The Witch Narratives: Reincarnation (33 page)

“Good,” she mumbled, looking down the tracks at the approaching train. Trains petrified her ever since Mother and Grandma dragged her to the station one night, after months of trying to teach her how to fly. She remembered the sound of the approaching train. They each took her by a hand and swung her above the tracks. They threw her in front of the train. It was fly or die, and she burst into a fireball and soared above the train. Her flying was rather rusty since she took up with Samuel. She wasn’t even sure if she could any more.

He dumped the newspaper in a trash can. “Let’s don’t talk about the Depression, but speak of more pleasant things. Your surprise is waiting, my Lady.”

He helped Salia rise to her feet and escorted her down the walkway to the last car of the train. He nodded his head to the workman, who laid down a platform and slid open the back. Two other men pushed a shiny, apple-red Ford 3-Window Coupe.

Samuel turned to her and smiled. “It’s for you, Darling. I’ll teach you how to drive the contraption after the baby’s born. Well, aren’t you going to say something?”

She stared at the car with sparkling eyes. “Oh, Samuel, it’s wonderful.”

“Come on,” he said in a gruff voice. “I’ll drive you home. Then I have to go to a meeting, which I’m going to be late for because the 10:00 came in at 10:10.”

“Go on to your meeting. I can make my own way home.”

“I’ll drive you,” he insisted.

“You just want to be the first to drive the new car.”

“You betcha,” he said and honked the horn.

39

S
amuel pounded the coal dust from his boots before opening the door of the offices of the Albuquerque and Cerrillos Coal Mining Company. “Woodson,” he said, nodding his head at his secretary.

Three men stood in a corner drinking cups of coffee, their heads bowed in amiable conversation. Samuel walked up to them and a hush fell over the room.

Pacheco puffed up his chest with his own self-importance. “I won’t beat around the bush. I am here to discuss organizing a union for the miners.” He stood between the mine manager Oscar Hughes and the foreman, Tom Dyer, as if he already had their support.

Samuel led them into his office, snapping off his gloves. “You may be seated, Gentlemen,” he said in a dry tone, “Although it seems you have already begun the meeting without me.”

Oscar coughed into his hand. “We didn’t start without you, Samuel. We were just chit-chatting.”

Pacheco pounded the table with his fist. “The men break their backs for you since the mines are rat holes.”

“Hang onto your tamales, Sandoval, and quit pissing chili. Madrid isn’t Gallup with six foot veins where the miners can work standing up. It’s not my fault the veins here are just three or four feet tall and dip sixteen degrees. And what interest is my mine to you? You don’t even work there. My concerns are none of your business,” Samuel snapped.

“You should at least listen to Pacheco, Boss,” Tom said. “The men have his ear. It would be in our best interest to hear what he has to say.”

“It would surely hurt us, Samuel, if the men strike,” Oscar pointed out.

Samuel leaned back in his chair, resting his hands on his stomach. He clunked down his boots on the desktop in a disrespectful, relaxed manner. “Very well, humor me,” he said, lifting his lips in a sardonic smile at Pacheco. “If my men listen to you when you open your mouth, Sandoval, then I shall do no less. Only sit down. I don’t look up to any man.”

Pacheco sat back down. He spread his hands across the table. “The men want better wages, Patrón,” he said.

“I pay my men very well, considering there’s a Depression,” he countered.

“That is true, but you deduct too much from their wages. It is as if each of the miners has dug his own tunnel from which he cannot escape. The debt each of them owes you can never be repaid.”

“Debt is good for my miners. My men are paid by the tons of coal each one produces. It makes a man produce more in his working hours, if he owes money.”

“That may be, but each year the men tunnel their way even deeper into debt.”

“That’s because they don’t know how to live on the money they earn but have to draw scrip against their future wages.”

“It’s because they already owe you so much money, the men cannot live on what you pay them.”

