Hard Red Spring (6 page)

“
Saber.
”

Evie and Judas continued deeper into the forest, where Judas needed his machete. He whacked at branches and vines with big, unpredictable motions, never warning Evie. She appreciated this, his trust that she knew to keep clear.

They soon came upon a small clearing planted with tiny corn seedlings. There had been trees before, but an Indian had cut them down to sun his crop. Evie could see the stumps, sliced up with thin, weathered machete marks, then burned to feed the soil. An Indian could have twenty of these plots hidden all around their land.

Alone, this discovery would terrify Evie, but with Judas, she felt brave. He was just Indian enough in her mind to be able to control the ghosts, and white enough that she didn't fear him. That's what Ladino meant to her. She watched him now attack the earth with his blade, cutting up the corn plants, not six inches high. Evie did her part and stomped on them, too, twisting her heel into the white, surfaced roots. In a minute, they'd destroyed the plot. Evie took three rolls from her basket and left them there, a gift, a hopeful gesture Father insisted on if Mother was going to insist on such destruction. Then they set off to find more.

“Judas, what does Magellan eat? I can't get him to eat anything.” This was not the only problem. In addition to not eating, Magellan had begun to peck at himself. A large wound had appeared on his breast, sticky and infected. Evie moved him to a dark corner, hoping no one would notice. Her first job on the farm, and she was failing at it.

Judas made an abrupt right and began to slice what seemed to be a new trail. “Magellan eats fruit and lizards,” he told her.

“I tried that!”

“But it's no use. He won't eat. He's killing himself. He's decided not to live.”

Evie stopped. “Why's he killing himself? Why would he do that?”

“
Saber.
” He smiled secretly, ducked under a vine, then cut it down so Evie would not have to duck. Yes, he was just Indian enough to be maddening at times, too.

Evie stomped a foot. “When you say
saber
, I know it means you know!”

He shrugged, turning them back onto an old path.

“If you tell me, I'll write you a note for the Frenchman's shop.” Amazingly, a note from any white person, even an eight-year-old, even with misspellings, could gain admittance for an Indian to browse. “A note to look at anything you want.”

Judas paused to consider, sucking the bread from his teeth and studying his machete for nicks. “Okay. Fine, I will tell you. Magellan is killing himself because he cannot kill you.” He seemed very pleased with this statement and swallowed.

“What?” But Judas continued walking. “Why would he want to kill me? My father saved him from the woods!” she yelled at his back, running to keep up. She felt disoriented, had no idea how far they'd gone until she was startled by the appearance of the cave. She had thought they were somewhere else completely, and the shock of seeing the stone jaws, the blackened cavern filmed with smoke, almost made her heart stop. Forgetting herself, she nearly walked into one of Judas's wild machete swings.

“Why would he want to kill me?” she asked again, weakly.

She felt the temperature drop as they neared, and the hair on her arms stood up in fright. She kept close to Judas, holding his belt now, to keep clear of his machete as he cleared the path. Evie hoped that Mother had finally heeded her warnings about the cave and had ordered Judas to burn it. But no, they passed by. And that was when she saw the most startling thing. A gift left for the dead ancestors, nicer than all the others. Among the coins and paper trash, the doll and bottles, she spied a silver glint.

They did not lose speed, coming off a trail and cutting directly through the brush. In front of them, branches shook, a flash of bright colors there and gone. An Indian. The jungle fell away from Judas's sharp blade, finally revealing an altar, a portal to Indian ancestors. The hanging gourds looked like heads knocking together in the wind, the twisted saplings like limbs.

Judas doused the pagan altar with kerosene, then tipped the lantern and lit it all up in a big bright whoosh that sounded like a flock of birds taking off.

Evie took no joy from this fire, which would ordinarily make her believe they could win the battle with the ghosts and Indians. Because now she
realized these fires did nothing. They were losing. The piano, its crescendo in the distance, provided no solace. They hadn't even the safe space of their own home. They'd passed so quickly, but she knew exactly what it was: the shape, the size, the glint. What she had seen there in the cave and what she couldn't bring herself to stop and retrieve was her mother's missing mirror.

