The Hummingbird's Daughter_ A Novel - Luis Alberto Urrea [56]
“If God is everywhere, my children,” he was saying, “then He is in everything. If He is in everything, then He is in me, then He is me. And I am God.”
Wood flutes were twittering away. Drums sounded an endless heartbeat.
“I am the God of this world, my children. The last time I came, you killed me on the cross. I have come back to this flesh to lead you to truth.”
A dancer shouted once and fell on his back—his feet kicked and hammered the dirt.
“He’s going to pee,” Huila noted.
And he did.
Chepito droned on. It was obvious he had been talking now for hours. Perhaps for days. Those around them were asleep on their feet.
“God is not God. I am God. The God who made this world, the God who rules you now, the Yori God, He is the evil one. This world is a trick. Only through devotion to Niño Chepito will this wicked incarnation end! The white man will die! The dead will then rise! A flood will cover the earth, and new soil thirty feet deep will sprout new corn and flowers! Have I not told you of the flood? Have I not promised to reincarnate all the dead? The deer will be fat on the flowers, and she will offer all true believers her sweet flesh!”
“Niño Chepito!”
“Chepito, Chepito.”
“The Yori must die. The mestizos must die. The angels will eat these souls, for Niño Chepito will not guide them to salvation, my children. No.”
“May we leave now?” whispered Teófano.
“Death is life,” Chepito said. “Do you see? Death is life. Death is life. Death is life.”
The drums sped up. Voices began to chant along with him.
Huila stared up at the messiah for a moment, then shook her head. “Let’s go,” she said.
As they pushed their way back out of the crowd, people laid hands on them, weakly grabbed at their clothes, tried to hold them, saying, “Where are you going?” and “The dark angels wait outside this valley to consume you.”
Teresita was frightened when she saw Tía weeping openly, raising her hands to the sun, crying, “Death! Death! Death!”
Tía saw Teresita and rushed to her, threw her arms around her and kissed her on the cheek.
“La muerte!” she hissed. “Niño Chepito nos lleva a la muerte!”
Teresita pulled herself out of her aunt’s grasp and ran after Huila.
She looked back. Tía fell to her knees and put her face in the dirt and rolled her head back and forth. The drums fell back to a heartbeat rhythm, and Chepito’s voice was small and dry, like the call of a distant crow.
She never saw Tía again.
Seventeen
THOUGH SOME STAYED BLISSFUL and delivered with the peregrinos of Niño Chepito’s evangelical camp, the rest of the People felt lean and ready to travel on. They had grown used to the road and the ground and the open sky. They had grown disciplined, awakening quickly at first light, starting their many fires and cooking faster every day, and they leapt to their wagons and carts and fell into order without speaking. Like children in a classroom, they had each found their spot among the many, and they did not deviate from it. Their new sense of organization was a joy to them. The Urrea ranch had transformed itself, again, into a morning spiral that curled and curled and then opened to spill them away from each encampment in a long steady flow. They were as synchronized as ants.
“Perhaps,” Don Teófano suggested, “in Cabora, the milk is sweet as honey.”
“What if,” an old woman offered, “the honey tastes like milk?”
“I don’t think I’d like that, comadre,” he said.
They all voted: sweet milk was better than milky honey.
“Where does this land of milk and honey come from?” Teresita asked in the wagon one day.
“The Bible,” said Huila.
“Can we read it?”
“The priest can read it,” Huila said. “We don’t read it.”
“Why not?”
“We just don’t.”
“Priests,” said Teófano, “go to school to read that book.”
“Why can’t we?” Teresita insisted.
“We’re not priests,” said Huila.
“But you said we do holy work. We work medicine and pray to the saints and the Virgin and the four directions.”
“Don’t be a pest, child.”
“Aren’t we the same as a priest?”
“Who?”
“Curanderas!