a
small cottonwood limb lying half under a larger piece of brush.
Using both hands and one foot, she tugged it out and held it
up.

It could only be San Francisco. The chunk of wood
was small, less than a foot in length, but there was a smaller
branch reaching down from the sturdiness of the main limb, extended
like San Francisco blessing the small animals that were his
particular delight. She ran her finger over the wood and looked at
Emiliano, who was smiling at her.

“Ho, Maria,” he called, “have you found a
saint?”

“I have,” she said, hugging the piece of wood to
her.

“Come show me then.”

She tucked the cottonwood limb under her arm,
grasped her skirts and climbed the bank to the men. “Look. It is
San Francisco,” she said, holding out the wood to Emiliano, who
took it, turning it over in his hands. Diego watched them. He
tipped his hat forward and leaned back on his elbow.

Emiliano handed the wood back to Maria. “Tell me,
where is the front?”

Maria frowned, pursing her lips. “Here,” she
replied, after turning the wood over several times. “And see! He is
blessing the animals.”

“Oh, Maria!” said Diego, “And where is the skull
that San Francisco always carries?”

“This one will not,” she flashed back. “Not
my
San Francisco. If you insist on skulls, you must find
your own.”

He laughed, and pitched another rock toward the
water.

Emiliano handed her the knife he had sharpened, a
small knife with a deer bone handle, worn smooth with many years of
whittling and carving. “Strip off the bark, if you are so sure that
San Francisco dwells within.”

Maria took the knife and set the wood upright in
front of her. She carefully peeled the bark off the dry wood,
marveling at how easily the outer shell fell away from the whiter
wood underneath. She worked slowly around the down-pointing limb,
guiding the knife with her thumb. When all the bark was removed,
she handed the wood back to Emiliano.

“Perhaps you are right, my child,” he said, after
running his hands over the cottonwood. “It could be San Francisco
himself. Only think how long he has waited here for you. ”

She nodded. Emiliano cleared his throat, “What say
you, Maria? Can we trust that ranchero over there with your San
Francisco?”

“Perhaps,” she replied.

“Here then, Señor, you carry our saint.”

Diego took the wood. “With pleasure.” He put the
small piece in his leather sack, then brushed his hand across
Maria’s cheek. “You’re crying,
chiquita
,” he said.

“I know. Silly, isn’t it?”

To her surprise, he hugged her to him for a brief
moment. When he let go of her, Emiliano took her by the arm to
hurry her on.

“We must find the right colors now, Maria. No time
for dawdling.” He led them along the riverbank and they walked for
another mile. The saintmaker seemed to know just what he was
looking for. Soon he came to a place in the river where the bank
rose high above the water and a narrow path led down to the water’s
edge.

“Down there, Maria,” said Emiliano, sitting
cross-legged again, “you will see a wall of gypsum, of
yeso.
Fill your bag.”

She picked her way down the slanting path. At the
river she looked back at the bank and saw the glittering wall of
gypsum. The
yeso
peeled away from the side of the bank in
flaking handfuls. She filled her leather bag with it, then toiled
up the path, the strap of the pouch biting into her shoulder.

Emiliano patted the bag and nodded. “That should do
nicely.”

They took another high path back toward the pueblo,
away from the river this time. Emiliano stopped and pointed to a
barely seen
arroyo.
“Over there, Maria, you will find
color.”

Diego walked with her to the
arroyo.
The sun
was high overhead now, and he took off his hat and put it on her
head, pulling the cords up under her chin. Maria gathered the clay
of red and yellow from the side of the
arroyo,
filling the
small sacks the
santero
had given her. They returned to
Emiliano, who was lying on the ground, his eyes closed. He woke and
peered into the sacks, nodding. “The rest we can find at the
pueblo. Do not dawdle, you two! We have much to do this day!”

“Let us see what we have now,” said Emiliano when
they sat together again on the floor of his workshop. He shook the
contents of the bags into small clay dishes on the low workbench.
When he had poured in enough, he turned to the cooking fire and
lifted off the pot of blue beans simmering there. Ladling out a
fair amount, he put the beans in a cloth bag, knotted it tight, and
handed it to Maria. “Here now, squeeze this over the pot.”

She did, even though the beans were hot and pained
her blisters. Doggedly she squeezed the bag until the pot was
half-full of blue-gray bean water. She looked over at Emiliano, who
had dumped the gypsum into a larger pot and added a small amount of
water. He put more wood on his little fire until it was crackling
away, then set the pot on the flames, handing Maria a paddle. She
mixed the gypsum and water together until it was the consistency of
cream, smooth and slightly off-white.

