Читать книгу A Santo in the Image of Cristobal Garcia - Rick Collignon - Страница 7

FLAVIO AND HIS WIFE, Martha, had been married fifty-six years when Flavio came home one morning to find her dead on the floor of the kitchen. He had just returned from irrigating and had taken his boots off by the front door and hung up his cap. Then he had walked through the quiet house to the kitchen. When he saw his wife sprawled on the floor, his first thought was that while he had been working peacefully in the sun, his wife had gone through something terrible all by herself.

He had hurried to her side and crouched down. Her dress had pulled up above her thighs and so he pulled it back down to cover her legs. Then he touched her face with the back of his hand. Her skin was still warm, but beneath it he could feel a chill like a pocket of cold water.

“Martha,” Flavio had whispered, as he shook her shoulder gently. He moved her hair from her face. Her eyes were half open and her mouth was slack. “Martha,” he said again.

MARTHA MONTOYA HAD BEEN A SMALL, round, quiet woman who, much like her own mother, had been blessed with a good nature. She had been an only child, and her mother, besides having an even temper and a soft smile, had entered the world speechless. So the sounds Martha remembered of her childhood were not voices, but the sounds of things. She remembered the scraping of spoons, the dry limbs of juniper cracking in the woodstove, the swish of her mother’s dress as she moved through the house.

Martha’s father was much older than his wife, and he had left the village in search of work far to the north before Martha was born. He was a miner and had left on foot one morning, carrying with him only a worn leather bag that held a few tools, a change of clothes, and a framed picture of his wife. No one in the village ever saw him again, but on the first Monday of every month a letter would arrive for Martha. In it would be a few dollars in coins and a note, the words printed in a childlike hand on yellow paper. It almost always read:

To my daughter, Martha,

I am fine and still far away

and the work I do is very hard.

Always I think of you and your mother

and of the day I will finally come home.

I know you will be a good girl

And in my prayers I am with you.

Your loving father

Martha and her mother would sit at the kitchen table as Martha read the words aloud. They would sit close together and count the coins, and then Martha would take a pencil and paper and write to her father. She would tell him how far she walked to school each morning and if it was cold or windy or if there had been snow. She would tell him how she and her mother made tortillas and biscochitos and, in the autumn, picked gooseberries and sour cherries and apricots for jam. Even if she was ill, she told him that she was well so that he would not worry. She said that she missed him and hoped that he would finish his work soon and come home to them. Later, at night, Martha would lie awake in bed and see her father far away, with a piece of paper clasped in his hand.

The last letter Martha received from her father was the day after her mother’s death following a long illness. Martha was a grown woman herself, married just one month to young Flavio Montoya, and she had found the letter on the small table beside her mother’s bed.

To my daughter, Martha,

I have grown old and I fear

that this is my last letter to you.

And if that is so, I want to say that

I am so proud to have you as my daughter.

I pray that you will always lead your life well

And never forget me.

Your loving father

Beside the open letter on the table were scattered a few coins and a pencil.

…

IN ALL OF MARTHA’S FIFTY-SIX YEARS of marriage to Flavio, she had not one regret. She had married a man who cared for his cows and kept the house in good repair and who never once raised his hand in anger. While it was true the two of them seldom spoke of things of importance, other than the lack of rain or a cow that would not grow, the silence in the house comforted her. She would listen to the sounds of their forks while they ate or the hiss of the beans on the stove, and she would feel that the fullness in her life always came from the things not said.

Each morning, she rose with Flavio to prepare his breakfast: eggs and chile and a warm tortilla with butter and honey. She would drink a cup of coffee by herself and look out the window at the apple trees that grew along their drive. Then she would begin cooking dinner. When it was done she would cover the pan with foil and leave it on the counter to cool. She would straighten the kitchen then and sweep the floors and make the bed. In the summer months, she tended a small garden near the house where she grew corn and yellow peppers and small red potatoes.

