Maria's Trail (The Mule Tamer) (11 page)

They were going to Mexico City and the old
priest seemed a little happier. They had a good wagon with two horses to pull
it. It would be a fairly fast journey as the roads were good.

Maria was not certain why he’d chosen her to
go, but he had. They rode together and she handled the horses for most of the
way. She was a good companion and he was falling in love with his little charge,
not in a biblical way, he just loved her as did everyone who knew Maria.

 She’d just had her nineteenth birthday and had
matured into a fully grown young woman, likely, the most beautiful in the land.
No man could resist her charms and everyone, everywhere wanted to do things for
her.

She regarded her city clothes as she rode and
worried over the dust kicked up from the desert roads. She didn’t want to look
a mess when they arrived and the priest sensed this. He rummaged around and
found a long rebozo and threw it over Maria, wrapping her to the neck.

He’d taken his vows of poverty and did not want
for worldly things. He wasn’t concerned in the least about his own appearance,
but Maria was different. She was not of the church; nothing he could do or say
or teach her would ever make her wholly of the church and he did not regard
this as a bad thing. She’d certainly never be a nun. He was delighted, just
like a proud father would be of his lovely daughter coming out to the world as
a woman. He wanted to show her off a little.

“And padre, tell me again, why are we going to
this place, the big church?”

“To visit a friend, Maria. Just to visit a
friend.” He smiled and looked at her. “And to show you a glorious city. Mexico
City, Maria. It is a jewel. We’ll go to see some sights. We’ll go to the
Archaeological Museum.”

“Thank you for the city clothes, padre.” She
smiled at him and he patted her arm.

“My pleasure child.”

They rode for a long time and eventually
arrived at their destination. Maria could see immediately what it was and it
made her feel very strange. They were shown to their rooms. Maria offered to
spend the day in hers but the old padre wouldn’t hear of it. He insisted that
she accompany him and, reluctantly, she complied.

They went to see a nun about the same age as
the priest. She was sitting in a chair in a dark room with shuttered windows.
She was reading a Bible and was dressed in her nun’s garb. She looked as if she
were dead except for her eyes. They shone with life. She was very glad to see
him.

He introduced Maria to the old nun and the
woman touched Maria’s face and then patted it. “Beautiful, beautiful.”

Maria smiled and said nothing. She didn’t know
why she was there and she didn’t want to see the priest look any sadder but
this was making him look that way. This was why they’d come to Mexico City.

Maria tried hard to think of a way to extricate
herself from the meeting. Let them be alone together. She had just come up with
a plan when the priest turned to her and asked her to help him with a special
mass, just for the nun.

She was disappointed because she found these
little masses to be tedious and she hated going through every ritual: making a
little alter for the priest and setting up the chalice, the water, wine and
wafers. She thought it all somewhat silly and redundant as the nun likely
already attended a mass that day. Now she’d have another and Maria didn’t want
to do it.

But then she saw the look in the nun’s eye and,
just as funerals are not for the dead but for the living, her ministrations and
her assistance at the mass was not for her to endure or be bothered by, but for
the happiness and peace of mind of the old woman who was dying.

When they finished, the old nun was exhausted
and the padre was also very tired. A nurse soon came and guided the old nun
away. The priest and Maria went to their rooms to rest and recover from the
exhausting trip and the even more exhausting meeting with the dying nun.

At dinner time Maria looked in on the padre. He
was lying in bed and there was a half empty bottle of American whiskey
alongside him. Maria knew he was drunk. This made her feel very sad as she knew
the priest did not normally drink, except for the holy wine and that he mostly
watered down. She came into his room and looked at him until he acknowledged
her. He’d slept the worst of it off and was no longer so drunk that he couldn’t
talk. He sat up and threw his legs over the edge of the bed and beckoned Maria
to sit down.

He’d been crying and Maria decided that she
should get him to talk about it. She began.

“Did you love her a long time?”

He looked at her and then looked away. “It is
so obvious, Maria?”

“Yes. To me it is.”

