Water and Stone (7 page)

"How was your first day back at school, Billy?"

"It was okay, father."

Rancher Ford always set aside time to have a little talk with his son each evening. Due to his busy schedule he wasn’t often home for dinner but he always made sure to be there before the boy went to bed.

"Tell me a little bit about it, son. Did you enjoy yourself?"

"I met a boy on the bus, father. His name's Church. Big John Gerhard was picking on him and I made him stop."

"You did right, Billy. How old is Church? Is he your age?"

"No... he's a little guy. He is six years old and this was his first day at school."

"I see... and where does Church live?"

"He lives with his mother and aunt at that little shack at the end of Cherry Creek Road. I see him sometimes at the swimming hole."

"His mother works here, doesn’t she, Billy."

"Yes... that's what Church told me."

"You're pretty much a man now, son. There's something you need to know about me. I love your mother but we... well, we don't..."

"You don't sleep together... I know that, father. Mother told me. I see her going to her own room each night."

"I see... well then, you should know something else too. Church is more than a friend to you, Billy."

"He's my brother, isn't he."

"Has anyone ever told you how smart you are, Billy? Yes, Church is your brother... your half brother, that is. You have different mothers but the same father."

"How come he has to live way out there in that shack? They are so poor, father."

"You know this has to be our secret, right Billy? If your mother ever heard of Church and who he is, she might leave and take you with her. I don't think I could bear that."

"I know, father... I'll never tell mother about him but can't we help Church?"

"I'll give it some thought, Billy. You've got a good heart and that's something I'm proud of."

He had to wait until the time was right. If Mrs. Ford suspected he was keeping time with another family she'd make life difficult... her father had connections in places that had been extremely helpful to Rancher Ford and he knew the same men could turn into ferocious enemies should the Senator give the say so.

His wife had taken to spending more of her time back east than in the past... sometimes she was gone for months, long enough that Rancher Ford wondered if she had given up on Texas and the harsh reality of life at the Triple Six. About the time he'd give a sigh thinking she was gone for good, however, she'd show up unexpectedly again at the ranch.

He wondered sometimes why she insisted on hanging onto a marriage neither of them were especially happy in... it probably had to do with her father and his judgment of her should she divorce, just as everything else in her life revolved around the man's point of view. His father in law had always seemed larger than reality to Rancher Ford and as distant as the moon and stars. Still, he knew how much his wife loved the man.

His own parents were long dead. He had received a clipped obituary newspaper column in the mail some years back telling how his father had passed away of cancer after suffering for many years. Rancher Ford figured it served the man right. A short time later another obituary arrived proclaiming the death of his mother. The clipping didn't say how the old lady had died, only that she did, nor did he know at the time who'd sent the articles.

It puzzled him that he didn't feel more remorse for their passing. The feelings he once harbored for his parents had long ago died away into a disinterest bordering upon quietude. He neither loved nor hated them any longer... there was nothing at all remaining inside his heart for them.

Perhaps that was why he stayed with Lorraine despite their obvious differences in both age and attitude. He owed the woman something... she'd brought a son into the world and Rancher Ford worshipped the ground that the boy walked upon.

He supposed he'd stay married to the woman forever if she'd have him.

Those who spoke English called it the Valley of the Monarchs but Church thought the name sounded much prettier in Spanish.

English was such a harsh language. The words grated upon the most sensitive parts of his ears like the German from which it descended. He'd always thought of Spanish, on the other hand, as the language of romance, of lovers, and Church often wondered why his mother forbade him to speak it for so long.

Each fall millions of the orange and black butterflies migrated there to fatten up for their long journey north come spring and to mate when the mild winter winds were right. They alighted upon everything turning the forest canopy into a living montage of wings weighing down the tree limbs until they brushed the valley floor.

Church landed in the middle of the Valle de las Mariposa Monarca along with a billion of monarchs upon the dawn of the day of the dead, or Dia de los Muertos as it was known in that land. Rather than fluttering his wings, however, he rode into the valley in an old battered pickup truck not knowing exactly where he was going or what he was going to do when he arrived. In the coming years the journey would become as much of a habit of migration for him as for the splendid butterflies.

Church Gutiérrez had been born in a dusty little chabola in the north of Texas. His father—a well-known rancher who'd amassed a great estate by buying up land from local farmers during the dry years—neglected his boy for years. Instead of helping support his illegitimate family, the man seemed to spend all his money on land. Desperate for a little cash to make their getaways to damper climes the desiccated farmers sold their parched land for a third of its true value and since Rancher Ford was wealthy he did most of the buying.