“If a man owes me money, then he’ll stick around to work off his debt, won’t he?” Samuel said, blowing smoke from his cigar in Pacheco’s face.

“That’s not much better than slavery,” he said, coughing.

“Tut. Tut. Slavery was abolished in this country, Sandoval,” he said, waving a finger at him. “I pay my men an honest wage for an honest day’s work, and I am always generous with credit. I let no man or his family go hungry, no matter how much their hours are cut because of the Depression.”

“You should increase their wages,” Pacheco said in a voice shaking with anger. “Instead, you increase the amount they have to pay for goods in the company store.”

“Now, come, Sandoval, I have not increased the price of goods in three years.”

“You have a monopoly in this town, Patrón. The men know that if one of them goes into Golden or Cerrillos and buys goods there, then he will be fired from his job.”

“You forget that I own this town, lock, stock and barrel. The men make their living in Madrid. I provide them jobs. I pay their salary, and I demand their loyalty. I believe the good people of Madrid should spend their wages in Madrid and give back to the community.”

“You mean, give more to you,” he snorted.

“You forget, Sandoval, that the businesses here in Madrid provide jobs.”

“At more low wages,” he scoffed.

“Without me, most of these people wouldn’t have a roof over their heads. I provide their homes.” Samuel put out his half-smoked cigar in the ash tray, grinding the tip into the glass.

“Many of those so-called homes you provide are in disrepair,” Pacheco said.

“The snow piles up in the corners because the houses were prefabricated and put together after they arrived decades ago,” Hughes added.

“You could throw a cat through the cracks in some of them,” Tom said, grinning.

Samuel did not find the joke funny. He glared at his foreman and manager.

“The houses are draughty and leaky,” Pacheco said, his voice grown louder, fueled by what he interpreted as Oscar’s and Tom’s support.

“If some of the homes need repairing, it’s because of the carelessness of the occupants. If they weren’t so lazy, they’d fix some of these repairs themselves. It’s always been my policy to provide the materials for repairs. Just last spring I had a roofing crew put new roofs on eight houses.”

Pacheco dipped his head. “That may be, but more must be done.”

“The problem with you people is that you’re never satisfied,” Samuel said, sighing with exasperation.

A knock came at the door.

“Enter,” Samuel barked.

Mr. Woodson poked his head in the door. “Your wife telephoned. Mrs. Stuwart is going into labor.”

The other men looked at each other uncomfortably.

“Thank you, Mr. Woodson, tell Salia I’ll be right home,” he said worriedly. He turned to Pacheco. “I would like to talk to my men in private before I go, Sandoval.”

Pacheco got up to leave.

“And, Sandoval?”

“Si, Patrón?”

“Don’t worry your little head any more about my company. I’ll come up with something to make my men happy, even though there’s a Depression, and I could replace each and every one of them quicker than they can
organize and strike. I could take my train down to Albuquerque and come back with a full load of able bodied men, willing to work for next to nothing and thrilled to have any kind of roof over their heads, and scrip to purchase food with before they even lift a finger to work.”

Pacheco nodded his head and closed the door behind him.

Samuel exploded. “Just what the hell were you two doing, siding with that bastard?”

Oscar and Tom denied the accusation.

“I want the surplus of coal increased, do you understand me—starting immediately, in case the men organize with Pacheco and that troublemaker talks them into striking. The man’s a fool,” he snorted, “threatening to organize my miners and strike when there are 13 million men out of work in this country. Now, if you’ll excuse me,” he said through gritted teeth, “I am about to become a father.”

He put on his coat with jerky movements, walked to the door then spun and faced Hughes. “You’re growing soft. I should replace you. As for you, Dyer, if I ever see your face during working hours outside in the open air, I’ll fire you. If I don’t see a significant increase in the surplus soon, I’ll fire the both of you,” he barked and spun on his heel, leaving behind two shaken men.