She sometimes thought that her life with Flavio was like a season, although she wasn’t exactly sure just what season it was. Not spring with its winds and late snows, or autumn when the aspens streak gold across the mountains and the light is too thin. Martha’s life was more like the thick heat of summer, or the flat frozen days of winter when it seems as if nothing will ever change.

If there had been any difficulty in their marriage, it was the absence of children, and even that was not for lack of trying. In truth, she and Flavio had tried so hard and so often to conceive a child that eventually their efforts became a habit. Far past middle age the two of them would make love quietly and Martha would close her eyes, her hands light on Flavio’s hips, and listen to the sound of his breath. Sometimes she would cry softly at the thought of Flavio’s seed swimming lost inside her, and Flavio, who seldom knew the right thing to say, would pat her arm awkwardly until they both fell asleep.

On the morning of her death, Martha was preparing Flavio’s favorite food, enchiladas with cilantro, when her heart caught in her chest. She stood by the stove for a moment as if waiting for someone, and then she felt her knees buckle. As she fell slowly to the floor, she thought that there was something she should tell her husband, but she couldn’t quite grasp what it was. Her eyes closed and she could smell the scent of garlic. Through the open window she heard the wind moving in the leaves of the apple trees.

TWO DAYS AFTER MARTHA’S DEATH, her Rosary was held at the church. Flavio sat alone in the front pew, just a few feet before the altar. He was dressed in a black suit that was a size too small for him and black boots that pinched his feet. His head was bowed slightly and his hands were in his lap.

Behind him, the church was filled with his friends and their families, but among them was not one relative of his or Martha’s. For the first time, he realized that somehow he had managed to outlive his entire family.

Martha lay in her coffin on the altar, and as the priest led everyone in prayer, Flavio raised his head and looked at his wife. He could see that her eyes were closed. Her hands were folded together on her chest. She was wearing a soft white dress that had once been her mother’s, and her hair was brushed in a way that Flavio couldn’t remember. She looked younger in her death and also different, as if she were someone he had once known but then forgotten.

The thick wood planks beneath his feet had worn to a shine from people kneeling for so many years, and he remembered all the other Rosaries for the dead he had attended. Then it occurred to him that when the priest was done, everyone in the church would pass by him to give their condolences. He had no idea what to say to so many people. Flavio suddenly wished he was in his fields staring at the mountains, listening to the water in his ditch and knowing, without thinking, that his wife was home waiting for him to come for dinner.

For months after Martha’s death, it appeared to everyone in Guadalupe that nothing had really changed in Flavio’s life. He still rose early each morning and went to his fields. He kept the house clean and neat. He even watered and weeded the small garden that Martha had planted in the spring. The talk in the village was that it was good Flavio had recovered so quickly from the death of his wife, rather than complaining constantly and weeping by the side of the road as Onecimo Romero had done, making everyone else feel bad. It was best to let go of the dead, most people thought, not let them hang around and cause trouble.

At one time, Flavio would have readily agreed with all of this. He had always been a man who thought little about things, content to go through his life much as one of his cows would have, wherever his feet took him, which was usually from his field back to his house. Unfortunately, although it was true that on the surface Flavio appeared to be fine, not only had he quietly become lost, as if in a place he no longer knew, but he began to dream without sleeping.

Flavio would be in his fields with his cap pulled down low on his forehead, his arms loose, his shovel leaning against his body. He would stand by the ditch and suddenly he would find himself having long conversations with people who were not there. What made it worse was that when he was done visiting with these people, he would barely remember just who it was he’d been talking to, let alone what it was they’d been talking about. He would think that he had dozed while standing, but when he glanced about he would see that the field was wet and his boots were stained with mud and water.

Flavio began to feel as if he were living in two places at the same time. Although he took some pleasure in the knowledge that his body was smart enough to keep irrigating in his absence, it made him uneasy to think that his mind could leave without him knowing it. All that would remain with him when he came to his senses was a faint memory that was more like a scent. Sometimes it was the vision of his father splitting wood in the winter, his breath a cloud, his large hands chafed, or his brother walking backward as an infant, his eyes seeing only where he’d been. Sometimes what he could remember was only something he had once heard: the sound of coyotes in the winter when the air is dead. The harshness in his sister’s voice when they were children. His grandmother calling his name just before dark. Flavio was living in the past, and the present had become lost to him.

