Water and Stone (9 page)

He winked at her as he walked them to the door and out to the car and she knew without him saying so that he was referencing her mismatched shoes. Riding back to Guthrie Lorraine found herself struck by the stark if unremarkable beauty of the land and wondered why she had not noticed it before.

Tree Patterson loved Church Gutiérrez from afar.

Her name was really Teresa but some boys in school began calling her Tree on account of her looking like a stick, tall and spindly. It started out as more of a taunt—just another way of bullying her—but she actually liked the nickname so much she began referring to herself as Tree.

Hers was a useless sort of love, unrequited, one that emerged not from any interaction with the boy but rather erupting alongside a raging feeling that if Church would only recognize her sickness then together they might salve the pain they both carried from living in such a hard and an uncaring world.

Most of all she suffered from the burning desire to simply be with him. That they were never alone didn't figure into her thoughts. She found intense joy simply sitting in the back of the classroom and watching the boy as he studiously attended to all the teacher's actions while she found herself continually being called out for not paying attention.

It was his fault. Why did the boy have to be so attractive? It wasn’t fair. None of the other boys held even the least appeal for her... especially the ones who thought they were all that... the jocks, the Friday night football heroes... watching them strut around the hallways in school made her want to vomit.

Though she longed to share the news of her affliction with someone—anyone—she was shy about telling either of her sisters about Church. She especially knew not to say a word to mother about the boy... after all, he was the son of a migrant worker, doubtlessly an itinerate child of paupers who were little more than gypsies forever wandering from their mother country to the great state of Texas to take advantage of the many employment opportunities afforded people like them.

Still, the boy seemed unlike the other brown-skinned children who appeared every spring and every fall, traveled with their families from field to field, and then promptly vanished again into the void from which they sprang. When those kids attended school—which was seldom and only for a few weeks each spring and fall—they all spoke Spanish. Whenever anyone said something to them in English a blank look crossed their faces.

Church spoke fluent English and what's more, he bore no accent. That and the fact that they lived in Texas year around made him and his family something of an anomaly, at least in the countryside surrounding Guthrie.

Not only that but Church lived on the biggest ranch in northern Texas. Though Tree had heard that his mother was simply a housemaid for the owner of the Triple Six, she'd always yearned to live way out in the country like that... and though Church's little cabin seemed more like a playhouse than a place where someone could live, she always thought how the home had an enchanted feeling to it as if inhabited by magic.

Maybe it was all the flowerbeds. Just about every other dwelling in and around Guthrie sat upon dried out plots of land that resembled her idea of hell but each time the school bus pulled up to the end of Cherry Creek Road where Church lived Tree found herself stifling a gasp at the beauty of the place.

Of course to him, she was nothing. Each time she looked his way hoping to attract the boy's attention Church ignored her. Sometimes she felt his eyes on her yet when she turned to look he put his head down as if he was disgusted by what he saw.

If only she had been born the pretty one instead of a plain Jane he might fancy her. As things stood, Tree knew her chances were virtually nil of ever exciting the love in Church's eyes.

She still remembered the first time she saw Church... how alive he seemed in a world full of dead people. Others noticed it too... they bullied him for it just like they did her. For a fast moving instant, she thought about sticking up for the little black haired boy with the light shining in his dark eyes but then she sank back into melancholia.

She'd been down that path before. They would only turn on her, Church too. He would join forces with the others happy to finally be accepted. She could almost see the leer upon his face as he hurled insults her way, berating her like they all did on how homely she was and how stupid.

Still... what if she'd taken a chance that day? Maybe she might've become friends with Church the same way Billy Ford had done. She couldn’t help but notice how the two of them always sat beside one another on the bus even though Billy was four years older than Church in contradistinction to her always being alone even if someone happened to sit beside her.

"How was school today, Teresa?"

Each night as they all sat around the dinner table her father asked each girl the same question. On that particular day, Tree remembered how the teacher asked the class to write a short essay on what they hoped to do when they were adults.

Tree had written about how she wanted to meet a special person and settle down in Guthrie to raise a family and keep the house while her husband went off to work each morning. She even knew who she was going to marry.

After she read over what she wrote, she tore it up and instead made up a story about wanting to be a teacher. Even as she put the words down on paper she knew she was but currying favor... pandering for a better grade... taking the easy way out.

Once again, she crumpled up her paper and made up a fantasy about being a model... of wearing expensive designer outfits and walking the runway as a million photographers snapped her picture so she could be on the cover of all the fashion magazines.

When the teacher read the essays aloud and came to Tree's the entire classroom began tittering about her ambitions and she'd turned red as the apple she'd brought for the teacher and she wanted more than anything to shrink down to the size of an ant and scamper out of the room and never return.

"It was good, father."

She had no idea how to tell him that she hated school... that if she had her druthers she would just as soon sit in her bedroom and stick kitchen utensils into her eyeballs. On the other hand, mother was always home. At least going to school lent Tree the chance to be rid of the shrew's constant harping if only for a few hours.

