Red Sky at Morning (4 page)

I had been away from Sagrado for seven summers, but nothing had changed. Nobody had built a defense plant there, or an Army base. There was talk of something warlike going on at Los Alamos, up in the Jemez Mountains, where there had once been a rustic boys' school, but we assumed it was just another boondoggle. "They're manufacturing the front part of horses up there," Dad suggested, "and shipping them to Washington for final assembly."

The streets in Sagrado were a little pockier than I remembered, and the few cars were fewer. While Mobile was growing and spreading out, raw, new and ugly, Sagrado protected itself, as it had for more than three hundred years, by being nonessential. That's the best way to get through a war: Don't be big and strong, be hard to find.

The Montoyas—Amadeo and his wife, Excilda— expected us. They had put fresh mud plaster on the house, swept the fine dust from inside, and put a polish on the welcoming job by thrusting sprigs of piñon through the door knocker and piecing out the message
"Bienvenidos a los Arnold"
with gravel on the doorstep.

They expected us, but they weren't there to greet us. Because they renegotiated their contract with Dad every summer that he came, it was their custom to wait a few days before the talks started. Mother had to cook during that period, and Dad had to irrigate and keep the place going. The work was tiring and the food was terrible. We were desperate for the Montoyas' help when they arrived.

Dad let me sit in on the negotiations this summer. He said I could learn some hard business sense from the bargaining, which began when he spread pink oilcloth on the big walnut outdoor table under the
portal,
set out ashtrays and Lucky Strikes, and pulled the cork on a gallon bottle of La Voragine Sweet Muscatel-Type Vino Fresno California A Family Tradition Of Gourmets Since 1934.

Amadeo and Excilda turned up in their truck on the afternoon of the third day. There were enormous greetings all around. I had grown
"casí una yarda,"
my mother was
"mas bella que antes,"
and my father was
"mas gordito y rico que nunca,"
a cunning opening shot which described him as richer than ever, and even rich enough to put on waistline.

Excilda went into the house with my mother, to tell her about the new
primos, nipotes
and
nietos.
Ordinarily, my mother loved talk of family; she came from a large and undistinguished family herself, notable for poltroonery and the seduction of minors, as it later turned out when her great-grandmother's diaries were published by the University of Alabama Press. But she always thought of them as being rich in Southern tradition. However, Excilda's family chatter annoyed her; there were never any grandchildren or cousins named Ashley or Lucinda; just Osmundos and Guadalupes, Alfonsos and Violas, all suffering from infant diarrhea.

My father and Amadeo Montoya and I sat around the walnut table, and the two men cracked the jug.

"How have you been, Amadeo?" It was plainly the wrong question.

"Well, Mr. Arnold, you remember that cold spell we had back around Old Christmas. It got fourteen, fifteen below for almost a week. The Indians couldn't even open up the ditches 'cause the sluice gates were froze."

"It was nice and warm down in Mobile in January. Maybe you should have written me a letter about it. We don't get the Sagrado weather report down there."

"Well, this cold didn't hurt your house any, except for some windows cracked on the east side from some water got under the putty and froze, but up in. . . ."

"How many window panes?"

"Five or six, I forget. I got a receipt for glass from Roybal. It's somewhere in the
troca;
I can go get it in a minute."

"We'll come to that later."

"Up in Río Conejo there was this
chingao
wind that came straight out of Texas, killed two calves. They were gonna be fine calves."

"Where was that Archuleta boy that takes care of your stock in the winter? He's supposed to get your animals in the barn."

"You're right, Mr. Arnold. You're right about that, but that
cabrón
didn't show up. I think he got married."

"Married! He's only ten years old!"

"You're thinking about Epifanio. Epifanio went to live with his uncle in Arroyo Coronado. This was his brother Wilfredo, he's about seventeen. He didn't show up. He went to work for the Park Service over by Ute Mesa and had this girl with him. If it wasn't for that
chingadero
I wouldn't of lost two calves."

"You're not trying to blame me for those calves, are you? I told you to get winter help on the place in Conejo, and said I'd pay half your help's salary, didn't I?"

"Sure you did, Mr. Arnold. I didn't say it was your fault. How could you help what happens up there in Río Conejo when you're down there in Alabama on the beach watching those sailboats in the warm. . . ."