On a day in late autumn, Flavio left his field earlier than usual. He was tired and there was a deep ache in his bones. He thought that rather than stand in his alfalfa and feel poorly, he would go home and rest. Although it was not cold that day, there was a hollowness in the air and a thin feel to the warmth. The leaves on the aspens and cottonwoods had already fallen, and the gray patches of woods high up on the mountains wavered like smoke.

As Flavio climbed into his pickup, he realized two seasons had passed since Martha’s death and he could barely remember either one. He also realized that October had come and gone and he was still irrigating plants that had no use for water, but only wanted a little peace before the onset of winter.

Halfway home, as he drove through the center of town, Flavio began to cry. As tears ran down his face, he suddenly found himself making strange gulping noises. When the road became blurred, he slowed the truck and then lowered his head so no one passing by would see him in such a state. He could not remember the last time he had wept, and a mile later when his tears ended so abruptly, it seemed to him as if it had happened to someone else, some other old man driving alone in his pickup.

Outside his house, Flavio stood in front of Martha’s small garden. Although there was not a weed to be seen anywhere, the corn and peppers and potatoes had been left unharvested. The stalks on the corn were yellow and brittle, and they moved slightly even with no wind. He would take a nap, he told himself. When he woke, he would come back outside and dig up the potatoes his wife had planted just before she died.

When Flavio pushed open his front door, he saw a shoebox sitting in the middle of the room. It was a gray box with a faded blue lid. The last time he had seen it, it had been sitting on the top shelf of Martha’s closet. It had once held a pair of small red shoes with slender black straps that Martha had ordered from a city in the east just before their marriage. She had worn them only once, then put them away, saying they made her feel foolish, not like a woman who was about to be married. She had taken the shoes off carefully, placed them back in the box, and covered them with delicate white paper. Then she had placed the box on a shelf in her closet, where it had sat for five decades.

Flavio wondered if someone had entered his house while he was gone. If they had, why had they done nothing more than move a box that was worthless from one place to another? Then it occurred to him it was possible he had actually moved the box without remembering, for himself to find later. The thought made him even more tired than he was, so he shook his head and closed his eyes.

Four hours later, Flavio woke on the couch in the living room. It was almost sunset. The light coming in the windows was pale and flat. He sat up slowly and brought his hands to his face, feeling weak and tired, as if he hadn’t slept at all. He took a deep breath and rubbed his eyes with his fingers and realized that the day was nearly gone. He realized, too, that all the evening held for him were two tortillas, cold beans, and the same magazine he read each night before falling asleep. His eyes fell on the shoebox a few feet away. It bothered him again that it hadn’t stayed on the shelf in the closet where it belonged. I’ll put it away, he thought, pushing himself up off the couch, and then see about dinner.

Flavio knelt beside the box and took off the lid. What he saw inside was not a layer of thin white paper covering Martha’s shoes, but six neat stacks of envelopes that completely filled the box.

“What is this?” Flavio said aloud. “Where are Martha’s shoes?”

The top layer of the envelopes that faced him were all identical. There was a stamp in the upper right-hand corner and printed on each of them in Martha’s handwriting was:

To Flavio Montoya

Box 17

Guadalupe, New Mexico

“What is this, Martha?” Flavio said again, as he reached down to pick one up. He slid his finger along the seal and opened it.

To my husband, Flavio

April 3, 1996

The apple trees are full

of blossoms this morning, and

I can hear the noise of so many bees.

It is a warm sweet morning.

your loving wife, Martha

Flavio stared blankly at the writing. His mouth was half open and he squinted, trying to comprehend not only the meaning of the words, but the fact that it was his wife who had written them. In all their years together he and Martha had seldom shared words such as these. Besides that, he couldn’t remember her writing anything other than a recipe or a few, hurried lines on a pad of paper that, more often than not, said, “Flavio, I have gone to the store and will be back soon, Martha.”