“Now she is dying. She no longer has the church
and she doesn’t have me. She’s alone in the world, Maria, and she will be dead
soon.”

Maria thought about what to say, thought
perhaps she would be going too far, then went ahead anyway. “Is life not hard
enough, padre, that you must heap on sin after sin, so that it is impossible
for you to live?”

He smiled cynically at her. His Maria. He saw
it the first day, back when he caught her stealing the candlesticks. She had
the wisdom of the ages about her. “It is not so simple as all that, Maria.”

She harrumphed. “I am an ignorant girl, padre.
But I am not stupid. There is a difference.” She looked him over, looked into
his sad eyes and continued. “My life has been very hard, padre. I know this,
and I don’t know why God has made my life like this. But it is the only life I
have and I will live it the best I can. But you, you make all this too hard.
You make sins where there are no sins. You make sadness where there doesn’t
need to be sadness. Does Jesus really want us to go around with sour faces all
day, all day looking so sad that you could make a baby cry?”

He smiled at her and was embarrassed. “I…, I’m
sorry, Maria.”

He looked out the window as if seeking out
someone waiting for him in the courtyard below, someone who could perhaps give
him the answers to her questions. “She and I met when we were young. I was a
new priest and she a new nun. We fell in love. I was going to leave the church
for her, but she could not. She said that she could not leave the church and
that she could not be with me.”

“I see.” Maria thought hard about it. He was
the poor Crisanto and the nun was Maria. “So, this terrible thing, this sin,
will it make her go to hell when she dies?”

The priest grinned and looked up at her. Maria
was so wonderfully black and white. There were no shades of grey with the girl.
He shook his head from side to side. “I don’t know, Maria.”

“Well, you need to let her go. You need to be
with her when she dies and you need to tell her that she’s forgiven and that
she’ll go to heaven. If you don’t know then you have to tell her the best
possible outcome for her. It might be that she goes to heaven and it might be
that she goes to hell, but if you do not know, then you need to tell her it is
heaven. She’ll find out soon enough, but she needs to think, believe right now
that it will be heaven.”

He loved her simplicity and her kindness. She
was a thoroughly good person and he smiled at her. “If only a fraction of my
parishioners were so good and wise as you, Maria.”

She stood up and looked out the window. She
picked up the bottle and took it with her.

“No more drinking for you, padre. It does not
suit you.” She held out her hand and helped him to his feet. “Now, go to her
and tell her. Tell her to expect Jesus at the gates of heaven and that you will
meet her there one day.” She thought for a moment, because she loved the padre,
“But not too soon.”

On the ride back to their village, the priest
was happier than Maria had ever seen him. The nun was dead and that made him
sad, but her last hours had been good and it was because of Maria’s advice.

Maria saw him regarding her out of the corner
of her eye and decided to ask about the old nun. “Was she from Chicago, padre?”

“Oh, no Maria. She was from Mexico. I met her
in Mexico when I first came to this country.” He didn’t know why but he began
to speak freely of her. “She was as beautiful as you, Maria.”

“Oh, I see now.” She gave him a sly grin. “That
is why you have always been so good to me. I remind you of your lover.”

He blushed. Then smiled. She was teasing him a
little and he didn’t mind. “No, Maria. I took you in because of the wonderful
light in your soul.”

“Oh?” It was her turn to blush.

“I saw it the moment I met you, the day you
clobbered poor Paulo with the candlestick.”

She grinned. “I have always been sorry for
that, padre.”

They rode on and the priest decided to bring up
something that had been bothering him for a long while.

“Maria, what do you want to do with your life?”

She smiled and looked at the road. “I, I just
want to do what I am doing, padre. Be at the church and be with the old woman
and the old man. They are getting along in years, padre. It is my turn to take
care of them. I will do this thing, I will take care of them and make them
comfortable and happy until they die.”

He decided to drop it. She was one of the
brightest young people he’d ever known and she had a good and curious mind but
now he realized his scheme was a stupid one. Maria was not studious, she’d be
miserable doing any kind of formal study. He smiled a little broader, admiring
her for what she’d just said.

