Heaven Is a Long Way Off (16 page)

“Thirteen,” mouthed the cherub. His lips pursed. He thought these displays of Sumner's too ostentatious, but half of him enjoyed them.

“Thirteen to me. Thirteen pesos, that is, oh, don't I wish it was thirteen dollars. I don't hold with these no-account pesos.”

“Suh,” said Don Carlos. He disliked Sumner, and these antics only made it worse. “In front of that man,” Sumner had confessed to Sam privately, “Ah loves to play the Nigger.”

Now Sumner stood up, beaming, taking his moment in the sun. “Do NOT interrupt me. Do NOT get in my way. I am a man came to play and I will PL-A-A-A-Y.” He made the word into a whinny.

Coy gave a short bark at him.

Slurring his speech, Grumble said, “Place your bet, sir.” Sam never knew what Grumble did with the brandy—winners bought rounds constantly—but he knew very well that Grumble was sober and sharp.

“Thirteen, I say,” and Sumner put those down, “I say thirteen”—he picked up his pile of coins—“and I raise, I raise…
ten.
”

Ten was the agreed limit.

Grumble pushed out his coins crookedly, as though even his hand couldn't help weaving. He gave the table a cupid smile.

Around and around the table the bet went. After another round, Gilberto folded, still not having looked at his cards. “I must see what's going on in the kitchen,” he said. “It smells delicious.”

At his turn Sumner stood up again. He preened. He took a breath and held it. His eyes grew huge. It appeared that he would explode if he held his words inside any longer.

Carlos looked so irritated that Sam thought he needed watching.

“I FO-O-O-LD,” said Sumner grandly, and sat down.

Coy whined.

Grumble, whose head now seemed to sag toward his belly, said, “You can't beat this company for bonhomie.” He winked at Sam, because it was a word he'd taught Sam just today. The cherub pushed his coins out, and the betting went on.

When only Flat Dog and Don Carlos were left, they raised each other over and over. Finally the Louisianan lost his nerve and called.

Flat Dog smiled and slowly plunked his cards down on the table, one by one—three jacks. It was a hand to bet big on, for sure, but now the Crow waited. Not only could a prial of queens, kings, or aces beat him—by rule the best possible hand was three treys.

Carlos spilled his hand onto the table faceup. Three nines.

Everyone laughed and congratulated Flat Dog loudly. The pot he collected was two months' wages, and he was the big winner for the night.

Sumner got up and clapped both his shoulders from behind. “What a man! What a man!”

Don Carlos gave the black a sour look.

Sam was tickled. If Grumble enjoyed gulling anyone the most, it was Carlos. Aside from being arrogant, Grumble said, “The man is infected with racial hatred.”

Whenever Sumner won, which was seldom, he scooted all the coins into his hat, stood up, did a dance, held the hat over his head, jingle-jangled the coins, and sang, “This child done won! This child done won!”

Sam said to him outside the cantina one night, as they walked home, “Don't you worry about going too far?”

“Black man can't go too far playing the fool. White folks nod their heads and say, ‘Look at that Nigger. What a fool he be.' Believe anything, them white folks.”

Grumble nodded in agreement.

Now it was late and Sam was weary of cards, weary of the brandy, weary of the smoky room. “Just one more hand,” he said.

“Give this child of God that deck,” said Sumner. It was his turn to deal. Though he was under strict instruction from Grumble not to try dealing seconds or bottoms yet, Sumner always grabbed the deck with great enthusiasm, as though he could make something special happen. “I have a very good card here for my friend Don Gilberto.” He snapped a card facedown in front of the don, who was almost too drunk to keep his eyes open.

“And equally good cards for”—he clicked them down in front of each man—“my friends Sam, Carlos, Flat Dog, the stodgy old Grumble, and my humble self.” He stroked his own card as though it were a pet, and made a cooing sound.

“Now!” he said, pausing dramatically. “That first card is a beauty. Any one could be a winner. The question is the second. Here's for you, Don Carlos. What do you say, is it good?”

Carlos didn't touch his facedown cards.

“Our Louisiana friend has nothing to say.”

Sumner dealt the other cards and paraded out questions for every man. Gilberto was loud in his confidence. Sam said, honestly, that he was too tired to care. When he peeked at his cards and saw two queens, he still didn't care.

Grumble said, “The dealer should not be a performer.”

Sumner laughed and dealt himself the last card. “A card of genius, I assure you all. Without looking, I can tell you I have a pair.”

Grumble's face didn't change, but Sam saw a glint in his eyes.

