Queen of America Read online

They came forward with their heads bowed.

  “Do you believe me?”

  They nodded.

  “Say it.”

  All they said was: “Sí, señor.”

  The short one retrieved a massive old Hawken rifle from a suede scabbard and delivered it to the tall one. He affixed a small bipod to the end of the octagonal barrel and flipped up the tall rear sights. The rifle smelled of oil. It was cool in the warmth of the sun. He rested his cheek upon the silky stock; it was carved with roses and hummingbirds. He drew a bead on the doorway, dark and empty. Then he swung to the window, to the blur of the man sitting within. Probably at a table. Reading a book. The gunman sneered.

  He drew back the hammer—it resisted the pull just slightly; the liquid clicks of the gun’s mechanisms as it prepared to shoot were soothing to him, like music. It was a five-hundred-yard shot, but downhill and no wind to speak of. He settled himself against the rocks, felt his ribs press into the earth, and he set the rifle tight to his shoulder and slipped his finger onto the trigger. Breathe. In. Out. Ignore the girl, appearing in the doorway now like a ghost in his peripheral vision. He could shoot the father and swing on her before she heard the shot. Papa would be dead in a cloud of red mist before the sound of the crack turned her head.

  He fired; the window burst; the man’s shadow exploded. Damn, the kick was brutal against his shoulder. He’d have a bruise. The girl spun to see what the shattering was. He took her with a shot drilled into the center of her back; she flew, disappearing like some magical act in a cabaret, into the deep dark of the cabin.

  The riders got down to the cabin, to chickens still panicking and the tied horses sidestepping and tossing their heads. It was funny how strong the smell of blood was. The whole yard smelled of meat and old coins.

  The short one threw a kick at a hustling chicken and said, “Supper.”

  His companion grinned.

  They stepped into the cabin. It stank. So much blood in such a small space. They were both dead. The wall behind the table was sprayed with a starburst of deep red. More than dead. Those finger-length bullets tended to scatter the flesh. But their heads were intact.

  “Drag them out,” the tall one said. He grabbed Papa by the feet. The other took hold of the girl’s wrist and pulled her out by one arm.

  They yanked their belduques and bent to the scalping, avoiding the dark blood that still leaked from the tatters.

  Her hair was red in the sunlight, her neck sugared with freckles.

  The rider turned her head on her limp neck and looked at her face.

  “Ah, cabrón,” he said.

  “¿Qué?” his friend said.

  “This ain’t her,” the first one said.

  “What?”

  They looked at Papá, then kicked him.

  “It’s the wrong family?”

  “Hmm.”

  They lit small cigars and stood there, stupid and hungry.

  “I guess we keep looking.”

  “I guess.”

  “Burn the house?”

  “Why not.”

  “But first…”

  “First, we eat some chicken.”

  And they did.

  Two

  A DAY LATER AND miles beyond.

  “The Saint of Cabora can no longer speak to the dead,” Don Tomás Urrea said to the newspaper reporter.

  Tomás turned away from the Arizona desert and regarded his interlocutor. The two men were sitting in the shade of the mesquite and paloverde trees of the rented bosque. Not far from them, the Santa Cruz River made its hot and languid journey away from Tucson, and on its banks a few cottonwoods had managed to grow—old grandfather trees, scarred by lightning and heat and drought. Don Tomás could hear them rustling in the desiccating breeze. His daughter the fabled Saint of Cabora regularly pointed out that the leaves of cottonwoods looked like hearts as big as hands, and they waved at you in the slightest wind. Beyond the trees, all was stones and rattlesnakes. He smiled ruefully. If they were in Mexico, he could show this reporter a bosque! Back there, he would have called it a huerta, and the mango trees would be dropping fat juicy fruit at his feet. But this was not the time for reveries, he told himself.

  The reporter seemed to be waiting patiently as Tomás ordered his thoughts. Of course, the gringo note-taker could not possibly know of the endless parade of rattling ideas, memories, worries, regrets, schemes that tromped through his skull. Who could? Sometimes, if Tomás drank enough, he could postpone the haunting, he could trip the ghosts and make them stumble.