“You are a genuinely good soul, Maria. A
genuinely good soul.”

Paulo met them on the outskirts of town. His
head was bandaged and Maria couldn’t help but wonder what he’d gotten into to
get himself clobbered again. She didn’t like the look on his face. When he saw
them he began to wring his hands. His sorrow turned to tears.

“What is it, Paulo?” The padre got down from
the wagon to better look at the man’s wounds.

“A.., I…” He looked up at Maria and cried
harder. He ran to her and grabbed her hands, crying into them.

Maria pushed him away and slapped the reins
against the horses. They broke into a run for the church.

The old man and old woman were dead. Maria
looked at them, laid out in the church awaiting burial. They looked like they
were asleep.

She waited for the padre and Paulo to catch up.
She was too calm for the circumstances. “What happened, Paulo?”

He was blubbering and she couldn’t get a clear
answer. She looked at him and demanded, “Paulo, get hold of yourself. What
happened?”

“Bandits. They came in the middle of the night.
They were stealing from the church and Decio discovered them. They shot him and
when Agata tried to help him they shot her.”

He went back to crying inconsolably. The padre
fussed over him and looked at Maria. There was nothing he could do.

She went to bed that night and listened to the
nothingness of the little home. She used to hear the old people snore and cough
and pass wind. She used to listen to the old woman clang around in the kitchen
early in the morning; the old man would tap out the dottle from his pipe and
blow his nose. She used to hear the old man laugh. He laughed a lot and he was
always kind to Maria. He never, not once, said a mean or angry or cross word to
her.

She dozed off thinking of these things and fell
into a deep sleep. She was awakened by a strange light that appeared under her
door. She went into the kitchen to investigate. Juana was sitting at the
kitchen table eating some beans and tortillas. She didn’t look up from her meal
as Maria seated herself across the table from her. “These beans and tortillas
are old.”

Maria looked at Juana. She hadn’t changed. She
was still a child and this confounded Maria. “Where have you been?”

“Oh, here and there.” She took a drink of water
and regarded Maria. “You got big.” She pointed with a piece of tortilla. “Your
tetas are muy grande.”

Maria looked down at her breasts.

“What are you going to do now that they are
dead?”

“I don’t know.” She didn’t like the casual way
Juana was speaking of the old people.

Juana looked around the room. “This is nice.
You could take over what they were doing for the church, get a man and raise a
family here.”

Maria became angry. It was a mean and
insensitive thing to say and Juana seemed to sense it.

“Mind you, that’s not what I’d do.”

“Oh, what would
you
do?”

“I’d go track those bandits down and cut off
their cojones and make them eat them with a plate of beans.” She was pleased
with that thought. “Beans with beans.” She smiled at Maria and then looked at
her a little seriously. “Oh, you don’t think you could do it?”

“I didn’t say I couldn’t do it.”

“You don’t have a good look. You have a look
like you don’t think you could do it.”

“I could do it.”

“Then do it.” Juana stood up and brushed the
crumbs from her lap. She kicked the crumbs far under the table out of sight.
Maria looked at what she was doing, then at the clock on the mantle, then back
at Juana. The girl was gone.

She suddenly felt cold and went back to her bed
and pulled the covers up to her chin. She soon fell asleep but it didn’t last
very long.

Awaking again, Maria realized she wouldn’t be
able to sleep anymore. She sat up and lit a lamp. For some reason she didn’t
understand, she got the mirror the old woman in the hovel had given her and
looked into it. The old woman was right again. There is no one else in the
world. No one else in the world will take care of you. Only this one.

She looked at herself in the mirror and
regarded her face. She thought hard about what to do next. She got up, even
though it was the middle of the night, and began her preparations. She would
not sleep another night in this house.

The priest watched her as she rode up to him.
He could tell she was leaving. She had packed for travel with a war sack tied
onto her saddle and several canteens. She’d been to the bank to retrieve her
fortune and then to the store where she purchased a Winchester. This she had in
a fancy leather scabbard tied to her saddle, as well.

