Rise Do Not Be Afraid Read online

  I’ll be back in October, before the first snow. My tio Nomio says I will be a man by then. So, I guess that means I’ll have money and I’ll be able to visit you. I’ll carve your initials in a tree and I’ll bring you something from up high. My tio says everything is prettier up there so it shouldn’t be hard to find something nice, even though I know the prettiest things are down here wearing blue. Take care.

  Affectionately,

  Ramon

  p.s. turns out that lion from the last letter was actually a panther. That’s what Mrs. Trujillo told me. Maybe she’ll go teach at the other school. She won’t let the nuns lose syllables and change names.

  Adios, Again

  With Affection,

  Ramon

  This Man of Another Nation

  She prayed like a brief rain on a still lake, randomly with too many prayers to count, none of them making a difference. In her bedroom, hanging over the only mirror in the house, there was a picture of the ascension. In it, Jesus was flying and wrapped in light, arms outstretched, palms turned up. His body formed the Y of the word yes. That is what Elle believed.

  There were four days in June, the 22nd was the last of them, when the sun would come through the bedroom window. In the early rising of the sun on those days the light would reflect off the picture of Jesus and cast a small prism of rainbow on the opposite wall. She prayed like rain, brief rain on a still lake, and those four days of morning light were her only proof of God. It was enough.

  Dear Lord let my son cry…water is the only thing that cleans…dear Lord let me die before Samuel so I’m not alone…dear Lord I’m sorry for my sins…look after Samuel and Aresando keep them in your care…dear Lord thank You for all that you do for me…look after Samuel’s family and mine too…take care of my abuelitas and abuelitos in heaven, my tio who always smiled, my tias and all the muertos…look after my dog Rover and that charolais cow that fought the six coyotes away from her becerro, thank you for letting me see that when I was a girl so I could understand what a mother is supposed to be…please say hello to your own mother and have her watch over us too…thank you for the rain…I’m sorry I spoke poorly of people and gossiped what the crickets said…thank you for my gift…look after Adelaida who is alone and hungry…take care of Pelayo too, you must have your reasons for making him leave…I’m sorry I questioned you just now, but so much is happening…pray…well you don’t have to pray I do…look after Alban Fernandez who was found dead yesterday…pray…I mean forgive those men who beat him and tied him to his horse…thank you for directing the horse home so his family could know…please don’t let Malinche Santistevan-Matthews make my boy crazy…she is back, living in town with someone she brought from the city…I’m sure you already know that since you directed it…forgive me Lord for not liking her and not trusting that man, his hands scare me, he has money and does not work…forgive me for judging that is yours and your father’s work…tell him hello too…thank You Lord for all that you do and for protecting us…look after our town, it needs you. Amen.

  The prism of rainbow lasted only a minute or two, longer on the first day than on the fourth, and when it was gone she would rise from her stinging knees, the picture of Jesus now completely flooded in light, and cross herself before moving toward the kitchen and the coffee Samuel had already poured.

  “Did you pray for me?”

  “I don’t remember,” she joked.

  “That girl is back.”

  “I know. I prayed about that.”

  “Did you pray for that cow?” He smiled and winked.

  “You know I did. She was beautiful. I didn’t really pray for her. I gave thanks.”

  “What if she would have let those coyotes eat her calf?”

  “She wouldn’t have. She was a mother.”

  “But they chewed off its ear. What kind of mother…”

  She cut him off and scolded him with her eyes. He already knew the story, but he liked to make her mad. Both of them were already old. This was their substitute for passion.

  “They came at night, during the night as the becerro was being born. They chewed its ear off while it was being born, la charolais was down on the ground, in labor, but the ear is all they got.”

  “Sounds like they got you too. You’re still mad.”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “I know what it’s like to be a mother.”

  “That worthless bull didn’t help her fight off those coyotes. Ese toro didn’t kill two of those coyotes. You know what that bull did?”

