Wraiths of the Broken Land (9 page)

Humberto took Estrellita’s little hand, walked her to the hickory peg from which depended his guitarrita case and claimed the unique instrument that he adored not quite as much as his wife and two girls, but more than any of his aunts or uncles or cousins or nephews. Father and daughter walked up the hallway, passed by Anna’s crutches and entered the room that the balladeer had built during Patricia’s second pregnancy.

The space was dark. Neither moonlight nor starlight shone through Estrellita’s window, and the mountains outside were indistinguishable from the charcoal sky. Humberto set his guitarrita case down, struck a match and lit the wick of a lantern that was hung too high for his daughter to reach. Amber light chased the shadows away.

The little girl locked the door (as if she intended to hoard every forthcoming musical note), climbed into bed and told her father that she was ready.

Humberto withdrew his guitarrita and sat upon the windowsill. Behind him, the sky and mountains were a black curtain.

A gentle melody drifted from the instrument’s plucked strings and into the girl’s ears. Unlike some balladeers who had to sing loudly in order to ring accurate pitches, Humberto performed adeptly at any volume.

The lyric described an imaginary South American town that was located in the bottom of a dell and surrounded by green forests and tall white mountains.

“Objeto Bendito!” Estrellita sang in concert with her father. (Humberto was pleased to hear his daughter match the pitches almost perfectly.)

The people who live in Blessed Object go to church and before each meal say grace and acknowledge His great sacrifice. They are pious. (Humberto played a melody where each note was plucked strictly on the downbeat—this refrain showed the townsfolk’s steadfast devotion to the Savior.)

As is often the case with Catholics who live in rural communities, the residents of Blessed Object have augmented the Trinity with a provincial saint to whom they pay tribute.

(“San Pedro del Objeto!” Estrellita sang, a little ahead of the beat because of her excitement. Humberto added a two-measure etude so that he could lean over and kiss her forehead.)

Saint Pedro of the Object is the supernal patron of the town and this is his story.

(Upon Estrellita’s face was an enormous smile.)

Two hundred years ago, at exactly nine seconds after eleven seventeen at night, an infant escaped his crib. He crawled from his house, across dark cobblestones and to the craftsman’s shop that was located on the far side of the settlement. When his parents found him the next day, he was covered with wet clay. His mother and father apologized to the shop owner and repaid him for the material that their child had ruined.

They took young Pedro home and—with a long ivory shoehorn that the man used to get into his knee-high boots—very gently scraped the clay off of the baby’s skin. The parents put their child back into his crib and went to sleep.

The next morning, when the mother and father entered Pedro’s room, they saw two babies. One baby was Pedro, and the other was made out of clay. The parents were uncertain how their six-month old child could have sculpted this second baby, and they suspected divine aid. This clay infant became the first sacred Object.

The settlement that was located in the bottom of a dell and surrounded by green forests and tall white mountains was given the name Blessed Object.

(“Objeto Bendito!”)

Throughout his life, Saint Pedro of the Object refined the Object that he had begun as an infant. He apprenticed with a carpenter, mastered the art of woodcraft and carved elaborate curly hair, one strand at a time, for his Object. With lapis lazuli, he made eyes for his Object. With fine pearls, he made perfect fingernails and toenails for his Object.

When he was a man of forty, Pedro studied the diagrams of anatomy and thereafter began his most time-consuming elaboration. He inserted pieces of clay, each no larger than a pea, into a tiny hole in the left shoulder of the hollow Object, and with long needles and tweezers, he sculpted bones, nerves, arteries and organs inside the boy.

Saint Pedro of the Object died when he was sixty-six years-old—exactly twice as old as the Son had been when he was betrayed by Judas Iscariot and crucified. The patron was buried in the central square and mourned by every person in Blessed Object.

(Humberto saw that his daughter was getting sleepy.)

The following day, the townsfolk went to place new flowers upon Saint Pedro’s grave, and they saw the Object, prone atop the burial mound. The villagers contemplated divinity. They journeyed to Saint Pedro’s house and saw that the armoire in which the Object was kept was still locked, and they knew that the patron had been buried with the only key.

The townsfolk prostrated themselves. This event was the second miracle performed by Saint Pedro, the patron of Blessed Object.

The white crescent upon Estrellita’s face was engulfed by a round black yawn.

Humberto let his chord decay and announced that he would finish the song tomorrow.

“Gracias.” Estrellita’s eyelids drooped, resisted for a moment and yielded.

The balladeer leaned over, kissed his most sacred creation upon the forehead, adjusted her cotton blanket, took himself and his instrument to the far side of the room, opened his guitarrita case and saw the grouch bag of gold nuggets that he had received from the desperate Texan earlier that evening.