"Amadeo, wouldn't you like another glass of vino? I'm going to have one."

"Un traguito, no más."

Amadeo and my father drank off a glass of wine, commenting on its smoothness and power, and silently prepared for the next round of negotiation.

"You have a real nice garden here, Mr. Arnold."

"Thank you, Amadeo. I owe much of it to you."

"Aw, well, I'm no gardener. My brother Esteban is the man who can make things grow. Me, I just slap a lot of manure on the plants and pray for a little rain in April. You know."

"A little rain in April is always a good thing, Amadeo."

"A gift from God. A true gift, because it doesn't rain much in April."

"How were the April rains this year, Amadeo?"

"There wasn't one. Not a drop. Dust blowing all the time. If you could have seen that
chingao
dust you'd have thought you were in Texas. I can still taste the dust."

"The rose trees look very good, in spite of all the dust. They should bud out very well in July. Did you water them?"

"Oh, sure. Your ditch was running sometimes. They got enough water. But it was the manure."

"The manure. . . ?"

"Sure. I put a lot of manure on the roses. You know Excilda's brother-in-law, Cruz Gutierrez, got all those horses?"

"How much manure?"

"Four truckloads?"

"Are you asking me? I was down there on the beach in Alabama watching the sailboats go by."

"Make it two truckloads. Prime horse manure. Fresh. I had to wear a bandana over my face."

"Amadeo, we haven't even started on this wine. It's going to turn sour if we just sit here and look at it."

"Una copita, nada más. Gracias."

"Salud."

"Salud, patrón."

"Now don't start calling me
patrón.
I'm not your
patrón.
Those days are gone forever, thank God."

"You said it." They drank another glass of muscatel, and noted that several minutes in the sun had baked some of the impurities from it.

"I hear Excilda telling my wife all about the new grandchildren in Conejo. How many?"

"Four this winter. Three living. Margarita's little girl died. Named Consuelo."

"Oh, I'm sorry, Amadeo. I'm very sorry. How old was she?"

"Two and a half months. Pretty little girl,
rubia,
looked almost like a
gringa.
She died in April."

"What was the matter?"

"She had the shits. Goddamn, Margarita told all the kids to boil water before they gave it to the baby, but somebody forgot. Probably Francisco, that stupid
pendejo,
but he says it wasn't him."

"You had a doctor for her?"

"Sure. Old Anchondo. He couldn't do nothing for her, but he sure sent his bill to us."

"I think your glass is empty, Amadeo. There's plenty of wine left, and if you'd just pass your glass. . .."

"I don't think I want any more just this minute, Mr. Arnold, thank you."

The preliminary negotiations were over.

"Would you and Excilda like to work here again this summer, Amadeo?"

Amadeo thought this over very carefully, and seemed doubtful. "Gee, I don't know about that, Mr. Arnold. Roybal offered me a job for the whole year, full time, driving his
troca.
No paperwork or anything. I just drive his machine."

"Roybal doesn't pay very well; he never has."

"No, well, but he offered me thirty-five to start, five days, half a Saturday, drive the
troca
home at night, he pays gas."

"Thirty-five! You know Roybal's never paid anybody thirty-five dollars a week in his life. Not even that dumb cousin of his that can't tell piñon from mahogany."

"He pays old Bernabe forty now. They're paying sixty up at Molybdenum, bucket man."

"Amadeo, that mine must be more than a hundred miles from Conejo. You want to drive a hundred miles twice a day?"

"No, Mr. Arnold. I don't want to, but man, sixty dollars, that's a lot of money."

"What about thirty for you, twelve for Excilda, I pay gas from here to Conejo, no Sundays? I'll let you use my gas coupons."

"I don't know. Excilda says she has to do a lot fancier cooking around here than up at home. She says it takes a lot out of her."

"Thirty-five for you, fifteen for Excilda, but by God we get
cabrito en sangre
at least once a month, from one of your own kids, and that goat better not be more than two months old."

"Thirty-five and fifteen. That only makes fifty a week, Mr. Arnold. Up at Molybdenum. . . ."

"Thirty-five and fifteen is all I can pay this year. I can always go talk to the Maldonados."

