When the Owl Cries

by Paul Alexander Bartlett

12

"I guess it was quite a party," said Fernando.

"Yes, Father."

"Who was there?"

"General Matanzas, Serrato, Roberto ... the Count, Jesús Peza, the Radziwills, Federicka ... several asked about you."

"Don't be so damn' polite."

The old man screwed round among his pillows, his cot in the patio of the serpent fountain. Slouched among pillows and sheets, he resembled a beachcomber, a feudal derelict. Behind him hung one of Alberto's cages, an azulejo fluttering inside. Columnar cypress sliced the sky.

Raul perched on a cane chair, his hat on the floor beside him. He had just returned from an inspection of the lagoon irrigation project, a job that would put fifteen hectares of land under cultivation.

"I saw your cancellations in the books," Fernando cried, the flames in his eyes starting. "I want those cancellations stopped." His voice sounded childish.

Raul did all he could to control himself: he fished out his pipe, nicked off scale, stared at it, silent.

"You can't alter our records," Fernando exclaimed.

"I'm not keeping our people in servitude," Raul declared.

"Will you free them?" Fernando cried, lips wide. "They'll kill you!"

"We've had them killed. Perhaps it's their turn."

"You talk like a madman!"

"Hasn't it been insane to think we can destroy and destroy and go on destroying?"

"We must eat," said Fernando foolishly. He wanted to see clearly: the damn' scum floated about at any time, blocking, filtering; he rubbed his eyes.

"I'm going about the job of changing things as slowly as possible. The lagoon project is coming along. I've had the dam repaired in Sector 17. Petaca is being improved. Our people have a right to a better way...." He thought he could not go on defending himself, repressing his feelings. "You say we must eat. God knows we've never gone hungry, we Medinas!"

"Listen," Fernando said. "I've disposed of my mining shares in Pachuca Incorporated. The money is banked in my name now."

Raul had counted on the dividends for further improvements. He had counted on them as a financial buffer as well. His lips went white.

"Did you hear me?"

"I heard you."

"You talk of improvements. I'll cut your income. I can control Petaca." Fernando's sheet billowed and sank back.

"You can't!" Raul exclaimed.

"Raul—you can't better Petaca on one hand and undermine it on the other. Your radical ideas will ruin us."

"So we must hold our own by destroying others."

"It's a system like any other."

"That's no excuse."

"What will you do? Divide our land? The Indians owned it once. Will you give it back?" His voice crackled.

"That can be answered later," Raul said.

"When? Tomorrow? Next month? How long will you wait?"

Raul replaced his pipe in his pocket and forced himself to reply: "I haven't decided how to act."

"You'd give our land away!"

"No, Father. I won't give up Petaca."

Fernando forced a quaking hand from under the sheet and wedged a pillow behind his back. Except for a general diffusion of yellowish light, he could see nothing.

"I'm almost blind," he mumbled. "When is that optical fool coming from Colima to fit my glasses? Blind ... you know what it is to be going blind? Give me a drink."

As the old man drank, he thought of Pedro; he trembled; his fear of death returned, and he did not want Raul dead.

"Don't go, Raul. Sit down, wait."

Raul held the empty glass and remained standing.

"Did General Matanzas speak to you ... of a new president?" he asked, with difficulty. He had difficulty in swallowing.

"No. He was drunk."

"Who is to take over Mexico ... does anyone say?"

"Nobody knows."

"What utter fools," he growled. "A ship without a helmsman.... And here at Petaca I must fight you." Then he said, sadly: "This is a time of rumors about revolt, about partition of land.... I don't like a time of rumors." He cleared his throat.

For the first time during their conversation, Raul considered his father carefully; he saw that he had lost weight; the gnarled face had shrunken; both hands trembled now. No one had troubled to wash his hands. No one had combed his hair.

Raul went for Chavela and brought her back with comb and brush and pan of warm water and cake of soap. As she held the basin, he washed his father's hands, remembering some old legend of men deriving power and adding to their own longevity by such an act. Chavela dried Fernando's hands and washed his face as he lay with eyes closed, silent. He fell asleep, while she combed and brushed his hair. Raul got his hat and climbed the stair to his room. At another time he would question Fernando about Pedro's gun smuggling.

In his bedroom, he smelled Angelina's perfume and, as he changed from boots to shoes, he went over their disaffection, wanting, no matter how absurd, how contradictory, a touchstone that might bring about harmony.

Downstairs, Gabriel rested, seated in a big armchair, drowned in a book, his robe pulled up from his legs, his sandals kicked off. Light from the veranda drilled holes through his spectacles as he read.

"When did you come in?" asked Raul, poking about.

"I've been at the bookcase quite a while. Last week I got lost in Josse's Historia and now I'm trying Locke's essay on Understanding."

"I'm the one who needs understanding."

"Not as much as I need it," said Gabriel. "What is it we need at Petaca?" he wanted to know.

"Friendship."

"Can that be it, Raul?"

"You taught me that, Gabriel. You've looked after the cuts and bruises and listened to the bitter stories. You've found ways of expressing friendship in the little things, a new altar cloth, medicine for Motilinia, a straw horse for a boy's birthday."

Quiet, Gabriel thumbed the leather book; for years he had encouraged one after another; it pleased him that Raul should speak out. What he had accomplished he could not say.

One force had worked consistently against him and that was Don Fernando.... As enemies, they had stormed over every sector of the hacienda. Already Raul had re-opened the school and secured a teacher, an able young man from Manzanillo, handy with guitar and songs. Secretly, Gabriel was a little jealous of Raul's successes. But he knew the inner man, the inner conflicts, and probed no more.

Both read in the shuttered, still living room. The bookcase occupied a corner, the top of it strewn with bric-a-brac: silver cup, barometer, Dresden doll, porcelain animals, the deed box.

