Woman of Light (68)

When she opened her eyes, Luz was in the Brown Palace, David at her side, fanning her with the newspaper. “I need to leave,” she said, sputtering through tears. “Now, right now.”



* * *



—

After David drove Luz home, she ran to her bedroom, opening the drawer with her stationery and pencils. In the main room where Diego and his snakes had once lived, Luz sat on the floorboards and began a letter to her brother.

Something very bad is going to happen…or maybe it already has.





TWENTY-NINE




Simodecea’s Final Shot

The Lost Territory, 1905





She had warned him, told him they were losing the theater, but Pidre assured her that Mickey had taken care of it. They’re paying, it’s a lease, don’t worry. Again and again her husband explained to Simodecea that no human being can possess land. Again and again that summer Simodecea watched as new tents went up throughout the property, the canvas shacks fluttering her eyesight like the blurred edges of reality just before a person faints. Lights out.

The tents soon gave way to permanent wooden structures, towers serving as platforms above newly dug portals into the earth’s crust. The Anglos built smelters in a matter of weeks, and the landside erupted with the sounds of their gutting, the churning of machinery into the ground, the picks and axes of men beating weapons into rock. There were company guards, armed men who patrolled the grounds, their pitiful retired military rifles the same color as their hands smeared in gray dust. Simodecea never saw this new element, radium, the cause for this glowing rush. As the prospectors came nearer and nearer to the adobe home, the Lopez family began to suffer the sounds of white men pissing into sagebrush, the streams of their spit into tin pails, the grunts they made when relieving themselves anywhere they pleased in the clotted woods. Simodecea wondered about the lands where they had come from, and in what state of disregard they had left them.

There came a dusty, long-shadowed afternoon when Pidre returned from Animas with his cart empty, though he had intended to stockpile grains and rice for the coming theatrical season. From their porch, Simodecea watched him arrive, her hand held above her eyes, a shading protection. Pidre’s lips were tight as he walked toward the house, his deep burgundy hat crinkled in his hands.

“They’re saying we owe a balance,” he told his wife.

Simodecea shook her head. She told him that couldn’t be right.

“And when I paid it, they told me my money wasn’t good.”

“What do you mean?”

“They said Indian and Mexican money is no good here.”

“Money is money,” said Simodecea and squinted beyond her husband’s shoulders.

“Not to them it isn’t. Not anymore at least.”



* * *



—

That afternoon, Simodecea walked into Mickey’s office.

“Show me the deed,” she said, and pointed a Smith & Wesson at his feet on the desk. She cocked the hammer, three clicks, a drumroll.

Mickey sipped bourbon from a clay mug, and with his sagging jowls he looked mildly inconvenienced. He shook his head and swiveled in his wheeled wooden chair. He stood slowly and went to the top drawer of a cherry-oak cabinet. He pulled the deed from its resting place, and flung the paper across his desk at Simodecea.

“It’s no use, Simo. That son of a bitch fucked us.”

She scanned the document, lowering her revolver and tucking it into its holster beneath the folds of her dress, warmly against her thigh. When she came back up, she gazed at Mickey with such contempt that she felt like smacking him in the face. “What’s this about mineral rights?”

Mickey took a swig of his bourbon. He wiped his wet mouth on the back of his hand. He offered some to Simodecea. She refused. “I’m sorry, Simo. I didn’t know then. All the silver had run dry.”

“What’re you saying, Mickey?”

“Otto, he’s sold everything beneath our feet. That mining company from out East is coming for all of it, the house, the theater, all of it until they squeeze every last drop of glowing rock from this land.”

Simodecea peered through the grimy window above Mickey’s desk. In the distance, across the sashaying sweetgrass, the company’s wooden platforms were like a crown above his head. She swallowed and shot him a look, as if to say, Fix it. “I know you’ll do what you can to save our theater.”

“But you don’t understand,” he told her. “It’s over. They’re coming for more and more of it.”

“Listen to me, you indolent Irishman,” said Simodecea. “This is our life. This is my family, all we have. We are not just going to give up, and neither are you.”

Through the dust-chuted office light, Mickey lowered his face in shame. He spoke as if watering the ground with his voice. “I never meant for this to happen. I didn’t read closely enough.”

Simodecea stepped around to his side of the desk. She gathered her dress in her hands, kneeling beside Mickey as if filled with piety instead of disappointment and rage. She reached for his hands, showing an unusual tenderness. “Start pushing back.”



* * *



—

When she came home that warm-breeze evening, Pidre was with the girls, hauling firewood into the shed beside their adobe house. The sky was violet blue, and Venus was twinkling as if communicating with distant worlds. Mosquitoes and gnats soared, making the oncoming night denser with life. They were preparing for colder months, and the girls were capable of carrying armfuls of kindling while their father hoisted several logs. Pidre gave Simodecea a peculiar look as she appeared beside their porch, a fixed expression of worry pulling her lips and jaw downward. Pidre whispered for the girls to finish up helping and go on inside. They were so small but so tough, and Simodecea savored the strength they showed. It was important, she thought, especially for little girls.