Hard Red Spring (14 page)

Judas stopped. “When did you see her in the cave?”

“Four days ago.”

“And what was she doing?”

She told him, as calmly as she could, about the old man and the chicken. The broken egg, the ghost rubbing her belly. Judas nodded thoughtfully, actually listening.

“What was she asking for, Judas?” She felt weak from the telling. Her fears and suspicions said aloud took on a physical dimension. Like the dust in her eyes. She rubbed and rubbed, trying to see him clearly. The road was so dusty and dry that every step they took ruined the air. “What has she done?”

He thought for a long time. In the forest around them, birds settled and trilled at one another, something large walked noisily where there was no trail. “She was giving thanks to the mountain,” he said finally.

“For what?”

“I don't know. There are so many things to be thankful for.”

Unsatisfied with this explanation, Evie decided to ask outright. “What happened last night, Judas? I know something happened.”

“
Saber.
” He bent to tie his loose shoelaces.

“If you tell me, I'll show you a better way to tie your shoes. You won't have to stoop and retie them so much. It'll last all day.”

He straightened, considering the bargain.

“I promise I won't be scared. I won't tell them I know.”

“Okay. Your father murdered one of the workers last night.”

“Why?”

Judas shrugged. “He was in the kitchen.”

“Murdered. Does that mean he can't work? Are we short one worker now?”

“Yes. Now show me this new way.”

While showing Judas how to double-knot, it occurred to Evie that her parents might leave for New York without her. That was why she and Judas couldn't take the cart. They would pack it—clearly they'd already packed something—and flee without her. She began to believe that when she and Judas got back from town, her parents would be gone. Just bits of packing paper, strands of her mother's dark hair left behind where they didn't bother to sweep on their way out. She'd be an orphan, like the Indian boy Tomás. Too expensive to keep. Without her, her parents would finally be able to afford Europe.

The town, empty because of the drafts and still strewn with rubble, seemed abandoned. As Evie expected, no one was eating cookies. Not the Indian women squatting in the park in their bright costumes or the children lurking in the shrinking morning shadows.

When they reached the government building, a sign announced in three languages—English, German, and Spanish—that the telegraph was still broken. Judas told Evie to wait in the arcade while he mailed the letters to Sophie and Mrs. Fasbinder. It took him several minutes to do so and Evie began to lose patience when he finally emerged, empty-handed, the only Indian man in the whole town.

“Judas, you went in the wrong door,” Evie said. “That's not the post office. Did you get lost?” She felt almost sure he'd walked into Mr. Ubico's door.

“Ah.” He smiled. “I know, I got confused. So many doors! But they all connect inside,” he said. “Don't worry.”

At the imports store, Judas gained entrance with Evie's verification and bought the supplies on the list. The Frenchman gave Evie change and they walked out into the rising heat of the day. The longer they took, the more she thought, the more her own fears of being left behind became harder to ignore. If her parents left her, she realized, she'd have to live with Judas.

“Judas, I'm sorry I tried to whip you. I didn't mean it. I was just playing.”

“I know,” he said, buying four bottles of the egg liquor from an Indian woman on the street. She gave him the change, though Evie held her hand out for it.

“Does Father ever whip you?” she asked, shielding her eyes to see him.

“No. I'm a hard worker.”

“If you weren't, would he whip you?”

“Saber.”

“Does he whip these new workers? He says they're terrible.”

Judas laughed a little to himself. “Only machetes. No whips. No one would whip these workers.”

“Why not? Would they kill Father? If he whipped them?”

Judas shook his head, blew air out of one of the gaps in his teeth. “Indians don't kill,” he said. “People with money kill. Indians just work. They just do jobs.”

“Like kill people?”

Judas hefted the bags. “Indians just do jobs,” he repeated, though every story Evie had ever heard of killing had involved Indians. “We can't choose the jobs, and we can't say no. It's the law. If we're lucky, though, we get paid.”