Flavio placed the letter he had read on the floor. Then he reached into the box and took one from another stack.

To my husband, Flavio

January 6, 1952

When you come home tonight,

I will tell you I am

carrying our baby.

Be careful, my husband,

it is so cold.

your loving wife, Martha

Flavio’s breath caught in his throat. He could remember that day forty-nine years ago. His cows had broken their fences, and he had found them walking the road at the south end of the village as if they had a place to go. It had taken him all day to chase them back where they belonged and then to fix the fence. By the time he had returned home, it was dark and his toes were swollen and purple from the cold. Martha had greeted him at the door, her face flushed. “I am pregnant, Flavio,” she had said laughing.

“We made love that night,” Flavio said out loud. Afterward, they had lain close together and stared at the ceiling, neither of them talking. It was a few days later that Martha found out she’d been mistaken.

Flavio put the letter on the floor with the one he had already read. Once more he reached into the box.

To my husband, Flavio

September 1, 1945

Today I buried my poor red shoes

beneath the apple tree.

When I told this to Grandmother Rosa,

she smiled and said that maybe an

empty box is of more value than one

with shoes.

We have been married one month and

it is like a second.

your loving wife, Martha

Suddenly, Flavio found himself standing. He ran into the kitchen and filled the coffeepot with water and enough grounds to make mud. He stood impatiently by the counter while the coffee brewed, every so often peering into the other room at the box on the floor. He ate a cold tortilla and, between bites, told the coffee to hurry. When it was finally done, he took the whole pot and a cup and went back into the living room.

Flavio began reading backward through his life with Martha, and in each letter he, too, had something to say. More often than not, he would remember what Martha had written about, but when he didn’t, he would shake his head and say, “Eee, you should have told me.” Once he began arguing with a letter and when he heard how loud his voice was, he lowered it to a whisper and chided Martha for making him so angry.

Flavio read and talked until it was dark and then on through the night. When morning came, not only was Martha truly gone, but she was all about him. She was sitting on the sofa, her hands together in her lap. She was in the bedroom straightening the blankets and folding his clothes. She was in the kitchen at the small table by the window with a pencil and a piece of yellow paper. She was in the air Flavio breathed. From that moment on, although Flavio never stopped dreaming while awake, whatever it was he had lost in the months after Martha’s death, she had returned to him.

INSIDE RAMONA’S OLD HOUSE, Flavio and Felix sat together on the sofa. They leaned heavily against each other and Felix’s hand still lay upon Flavio’s. Flavio’s chin had sunk down low on his chest and he was staring blankly at the floor. At first glance, the two of them looked more like brothers napping on a warm morning than anything else. Suddenly, Flavio took in a sharp breath. He blinked rapidly and then raised his eyes and looked out the front door. A slight breeze had picked up, and the leaves on the cottonwoods stirred. The door creaked a little back and forth. He could feel a cramped muscle in his neck and he moved his head gently until it eased.

“I must have fallen asleep, Felix,” he said out loud. And for a second he almost remembered what it was he had dreamed, or thought he dreamed, and then it flew away from him. With a groan he pushed himself up to the edge of the sofa and sat there quietly for a moment. His hand still lay beneath Felix’s and he could feel the constant trembling of Felix’s fingers. He spit out some air and shook his head. “I dreamed you talked, Felix,” he said. “That’s what happens when you stand in the sun for so long. And then to be in this house.”

Flavio rose to his feet and stretched out his back. The day outside looked hotter than ever and, worse, now a dry wind was beginning to blow. In his mind, Flavio could see Ramona’s alfalfa field wilting and dying in such heat while he sat inside doing nothing. “I should take you home, Felix,” he said. “Back to Pepe where you belong.”

