The Almanac of the Dead: A Novel (82 page)

EL FEO HAD NEVER TOLD ANYONE how he had felt the first time he had walked into the downtown hotel where the negotiations were being held. The strobe flashes and videocam lights were blinding as he entered the lobby. The other Indian leaders were more well-known and had aides along to carry their briefcases. El Feo had been lucky to borrow a pair of new shoes from the village mayor; no one in their village, not even the mayor, owned a briefcase. Later El Feo and the other Indian leaders had been driven in buses to the university campus to meet with student leaders. In those days, La Escapía had gone by her Christian name, Angelita. She had been baiting university students the first time El Feo ever saw her. Angelita had been drunk on politics; a raving orator who might someday gather together hundreds and hundreds of fighters for El Feo’s army. Then suddenly Angelita’s attention had turned to El Feo; he could feel her eyes on him. Angelita had started laughing at him—squinting in the bright lights and pointing a finger at El Feo. El Feo disliked her instantly; she knew nothing about him. He had purposely not brought a briefcase or notebook. He wanted to make it clear he was not interested in white men’s pieces of paper; El Feo had simply come for his people’s ancestral lands.

El Feo had heard stories about Angelita. She was dangerous. She laughed and made fun of everything. She got the people laughing when the meeting or topics were serious—Angelita even made jokes about uprisings. She was dangerous. Nothing tiny or angel like about this woman, El Feo had decided, not unless you were thinking of an angel from hell. El Feo felt his throat get dry and his feet and hands tingle.
He could feel beads of sweat on his scalp. Great dark angel from the thirteen nights of the old gods—here was the angel El Feo had been searching for all his life.

Until El Feo had met Angelita, he had felt passion only for retaking stolen tribal land; big brown women with big breasts and big bellies interested him for only fifteen or twenty minutes at a time. Market days in the mountain villages found the women gossiping, whispering, and giggling behind their shawls about one so handsome his mother had to call him El Feo to protect him. His mother got him at birth from a coastal village. At one time the people had all lived closer together; at one time life had been a great deal different down in the low valleys that ran to the turquoise sea. He had come from a village close to the turquoise sea. He had been sent as an infant to the mountains so the coastal clans and the mountain clans did not forget they were one family; and because he had had a twin brother. Later as El Feo and his mother had traveled to the coastal village where he had met his other mother and father, and his twin brother, Tacho, nicknamed Wacah because he tamed big
wacahs
or macaws. The people on the coast had all the fish they could eat; otherwise they were poor. Tribal land the people had cleared for farming had later been claimed by the federal government; then the land had been resold to German coffeer planters.

Angelita had questioned El Feo about certain rumors going around; they said El Feo was already married—married to the earth. They claimed El Feo had sexual intercourse four times a day with holes dug in damp river clay. El Feo had laughed and shook his head. He said he did not discuss his religion with anyone, not even with warrior angels. Later the village gossips claimed El Feo had been seduced by Angelita La Escapía, the crazy woman from the coast.

El Feo used to watch her face and watch the faces of people in market crowds who listened to her.

“A great ‘change’ is approaching; soon the signs of the change will appear on the horizon.” Angelita’s words filled El Feo with rapture. The earth, the earth, together they would serve Earth and her sister spirits.

El Feo had been content to watch from a distance. Men probably watched to see her big breasts heave and jiggle. But the women listened because they had never heard a woman like her before.

EL FEO AND HIS TWIN had been separated because twins often attracted dangers from envious sorcerers; later there might be accusations of sorcery made against the twins together. El Feo had been initiated by the elder men in the ancient fashion, while Tacho had only the small ceremony the coastal village people still practiced. They both had been confirmed in the Church by the same traveling bishop on the same day. The elders had remarked that the twins had been reared in different villages to prevent just such coincidences as that.

Then one day Tacho had appeared in the mountain village. Tacho had worn his driving uniform, although he had hired an old taxi to drive him. The taxi had been full of gifts for all of them. Tacho had spent all his wages for the first month on the taxi ride, goat, and black piglets. Tacho had butchered the goat himself, but had left the task of dividing the meat to El Feo’s “mother.” Tacho’s parents had sent the goat; but Tacho himself had chosen the black pigs for his brothers. Clanspeople broke out the home brew, and the village celebrated the visit from their dear brother Tacho.

Long into the night Tacho and El Feo drank with the other men around the glowing coals. They had talked about the black pigs and the wild-boar spirit the coastal people fed parched corn. Before dawn El Feo had looked at the piglets and at Tacho; El Feo had looked around at the figures squatting in their blankets, many of them dozing.

“The black pigs will feed an army,” El Feo said softly.

“Four of them?” Tacho had his eyes closed, but he was listening.

“Of course four of them. Four is a good number. One boar, three sows. They will combine themselves over and over.”

In the mountains the rich farmers hired armed patrols to watch for Indian squatters in the coffee plantations, and to shoot the wild pigs. Pigs rooted out the coffee seedlings and stripped off bark from mature trees.

“On the coast, people say the black boar and his kind have helped the people’s uprisings more than once. The black boar and his troops stampede through thick undergrowth and trees. The stupid army chases the pigs deeper and deeper where the paths sink into moss. The black boar leads them into the swamp where hundreds of soldiers can easily be picked off by a few snipers,” Tacho said.

El Feo took the pigs to his campsite in the hills above the village because pork was a great temptation even for El Feo. When the pigs were large enough to fight off wild dogs, El Feo would let the black pigs run wild. El Feo had explained to Tacho only one thing mattered: the stolen land; someday wild black pigs would help feed the people’s army as the people took back their land.

TACHO WAS CAREFUL not to raise suspicion with El Feo’s visits. Tacho made a point of having El Feo help him wash and wax the black Mercedes. The boss and the new wife had been quite nervous lately; rich white people needed reassurance because of the political unrest. White people can see the tribes in Africa have retaken all their ancestral lands, blood-soaked though they were.

Tacho entertained El Feo with stories about the “old wife” and the young mistress from Mexico City. El Feo had especially liked the old wife’s tumble down the marble stairs, but that had been everyone’s favorite story, from the housemaids to the rich society matrons. The boss would not mind if El Feo spent the night in Tacho’s space at the front of the garage. El Feo had wanted to sleep one night in the backseat of the Mercedes, but Tacho had refused. “The boss doesn’t sleep so good at night. He might surprise you.”