Hard Red Spring (12 page)

Father nodded, allowing this baffling point. “Well, we'll see. But for now, I'll celebrate staying, you can celebrate leaving. In the end, one of us will be happy. That's something to drink to.” He uncorked the bottle and held it out for Mother. “Play us a song on the piano, Evie!”

Evie did not move. Despite their smiles, she sensed trouble. They sometimes forgot the old tricks didn't work on her anymore. Evie knew there were different kinds of smiles, and theirs now showed toothy and sad. Father did not notice the lack of music, and began to sing:

Mother took the bottle and drank from it with the quick, successive gulps Evie recognized from Indians drinking on the side of the road. Each motion sent her right arm up, showing the white skin through the hole in her dress. Evie watched, unbelieving, as they passed the bottle back and forth. Until today Father did not drink and Mother certainly did not drink. It was a
source of pride, which Mother always shared with anyone who would listen. Robert doesn't drink. He may disappear for months, hop trains like a hobo, but at least he doesn't drink. Yet here they were, drinking, not even something respectable like brandy from the Frenchman's shop. No, drinking Indian moonshine straight from the bottle.

The song made Mother smile feebly. Father complimented her on her dress, her hair, tracing over her face and leaving a pink smudge. He then slipped his stained fingers down inside Mother's dress and she did not flinch away for propriety but held him there. Evie watched his hand push one of her breasts up, making a mountain that spilled over the neckline. And here were her parents, kissing in the middle of the room. Standing and kissing and making up with violent, desperate movements that sent them stumbling back. Evie, very conscious of her manners, tried to leave, but they blocked the way to the door.

—

The new workers did not understand the delicacy of the harvest. Judas spent the entire day yelling at them, while Mother spent the afternoon lying down with a wet cloth over her eyes, trying not to hear the yelling. Father promised he'd watch Evie so she could rest.

“Don't you let her out of your sight, Robert,” she commanded from beneath the cloth. “Only Judas can bring the baskets, hear? The others aren't allowed to see her.”

Father and Evie worked in the cooking shed, keeping two fires. Inside, it was hot and so cramped that two people couldn't fit inside without being all over each other. But Evie enjoyed being so near her father, and found comfort in his complicated, intimate scent: oil, manure, hay, and smoke. She felt a rush of gratitude each time he took a moment to explain something, thinking maybe he had changed his mind about firing her. If she could understand and help with the harvest, she wouldn't be too expensive to keep.

“The pregnant ones are the only ones we harvest. They have the most carminic acid,” Father said. “The others aren't worth our time.”

Father placed a cochineal bug on the sorting table and held a lantern to it. It didn't look like a bug at all, but like a confectionary from the Frenchman's shop. A small, soft ball, rolled in powdered sugar. Then Father used his thumb to squash it.

“Look,” he said, bringing his magnifying glass from the shelf. “Look here.” He held the glass over the bug to reveal the suddenly huge smothered body. “That's what we're after,” he explained. “See all that?” The bug's demise, amplified a million times, looked like a lake of blood.

Evie stepped back, averting her eyes. “That's terrible, all that blood.”

“No, no,” Father reassured her. He pushed her to look again. “It's not blood, sweetie. It just looks like blood. That's carminic acid.”

Evie reconsidered the crushed body through the eye of the magnifying glass. She looked for any remnants of a face, of limbs, of a mouth. The bugs were pregnant, but there was no sign of a baby, just the red.

“See? It's not so bad. Quite beautiful, really.” When he straightened, his huge blue eye filled the glass, finding her. “And it's worth much more than plain old blood.”

“But it's still dead.”

The bugs went into the stove powdery white and came out gray. Evie helped Father lay them out in the sun, where they dried into pellets. These pellets Father sold to merchants, who powdered and sold them as dye. A deep red, vivid dye.

“Pay attention, Evie. It's important to keep two fires to get an even heat. You make two smaller fires and you keep some hot coals between them, instead of one big fire. That way you can cook more bugs at a time and not burn them.”

