misgivings. I wondered if I would ever really know my brothers, or would they remain but phantoms of my dreams. And I wondered if the death of Narciso had anything to do with Andrew’s decision to go.
Dieciséis
After Christmas I returned to school. I missed walking with Andrew in the mornings. At first the kids wanted to know about the murder of Narciso, but I told them nothing and soon the news was old and they went on to something else. My life had changed, I thought; I seemed older, and yet the lives of my schoolmates seemed unchanged. The Kid still raced at the bridge, Samuel nodded and walked on, Horse and Bones kicked at each other, and the yellow buses still came in with their loads of solemn farm kids. And catechism loomed in the future for all of us.
I talked only once to Cico. He said, “We have lost a friend. We shall wait until summer to take the news to the golden carp. He will tell us what to do—” After that I didn’t see him much.
I kept, as much as possible, to myself. I even lost touch with Jasón, which was too bad because I learned later that he would have understood. Of course, the dreams that I had during my illness continued to preoccupy me. I could not understand why Narciso, who did good in trying to help Ultima, had lost his life; and why Tenorio, who was evil and had taken a life, was free and unpunished. It didn’t seem fair. I thought a great deal about God and why he let such things happen. When the weather was warmer I sometimes paused beneath the juniper tree and looked at the stained ground. Then my mind wandered and my thoughts became a living part of me.
Perhaps, I thought, God had not seen the murder take place, and that is why He had not punished Tenorio. Perhaps God was too busy in heaven to worry or care about us.
Sometimes, after school let out in the afternoon, I went alone to church and kneeled and prayed very hard. I asked God to answer my questions, but the only sound was always the whistling of the wind filling the empty space. I turned more and more to praying before the altar of the Virgin, because when I talked to Her I felt as if she listened, like my mother listened. I would look very hard at the red altar candles burning before her feet then I would bow my head and close my eyes and imagine that I saw Her turn to God and tell Him exactly what I had asked.
And the Lord would shake His head and answer, the boy is not yet ready to understand.
Perhaps when I make my communion I will understand, I thought. But to some the answers to their questions had come so soon. My mother had told me the story of the Mexican man, Diego, who had seen la Virgen de Guadalupe in Mexico. She had appeared to him and spoken to him, and She had given him a sign. She had made the roses grow in a barren, rocky hill, a hill much like ours. And so I dreamed that I too would meet the Virgin. I expected to see Her around every corner I turned.
It was during one of these moods of thought that I met Tenorio one afternoon on my way home from school. The blowing wind was full of choking dust and so I walked up the path with my head tucked down. I did not see Tenorio until he shouted into the howling wind. He was standing under the juniper tree at the exact spot where he had murdered Narciso. I was so startled and frightened that I jumped like a wounded rabbit, but he made no move to catch me. He wore a long, black coat and as was his custom, his wide-brimmed hat pulled low. His blind eye was a dark blue pit and the other glared yellow in the dust. He laughed and howled as he looked down at me and I thought he was drunk.
“¡Maldito!” he cursed me. “¡Desgraciado!”
“¡Jesús, María y José!” I found the courage to shout back, and I crossed my thumb over my first finger and held it up to ward off his evil, for I truly thought he was the reincarnation of the devil.
“¡Cabroncito! Do you think you can scare me with that? Do you think I am