Behind him, Felix leaned forward and reached out and touched the back of Flavio’s leg. “My feet hurt too much, Flavio,” he said, “and I don’t feel so good.”

And, without thinking, Flavio answered, “That’s what you get, hombre, for walking through the mountains at your age.” Then, he fell silent.

A sudden chill ran through Flavio’s body so deep that his legs nearly buckled. The rasp of Felix’s breath filled the room, and again Flavio felt the brush of Felix’s hand. As if he were still a child, Flavio thought that what was happening couldn’t be and that it was possible one of them had died while dozing on the sofa. What he should do, he thought, was walk out of the house and get in his truck and drive home—even if it was he who was dead. He actually took a step toward the door before he stopped and turned around.

At first, not one thing about Felix seemed to be any different. His hands still shook, his back was badly bent, and he seemed to be no more than bones inside his clothes. But, now, his eyes stared straight up at Flavio without wavering.

“Where have I been, Flavio?” Felix asked, and this time, though his words were still harsh, they came out of his mouth in a way Flavio remembered.

“Felix,” Flavio said, and his voice broke. “Are you back, Felix?”

“I don’t feel so good, Flavio.”

“I can’t believe my ears,” Flavio said. “You’re talking, Felix. It’s like a miracle.” He grinned and suddenly felt like running in small circles about the room. “Wait until Pepe finds out. Wait until the village hears. It’s so good to see you again, Felix.”

“Where have I been, Flavio?’ Felix asked again.

Flavio looked down at him. “When?” he asked.

“When?” Felix asked. His eyes moved away from Flavio and went nowhere. “I don’t know when,” he said. Then he began to cry silently. Tears ran down his face and, mixed with blood and dirt, dropped to the floor.

Flavio took the two steps back to the sofa and sat down. He put his hand on Felix’s leg and gave it a little pat. “It’s okay, Felix,” he said. “Quiet yourself now. You’ve been sick for a long time, but now you’re better. I don’t blame you for being so upset.”

Felix shook his head. He opened his mouth to say something, but all that came out was a cough so deep and full of phlegm and tears that Flavio clenched his teeth and shut his eyes until it passed.

“A little water,” Felix said. “I could drink a little water, Flavio.”

“Oh sí,” Flavio said. He picked up the glass from the floor and held it to Felix’s mouth. “There,” he said, “but don’t drink too much, my friend,” and he took the glass away.

Felix sat there swallowing water and air. Then he turned his head, and the two men looked at each other. “I’m so happy to see you, Felix,” Flavio said, his own eyes filled with water.

“IT WAS A POT THAT MADE ME SICK,” Felix said. “The big pot that my grandmother had cooked in. This pot had been in my family since before I was born, and it was one I always trusted.”

Felix talked staring straight ahead, his words not much more than ragged air. Sometimes, as he told his story, he began to tremble so badly that Flavio would put his arm around his shoulder as if to hold him together.

It was early on a late winter morning that Felix had his stroke. It was still dark out and the only one in the café was Paco Duran, who was sitting by himself, smoking and drinking coffee by the front window. Outside, old snow was crusted along the side of the road and the moon was shining in the melted ice on the highway. Felix’s son, Pepe, was rolling out tortillas in the kitchen, and Felix had just begun to prepare his beans. A small radio on one of the counters was turned on low, and as Pepe sprinkled flour, he sang a little with the music.

Felix had slept badly the night before, dreaming of things that disturbed him and that he couldn’t remember. He could feel grit beneath his eyelids and his shirt felt too heavy and too close to his skin. He thought that after he put on a large pot of water for his beans, he would step outside to feel the cold air on his face.

As he took the pot down from the hook on one of the vigas, he glanced inside it to make sure that Pepe had cleaned it well the night before. The light from the ceiling danced on the bottom of the pot, and in that instant, with the sound of Pepe’s singing in his ears, Felix’s life passed before his eyes.

“It was like eating,” Felix said to Flavio, “and in one bite is your whole life.”

