earth last night—”
On Sunday morning I always stayed in bed and listened to their argument. They always quarreled on Sunday morning. There were two reasons for this: the first was that my father worked only half a day on Saturdays at the highway and so in the afternoon he drank with his friends at the Longhorn Saloon in town. If he drank too much he came home a bitter man, then he was at war with everyone. He cursed the weak-willed men of the town who did not understand the freedom a man of the llano must have, and he cursed the war for taking his sons away. And if there was very much anger in him he cursed my mother because she was the daughter of farmers, and it was she who kept him shackled to one piece of land.
Then there was the thing about religion. My father was not a strong believer in religion. When he was drunk he called priests “women,” and made fun of the long skirts they wore. I had heard a story told in whispers not meant for my ears that once, long ago, my father’s father had taken a priest from the church and beaten him on the street for preaching against something my grandfather Márez had done. So it was not a good feeling my father had for priests. My mother said the Márez clan was full of freethinkers, which was a blasphemy to her, but my father only laughed.
Then there was the strange, whispered riddle of the first priest who went to El Puerto. The colony had first settled there under a land grant from the Mexican government, and the man who led the colonization was a priest, and he was a Luna. That is why my mother dreamed of me becoming a priest, because there had not been a Luna priest in the family for many years. My mother was a devout Catholic, and so she saw the salvation of the soul rooted in the Holy Mother Church, and she said the world would be saved if the people turned to the earth. A community of farmers ruled over by a priest, she firmly believed, was the true way of life.
Why two people as opposite as my father and my mother had married I do not know. Their blood and their ways had kept them at odds, and yet for all this, we were happy.
“Deborah!” she called. “Get up. Get Theresa cleaned and dressed! Ay, what a night it has been—” I heard her murmur prayers.
“Ay Dios,” I heard my father groan as he walked into the kitchen.
The sun coming over the hill, the sounds of my father and mother in the kitchen, Ultima’s shuffle in her room as she burned incense for the new day, my sisters rushing past my door, all this was as it had always been and it was good.
“¡Antonio!” my mother called just when I knew she would and I jumped out of bed. But today I was awakening with a new knowledge.
“There will be no breakfast this morning,” my mother said as we gathered around her, “today we will all go to communion. Men walk the world as animals, and we must pray that they see God’s light.” And to my sisters she said, “Today you will offer up half of your communion for your brothers, that God bring them home safely, and half—for what happened last night.”
“What happened last night?” Deborah asked. She was like that. I shivered and wondered if she had heard me last night and if she would tell on me.
“Never mind!” my mother said curtly, “just pray for the dearly departed souls—”
Deborah agreed, but I knew that at church she would inquire and find out about the killing of the sheriff and Lupito. It was strange that she should have to ask others when I, who had been there and seen everything, stood next to her. Even now I could hardly believe that I had been there. Had it been a dream? Or had it been a dream within a dream, the kind that I often had and which seemed so real?
I felt a soft hand on my head and turned and saw Ultima. She looked down at me and that clear, bright power in her eyes held me spellbound.
“How do you feel this morning, my Antonio?” she asked and all I could do was nod my head.
“Buenos días le de Dios, Grande,” my mother greeted her. So did