When the Owl Cries Part 19

Slashes of rain struck across the road and men on burros appeared out of the rain, the riders crouched under raincoats of palm, fibrous, soppy ma.s.ses. Each man bore a hoe. The burros trotted wearily, heads down.

An embankment, gutted by years of erosion, led onto a bridge of sixteenth century red masonry, crumbling and narrow. In the center, on a limestone panel, a Humboldt had had a sonnet carved, before his sugar plantation had collapsed or before his mine had petered out in Jalisco.

Empire builders, those Humboldts. Beyond the bridge, sweeping over fields, the rain rippled over sugar cane, breast high. Above, on a rocky hill, was the stone fence line of the Medina property, a great crooked L.

For Manuel, the green sweep of cane held a promise: he hoped for a few acres and felt that Raul would let him have them soon. Many men hoped for acres of their own. Pedro had promised land, if men sided with him, land he had never owned.

Ping of a muzzle-loader stirred a flock of duck from a Medina pond and a scrawny, lame man popped out of bushes and hailed Manuel, a duck slapping his leg.

"Cubo," said Manuel.

"Manuel--que tal?"

Manuel rolled a cigarette, the man walking toward him.

"Any word about Farias?" he asked of this family servant.

"Not a word."

"Raul was shot by one of Pedro's men. He's at Palma Sola. I've just come from there."

"Is he badly hurt?"

"Pretty bad. In the shoulder."

"Madre de Dios."

His old musket and old bare legs and thin arms seemed to have been eaten by the rain. His torn whites stuck to the quivering bird.

Thinking of Raul, he rubbed his fingers over his powder horn.

By the time Manuel reached Petaca it was nearly noon; pigeons drowsed on the roof; dogs snoozed on the cobbles. Manuel stabled and rubbed his horse and, while he rubbed the flanks, whistling a little, a man hurried in: El Cisne, the stable hands called him, a flour-skinned fellow, young, tubercular looking.

"Farias is back," he said. "And Luis, too."

"Good," said Manuel. "I want to talk to Farias. Where is he?"

"He's at the mill."

Manuel's horse pushed her nose against her feedbox to ward off flies.

"I'll be right along."

"Where's Don Raul?"

"Injured--at Palma Sola."

"Que malo!"

They walked toward the mill, the flour-skinned fellow behind Manuel, his whites billowing with air as he strode.

Here and there, tiles had crashed during the quake; an adobe hut, where plows were stored, had collapsed, dumping adobes like dominoes. From a distance, the residence seemed to have escaped. Manuel did not question El Cisne. The path led quickly through an orange grove to the mill, an eighteenth century building, with French earmarks, even a few fleurs-de-lis. A Medina had hired a Gascon architect to do both mill and house but the French influence had long ago disappeared from the house, due to quakes and remodelings.

New ragged cracks appeared in the east wall of the mill, Manuel noted.

Men sat by the pool, Farias among them. He and Manuel greeted each other heartily, slapping each other on the back.

"Tell me what happened."

"Pedro tried to keep me, a deliberate mix-up with some del Valle men, to cause trouble. It's just as Luis told you. They'd have kept us both if they could."

"You got away today?"

"I got away yesterday, but it took time to reach Petaca."

"The fools--to keep you. Raul is wounded and at Palma Sola. Pedro tried to get him when we were riding in the campo."

Several workers stood up. One of them stopped whittling.

"What's that?" demanded Farias, instantly blaming Don Fernando. "Tell us again."

"They tried to get Raul, out in the campo. A rifle shot. It's a nasty wound ... deep in the shoulder."

"Did you see Pedro's men?" someone asked.

"Sure, we saw them," said Manuel.

"G.o.d d.a.m.n that Chavez," a man cried.

"Jesus Peza removed the bullet.... When did Luis come in?" Manuel asked Farias. "We lost him day before yesterday."

"He came in yesterday," said Farias. "He's dog tired but he's all right. They stole his horse."

Above the mill, the volcano released streamers of smoke, smoke that fanned wider and wider as it climbed. It had commenced as they talked; now everyone saw it, considered it silently, as if hypnotized. Manuel thought, as he looked, Raul will die. The haciendas will fall. In the smoke he saw the bodies of peasants, dead cattle, rifles, machetes, trees, women, children. Destiny ... the force that takes us, one by one.

Farias stepped up close to Manuel.

"The Clarin tried to kill Raul," he said. "The man's insane." Years of resentment went into his remark; he rubbed chaffed wrists and galled hands and regarded his Petacan friends, most of them bearded, in their fifties and sixties; they had stomached Don Fernando with patient desperation; all of them craved freedom.

"Don Fernando wanted another killing," someone said.

"You'd think he'd have enough by now."

"Of course he put Pedro up to it."

"His own son ... anything to have power over us."

"Times will go worse for us, now that Raul's wounded," said a one-eyed man, with machete dangling from a cord around his neck.

Almost superst.i.tiously, they felt the old man would regain his power and impose his violence. Hunger, sickness and fear had crucified their faces and yet there seemed to be room for this new dread. A paunched man tipped back his hat and fumbled a cigarette. Another coughed and spat....