The Hacienda(75)

For he was still close enough to the house to hear me scream.





25





ANDRéS


Febrero 1821

Two years earlier


WHEN I RETURNED TO Apan from San Isidro, I stole hours away from my duties in the church to walk far from the town, beyond the fields where townspeople grazed their goats and few sheep, into lands that belonged to no hacendado. Far enough that the earth became rockier and the ayacahuite pines grew thick.

I combed the forest floor for herbs Titi used to collect, following a path she and I had trod many times to a stream that flowed down the craggy faces of the hills. Shadows had grown long by the time I found my quarry; complete night draped over the church when at last I returned to the rectory. I mumbled my apologies to Padre Vicente, as I knew there was no need to apologize to Padre Guillermo. The latter shook his head when he saw how soaked I was from the rain, how I smelled of the pines far from town.

“I’m surprised you even made it back,” he said, casting me a knowing look over his crooked reading spectacles. While the leaping firelight made Padre Vicente look like a vision from Judgment Day, it softened the lines of Guillermo’s aging face. We had both grown and changed since the days he would find me asleep beneath the pews of the church, but much had remained the same. He often joked that I was like a green horse, one that couldn’t stop moving and paced deep grooves into its paddock.

“Let him stretch his legs,” he told Vicente. “He was born in the country. He needs the air or he’ll go mad.”

Unlike Padre Vicente, Guillermo saw no problem in turning me loose to celebrate Mass or perform baptisms and other sacraments in the various capillas of the haciendas. Nor did he care about stamping out what he euphemistically called the traditions of the villages, so long as these did not interfere with the people paying the correct levy to be baptized and married as the Church required.

Vicente was different.

I had overheard him confiding in Guillermo that he doubted that a priest with mixed heritage could serve as a civilizing influence on the villagers.

“He is too naive. He simply isn’t capable of being as rational as he needs to be,” he argued. “It’s in his blood.”

Bitterly though I admitted it, in one respect, Vicente was perfectly right about me: I had no gift for civilizing, not as criollos like him defined it. Nor had I ever wished for it.

I slipped away from the other priests; once in the safety of my room, I lit a candle and emptied my small cloth bag of treasures. If brewed correctly, this was the medicine Paloma requested.

Titi taught me everything she knew rote. She never learned to read or write; I was able to keep in contact with her during my years away because she insisted that I teach Paloma her letters before I left for Guadalajara. This foresight benefited Paloma as well: as the war drew on, fewer and fewer educated young men lived on the hacienda, and in the absence of an official foreman, José Mendoza began to rely on Paloma to help him transcribe records and calculate earnings, though he never told the patrón. He claimed it was because his eyesight was growing too weak to work into the night. I knew it was because of Paloma’s fierce alacrity with numbers. Her penmanship was blocky but clear; a steady, determined hand wrote the letters I received from her and my grandmother while at the seminary.

Titi says it will be cold near the feast day of San Cristóbal, and you should dress warmly, Paloma’s letters would read. She says you must go for long walks, as this will cure your sleeplessness. There was a rainbow yesterday as the rain began, and even though there were fresh puma tracks near the house of Soledad Rodríguez and her daughters, all of the lambs were accounted for this morning. She says it is a good omen. She says the pueblo is praying for you. She says I pray for you. The birds pray for your return to San Isidro.

I memorized each letter with the same fervor as I had memorized every prayer my grandmother taught me, every recipe, every ritual, every symbol. I carved them into my heart, into the muscles of my arms, into my palms and the soles of my feet.

My mind wandered as my hands parted the herbs into groups, then divided them into the correct proportions. Raíz de valeriana. Milenrama. My grandmother quizzed me often, pride settling in the corners of her wide, kind mouth each time I answered or repeated back the recipes for drafts that soothed coughs and fevers and colicky infants.

My hands stilled in their work. I stared at the herbs.

I thought of the faces of villagers when they watched me during the procession on the feast day of la Virgen de Guadalupe. The strained face of Mariana in the firelight, the suddenness of her flinches.

She needed my grandmother. They all did.

You must find your own way, Titi told me.

But I couldn’t. Not now. Not when what they needed was someone like her.



* * *




*

I WAS NOT AFRAID of crossing the empty countryside in the dark. Once past the last stables and chicken coops of Apan, I gave a soft call into the night, barely a breath. The night replied: it settled over my shoulders like a cloak, gifting me a measure of itself. Invisible to man and beast alike, I walked on. Even the most curious of the nocturnal creatures smelled the presence of night on my back, recognized the watchful eye of the skies, and cut me a wide berth.

This time, my arrival went unannounced. I slipped into the kitchen where Paloma and I had agreed to meet. When she bade me sit, I hesitated. I should give her the herbs and instructions and leave as soon as I could. But the warmth of the kitchen coiled around me. Paloma’s promise of a mug of warm atole would make the long, cold walk back to town more tolerable . . . I gave in. She put a pot on the embers of the kitchen fire, stoking it enough to warm the liquid contained within.