Church was born to one of the many migrant workers—Yanielle Gutiérrez—and the only one who'd stayed on permanently at Rancher Ford's personal request, obstinately to cook and to clean the enormous hacienda ranch house inhabited by the Ford family. Apparently the man had taken it as another duty of one of his prettiest employees to comfort him on those long dark Texas nights while fat Mrs. Ford was away visiting relatives back east.

After the baby was born Rancher Ford didn't acknowledge his paternity to Church in any way other than to allow the boy and his mother continued use of a tiny two room shanty at the back of the property where they'd be seen as little as possible, especially by Mrs. Ford, who—from the swirling rumors he heard—had a sharp eye and an even keener nose for sniffing out details such as small children who bore a striking resemblance to her constantly philandering husband. Eventually the man deemed it proper to lend Church the use of his name when the boy came of age though Rancher Ford would pass away before making that arrangement legal.

The tiny chabola where they lived was situated a short distance from the confluence of two creeks—Cherry and Manaza—neither of which ever ran dry no matter how severe the droughts that periodically swept over the land became. The water hauled in buckets from those creeks allowed more vegetation to grow around their home than was the wont of most houses in that area and taking advantage of that fact Church's mother planted many and diverse gardens about the place lending it a homey air despite the overriding poverty with which the family seemed to be perpetually stricken.

As a matter of course little Church didn't know anything of his father for the first six years of his life. It wasn’t until his aunt from Mexico visited them that the boy finally began to learn of his heritage. That visit turned into a lifetime, at least in the boy's reckoning. His aunt who he called Tia ended up teaching Church many things though most of them weren't good.

His mother's sister, Evalena Gutiérrez, frightened him more than a little. A small woman not much taller than four feet even in her high shoes, she possessed a manner and style not all together unlike that of the Wicked Witch of the West as told in one of his favorite books, The Wizard of Oz. He didn't understand how prescient his feelings actually were towards his Tia until years later.

Though just as strikingly beautiful as Church's mother, his aunt had only one good eye—her left eye—and it seemed enormous. She always wore a black patch over her right eye which made the boy curious as to what she might be hiding under it. Church occasionally overheard some of the migrant workers passing by the chabola addressing her as La Profeta while genuflecting many times as if to ward off the devil herself.

He didn't know what La Profeta meant but something in the way the men said it suggested to his fragile and undeveloped mind that it wasn't something to be desired in an aunt. Still, being a blood relative his mother told him in no uncertain terms that he was required to respect if not love the woman.

Tia Evalena Gutiérrez wore her raven hair long and tied up in a high knot on top of her head only letting down in the evening when the little work she did during the day was finished and the hoot owls came out to serenade one another in the slender and ever-thirsty ash trees surrounding the little chabola where they lived tucked far away from Rancher Ford and the finery of his vast Triple Six hacienda set in the middle of thousands of acres of ranch land slowly burning up under the hot Texas sun.

"Come over here and help me, boy."

She always called him boy, as if he had no other name, or at least none she dared speak. He imagined she'd spent her long life being ordered about by her superiors so now she'd taken it upon herself to do the same to those who she deemed inferior, him being one.

Though he told himself he should hate it, he actually loved brushing Tia Evalena Gutiérrez's long silken black hair until it shined with a luminescence all its own. She always took the time to scold him that he pulled too hard even when he was extra careful with the brush.

Sometimes she'd look at him with that one enormous eye—each night her hair required one hundred strokes—and inform him that he was muy mala suerte, which of course he didn't understand since his mother raised him from a young age to speak English, only scolding him in Spanish if she became angry which was seldom if ever.

"Please don't say such things, sister... Church is good boy. Why do you have to pick on him so much?"

Church noticed how his mother and his aunt never called each other by their names instead preferring use the term 'sister' or 'hermana' when they spoke in Spanish. For years he always imagined that he and his mother were people of wealth for he didn't stray far from their abode other than to wander the surrounding fields and play at the old church and along the creeks that meandered a quarter mile past the parched field that comprised the back yard of the chabola.

If someone asked him he'd have professed to want for nothing as his mother had been careful to raise Church in the belief that they had all they needed inside their hearts: love. Still, they were as poor as the soil under their feet which he would one day discover.

Though he didn't know it until he grew older their life wasn't easy in that little chabola hidden away in the vastness of a land too big to encompass with the sweep of the eyes. Church never knew how poor they really were until it came his time to take leave of his mother and attend school in a big red brick building only reached after an hour long ride upon a high yellow bus which drove many miles just to pick him up each morning.

Since the doorstep of the tiny chabola was the last stop on the driver's route the bus was already filled with other students and though he didn’t know it most of who were just as poor as Church. Yet there were a few who seemed to relish the opportunity to make fun of the small boy with eyes dark as coal and hair cut like his mother had placed a soup bowl over his head to use as a pattern which in fact she did, not wanting to send him to school with hair down to his shoulders.