Raul took down the Journal of Las Casas and after reading a while at random he said, "I never find much time for reading any more."

"In Italy, I read a book a fortnight ... that was my goal."

"Perhaps life was easier in Italy."

"It's a matter of habit," said Gabriel.

"I'm sure you're right. I get more out of my smoking than I do out of my reading."

"When I first came, I read till late every night," Gabriel said.

"I remember how late your light used to burn."

"Well, my eyes aren't up to that kind of reading any more," said Gabriel, regretfully, and fingered the bow of his glasses.

In a loud voice, Salvador called Raul from the doorway of the veranda.

"Tomás is hurt," he said, as if reporting the weather.

"Which Tomás?" asked Raul, laying down his book. Petaca had two, little and big, both stable workers.

"Little Tomás."

"What happened?" asked Raul, rising.

"His leg."

"Yes."

"A horse kicked him. I think the leg is broken."

"I'll go with you," said Gabriel.

The man lay on the ground in a stall, almost buried in gray straw and gray light. An enormous dusty cobweb drooped above him.

"Are you badly hurt?" asked Raul.

"Yes ... patrón."

"Where?"

"My leg, patrón."

"Where—down low, or high up?"

"Low."

"Umm, I wouldn't want you kicked in the groin. Help me lay him flat, Gabriel."

Storni knelt in the dirt and together they made Little Tomás more comfortable. They removed his sandals and explored the injured leg; the break was obvious.

"Let's take him to my place," said Gabriel.

"Where do you want him?" asked Salvador, and bending over he gathered Tomás as if he were a child.

Tomás began to whimper.

"No, no ... take me to my hut," Tomás begged. "Patrón ... por favor."

"It's closer," said Raul. "Take him to his own place."

It made no difference to Salvador; he said something cheery and swaggered out of the stall and across the stable yard to the row of huts built recently. Tomás and a friend shared a hut. Salvador laid him on a straw mat, just as he would set down pottery. The man-length space had no furnishings, but Tomás' macaw wabbled in and climbed onto his arm and, when Raul scared off the parrot, it squatted in a corner and clicked its beak peevishly.

"I'll go for Velasco," said Gabriel. "I'll get him here as soon as I can, Tomás."

Raul had Salvador bring water; there in the hut some of Tomás' fear vanished; he managed a twisted grin; his face, streaked with straw and sweat, had the eagerness and pathos of a student. Salvador's corn cob fingers removed straw from his hair; sitting beside Salvador, Raul lit a cigarette and then a second one for Tomás.

"What horse kicked you?" he asked.

Salvador picked up more straws.

"Yours ... Don Raul."

"Chico! That damn' horse! What the hell was Chico doing in that stall, Tomás?"

"I was leading him ... to be shod ... he kicked me ... I fell into that stall ... I fell."

"Ah," said Raul, smoking, disappointed in Chico.

Later, outside the stable, he watched men curing a batch of iguana hides; they had the pelts submerged in a chemical solution and kneaded them with wooden mauls. Other men padded saddles with milkweed and sewed and polished leather. Under a thatched ramada they had a dozen saddles on saw-horses; he noticed one of his own, a reddish McClellan, from Texas. The air smelled of leather, strong saddle soap and polish. Sun streaked the stable wall. Raul strolled among his men, chatting, whistling, smoking.

A teenager, in torn shorts, gutted a snake. Above him, head high from the ground, in a carved niche, stood the figure of St. Christopher. A Medina had placed it there generations ago, a pink stone carving done by a local artisan. A snakeskin dangled from St. Christopher's arm and another swung from the saint's sandal. The snake collector looked worried as Raul inspected his workshop.

"Why do you want so many skins?" Raul asked. "Are you trying to get rid of all our snakes?"

"No ... to make belts."

"You cure them for belts?"

"I can make other things." The youngster could scarcely work his tongue; he thought Raul would accuse him of selling his products; he leaned over so far his straight hair touched his bloody knife.

"What can you make?"

"A pouch ... maybe a hatband."

"Make me a tobacco pouch. I'd like a small one, about this big."

"Yes, sir." (Faintly)

"Make me a good one."

"Yes, sir."

He believed in the man's kindness.

The snake boy and Little Tomás and his father faded from Raul's mind as he walked toward the burial plot in the grove. Juggling a smooth white stone, he walked past the rear of the mill; above—he did not stop to look—gulls cried. Usually gulls did not fly this far inland. A dog barked ... it might have been Mona chasing after a girl's ball.

The graves had been redecorated with shells; the jungle had been pushed back; lianas had been cut; vines had been ripped down; trees had been trimmed. For the first time in years he read his mother's name on her marker. Her marker consisted of a red cantera globe; he sat on it and listened to the gabble of parrots and still, high up, somewhere, the cry of gulls.

In a few weeks Caterina's bronze figure would be cast and, if the artist remained faithful to his sketches, it would be a graceful girl bearing a bouquet of roses in her arms, her dress swirling over bare feet. Soon it would acquire a patina and become part of the jungle. Perhaps it would tell others what a beautiful child she had been. Perhaps ... then he remembered his murdered grandfather and looked at the marker Roberto had set up, a dignified shaft of fluted marble. Time had cracked the stone and quakes had knocked it out of line ... nothing defied the years.

Nothing had helped his father forget his crime.... He, too, was buried here, the best of him, the kindness that a man normally had.

He returned slowly to the house and sat on the long veranda. Men had gathered in the court; one had a guitar and his voice had the old pleading tone. Rocking on an old hide rocker, Raul listened to the singer as the sky filled with stars. The big dipper hung above the court. Someone lit a bonfire. Suddenly, Raul realized that Manuel had been sitting near him for some time.