“Good bye.” She began to turn away.

He called out to her. “Maria, stop.”

She waited.

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to get them.”

“And this is the right thing for you to do?”

“Yes.”

“They wouldn’t like it, Maria.” He pointed to
the church, toward the coffins with the bodies of the old woman and old man
inside. “They’d say, let it go, they’d say that Jesus would tell you to forgive
and move on. Please, Maria. Please help me bury them, give them a good funeral
and stay and do the work they’ve done so well. Please, Maria.”

“They’re dead.”

“And it is terrible, but it’s God’s will, and
more killing won’t bring them back. It’s God’s…”

She became furious and hissed at him. “God,
God! Goddamn your God. Your God has brought me nothing but pain. Your God has
pulled down his trousers and shit on my head all my life. Your God can go to
hell, padre. Your God’s a fool.”

He looked at her, pain and sorrow in his eyes.
He wanted to speak, but nothing he could say would mean anything to her now.

“I will be the justice now because your God is
nothing; he is, like Crisanto, he is an alfeñique. He is a nothing and I am
finished with him. Goddamn your God.”

She thought of something and jumped from her
horse. She walked up on him. “Give me a Bible!”

He stood, dumbfounded and a little afraid of
her. She grabbed him by the arm and pushed him ahead of her into the church.
She found a Bible. “Let’s see.” She paged through and found the book of Exodus.
“Here.” She tore a page from the Bible and held it up. She read through it and
looked at the priest.

“I will break every one of these a hundred
times over. I will taunt Him and do the opposite of Him. I will make every bad
thing that I can think and I will make things right in this world. No more
bandits or cutthroats. No more children starving or men abusing little girls.
No more! No more! When I find them, I will kill them. This is better than your
God. Goddamn your God, padre.”

She stormed out and, jumping back on her horse,
wheeled around and was gone.

She pushed her way into the saloon at the end
of town. The old man would come here of an evening now and again, to play some
cards and beat the locals and make money for Maria’s vaquero outfit. He was
well known and respected by them all.

The men acknowledged her at once. Everyone knew
Maria even though the old woman had not allowed her in this place. She walked
up to the bar and ordered mescal. She drank it quickly and ordered another. One
of the men walked up to her and handed her some money. “Your father, he won
this from me. He, he’d want you to have it.”

She looked the man in the eye and then back at
her glass. “He was not my father.” She poured again and handed the man at the
bar the money and told him to keep giving her and everyone drinks until the
money was gone. They all stood up and toasted her and the memory of the old
woman and old man.

She looked at them.

“Who were these bandits?”

No one spoke up.

“Come now, boys,” she sounded odd calling the
men boys. “Come now, you must have seen them. You must know of them. Tell me
where to find them.”

“Let it go, little one.” A kind old man touched
her arm and she recoiled.

“I will not let it go!”

Suddenly a voice came from the back of the
room. “I’ll tell you.”

“No!” several men responded in unison as the
man stepped forward. He was a vaquero and a tough man. He was not old like the
other men. He wore a six shooter and carried a big knife. He looked harsh but
his eyes were kind.

“Yes, I’ll tell her.” He gestured for her to
sit down. She complied. He got two more drinks and offered her one. He looked
her over carefully.

“These men don’t want you to go after the bad
men because they are afraid for you, Maria.” He drank and continued. “But I
know you are not afraid. I know what you can do, and you should do it. Avenge
them, Maria.”

“I will.”

“The men are from a band headed by a man from
further south. He’s called Sombrero del Oro because he wears a big gold hat.
He’s a bad one, Maria.” He looked at her with intensity.

“He trades in humans and he kills without
consideration. But Maria, dying would not be the worst thing that could happen
to you if they should catch you. You are beautiful and they would do many bad
things to you. You know what I mean?” He nodded when she didn’t change her
expression.

“I know.”

He nodded and took another drink. “I didn’t
think that would dissuade you.”

