The Almanac of the Dead: A Novel (104 page)

The girls were fourteen. They had talked to other girls, inquiring awkwardly about the other girls’ uncles. When none of the other girls volunteered any information, not even a blush or warning about secret and delicate subjects, the girls began to get the picture. They stopped for orange soda pop at San Isidro, a small town that served as a supply center for the cattle ranches and remote villages. Uncle Federico had inquired after Father Lopez from the woman behind the counter at the little store. Oh, yes, Father Lopez was there. He had a new house, one of those modern house trailers, parked next to the church. Lecha looked at Zeta and Zeta looked at Lecha. They shook their heads. They were both aware of how Uncle Federico was staring at their breasts. There was nothing in the store. The wooden shelves from floor to ceiling along the walls were empty except for a deep layer of gray dust. The soda-pop vending machine had rattled and hummed constantly but left the soda lukewarm. There were dusty harnesses hanging from nails in the wall, but the leather was brittle and cracked. No one there had the money to own horses anyway, the girls knew. Their poorest Indian relatives lived in San Isidro. Their father had sent them each a ten-dollar bill for the trip to Tucson. Zeta tried on the sunglasses, the only other merchandise in the little store. They were a man’s sunglasses, and the layer of dust on the lenses made them look like blind insect eyes. The girls laughed at each other in the glasses. They waited outside on the
shady side of the store building until Uncle Federico came huffing and panting across the plaza from the direction of the church. “Surprise!” he said. “Father Lopez can hear both your confessions. You go over right now and I’ll wait for you in his beautiful house trailer. Come to me right away—just as soon as you’ve finished.”

The confessional box was low and hot and smelled of mutton fat. Lecha went first because she had nothing to confess except that she was angry their father had sent for them instead of letting them live with old Yoeme. The priest had a soft, whispery voice. He asked questions. Was she sad her mother had died? Yes, she was, but her mother had taken a great deal of time to explain that they would meet up again. Only if you get to heaven, my child. She didn’t say that, Lecha told the priest, but probably she forgot. “Five Hail Marys and go right away to the trailer. Your dear uncle is waiting for you.”

Lecha had brushed against a whitewashed wall coming out of the church. She rubbed the black cotton of her skirt against itself to remove the chalky smudge. She walked to the shiny new house trailer slowly. Everything seemed so strange now that their mother was gone. The father who sent for them had not seen them for years. Yet when her mother died, he had sent for them.

Before Lecha could knock on the yellow and white metal door of the house trailer, Uncle Federico opened it wide. “Ah, my dear! All cleansed of sin. Yes. Come inside.” All the floors in the trailer were covered with bright yellow linoleum. Lecha thought of bugs that had splattered across the windshield as they had neared the town.

“Lie down in here for a little nap,” Uncle Federico said. “Take off your dress. Don’t wrinkle it!” He closed the door and left her in a room so small that she could spread her arms and almost touch the walls on either side. She had just lain down when he came in. He felt Lecha’s forehead, then took out the stethoscope he always carried in the pocket of his sport coat. His breath smelled like sour wine and onions. He felt her stomach through her slip. He rubbed her stomach round and round and told her to close her eyes.

“Appendicitis is very common nowadays. Because children eat too many sweets. Now let me feel. Ah, there! Is that where it is? Yes, my dear, now keep your eyes closed and relax. Don’t peek, I am just going to insert my finger in here and probe around.” He was leaning on the bed and she could feel him tiptoe, and the narrow bed creaked under his weight. Lecha had started to open her eyes, but this time Uncle Federico had ordered them shut in a frightening tone. Still Lecha knew
how to cheat at hide-and-seek; through slitted lids she say he held something in his hand. One of his thick, dark cigars. Strange that he would want a cigar during an examination.

SEESE DROVE the big Lincoln sixty-five and seventy all the way from Nogales to Hermosillo. Lecha was giving her directions and coaching her on driving in Mexico.

