The Hummingbird's Daughter_ A Novel - Luis Alberto Urrea [147]
“Amen,” said Rubén, just to add something.
“And then?” Cruz demanded.
“Cookies.”
“Cookies!”
“Cookies and coffee.”
José smiled in a saintly fashion.
“The boy had milk. We had coffee—with honey!”
Cruz pondered this report for a moment.
José had a blue bandana tied around his neck.
“Show me your tumor,” Cruz said.
But before the cloth could be removed, Teresita was standing before them. She curtsied to Cruz.
“Your Holiness,” she said.
Rubén snickered.
Cruz spun on him and fixed him with a stormy glare.
Teresita looked at Rubén and said, “You. What is your name?”
“Rubén.”
“You are a warrior.”
“Sí.”
“Are you a killer?”
“Perdón?” he said.
“Do you kill, Rubén? Do you kill men?”
Rubén grabbed his rifle and hopped off the porch and ran away.
“You are unnerving my men,” Cruz told her.
Teresita sat on the swing.
“Cruz Chávez,” she said. “I am ready for my test now. Shall I fetch a pencil and paper?”
José grinned at him.
“José,” he said. “Go away.”
“I will find Rubén,” Saint Joseph said.
They were alone, if being watched through the windows by family and servants could be considered alone, if ten thousand eyes in front of them watching their every move were a form of privacy.
He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. The way the light caught Teresita illuminated her hair like small lightning bolts. She smelled like roses. She patted the seat beside her, and he sat down. They swayed slightly. The tumult of the beggars and lame had faded into a steady rumble, almost beyond his hearing. He cleared his throat, but he had nothing to say. A small boy ran up to her and gave her a bouquet of clover blossoms. She embraced him. The boy ran back into the crowd.
“Do you fish?” he blurted.
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing.”
They rocked. The noise around them was muffled, as if by cotton. Bits of metal flared in the light. Everything seemed as if it was across a wide valley. Bees inspecting the madreselva vines on the wall were louder than the voices of the People.
She said, “I do believe, señor, that this is the easiest test I have ever taken.”
He cleared his throat.
“Don’t worry,” he reassured her, “you are doing well so far.”
She accepted a mango from a drunkard who patted her head.
“How do you stand it?” Cruz asked.
“What?”
“This,” lifting his hand to the wall of faces before them.
“It is my work,” she said. “Do they make you nervous?”
“Many,” he said. “Son muchos.”
“Not so many pilgrims in Tomóchic, I imagine.”
He blew air out through his lips.
“Four hundred,” he said. “Five hundred live there. Pilgrims? Perhaps ten, twenty at a time.”
“And do many come to seek counsel with you?” she asked.
“A few.” He looked away. “Not many.” He tapped on the floorboards with his rifle butt. “Not like this.”
“Ah. Well, this.”
She sighed.
“These are nine, ten thousand. I never thought of it, Cruz Chávez, but I had never before seen this many people in one place.” She stared out at them. “It’s really quite interesting.”
“I saw this many,” he said. “In Guaymas. Didn’t like it. Went back to the mountains.”
He looked at her. Grinned. She smiled.
“I don’t like it much, either,” she noted.
They rocked.
“Lemonade, Señor Chávez?” she offered.
“No.”
“Bueno.”
“But,” he said, “how can you stand this, this crowd? How can you sleep? Eat? All these sick people calling to you.”
“Those who presume to save, señor, win a cross.”
He’d heard that one before.
“You are not here to save?”
“I am here to serve. But I am also here to live. I offer my work to God, and I stop when I am finished for the day.”
“Some could die,” he protested.
“I have been dead. I will die again.”
He looked at her for a moment.
“What if one dies while you sleep?”
“Then they were supposed to die. I can only do what I can do. To try to do more would be a lie. A lie is worse than doing nothing.”
“Is this God’s will?” he said.
“God?” Teresita sighed. “For you, God is a notion. Not for me. You must remember, great Tiger, that unlike you, I have met God.”
He pushed the swing with his rifle.