This Is How I'd Love You (17 page)

However his father tried to reason with the men, it failed. They nailed him to the door and left him there while they ran past, filling their burlap sacks with every shiny thing in the place. The doña hid in a secret passage between the pantry and the dining room. When she emerged and saw the walls stripped of their gold-framed portraits, the tables turned over, the couches’ upholstery ripped and gutted, the hooks in the kitchen missing all their shiny copper pots, human feces on the marble-top dining table, and the silk rugs on fire, she ran out of the house—perhaps she never even noticed their father, sacrificed, hanging on her front door.

At this point, Hensley’s knees quiver and buckle. She folds herself onto the floor beside Berto’s cot. He turns to face her. “He lived three days.”

Hensley puts a hand to her mouth.
Dear Lord,
she begins, but there is nothing else. Nothing. The silence gathers around them and presses hard on her head and chest.
Dear Lord,
she tries again, but fails to continue. Berto’s breathing has turned rhythmic. Hensley examines his face closely. At one corner of his mouth, spittle gathers and leaks gently onto his cheek. His eyebrows are perfect black dash marks in the middle of a sentence. She does not dare wake him, but Hensley cannot help but wonder about his mother. The image of the chase has faded, but Hensley can still hear the terrified heartbeat, as if it were her own.

With great effort, she stands and moves quietly to the kitchen. As she begins to tidy up, a jar falls from the counter and shatters. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she says, turning toward Berto, but he is still, quiet.

She wraps her hand around the broom that is leaning against the wall and begins to collect the scattered pieces of glass into a pile. Mixed in with the shards of glass, there are several unmistakable flecks of gold. Picking through the pile with her fingers, she tries to segregate one from the other, but it is an impossible and bloody task. Her index finger suffers a small but painful gash. She sucks on it, drawing the blood into her mouth. Pulling a mixing bowl from the shelf, she sweeps everything into it, both glass and gold. It is a beautiful and dangerous combination of ingredients. She imagines cracking an egg and pouring some milk on top and scooping golden glass fritters onto the cast iron. It reminds her of a fairy tale—a helpless young girl concocting a deadly breakfast for a slothful and oppressive king with shrunken teeth. But killing the king will not liberate the young girl. She is doomed.

Hensley gives the bowl a shake, just to hear its noise, then sets it on the counter, embarrassed by her clumsiness.

Hensley wraps her finger in her apron. Crossing the floor again, she stands above Berto, wondering if she should do something for him. Wet a rag for his brow or brew some tea. Instead, she shoos away the flies that are gathering, landing and levitating with the alacrity of eager suitors. The book is still in his hands—or, rather, beneath his hands—since they no longer have any intention in them. Hensley tries to read the spine, but its gold letters are faded and in another language, presumably Spanish.

Letting the apron fall away, Hensley checks her finger. It has stopped bleeding.

There must be something she can do. As the sun rises higher, the air coming through the open windows is no longer cool. With the heat, the metal jug by the bed is becoming ever more pungent. The flies are drawn to it, some so spellbound that they now float, lifeless, on the surface.

Using her apron as a makeshift glove, Hensley grabs the handle and hefts it outside. Walking a few paces away from the house, she squats, turns her head into her shoulder, and holds the pail as far away from her body as she can. In a single motion, she dumps it and it pools into a momentary puddle before soaking into the ground. The slightly furry black flies are all that remain. Hensley takes a deep breath.

The cats have abandoned the sun, choosing instead a patch of shaded dirt somewhere out of sight. Her embroidery basket, weeping its colorful contents, is now the lone inhabitant of the patio. Beyond her house, she can see the post office and the bar. Farther still, the dirt road leading through the hills to the mine is visible. The rhythmic clomping of horses’ hooves echoes up from Main Street.

The jug is heavy in her hand and she walks carefully, avoiding prickly pears and goatheads along the way back to the front of the house.

She pushes on the door and it opens into the room, again confronting her with its darkness. “Hello?” she says, slightly afraid that Berto may have slipped away. Instead, as her eyes adjust, the room is just as she pictured it moments ago. Berto is alone, asleep in the bed, his hands still swaddling the book, his chest visibly moving beneath it. She replaces the empty jug beside the bed.

Berto groans quietly in his sleep. Hensley wrings a damp towel out and carefully places it across his brow. Beneath its weight, he shifts slightly, falling deeper into some faraway place.

Hensley lifts a chair from the kitchen and sets it beside his bed. She closes her eyes and tries to place Mr. Reid beside her, in his own chair, in civilian clothes. Maybe even in a jacket she’s tailored for him out of the beautiful gray flannel that she’s coveted so often at the fabric depot on West Forty-fourth. She urges him to sit, cross his long legs, fold his hands in his lap, gaze at her in the dimness and smile. Or sigh. Or rub his eyes. Or request a story. The unfolding of a drama. Or the revelation of a secret. She realizes that despite the distance, he is her closest friend. It is he with whom she longs to be.

Reaching for the towel on Berto’s forehead, she finds herself suddenly terrified. What if it were Mr. Reid instead of Berto here in the bed, with his hands splayed across the leather volume? The thought startles her out of her chair and she walks the floor, her mind racing. What if he is gravely injured overseas? With some other young woman tending to him just as she tends to Berto? Will she even know? She and her father are no relation to Mr. Reid. He might vanish and the only trace she’ll ever have of him is his letters.

“You must not,” she says aloud, desperate to be heard. “You must live.” Returning to her place beside Berto, all of their lives conflated into one, Hensley reaches out, places her own pale hand on his arm, and leans close to his face. “Do not die,” she whispers. “Please. You must survive.”

Beneath her hand, his arm twitches violently and Hensley recoils.