—

They burned three altars and dug up four corn plots that day, the communal land reclaimed in the name of civilization. When they returned from the forest, stinking of kerosene, smoke, and black mud, Evie could see her parents from afar, standing on the porch with a newspaper. Evie approached carefully, watching them. They hadn't noticed her skirting the cactus field, still costumed in their clothes and providing camouflage.

Mother closed the paper. “Now we've lost our workers and our money. I told you not to throw money at the problem right away. Now they need all the Indians, no matter if they're in debt. If you'd just waited a few days—”

“Not all of it,” Father insisted. “We still have a little money left.”

“Yes, what we need to get home. You're not taking our fare money.”

Money. Evie walked to the back of the house, uninterested in hearing more. How could they argue about money when much more horrible things were happening all around them? The ghosts didn't want their money, they wanted Mother's mirror for some horrible, unimaginable reason. And, she was sure, they wanted her parents to fight. In the kitchen, she studied the bird and his bloody breast. She couldn't believe Magellan wanted to kill himself. More likely, the ghosts were tormenting him, too. She peered through the slats and met his fierce, black-bead eye.

Evie gathered the heavy crate in her arms. Magellan flapped and hissed in protest as she carried him to the front porch.

“Magellan's sick,” Evie said, hugging the crate. But they didn't hear or see.

“They can't take all the Indians away. I'm sure they'll make exceptions.”

Agitated with their fight, Magellan hopped from foot to foot and began preening.

“Every bean has to be washed, Robert. Every single coffee bean has to be picked by hand and washed and dried. And they will get every Indian in the country to do it. You got out of the first draft, now you think you can get out of this second draft, but what about the third and the fourth?”

“I just have to talk to the right people. The government—”

“The government
exists
for coffee. Not law and order, not social welfare. Their
only job
is to get the Indians to work. That's all anyone pays them for!”

“But still, they have to see what I'm doing is good for the coffee, too.”

“Haven't you figured it out, Robert? Have you yet to realize that feeding the Indians is not in their best interest? Starvation is the only incentive they have!”

In the long, searching silence that followed this proclamation, Mother saw Magellan for the first time. “Oh my God, what is wrong with the bird?” she gasped. “What's he doing?” Sensing her attention, the bird glared up at her with his demented beard of blood and feathers. “Evie, what's the matter with Magellan?”

“He won't eat. I don't know. I tried everything,” she cried.

Father took the crate from her. It seemed light in his hands. “Did you try lizards?”

“Yes.”

“Berries?”

“Yes!”

“I think we should let him go,” Mother said, peering through the rough slats. “He's going to kill himself like this.”

Father turned the crate over, observing the situation from various angles. “Ixna knows. I know she knows what kind of bird this is, but she wouldn't tell me.”

“Judas says it's not my fault. He said it's in his nature to do this.”

Father decided on an angle and held his chin, thinking. “If he can't survive in a crate, with us bringing him food, he certainly can't survive on his own in the woods.”

“So we have to watch him waste away in our house?” Mother asked. “While he rips himself to shreds before our eyes? Evie, don't look at him!”

“What is wrong with this country?” Father marveled, sniffing the rotting food. “It's like they all want to starve to make some point, even the goddamned animals.”

Done with Magellan, Mother threw her shawl over the crate and turned back to Father. “You care more about these Indians, who don't even want your help, than your own family. Do you think”—she paused, licked the sweat from her upper lip—“this is a nourishing environment for your daughter? Without school or friends or an idea of civilization? Do you know what she's learning down here, following Ixna all day? She doesn't know what a toilet is, Robert, but she knows about bribery! She knows all about a bunch of ghosts that live in a cave and steal our things!”

Evie's face went hot with shame. She should have known her mother wouldn't take her concerns about the cave seriously.

“We're broke. The wheat plan is done,” Mother decreed, flourishing her arm. “It was never even feasible. It's not about food, it's about hundreds of years of history. Indians aren't fighting hunger, they're still fighting the Spanish. They're fighting history. They won't win, but they'll starve trying because they have nothing more to lose.”