  “Watched like a dumb bull?”

  “You’re hopeless. Drink your coffee and shut up.”

  “Do you think Aresando will find out about her man?”

  “Drink your coffee, I’m thinking.”

  “Thinking like that cow, how are you going to save your baby?”

  He knew he shouldn’t have even as he was saying it. He knew immediately what was coming but his joke was heavy in the room and he could not bring it back.

  “What do you do? Nada. Let him go to that war, let him fight that man, that ugly coyote of a man who almost killed him, and for what, esa green eyes. You should protect your son, not sit there like a dumb bull. Cabron toro, that’s what you are.”

  Samuel knew to keep quiet, but he could not.

  “I couldn’t stop him. He sighed. And that guy for New Years, it was not right. Aresando gave what he got. That guy won’t come around no more. My boy fought like a man. Stood up when no one would.”

  “That man is back.”

  “Como?”

  “He just looks different. Everything else is the same. I recognized his ring.”

  If Even the Salt Loses Its Strength

  Ramon Fernandez was in the half-light of the bosque where the trees cast their thin shadows away from the afternoon sun. Nonnatusia’s name crossed his lips. The white aspen and the sombra they cast reminded him of home, of Rafael Trujillo and his piano. He missed the music. He missed Nonnatusia. The sheep began to drift into the piano keys Ramon had imagined, they moved silently into the sombra to escape the heat. Ramon Fernandez did not wear a watch, but the train’s whistle would come soon, three lonely blasts into the mountain air, exhaling its black breath as it rolled toward the water tower. Nomio would be waiting for the train there, waiting to collect bags of salt for the sheep. Ramon Fernandez was alone but off to his left he could hear one of the herders moving his sheep toward camp, the man’s voice echoed up the canyon and hung in the air for a while, and then the breeze would take it. There were seven bands of sheep up high that year. Ramon and Nomio looked after the smallest of them. Sometime before the trees began their migration to gold, all the herders would drive their sheep to the corral beside the water tank. From there the lambs would be counted and loaded on the train, a receipt handed to each herder, a piece of paper signed by Ambrose Benedict-Matthews that promised to pay them the going rate upon his return from the sales in Denver.

