When the Owl Cries Part 33

"Yes."

"A horse kicked him. I think the leg is broken."

"I'll go with you," said Gabriel.

The man lay on the ground in a stall, almost buried in gray straw and gray light. An enormous dusty cobweb drooped above him.

"Are you badly hurt?" asked Raul.

"Yes ... patron."

"Where?"

"My leg, patron."

"Where--down low, or high up?"

"Low."

"Umm, I wouldn't want you kicked in the groin. Help me lay him flat, Gabriel."

Storni knelt in the dirt and together they made Little Tomas more comfortable. They removed his sandals and explored the injured leg; the break was obvious.

"Let's take him to my place," said Gabriel.

"Where do you want him?" asked Salvador, and bending over he gathered Tomas as if he were a child.

Tomas began to whimper.

"No, no ... take me to my hut," Tomas begged. "Patron ... por favor."

"It's closer," said Raul. "Take him to his own place."

It made no difference to Salvador; he said something cheery and swaggered out of the stall and across the stable yard to the row of huts built recently. Tomas and a friend shared a hut. Salvador laid him on a straw mat, just as he would set down pottery. The man-length s.p.a.ce had no furnishings, but Tomas' macaw wabbled in and climbed onto his arm and, when Raul scared off the parrot, it squatted in a corner and clicked its beak peevishly.

"I'll go for Velasco," said Gabriel. "I'll get him here as soon as I can, Tomas."

Raul had Salvador bring water; there in the hut some of Tomas' fear vanished; he managed a twisted grin; his face, streaked with straw and sweat, had the eagerness and pathos of a student. Salvador's corn cob fingers removed straw from his hair; sitting beside Salvador, Raul lit a cigarette and then a second one for Tomas.

"What horse kicked you?" he asked.

Salvador picked up more straws.

"Yours ... Don Raul."

"Chico! That d.a.m.n' horse! What the h.e.l.l was Chico doing in that stall, Tomas?"

"I was leading him ... to be shod ... he kicked me ... I fell into that stall ... I fell."

"Ah," said Raul, smoking, disappointed in Chico.

Later, outside the stable, he watched men curing a batch of iguana hides; they had the pelts submerged in a chemical solution and kneaded them with wooden mauls. Other men padded saddles with milkweed and sewed and polished leather. Under a thatched _ramada_ they had a dozen saddles on saw-horses; he noticed one of his own, a reddish McClellan, from Texas. The air smelled of leather, strong saddle soap and polish.

Sun streaked the stable wall. Raul strolled among his men, chatting, whistling, smoking.

A teenager, in torn shorts, gutted a snake. Above him, head high from the ground, in a carved niche, stood the figure of St. Christopher. A Medina had placed it there generations ago, a pink stone carving done by a local artisan. A snakeskin dangled from St. Christopher's arm and another swung from the saint's sandal. The snake collector looked worried as Raul inspected his workshop.

"Why do you want so many skins?" Raul asked. "Are you trying to get rid of all our snakes?"

"No ... to make belts."

"You cure them for belts?"

"I can make other things." The youngster could scarcely work his tongue; he thought Raul would accuse him of selling his products; he leaned over so far his straight hair touched his b.l.o.o.d.y knife.

"What can you make?"

"A pouch ... maybe a hatband."

"Make me a tobacco pouch. I'd like a small one, about this big."

"Yes, sir." (Faintly)

"Make me a good one."

"Yes, sir."

He believed in the man's kindness.

The snake boy and Little Tomas and his father faded from Raul's mind as he walked toward the burial plot in the grove. Juggling a smooth white stone, he walked past the rear of the mill; above--he did not stop to look--gulls cried. Usually gulls did not fly this far inland. A dog barked ... it might have been Mona chasing after a girl's ball.

The graves had been redecorated with sh.e.l.ls; the jungle had been pushed back; lianas had been cut; vines had been ripped down; trees had been trimmed. For the first time in years he read his mother's name on her marker. Her marker consisted of a red _cantera_ globe; he sat on it and listened to the gabble of parrots and still, high up, somewhere, the cry of gulls.

In a few weeks Caterina's bronze figure would be cast and, if the artist remained faithful to his sketches, it would be a graceful girl bearing a bouquet of roses in her arms, her dress swirling over bare feet. Soon it would acquire a patina and become part of the jungle.

Perhaps it would tell others what a beautiful child she had been.

Perhaps ... then he remembered his murdered grandfather and looked at the marker Roberto had set up, a dignified shaft of fluted marble.

Time had cracked the stone and quakes had knocked it out of line ...

nothing defied the years.

Nothing had helped his father forget his crime.... He, too, was buried here, the best of him, the kindness that a man normally had.

He returned slowly to the house and sat on the long veranda. Men had gathered in the court; one had a guitar and his voice had the old pleading tone. Rocking on an old hide rocker, Raul listened to the singer as the sky filled with stars. The big dipper hung above the court. Someone lit a bonfire. Suddenly, Raul realized that Manuel had been sitting near him for some time.

13

June 19, 1911