Listen to the Mockingbird (27 page)

She turned her head slowly to look at me and I saw where the bullet had landed. Next to her face was a mound of feathers that had burst from a round hole in her pillow. A scant inch above it, Winona’s earlobe dripped blood into the feathers.

I shooed everyone from the room, ordered Herlinda to wait for me in my office and closed the door. Then I went to the bed, picked up the hiccoughing Zia, took Winona’s hand in mine and looked into her face. “Are you all right?”

She blinked at me thoughtfully as if taking inventory of her various and sundry parts, then nodded slowly. “I appears to be okay, but I sure enough ain’t amused.”

Balancing Zia in one arm, I tended to Winona’s ear with a drop of whiskey, and she screwed her face into such a fierce expression that I almost laughed. “It could have been worse,” I told her. “A lot worse.”

“Could have been a mite better, too,” she grumbled, pushing my hand away and getting out of bed to stomp across the room to the bureau. She stabbed her finger at the door. “I tell you true, for myself, I can put up with most anything. But if that woman harm my chil’, I break her in halfs and use her for kindling.”

Herlinda sat sullenly in my office while I spoke to her blank face. “You are a fool. You could be put in jail. Winona is no bruja. You cannot blame her for…” My voice hitched. “For God’s sake! She was in town with us that day.” I almost choked on the memory of Julio. “If you have to blame someone, blame me. If you can’t live here peaceably, leave. Leave now.”

All the while, I was praying she would not leave. I knew full well that Nacho would not let her go off alone, and I needed him desperately. No one had his art with horses. She stared at me woodenly until, in exasperation, I sent her back to the kitchen.

That night I sent for Nacho. Perhaps he could talk some sense into her.

“Señora?” he said from the doorway. He was pale and haggard, and there was an awful look about his eyes that shot a knife of panic through me.

He took two staggering steps and wilted to the floor. His old sweat-stained hat rolled drunkenly toward the stove.

Chapter Thirty-one

Winona and I reached Nacho at the same time. “Holy God,” I said, rolling him over, searching for the bullet hole, praying it wouldn’t be in the chest or the gut. But there was no blood, no wound.

Winona touched his face with her fingers and drew in a sharp breath.

“What is it?”

“He be on fire. He burning up.”

I laid my hand across his forehead. The flesh was dry and papery and hotter than caliche in the worst heat of July. “My God.” I stared into Winona’s eyes. “What is it?”

“Don’t know. Maybe the pox.”

I tried to unbutton his shirt with fingers gone thick and wooden.

Winona shoved my hands away. “You back off, now. I had me the pox when I was a little gal.”

We both knew no one got the pox twice. If you lived through it, you were safe from it forever. She undid the buttons one at a time. It was all I could do not to tear the shirt open.

But no telltale blisters dotted his chest.

Nacho moaned and his head lolled to the side. He began to shake with an ague the like of which I’d never seen. He pulled his arms across his chest, and his whole body twitched with shudders.

“Herlinda,” I called, fearing he would die on the spot. “Herlinda!”

Something in my voice must have told her not to dally because she appeared in the doorway almost immediately and, seeing Nacho’s shaking body, threw herself across his chest, as if his cure lay in keeping him pinned to the floor. A howl, like that of an animal when first the trap springs, filled the room. Her head lolled from side to side, her black eyes like death itself.

But he was not dead. Not yet. Death may command resignation; illness is something to pit oneself against.

“Stop it.” I bent over her, clasped her shoulder. “Get him to bed,” I said gently but firmly, as to a frantic child. “Keep him warm.” I straightened and headed for the door. “Herlinda, you cannot move him by yourself. You must allow Winona to help you. Do you hear? You must do as I say. I’m going for Tonio.”

Listening to Fanny’s hoofs beat along the path to the cuevas, I didn’t know my breaths were coming so shallow until my head began to feel full of feathers and I had to grab the horn to keep myself from pitching from the saddle. I was less sure there was any hope in pitting myself against this horrible disease, whatever it was. Tonio was wise in the ways of medicines, but he could not perform miracles. I well knew I couldn’t run the ranch without Nacho, and that without his steadying influence I even feared Herlinda a little.

But all that aside, with Jamie gone, other than Winona, Nacho was my only real friend. And I was frightened not only for him but for myself.

