E
VEN THOUGH SANTIAGO LAGUNA
believed he was born free of the curse, the Sunday he met Ezequiel Montes after Mass, an icy effervescence surged through his bones. The man smelled of lavender soap and the sweetness of sheep, a smell that had permeated the wrinkles in his forehead and neck, a smell that remained no matter how much he bathed. Santiago shook his hand, rough and cold from the October air. Ezequiel smiled at him. He was wearing a black suit as stiff as armor and a white, collarless shirt. His short hair was thick and brown, curls brushing his temples. At sixteen, Santiago was taller than him, a handsome young man as tall as a church steeple, just like his father.
“I’m so happy you two have finally met,” Olvido said after introducing them.
Ezequiel Montes looked deep into her eyes, his own tinged green from staring at meadows. Olvido responded with a tender glance. It was then Santiago discovered that, instead of bones, rivers flowed under his skin, and he cursed blackberry cakes, blackberry bushes, and sheep bells. For the first time in his life, he felt like the unluckiest boy in the world.
One mid-September morning, when Santiago was in school, Olvido went to pick blackberries in the hills to make him a cake. Fate or a rock caused her to trip and lose her balance. She fell into a bramble-filled ditch with the most luscious end-of-summer crop. Bruised and pricked by thorns, Olvido watched as a sheep with a bell around its neck appeared at the edge of the ditch, followed by another, and another, their round eyes glazed as they chewed the grass. Behind them towered the powerful silhouette of Ezequiel Montes. Olvido had occasionally seen him at church or the general store but never paid much attention until he stood staring down at her, his feet spread, a bag slung across his chest. He reached down to help her up, taking her arm when she faltered. He offered his name with the scruffy solitude of the country and, trailed by foggy bleats, led her to his hut to tend her cuts.
“Let me put some ointment on those scrapes.” His voice rose hoarse from his throat.
It was a small stone hut with a slate roof. Ezequiel Montes decided not to take Olvido inside, where there was only an unmade cot, a little table, and a hearth for heat and to cook his meals. He helped her down onto the grass, by the door, and placed his bag under her head. High in the sky, the sun cast its midday light. He went inside and soon emerged with a jar of ointment, a clean cloth, and a cup of milk.
“Drink this. It’ll do you good.”
Olvido sat up to drink the milk, then lay back down.
“I’ll pull the thorns from your legs.”
“Thank you.” Olvido hitched her skirt above her knees and pressed her thighs together.
She felt Ezequiel’s thick fingers pluck the thorns out one by one, felt the burning sensation that remained.
“It’s the first time anything like this has ever happened to me. I’ve walked these hills all my life.”
“That ditch is dangerous. One of my sheep fell in not long ago and tore up her legs. Uh . . .” He paused, a look of concern on his face. “You’re much better looking than any sheep, of course. I didn’t mean to compare.”
“That’s all right.” Olvido smiled.
The shepherd cleaned her cuts with the cloth and applied rosemary ointment but did not dare go any higher than her knees.
“Now for the scrapes on your arms and face.”
He leaned over her. Nature had been his only company for weeks, and his stomach fluttered. He avoided looking into her eyes, avoided looking at her lips, concentrated on her cuts. An invisible haze emanated from the shepherd’s chest, soothing Olvido’s pain.
“Can you roll up your sleeves?”
“Of course.” Olvido’s skin began to tingle as she uncovered her arms.
“Do you live far from here?” Ezequiel asked.
“The estate by the road.” The shepherd had big, weathered hands. “The one called Scarlet Manor. I’m sorry. You’ve been so kind, and I never even told you my name. I’m Olvido Laguna.”
“Let me walk you home, Olvido.”
“Oh, I’ve kept you long enough.” She slowly got to her feet.
“Can you walk?”
“Yes.” She took a few steps. One leg hurt and she limped a little.
“I’ll go with you.”
He put the sheep in the pen, leaving two dogs to watch over them. Then he took Olvido’s arm in his, telling her to lean on him, and they began to walk down through the meadows, bright with bellflowers and poppies. In the distance they could hear the bleating of other flocks that disappeared in dusty cane fields and along enchanted paths, their metal bells honing the breeze. Out of habit, Ezequiel walked in silence; at forty-four, he had been a shepherd all his life.
