The Day the Rebels Came to Town (6 page)

“Once in a while, a cheque will come from the state government. Not often, but once in a while. But as long as the war is on, the cheques won’t be any good anyway.”

There was a long, long pause.

“Antonio Garcia. Do you really want a coward to be your mayor? Do you really want that for your town?”

“If you are what a coward is, Carlos Orozco, then my answer is yes.”

The next day, Carlos visited the mayor’s office. It was upstairs in the town hall, the two-storey adobe building on the square that his friends had shown him. He liked the office’s view over the north end of the plaza. The padded chair that came with the job looked nice, too. He could imagine greeting people in this cool, shabby room, his desire to help them as real as the sun was round.

That afternoon, Carlos went to the tavern. He did the same the next day, and the day after that as well. After a couple of weeks, he stopped correcting people when they called him Mayor. His foot healed for good, though he was left with a slight limp. He knew that limp would stay with him for the rest of his life.

The war ended, and his thoughts slowed to match the pace of the town. Before very long,
he and Linda got married, blessed by Father Alvarez. Every couple of years, he visited his father in the South, though he noticed that he missed his new home in the North. Linda felt the same way, so they mostly stayed close to home. He and Linda had children, and Carlos loved them with the strength of a madman. Carlos read a lot, and he hunted deer with the other men. Afterwards, in the middle of the desert, the hunters would eat smoked meat and rice boiled in stock and bay leaves.

Carlos also learned to spend hours thinking of nothing at all. With this talent came an ease with life that he had not had before. One day stretched into the next. He made close friends. He fell in love with the sight of a sunset over reaches of sand. Studying the dull, grey desert birds, he came to see their beauty. He even grew to like polka music and the food of the North. Decades passed. As he grew older, he learned that, at times, joy could be so sharp that it felt almost painful.

When Carlos was eighty-three, Linda passed to the next world. Their six children, who all lived in the United States, came for the funeral.
His four girls stayed for a few weeks. The oldest, Margarita, was the last to leave. When he finally convinced her that he would be fine, he walked with her to Rosita’s new bus station. She kissed him and said, “I love you, Papa.” She rode of waving, a fifty-two-year-old woman who was the spitting image of her mother. She even had a grandchild of her own.

“Well,” Carlos thought as he waved, “it won’t be long now.”

The sickness came right away. Within months, he spent more time asleep than awake. Once again, the village cared for him, hiring a young girl to bring him soup and bread and fresh towels. At times he became confused and began talking to her as though the year was 1920, and her name was Linda. The girl did not correct him. She preferred to say, “Yes, Carlos, war is an awful thing. Now, eat your soup. It is getting cold.”

One day he came awake with a clear head. He knew that it was to be his last day alive. He did not feel sad. For the most part he had been a lucky man. He had also been wise enough to enjoy his good fortune. This ability, he knew,
was not enjoyed by most men. Women perhaps, but not men.

Carlos prayed that day, looking over at his little statue of the Virgin Mary. He remembered when Father Alvarez had brought it to him all those years ago. He wondered how long it had been since he’d had a drink with Father Alvarez or Antonio or Fernando. With a shock, he realized that they had all been gone for more than twenty years. Ye t he could still picture them as clearly as if they were right there beside him. It was funny, he thought, how memory worked. It could put you in many different places, all at the same time. Like most things in life, memory was a sort of magic.

He closed his eyes. In his head, he said goodbye to each of his children. They were all in their forties and fifties. Still, he could remember how their baby skin smelled whenever he lifted one of them from a rainwater bath. He was careful to say how much he loved the thing that made each of them different. He also told them that he understood their need to have a better life in America, even if he had died a little bit every time one of them left.

He then moved on to Linda. He told her how much he still adored her and that he would see her soon in heaven. Now that this silly thing called life was over, they could be side by side forever. One day, they would be with their children as well.

“Don’t worry, my darling,” he told Linda. “This short time that we’ve been apart will soon seem like it never even happened.”

Yet when his final moment came, Carlos thought of the same thing he’d thought about each day of his life in Rosita. He thought of the day the rebels came to town. But this time, with death looking him straight in the eyes, he felt no fear. This pleased him. He was a brave man, after all. He was no coward, after all. He laughed. It was so funny—he’d fretted about something untrue for so long. He then enjoyed his final breath and stepped toward something light-filled and unknown.

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