When the Owl Cries Part 12

"I'm afraid she's worse."

"You're afraid, poor boy! Why don't you do something to help?"

"Velasco has gone to Guadalajara. He'll be back with new medication tomorrow."

"You'll let her die."

"Not if we can help it."

"I'm going up to her room."

"You couldn't make it up the stairway."

"Men can carry me," he said savagely. "Or have all the men at Petaca become too weak!"

Raul turned to leave, but waited a moment.

"Raul--will Caterina want me?" The old man asked humbly, his voice normal.

"It might help her."

"Then?"

"I'll arrange for you to be carried up later."

At the stable, Salvador and others were stacking roof tiles knocked off by the fallen eucalyptus. Branches of the huge tree lashed at the men, and the air smelled of oil from the bruised leaves and bark. Someone inside the stable bawled an order; cattle shuffled; a hinge of wind opened and closed. Raul inspected the tree, recalling its s.h.a.ggy beauty, and fought the gale as he climbed between branches. Someone began to chop at a branch that had gouged the roof. Salvador tapped Raul's arm.

"I'll get men with a bucksaw," he said.

"Have them saw the trunk close to the roots ... about here," said Raul, indicating a bruise on the tree. "Cut it there and then it can be yanked away from the stable wall."

"I'll bring some oxen," said Salvador.

"Put a chain to a whippletree and drag it off."

"Some of the wall may crumble."

"Have the grain moved to a dry place. That should be done right away.

You can saw the tree a second time, nearer the top; that'll free two sections." It seemed impossible, measuring the stabbing roots, wet and naked, that the tree could have toppled. "I'm going back inside, to be with Caterina. She's not doing well."

Salvador nodded sadly, the wind tearing his hair, his three hundred pounds impressive, soaked with rain.

"May G.o.d help her," he said.

Raul felt the kindness in Salvador's voice; he needed kindness and a.s.surance. He was shaken by the storm, the quakes, and Caterina's condition. Gripping his hat brim, he entered the house through the kitchen. Inside, by the door, near the adobe oven, a boy of five or six sat at a low table, eating. He glanced shyly at Raul. Servants broke off talking. Raul pulled off his hat. A woman was cleaning _garbanzas_, another was grinding coffee, and others were washing clothes. They bowed. The smell of coffee surprised Raul; it seemed so unrelated to his troubled world. He patted the boy's head, and asked:

"Will someone find me two men? I want Don Fernando carried upstairs."

His hand on the child's chair, he thought of other peasant children, many of them beautiful: how many died every year of diarrhea or dysentery on the hacienda, on every hacienda? He asked himself whose boy this boy might be. Such a calm face. A little embarra.s.sed by his own emotions, he returned to Caterina's room. He told himself that no one escaped death, that death came even to G.o.d's house.

When Caterina had had her broth, Don Fernando was carried upstairs, an easy trick with Manuel at one side and Esteban, a young fellow, a Coliman, very tall, very thin, at the other. They brought him in a chair and set him beside Caterina's bed. The wind still lashed, and Fernando shivered under his blanket. The two sick ones grinned at each other. Fernando reached out, patted Caterina, then straightened and sank back in his chair. He frowned, cleared his throat and rumbled, imitating someone:

"Get up, pretty princess, I command you." He clapped his hands softly and at once hid his shaky arm. "I, the magician of El Rey del Mundo, bid you get well. Chia, chia ... hear the magic word." Laughter transformed his miserable face. "Come, little one, we'll go to the castle with the gold door."

Raul and the nun smiled, smiles of apprehension.

"My king, I shall obey," said Caterina, her eyes aglow, holding her hands out to him. "Oh, king let us visit the castle."

"At once," said the magician.

"At once," whispered the girl.

"When I was a boy," Fernando began, his voice full of tenderness, "I got sick. The same trouble as yours. Just as bad, and I was seven or eight. I remember it very well. Papa rode to Colima for a doctor, and bandits beat him up on the way home--his mozo ran away and left him, when he saw the bandits closing in. Remember that story?"

"Tell it again."

"The men beat him and stole his horse and he began to walk home, limping along, because he had been so bruised and hurt. It was a long, long way, maybe ten miles. Dark. Cloudy. Pretty soon he heard a horseman. He hid behind a cactus bush. It was the doctor, following him, going as fast as he could to Petaca. He was astonished to find Papa, walking, all bruised and hurt. He helped him and they got on the doctor's horse and rode home...."

Sometimes Caterina had thought about the bandits; sometimes she had wondered how badly hurt Great-Grandpa had been. She wanted to question her grandfather now, but her head throbbed.

Fernando studied her face, considered its pallor, the feebleness of the eyelids, the tremble in the lips. Her throat pulse fluttered.

"Raul and I will stay here with you," he said.

"Raul," Fernando said.

"What is it?" Raul replied.

"Bring me morphine."

"She wouldn't take her dosage."

"I'll give it to her."

"She wouldn't take the laudanum," Raul said.

"Bring the morphine," said Fernando.

Raul's shoes rubbed slickly on the tiled floor.

"A spoon..."

"Here's a spoon."

"Caterina--a little dose, for Grandpa?"

"Yes."

"Raul, lift her head."