When the Owl Cries Part 27

"I know how you feel," Gabriel adjusted his gla.s.ses. "I'd like to get away myself, if there weren't so much to do here at Petaca."

"Why has Don Fernando taken another bad turn?" she asked.

"Money," he said.

"Whose money?"

"Hacienda money," said Gabriel. "You see, Raul canceled certain accounts. He wants to do away with the indebtedness on the tienda de raya books. A matter of hacienda funds."

"Raul goes too far," she said, putting her cup down hard.

He began to defend Raul's actions and she tried to listen politely, filling his cup, giving him sugar, handing him a napkin. She felt that the sound of the rain was all that kept her in the room--without it everything would disappear.

"Oh, Caterina's photo has fallen over," he said, and set it up.

"I laid it down."

"Why did you do that, Angelina?"

"To help me forget her."

"Forget her ... we mustn't forget her."

"Don't you understand that I miss her ... I miss her all the time ... I don't need her photograph. Can't you see that things can be so bitter ... can't you accept how I feel?" She spoke without rebuke, as though to herself.

They lapsed into silence; the rain beat across the veranda, across the tiles; somewhere a shutter thudded; somewhere children babbled.

"We should have saved her," said Gabriel, stirring his coffee.

"How could we have saved her?"

"The Indians know many ways of curing dysentery."

"Then why don't they cure their own little ones? We see them die every year. Gabriel, the haciendas are littered with their graves."

She remembered playing with Concepcion, Miguelito, Trinita, Pepe--dear faces, Petaca's dead children! Her love for them choked her.

Forget Petaca! Forget Raul!

But did one forget someone once loved? Could there never be accord?

Gabriel had recommended patience. The dung beetle was patient: she had seen it shoving a ball, worming it from side to side, attacking it frenziedly. She was no dung beetle. Revolving the delicate cup on its saucer, guiding it around inside the rim, her toes digging at the rungs of her chair, she smelled her own flesh, waited. It seemed to her she had waited more than half her life, waited for someone to love, waited for marriage, waited for s.e.xual adjustment, waited for childbirth, for her babies to walk and talk. Even death had to be waited for. Her own. Her friends. Don Fernando's.

She heard her father-in-law say:

"Let's not bring that toy to the breakfast table....

"This is no place for women ... get out....

"Well wait for your wife to go to bed....

"Take the noisy children away...."

Dressed in one of his charro outfits or in badly pressed whites, whip or quirt in hand, he epitomized Petaca. Blood-shot eyes, battered mouth, scrawny neck--soon death would take them away. And she knew how he feared death; she had heard him mumble to himself. It had perplexed her that Caterina had been fond of him but she let them alone, hoping the innocence of one would offset the vices of the other. Well, it had been a brief affection. She wondered how she condescended to treat him humanely, almost with affection sometimes.

Pouring herself more coffee she tried to shake her mood and said the first thing that came to mind:

"What have you been thinking about?"

"I? Oh, I was thinking of Italy. What were you thinking about?"

"Don Fernando. Caterina. Life and death."

"I was thinking of home. Very foolish of me. I guess I'm ... well, sentimental." He patted his bald spot.

"You've been homesick as long as I can remember," she said.

"Come, come now," he said. "I haven't been that bad, have I?"

Chavela went about opening windows and candle flames wavered from the cool, damp but refres.h.i.+ng air. The clack-a-clack of hundreds of blackbirds resounded from their roosting place in the Indian laurels at the lagoon end of the garden.

Gabriel lit a kerosene lamp and placed it on the piano and excused himself.

"Good-night, Angelina ... I must visit Viosco ... he's sick ... thanks for the coffee...."

She hunched on a sofa, her feet under a velvet cus.h.i.+on, eyes on the irresolute candles. Shall I confess to Gabriel that I like to walk naked in my fur? Shall I tell him about the girl at the convent?

Shall I tell him why Raul married me? Confess. Must we all confess, confess how lonely we are?

Later, in the chapel, she prayed for Vicente and herself. The place was dimly lit but the darkness and her _rebozo_ could not shut out the Petacans, the lame, the sick, the hungry: they whimpered for clothes, medicine, alms: they fought for food, stole, got drunk, killed. They had never crowded about her before and their ghostly presence drove her to her room.

Raul had stayed in a peasant hut during the rain, a thatched room where woven fronds, carefully herringboned, shut out most of the downpour. A pig slept in a corner. Raul sat on a wooden chest; the owner and his wife squatted on a mat. Above the pig, in a sisal hammock, swung a child. Another hammock was looped over a peg, its pouch resembling a gray moth's case. The deluge shut out nearly all light. Through the open doorway mist drubbed. n.o.body tried to talk. Raul dozed. When the rain stopped, he thanked the pair, accepted a chunk of sugar cane for Chico, and got on his horse and rode off.

Chico trotted briskly, whiffing the rain-washed air as they followed a trail through pastureland where knots of Herefords grazed. Belly high to the horse, a stone wall paralleled the trail, iguanas here and there.

At a bend, Chico whirled sidewise, and pain from his bullet wound shot through Raul. He thought he might topple, but somehow managed to keep his saddle, as the horse pirouetted. Shouting, commanding, he dug his spurs. The horse screamed. Then, Raul saw the snake, a good-sized rattler.

Dragging violently at the bit, he checked Chico underneath some orange trees and dismounted, thoroughly disgusted.

"You fool. Haven't you ever seen a rattler before? You ought to learn a thing or two. You crazy fool--you're no colt!"

The snake slithered away through the gra.s.s.

At the dam, the foreman told Raul that they had less than a week's work, though the cracks in the dam appeared formidable. Raul sucked his pipe, nodded his head, simply agreeing. The place oozed gnats and flies. Sandpipers paraded the shallows.

Remaining on his horse, Raul chatted with the workers, all of them in breechclouts or shorts. A number wore conical hats of a nearby mountaineer clan. The southerners had bodies like chocolate. Some spoke no Spanish. Through the years, Raul had acquired an Indian vocabulary of sorts and he tried to josh the men but none of his jokes got across. He slapped at gnats, and left as soon as he could.

On his way home, he felt a sense of freedom. The breadth of the land affected him. Uncle Roberto had said: "It does something to a man to live on a place you can't ride across in days." Though Raul had been born at Petaca, he realized there were parts he had never seen, hill country, mountain fields, lava terrain, streams. A subforeman insisted that a lake existed in Sector 25. Recently someone told of Indians camping in 31, thatched huts in a valley of willows.

As dusk brought the swallows and bats, Raul remembered Petacan outings in all kinds of weather, high volcano climbs with lightning flas.h.i.+ng from rock to rock, river explorations, treks across pasture lands, trails to milpas, trails through steamy canyons choked with red-barked trees. They had herded cattle, roped yearlings, branded, dehorned; they had driven herds of sheep and goat; they had chased wild horses.

Gathered around campfires, they had eaten from chuck wagons. Years past, they had packed burro trains into the Mountain Rancheria area in search of gold and silver. They had hunted deer in the uplands, _tigres_ in the marsh gra.s.s of the coastal land, iguanas where the palmera whined, alligator and ibis in the lagoons, wolf and bear midway up the great peak, eagles at the summit.