They're fighting history.
The phrase struck Evie. How does one fight something that already happened, that cannot be changed?

“I'm hiding our fare money,” Mother told Father's back as he walked out the door. “If your plan doesn't require it, fine, but we're not going to be stranded here.” Evie followed Father. She had no desire to know where their savings were hidden. She tried to block out the sound of the bureau sliding from the wall. She was afraid one of these days Father would ask her where their money was and she would tell him.

~~~~~

The next morning was a special morning, Mother said, as she tugged and twisted Evie's hair into two tight, wretched braids, then tied them off with blue bows. Evie was going with Father into Xela.

“Is he selling bread? Will we be at the market?” She held her feet up, one by one, for her white leather shoes with the heart-shaped buckles.

“No, Evie. Market is on Sunday. This is special business. Just do what your father says and don't say anything. Act like a lady,” she reminded Evie several times, making her increasingly nervous. The worse off they were, she knew, the more ladylike she'd have to be.

“Be careful, Robert,” Mother pleaded, burying his gun under some sacks in the back of the cart. “Stay on the main road, and don't give any Indians any rides. They're worked up about the volcano. I want you back here in one piece.”

“I'll hope for two,” he said, then took Mother's hand and began to sing, “
I lost my head in Totonicapán, over a girl . . .”

“That's not funny, Robert.”

“Two pieces, Mattie. Me and Evie. Don't worry.”

The mule cart rocked downhill, shuddering with the excruciating pace of Tiny's stubborn haunches. Magellan, in his crate on Evie's lap, was still despite the rough road.

“What do you think is wrong with Magellan? Is he sick? Did I not take care of him like I was supposed to?”

“It's not your fault, Evie,” Father reassured her.

She reconsidered Judas's theory that Magellan wanted to kill her. “He bites me every time I try to feed him. I think he hates me.”

“Birds can't hate, Evie. It's scientifically impossible. Their brains are too small. It's not you, it's the bird. I don't know if sick is the word. Maybe he's crazy.”

“Are we taking him to a doctor?” She thought they must be going to see someone special, since she was in her best dress and Father had put on his only suit—both rescued from the field and washed just for this trip.

“No, Evie. I don't know what we can do to help him. But maybe he can help us.”

Now ten days after the eruption, the view in all directions had cleared. Santa María loomed ahead, looking closer than before. The shacks, too, on the bottom of the mountain seemed nearer their fence, as Mother said. More like skeletons of houses, sticks lashed together and topped with dried leaves. The sticks and leaves, Evie knew, came from their land. She stared down from the cart at shirtless men hauling enormous loads of dried corn on their backs. Bent over double, they wore head straps tied tight to counter the weight.

A little potbellied boy, completely naked, ran alongside the cart, trying to get a look at Father's blue eyes. Sometimes he humored these curious children, smiling savagely so they screamed with terrorized delight and ran away. But today he whipped Tiny into a trot, leaving the little boy behind.

“They're all trying to plant now, before the second draft. With all the men gone, there's going to be a corn shortage, Evie. Dead Indians can't pick coffee. Dead Indians can't build railroads.”

But they could do other things. Steal, sabotage her family's crops, haunt their mountain, and possibly much more. “Father, what made the volcano erupt?”

The mountains, to Father, were not holy or evil. They were nothing more than two plates colliding. He demonstrated for Evie how mountains formed over millions of years.

“Our mountain,” he said. She did not like that phrase anymore: our mountain, my mountain. Each time he said it, she thought of the snake. Father let go of Tiny's reins, butted his chewed fingertips against one another. But his hands, which always seemed huge and powerful, struck Evie as completely inadequate for what he was trying to demonstrate. “Two opposite forces,” he said, “pushing against one another. Now those same forces that made our mountain can release lava and pressure from far below the surface. Pressure you cannot imagine. That's why, too, when the volcano erupted you felt the ground moving. Everything's connected, right below the surface.”