When the Owl Cries

by Paul Alexander Bartlett

14

Raul and Lucienne camped in a canyon at twelve thousand feet, close to the timber line, where a fire munched pine logs and emitted wisps of smoke. Directly above them a lava cliff bulged and towered, an ominous flat slab, that had been chiseled off centuries ago. Time and erosion had broken chunks that now cluttered the ground. Lucienne had climbed among the lava blocks, noticing the various kinds of plant life pushing their way through. For her, this rock bowl had a spirit of its own.

Two men had accompanied them on the ride up the volcano and, at supper, all had shared venison, rice and tortillas. Raul had shot a buck and it hung nearby from a tree. It was a starry, chill night, without wind. Raul and Lucienne bedded down under several serapes—the men slept lower down in the canyon. Only the sound of the fire and the stamp of horses broke the silence.

After a while, Raul asked:

"Are you asleep?"

"I'm cold. Can you put more wood on the fire?"

"Of course I can. Right away."

"Put on several logs."

"How's that?"

"That's lovely. Now hug me. I'll soon get warm. The sparks are flying 'way up the cliff."

"Are you too tired to sleep?" he asked.

"It's not that.... I'm not used to all these strenuous things," she laughed, her mouth against his neck.

"I love you, my dear," he said.

"Darling, it's wonderful anywhere with you."

"Do you want to ride higher tomorrow?"

"This is high enough, Raul."

"How brilliant the stars ... at this altitude."

"There are clouds again. It could rain."

"It looks only threatening."

"A wet trail won't help," she said sleepily.

"We've got sure-footed horses," he said.

"I climbed near here with my father, during the dry season. We saw the ocean from the rim ... such a clear day," she said.

"We used to cut wood below here. There's a first-rate stand of pine a few thousand feet down."

The fire sputtered and jets of steam puffed. She felt the warmth penetrating her serape, and was grateful.

Her hand found his face. His hand found her breast.

"It's nice to wake up like this."

"Alfredo used to climb mountains. You know Alfredo Villaseñor? What happened to Alfredo? He was a likable fellow. Your father wanted you to marry him."

"He went to Europe ... and I don't know what became of him."

"Did you like him?"

"Very much ... for a while."

He had a faded picture of Villaseñor, mountaineer, Spanish, freckle-faced, well dressed, demanding.

"I'm the sort who runs away to the mountains, takes his own woman, a sorry Catholic, Lucienne. I've been thinking of my lapses. I profess one thing and do another."

His seriousness woke her a little and she said, emphatically, "There's such a thing as tolerance—the scripture teaches that."

"Not license."

"Love sanctifies things."

"Then will the Church accept us?"

"Accept me?" she said, making it a pointed question. "I won't accept the Church. Hush, hush, Raul, it's time to sleep. Think where we are, up here, at the top of things...."

"Are you warm?" he asked.

"Very warm. Let me sleep on your arm."

"Tomorrow we have a long ride," he said.

In a matter of seconds, she fell asleep, breathing gently, her arms around him. He turned thoughts over in his head while listening to a wolf howl, high on the cliff above. How ridiculous to ask: Will the Church accept us? As if Angelina no longer had anything to do with my life. Yet, as he lay there, staring at the gathering clouds, he felt she had less and less to do with his life. Guadalajara would claim her, the parties, friends, theater—Estelle Milan.

It was drizzling when they awoke. They had breakfast around the campfire, the horses tethered nearby, ready for departure. As they began the slow descent, the drizzle changed to rain, chilly, at times falling fast. To reach the regular trail, they filed through a forest of scrub oak. Shale made the going tricky, but the rocky area did not last long. Once on the main trail, they quickened their pace and then—like a great swab—mist puffed over them and swallowed trees and boulders. Because of the mist, Raul had trouble with Chico. Somewhere below nine thousand feet they crossed a number of small cornfields, mist along their edges.

"I wouldn't want to live up this high," said Raul.

Dressed in white tropicals, Raul's men shivered. Raul felt cold and a little shabby in old blue denim. Lucienne was comfortable in corduroy: tan jacket, dark green riding skirt, darker beret, raincoat. Italian boots, laced with yellow laces, reached almost to her knees. She loved the mist, and sang as they plugged along, corkscrewing through pine. Unpacking her plant press, she stopped for a rare fern.

In a flash of sun, the mist broke and below them lay a rancho, a ragged L-shaped patch of lava rock huts with yellow straw wigs, a chapel and municipal building.

"Are we going down there?" Lucienne asked.

"I want to speak to the jefe."

"It looks wild."

"Haven't you been there?"

"No, I've never been there."

"The jefe wears tigre skins."

"You're joking."

Raul's men laughed at her.