“And these men. Why did they do this thing to
the old woman and the old man?”

“Because they could.” He shrugged. “No reason.
Because they could. You see, Maria, these men, they are not people. They are
not human beings. They are some horrible creature, even worse than a loco bull
or rattler. They kill for malice and for fun. No creature in the animal kingdom
acts like this. And Maria, don’t hesitate. Show no mercy when the time comes.
Kill them. Do not show them mercy.”

She stood up and felt a little dizzy. She’d
never had so much mescal. She held out her hand, as one man would to another
and he took it. He shook her hand gravely and nodded. “God be with you, Maria.”

She turned and walked away. “No thanks. I don’t
need Him.”

On her way out of town she rode up on Paulo
shuffling between home and church. This was the second time in his life that
Agata had broken his heart and it was uncertain he’d endure. Maria stopped next
to him. He looked up at her with tears running down his craggy old face. He
didn’t try to hide them from anyone, especially not Maria. She leaned over and
handed him something.

“This is Agata’s necklace, Paulo.” He held it
in his clenched fist and pressed it to his forehead. He shook and cried and
cried out. He desperately needed her to get down, hold him and comfort him, but
that was not Maria’s way. It never had been and it certainly wouldn’t be going
forward. She reached over and patted him gently on the head and rode on.

She rode straight through to Nuevo Casas
Grandes, the place the vaquero had told her she was most likely to find the bad
men. She lived on cold coffee and tortillas and the cigars she’d gotten from
the fancy store. She liked the cigars because they took her appetite away and
kept her alert and awake. It would be her way from now on. When she was
traveling she’d travel hard and fast and unrelenting. She wanted to get to the
bad men before they moved on. She knew that such miscreants drifted. It would
be easy to lose them in the big land.

The town hadn’t changed much in the ten years
since she had been there. She rode past the bastard Sanchez’s shop. It was no
longer a shop. It was boarded up. Enough boards were missing that she could
tell it was nothing more than a shell.

She rode to the far end of town where the
saloons and brothels were located and decided to visit the brothel first. It
was still red and still well staffed with many sporting girls. Some of them
sauntered out to regard her as she tied her mount to a rail. Several of them
ooh’d and aah’d at Maria. She was beautiful despite the thorough coating of
dust that covered her from the long ride.

“Come on in here, Chiquita, we’ll get you nice
and clean.” They were not taunting her. Many of the girls would be delighted
for the company of a delicate and pretty woman rather than the coarseness of an
ugly vaquero or field hand. She smiled at them and removed her hat. One of them
handed her a beer and she drank quickly. She bowed her head in thanks and
regarded the one who’d given her the drink.

“Señorita, tell me of one of your women here
about ten years ago. She was dark but had yellow hair.”

“Ah, Lupina.” The woman put an arm around her.
She reached over and kissed Maria on the cheek. “Come with me, little doll,
I’ll show you.” She stopped and regarded Maria. “Now, don’t be upset. She is
not well. She’s old and she’s a little addled.”

The woman took her to the very room Maria slept
in those many years ago. The bed, mattress and even the covers seemed to be the
same.

The old prostitute was sleeping when they
walked in and Maria’s escort led her to a chair. Maria sat down and waited,
falling asleep for an hour, until the bedridden woman awoke.

Maria regarded her. She was drawn in the face
and Maria could tell that she hadn’t much time left. She coughed into a rag
until it was bloody and Maria helped her sit up.

“Do you remember me, lady?”

She did not.

“You helped me when I was a little girl. Juana
brought me.”

She brightened at hearing Juana’s name.

“The little chubby one.”

“Yes, yes.”

“Whatever became of her?”

“She died.”

“Oh, what a shame.” She coughed again.

Maria gave her money, a big fistful of bills.
The old woman was confused.

“You were good to me, lady. I vowed to thank
you some day and now I can.” Maria got to her feet and, reaching over, pulled
the woman upright and straightened her in her bed. She patted her on the cheek.
“You rest, lady. Just rest.”