“Now take it from the fire. Set it down like so.
Follow me.”

They went outside again to the mission corral by the
church where Father Pio kept a couple of milk cows with their
calves. “Find me some bits of hide, horn and hoof. Especially
hoof.”

She climbed into the corral. It was ill-kept and
littered with parts of hoofs. She combed each corner of it, picking
up bits of ragged hide. Next to the feed box she found a complete
hoof, still soft inside and stinking. She held it away from her,
wrinkling her nose. She found another like it, and a horn, as well,
and returned to Emiliano, who peered close at what she carried and
chortled like a small boy.

“Good! You shall have a fine San Francisco. Now let
us cook this mess. But outside. I cannot stink up the entire
pueblo.” Emiliano tossed Maria’s malodorous scavenging into another
cooking pot, added water and instructed Maria to stir it over the
flames of the outdoor fire he had started. “Until it thickens,” he
said. “Diego and I will eat and take a siesta.”

She watched them go toward the pueblo, then turned
her attention to the pot before her. The smell that climbed from
the pot made her stomach heave, but she stirred the horn and hooves
and hide round and round until the whole disgusting mixture
boiled.

When she could hardly stir the mixture, Emiliano and
Diego returned. Diego took his hat, which was hanging by its cords
down her back, and set it on her head again. “
Chiquita
, we
cannot have you falling into the pot with sunstroke. I fear no one
would retrieve you. Ay, what a smell!” Diego sniffed her hair.

Emiliano watched Maria’s face and laughed. “Señor
Masferrer, you had better stand back. Maria feels little charity
toward even you, at the moment. This is the hard part, Maria. You
are almost through.” When she could turn the paddle in the pot only
with real effort, Emiliano motioned for her to stop. He had carried
out the pot of gypsum, which he had added to the glue. “Now stir
this only a little, Maria. You will know when it is done.”

She did know. There was a magic point when glue and
gypsum blended into a thick sparkling mass that caught the sun. She
took the paddle from the pot and looked at Emiliano, who lifted the
pot off the flames.

“Well done, Maria. Now, we will let Diego carry this
up the ladder for us, and if he trips, we will laugh at him.”

Once inside the workshop, Maria leaned against the
cool wall. Her back ached from bending over the pot, and her
already blistered hands were rubbed raw. Diego set down the pot and
looked at her, taking his hat off her head.

“Are we too hard on her?” he asked Emiliano.

“No. You cannot be too hard on a saintmaker. I think
there must be a necessary pain in this work, eh, Maria?”

She smiled faintly, but said nothing.

“Now,” said the
santero,
“if I may have your
attention. I have carved a ring about his shoulders and given San
Francisco a neck. If you will carve down his back and make it
straight, we can proceed.” Emiliano handed her the knife and she
scraped the small bumps of wood off the back, smoothing it down
with sand. She carved the saint’s waist so his long gown flared
out.

Emiliano pointed to a small brush in a dish of
water. “Made of yucca fibers, set to soak. Remember that, Maria. By
rights, you should have made your own brush, but time is too
short.” He paused and caught Diego’s eye. “Too short. Now, spread
the white on your San Francisco. He has waited too long for
this.”

She sat cross-legged on the floor in imitation of
Emiliano and applied the thick, gluey gypsum to the statue,
beginning at the head and working down to the hem of his robe. As
the white flowed on, she smiled, forgetting how her back ached and
how sunburned her face was. She paused when she finished and looked
at Emiliano. “What about his other arm?”

“I have carved you one. Here it is, for you to
paint.” He handed her a small piece of cottonwood, already smooth.
“We will put a cross in it later.”

She painted the other arm, and when she was done,
the statue was already dry.

Emiliano looked at her work. “It never takes long to
dry, not here. And now, I will get an egg or two and some chicken
feathers.”

Diego sat in the corner on the buffalo hide pile.
Maria put down the brush and stood up. The pueblo was still,
wrapped in the afternoon rest, but she heard a distant drum
throbbing somewhere deep within the adobe walls.

“What does he mean, Diego?” she asked in a whisper
after Emiliano left.

“Qu
é
, chiquita
?” Diego asked. His face
had a distracted look, as if he were listening to the drums,
too.

“He speaks of too little time, or that time is
short.”

“He is old, Maria,” he said. His answer seemed
evasive to her, and he shifted slightly, turning away from her.