"Don't set your sights too high, Teresa. You aren’t anywhere near as pretty as your sisters. Sometimes I wonder how I could've produced such an ugly duckling. It must've been your father's doing... his sisters are certainly no prizes."

Her mother had no qualms about setting Tree straight about her potential in the world but she hated it when the woman blamed her father for things he couldn’t help. Tree was glad she looked more like his side of the family than mother's side. Though mother and both her sisters were beautiful, they seemed to be lacking in the capacity to feel the pain of others.

Tree understood how she sometimes felt too much. She tended to try and take all the suffering in the world onto herself in order to spare the feelings of not only her family but even strangers. She spent hours kneeling in prayer—until her knees ached so badly she could hardly stand up when she finally finished forgiving everyone who had ever slighted her in even the least way—wracking her memory to dredge up all those people who tormented her even unknowingly.

Church was always first and last in her thoughts. She could see the boy's face, inhale his fragrance, hear his voice, and even reach out to touch him. Yet he was forever a mirage, a fantasy, a figment of her overactive imagination somehow made real.

Even as the years began to pile up... when the boy no longer rode the bus to school but instead drove himself in an old pickup truck with a loud muffler and that had no license plates but none of the cops ever seemed to pay it any attention... Tree still fancied after the boy.

Some mornings she would rise early while telling herself if she began walking to school Church might happen to drive past, stop, and ask if she wanted a ride. She even plotted on how she'd tell him no at first so as to play hard to get—coy—to make him want her all the more.

Sometimes as she walked down the street she'd hear his truck rumbling in the distance and watch in anticipation as it drew closer, actually stopping by the side of the road and waiting for him to pull up next to her.

But he only roared on by... probably on his way to pick up a prettier girl, one more intelligent and refined. Instead of making her love for him diminish, his indifference only acted as a sort of fertilizer, causing it to blossom in ways she never thought possible.

"One day you're going to be mine, Church Gutiérrez."

She smiled as she said the words aloud knowing no one would ever hear them but her yet not caring.

She was happy his father finally decided to pay attention to Church.

The boy deserved happiness... he'd never one to complain, even when he was just a baby he rarely cried. Though she did her best for them life had been hard. When Evalena showed up Yani wondered if it might be a sign of better times but nothing changed. Instead, the woman seemed to work at nothing except cultivating the good graces of the Ford family.

"Let me make love to you with the light on, Yani. I want to see how beautiful you really are... you always seem to hide that gorgeous body of yours."

Rancher Ford had many desires which she'd satisfied but that one she could never force herself to accommodate. No one had ever before seen her from shoulders to feet... she even wore long sleeve shirts on hot summer days. And though she loved Rancher with all her heart she knew if he ever gotten a glimpse of her body in the light he'd leave and never return.

She made sure that they always made love in the dark. Night seemed to be the only time he could get away from his wife and even if he were to suddenly appear during the day Yani would have fled his presence under heavy blankets rather than risk his gaze.

She never understood what had happened to her on the night of her fifteenth birthday... only that her father and his compatriots had conspired to inoculate her body with some sort of magic unguent which caused welts to appear everywhere they had applied the mixture.

Oh, they had been careful not to mar her face and hands, but the rest of her? After the welts and redness subsided whatever concoction they had used on her body rendered oblong blotches of translucent white upon her skin though as she stood in front of the mirror peering at herself Yani couldn’t quite say if the patches were white or blue or perhaps even yellow.

"I look just like that stone."

It was true. The stone that she'd buried beneath the sycamore tree growing out of the old church had the same color qualities as her skin. The translucent patches covering her body didn't hurt nor did the affected skin feel any differently. Still, looking at her reflection filled Yani with a deep foreboding that she didn't understand.

"Please leave the light off, Rancher. Do anything you want to me, but please don't turn on the light."

Finally, she lost him anyhow. It wasn’t his fault. A man deserved to see the woman with who he made love and she would've dearly loved to have seen him too. She simply didn't have the answers to the questions that would have inevitably arisen.

Evalena didn't share her burden. She watched as the woman sunned herself under the hot Texas sky with nearly nothing on while yearning to do the same. There were times when Yani wanted to demand that Evalena tell her why she'd abused like that but something made her keep silent... a premonition maybe, or a suspicion.

Had she been some type of experiment for the cult to which her father belonged? And if so, would Evalena inform the brethren of her whereabouts knowing that whatever they were trying to do had ultimately been successful? Still, had it? Perhaps what had happened to her was merely an allergic reaction to whatever noxious substance they used on her body.

Yani often wondered about the patch Evalena wore over her right eye. She assumed the girl had lost the eye somehow—an accident, perhaps, a bar fight most likely or a punch from a drunken trick—and wore the patch to spare others the sight of an empty socket staring out at them.

What if Evalena wore the patch over her eye for the same reason she covered her body from shoulders to feet? Had something wicked happened to her eye? Though Yani yearned to know she didn't have the courage to ask or the sass to lift the patch while her sister slept.

Perhaps Evalena had been abused the same way she was though Yani couldn’t help but remember how her sister was always their father's favorite... how the two of them did everything together while leaving her alone as if they were ashamed of her.