Even though he did not believe in the immediate divine intervention of which he sang, Humberto said a silent prayer for the abducted gringas. He tucked away his four-stringed child, blew the flame off of the lantern wick and felt the plaintive lump in his guts that was awarded to each good father on the day that his first daughter was born.

Chapter XII
The Reapers of Scotch and Tequila

Nathaniel Stromler adjusted his royal-blue derby and walked up the only paved road in Nueva Vida, toward a white three-story building that was surrounded by carriages, stagecoaches and horses that glistened like satin. Beneath a jutting overhang and illuminated by two glaring mirror lanterns hung a green-and-gold sign.

Castillo Elegante

de

Humo, Bebidas & Dados

To the worldly, would-be hotelier from Michigan, who had thrice visited Europe and once (accidentally) sojourned in the Orient, the establishment did not resemble the elegant castle that the sign promised, but the rectilinear specters of tobacco smoke before every window, the braying laughter and the sudden exclamations that were concurrently joyful and angry did confirm the alleged cigars, drinks and dice. Two clean-shaven men in pine green uniforms stood on either side of the mahogany front door, monitoring the gringo as he approached. They wore bright new pistols and stern faces, and Nathaniel was unsure whether they were privately contracted guards or law enforcement officials or both.

“Good evening Señor,” said the man on the left with stilted, but clear English. “Welcome to Castillo Elegante.”

“Gracias,” Nathaniel replied, “y buenas noches a ustedes.”

Both men were surprised by his precise and confident enunciation.

The gringo strode underneath the overhang and saw upon the door a pretty placard warning any poor man who thought that he might smoke, drink or gamble in Castillo Elegante that he was not welcome.

No Hay Hombres Pobres Permitido.

The sentry on the right pulled open the heavy door, exposing a luminous and smoky pine-green interior.

“Amigos.” Nathaniel gifted the guards with two ten-peso eagles and saw by their bright eyes that such generosity was uncommon.

“Gracias Señor,” said the one who spoke.

The other nodded appreciatively.

(Nathaniel thought it best to have the armed men favorably predisposed to him should things go unexpectedly bad during his reconnoiter.)

Feeling the weight of his predicament and a sharp pang of apprehension, the man from Michigan paused at the portal and glanced back at his tan mare, the glowering sky and the shadows that concealed his hidden accomplice Deep Lakes, whose exact location was unknown. Nathaniel steeled himself, filled his lungs with chill air and entered a sizable parlor that was decorated with pine-green wallpaper and sofas and inhabited by people who did not seem to understand that dawn was less than four hours away.

A throng of Mexicans wearing shiny blue suits converged, and the gringo’s eyes stung from the potency of the cigar and cigarillo smoke that they exhaled. Serving women offered smiles and drinks to any man not focused upon their bosoms, which were coaxed into voluptuous prominence by strict lace corsets. A young mariachi, a woman with castanets and an ancient trumpeter, all of whom were outfitted with gold-fringed pine-green suits, performed unobtrusively in an alcove that was illuminated by two mirror lanterns.

As he began his first circuit of the parlor, Nathaniel considered Ojos’s description of Manuel Menendez. ‘Menendez is fifty, portly, five-and-a-half feet tall, has a mustache, some liver marks and some gray hair.’ The orbiting gringo saw that half of the men who peopled the room could be thus described, and unless he asked a serving woman or a chance stranger to identify his quarry, he would be unable to divine the Mexican gentleman from his two score doppelgangers. Consequently, Juan Bonito, ‘a five foot four-inch mestizo with a flat nose and torn right ear,’ was the gentleman upon whom Nathaniel decided to focus his search, even though Ojos had warned him that the fellow was ‘strange and far less approachable than Menendez’.

Three circuits of the room did not reveal the conspicuous little man to the gringo. Certain that Juan Bonito was not on the first floor, Nathaniel looked for the stairwell that led to the upper stories and saw, in a dark portal, a golden diagonal line that was a balustrade.

A serpentine limb wrapped the gringo’s arm, and his breath caught.

“Hello, handsome and tall American.”

Nathaniel looked to his right and saw a young Mexican woman who had wide, innocent eyes and a lascivious smirk. The girl looked eighteen years old (or younger), although perhaps she was in her twenties (like negroes and Orientals, Mexicans aged slower than other people).

“Buenas noches,” Nathaniel replied a little uneasily. It had been years since he had last felt the warmth of a pretty woman who was not his fiancé.

“Did you ride into the town today? From Texas?”

“You are twice correct.”