“I won’t be able to make that blackberry cake today after all. I left my basket in the ditch,” Olvido said.
“I’ll pick more tomorrow so you can make your cake.”
Beech leaves had begun to fall from their branches. The air was warm and limp by the time they reached Scarlet Manor.
When Santiago arrived home from school early that afternoon, his grandmother told him what happened. Concerned, he washed and disinfected her cuts before bed, thinking his grandmother meant the shepherd Saturnino, a big old oaf who drank too much on Sundays and belched all through the town square. The next morning Santiago wanted to stay home to look after her, but Olvido insisted she was fine, and he finally left for school. Just after eleven, there was a knock at the door. Olvido felt it in her belly and knew it was Ezequiel Montes. Freshly shaven, his leathery skin brought out the soft green of his eyes. His hair shone and he stood wringing his hands, red from milking animals in the misty dawn. Olvido invited him into the kitchen.
“I found your basket.” The shepherd handed it to her, filled to the brim with blackberries.
“I’ll have enough for at least two cakes now,” she said, setting the basket on the counter. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”
Ezequiel accepted and remained standing to watch her. He knew the story of this beautiful woman’s past, the story of her family and the lavish brothel housed there in the early 1900s. But his soul had been cooled by mountain air for more than forty years; caring nothing for gossip, he listened only to his feral heart.
“Are you feeling all right?”
“My scrapes hardly hurt and my leg is much better after a night’s rest. You really were very kind.” Olvido handed him a cup of coffee, and they sat at the white table that had replaced Manuela’s butcher’s block.
“Do you work the estate alone?”
“My grandson helps me. He just turned sixteen, nearly a man now.”
“I’m a widower. My wife died of pneumonia before we had children.” Ezequiel took a sip of coffee, bitter on his tongue.
“I know what it is to lose a loved one. I’m sorry. We’re never the same again . . .” The taste of graveyard earth filled her mouth, and Olvido lowered her eyes.
Ezequiel Montes set down his cup. He would have liked to stroke her hair, caress her cheek, but merely squeezed her hand.
“A wolf takes one sheep, but the rest still need tending.”
Olvido looked into his eyes. The shepherd’s touch felt good. She liked inhaling the invisible cloud that rose up from his chest.
“I should go. Thank you for the coffee and the chat. Sometimes I go weeks without seeing another soul.” Ezequiel withdrew his hand and stood.
“Come back whenever you like.”
Ezequiel Montes seemed to be in a hurry. Olvido walked him to the door and watched him walk down the daisy-strewn drive.
When Santiago came home, he found his grandmother baking a blackberry cake and chastised her for going into the hills before she was better from her fall.
“The shepherd brought them,” she said without a second thought.
“That Saturnino’s going to great lengths for you.”
“It wasn’t Saturnino but another shepherd. You don’t see him in town very often. His name is Ezequiel Montes.”
Santiago vaguely remembered him. He was a big, silent man rumored to have the looks and instinct of a wolf.
“I was going to pick blackberries for you this afternoon.” Santiago furrowed his brow. “It was nice of him, but if you see him again, tell him there’s a man in this house already.” He left the kitchen, climbing the stairs to his room two at a time.
Olvido washed the berry juice off her hands and followed her grandson.
“What’s wrong?”
Santiago was lying in bed with an absent look in his eyes.
“I don’t want anything to happen to you, don’t you see? I want us to be together forever.”
Olvido sat next to him, stroking his hair. Santiago put his head on her lap and held her tight.
The next day, when Santiago left for school, Olvido prepared lunch, worked in the garden, and went to look for Ezequiel Montes. On this foggy morning the meadows looked like mirages and the memory of the shepherd seemed like a dream. When he was not by the ditch, Olvido continued to his hut. She walked leaning on a stick, careful not to drop her cake. The sky had begun to clear by the time she arrived. She saw Ezequiel sitting on a stool by the door, lost in a book. He looked up, set the book on the grass, and smiled. A gust of wind came down from the mountains, ruffling Olvido’s hair and the flounce of her skirt.
“I brought you a blackberry cake.”
Her cheeks were flushed from the effort, her back damp with sweat. But when Ezequiel Montes approached her, she began to shiver.