Sam slid his third card off the table, saw the third queen, and put it back down. He looked words at Sumner.
You're dealing off the bottom, you devil.

Coy gave a short, muffled bark.

Sumner grinned at Sam. Was he proud of the three queens? Or did he know Sam's thought?
This is dangerous.

Carlos went for a raise of five pesos whenever it was his turn to bet. Sam raised quietly, one or two pesos, without emphasis. Grumble had taught him to keep the suckers in the pot.

Sam was getting uneasy. Sumner wasn't just pretending to have fun. There was something here he really liked.

Coy shifted from lying at Sam's feet to sitting up. He also smelled trouble coming.

Round and round the bets went. Finally, three players were left, Sam, Don Carlos, and Sumner. The pot was huge, probably eight hundred pesos.

Suddenly Don Carlos dropped words into the air like individual stones plopped into a pond. His voice curdled with something that gave Sam a chill.

“I think the Nigger is cheating.”

Quick as a snake, Sumner's hand dived inside his coat.

Just as fast, Grumble locked his forearm in a fierce grip. “Let us all remember our manners,” the cherub said casually.

Everyone at the table tensed, ready to dive for cover or grab a weapon. Coy growled, and Sam thought that if he snapped out a bark, everyone at the table would attack everyone else.

“My dear sir,” said Grumble to Don Carlos, “I think you know better. This child of nature has neither the guile nor the intellect to commit such chicanery.”

Carlos's face was boiling red. Everyone waited, poised.

“I will prove it,” said Grumble. “Sam, show us your cards.” His voice was as smooth as a hand stroking a cat.

Sam turned over three queens.

It seemed like the whole table gasped. A prial, and a high one.

“Don Carlos, my esteemed friend, now your cards.”

Carlos hesitated. Then, one by one, a sneer on his face, he turned them over.

King of diamonds.

King of hearts.

King of spades.

Now the gasp was louder. A higher prial.

“And last let us see what the good Sumner's cards are.” Grumble reached out and turned them over himself.

Ace of spades.

Ace of hearts.

Ten of clubs.

Everyone laughed uproariously. No one had seen anything so funny in his life. Don Gilberto, not Don Carlos, seemed to enjoy it the most. He guffawed, tried to drink his brandy at the same time, and spilled the brandy all down his front.

Everyone hee-hawed louder. Two of them were laughing out of relief—Sam and Flat Dog knew damned well that Grumble had palmed that third ace and dropped the ten in its place.

“Take your pot, sir,” said Grumble to Don Carlos.

Carlos raked the coins toward himself.

“The finest pot of the night, it appears,” said the cherub. “And I believe this will make an evening for me. Good night, gentlemen.”

Carlos scooped the whole pot into his hat, stood up, held the hat over his head, jingle-jangled the gold and silver loudly, and did a mocking dance. All the while he fixed his eyes fiercely on Sumner.

Sam wanted desperately to go, but Grumble's rule was that they leave one by one, to put off suspicion of collaboration. Still, after two more hands Sam was on the street in the cold night air, breathing freely.

As they all crawled into their blankets later, Grumble said nothing to Sumner about the event except, “It would be well if you don't attend the games for a week or so.”

 

S
O WENT THE
winter for Sam. He spent five days a week with Paloma at the rancho, training her horses, teaching her his training methods, getting to know her in every way. Every weekday he had lunch with Flat Dog and Julia so he could be around Esperanza. One day while he was dandling her on his knee, Julia said, “Do you realize you are never quite comfortable with Esperanza?”

“I'm fine with her,” said Sam.

Julia shrugged. “It doesn't seem so. Do you resent her for causing Meadowlark's death?”

“Sure not,” Sam said quickly.

Julia cocked an eyebrow at him.

Sam picked up the child and turned away from Julia.

He spent weekends with his other amigos reading and gambling. At Rancho de las Palomas he earned some money, and at the gambling table he got hold of more. Though he spent some on cute baby clothes, his hunting pouch held a lot of coins, and he kept more in a pouch hung around his neck.

The best of the winter, though, was that he healed. Sam's body got its first rest, really, in a year and a half. He gained weight and fleshed out some hard edges on his body. Though Meadowlark's death still felt like a spike driven into his chest, he found a way to live with the pain. He knew that what healed him, mostly, was Paloma's love. Love in the physical sense and love, even if she never said so, in another and better sense. In her eyes he was a good man.

He improved his reading more and more, because he liked it and he worked at it. He even started picking out written Spanish words. When he and Paloma rode or walked the streets of Santa Fe, she would tell him the meanings of the signs in front of the shops. To help with pronunciation, she explained what sounds each of the letters made and had him speak the words after her.