“Step on it! Don’t ever hesitate! They’ll move out of the way!” Sterling had learned to get out to piss when they stopped for gas because Lecha demanded they drive straight through. They still had to stop to hire shovel hands.

“My information comes from here,” Lecha said as they pulled up to a small whitewashed house with strings of blue morning glories trailing up the front walls. The sun was dropping low, and Seese looked tired. When she glanced at him in the rearview mirror, Sterling thought Seese looked sad. The sun was on the southwest horizon, and the crickets were noisy; a light breeze fluttered the blue morning glories. Lecha had hired teenage boys, around fifteen or sixteen; all three wore clean, mended blue jeans and white T-shirts. They were too shy to speak to Lecha, who rattled on at them in Spanish. She was apparently explaining what she wanted them to do. They answered her with nods of the head. They seemed afraid to brush against Sterling and gave him plenty of room on the back seat. They were a strange group—these teenage boys, Sterling, Seese, and Lecha.

The family graveyard was on a sandy ridge above a salt flat on the southeast side of the bay. The last twilight was fading. Seese had been driving for hours. She was still seeing white lines on pavement although they were winding down a hill on a sandy wagon road. A breeze came across the salt flat and salt crystals glittered in the last light. The sea beyond was thick, blue, and motionless. The family cemetery was surrounded by a low, crumbling wall of ocean cobblestones. Wire fencing, now rusting and sagging, enclosed the entire west and north sides where the wall had fallen and stone was scattered over the ground. The recent
graves were still mounded high. The white wood crosses that marked them were entwined with red and yellow plastic roses and plastic wreathes of green ferns and pink carnations. Graves in the older sections were marked with flat wedges of dark basalt from the low volcanic peaks,
cerros,
they’d passed driving from San Isidro. Some of the black stones had been patterned with crude white crosses gradually weathering away. Around the stone markers the plastic roses and carnations had been planted into the white dune sand as if they had always grown there.

Lecha leaned over the wrought-iron fence and pointed at the graves of Federico, Popa, Cucha, and the others. She had turned to Seese and Sterling and glanced at the three boys. She made a disgusted sound against her teeth with her tongue and shook her head. The three boys leaned on the pick and shovels and watched the strange woman tour the graveyard.

Sterling leaned on the pick and stared off toward the west. He was sorry they had come so late. It would have been nice to see the ocean water of the California Gulf. He had seen the ocean many times from Long Beach where he liked to vacation and visit the amusement park. His favorite ride had been the giant roller coaster. He liked the part of the ride over the ocean in the early evening when the mist and fog rose up and left his jacket and hair soaking. Looking at the smooth, dark-blue surface loosened the big knot of loss in his chest. There were other places he could retire to besides Laguna.

Seese watched Lecha walking from grave to grave. Seese shivered although the air was warm. She had suddenly wanted to get away. Anywhere but Tucson or the Southwest. But Lecha had warned her certain matters take time. They would have to work on the almanac. Seese wandered to the far end of the graveyard where the stone wall was most intact. The graves were closer together here and the stones and crosses were smaller. She stopped at a white stone marker with two baby angels lifting a lamb.

“I didn’t know it would be this easy!” Lecha said triumphantly as the three boys lifted out the first coffin. The pale beach sand on the ridge made easy digging. Lecha had been too excited to notice Seese had turned pale and had stumbled away in the dark.

In the distance, Sterling could hear the town dogs barking. He was nervous. He figured he’d probably get fired, but after all this it would be just as well. These people in Tucson were too strange for him. He’d try to find his cousin in Phoenix. High wages weren’t everything. Sterling was worried about what the Mexican police did to people who disturbed
graves. He held the flashlight while Lecha directed the boys. The coffin was old and the wood was half-rotted. The boys carried it easily. They seemed unconcerned at what they were doing. Sterling had seen the roll of bills Lecha carried in her big black pouch. Maybe she would buy off the police too if they showed up. Sterling was beginning to think that what had happened back on the reservation with the Hollywood movie crew was hardly an incident as compared to the crimes committed in places like Tucson.

