Water and Stone (12 page)

Yet through all the hardships she endured she felt fortunate. She knew of the piedra and with its powers she could manipulate events both near and far. How much greater would her magic become if she once again laid her hands upon the long lost treasure and claimed it for her own?

"I'm going to the Triple Six hacienda, Tia. I'll be home before mother to start her dinner."

It was as if the child was rubbing her nose in the stink of his newfound freedom. Still, he was fifteen years old now and fast becoming the man he was destined to be. Each day he looked a little more like his father and sometimes she thought she caught sight of her own dark magic lingering in the boy's eyes. Evalena wondered if the powers might leak down through the generations and pool into Church.

One thing she knew: the boy would bring suffering to the life of everyone he met. Still, the world was made of hardship and sharp trials and anyone who walked the earth was bound for disaster in the end. Even with all their power her fathers couldn't forestall that eventuality.

It pained her a good deal that she had the gift of prophecy when it came to others yet her own personal myth was hidden from her as if a veil had been drawn over her one good eye by the dark gods she worshipped so fervently. Perhaps they teased her as her father had warned that they would... indeed as he did. It was the price one paid for the power instilled by the gods.

Evalena longed to change places with Yani. She desired—in fact she deserved—to live in the hacienda. She saw herself sleeping upon sheets of silk and rising to the soft tapping of the maid at her door informing her that breakfast was ready to be served in bed. Such splendor was wasted on men like Rancher Ford and his obese wife who was gone all the time and who'd never known one moment of wanting in her life.

Did Rancher Ford still have eyes for Yani? She suspected that he did though she also sensed how the man was fickle as a red headed sandpiper and was bound to alight upon any branch with a bird upon it that stayed still long enough. Still, the man had two sons now and her foresight told her only one would inherit the vast ranch and all its wealth while the other perished.

For her own part, Evalena always thought her father would give back to her the most treasured possession she'd bestowed upon him for safekeeping but somehow it was lost in the maelstrom of his death. Though she searched for years the trail eventually went cold. When she found herself again she was living in a whorehouse in Mexico City.

Evalena had no qualms about ordering the death of those deserving of it. She had all the villagers who she assumed had murdered her father put to death in particularly gruesome ways along with their entire families... the entire town, in fact. The guilt carried by those killers of her father ran deep and to root it out it was necessary to kill everyone they knew or might have known.

They called her La Doncelle de la Muerte, the men who came to see her and yet were too afraid to look upon her beauty and grace. They would rather crawl on the ground yet she knew with a certainty that they'd all hasten to do her bidding no matter how dark the deeds.

Even at the brothel in Mexico City she was known as the one who could get things done. She wasn't a whore like the others though she would have willingly given herself away to the right man.

"Have fun, mi chico... Tia will be waiting here all by herself."

It was useless to forbid the boy to go... she understood that. But perhaps a small dose of guilt might work where a deluge of denial didn't. Church stopped short as he turned to her and spoke.

"Come with me, mi Tia. There's no reason for you to sit here all alone. Come with me. We're going swimming today and not in that old creek either. We're going to swim in the new pool Rancher Ford just had installed. Come with me and bring your swimming suit."

She liked the way he called her his aunt and for just a moment she contemplated accepting his offer. She was after all a beautiful woman and Rancher Ford was said to enjoy indulging his every whim in such creatures... perhaps there was another way to the man's fortune than through guile and malice. Still, she didn’t wish to seem too easy, either.

She imagined it was the puta inside of her longing to be set free. Every day women sold themselves for far less than a ranch. Her own sister had given herself away for nothing as if that was all she was worth. Evalena thought how it might not be an altogether bad thing to teach the man a lesson.

"Oh, I better not go, mi chico... your mother might not like it if she saw I was enjoying swimming in the pool while she was working."

He came back to her taking her by the hand and leading her out the doorway into the bright sunlight where she blinked for many moments until finding her sense of sight once more.

"You've never been to the hacienda, Tia. Come with me and I'll show you how grand a place it is. If she wishes to do so, I'll see if Rancher Ford will allow mother to swim with us too. I'll ask him myself."

She hadn’t realized until that moment what a man Church had become.

He always dreamed of having a brother.

His father surprised Billy Ford on a Tuesday by asking him to saddle up the horses for a ride, especially it being a weekday. Normally Rancher Ford spent the week in Guthrie working business deals and attending meetings with his various partners or else working the ranch often times leaving before dawn and not arriving home until after sunset.

Billy figured his father had forgotten about their talk concerning Church, the boy he met on the school bus and later learned was his brother. It'd been two years since he'd mentioned the little boy to Rancher Ford and how poor he lived along with his mother at the dilapidated shack hunkered by the confluence of creeks at the end of Cherry Creek Road.

He'd seen the boy as he climbed onto the bus... watched as Big John Gerhard began bullying him the way he bullied all the boys younger and smaller than him... and finally he had enough of it.