—

Mother and Father had not left Evie behind, at least not yet. When Evie returned from Xela with Judas, she nearly wept in relief at the sight of them: Father washing out the cart, Mother hauling bags to the porch. But she remembered her promise to Judas, to show no fear. And so she passed the rest of the day with determined calm, helping Mother pack as best she could. Plates, sheets, candlesticks, picture frames. Their belongings amounted to much more than Evie thought possible.

Evie was put to bed that night with the ceremony of a sick, much younger child. Mother buckled her polished white leather shoes on her before tucking her in.

“Why do I have to wear these to bed?”

“I want to make sure we don't leave them behind. If you wear them, we won't forget them. Now go to sleep. Tomorrow we'll be in Xela. In a month, we'll be home.” Her breath was sweet, mystifying, but when she bowed down, her kiss tasted sour. “Your father processed enough cochineal today to buy our tickets.”

“Am I going, too? I'll be good. I can get a job!”

“Of course you're coming, Evie.” Mother searched her face with concern and cleaned her cheek with her thumb. “What is going on in that crazy little head of yours?”

In a month, they'd be home. Of course her parents would never leave her. She would not be an orphan. Lying in bed, Evie tried to distract herself, thinking of her letter to Sophie. Where was it by now? She imagined Judas in the government building, handing the letter to an Indian on horseback, who immediately galloped to the nearest station. It would travel by road, then train, by boat, by train again, then another boat, and once more by train. Which would make it to New York faster? Her or the letter?

~~~~~

Points of weak red light filtered through the blanket covering her face. She never cried or screamed or said anything, for the gag filling her mouth. She could not kick. She knew she was being carried down the mountain. Rocks scraped under shoes. Desperate for air, she pressed her nose against the fabric and took deep breaths. Body odor, the smell of rank ocean from the red wool, filled her lungs. She convinced herself this was Father, taking her to Xela, for safety. Ghosts didn't wear shoes, and neither did Indians.

Or maybe he had wrapped her up to sell her. Wrapped her up so she couldn't see where she was going, so she couldn't come back. Like the Indians in the covered wagons, drafted away.

Once set down, she tried to move her arms and legs again, but couldn't. She'd been swaddled. Pressing her nose to the light, she took another deep, nauseating breath.

Who knows how long she lay there, unable to move? It seemed to Evie to last forever. But eventually, hands loosened the fabric and rope. Who would it be? Who would she live with now? Then Evie saw Judas.

“Evie, what happened to you?”

She was in the cemetery, laid next to a vault with painted blue and yellow symbols. She sat up and looked around, seeing the broken stones and crosses and desiccated flowers. Seeing these, she began to cry, the wet rag falling out of her mouth so easily. She was in a cemetery, with dead people, ghosts, all of them situated to face the rising sun. Judas wiped her tears with his nice silk handkerchief.

They walked the dirt road to the city, holding hands, past the plantation workers' shacks. No one paid them any mind. At times like this, Evie felt relief not to have her Father's blue eyes. She could not endure the reactions his eyes caused on this road. Unnoticed now, they passed Indian women punching tortilla dough with tender, practiced violence. They walked through their wood smoke like survivors of a great catastrophe.

“Where are my parents, Judas?”

“I don't know,” he said. “Soon.”

“Did they leave me? Did they go back to New York without me?”

He led her over the seam in the road where the dirt gave way to cobblestone. Judas's hand felt hot and slick. He wore, Evie noticed, a new pair of shoes. Double-knotted.

“I like your shoes,” Evie said, because she did not want him to answer
that last question. The two of them, in their best shoes, she thought, must look like a courting couple. It would not be so much of a scandal, she thought, if people believed he was Ladino. Indeed, he did look more Ladino every day to Evie.

“Thank you,” he said, turning the sides up, one after the other, to admire the embroidery without interrupting their pace.

“Did Father get those for you?”

“No,” Judas said. “I got them myself.”

“How did they let you in the store? Did you use the note I gave you? I thought I wrote it for socks, though. Did you get the socks, too?”

