Streets of Laredo: A Novel (19 page)

Silvana's younger children, the two boys and the little girl, stayed with Maria in Silvana's house.

Maria became their mother. They saw little of Silvana, once she became Ramon's woman, although his house was only a few steps away.

Maria forgave her mother. She knew that Silvana was only tired. She had accepted Ramon because her spirit was weary and dying. Only a woman whose spirit was dying would submit to a man like Ramon.

When Ramon killed Three Legs, Maria felt that her spirit might die, too. She had loved her horse more than anything. But her spirit didn't die. Her hatred kept it alive, hatred of Ramon, and for a time, hatred of all men. They were creatures of violence, brutes.

Maria planned to live alone. She would raise her brothers and sister, but she did not plan to live with a man, as other women did. The only way a man would have her was if he was quicker and stronger and took her, as Ramon had.

Silvana gave Ramon two more children. Much of the time, they lived with Maria and the other little ones.

Maria felt sorry for her mother, because her spirit was so damaged. She helped her mother as much as she could.

But she never turned her back on Ramon.

All she gave him was the hatred in her eyes.

In time, Ramon came to fear Maria as he feared his own death.

In the matter of men, though, Maria was wrong.

She never expected to be with one willingly. But the years passed, and then Carlos Garza rode into town. He was then a vaquero who worked in the south. She saw him looking at her, and when he spoke to her in his soft voice, she felt a change inside her. A few days later, she went with Carlos willingly and even eagerly.

Only later was Maria to learn that Carlos's soft voice belied his jealous nature. Soon after she went with him the first time, Carlos gave her a horse, a little white gelding who was too slow for cattle work. Maria named her little horse Chapo, because he was so short.

The day after Carlos gave Maria the horse, the two of them rode together, far down the river, past the place where Maria had gone to mourn her father. They entered a canyon whose great cliffs rose over the never. Carlos Garza looked especially beautiful to her that day. She was eager for him, more eager than she had ever been before.

In the time of their ride, Joey was conceived.

After Carlos gave her Chapo, Maria was never without a horse. Maria traded work for corn, in order to feed her boy and her horse.

Joey was six when Juan Castro sold him to the Apaches. He was gone two years. Maria had begun to give up before her son came back, and once he did return, she found she had to give up again, though in a different way. Juan Castro had traded away a good boy, a child she loved, but the boy who came back was not even a child she knew. No one knew Joey Garza. He was the most beautiful boy in the village; the girls looked at him, and hoped.

But they hoped in vain. It was to be that anyone who invested hope in Joey Garza hoped in vain. From the time he was ten, he often left the village, to be gone for a month or more. Maria wondered if he went back to the Apaches, if the Indian ways were stronger than her ways. Once she asked him if he went to the Apaches. Joey merely looked at her, smiling.

"Why do you care?" he asked.

"You're my son," she said. "Can't I be curious? I wonder about you." "I don't go to the Apaches," Joey said.

"If I ever go to the Apaches again, it will be to kill the ones who beat me." Later, by accident, Maria found out the truth.

Joey went down the river, as far down as Laredo, and he went to steal. He was a thief, and a gifted one. Olin Roy told her about Joey's thieving. Olin said that Joey had found a cave, somewhere in the mountains north of Boquillas.

Olin had glimpsed Joey once, at dusk, on the Mexican side of the river. Joey had been carrying a fine saddle, with silver trappings; the silver shone in the late light. Olin knew the saddle was stolen, because only two nights earlier he had stayed at the home of the hidalgo Joey stole it from. The old man thought an Indian had taken it, because there were no horse tracks leading to or from his ranch. There were no tracks at all.

It was a long way from the hidalgo's ranch to the mountains near Boquillas. And yet Joey was there, by the river, carrying the saddle. It was a thing an Apache could do. Apaches had little use for horses. They walked, and they left no tracks.