When he spoke up he wasn’t certain what Big John's reaction would be. They were the same age—ten—though John was built much bigger, fat, mostly. Billy Ford had seen boys like that go down with one solid punch to the nose—a roll of pennies clenched inside his fist helped—so he told himself if the boy took umbrage at him sticking up for the little guy then he'd set things to right without much effort.

Big John obviously deemed it better to simply do as Billy Ford said and leave it at that. Perhaps the boy had heard the rumors about Billy's propensity toward violence or more likely he was simply a coward.

After so quickly making friends with Church, Billy kept wondering why they were brought together as they were... both of them living on his father's ranch... one in a mansion and the other in an old one-eyed shotgun shack that should have been burned down ages ago.

He took to bringing Church gifts. Though he tried to give him money the boy always refused saying his Tia would be upset with him for taking it. Billy Ford wondered why the pretty woman at the shack disliked him so but soon discovered it was her predilection to frighten men and boys away, especially those she did not appreciate being around.

It seemed apparent that the woman didn't cotton to Billy. At first he thought she was protecting the younger boy from someone she believed might be trying to take advantage of him but soon he began to wonder if there might well be something far darker going on in that family.

She scared him more than a little.

After his first run in with the aunt Billy stayed away from the shack at the end of Cherry Creek Road for months. Finally he worked up his courage to go back on a weekend day when he hoped the woman might not be there. But she was. His horse nickered and whinnied but didn't run this time.

"Come here, boy."

She ordered him around as if he was hers to do with as she would. He had a fleeting notion to inform her that he was the de facto owner of the shack where she was living and should he give the word she'd be gone by sunset but something in the woman's demeanor stopped him cold.

It was hot for late October yet a chill ran up his spine as he climbed down off his horse and did as the woman told him. Walking closer to her Billy was struck by both her beauty and her youth... he'd heretofore thought she was much older but he saw that she couldn’t be more than a year or two his elder.

"Give me your hand."

When he hesitated she put hers out in a quick gesture that bade him do likewise. Taking hold of his arm she turned his hand palm upward holding it at just the right angle for the sunlight to hit it squarely and bending over she studied it intently. The touch of her skin upon his excited him almost more than he could stand and he nearly pulled away before giving in to the feeling and going with it.

Evalena seemed too absorbed in gazing into his hand to notice the eager want arising in his eyes and the way the crotch of his pants were suddenly too small. Then again, perhaps she did notice... he learned later that the girl had a way of holding back what she knew of the world until and if it was necessary that she spill her knowledge.

Most people that Billy knew were always trying to make an impact on others with their wealth, be it material or mental. Evalena had neither. He got the impression she'd never attended school. He doubted if she could read. She lived simply and her speech was plain and without the adornment of wisdom. She had nothing but the clothes upon her back. At the same time though, he knew without asking that the girl was more than a match for his own intelligence.

"It's here... that thing which I've lost. I can read it written in the wrinkles on your palm. Tell me, boy... have you ever seen something strange anywhere nearby... a stone that doesn't seem like it should? It belongs to me. If you know of it, tell me, and we'll share its power."

"No... I don’t think so... what does it look like?"

There was a sense of urgency in the woman's eye that he didn't like, feral and uncouth. He knew without a doubt she'd do anything he asked to get the stone back. He had an urge to lie to her... to tell the girl that he knew where the stone was and could obtain it.... for a price. Still, he thought it better to keep silent, at least for the present time.

The desires he was beginning to have... she'd satisfy every one of them and more. Once again the thought came to him at how young she was... and how extraordinarily beautiful... though the way she carried herself she seemed much older and he thought how the authority she assumed dulled some of her splendor.

"Even an idiot like you would know it if you saw it, boy. I'm certain you've been close to it... it's carved its presence into your hand. Perhaps it's hidden around here. Tell me... if you had a great treasure to hide, where would you put it?"

"In the bank, I guess."

"You're a fool. Go on with you... go and play with the other imbecile. Church is in back. But remember... if you ever come across a strange stone, bring it to me and I'll reward you with wealth beyond imagination. Ask your idiotic brother about it sometime... he may be eager to tell you what he refuses to share with me."

The migrant workers filtering through the Triple Six often gossiped over their lunch of tortillas and beans and working with them over the years Billy had come to a rudimentary understanding of Spanish though his speech was lacking in that same fluency.

He noticed how the men kept talking about a beautiful senorita who lived in a chabola at the edge of the property with her sister and her nephew and how it was best to go by every so often and pay their respects to her lest she might cast one of her spells over them.

In a flash of insight Billy Ford realized the woman the men were talking about had to be Evalena, Church's aunt, the one who had given him the evil eye and caused his horse to run off with him on the first day he rode out to the shack to take the boy riding. Apparently she was a woman of some renown and not one to be trifled with.