He jerked her to a stop, right there in the middle of the road. He pulled her in close to confront his angry mouth. His gray, useless teeth like tombstones. “You ask”—Judas shook her—“too many questions. I'm taking you someplace and you won't ask any questions. You won't say anything. If you stay quiet, you can see your parents.” She had never been so close to Judas before. He smelled, to her surprise, intensely familiar. An intimate scent she had not smelled in a while and had almost forgotten. Mother, from a long time ago. She could see ivory powder caked on the sides of his nose, dusting his angry eyebrows.

They passed the imports store, where the orphan boy Tomás was tying Mrs. Fasbinder's cart to a post. Tomás looked very different than when she'd seen him last. He wore the same clothes, but those clothes were ripped and filthy and hung on him like rags. Evie watched him hurry to the side of the cart to offer his head as a newel post as Mrs. Fasbinder lowered herself onto the ground.

Evie neared, and they each stared harder, straining, as if they were moving farther and farther apart, instead of closer. Evie held by Judas, and Tomás wrapped in the reins of the cart. By the time they passed within a breath of each other, they could have been miles away, for their mutual helplessness.

At that moment, Mrs. Fasbinder reappeared and swatted his face. “Who do you think you are, gawking at a white girl like that?”

—

The office was more finished than it had been just one week ago. Everything now had its proper place. Books upright on shelves, knickknacks consigned to their eternal displays, already collecting dust: an Indian warrior lunging, a helmeted conquistador aiming. The Catholic chalice still held its arsenal of sharpened pencils on the desk. The bird, Magellan, with the red breast,
presided in a corner. He opened his beak and held it there—a silent scream or laugh, or a yawn—and shifted his weight from foot to foot in a golden cage lined on the bottom with newspaper. He seemed to be doing better. Two tail feathers, one blue, one green, held a long flirtation through the bars, twisting and crossing for a meter before touching the floor. The bird regarded Evie with one hostile eye, possibly remembering her.

“How old are you, Evie?” Mr. Ubico's accent sounded like his mouth was full of food. Was this really the man who had replaced God, as her father had said? The bird, behind him, nodded enthusiastically, then began shredding his newspaper. Evie had never thought God could look so young, or be so short.

She held up nine fingers. There was no good reason to lie, but it was already done. She sat in the same church pew she and Father had sat in before, while Mr. Ubico regarded her sadly from his red velvet throne. She spread her nightgown to show off the lace, secretly pleased to be wearing it in the daytime, in public.

Judas, with a bowed head, stepped outside. Evie listened to his fancy shoes—
squeak, squawk—
make a crazy noise against the arcade tiles. He had told her not to ask any questions, not to say anything, advice that she trusted. Judas had saved her, after all. They had put her in the cemetery like a dead person, and he had saved her.

“Do you know your address in America, Evie? Could you tell the embassy where someone in your family lives?”

She shook her head, ashamed now that she had lied about her age. A nine-year-old would know her address. Probably an eight-year-old should, too.

“Do you know what happened? Do you know why you're here?” Absently, he reached into his pocket and slid four peppermints across his desk in front of her. Behind him, the bird began aggressively grooming himself, feathers drifting to the floor.

“Our parents,” Mr. Ubico began, making his first slip in English, “were murdered by their Indian workers. Your father hired criminals and they robbed and murdered your family. Do you understand this?”

Evie nodded, recognizing that word, murdered, from her conversation with Judas. But Ubico had gotten it backward. Father had murdered a worker, not the other way around. At least, the situation had gotten no worse than the day before. Slightly relieved, she ignored the pile of mints, knowing from before that they were old and stale, and tasted like pennies and pocket dust.

“Did you see anything?”

She shook her head. The only thing Evie had seen was the blanket covering her face, the rough weave of wool and light and straw. She had woken up to fabric being stuffed in her mouth, an Indian blanket wrapped around her head. She couldn't scream or talk, but could open her eyes and see that the color of pure dark was not black but red.

“Did you hear anything?”

Just the footsteps that carried her away. The fabric had been scratchy. Nothing her mother would own.