Faithless as I knew I was, I prayed, Please, God, deliver this good man from such a fate as this.

999

They were not able to get Nacho into a bed. When I returned with Tonio he was thrashing about on the floor where he had fallen. Herlinda and Winona were desperately trying to keep him covered him with blankets; but as soon as they wrapped one around him, he kicked it away. His eyes were tight shut, his hands defensive in front of his greyish face, like a small child trying to protect itself from an attacker.

I turned in wordless bewilderment to Tonio, who stood in the doorway taking in the scene. Winona was trying to sponge Nacho’s face with water from a dented cooking pot, but he knocked the towel from her hand, groaning, “No, no. Papa. No. El verdugo. Nooo…” His voice became a shriek and he writhed as if in combat with Satan himself. “Ahorcarse!” he screamed. Then he repeated the same word in a voice of utter desolation.

Herlinda’s eyes widened with horror, and she stared at Winona. Then she reached across Nacho’s writhing body, grabbed the straps of Winona’s apron and shook her like a rag doll.

“Bruja!” she screamed. “Bruja!” She threw herself at Winona.

By the time I could cover the few feet that separated us, the straps of the apron had torn and Herlinda was wrapping them around Winona’s throat.

“Stop!” I shouted, wrestling with her. With the brute strength of the demented, she gouged my face with her fingernails. Then her hands, fingers still rigid, were moving away.

Tonio had grasped her by the forearms and pulled her to her feet, where he held her immobile until she stopped struggling. Then he pulled her to his chest, crooning something in comforting tones; and she sagged to her knees, made the sign of the cross, fingered the rosary she always wore around her neck and began to pray. Tears spilled down her face and dripped on the floor.

Winona had returned to mopping Nacho’s face with the towel. The poor man tried to twist his head away. He opened his eyes then covered them with his hands.

“La luz,” he groaned. The light. I understood the word but couldn’t fathom the meaning. He opened his mouth, and a greenish bile spilled down his chin. Then his body went still, and I screamed.

Tonio probed Nacho’s neck then put his ear to Nacho’s chest. I closed my eyes against the certainty that he would find no pulse, hear no heartbeat.

Tonio’s head remained that way for a long time, the silence broken only by the murmur of Herlinda’s prayers and the little splash of water each time Winona’s towel returned to the pot.

Gently, Tonio pulled away the shirt and raised Nacho’s arm. Winona and I stared. The lump in the armpit seemed as big, the flesh as red and tight, as an over-ripe crabapple.

Tonio was staring, too, his eyes narrowed to slits.

“Is he dead?” I whispered.

He shook his head, then gathered Nacho in his arms as one picks up a child. “Get a bed ready,” he said, rising to his feet.

Herlinda looked up at him fearfully then scurried ahead of us to the room she shared with Nacho.

999

Tonio and I sat in the kitchen with cups of bad coffee trying to regain some sense of normality. I had taken him in the wagon to the cuevas, where he collected a half-dozen packets of herbs and powders. At my cook-stove, he’d prepared some concoctions that he forced between Nacho’s lips. Most had rolled down the leathery chin, and Winona mopped it away while Herlinda’s frantic eyes darted from face to face. She had seemed on the very verge of trying to stop us, but she didn’t.

I daresay Tonio’s certainty, his command of the situation, lent all of us a scrap of security. He had given firm orders that no one was to leave the sickroom without scrubbing hands and arms with lye soap. When the bedclothes were removed, they were to be burned. Herlinda had gasped at that, but the look on Tonio’s face brooked no argument.

A knife, fork, spoon, cup and plate were to be set aside to feed Nacho and boiled in hot water for the better part of an hour immediately after he finished. And we were all to eat as much garlic as we could get down.

Now Herlinda and her son were with Nacho, Winona was seeing to Zia and Tonio and I sat mute and weary on the slat-backed chairs in the kitchen, sipping coffee neither of us wanted.

There was death in the air. I could fairly smell its bitter scent.

“What in the name of God is it?” I asked dully, wondering if we would all die of this awful sickness. Putting a name to it might somehow put it in our grasp, make it manageable. “It can’t be pox.”

Tonio shook his head and stared at the ceiling. His bleak brown eyes traveled slowly to mine.

I waited. Then, “What is it? For God’s sake, tell me!”

“Plague,” he said. “It is bubonic plague.”