Samuel stormed out of the building. He did not notice Pacheco on the side wall, rubbing his back against the building, shedding his skin like a snake. He glittered at him through slits from his head that Samuel had called little. Pacheco was a small man and did have a tiny head, like a cobra.

Oscar and Tom left the offices, motioning with their hands to Pacheco. The three men went behind the building.

“If it was up to me, Pacheco,” Oscar said, hold out his empty hands. “I am helpless ever since Samuel moved to Madrid. I lost the freedom to manage the mine as I see fit.”

“I wish he’d go back to Albuquerque and leave the town to us, the people who belong here. He may own Madrid, but he has never fit in,” Tom said.

“Well, we all know who keeps him here,” Oscar said, rocking on his feet, and resting his hands on his big belly. “The whore’s not cosmopolitan enough for Albuquerque. Would you be seen with her in the city?”

Tom shook his head, no.

“He has to hide with the witch here, where she can’t shame him in front of his rich friends,” he snarled.

“The bruja is about to deliver an heir to the patrón,” Pacheco said, crossing himself.

“I can’t believe he married her,” Oscar said. “He preferred that…that… to a decent woman.” Oscar, of course, was thinking of his daughter, who a few years ago married the son of the owner of a dry goods store in Albuquerque, not exactly the rich man he had envisioned as a son-in-law.

“Why did he have to go and marry her for?” Tom said. “After all, she was already living with him without a ring on her finger.”

“She bewitched him, when he looked in her eyes at the trial. This is why I have felt sorry for the patrón, but my patience is wearing thin,” Pacheco said.

Oscar laughed. It was an ugly sound, nothing joyful about it. “That baby was conceived before he married her. Salia Esperanza trapped Samuel, using the oldest trick in the book. They’ve only been married five months.”

“She will be unfaithful to him,” Pacheco said in a shrill voice. The subject of adultery was a sore spot with him.

“Salia may be considered a great singer, admired by those other singers who come by train from all over the country for the privilege of acting with her, but to those of us who remember the snot nosed brat, trailing after her witch grandmother and mother, she’s no better than a prostitute,” Tom said.

“Maybe the child isn’t even his,” Oscar snorted.

“The boss has brought shame to our peaceful village by living with Salia out of wedlock. The fact she’s married to him now, don’t mean nothing. Mrs. Stuwart,” he scoffed. “Who would have thought?”

“I’m embarrassed to have my own daughter visit,” Oscar said, shaking his head.

“Maybe he’ll move back to Albuquerque for the sake of the child, and then your daughter can show her face in Madrid again,” Tom said.

Oscar opened his mouth, speechless.

Tom turned beet red. It was no secret Oscar’s daughter was spurned by Samuel in favor of Salia.

“As for the near-bastard child, the new heir of Madrid is an abomination,” Pacheco said.

And he took his fist and shoved it at the wall.

40

S
amuel arrived home, accompanied by New Mexico’s best doctor who had been on standby, patiently holed up in the Gold Hills Hotel. However, both men were barred from the bedroom where the birth was already taking place. Spider-Woman was midwifing, along with her husband’s inferior second wife, Little-Dove, who was about 20 years younger than Spider-Woman. Little-Dove had lovely doe eyes. Unlike the fat Spider-Woman, Little-Dove was small and graceful.

Samuel was frantic with worry. He had no idea what was going on in the birthing room, nor could he comprehend how the women could have gotten to his house so quickly, not knowing that they were both witches of the Sisterhood of the Black Rose and could fly as fireballs.

“If my wife and child come to any harm,” he screamed at the locked door, “I’ll have you brought before the law on charges.”

Spider-Woman merely rolled her eyes at Little-Dove. Men. They were all the same. When it came to womanly things, they all knew nothing.

What concerned Samuel were not the screams coming from the closed room, but the silence.

Meanwhile, the doctor from Albuquerque made the most of this opportunity to sit in the library, where he found a bottle of whiskey in a desk drawer.