A rough but short route got them to Palma Sola in the late afternoon, sun at their heels. Before freshening up, Lucienne and Raul went to see some monster turtles lying in beached dugouts. Each one had barnacles on its wounded shell: how their red eyes begged for freedom!

A fisherman, coiling hand line, put his foot on the gunwale, pointed at one and said, "It came from far off," as if he had a magical probe that reached undersea and understood all mysteries.

"Turtles stare in such a sad way," Lucienne said, as they went into the house. She spun her beret onto a chair.

"They know they have to die," said Raul.

"I like plants because they can't look at me, can't accuse, can't plead. They never fill me with a sense of guilt and sorrow."

At a window, facing the beached dugouts, she clasped him tightly, tasting the flavor of transience: she saw her parents' death, saw herself in Europe, thought of other lovers, other friends. Almost tearfully, she kissed him and said, "Let's get dressed for supper."

"You must be tired."

"Not too tired."

At supper he said, "I'm afraid I have to leave tomorrow."

"Can't you stay on a day or two?"

"Can't we meet in Colima soon?" he asked.

"Of course we can."

"But it's never like here—or in the mountains."

"It's such a closed feeling, people, too many people. Maybe we can meet before I go to Guanajuato. When I wrote you about the mine it didn't seem so serious. The manager thinks the mine is giving out."

"So serious ... I hope not."

"Without that income, what shall I do?"

Breaking open a crisp roll, he studied her and considered the problem. He had descended the mine's moldy ladders. He had checked the ore, had had it assayed, had estimated the output. Few mines had less to offer, for both gold and silver ran low. The copper percentage might pay, but no copper smelter existed in Guanajuato.

"I hope I can help. I'll send Señor Rul around to check for you. Maybe it's a case of mismanagement."

"I trust my man.... He can't produce ore if there isn't any ore."

"Let's not let it worry us, Lucienne."

"I hear that the peons are quitting, are in revolt," she said, when they were alone in the dining room. "My people whisper. I pick up remarks."

"What do you hear? Is it about Palma Sola?"

"Other haciendas ... threats, anger, disobedience. It's as you've said: they're turning against us. I'm afraid."

"There won't be trouble here," he said. "Father has so many enemies, we'll have trouble at Petaca, if it comes anywhere. Three-quarters of our land was Indian property years ago."

"So was mine," she said.

"If the peasants revolt, we must give in or fight. We have no choice."

"Not a pleasant prospect," she said.

"It hasn't been pleasant, sweating it out in the mines, sweating it out in the sugar-cane fields, up at dawn, down at dark, always in debt...." He reached for his pipe but did not fill it.

"I don't defend myself against father's accusation of political idealism, weakness, call it whatever you want. I'm groping. But I can see how the people suffer ... in almost every hacienda. Díaz wasn't right for us!"

"I hear of your changes at Petaca. People are amazed at what you've accomplished."

"I like to help. I feed my people. If they're sick they get care. I let them go to Colima to buy things. I've canceled debts in the tienda de raya books. I talk over problems. Many places could do that ... but we have so much to live down at Petaca. I'm glad there never were beatings and killings here."

When he returned to Petaca he found a letter from Angelina, gay and trivial. It heartened him until he reached the final paragraph: "I think Mona is really my dog, not Lucienne's. I think she won't always stay at Palma Sola but will come to me, changing so prettily, her glass bones shining...."

What did Angelina mean. "Glass bones shining?"

In his easy chair, in the living room, he reread her letter; the last paragraph continued to bewilder him. He thought of showing the letter to Gabriel, but dismissed the idea and crumpled the sheet and tossed it into the fireplace. Holding out his hands to the blaze, he leaned his elbows on his knees. He did not need a confidant but needed to be alone. Wind puffed across the house, making a wintry sound. Raul felt disappointed when Father Gabriel appeared, rolling Fernando in his wheelchair.

Glass bones shining, Raul thought, seeing that his father was mere bones, sunken eyes, perhaps accented by his new glasses. Fernando stretched out his bony fingers toward the fire and sighed.

"The cold spell will help the corn," he said, his voice thin.

Raul could think of nothing to say.

"Nothing like a fireplace," said Gabriel, sitting down; he was tired, still fighting off his malaria; he, too, was hunting for thoughts. "Raul, I see you've had the Swiss clock repaired. I've always liked it."

"I brought it back from the jeweler's last week," Raul said.

All three eyed the clock on the mantel, a white marble clock veined with black, thin and tall.

"Humph ... you had your clock repaired, what of it?" Fernando said.

Raul and Gabriel waited, ill at ease.

"Time is for getting; get what you can before it gets you. You don't find it on a dial." With his good hand, he pushed angrily at the arm of his chair; each man heard the tick of the marble clock.