“You cook them alive? Don't they crawl away?”

“They can't, honey. Once the females get pregnant, their legs fall off.”

She held up a cooked specimen. “How horrible. Poor bug.”

“Berries,” Father corrected. “After they're cooked, we call them berries.”

“Berries? Why?”

“Let's put it this way,” he said. “If you're a rich lady from Boston, would you rather buy lipstick made from cochineal bugs or cochineal berries?”

“I thought it was used for clothes. Don't they use the dye for clothes?”

“Among other things,” Father answered. “Cochineal berries are in everything. In clothes, paint, powder, soap, and lipstick.”

“Lipstick? In Mother's lipstick?”

“Oh yes! But don't tell her that. I don't think she knows. Let's not ruin lipstick for her, too.” He laughed, and Evie could not tell at whose expense. “That's the beauty of faraway lands, Evie. Something as terrible as a bug's guts gets magically transformed into a berry. All it takes is a short trip across the ocean.”

—

“It's going to work,” Father said, beaming over dinner with his mouth full. They were able to pick and process five bags of cochineal that day. “If we can do this for a week, everything will be fine. These workers—they're terrible, but I have more of them than I ever did.”

“And I helped,” Evie reminded her father. “I kept the fires going.”

“Yes, you did, Evie.”

Pow!
A shot rang out from the yard, making Evie and Mother jump.

Mother said nothing, just drank from her glass of the Indian moonshine. The thick yellow liquid reminded Evie of bile, of what she threw up when there was nothing more left.

“What's wrong, Mattie, my love?”

Why did Father keep asking that? He knew, even Evie knew, what was wrong: money, scary Indians. And now this random gunfire, punctuating the evening in unpredictable bursts.

“Don't be scared,” Father reminded them for the tenth time. “It's just Judas calling the Indians. It's the fastest way to get them all together.”

Mother nodded. Evie studied her lipsticked mouth, the bright bug guts smeared along the rim of her glass and her frown.

“Mattie. I'm sorry. But they're spread out all over the fields, it's the only way—”

“She's still here.”

“Who's still here?” Father asked warily.

“Ixna. I saw her in the yard today. I yelled at her, but she won't leave. She's just moved into the forest. She won't leave!”

Pow!

“I didn't see her,” Father insisted, unflinching, refilling her glass. “Maybe she forgot something.”

“You're going to call the police.”

“I can't have the police up here. I'll have Judas find her. In an hour, she'll be gone. I promise.” He took her hand. “Will you please cheer up? Things are working out.”

“I can't be happy, Robert. Even if Ixna falls off a cliff, even if the harvest succeeds, I cannot relax until I know where the money came from.”

“I was advanced money on something that doesn't matter, because I'm going to be able to pay it all back with the money from the harvest. So nothing's lost.”

“Something that doesn't matter?” Mother turned the phrase over in her mouth, considering its ingredients. “What is that, Robert?”

“It's more like collateral, really.” He glanced at Evie. “Can we discuss this later?”

“Collateral?” A new taste now, this word, one she did not like. “Robert, who did you get this money from? Who do we owe? Who has power over us now, other than a crazy dictator? Other than the coffee planters, foreign investors, bankers, Ubico, and throngs of Indians controlling our mountain?”

“They're friends, Mattie. It's not a bank or some corrupt government official. They're friends and we have a friendly agreement. Let's not bore Evie with the details.”

“We don't have friends down here, Robert.”

Pow!

Even Father jumped to that one. “Oh, don't say—”

“Who!” Mother slammed her fist down on the table, making a terrific clatter with their dishes. “Who, who, who, who!” Every time she said “who,” she banged her fist on the table. Their dinners all shifted to the right and a storm began in their water glasses.

“The Fasbinders.”

The answer completely perplexed Mother, who blinked at Father's empty plate. “The Fasbinders? What interest do they have in your experiment? What could we possibly have that they want?”