"Mr. Arnold," said Amadeo after reflection, "you think maybe your wife and my wife would like some of this good wine before it all turns to vinegar? Man, I sure hate to see this good wine go to waste."

That night, my father asked me if I'd learned any hard business sense, and I said I thought I had, but I wasn't sure.

But it was a good summer, the best summer ever, from June to August, 1944. My mother found lots of people to play bridge with at La Posta Hotel and almost forgot that she was living in a mountain town full of Catholics and dangerous people who felt, however vaguely, that Lincoln Was Right. Dad would have to report to the Navy in late August, and he said he took his commission seriously. "I'm out of shape," he said, shortly after we arrived. "They're going to run my fanny off with a bunch of callow college boys when I show up. I'd better take off some flab." We rode almost every day, or hiked—we didn't swim; there were no swimming pools in Sagrado; water was too precious—and once we made a two-week camp in the Cola de Vaca Peaks in the Cordillera, carrying all the gear on our backs.

For an old man (he was forty-one) he did pretty well. I still didn't understand why he'd insisted on joining the Navy at his age. Mother didn't understand, and neither did Paolo Bertucci. The War Production Board didn't think it was a good idea; they had told him his patriotic duty was to stay in Mobile to build landing craft and small, fast tankers with shallow drafts; but he had scurried around and snapped at people, threatened bureaucrats and finally called the Secretary of the Navy in Washington—a man named Knox—and got his commission at the same time as the Normandy invasion, an operation which employed more than a hundred of his landing craft. "You see," he told Paolo one evening in Mobile, when he'd dropped by to argue, "they're fighting the rest of the war on land. They won't be needing Arnold-made craft any more. The yard can go back to making shrimp trawlers and garbage scows. You can handle that sort of thing yourself."

"I think you're just like a little boy playing sailor," Paolo told him.

"You're right," Dad said. "I am. And don't try to stop me, or I'll put a six-pounder into your poop deck. You swab."

In August, after running me around the mountains until my nose bled every afternoon, he declared he was fit to wear the uniform. On his last day with us, my mother forewent her bridge game at La Posta and stayed home. Excilda roasted a kid, we each had a glass of Harvey's Bristol Cream before dinner, and Dad cracked a bottle of Chambertin 1934, which had probably never been drunk with goat meat before. We toasted the President, John Paul Jones and Lord Nelson. My mother refused to toast David Farragut, but I went along with it. After dinner, he telephoned Paolo Bertucci in Mobile.

"Papa's off to the seven seas," he said. "Everything going all right down there, you loathsome wop?"

"I think so," Paolo said. "We're squirting boats like a machine gun. I'd say as many as twenty-five per cent of them stay afloat when they hit the water, although they don't all float right side up."

"That's a pretty good average for a Genoese landlubber."

"I do have one question, though," Paolo said. "Some of the men asked me, and I thought I ought to check with you. When you're standing at the back part of the boat, facing toward the front of the boat, what do you call the right-hand side? Is it starboard or larboard?"

"The right-hand side is called the mizzenmast," Dad said. "You call the left-hand side the fo'c'sle. I knew we'd have a language problem if we let a dago run the yard. Maybe I ought to resign my commission and get back there."

"We'll make do without you, Frank," Paolo said. "Hell, all you ever did was get in the way. I'm already saving twenty thousand a month by using oakum instead of rivets."

"The paper said some landing craft sank halfway across the Channel on D-Day. Any idea who made them?"

"Couldn't have been us," Paolo said. "Ours don't sink; they capsize. Well, keep your powder dry, Olaf. My respects to your family. Tell Josh we always have a job for him as ship's cat."

"I wish you wouldn't let him talk to you that way, Frank," my mother said, when he reported the conversation. "It wasn't too many years ago that he was a carpenter or something."

"I'll work on the dignity angle when I get back," he said. "Right now Paolo's building boats and keeping five hundred men occupied. If I want deferential language I'll hire a butler to run the yard."

He left the next morning, wearing his new suntans. "Practice your Spanish, you ape, and be nice to people," he said. "Make new friends. Get a haircut once in a while. Don't suck your thumb. And don't get cute with your mother. A little flippancy goes a long way with her." He set his suitcase down on the gravel driveway and gazed around him, sighing. "God, I'm going to miss this country."