One afternoon Sam and Paloma sat in the courtyard in the sun. Sam read one of her father's books in English. “English,” she said, “what an ugly language, all full of sounds that grate on the tongue. And when you look at the words, you have no idea how to say them.” Though Paloma's father did teach her some English, and she understood it, she disliked the language and declined to speak it.

“The only advantage of Spanish,” he half mumbled, “is that the rules make it easy to figure out how to say the words.”

“Spanish,” she said, “is a lovely language of classic beauty. It flows as water runs smoothly over rocks. The Spanish language
is
beauty.”

“I like English,” he mumbled.

“Ha! I will show you.”

She went into the house and brought back a book of Spanish proverbs. “I will read to you of love,” she said, “and we will make beauty into beast by translating it into English.”

She read,
“‘El hombre es fuego, la mujer estopa; llega el diablo y sopla.'”

They wrangled out the English together: “Man is fire, woman dry grass. The devil dances by and blows.”

“Do you hear?” said Paloma. “The Spanish is liquid—
‘diablo y sopla.'
The English, it is bumpy.”

“It has a nice punch, though.” Sam couldn't help wanting to defend his native tongue.

“Another,” she said.
“‘Juramentos de amor y humo de chimenea, el viento se los lleva.'
Listen to that, how beautiful it is—
‘el viento se los lleva.'”

Again they wrestled it into English. “Promises of love, smoke from a chimney—the wind whisks both away.”

“You are right a little bit,” she said, “the English has nice muscles.”

Sam kissed her lingeringly.

“Now I tell you one of my favorites,” she said. “The way the sounds roll, it is beyond compare.
‘Amor es en fuego escondido, una agradable llaga, un sabroso veneno, una dulce amargura, una delectable dolencia, un alegre tormento, una dulce y fiera herida, una blanda muerte.'”

Sam replied by kissing her again, sensuously, and fondling her breasts. Her chest heaved deep and strong, and then suddenly the breaths came short and fast. She took Sam's hand, and led him fast into the casa, into the bedroom, and into love.

Afterward, they sorted out an English version of her proverb. “Love is a concealed fire,” she said, her eyes aflame.

He bent and licked her nipple, murmuring, “And a lovely sore.”

“A tasty poison,” she whispered. She raised his lips to hers and teased his tongue with hers. “A sweet rue.”

Sam put her hand where he wanted it. She smiled wickedly and squeezed. “A delectable suffering,” she said. She squeezed harder and harder. “A happy torment, a delicious wound.”

Sam rolled on top of her again. “And a soft death.”

Much, much later she said, “English lacks music, but our bodies sing together beautifully.”

They napped.

When they woke blearily, Sam gave her sweet kisses.

“Let me tell you one more proverb,” she said.

“What?”

“‘Más fuerte era Sansón y le venció el amor.'”

“Which means?”

She enunciated clearly in English, “Samson had even more muscles than you, and love whipped his ass.”

D
URING
H
OLY
W
EEK,
which was in the second half of April, Sam didn't see Paloma for four days. They rode up the river road to town on Wednesday instead of Saturday. “Holy Thursday,” she said. “We have the Eucharist in honor of the day Christ held the first one. Then Holy Friday, mass on the day he gave his life for all us mortal sinners. On Saturday the vigil, at dawn on Sunday the Resurrection and the mass to celebrate this great event.”

“Vigil?”

Paloma laughed. “You are such a barbarian. The vigil is the blessing of the new fire, the lighting of the paschal candle, a service of lessons that we call the prophecies, the blessing of the font, and then the long sitting in the church, each person holding a candle, waiting for the great moment of the Resurrection. There, you see? I always go.”

Not only went, it turned out, but spent the entire time with her sister and her family, and didn't see Sam at all.

The result for Sam was a lot of reading with Hannibal and Grumble, some wandering around Santa Fe with all his friends, and five nights of playing brag. The whole trip felt like a thorn whose tip had broken off in his hind end. The one good part was that he ended up with a lot more gold coins in his hunting pouch.

On Monday morning, as Sam and Paloma rode back down the river road together in the fine spring weather, he felt extra aware of the way she sat in her saddle, the way she turned to watch the river roaring downhill, leaping over rocks and making suck holes on the back side. She stopped and led her mare to the river. While both horses drank, Paloma watched the current surge. “I am enthralled by its power.” Riding on, from time to time she pointed out the wildflowers in bloom on the side of the road, the orange cups of globe mallow, purple rags of locoweed, and the red bristles of Indian paint-brush. “They are getting ready to open, see?”