He saw his grandparents, bent and stiff and always arguing about anything, walking together on the path that led to the church. He saw his mother and father cooking beans and tamales and canning chiles in their own kitchen, and he understood the look his mother would sometimes give his father when she would bend over to pick up something she had dropped. He saw his wife, Belinda, as a young girl in school before he had ever kissed her or touched her face and then, later, on their wedding night when he knew in his heart there was no such thing as death. He even saw his sad little baby with the twisted foot that Belinda had lost giving birth to, and he remembered the sound of Belinda’s crying, which he had worried would never end.

Felix saw things that he thought he had forgotten. Then, with the pot still in his hands, he turned to his son. “Pepe,” he said, “my life is too full”—although the words his son heard him say were, “Your mother’s breasts, hijo, are the reason I cook so well.” Then, as Pepe stood shocked into silence, and without even the thought of catching himself, Felix fell to the linoleum floor.

FELIX STOPPED TALKING AND LOOKED UP at Flavio. “That’s what happened to me, Flavio,” he said. His head was going through such a myriad of motions that he appeared to be shaking it. “I can still see my grandmother cooking chickens in that pot.”

Flavio didn’t know what to say. He had never seen anything in the bottom of a pot but rust and old food—which, it now occurred to him, was probably a blessing. He also thought that if he saw all of his life at once, there would be little to see.

“You said eight years?” Felix asked.

“Sí,” Flavio told him. “Eight years, Felix, and in all that time you never said a word.”

Felix looked down at his hands. They were filthy and marked with scratches and dried blood. He turned one over. “This doesn’t even look like my hand.”

Before his stroke, Felix had been a solid man. His hands had been thick and callused from cooking and his arms strong from lifting. If his hands had ever been dirty, the dirt had come from food, which bothered no one. There was little that resembled that Felix in the one now sitting beside Flavio.

“What was it like, Felix?” Flavio asked.

“How should I know?” Felix said. “I was asleep. You should be telling me these things. What’s happened here since my stroke?”

For a moment Flavio was quiet. He thought that in the eight years Felix had been somewhere else nothing had changed. “A lot of the viejos are gone now,” he said slowly. “And my sister, Ramona, died también. And Martha. Many of our old friends.”

Felix looked down at his hands without speaking. Finally, he said, “This is too hard, Flavio. I’m sorry you had to go through that alone. Martha was a good friend to my wife, and she could cook biscochitos like no one else. They were so soft I remember they tasted like warm snow. Eight years is a long time. And what of the village?”

“The village?” To Flavio, the village was not a thing that ever really changed. It was something that just was and always would be. But not even he was blind to all the things that had been happening in Guadalupe and in the hills around the village.

People from other places had begun to move north out of Las Sombras and into the mountains surrounding the valley. From the center of town you could look into the foothills and on the ridges, where the land was full of rocks and there was never enough water, stood sprawling adobes. No one knew who these people were or what had brought them to such a place, and sometimes there was talk, especially at Tito’s Bar after too many beers, that all of these outsiders should be burned out and sent back where they came from. They had no respect for the old ways and drove through the village as if it were just a stretch of highway to get somewhere else. Besides, the men in Tito’s Bar would say, that land was once ours. It was where our grandfathers cut fence posts and firewood and picked piñon and hunted deer and elk.

But Flavio had lived his whole life in the village, and he knew that what he heard people complaining about could also be said about many of them. It was obvious to him, too, that the hills would still be empty if the people in Guadalupe had not sold their land.

On top of all that was the copper mine that sat just five miles to the east. The village had fed off of it for so many years that few kept cows anymore and most fields were left fallow. All of these things made Flavio feel as if the village were shrinking and becoming less of what it once was and more of something he couldn’t understand.

He didn’t know how to answer Felix’s question. So, he shrugged and said, “The village is the same as always, Felix. But maybe you shouldn’t hear so much all at once. You should take it easy for a while and get strong. Soon things will be as they were.”

“I don’t know, Flavio,” Felix said. “I think the fire could be a big problem.”