Not long after his initial misadventure at the tiny cabin two of the more trusted compañeros at the ranch, men who'd worked there for years, were found dead in an arroyo some miles from the hacienda. Apparently their death had been particularly gruesome and though some of the migrant workers attributed it to a cattle stampede others told how no one could find any sign of animal footprints on the dusty ground where the men were discovered.

Rumor had it that they were not Mexicans, those two men. Instead they hailed from Cuba. The men at the ranch talked in hushed tones telling tales as to how wild dogs or perhaps coyotes had pulled out the insides of the bodies and left them lying upon rocks and stones the way no one could ever remember seeing before. The talk tended toward it happening while the men yet lived though Billy Ford wondered if that was simply the vaqueros joshing one another, scaring the younger men among them and even the elder ones. In time the talk of the strange deaths dissolved into the same nothingness of the land from which it sprang.

The rumor persisted, however, that Church's aunt and his mother were not Mexicans either. They too were originally from Cuba. One of the migrant workers had told Billy Ford with a sigh not to repeat it how the aunt, Evalena, was steeped in Santeria, or La Regla Lucumí, a term which Billy didn't understand. He'd heard of Santeria, however.

Billy Ford once happened across a book called The Satanic Bible. One of the older kids of a man in the employ of his father had loaned it to Billy when he expressed an interest in reading it. Not wanting his parents to see the book he read it late at night under a tent he constructed with the covers of his bed and with the help of a flashlight to illuminate the words. It spoke of dark doings, the devil's doings, and something called Santeria. Apparently the religion came to Cuba and other Caribbean islands from Africa.

It was related to Catholicism in ways which intrigued Billy Ford into studying both religions more in depth. Apparently something called the Philosophers' Stone was given to Adam—the first man—by God. According to legend the Stone was passed down through the generations giving the biblical patriarchs their extended longevity... some of them lived a thousand years or more.

The Stone was said to be the rejected cornerstone in the Temple of Solomon, something called 'first matter,' a fabulous jewel by which the holder could know the will of God as well as the ways of Satan.

Apparently the Stone was given to Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican friar, in the thirteen century after being discovered in a ruined abbey in Italy by one of his mentors. Aquinas was honored in Catholicism as a Saint not only for his extensive writings but for his religious reformations, especially for his doctrines on heretics and how the Church should not seek to imitate God.

After the death of Aquinas the Stone seemingly vanished. For centuries it was rumored to be kept at a secret location under a Coptic temple in Africa and was the object of various quests by many people and even nations. Failing to find the Stone, alchemists sought to replicate it by various means all of them failing in the end.

Billy Ford wondered if like Santeria the Stone had come to Cuba from where it was hidden in Africa and if it had, perhaps Church's family were involved somehow. After considering his theory for some time he put it off to nonsense... if Church's family were in possession of the Philosophers' Stone they would be wealthy beyond belief, not paupers living in a shack at the edge of a Texas wasteland.

Still, there was something decidedly strange about Church's aunt Evalena and her effect upon the migrant workers who seemed to worship her. She scared him so badly that for many months after his first encounter with the woman Billy Ford wouldn't go to that shack alone even though he recognized Church as his brother.

That too was a bit of an accidental discovery. Billy had been leafing through one of the many family photo albums late one night while sleep wouldn't come and he'd happened across a picture of Church. The find startled him mightily until he realized it wasn’t Church at all... it was him... a photo taken of him at the same age as Church. But for the differences in complexion and the color of their hair they could have been twins.

Though he'd never told Church that they were brothers, at least not in so many words, the boy must have known it too. When his father finally decided to make a trip to the tiny shack where the boy lived and asked Church if he knew who he was, the boy replied that he was his father.

Billy remembered how his father didn't acknowledge Church either affirmatively or negatively, only laughing and offering him a job at the hacienda taking it for granted that he would now become the boy's mentor as well as his father.

Billy Ford had always assumed that as the only child of Rancher Ford he'd one day inherit everything the man owned. Though he didn't begrudge Church's soft spot in his father's heart he couldn’t help but wonder at times if he was being displaced somehow... if perhaps he didn't measure up quite as highly in his father's estimation as he'd once done.

Church was hard not to love, however. The boy had a gentle hand with not only the ponies but all the animals around the ranch making pets out of the horses as well as the goats, the sheep, and even the pigs. He openly wept when the cattle were butchered and refused to eat meat of any kind.

Finally, Billy decided it didn't matter if they were to share in his father's legacy though he wouldn’t relish being related to a woman like Evalena. Still, the woman had a certain pull on him that he wasn't proud of and often chided himself for the thoughts he had when she was around.

One night he dreamed of her. She came to Billy Ford the same way he had noticed how his father's women came to him, all love and kisses. When she removed the eye patch she wore over her right eye it revealed a red eyeball only not an eyeball at all. It was a stone colored white yet constantly shifting into all the hues of the rainbow.

Upon waking the next morning Billy Ford sensed he was being called.