Chapter Thirty-two

I insisted that Tonio take one of the horses; and after making me promise to fetch him if there was any change, he departed for the cuevas riding clumsily, a little too stiff-legged but well enough.

None of us slept that night. We moved about the rooms slowly and very quietly, speaking little and only in whispers, as if death were asleep nearby and we feared to rouse him.

We spelled each other at the bedside. Herlinda had refused to leave Winona alone with Nacho, but she was so exhausted she fainted and Ruben carried her to the parlor.

Tonio was back at dawn with more herbal mixtures. He listened long at Nacho’s chest then announced softly, “The lungs are clear.”

Nacho continued half-awake, half-asleep, delirious. Whenever he opened his eyes, he muttered “la luz” in such distress that we finally understood that any but the dimmest light hurt his eyes. He did no more shouting. He was too weak.

Herlinda and I were at the cook-stove preparing tortillas when Winona wandered into the kitchen with Zia. Herlinda stiffened. I put my hand on her arm. “She is a good woman. Believe me. She is no witch, no bruja.”

Herlinda dropped the spatula she was using to turn the tortillas and began to weep. She drew up the skirt of her apron and hid her face. “Estára,” she sobbed. “Estára.”

I put my arms around her and she clung to me like a frightened child. I led her to a chair. “Why?” I asked. “Why must Winona be a witch?”

“Only bruja make him speak of el padre.”

“I don’t understand.”

“His father, he hang. They say he was horse thief. Ignacio, he was there. He see it. Un niño. A child. La bruja make him see it again. La bruja make him see el verdugo. The hangman!”

Herlinda gasped and burst into fresh tears. “Señora,” she wailed. “El favor de usted. You would not send us away for this thing?”

“Send you away because Nacho is ill?”

“Because the father was horse thief,” Herlinda wailed between sobs.

“Good heavens, of course not! Nacho is the best man with horses I’ve ever laid eyes on. I don’t care what his father did. If he taught Nacho about horses, I’m even grateful to him.” I tried to keep my voice calm and cheerful despite the bitterness that rose in me. How could God make a man wracked with illness relive such a nightmare?

999

On the third day, Nacho’s fever fell. Still, he barely clung to consciousness. Tonio arrived just as the sun sent its first slanting rays down the mountain. He sent everyone from the sickroom and bade us rest. We all scrubbed our arms and hands raw and tried to nap.

I was asleep as soon as my body touched the mattress. When I woke the window was already beginning to dim with dusk. Tonio was standing over me. His cheeks were hollow with shadow, but his eyes were bright.

“He will live,” he said softly. “The worst is past.”

Relief was like gravity, drawing me closer to the earth. I put my hand over my eyes to let the news absorb slowly, to be sure it was real. “Thank God.”

Tonio stretched out his hands to me; and I rose, feeling light now from the empty spaces in my being where the fear had been. His arms opened, and I laid my head against his chest. His beard smelled of wood smoke mixed with something faintly like verbena.

“Sorry I woke you,” he said. “I just wanted you to know as soon as I was sure.”

I tightened my arms around him. “Thank you.”

“Herlinda is with Nacho, Winona spelled me earlier.” The creases at the corners of his eyes deepened. “She does have a way with her, your Winona.”

I frowned. “You didn’t let her do anything…odd…did you?”

He chuckled. “It would have been worth my life to stop her.”

“Like what? What did she do?” I asked cautiously.

“Nothing harmful. A wax doll near his lips. To draw the demon, I suppose. Herlinda was asleep,” he said to the look on my face. “I didn’t leave the doll there.” He opened his hand, and a small dark lump gleamed on his palm. The doll seemed to be all misshapen head with many legs bent at the knees. It looked quite like Evelina, my tarantula.

No one else had appreciated the spider’s company, so I had taken her outside, had a solemn talk with her and bade her goodbye. Whenever I saw a tarantula scurrying around a corner of the house I was always convinced it was Evelina still hanging about to keep me company.

I shook my head at Tonio. “You’ve had years of Christian training. How could you let her do that?”

His shoulders lifted, and a smile tried to happen around his mouth. “What possible harm could it do? Besides, there’s something to be said for hedging one’s bet.” He peered at me in the pale light. “What’s wrong?”

A chill had passed over me. I struggled to smile. “Someone walking on my grave, I suppose. What of the rest of us? Will we catch it?”