Coy pranced about wildly, as though the greening grass, the leafing trees had brought up the sap in him, and he couldn't just walk.

Farther along a sound came to Sam's ears that he could hardly believe. “Oh, Sam, this is…I can't describe it. Let's ride and find a good place to watch.” She whipped her horse up onto a knoll, and he was right behind her. In a few minutes the caravan came. The racket was an assault. “That noise is the big wheels turning against the axles,” said Paloma, almost shouting. “As you can tell, it is heard even a mile away. If they greased the axles, it would be diminished. But the muleteers say the sound is like music to them. They call them the singing carts.”

In the forefront came horses and mules, hundreds of them. Behind this livestock trudged human beings, Indians, Mexicans, or mestizos, Sam couldn't tell which. Their hands and feet were shackled. “Slaves,” said Paloma.

Paladin pulled on the reins, impatient. But Sam couldn't take his eyes off these people. There were three women, one perhaps in her thirties, one in her twenties, one a teenager but physically mature, and seven children who were probably between the ages of eight and twelve. All the women and children walked with the look of those who have been not only defeated and humiliated but beaten beyond despair into utter hopelessness, a state where life offers nothing but dreariness, darkness, and pain.

Sam felt a sharp burning in his heart.

The slaves trudged on and on. Nothing would ever change, and they knew it. They probably resented the bodies that enabled them to walk to their own debasement.

“It is hard to bear,” said Paloma.

“Who will buy them?”

“Landowners like me. The only wealth in this province is land, which comes in grants from the government. Slaves work the land, or clean the houses, or do the labor of making crops ready for the table. Slaves do everything, if you are willing to have them, which I am not. From the look of these, most of them will also bear children who will also become slaves.”

“Why don't they run screaming at their captors?” said Sam. “Why don't they break away? If you die, so what?”

“I asked Rosalita that. She said it is not possible at the time, not quite possible, to believe that death is better than where you are. But death would be better—that's what she said.”

Now the slaves were out of sight, blocked by the carts and the mules and oxen that pulled them—hundreds of carts, it seemed to Sam. The screech was now almost unbearable. The wheels were huge rounds of cottonwood in one big piece.

“What do they have to trade?”

“Whatever we cannot produce, household utensils, candles, tallow, nice textiles, coffee, sugar, liquor—oh, it's such pleasure to see all the fine things and buy them.”

They watched the carts wobble and creak on their way, and the dirty, dusty drovers pushing them along.

“How long have they been on the road?”

“It's about six weeks from Chihuahua. These traders are daring—they must have started as soon as the weather warmed up a little. This is the first caravan of the year.”

She looked at him with girlish glee in her eyes. “Sam, let's ride back to town tonight. First the afternoon in bed and then back to town. It will be so much fun, you cannot imagine. The whole town will come to the
baile.
”

“Sure.” He was thinking that the bed sounded better than the
baile,
but…

“We will even stay in town. We will be wicked and take a room for the night. We'll have such fun.”

Sam looked far up along the train of carts, but he couldn't see the slaves.

“Tomorrow we will go to one of the great ranchos and see something you'll never forget. You'll hate it, but you'll never forget it.”

 

L
OLLING TOO LONG
in bed, they got to town long after the grand entry. “It is a wonderful sight,” Paloma said. “The caravan men drive the carts along the river straight to the plaza. When they get there, they circle the plaza as fast as they can go, cracking their whips. From the uproar you would think it is a war. The children get very excited.

“As the caravan hurtles through the streets, the people hear the carts squealing and pour out. They run after the caravan on the way to the plaza, singing and shouting. From all directions everyone rushes to the plaza. We are all excited to see the fine things, to be able to trade for a pot of copper for the kitchen, to get new shoes for the family, to get a beautiful piece of silk that will make a skirt that may catch the eye of a certain man…And the merchants, after the first burst of trading, they stock their stores with the rest.”

Now the
baile
was in full swing. The high-born, the merchants and tradesmen, the peasants—everyone thronged all over the plaza. Cantinas poured El Paso brandy and Taos whiskey liberally. Two groups of musicians competed to see who could play the loudest, with the most style, and attract the most listeners. Actually, the most dancers.

Hannibal waved at Sam and Paloma, and they crowded into the table with him, Grumble, and Sumner. Grumble ordered more brandy, and they all drank fast. Sam was feeling wild.