  Tomás tried to focus, but all he could imagine were scenes of his lost life, turning to dust in Sonora. His ranch, gone. His woman, bereft and lonely. His wife too. And his children.

  He wondered if his horses missed him. He wondered if his top hand, Segundo, had whipped the tattered workers of the ranch into shape and earned him some profits. He wondered how a man made his fortune in the United States. Hell, how did a man even eat?

  “Bosque,” he said.

  “Pardon me?” replied the reporter. They were speaking Spanish, but Tomás was convinced he had mastered English, and he intended to show this fool a thing or two.

  “That is the name of this place: the Bosque Ranch.”

  “I see.”

  But he did not see. To be a ranch, a place needed cattle, horses, crops. Tomás and Teresita sleepwalked, stunned by their escape from death in Mexico. In unspoken mourning over the lost families and lovers, friends and memories cast out upon the sand by the violence of Indian wars, by the assaults of the government on their home. All Tomás had left was his great self. What else was there?

  His daughter had her God and her herbs and her holiness.

  She had ruined him.

  He had been used to great bouts of superhuman activity. His days were filled with horses and vaqueros and cattle and laughter. Strong drink. Women. Always women! His days had been full of noise! And now, Arizona.

  It was silent. He had never heard such pervasive silence. Except for the birds, which did not allow him to sleep in the mornings. The Apaches told him there were more birds in Arizona than in all the rest of the world, and he believed them. But you could not ride birds.

  I will never go home.

  In the bright house in Tubac, the Saint of Cabora cried out in pain.

  “Be still, Teresita,” her hostess said.

  “It hurts!”

  “Being a woman hurts,” the lady replied.

  Teresita closed her eyes. It was as if she were a small girl again, and her old teacher were speaking to her. Huila. Old Huila! Gone now to the place of flowers.

  The women were preparing for a funeral, but, as is often the case, these survivors who attended to the details after a death felt a small giddiness just to be alive. Yes, a relative’s death diminished them, but such passings also reminded them they were alive, more alive on some funeral days than on other days. Teresita thought: Life continues, even in this desert—weddings, births, illness, death—it is our story, always. No one dared laugh loudly when a quip lightened the room, but they avidly sipped their teas and their coffees and ate small pastries and perched on the edges of their chairs and stared at the Saint of Cabora as she spoke. Their eyes bright.

  “Your father,” one of the women said, “is quite charming.”

  “And handsome!” another enthused.

  Teresita squirmed in her seat.

  “We have fallen on difficult times,” she said. “He is, though, still possessed of great charm.”

  “Is it true,” her hostess asked, “that he nearly died to save you?”

  Teresita felt shame. Her burden of guilt was heavy. Now, when she and her father scratched at each other in their endless skirmishes, she felt doubly guilty. Everything was confusing to her.

  “He was heroic,” she finally said. “In our tribulations.”

  The women passed looks around the room—it was all so thrilling.

  “So tell us more,” her hostess requested.

&n
bsp; “¡Ay! Well, the soldiers came for me. They insisted I had inspired war. Revolt. Oh! That hurt.”

  “Sorry.”

  The women clucked.

  “I did not inspire war, I never preached war. I was trying to tell the People of God’s love… of God’s justice.”

  The women looked at one another, nodded.

  “I was to be executed. It was clear. I was sent to prison with my father. There… we suffered. Terrible things.” She jumped in her chair. “But now I must suffer this torture instead!”

  “Quiet now. Don’t be a ninny,” her hostess said.

  Through the window, Teresita could see the twin cottonwoods at the Tubac river crossing. Teresita had stopped at the ruins of Santa Gertrudis Church for a quiet morning prayer. She enjoyed the sorrowful dilapidations, and the old fort still standing outside of town.

  “I am not a ninny!”

  She sat in the front room of Guillermo Lowe’s house being attended to by his wife and some of the town ladies. The funeral was for Guillermo’s father, William, down at the Cienega Ranch in neighboring Tumacacori.