Was Evalena in hiding too? It made sense. There could be few other reasons why the girl would choose to stay at the chabola as poor as it was instead of living a life of wealth in the city. She was pretty enough to attract rich men and she didn't have the same skin problem as Yani to worry about.

She'd no reason to believe Evalena wished to be found anymore than she did. The woman was obviously doing her best to live in secrecy. She noticed how Billy Ford had taken to visiting the chabola ever more frequently even when Church wasn’t there and how he and Evalena would spend increasingly inordinate amounts of time talking over plans to buy a neighboring ranch... or rather to trade some property in Mexico that Evalena had managed to acquire for it.

Her sister was a whore who ran a house of ill repute, or so the rumors went that floated about the Triple Six like the gossamer falling from the oak trees when the wind was up and the weather was particularly dry and hot. She tried not to listen to the gossip but she sensed how the other workers had a propensity to speak just loudly enough that she'd hear.

Yani wanted to warn Billy Ford... to tell him how the woman she called her sister wasn't actually related to her... that she was part and parcel to a dangerous cult that make use of people like him to advance their own agendas, never to help them achieve whatever dreams they might once have harbored.

She knew Billy Ford lived to impress his father. She liked that about him but on some level he reminded her too much of herself at that age. She too wanted nothing more than to be her father's good girl, to do whatever she could to curry favor with a man who in the end only used her as some sort of pawn in a game far larger than she imagined.

What would have happened to her if she hadn't run away that night? She often wondered if perhaps she would've become one of those girls who simply vanished and no matter who looked for her or where or for how long her disappearance would always remain forever a mystery. Still, by her running away hadn't she wrought the same destiny for herself?

She wanted a normal life. For a time, she thought she'd found it at the tiny chabola in Texas with her son. It didn’t matter that they lived in the most extreme poverty. She was as happy there as she'd ever been. But then Evalena showed up again.

"Why can't you just die and leave us alone?"

She muttered the words while looking out the one lone window at her sister and Billy Ford. They seemed uncomfortably close today as if plotting the overthrow of the known world. Evalena stroked Billy's hair the way a lover might. Yani didn't want to think what that might mean.

She'd noticed Church drawing away from the boy. They used to be as close as two brothers could be but lately Church had taken to spending more time alone with the ponies while Billy spent his days with Evalena. She knew how much her son loved the animals... all of them, the goats, the pigs, even the cows were Church's pets. But he seemed especially drawn to the miniature horses that Rancher Ford raised for show and for sport.

They were marvelous animals not much bigger than a large dog and remarkably intelligent. She liked the way Church always insisted on leaving the radio on for them saying how much they enjoyed the music, and not just any music... it had to be classical.

"They're like your children. When I watch you with your ponies I think what a marvelous husband and father you'll make someday, my son."

Her boy laughed and walked away with an embarrassed look on his face as if he thought she might be teasing him but it was true... any man who cared for his fellow creatures as much as Church would doubtlessly become a man of substance... perhaps not one of wealth, but one of a sense of feelings that ran far deeper than the ordinary man's might.

Yani couldn’t help but notice too how Rancher Ford and Church spent a good deal of time together both riding around the Triple Six and sequestered indoors, inside the man's gargantuan office that took up an entire wing of the hacienda.

Was the man grooming their son for something special? Knowing how a rift was opening between Rancher and his other son Billy Ford started Yani to daydreaming how one day the ranch might belong to Church. The boy deserved some happiness in his life after all the years he had spent living in poverty.

She saw too that Rancher Ford kept casting his eyes her way while she endlessly worked around the hacienda cleaning up after all the others, cooking and serving meals, doing laundry and scrubbing toilets. She sensed his gaze following her.

The man had grown older during the twenty years since they last made love... the small paunch around his hips had grown larger, the early male-pattern baldness had pushed his hairline so far back that when he removed his hat he was virtually bald, and his face was flabbier, not nearly as tight and self-assured as it once was.

On the other hand, looking into her mirror Yani noted how she hadn't changed at all. She still wore the same clothes she had when she came to the Triple Six and sometimes it astonished her to look at the reflection staring back and see no wrinkles forming yet, not even the tiny crows' feet around the eyes that most women fought so hard to control and yet ended up failing in the end.

As near as she could figure she was close to seventy years old now. She remembered how Evalena had been a grown girl when she had been so little she could walk under a table top without hitting her head on it. Was their youthful appearance the result of their family heritage? It was possible she supposed... her father too was an extremely youthful and energetic man.

On the other hand, it frightened her to know she couldn't stay on the Triple Six much longer without drawing unwanted attention. The same migrant workers appeared looking a little older year after year and already she heard rumblings of discontent pertaining to the housekeeper who never seemed to age.

Her thoughts never strayed far from the piedra buried beneath the sycamore tree. As the years hurried past Yani began to consider ways she might take the stone and leave the Triple Six ranch behind... to go somewhere that no one knew her and start over again. But the thought of never seeing Church again tore at her heart in ways she didn’t think possible.

There were times when she hated being her father's daughter.