Olin Roy camped near the river that night, meaning to see if he could find Joey the next day. But Olin didn't find him. There were many caves in the high, limy cliffs, and the mountains rolled back for many miles into Texas, where the river made its great bend. Cougars lived in the caves, cougars and even a few grizzly bears.

Olin told Billy Williams what he had seen, and Billy told many others. Soon a legend was born, the legend of Joey Garza's cave. It was said that Joey was filling a cave with things he had stolen: rifles, fine spurs, fancy bridles, ivory combs and jewels, stolen from the bedrooms of rich ranchers on both sides of the river. The river was no boundary to Joey. He crossed it as he would cross any stream.

Olin told Maria what he had seen. He loved Maria, and knew that she worried about her son. He also knew that things had not been good between mother and son since Joey returned from the Apaches.

"When he left here he was on a horse, a sorrel he got from Ramon's son," Maria said, in response to Olin's news. "When he came back, he was walking. He leaves on horseback--he returns on foot. Or he leaves on foot and returns with a horse.

He's a boy I don't understand." "Maybe Joey eats the horses. Apaches do, you know," Olin said, when he was discussing the matter with Billy Williams. "It's a long way from Ojinaga to Laredo, but Joey steals from Laredo like it was a candy store." "If he steals horses, then it's better that he eats them," Billy said. He had always liked Joey. He thought he was a good boy, but strange. Being strange was not something he could hold against anyone; after all, he himself was strange.

"Life makes everybody strange, if you keep living long enough," Billy told Maria, once.

Maria disagreed. "I am not strange," she said. "I could be a happy woman, if I had a little help." "Well, I'll help you," Billy said "You name it, I'll do it." "If you really wanted to help me, I wouldn't have to name it," Maria said. "You'd be doing it right now." She smiled when she said it, though.

Billy Williams felt disquieted. They had just eaten a good meal, cabrito and frijoles. What could it be that Maria wanted help with? He considered asking, but in the end, he didn't. He got drunk instead.

Maria had almost no money. She worked as a midwife for food, for herself and Rafael and Teresa. Her two brothers had run away to Texas, and her little sister had died one winter; she got a sickness in her chest and died within a week. Maria had to work hard to see that there was enough food for Rafael and Teresa. When Joey returned from his journeys, he always had money.

He wore it in a belt that went across his shoulders, like the belt of the machete she had once carried to defend herself against Ramon.

It angered Maria that her son would not share his money, not even the few pesos it would have taken, every week, to keep his family in food. Besides her midwifing, Maria did washing and cleaning, so as to be able to give corn and frijoles to her children.

Joey liked for his mother to wash his clothes, because she did it well. When she did them, they were clean and soft. Joey took the soft, clean clothes as his due. He never offered to pay for the food he ate, and he took no notice of his brother and sister at all, unless he was in the mood to torment one of them.

One day when Maria was tired and angry--an old man she cooked for had tried to poke his bony hand between her legs, and when she shoved him away, he spat at her--she challenged Joey about the cave.

"I hear you have a cave full of treasures near Boquillas," she said. "Is that true?" Joey looked at her insolently, as he always did when questioned. Who was this woman to ask questions of him? She was a woman who had whored with four men. Perhaps there had been even more.

"Where do you go, when you go?" Maria asked, when Joey said nothing. She felt like slapping him, maybe punching him with her fist. Rafael and Teresa, her damaged children, loved her. Even Rafael would come to her bed and try to speak to her, to express his little hopes. If he had a new chick, he would bring it to his mother and offer it to her as a present, cupping it tenderly in his large hands. Teresa would come to her bed to cuddle with her every morning. If Maria was sad, if tears leaked from her eyes, Teresa would whisper to her and wipe the tears away.

"Don't worry, Mama," Teresa said.