  “We were unexpectedly placed on a train,” she continued. “And we were expelled forever from Mexico.”

  She squirmed.

  “Sit still,” Anna Berruel told her.

  “I am.”

  “No, you are not.”

  “¡Ay!”

  “It doesn’t hurt, Teresita.”

  “But it does!”

  Anna waved her tweezers in Teresita’s face.

  “You have one eyebrow! A lady does not have one eyebrow!” The gathered women nodded and murmured. “Do you wish to be a lady or not?”

  “If you wish to find a beau…” one of the women said, her voice trailing off.

  “I do not want a boyfriend,” Teresita claimed.

  “Yes, you do,” said Anna.

  After a moment, Teresita said, “Yes, I do.”

  They all laughed.

  “One brow, why, it’s… wanton,” Anna scolded.

  ¡Por Dios!

  Teresita could not believe that after all she had been through, people were still trying to make her into a “lady.”

  “Go ahead,” she said. “Pluck.”

  Shade did not cut the heat.

  The reporter had once interviewed Wyatt Earp, and this Mexican’s mustache reminded him of the great lawman’s. Though Tomás was tall enough and sufficiently craggy, and though he was momentarily famous, such a crop on the Mexican’s lip seemed a real fumadiddle to the kid. These greasers and their pretensions. He smiled and focused on his satchel, fetching out a set of pencils and a leather notebook.

  Don Tomás lifted a glass of dark wine from the wooden table. The reporter’s full glass remained untouched. One of the table’s legs was short and was propped up by a flat stone. The men sat on two rickety chairs. Don Tomás rested his boots on a third. He sniffed the wine right before he sipped it. All pleasure, he believed, could and should be doubled.

  “So,” he said.

  He placed the glass carefully on the purple ring it had left on the gray wood.

  “You have come to hear the story of what has happened since we were escorted out of Mexico.”

  The reporter opened his notebook so it lay flat on the table. He raised his pencil. His green bowler hat profoundly offended Don Tomás. Tomás could not understand why Americanos didn’t doff their hats when addressing a caballero in serious matters.

  “I would very much appreciate whatever of your story you might wish to impart, Mr. Urrea,” the reporter said. “You are, what, some kind of Spaniard? A conquistador?”

  “My family is Basque, originally. But we have deep historical roots in the Visigoth invaders of Iberia—”

  “Yes, yes. Very interesting. You were imprisoned by the Mexican government, correct? Would it be improper to term you an enemy of the state?”

  Don Tomás tipped his head politely.

  “As you wish,” he intoned.

  “Criminal charges, correct?”

  Silence.

  “Might you be called a traitor, then?”

  Slight cough.

  If he had only seen Tomás riding his legendary stallions through Cabora, he would have known that Tomás’s mildness was a harbinger of dreadful things, a sign that would have sent the vaqueros and ranch hands running. Tomás sipped his wine.

  “I would like to hear about the Saint of Cabora. Your daughter.”

  In English, Tomás announced: “I know who is my daughter.”

  “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “The”—he consulted his notes—“the ‘most dangerous girl in Mexico.’ That was according to Porfirio Díaz, the president of Mex—”

  “Oye, cabrón,” Tomás snapped, then switched back to English, which he thought was fluid and masterful. “Do you not think I know who is Porfirio Díaz?”

  “Who Porfirio Díaz is,” the younger man corrected. “Your English.” The reporter smiled condescendingly. “A slight remediation, señor, for future reference.”

  Don Tomás turned his face to the young man with a small, skeletal smile.

  “How kind,” he breathed.

  He was being ripped to pieces by the world, and nobody even noticed.

  “So. As regards Señorita Urrea,” the reporter continued in his schoolboy Spanish. The reporter pronounced it “seen-your-reeter.” “Her mother is absent?”

  “We do not speak of these things,” Tomás muttered.

  “She absconded, however.”

  Tomás adjusted his vest and his belt buckle and looked away. One shoulder shrugged.