Flavio grunted and jerked his head back. “Qué fire, hombre? There’s no fire.”

“No?” Felix said. “Maybe you’re right, but I have a bad feeling that already the mountains are full of smoke.”

Flavio stared at Felix for a moment. Then he took his arm from around Felix’s shoulder. Suddenly, he felt exhausted and empty. He had spent the morning tricking himself into believing that if you went backward in life everything would be the same. Half of what Felix had said was crazy, and here he was, calmly listening to talk of pots and fires as if these were things he heard every day. Who knew what Felix had gone through in the eight years of sitting hunched over in the café. Flavio pushed himself to the edge of the sofa and stood up.

“I guess we should go now, Felix,” he said.

“I don’t blame you for not believing me, Flavio,” Felix said. He was staring past Flavio though his head drooped so low that his face almost touched his knees.

The door creaked in the breeze, and Flavio felt a vague disquiet come over him. Hanging on the wall above the sofa were two of Ramona’s paintings. One was of a washed-out arroyo, a trail of muddy water running past bone-white rocks. The other was a picture of three horses standing so still in the rain that they seemed dead. Flavio thought Felix looked more like one of Ramona’s pictures than anything else, and one that she probably would have enjoyed painting.

“Go outside and look for me, Flavio,” Felix said. “Let me rest for a little while.”

Flavio stood looking at Felix as he grew quiet. Then, he turned and walked across the room to the open door.

Even with the wind doing nothing but blowing heat around, Flavio felt better as soon as he stepped outside. He took the steps down off the porch and walked across Ramona’s yard. His pickup was parked in the shade beneath the cottonwoods, and he nodded at it as he passed by. He walked into the middle of the dirt road where he was nearly run over by Sippy Valdéz, who was driving too fast.

Sippy hit the brakes hard, and the truck pulled to the right and bounced to a stop. The cloud of dust that had followed Sippy down the road got caught in the wind and blew off toward the foothills. Sippy stuck his head out the window. “Cuidado, Flavio,” he said. “I’m glad I didn’t run you over.”

“No,” Flavio said. “I should watch where I’m going.” He glanced at Sippy and then looked away. Half of Sippy’s face was stained red from a birthmark, and as his eyes were too light in color and slightly crossed, it was difficult to talk to him without looking somewhere else. Sippy lived just up the road from Ramona’s in a double-wide trailer. It was rumored that he made his living selling drugs around Guadalupe and down in Las Sombras.

Sippy and a number of others from the village had been dragged from their homes a few years ago when the state police, one helicopter, and thirty other cars that bore no markings came quietly into Guadalupe one morning before dawn. Flavio had been irrigating his own field that day, and he’d seen the helicopter flying low over the valley and the caravan of cars stopping, seemingly at random, at people’s homes. At first, he’d thought it was an invasion, but he had no idea by whom, let alone why. He had stood in his field with his shovel and watched as they’d pulled into Celina Mondragon’s drive and taken her away in handcuffs. Her four children, none older than twelve, were crying in the open doorway, and Celina had yelled back at them to call their grandma and not to worry. Then she had been shoved in the backseat of a car, and in a few seconds they had all driven off.

Later, Flavio had heard it all had to do with drugs, and though some in the village were glad the problem had been dealt with, others wondered if things were done this way in other places. But since Sippy and Celina and everyone else taken away that morning all returned a few days later, the controversy soon died down and the village forgot about it as if what had happened hadn’t.

Sippy was smiling a little. His arm was hanging out the cab window and his fingers tapped on the outside of the door. “What are you doing in the middle of the road, Flavio?”

Flavio took off his hat and then shoved it back on. “I’m looking for a fire,” he said, and he looked up at the hills. All he could see was what he had seen for months, mountains that were dusty and faded and too dry. He shook his head. “I thought the mountains were on fire. Pero, don’t even ask me why. Where are you going so fast, anyway?”

“Didn’t you hear?” Sippy said. “My Tío Petrolino died a couple days ago. The funeral’s this morning.”

