Woman of Light (55)

As the camera clicked, Simodecea relaxed, loosened her joints. Pidre glided his arm briskly off her shoulder. He looked into her eyes, an unpredictable softening warmth.



* * *



—

Animas grew by the day. There were more mines, more farms, more trains. Within several months of opening, Pidre’s Extravaganza had sold out weekend shows. Pidre had hired performers from across the region, some he’d convinced to leave other shows, and others who had auditioned for the first time. There were snake charmers, tea leaf readers, dancers and acrobats. Simodecea at first didn’t enjoy being rooted in place. She had always traveled, but Pidre was a gifted businessman, and she and the other performers respected him and counted their earnings. Sometimes when they didn’t have a show, if the moon was full, Pidre made a great feast with the hornos and bonfires and an underground barbecue pit. He welcomed undertaking the traditional chores of women. He baked the breads and served his compadres hearty plates of beans and bowls of brisket stew, all while wearing a dusty leather apron.

There was a summer night when they all sat together in the meadow on woven rugs, their bedrolls and sheepskin, tin plates of food. The fire dancers were beautiful and moved their bodies like serpents. Simodecea had become friendly with two of the younger girls, and they brought her clay pitchers of mezcal. They had both had a recent night with a Greek miner. I’ve never felt anything like it, the prettier one said. She was named Sabina and had a beaklike nose that was handsome in its uniqueness.

“What did he do?” asked Simodecea amid the crackling of fire and pulsating crickets.

“It wasn’t what he did,” chimed in the other. “It’s what we did to each other.”

They all three laughed, and Simodecea noted the musical sounds of their throats. She excused herself from the ground and stood with her tin cup in search of the water bucket.

The bonfires were blazing against the night. There were sounds of crackling cedar. Simodecea stepped near conversations, the lumped bodies speaking softly in the dark. The stars were heavy though hidden by firelight. The cottonwood trees along the center ditch stood in fashionable poses, limbs elegantly resting this way or that. Through the grayish air a far ways off, Pidre stepped away from the party. He cut across the meadow, continuing beyond his temporary cabin adjacent to the adobe home he was in the midst of building. Simodecea stood in the grass and told herself no but then told herself yes.

Pidre was turning the corner of his cabin, returning to the group with an armful of firewood, when Simodecea stepped before him.

“Evening to you,” she said, and raised her chin. “Beautiful moon.”

Pidre glanced up. A silver glow bathed his serene features. “Guards the people at night.”

Simodecea waved her hands through the chilled air. Her skin was pale under moonlight. “It’s cold out here,” she said.

Pidre held the firewood a little higher in his arms.

“I was thinking,” said Simodecea, “we could go in there?” She made eyes toward his cabin.

Pidre shook his head. “Just as cold in there, colder without a fire.”

“We can heat it.”

Pidre was silent. A log of firewood fell from his arms, hitting the dirt with a thud.

“Pidre,” Simodecea said.

“Yes.”

“I want to go into your cabin with you.”

Pidre peered at Simodecea. He squinted under moonlight. “Oh,” he said. “Wow, se?ora.” He repeated wow as she took him by the hand. “I mean, I’m honored.”



* * *



—

Once they started, they couldn’t stop. They plummeted into each other, fitted together as earth and sky. Simodecea spent nights in Pidre’s cabin and rushed home under starlight to her wooden trailer, lush with her satin and velvet curtains. She’d close the door and silently run her hands beneath her cotton nightdress, amazed at how good she was still able to feel. She hadn’t been with a lover since Wiley, and the first time she revealed in candlelight the notches of her scars to Pidre, he reached his soft hand to her skin and asked with sorrow, “Do you hurt?”

“Sometimes,” said Simodecea, standing from bed and lifting her skirt from the ground and fitting it around her waist. “For some time after it happened, I felt the pain all over again, like a phantom. I remember when it was happening, how I couldn’t believe my body could take that much hurt.” She let out a hoarse laugh, turned her face to the scanty window above their pillows. “How could God let us feel such pain? And that’s when I thought about the devil and hell and how surely they are real.”

Once at dawn, as she was walking through the saturated meadow with her hair blowing like a blade, she was stopped by Mickey. He stepped out from the storage shed, a toothpick in his mouth, his misshapen hat low on his forehead. Simodecea stopped walking. She instinctually laid her right arm over her breasts in the flimsy nightgown. Mickey was Pidre’s bookkeeper, and other than drinking away nearly all of his earnings each month, he didn’t seem to contribute much to the family of performers. Simodecea spoke to him as if a coyote had crossed her path. “Yes?”

“I’ve been watching you,” he said. “Pidre’s a good man, my closest friend.”

“I also enjoy him,” said Simodecea.

“Then why you sneaking around at night like some owl?”