The Hummingbird's Daughter_ A Novel - Luis Alberto Urrea [52]
One day, Buenaventura brought Teresita the most marvelous object of all. The tobacco stains were still upon his cheeks like huge freckles. He clutched in his fist a small stone, and on this stone was the imprint of a fish. She grabbed it and squinted hard at it, rubbed it, licked it.
“A stone fish,” Buenaventura said.
Huila took one look and said, “This is a miracle of God,” and made the sign of the cross, by now the favorite gesture of the Exodus.
Don Teófano said, “The work of the devil,” and also made the sign of the cross.
Old men insisted it was left over from Noah’s flood.
Aguirre had proclaimed it an excellent example of ancient Chichimeca stone carving.
Segundo had insisted a witch made it.
Tomás had simply walked away, telling him not to bother him with foolishness.
Buenaventura said, “I think it’s the seed of a fish.”
“What!” Teresita laughed.
“I’m going to put it in a bottle of water, see if it sprouts.”
“Fish don’t sprout!”
“What if they do?” he insisted. “I’ll be a rich man.”
“You’re already rich,” Huila said. “You don’t even know it.”
Buenaventura looked down at his rumpled suit and grimaced.
“What do shoes feel like?” Teresita asked.
“It’s like your feet went to jail,” Buenaventura said.
She made a face, too.
Huila, who didn’t have to go barefoot anymore, said, “It’s not so bad. You can step on stickers and not feel a thing.”
Teresita smiled.
“That’s what huaraches are for.”
“True.” The old woman nodded. “But shoes are more hard. Your toes are safe, the tops of your feet.”
“Like having hooves,” Teresita said.
And they mounted up, into Indian country: passing small as fleas on a rumpled blanket. The Río Navojoa, though broad, was shallower than the Fuerte and Segundo scouted a fine fording spot near another ferry raft. They made camp and watched the wagons cross the water like strange blocky ships, and the buckaroos played cards with a small company of gringo horse-hunters, come down to steal their herd back from a Mexican thief. And the leaves above their heads were turning yellow, something quite marvelous to see. Yellow and red, then falling like moths, spinning through the air.
This night’s camp was on a dry plain. Three Indian men walked into camp and hailed Tomás, asking for a meal. He fed them beans and steak and fried potatoes on pewter plates and fried brains in scrambled eggs. They ate with their fingers and triangular pieces of tortillas. They drank cocoa—it made them laugh. When they were done, they smoked with the men, then stood and said, “Lios emak weye,” and walked into the night without another word.
“Go with God,” Teresita translated.
Tomás called out, “God bless you!” but they said nothing. He shrugged. “If there is a God, it can’t hurt to stay on His good side.”
Teresita and Huila walked toward their camp, holding hands.
“Spies,” Huila said.
The peaks grew heavy with night, the points flaring orange, then impossible molten copper. Red like a deep infection crept down the cliffs and the arroyos, heavy and somehow fluid, until it spilled purple across the plain, drowning wagon after wagon, crawling up the legs of horses until only their backs were left in light, like small oblong islands in a shallow sea. Horse by horse, night conquered the plain. Fires blinked to life, and soon the stars above and the fires below looked the same, as if a slice of the sky had been stretched out on a drying rack so they could eat it in the morning.
All around the llano, the Urrea ranch camped, pitching tents and laying blankets on the shadows of the ghosts who had gone before. Aguirre, unknowing, lay on the spot where riders of the Glanton gang had once laid out a line of salted scalps to dry in the sun; the spot where shell traders from the Sea of Cortes had slept in 1764, and near his left foot the spot where the leader of that party had copulated silently with his third bride; the same spot where Spaniards, searching for El Dorado, had rested before they’d walked ignorantly into a storm of Yaquis