“No,” Flavio breathed out, and he walked over to the side of the truck. “I didn’t know that.”

Petrolino Valdéz had been a few years younger than Flavio, and though the two had never been friends, they had known each other all their lives. Ever since Petrolino was a young boy, he had walked up and down the highway picking up things that other people threw away. He would carry two large burlap bags and walk the length of the valley in both directions. His house, which was small and dark, was cluttered with crushed aluminum cans, glass colored by the sun, various car parts and bottle-cap sculptures, and other things he had thought valuable. He was someone everyone saw each day and had for so long that Flavio couldn’t imagine not seeing Petrolino stooped over on the side of the road.

Flavio let out another long breath of air. “Petrolino’s dead,” he said. “I didn’t even notice.”

“It’s hard to miss something when you see it every day,” Sippy said. “But don’t feel too bad, Flavio. Ever since those cows, I think he’d been in a lot of pain.”

One morning, just before dawn, Petrolino had been found in the ditch beside the road buried beneath two cows. All that could be seen of him was the little hat he always wore and one of his feet. Ray Pacheco, who had been the Guadalupe police officer back then, said that one of those trucks that hauled hay had plowed into some cows and thrown them on top of Petrolino. But after he’d been uncovered, Petrolino said there had been no truck. He said that God had dropped them for him to find and it was only his own bad luck that they’d fallen on his head.

“Everyone thought he was dead,” Flavio said.

“And that was one of my tío’s better days,” Sippy said. “We ate hamburger for a long time.” He pulled a cigarette out of his shirt pocket and when he lowered his eyes to light it, Flavio glanced at his face. The birthmark ran halfway across his lips before fading away and down through one eyebrow to the bridge of his nose. Flavio remembered Sippy as a small boy who had few friends and who would often walk with his tío and help him carry what he had found.

“I’m sorry about Petrolino,” Flavio said.

“Yeah,” Sippy said and blew a lungful of smoke out of the cab. “Well, he got old and he never was an easy man to be with. I better get going, Flavio. They’re waiting on me at the church. I hope you find your fire.” Then he looked past Flavio at the hills. “Or maybe not. I can’t remember the last time it rained.” He slapped the side of the door with his hand. “Come by the house later,” he said, “and have a few beers.” Then he shoved the truck into gear and drove off.

Flavio stood in the road and watched as Sippy drove to the stop sign and then turned right onto the highway. The breeze tugged at his cap, and he pulled it down lower on his forehead. He had left Ramona’s house halfheartedly to look for Felix’s fire, but what he had found was one more viejo who had died. At one time, he had thought that one’s death and the life one had led would hold some importance, but it seemed to him now that what death meant wasn’t much more than a curtain moving in a draft or a reason for others to drink a few beers. He watched the dust from Sippy’s truck twist away from the road. Then he walked back to Ramona’s.

“Petrolino’s dead,” Flavio said, standing in the doorway. Though his eyes were still half blinded by the sun, he was able to see that Felix had straightened up and was actually leaning back against the sofa.

“No,” Felix said.

“Oh, sí,” Flavio said as he walked across the room and sat down. “He died a few days ago in his bed.”

“That’s too bad,” Felix said. His hands were folded in his lap and they lay still now without trembling. “I never liked him, but he always knew what he was going to do each day. And he kept the roads clean.”

Flavio leaned back beside Felix, took off his hat and put it on his knee. “Sippy said we should come by his house later and have a beer.”

“I don’t know,” Felix said. “Maybe I should wait a little before drinking beer. Besides, the fire’s going to be trouble.”

Flavio turned his head and looked at him. “There’s no fire, hombre. I just looked. The only smoke in the mountains is dust.”

Felix was breathing quietly and though his head still shook slightly, even those tremors seemed to be easing. Finally, he said, “We were just little boys, who didn’t know nothing.”

“What are you talking about, Felix?”

“She told us that this place was named Perdido, because everyone in this valley was lost.”