“You would like a hot bath?” The woman’s painted lips framed a smile. “I will clean you well.”

Nathaniel devised a polite reply. “I…did not come here for…female companionship.”

The woman sharply withdrew her hand from the gringo’s arm and said, “I give baths only.” She took a step away and added, “You smell like horse.”

“I apologize for my assumption, I was—”

The indignant woman departed.

Nathaniel, who had twice visited New York, checked his trousers to see if the bathhouse girl had acquired an illicit stipend or a new American pocket watch, but he located all of his possessions. He walked to the stairwell at the back of the room, and as he ascended, he imagined how soothing a warm bath—administered by the girl or Kathleen or himself—would feel. The musings unhelpfully recalled his weariness and many aches.

Up the steps, Nathaniel trudged. The gold rectangle above him grew, and from it emanated the sudden shouts of winners and losers engaged in the ritual of inviting chance into their wallets. Amidst the cacophony, the crystalline strings of a harp resonated.

The gringo passed through the portal and into a luxurious room that was decorated with golden wallpaper and furnished with white divans and stools that were occupied by more than a score of game players. The servers wore opalescent bodices that showed the tantalizing edges of their tan breasts (which undoubtedly helped the gamblers make wise decisions whenever they bet against the house), and a mulatto woman in a silk gown played a delicate melody upon a large golden harp in a far corner. Depending from the walls were four impressionistic oil paintings that depicted stately horses atop drear mountain peaks. (Nathaniel recognized that this room was supposed to invoke Europe, but to him it seemed designed by a man who had never traveled more than three miles from the hacienda in which he had grown up. Had the gringo seen a harpsichord, he would have laughed aloud.)

The gamblers focused their attentions upon cards, dice, drinks, female flesh and the eyes of bluffers, and thus were less interested in growing the volume of smoke than were their desultory contemporaries below. As Nathaniel made his survey of the room, his stinging eyes cooled.

Seated at a white table that had raised edges was a small man wearing a brown suit. His back was to Nathaniel, and so were his mismatched ears, one of which looked as if its top half had been shot off at close range. An anxious pulse thrilled through the gringo’s chest.

Nathaniel circled the table and furtively noted his subject’s flat nose, atop which sat a strong brow that suggested a mix of Mexican and native ancestry. This man was Juan Bonito.

In addition to his tight brown suit, the ugly little man wore a red derby, a matching bowtie and bright white gloves, and thus appeared like something that might accompany an organ grinder with upraised palms and a banana agendum.

Juan Bonito furiously shook dice in a golden cup that was decorated with coruscating beads, as did his three peers, all of whom fit the vague description of Manuel Menendez. The caroming ivory rattled like a hailstorm. The quartet overturned their cups and slammed them to the table. Clandestine dice settled, and gamblers glanced underneath lifted lids.

Nathaniel did not know if they played the type of Liar’s Dice wherein there was one loser per round or the variation wherein a victor took the entire pot from multiple losers, but either way, the ante seemed very substantial for a game of guesses—each person had fifty pesos upon the betting circle.

The gringo knew better than to approach the table before the round had concluded, and thus watched the game from a respectful distance.

“Empezas,” Juan Bonito said to a man who wore a pinstriped jacket.

The chastened fellow bid five rolls of three.

A man who chewed upon a damp, unlit cigarillo said, “Seis los tres.”

The next fellow in the clockwise progression bid seven rolls of three.

“Deceiver!” exclaimed Juan Bonito.

The men raised their cups, and the revealed dice showed five threes.

With bright white gloves, the diminutive mestizo took the winnings from the gentleman at whom he had yelled, circumspectly inspected the pesos and added them to the metropolis of coins and neatly-arranged bills that stood beside his right elbow. (The other bets remained untouched.)

Nathaniel asked if he could join their game.

The man who had just lost made a space between himself and Juan Bonito, so that the gringo could sit, look at the champion’s ruined ear (which looked like a burnt clam) and lose.

“Gracias Señor.”

A Mexican woman who had strong arms slid a chair before the gap and placed a golden cup with dice upon the table. Nathaniel thanked her and sat down.

Fingering his ruined ear, Juan Bonito said, “We do not play for wooden nickels.”

The gringo withdrew his coin pouch from his jacket, opened the strings and poured onto the whitewood table a score of high-value pesos. Juan Bonito and his contemporaries nodded.

Nathaniel decided that a man of wealth (or at least the fictitious individual whom he was portraying) would adhere to some of his inbred preferences when abroad, and would not care overly whether or not he ingratiated himself to the locals. He turned to the woman who had inserted his chair and said, “Quiero un escocés, viejo y dulce, por favor.”