  “Is it true, what we hear about this healing business?”

  “True?” said Tomás, considering it. “Define true.”

  “Is the Saint healing people, or do they only think they are being healed?”

  “Ah,” Tomás said. “Reality.” He shrugged one shoulder again. Squeezed out a tiny reluctant laugh. He lifted his hands slightly. “I ask myself this every day.”

  “Do you have an opinion?”

  “Yes,” said Tomás, bored with this line of questioning. “I have several opinions. I manage to have an opinion almost every day.”

  The reporter crinkled his nose as if a bad smell had wafted in from the river.

  “Opinions, then, about her being dangerous? If you will indulge me.”

  “We are in Arizona now,” Tomás noted mildly. “Here, she is not so dangerous. Perhaps it is I who am the dangerous one.”

  The reporter chuckled.

  Don Tomás lifted his glass.

  “I said a funny?” he asked, reverting to English to show the kid he could.

  These newspapers—all they wanted to write about was the Saint. The rural papers offered articles of faith, while the urban papers offered mockery. These incessant stories only fueled the madness. Even here, in this desert, eighty people a day could show up at any time demanding… miracles. Healings. Resurrections and blessings. Indians wanted to raid cities in her name. And the family’s enemies, no doubt they were taking notice of this stream of mythmaking. The Great Depression of ’93 was not helping either; the more desperate the pilgrims became, the more they scrambled after wonders. Trouble, trouble, trouble.

  He slammed the glass on the table; the reporter jumped.

  “The question is, do you intend to continue your outlaw ways here in the United States?”

  “Ah, is this the question?”

  A wasp buzzed around the table. It closed on the rim of Tomás’s glass. It hovered and landed and tasted the wine.

  Enough.

  “I prefer bees,” Don Tomás said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Bees.”

  “Bees?”

  “You are aware of bees?”

  “Bees, señor?”

  “Bees!” Tomás said. “Who do you think introduced domesticated bees to Sonora? I did! Who gave honey to Sonora? Me!”

  The reporter said, “Yes, but we are in Arizona
now. As you said.”

  He grinned at the patrón: Touché!

  Tomás dropped his feet from their chair. The silver rowels of his spurs tinkled and rang like small church bells. He rose. He blotted out the sun.

  “You see,” Tomás said. “I prefer bees to wasps. Bees are more polite than wasps. And one thing I will not abide is rudeness.”

  He drew his .44 revolver from its holster.

  “I cross-draw my pistola, left to right,” he noted. “Like your own Wild Bill Jee-coq.”

  He cocked it.

  “Bees have the decency to die once they sting you. Wasps, you wave them away, you swat them, you flee from them, but they just keep on coming after you.”

  He fired once, exploding the glass and the wasp.

  The notebook and pencil flew into the sky; the green hat levitated; the reporter dove to the ground and scrambled in the dirt. His chair landed three feet behind him. He had come all the way from Deming, New Mexico, and thus he began his return. On hands and knees.

  “You bother me,” Tomás announced. “You and your little hat.”

  He shot the hat. It scurried across the ground like a very agitated turtle. So did the reporter.

  Teresita enjoyed the company of the good families of Tubac. Her father did not. He bristled at their kindness. He said all they had to offer him was charity. He refused to enter their homes because a man like himself did not beg for meals or ingratiate himself to neighbors for a complimentary glass of whiskey.

  He was the patrón!

  She could not, could not in any way, imagine a life trapped in their little vale, in their little country house, with no one for company. No friends. No conversation. Just their own remorse and anger. She was furious daily, and sometimes she trembled with anger and could not pray, for her quiet moments when she was alone with God were afire in her head with flame and ruckus and fighting.

  She was angry, and she did not in any way believe that she deserved to feel that anger. But her old teacher would have told her that feelings are not right, and they are not wrong, feelings only are, and these were hers.

  She was angry at her father for being drunk, for behaving like a spoiled child, for refusing to believe in her beloved God. Angry at Mexico. Angry at death.