Woman of Light (56)

Simodecea lifted her face to the spreading dawn. She removed her arm from across her chest and stepped past Mickey.

He turned around on his boots. “I see you. You’ve kept his name. You’ll never love anyone else.”

As she walked away, Simodecea stopped some ways off from Mickey and removed her nighttime moccasins. She strolled barefoot over the earth, felt the cool soil and harsh grasses etch into the balls of her feet, the fat of her heel. She moved her face to the sky, the morning animating the world, birds and trembling trees, the sweet smell of water and stone. “You know who else was jealous,” she called over her shoulder.

Mickey said nothing. He started in the opposite direction.

“The fallen angel,” said Simodecea. “Be careful who you model yourself after.”



* * *



—

Simodecea sensed it all along. They were destined to make life. This didn’t mean she was prepared for it or wasn’t beside herself when it happened. Admittedly, it was difficult when her belly began to limit the downward movements of her arms. She was more fatigued than usual, and there were some cancellations of her evening shows. Still, she was able to shoot from an upholstered yellow lounger, the crowd dazzled at seeing a woman so full with child shooting clay disks from the sky.

Some weeks before the baby was born, Pidre and Simodecea had a ceremony to ensure the newborn’s safe passage between realms. During the blessing, a curandero named Raúl wrapped Pidre and Simodecea in a woven blanket, blue lightning and red mountains across their backs. Inside the blanket’s cave, through pinpricks of glowing light, Pidre gazed upward and cradled Simodecea’s face in his hands. He smelled of summertime at night, the sweetness after rain. Her cheeks balled with happiness. Pidre placed his palms on her belly and smoothed the lacy fabric. Simodecea didn’t tell Pidre, but in that moment she felt as if they had married, and she thought to herself that if Wiley were to meet her again in the afterlife, she hoped he wouldn’t feel betrayed.

The first child was Sara. She was a small baby with large black eyes like seeds and a full, grown-looking mouth. She showed a talent for clairvoyance, a gift Pidre suspected came from his Grandma Desiderya. “Bird in the house,” Sara once uttered, and a crow, enormous and black, squeezed its plump body through the adobe fireplace, landing on its talons, as if Sara had called the animal to her side. Sara was a compliant infant, and at first this thrilled Simodecea, who could hike some ways off from the theater with her infant and her Remington or Winchester strapped to her back in a wicker basket. She’d practice her show with the infant nestled behind her warmly in the sweetgrass.

Maria Josefina was born a little over a year later. She had an adventurous spirit and was much more assertive than baby Sara. Maria Josefina seemed like Sara’s protector, sent from another place to shepherd and watch. She showed an interest in building, and whenever Pidre’s Ute compa?eros from the south visited the theater, she closely eyed how they hoisted their cedar lodgepoles into the endless sky.

The girls loved spending time with their father—they assisted him with collecting firewood, drawing water from the river and well, harvesting modest handfuls of yucca and osha, pi?on and juniper. They accompanied him on trips into Animas, where their father purchased bulk ammunition, barrels of pinto beans and rice, and thick stacks of dried venison. The Anglos of the town, especially the women, the schoolteachers and wives, they adored the girls. They often complimented Pidre on his mixed-breeds, to which he would not reply. On their way home from town, Pidre would stop a little ways from the theater’s ridge. He’d place his strong hands under each girl’s arms, removing them one at a time from the cart and setting them face out on the mesa, the earth below like a windswept moon, a moon whose soil had created them. “Listen to the land,” Pidre told his daughters. He taught them to say a prayer thanking Creator, acknowledging the mood and feel of the earth, their life among the animals.

For a time, they were happy.

In the late spring of 1905, Simodecea noticed canvas tents lining the upper ridge beyond the theater. She used the iron binoculars Pidre kept beneath the bed and peered across the countryside. Her eyes moved over sagebrush and thistle until they worked into the bark of the trees and landed in a thickly webbed patch of yellow aspens. There were several Anglos, some kind of prospectors, portentous in dark hats. Simodecea showed the men and their tents to Pidre, who shrugged and told her that Mickey was taking care of it. Besides, Pidre believed they could share the ridge. “There’s plenty of room, and remember, Simo, we did not come from here first.”

While Simodecea respected his viewpoint, she was fearful of the encroachment, of whether or not those men believed there to be plenty of room. She approached Mickey one afternoon in his stale smoke-filled office. He was seated before topsy-turvy paper piles, banknotes, and empty jars of preserved peaches from the Animas mercantile. When she opened the office door, he was startled into an upright position. He began fiddling with the ledger, as if he had been hard at work all along.

“While I respect my husband’s ideology, that doesn’t mean this isn’t the Lost Territory. The word lost is in the name for a reason.”

“I can’t say I have the slightest clue as to what you’re referencing, Mrs. Salazar-Smith.”

Simodecea examined the room. In the years since Mickey had stopped her at dawn, her mistrust had grown. He was older now and his age showed in his smoke-stained fingers, his rocky face and pallid skin. “I’d like to see the land deed.”