  The sheep were lying in the shadows, their lambs by their side. The train whistled three times, the aspen shifted their leaves in a slight breeze, green gray green. Beneath Ramon the grass was cool, his hat covered his face in sombra, he looked older after fourteen years with the herd, his jaw set, his lips expressionless. The echoes of the herder in the canyon reached him again, they seemed lonelier than the train’s whistle. He had learned many things from his tio, learned that Jesus was not wrong to call himself a shepherd and the people his flock. There in the sombra of the bosque he saw Rafael’s piano, he saw his tia Adelaida’s abandoned house beneath a bent cottonwood, Nonnatusia standing in a field of clover and brome, lirios purpling all around her, he saw the ditches rising and the water spilling into the fields, he saw Mana Virginia walking in the dusk along the river, her soft hands picking mint, he saw his abuelita making tortillas, the flour cupped in her hands and then spilling into a wooden bowl, in the shadows and in the sheep that had entered the shadow he saw the people of Santa Rita. He could not have known it then,
no one did. Jesus was a shepherd who sought the one while the ninety-nine remained in the wilderness. He could not have known that the one had already parted from the herd and that Jesus had already brought it back to the flock. He could not have known that Ambrose Benedict-Matthews would take the lambs before autumn and never return, could not have known that his father had been beaten and tied to his horse, the news would reach him later when Nomio returned with the two hundred pounds of salt. No one knew the town was lost, that of the seven herds up high only one would ever return. They could not have known that the land they were selling to each other belonged to none of them, could not have known that Alban Fernandez had found three men from a lumber outfit putting up a fence on what he thought was his land. He had gone for his gun, a pistol on his right side, but one of the three threw his hat toward the horse and spooked her, his first and only shot sailing high. The sheep rested in the shade, safe in their numbers and the eye of Ramon Fernandez, none of them knowing that they would disappear and take the town with them. The walls would remain, the people would remain, but the town would fade. It may have been the devil, already the people were selling land to the bueyeros, they were counting the water now, fences were going up, word had not reached him yet that his father’s horse had found its way home. There in the bosque he could hear the echoes roll up the canyon, see his own herd in front of him, scattered loosely in the aspen. The devil’s water had risen that year washing away a maze of ink signed almost a hundred years earlier when America had come to the people of Santa Rita. The people were like the borregas that Ramon Fernandez looked after, none of them knowing they had been left alone since 1926 when Ponce Santistevan-Matthews had sold a small piece of land to his father-in-law. When America came to the people in 1848, they had all been promised their land, the land that had been theirs since 1598 when they had stolen it away from the Indios and agreed to share it amongst themselves. Communidad, they prospered without money and never missed what they did not have. Even the great lake city of the Aztecs was torn down by the Spanish, the stone blocks of the pyramids and the temples thrown into the lake. Santa Rita had once been part of New Spain and then Mexico. Ponce’s grandfather had been governor, distributor of the land grants. The Americans knew nothing of comunidad; there could only be one owner and without knowing it Ponce was the owner. He had always told Malinche that she was a descendant of royalty, that was all he had cared about. Everything else had disappeared from his memory, but the paper remained. He signed away all 600,000 acres to Ambrose Benedict-Matthews and never even knew it was his to sell. All that was left of them were the small squares of land where their homes stood. Maybe it was the devil that whispered it to Ambrose Benedict-Matthews, maybe on one of his trips to Denver he tried to file his title for his 800 acres and realized that he was richer than he imagined. When he began selling was not completely known to the people of Santa Rita, but when the three men from the lumber company tied Arabal Fernandez to his horse everything changed. He had always wanted to go somewhere great, somewhere west, maybe San Francisco. He could have left that night, but he wanted more and had sent word with the train that the prices were high, and they should sell. He would write them their paper receipts like he had always done and never return.

  The death of Arabal Fernandez would save Nomio’s herd, the two men would attend the funeral and miss the train that sent everything north.

  Ramon Fernandez sat watching his herd and did not know any of this. He only knew that Jesus had been a shepherd and that when the flock was lost, he would save them from the wilderness. Once one sheep leaves the others follow. Every herder knew this. As he sat there, Nonnatusia’s name crossed his lips again, the train whistled its departure from far away and the borreguero in the canyon had finally reached his camp and fallen silent. There were two birds singing to each other in the aspen and the sun caught the trees golden. The birds were proof that Nonnatusia loved him. He could not have known what Nomio would deliver. He only knew that Nomio was coming with salt, not that everything had already wandered off like a single sheep into the wilderness and that Jesus had already saved it without anyone knowing.

  Joy Arises

  Aresando stood in the saddle of his Indian, arms outstretched. He was made of wind. Two years removed from the war he was brave and crazy, and everyone came to watch him ride down the dirt roads, dust trailing behind into the eyes of those watching until they could not see him. They wondered, there in the dust of the passing motorcycle if they had really seen him, arms outstretched, caught in the sunlight, the machine rumbling beneath him. He was beautiful there in the summer light. Water from the fields pooled by the roadside and he was reflected there. Blaesilla, the widow, came with her four kids to watch him, the infant Patricio in her arms, and he was reflected in her eyes too. The sun was thick, the lirios high and the dust from his passing settled softly on everyone and everything. The people followed him, even the bueyeros, to the vegita by the river.