Evie became very still, thinking this was the moment Father would confess he had sold Evie to Mrs. Fasbinder. She would be a house girl, alongside the Indian boy Tomás. Or she would work in the coffee fields, with all the drafted Indians. Like Ixna, eight years old, whipped for eating a banana.

“Like I said, they aren't getting anything. We can discuss this later, in private.”

“In private! Where can we go? I can't step onto my own porch anymore! Shall we go five steps that way and discuss it? Ask Evie to cover her ears?”

“Fine. I'm paying them back in two weeks.”

“For what? Their plantation is devastated, Robert. They would not loan a peso to anyone right now unless they're getting something they desperately want. What—” She pounded again. “What do they think they're getting from you!”

“I don't—”

She pounded on the table with both fists now, over and over, almost drowning out Father's eventual reply: “The piano.”

Mother's fists froze, midair, and Evie thought she might lunge and strangle him.

“But they're not getting the piano. She wants it for her school. But the school isn't even built yet. The government won't approve it. It was a fight to rein in the damned Catholics. You'll keep your piano and I'll have the money to refund her once the harvest's in. I'll even pay them interest.”

Mother's hands lay on the table now, flat. With an eerie formality, she asked, “And if it is built? If, perhaps, the President was at her gala and approved the school?”

“They learned their lesson with the Catholics, Mattie.”

“They're after souls, not land and gold, Robert. I think the President is very interested in her
fucking
school. I think he sees a beautiful partnership.”

“Even if he is,” he sang, twirling his fork, ignoring this astounding language from Mother's mouth, “it won't be built in two weeks.” The last time Evie heard Father say that word, Mother made him sleep in the mule shed for two nights.

“Don't play those pretty eyes at me. She's not going to want her money back. She's going to want that piano. She's wanted it for years!” Evie watched her right hand crawl across the table like a spider, hunting the nearest knife.

“I can pay her money back, plus more.”

“Because you're sure you'll get this harvest in? You're sure you can control this situation? Indians who skipped the draft,
who are not afraid of Ubico
?”

Pow! Pow!

Mother gazed up at him, her eyes jellied with fear. Her fingers found the knife, gripped it. Father reached for her glass and took it away.

“You're scaring Evie, Mattie. She doesn't realize you're joking,”

“Everything's fine, Evie. I'm just drunk, that's all. People say silly things when they're drunk. They make jokes no one else finds funny.”

~~~~~

The next day, Mother played her piano for the first time in days. Possibly Father's promise to stop firing guns cheered her up slightly. She played for hours, not pausing for anything. She suffered no questions, no interruptions, until she pressed the soft pedal with her foot to ask over her own playing, “Where's Ixna? Have you seen her out in the yard today?”

“She's in the cooking shed, helping Father.” Evie knew she should have lied about what she saw out the window, but telling would be the only way to ensure Ixna was kicked off the mountain for good. Father would never do it himself; he was too nice.

Mother merely nodded, the music working up her arms, rounding her shoulders, and dipping her chin. She played and played, her eyes set on something not in the room. She swayed on the loose piano bench, her chest out and her dark nipples showing beneath her blouse.

And then the tune was over, or Mother had just stopped, for it didn't seem a proper ending. She stood up. Fixated on the white, closed wooden body where her song expired, she swept her hand over the keys like a magician, knocking the lit lantern over on its side.

The movement of the fire over the piano was so quick that Evie and Mother just watched as the kerosene drew a blue line over the top. By the time the flames rose, Evie yelled, while Mother remained standing, watching the fire with a peculiar half smile on her face. She stepped back, as if for a better view, while Evie ran to the kitchen. All she could find was the cold porridge from breakfast. The heavy, tall pot slopped porridge on Evie's shoes as she ran. With all her might, she hoisted the pot over her head and heaved its contents on the piano. The porridge spread slowly, smothering the fire into smoke.