When the Owl Cries Part 4

"Velasco usually comes about seven."

"Very well," said Fernando.

Raul waited, and as he waited, standing in the door, his father dozed.

He called Chavela and instructed her to check from time to time.

Stepping into the patio, he paused to take in the warm sun; he felt more like himself as he a.s.similated the light and air, heard laughter in the kitchen, and listened to the twittering and jabbering of parrots, thrushes and doves in their wall cages, cages that decorated all sides of the patio. A stone fountain centered the patio. Many years ago, the pink stones had been brought by oxcart from a prehistoric pyramid in Sector 9. Carved snakes wound from stone block to stone block, to vanish, with reptilian grace, over the rim. Raul sat on the curb, under the cypress. A dragonfly rode a lily pad.

Where bougainvillaea climbed the wall a white b.u.t.terfly, as big as a woman's cupped hands, descended: it seemed to be coming down an aerial stairway a step at a time. Raul shut his eyes, wanting to forget his problems, the ugly face of his father, the threat of dissolving traditions.

Presently, he went to the stable where Chico stood, brushed and saddled, tail switching. Manuel was polishing the cantle, chatting with other men; hens and roosters scratched in the floor straw; the air boomed with flies.

"The sacks are on," said Manuel, punching a corn sack behind Chico's saddle.

"Let's go, then," said Raul. "Are you ready?"

"I'm all set," said Manuel.

The palomino's beauty was obvious in many ways: bone structure, slant of ears, line of hocks, texture of mane and tail. Chico swung his head to watch Raul mount; his teeth ground his bit slightly. Lagoon and volcano came alive as the men rode side by side, Manuel on an Arabian bay. Each rider had a western saddle ornamented with silver, ta.s.seled with red. They left the hacienda by the main road, lined on both sides with eucalyptus trees, four and five feet in diameter and fifty to sixty feet tall. The fragrant foliage sweetened the air; birds sang; dust puffs fitted like leggings around the horse's hoofs. Manuel's Arabian carried the heaviest sack of corn, but did not seem to mind.

Raul packed a revolver in a new holster. Manuel had two pistols slung on a full cartridge belt. Both were dressed in white and wore straw hats with quail feathers under the bands.

Again volcano and lagoon swung with the riders; at a curve in the road, with the sh.o.r.e line close, ducks swam across the volcano's reflection.

The double line of eucalyptus rambled on, but at the end of the lane, where a road intersected, they spread into a grove. Close to the grove, a white wooden cross pegged a hill. A tall man was looping dried marigold strands on an arm of the cross, his back toward Raul and Manuel. When he heard the horses, he faced about, his face luxuriously bearded with curly white hair. Picking up his hat out of the weeds, he walked toward the road.

"It's Alberto, the musician," said Raul, pleased.

"Ah, so it is. I hear he's been very sick," said Manuel.

"Good morning," said Alberto, smiling, bowing a little, big hat dangling in front of his stomach, gripped by both hands. His immaculate whites must have been ironed that morning.

"Good morning, Alberto," said Raul. "Sorry to hear you've been sick.

I didn't know. How are you feeling?"

"Ai, patron, I feel better, thank G.o.d. My legs troubled me. I'm old ... it is nothing. It will pa.s.s."

"When are you coming again to play for us?"

"Soon--G.o.d willing."

"Here's something for you."

Alberto limped close to Chico and patted his mane. The horse shied and blew through his nose, clicking his bit.

"Steady now, Chico," Raul said, and handed a few coins to Alberto. The old man accepted the money graciously, jingling it before pocketing it.

For Raul, there was Christ in Alberto's face, the Christ of his own hacienda, of many haciendas. A few thorns, he thought, a few drops of blood ... He remembered Alberto at a fiesta years before: a drunk had struck him in the mouth. Alberto had toppled. Yet he had not complained. The jingle of coins in the open air, the cross on the hill, made Raul taste betrayal--he was offering the vinegar sop to his people. He hadn't the guts to free them! He jerked Chico's bit angrily, the horse reared, and Raul went on down the road.

Disturbed, Manuel eyed his friend doubtfully as they jogged along.

Huts lay around another bend, and they rode slowly, over badly placed cobbles. The area was semi-arid, the soil rocky and alkaline. A few stone huts pimpled the ground among maguey and tangles of p.r.i.c.kly pear and candelabra. Each hut resembled a cairn topped by a straw wig. The unmortared walls were made of lava, rough, porous, grayish-lavender.

Big and suckling pigs slumped in front of a wooden watering trough that had a leak at one end; chickens fed here and there; dogs yapped at the hors.e.m.e.n.

Raul dismounted in front of a doorless hut, and began to pull off his corn sack, tugging at the leather thongs and henequen cords. A deep voice said, "Bueno," and Raul looked into the face of Salvador, the head man of the hutment, a three-hundred-pound fellow, with a paunch, a stevedore's shoulders, grinning jowl and swooping mustache.

"Let me take the sack, patron."

"I heard you had no corn here," Raul said, backing away.

"No corn for three days."

"You should have come to me."

"Sometimes it's better to wait. We have our chickens and pigs. We're not starving."

"You can't make tortillas out of chickens and pigs," said Raul.

Salvador laughed soundlessly, and the upper part of his body shook. He untied the corn sack and shouldered its weight easily. Barefooted, standing there, legs spread, one hand balancing the burlap, he faced Raul, the sun streaming over his whites.

"Will you go inside and wait for me?" Salvador asked.

"I want to talk to you," said Raul.

He entered the low hut and sat on the packed earth floor and took a cigarette paper from his pocket. Presently, Salvador came in and sat against the wall opposite Raul, across the hut. Their feet almost touched. A broken candle lay on a termite-riddled chest that had been patched with a triangle of pine from which dangled a rusty padlock.

Clothes and a folded hammock hung on pegs. There were no other furnishings. Outside, women gabbled over the corn sacks and children dashed about crying: "We've got corn.... Come, see the corn!"

Salvador fished out paper and tobacco and paper and tobacco became a cigarette with magical dexterity. The two smoked silently. They had met in this hut quite a few times through the years. Last September they had weathered a hurricane's tail behind these walls. As Raul smoked, he kept seeing the musician's face and sensing his own obligations.

"I want you to move to the house in a few days," Raul said. "I need your help, Salvador. I want you to turn out several carts; that means wheels, frames, and yokes."

"But Don Fernando doesn't want them," said Salvador, and his lip pulled away from his cigarette with a sc.r.a.p of paper clinging to it. What was Don Raul thinking? What kind of quarrel would come of this?

"You do the job for me. I'm not waiting any longer. I've made up my mind to take over Petaca. We can't go on waiting and waiting. My father's day is over."

Raul felt his voice was trembling, and tried to distract himself with the ash of his cigarette.

"There will be a lot of trouble," said Salvador, skeptical of such a decision. "People will take sides. We'll have our hands full."

"Are you afraid?" scoffed Raul.

"Of course not, patron."

"Our people are hungry and sick," said Raul, staring at a stone embedded in the wall.

"I'll do my part," said Salvador humbly, picking the shred of paper from his lip. "I know that we need new carts, that carts need repairing.... There's a lot that needs doing."

"When you come to the house, bring Teresa. She can help us."

"I'm glad to move, but I must continue to look after these people, too.

They're my friends." A hunch of his shoulder indicated those who lived in the surrounding huts.

"You can do both jobs," said Raul, and glanced at Salvador confidently.