"I am here. Rafael is here. We will take care of you." It made Maria angry that her children who had no gifts--one who could not see, the other who could not reason--would help her with their love; while Joey, the brilliant one, the one whose mind was quick as a young deer, whose eyes were blue, whose teeth were so white that girls and even grown women melted at his smile--Joey gave nothing, not even little scraps of information. Maria did not really much want his money; what she wanted was his help.

"Someone saw you near Boquillas," Maria said. "Near the cave where you keep the treasures." "I don't have a cave," Joey said. "I go to Piedras Negras, not Boquillas. There is nothing in Boquillas." Maria thought of following Joey to his cave.

She didn't believe him when he said he didn't have one. She didn't want his money for herself, she wanted it for her children. She had heard that in the City of Mexico, there were doctors who could cure many ills. It was said that there were doctors who could make blind people see. She wanted to take Teresa to such a doctor. It saddened her that her little girl had never seen the beauty of the world.

Also, she had heard that there were doctors who could help people whose minds were incomplete, or whose thoughts could not stay in order. She wanted to take Rafael to such a doctor, so that someday he could think like other people.

Maria wanted to take her children and go and seek the great doctors, in the City of Mexico, but she had no money. Joey had money.

Maria wished he could be generous and give her what she needed, but she knew he never would. Joey was not generous, and not interested in her life or the lives of his brother and sister. He was only interested in himself.

"You help no one," she said to Joey one day, bitter.

"I help myself," Joey said.

"Are you the only one in the world?" Maria asked. "What is wrong with you?" Joey didn't answer. He left, as he always did if she asked questions.

The day Maria rode off to Crow Town to warn Joey that Captain Call, the famous manhunter, had been sent to kill him, Billy Williams sobered up and made food for Maria's children.

As he cooked and set the plates, Billy felt sad. He should have gone with Maria, although he was nearly as blind as Teresa. He would have gone if Maria had asked him, should have gone, even though she hadn't asked. He was too old for places such as Crow Town. Going there might mean his death, but it also might mean Maria's death. He would worry now until the moment he saw her again.

He wondered if Maria had refused him because he was a Texan. After all, her husbands had been Mexican. He didn't know if that had been her reason. Probably he had made some mistake and Maria had turned away from him instead of toward him. He ate his frijoles in sadness; he was old; it was too late. The large boy crooned, the little blind girl chattered. Billy thought it would be enough if Maria could just escape harm, if she could return from Crow Town to her children. His job was to stay sober and take care of her children.

Later, though, when Maria's children were asleep on their little pallets, the power of the lost, never captured love became too much for Billy.

He couldn't bear it, not sober. And he began to get drunk again.

"Now you wish you'd gone, don't you?" Lorena said.

Pea was standing just outside their back door, looking across the plains. It was past time to get the team hitched, to begin the day's work, but he was just standing there, looking across the plains. A norther had blown in around morning, and it was going to be a cold ride to school. But that wasn't what worried Lorena. For nearly a month after sending Call off without him, Pea Eye had worked with a will. But then, his will began to falter. Usually, he was out of bed and at work in the kitchen, getting a fire started or the boys up or making a beginning at breakfast, before she finished feeding Laurie and hauled herself from under the covers. Ten minutes more in bed, to gather her energies for the day, was something Lorena had come to count on, but she was able to count on it only because Pea was so good about getting up and getting started with the early chores.

He still got up and made a start on things, but with only half a will. He made mistakes, put one boy into another boy's clothes, burned the porridge; he seemed to be distracted, or in a daze, or something. Instead of saving her time, he cost her time, all of it spent correcting his mistakes.

The same distractedness stayed with him throughout the day. Clarie complained that he gave hay to the horses, but forgot the milk cow. He went off to work, as he always did, but instead of working from dawn until dark as he had to if the farm was to flourish, he would come home in the middle of the afternoon. Often, she would find him in the barn, when she returned from school. He would have taken a harness to the work bench, meaning to repair it, but then he didn't repair it. He would just hold it, and go into his daze.