“Get ready,” said Hannibal.
“Nemo enim fere saltat sobrius, nisi forte insanit.”

“What does that mean?”

“Only crazy people dance sober.”

“Have you had enough to drink? Do you know the fandango?” said Paloma, a dark, sexy look in her eyes.

“I'm woozy,” Sam said, “but for you I'll pretend.”

“You will do much better than that. You will
dance.
” She took one of his hands and led him out among the couples in the plaza. “These are
fandanguillos,
more festive versions of the fandango. They are dances of…courtship would be the polite word. You direct Americans would say seduction. They are exuberant, unrefined, born of the desire of all creatures for fertility. It is not for talking but for doing.”

Without warning she began and Sam followed, feeling like he was in a whirlwind. She tapped out a rhythm with her feet and snapped her fingers. He couldn't copy her steps, but he matched her attitude. She rose and, stepping high, they pranced past each other, shoulders almost touching, and faced each other once more. She teased and challenged. He pursued, she slipped away. He held her eyes piercingly. With her hands, shoulders thrown back, she shook her skirt in a taunt.

The music accelerated, its rhythm accented by castanets. Paloma clapped her hands and stomped her feet. Sam followed as though in a trance. The music itself seemed to tell him what to do. Now the music swirled faster and faster, like a waltz in three beats, but free of all drawing rooms, free of civility, as primal as a roll of thunder.

Stop. A total halt to the music. Paloma and Sam and all the other dancers froze. Tension throbbed.

Music again! Animated by the notes, the dancers grew wild. Passion surged through their poses. Arms and faces teased. Eyes, torsos, and hips challenged. Back and forth they soared, faster and faster, ever more passionate, ever more daring, and yet again faster.

When the orchestra stopped, silence clapped the ears. The dancers froze—sexual electricity charged the air.

Again the music charged forward, and Sam charged with it. He whirled, he grabbed Paloma, he slung her to the length of both their arms, he brought her back, she clung to him. Gently, gradually, she arched backward in his arms. The music came to a climax and was over.

Sam was dazzled with what he had done, and limp.

Paloma embraced him and whispered, “I want you to be like that inside me tonight.”

His groin throbbed.

They went back to the table, drank more brandy, ate tortillas with pork and green chile sauce, and drank more brandy. Grumble paid for everything, and everyone had a great celebration.

Sam noticed that, as at the Los Angeles pueblo, dancers often went slinking down side streets, wrapped in a single serape. Paloma whispered in his ear, “How many children do you think will be conceived tonight?”

A gentleman in the garb of the Mexican elite, and with the arrogance, came toward them.

“Buenas noches, señora.”

“
Buenas noches, Gobernador.
Won't you join us?” Paloma made the introductions. “Gobernador Armijo is our former governor.”

“Oh, señora,” said Armijo, “must you call me a ruler in front of these democratic Americans?”

“My American friends are traders,” said Paloma. “They have brought a herd of horses from California. Governor or not,” Paloma told her friends, “Don Miguel is a great man in Nuevo Mexico. We have five preeminent families, and he is the head of one of them.”

“The head of a donkey still brays like a jackass,” said Armijo. Everyone laughed at this self-mockery, Armijo the loudest. He had two more bottles of brandy brought to the table, and proposed several rousing toasts. He sported a conspiratorial smile hinting that they were all devils together.

He made the company laugh several times more before saying, “Señora, shall we dance?”

Paloma gave Sam a smile, slightly nervous, he thought, and walked into the plaza on Armijo's arm.

Sam watched Armijo do the fandango with fascination.

“He barely moves,” said Hannibal, “but his whole body bristles lust.”

Sam watched his thick, high-arched eyebrows and drooping eyelids. He and Paloma, facing each other, moved sensuously, suggestively. Sam felt a stab of jealousy.

“That's a man who would come to power by any means necessary,” said Sumner.

“And assume that anyone else would do the same, if they have ambition and daring,” added Hannibal.

“He's like a child, swept up in his own desires.” said Grumble.

The fandango ended, and Armijo led Paloma back to the table. “I must be off,” he said to the group.

“I wish you well in your conquests,” said Paloma, with a smile, “of every kind.”

The ex-governor beamed and strode away, leering.

“It is Armijo's rancho we will go to tomorrow,” said Paloma. “You are all invited.”

“To what, señora, “asked Grumble.

“A slave auction,” said Paloma.

Sumner's eyes flashed, and his nostrils flared.

“Do you care to come?” she asked in a light tone.

Hannibal and Grumble hesitated and murmured, “Yes.”

Sumner said, “Damn right.”