"What's your name, kid... is it Esse?"

The boy was much taller than Church even sitting down with rolls of lard protruding over the top of his pants and a shirt that didn’t cover his belly and flaming red hair sprouting out of a head filled with freckles. He had little pale blue pig eyes set so deeply in his fat face that they could hardly be seen.

Looking down the aisle for possible allies in the unexpected challenge confronting him, Church's eyes fell upon a little brown haired girl probably his age who for just a second seemed ready to stand up and come to his defense but then something in her demeanor changed, as if she might have realized even the two of them stood no chance against the bully. He couldn’t blame her. He had to go it alone.

"My name's Church."

His voice sounded like the squeaking mouse he once saw that had caught a leg in one of mother's traps and he felt just as small. The world was so much bigger than he had imagined and the people in it suddenly seemed much meaner than he hoped.

"No it isn't. No one has a name like that. Your name is Esse. Say it... my name is Esse. Who cuts your hair, Esse? You look like a girl. Are you a little girl?"

Church started to walk past the big kid and sit down but the boy stuck out a fat leg to block his way. The bus driver, either oblivious to what was going on—which was hard to believe since the woman was only a few feet away—or else she simply didn’t care, shifted the bus into gear and headed off down the road causing Church to stumble forward into the leg stretched across the aisle hyper-extending the kid's knee and causing him to squeal in pain.

"Ouch! You did that on purpose, you little bastard. Now you're going to get it... I'm going to pound you good when we get off this bus."

"Leave him alone, John. If you want to pick on someone, try me."

A boy sitting a few seats down had spoken up without standing. When the bully turned to confront whoever was butting into his business with Church the fat kid's red face turned a special shade of crimson as if he knew he had met his match. He wouldn't bother Church again for years.

Church had seen his benefactor before. He was an older boy and he lived at the Triple Six hacienda though Church understood he wasn’t supposed to know that. Yani, his mother, had always kept her boy on a tight lease but sometimes on the oppressively hot summer days when even the oaks wept and the aspen trees wilted in the sweltering heat he was allowed to go to the spot where the two creeks met... only under her supervision, of course.

She went to work early in the morning and labored deep into the night but his mother was allowed a midday siesta when she would often make the trip back to the chabola where they might do something special just the two of them. It was one of the few opportunities they had to spend time together. Church relished it, especially when they went to the swimming hole.

Though the creeks ran low during the hot summer days the waters seemed to never quite dry up and there were certain spots where they ran deep and cold. One such hole was not too far behind the chabola where the two creeks merged and though he was restricted from going there by himself when he grew older sometimes mother would take him to wade in the cool waters under the vast weeping willows that hung like curtains over the rippling water offering up their cooling influence upon the still and damp air beneath their canopy.

The boy who was his savior had waved Church over to the empty seat next to him and with a motion of his hand offered him a place to sit. Church had been dreading going to school but now he thought how it might not be as awful as he imagined. Everything seemed better now that he had a friend.

"What's your name? I think I know you from somewhere, don't I?"

"My name's Willem but everyone calls me Church. What's your name?"

"My name's William Ford but everyone calls me Billy. That's funny how our real names are nearly the same."

"My mother told me she was going to name me William but then she changed her mind."

"You live in the little house out back on our Triple Six ranch, don't you, Church?"

"Yes, that's right. I live there with my mother and my aunt."

"That's close to where I go swimming."

"I think I've seen you at the swimming hole, Billy. I'm not allowed to go by myself. My mother says I'm too young."

"Hey... maybe sometime I can come by your house and we can go swimming together."

"I'd like that, Billy... thank you."

"What's your mother's name, Church?"

"Her name's Yanielle but everyone calls her Yani."

"Sure... she works at the hacienda. I see her all the time."

"Yes, that's right. She does work at the hacienda."

"How come I never see you there, Church?"

"My mother says I'm not allowed. If I were to be there it might disturb her work. I have to stay at the chabola and wait for her to get home."

"Aren't you afraid? That cabin where you live is out in the middle of nowhere."

"No... my aunt stays with me now. For a long time we had a girl named Maria staying with us. She watched me while mother was away but she went back home."

"What do you like to do, Church?

"I like to read, mostly."

"Aren't you too young to read, Church?"

"I don't know. I guess."

He hoped it didn’t sound as if he was boasting but it did. He rarely spoke of reading to anyone, not even to his mother. When he had first taught himself he wanted brag to someone about it but he quickly learned how making a show of himself wasn’t a good thing.