Lecha threw open the trunk lid. She did not seem very sick, though Sterling could see her black pouch and suitcase were full of pill bottles and syringes. Of course, Sterling reasoned, Lecha could be relying on that mysterious strength he’d read about in the
Police Gazette
—the strength that crazy people and killer maniacs possessed as they fought off platoons of police with tear gas and live bullets. Lecha gave orders in Spanish. The oldest boy caught the edge of the coffin lid with the toe of his cowboy boot and popped it loose. “Dump it in here,” she said in English, and pointed at the deep trunk of the Lincoln. Sterling was holding the flashlight for them, but he turned his head away, as the boys did, to avoid the fine dust that spumed up. “Well, well, Uncle Federico, here is all that remains of you and your thick, hairy fingers!”

Next came Popa. “We’ll see how you like
your
new home, Auntie.” Lecha directed the boys to enlarge one hole and dump in all the remains of the coffins. When an end of a coffin protruded, she had grabbed the pick from Sterling’s hands and smashed it into kindling. “That’s what we brought tools for,” she said, giving it back to Sterling. He could tell how badly his hands were shaking by watching the beam of light on the beach sand pouring from the boys’ shovels over the remains of the coffins. At the town dump they scattered the bones and remains. Lecha had paid the teenage boys very generously to keep this night confidential. People would accuse her as they had accused old Yoeme of sorcery.

Lecha had got all the news about the war in the South from the teenage gravediggers. The young men had been excited about the rumors and television reports about two brothers from a small mountain village near the Guatemalan border. Spirits talked to one of the twins and told him what the poor people must do, what the poor Indians must do. Spirits talked to him and scolded the people for being lazy and weak, for selling out to the Europeans. The spirits spoke through two big macaws. The macaws had flown out of the jungle to perch on the shoulder of one of the brothers.

Before they left Hermosillo for Tucson, Lecha had directed Seese
to the street with the newsstand where she bought all the Mexico City newspapers. Before the blue and yellow spirit macaws had alighted on the brother’s shoulder, theirs had been just another pitiful group of rural squatters hounded to death by the Mexican army and police.

The big excitement each day was the thousands of Indians and mestizos as well as hundreds of whites who gathered to learn what spiritual messages had been received. The spirit macaws promised spiritual strength and satisfaction to all who marched north. North was the direction of Death, but they must not be afraid. The number of the landless and the homeless and those who joined them had grown steadily, but now the authorities were dealing with a religious cult that seemed not to fear death much because they already talked to spirits of the dead anyway.

Nearly as remarkable as the spirit macaws was the Indian woman leading an all-tribal army that traveled with the spirit macaws to protect the twin brothers who served the macaws and the other faithful followers. The woman had lived with the other twin brother. The woman had been trained by a Cuban Marxist unit, but other reports circulated that other Cubans, only posing as Marxists, had trained La Escapía or the Meat Hook as she called herself.

The all-tribal people’s army had sent a shocking video to local government television stations. La Escapía’s big Indian face had filled the whole video screen. Her big Indian teeth flashed in the close-up. She said she chose the name La Escapía for battle because she thought it was hilarious. Hilarious how terrified the whites were of Indian wars. To further terrorize army and police officers, La Escapía promised if she captured high-ranking officers in battle, she would feed them the steel of her namesake and cook their testicles for lunch. The enlisted men had nothing to fear, she promised. They were welcome to quit the government forces and join the people’s army at any time.

Newspapers reported that the latest messages from the macaw spirits had warned that soon unrest would spread like wildfire across Mexico and U.S. military forces would invade. To save money, La Escapía has videotaped another message for later broadcast, after the U.S. invasion of Mexico. She wants to terrify the young U.S. troops; on the screen flash color photographs of the severed heads of the U.S. ambassador to Mexico and his aide floating faceup in a canal at Xochimilco Garden.