"While you were away last week," said Fernando, "I sold the horses in Sector 9." The Clarín stared at Raul maliciously. "Señor Filar paid me sixty pesos per head. We've never done better. I stopped the corn planting in 21.... That sector must be kept for pasture." He beat the side of his chair. "Sitting right here, I can manage Petaca. My people understand me." His voice shrilled, broke.

Raul walked over to the piano. Someone had placed Caterina's picture there, and her face comforted him.

"'A house divided against itself...'" Gabriel began.

"God, don't spout at me!" cried Fernando. "Have some sense. Life is cruel."

"Life is what we make of it," said Gabriel, very gently.

Raul accepted the truism, knowing it was one thing in his father's mind, another in Gabriel's, and another in his own. He tried to remain silent.

"I don't like the bronze figure you had put on Caterina's grave," Fernando objected.

"I haven't seen it yet," said Raul.

"You're ostentatious," said Fernando.

"It was done out of love," said Raul, moving close to the front windows where he could see the forecourt.

With a jolt, Fernando remembered his love for Caterina, remembered the child reading to him, feeding him, remembered his old, old longings for affection. His fear of death came again; he floundered, hoping he might touch something kind before the end.

"Yes ... yes, I'm sure ... it was love," he admitted.

"What did you say?" Raul asked.

"It was love ... not ostentation. But I would have put something else on her grave ... not a statue of a girl."

"What would that have been?" asked Gabriel, curious at this about-face.

"An animal, a frog, a bird ... I think I would have put a bird there."

"I thought of putting her sundial there, her noonday cannon," said Raul.

"Get me a cigarette," said Fernando, to Gabriel.

"I'll light one for you," said Gabriel.

The ticking of the clock came into being again.

Fernando's thoughts faded backward into time: he heard his father speak. His head throbbed. Everything had grown indistinct. What was the purpose of death? Was death talking to someone who never listened? Was death shoving something inside something already black?

"I want to go to bed," Fernando said. "Push me. Help me to bed, Gabriel."

Raul tried to say good night but could not utter a word and neither could Fernando. A rubber tire on the wheel chair squeaked; the wind and the clock continued. His feet toward the fire, he thought of Lucienne and their mountain trip; then he got up and got his jacket and went outside, the wind whipping his hair. So the little figurine had been placed beside the grave.

He found the statue just as he had hoped it would be, the right size, the right pose. True to the artist's sketches, a young girl carried a bouquet of roses and contemplated them lovingly. The bronze had many lights and shadows. A gust of wind blew Raul's jacket, as he stood there, looking.

Manuel, carrying a large box of sea shells, found him testing the statue's base, for balance and security.

"I like it very much," Raul said.

"It's beautiful," Manuel said, setting down the box. "I had them place it for you. Is it all right?"

"It's just the way I wanted it."

Manuel began laying down shells, one by one, in a design around the base of the figure, white shells, most of them identical in size, about as big as the hand.

Raul found a spade and began leveling behind the statue, where Manuel had not placed his shells.

"Shall I lay them in rows, here?"

"I like them that way, Manuel."

Blackbirds shot past on the wind; a large white butterfly wobbled by, as if injured; on a mound of sand an iguana scratched its way over a vine, its head cocked toward the men.

Spade in hand, Raul stepped to a crooked marker that read Alberto Saenz, in jagged lettering. The musician had died during Raul's Guadalajara trip. Raul missed him now. So there would be no more cedar harp at the fiestas.

Manuel said that his box of shells was empty and that he was going for more.

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

They walked together, and Raul asked, "Was Alberto born at Petaca?"

"Yes. His father was born here too."

"Who'll play the harp for us now?"

"Cipriano."

"Cipriano's only a boy."

"He plays well."

"Do you know who taught him?"

"Alberto," said Manuel.

"How time passes," said Raul.

He and Manuel found cowboys struggling with a bull, outside the main corral, the bull flat in the mud near a watering trough, three lariats on him. While mounted cowboys kept the lariats tight, a veterinarian stuck a hypodermic needle in the animal. The bull bellowed. At a signal, the lariats went limp and the bull struggled to his feet and made off.

The veterinarian, a small man wearing a five-gallon hat, explained the bull's serious condition to Raul, emptying his hypodermic as he talked.

He had been trained in northern France and had ideas and methods of treatment frowned upon by most hacendados. Raul welcomed his care, for under his supervision Petaca cattle losses had decreased 20 per cent.

In the dying light the volcano had a greenish mist over it and, with no smoke coming out of the crater, expressed indolence: it said men will dawdle in hammocks and rest on petates, that fruit will have time to ripen, that birds will be able to build their nests wherever they want to, that animals will find cool hideouts to escape the summer heat ... nothing will change, only the clouds, the flying things, maybe a fish, nothing more.

Raul understood the lie, and grinned back at the old king.