Her tears betray some deep sorrow that feels familiar yet distant. She rewets the towel and places it with care upon his forehead. “I will stay right here,” she says, collecting herself, drying her cheeks with her sleeve. Berto’s book falls at her feet. Looking down, she picks it up and then returns her gaze to the bed. Berto sleeps on.

She opens the book. Its weight on her lap is reassuring. On the inside of the front cover is a list of names and dates. A family tree. Written in different hands, with different ink, this is their history, beginning in 1820. Hensley places a timid finger on the only two names she knows, Humberto and Teresa, born on the very same day, 1899. Then she places her finger on their father’s name and his birth date. She closes her eyes, imagining that baby, the chubby cheeks and feathery hair. Then, at the end, his hands roughened, bloodied, torn, useless. What monsters we become, she thinks.

The book must be a hundred years old, for there are nearly a half dozen generations. Perfectly written names and dates, so carefully placed on this sacred page. How small we are, Hensley thinks, tracing the names of long-gone men and women. And then, thinking of the telegrams crossing the country, the imminent wedding gifts and baby blankets, how very large. She speaks their names as best she can, invoking history.

She turns the page. The words are in Spanish, but contrary to what she expected, it is not a Bible. It looks like a novel, with beautifully inked chapter titles. She tries to sound out some of the words, searching to hear what comforts Berto, but just then his eyes open suddenly. Frantically, he reaches out. Hensley places the book into his hands and he relaxes. Her own heart is racing, the sound of it deafening her.

“So thirsty,” Berto says, his voice still thick with sleep.

“Of course.” Hensley stands, walking across the floor without any feeling in her legs. She fills a jar with water and returns to the chair beside the bed. She notices that the pillow behind Berto’s head is dark with sweat. “I think your fever has broken,” she says.

Helping him to lean up on one elbow, Hensley guides the jar to his lips. He gulps noisily. Hensley smiles.

As he restores himself on the pillow, she says, “Better?”

He nods. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

“You don’t need to stay. Every day is like this. I am a predictable show. Nothing very interesting here.”

Hensley can’t help but laugh. “Utterly boring.”

Berto furrows his brow. “Do I talk in my sleep?”

Hensley doesn’t answer his question. Instead, hoping for distraction, gesturing to his book, she asks, “Would you like to sit up so you can read?”

His fingers tighten as he shakes his head. “No. You’ve done enough.” His voice is not entirely kind.

Hensley is surprised but not offended.

“Of course,” she says, pulling the cloth from his forehead as though it is a delicate object. Once more, she wrings it out in the sink. She refills his jar with water and places it within reach. They do not exchange any other words before she leaves.

As she walks down the hill, Hensley notices a swath of thick cumulus clouds gathering in the east. Huddled in intimate bundles of conspiracy, the sight catches her breath and gives her a focus.

My dear, dear, unexpected clouds,
she begins,
how reassuring you are amid that unforgivably vast blue sky.
Where have you been hiding
?
I’ve yearned for you.
When Mr. Reid mentioned a pounding rain in one of his recent letters, I nearly choked on my own envy. And now, here you are. When I most need reassurance. If only you could carry messages from one part of the world to another. Glide across the sky not just into soft, moving shapes, but into gently sloping letters. I might glance up and know that he is alive and well.

On her way inside, she kneels to replace the embroidery thread into her basket. Each bundle is hot to the touch—a limp, colorful brood. Hensley tucks them carefully away and stands up, smoothing her apron across her waist. The blood from her finger has dried in an ugly brown stain.

Just before she leaves the terrace and the burning midday sun, Hensley glances up the hill once more. The house is small and innocuous. Four walls plunked down in the middle of this desert. A flat metal roof, unafraid of storms. Windows with glass so thin that the dust seeps through, leaving small drifts in the sills and across the floor. A door with hinges that squeak, calling out their sorrows to anyone who’ll listen.

H
e drifts across the ocean, above the swells, but is still aware of the gorgeous spray just teasing the bottoms of his feet. The air cools all around him.
I don’t matter at all,
he thinks. People die every day. Everywhere. We’re all dying. The ending is always the same. You’d think life would have more variety. But it doesn’t. It dies.

Then, with this understanding, Charles hears her words, as though she were beside him.

As this little stack of stones grows taller, I wonder what it will look like as our correspondence continues. Perhaps the wall will become an artifact of our friendship.

My father tells me of the miners’ superstitions. Whistling in the tunnel is bad luck. Red-haired women are bad luck. Empty boots left beside the bed are bad luck. Good luck is rarely spoken of, and only in hushed voices as are used in church.

My father warns me about the dangers of fantasy. He wants me to have a cautious mind. I’m afraid, however, that my mind will not conform to any reality in regard to you. It seems that you—five thousand miles away—have become my dearest friend.

Then, finally, something he doesn’t recognize.

Do not die. Please. You must survive.

Charles is terrified; she is so close but he is fading. He has no strength. If he could stay just a bit longer, he might finally see her face.

Dying is so easy. His body is ready, the fading light is seductive as it tunnels around him, blurring everything. Thinking only of her words, Charles forces his body through an ugly dark into an even uglier light.

He knows this place. He sees Dr. Foulsom’s dark, tired eyes and his unshaven face and the calm, unhurried nuns with such pale hands. His leg seems to be dangling off the bed, numb. He tries to pull it back. The pain swells through him, turning everything black.

“Sorry about this,” Foulsom says, his voice hollow. Charles had shared a cigarette with him before driving toward the front in the gray fog. “We’ve had to take the leg, Reid. Glad you’re still with us, though.”

A sympathetic nurse brings a canteen to his mouth. She lifts his head with a strong hand. His lips are raw and his throat tastes of blood. “Thanks,” he tries to say as she sets him back down, but his tongue is thick and slow.