“Are you cold?”
“A little.” She was about to blush and looked away before handing him the cake.
Ezequiel thanked her, taking it into the hut, setting it on the table by the hearth. He came back out with a sheepskin coat and placed it on her shoulders.
“There’s a real bite to that wind.”
“What are you reading?” Olvido asked as she sat on the stool.
“The Bible.”
The cover was black leather, the pages turned brown by time, by lonely hands and nights and howls of wild beasts.
“It belonged to my father.”
“Do you like to read?”
“Only the Bible. I learned to read with it, and it’s as far as I got.”
“Have you tried to read anything else, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“I understand your curiosity, but no, whenever I try, the letters all jumble up and I can’t understand a word. Still, I’ve read the Bible twenty times at least, without any trouble at all.”
Ezequiel sat on the grass, pulled out a blade, and stuck it between his lips. He began to tell Olvido about his father, the young priest of a small church in Soria who hung up his robes when he fell in love with a girl, a dressmaker’s apprentice, who came to light candles for her ancestors every morning. The light from those short wicks designed for remembrance dancing on her cheeks and in her wild cat eyes were his father’s introduction to physical love. Ezequiel could not remember those feline eyes: infectious tuberculosis took his mother when he was just four. After the funeral, his father moved back to where he was from and became a shepherd, nurturing his son, his sheep, and his sorrow in the mountains. Ezequiel never went to school; his playmates were the lambs and the dogs. He learned to read with the Bible and to count with the sheep: he added when lambs were born, subtracted when they were taken by wolves. The Civil Guard killed his father in the late 1940s, accusing him of selling milk and cheese on the black market. They shot him on a path where poppies and cotton thistle had grown ever since. Ezequiel found the bullet casings in the mud and carried them for a time in a little leather bag. He would never have looked for them if he hadn’t been so young, but it was as if they could bring back what he had lost. He slept with that little bag under his pillow, the shells exploding in his dreams, filling the hut with gunpowder and terror. In the meantime, wolves ate his sheep as he did nothing to stop them. Until one night, the shells no longer burst, and Ezequiel killed his first wolf with a man’s rifle. At dawn he went back to the path and buried the little bag under a clump of poppies.
The shepherd cleared his throat. It had been years since he had talked that much, years since a woman had listened to him. They said goodbye just after noon. The slow tinkling of bells, the bleating of sheep, the pastures saturated with a green quite different from Ezequiel’s eyes, spurred him on to ask her if she might visit another morning.
“I’ll make you some cheese.”
Nature, however, was the first thing to come between Olvido and Ezequiel, when it rained passionately for several days. Ezequiel’s cheese soured in the hut as a result of the wait. The milk fermented impatiently, mold appearing on the rind as often as the shepherd went to the window in search of a woman’s silhouette in the storm. One afternoon he crushed the round with the butt of his rifle and set about preparing a fresh batch. When it was ready the next morning, he put on his oilskin coat, sheltered the cheese next to his heart, and left the hut. He walked down through the pastures and cane fields until he came to the thick stand of pines and arrived at Scarlet Manor.
The rusty hinges on the iron gate squeaked and the daisies were crushed under his boots. The gold knocker shaped like a woman’s fist rose up, slippery in his hand. Olvido opened the door to find the shepherd under an old, wide-brimmed leather hat.
“The cheese couldn’t wait.”
He pulled it out of his jacket as Olvido invited him into the kitchen. Olvido took the round in her hands and felt it throb against her fingers.
“Thank you,” she said, but nothing more.
Olvido did not dare tell him that she’d tossed and turned all night dreaming of gunpowder the last few nights, unsure whether it came from the rifle Manuela used one winter night or the casings the shepherd had placed under his pillow. She did not dare tell him that, when the moon appeared, she would lie under the purple canopy while two yellow eyes laughed at her restless wanderings through meadows and flocks of sheep. She did not dare tell him about mornings when her eyes were lost in the clouds, her hiking boots ready by the door, her raincoat on the hook, anxious to reach its destination. She did not dare tell him about the squash that died in her hands as she cooked them wistfully thinking of him, unsure how it had happened. She did not dare tell him about her sorrow as she watched the rain, the sorrow in her grandson’s voice or hers at lying to him for the first time ever.