  The vega belonged to Juan de Jesus Sanchez, the best farmer in Santa Rita. It was cut short, weeks ahead of the other farmers. The hay, piled in a semi-circle, formed the outfield fence. Dionicio Sandoval had closed the cantina, he was in left field, closest to the road. The smell of the cut hay was with him and he was remembering a woman, how he took her face into his hands and kissed her, he was remembering the way they fell into the clover and mint along the river. In his memory he had reached the smooth field of her belly when Aresando’s motorcycle broke his dream memory. Aresando was facing west, the motorcycle rolled east as he used his hands to steady himself as he spun and spun in the saddle, east west east. Dionicio had forgotten his dream memory, he watched as the crazy man moved up the motorcycle to sit on the handlebars, his feet held together above the spinning wheel. The Indian slowed and the dust behind it fell flat as linen dropped over a line, hanging there as Aresando jumped off the still moving bike and ran beside it, slowly coaxing it to a stop beneath the cottonwoods behind home plate.

  Apollonio was ancient so he played first base. Aresando, who was crazy, was behind the plate. Edimundo Trujillo would pitch. He was the youngest one on the team, the tallest and thinnest too. He, too, in the summer sun at the heart of the field was also beautiful. His leg kicked high, the ball held close against his chest, he didn’t wear a hat, he looked directly into the sun, felt it briefly on his eyelids and lips, the scent of his leather glove rising into his nostrils, his hands separating, his right arm cocking at the wrist and elbow, the long muscles of his shoulder contracting, his left leg falling toward the ground, planting itself in the short grass, his hips turning toward the plate, his body coming square as his right arm whipped across his body, wrist snapping, the ball invisible in the rising waves of heat; the loud crack of it meeting Aresando’s glove was the most perfect of sounds.

  Nomio was at second base, still the swiftest of all the men, his beautiful shoes collected no dust. Samuel, who could read the other team’s signs by way of the crickets was managing. He sat along the first base line, his body resting on a plank of cedar spanning across three blocks of pino taken from Jose Francisco Salazar’s woodpile. Jose Francisco played shortstop and hit sixth, right behind Sebastiano Avila, the centerfielder. Juan de Jesus Sanchez, the owner of the field and best farmer in Santa Rita was in right field, closest to his adobe house. His grandson, Alfonzo, would be at third and bat third because he always made contact.

  1955 was the last good year and this was the greenest time of that year. The bueyeros had fielded a team, most of them played at the college sixty miles up the road. They wore uniforms, white with green lettering across the chest. They called themselves the Zion Zephyrs.

  When the Zion Zephyrs saw the field and the men in it, they refused to play, noting that the pitcher had no hat, the second baseman wore shiny boots, the first baseman was clearly over ninety years old and none of them had uniforms. The Zion Zephyrs were undefeated, too good to be brought to this level. They refused to take the field to lead off the first. It just wasn’t
proper, a travesty to the game they called it.

  Apollonio called in the team and asked them to empty their pockets. There was ninety-two dollars and eighteen cents among them, the majority coming from Nomio who had just sold two lambs. They sent Jose Francisco Salazar with the money. Of the nine, he was the most diplomatic. Jose Francisco at first thought to pay the bueyeros, ten dollars an inning with the remainder going to an umpire of their choosing. By the time he reached the bueyeros, all of them over six feet tall and burning to a bright red along the unshaded third base line, he had decided a bet was more the way to go.

  “$92.18,” he said, the money folded and stacked in his right hand. “Bet you guys. All of it. Even money.”

  The bueyeros didn’t have any money, all of it had been spent on their uniforms and green hats with a white Z sewn into the crown.

  “No bet there Jose. We don’t gamble.” It was Chance Crowsen, their cleanup hitter, six foot six and 280 pounds, right handed and always ahead of the pitch; everything went to left field with Chance Crowsen.

  “You don’t play. You don’t gamble. What do you guys do?” Jose Francisco, the diplomat, had hoped they would send over Crowsen. Jose Francisco was five foot seven and 163 pounds, tiny compared to the cleanup hitter. Nobody that big likes to be challenged by someone smaller than they. “We’ll spot you two runs plus the $98.18.”