When the Owl Cries

by Paul Alexander Bartlett

2

The hacienda of Petaca dated from 1619. The deed—signed in Colima—lay in a cedar jewel box in the living room. The Jesuit paper (some lawyer had gotten hold of ecclesiastical stationery) bore the cross-and-crown watermark. Flowery signatures in brown ink were fading into the foxed sheets that had frayed and chipped edges.

Petaca stretched over 1,580,000 acres: sugarcane fields, corn land, wheat land, cattle country, hills, valleys, rivers, lava beds, half a volcano, a lagoon, a pre-Columbian pyramid, villages with their gardens and orchards. The main house was thirty miles from Colima, the capital of the state. Peasants of the neighboring haciendas had dubbed Petaca the "Hacienda of the Clarín." Their ironical name referred to Raul's father, not the mockingbirds in the grove behind the residence. He had made many a man "sing." The nickname, said with a ttck of the tongue, conveyed their condemnation.

Fernando Medina, the Clarín, lay in bed, propped on pillows. His bed faced a tall grilled window, its wooden shutters flung back. As he lay against his pillows, one hand twitched nervously. He was seventy-nine, white-headed, ashen and scrawny, part Coro, part Spanish. Bowled over by a stroke, he still had a patriarchal air. His eyes could still explode. The white eyebrows, though thin, arched imperially. Decaying and absent teeth had crumpled his mouth; only when he was angry could it regain its forcefulness; at all other times it mocked the man. Don Fernando had been rebellious. As a young fellow, he had quarreled with his father over a trivial matter and shot and killed him. This was the venom of his life. No law had punished Fernando.

As he lay against his pillow, his hand trembling, he coughed and moaned. He hated inactivity; he hated being alone; he hated his room; lifting a small copper bell from the bed table, he clanged it erratically. As his hand quivered more violently, he plunged it under the sheet and pinned it down.

"Did you ring, Don Fernando?"

"Of course I rang. Bring me a cigarette and light it, Chavela."

"But Dr. Velasco asked me not to ... you..."

"Get a cigarette and be quick about it! Don't tell me what Dr. Velasco said, and don't run to him with your prattles."

"Sí, Don Fernando," she said, cringing a little.

As he waited for the cigarette (she had to go to the kitchen for a light), he eyed the grilled window. The bronze bars had a chunk of landscape wedged between them: a strap of corn land with giant chirimoya trees beyond. The chirimoyas had green limbs, and their mat of branches formed an umbrella cap of foliage. Don Fernando's sight was weak and branches did not exist for him. The umbrella seemed to float in mid-air. The effect annoyed him. He clanged his bell.

Chavela, a fat Tarascan peasant in her twenties, hurried back, a cigarette in one hand and a charcoal ember in the other. Pincher-wise she gripped the glowing ember between splints of wood, tongs she had improvised.

"Light my cigarette, you fool, before the charcoal falls on the bed! Did you have to bring it here? Don't you ever think for yourself?"

Chavela's broad chocolate face looked troubled; her big steady hands seemed to lift on strings as she brought the ember to the tip of her cigarette and puffed violently, close to Fernando's bed. Smoke corkscrewed from her nose and mouth, and she frowned and coughed, and then grinned. Carefully, she placed the cigarette between his lips.

"There," she said. For a second, her eyes narrowed; she turned away, repelled, and as she turned, the ember dropped alongside the bed.

"You could have burned me!" wailed Fernando. "Where's Angelina? ... get her!"

"She's outdoors, playing with the children."

"Playing with the children: doesn't she do anything else? Doesn't anybody do anything here?"

A heavy tread outside Fernando's room made Chavela glance toward the door; a spur dragged its wheel over tiles; it was Jorge Farias, the corn-production manager, a hungry-looking man, half Spanish, half Tarascan. He removed his wide-brimmed straw hat as he halted in the bedroom doorway; the rough brim scraped across his trousers.

"Farias wants to see you," said Chavela, and went out.

"May I come in?" asked Farias.

Don Fernando motioned him inside with childish gesture. As Farias entered, the old man spat on the floor.

Farias was dressed in soiled brown trousers and a white shirt designed like a four-pocketed jacket, he had on black riding boots spurred with star-shaped rowels, polished from use. He stood stiffly erect. He disliked the old man. Nearly fifty, he felt that his years of service, doled out to the Clarín, had been largely wasted; yet he liked his job and was proud of any help he could render his own people whenever Fernando's vigilance slackened.

"Can't you bear to look at me?" said Fernando.

"I'm at your service," said Farias.

"Sit down ... sit down!"

The spurs dragged. The chair by the window squeaked. Farias supposed he would be told to check the crops along the boundary line of the Santa Cruz del Valle hacienda, where it adjoined Petaca. He dreaded the journey through the mountains, but remembered he could take his son along, unless the Clarín had another job for Luis. But the Clarín's mind was slipping. Last week, he had ordered Felipe locked in the pillory; Felipe had not been guilty of stealing; it had been Carlos Vasconcales who had robbed the corn bins; nothing Farias could say had altered the Clarín's decision. Farias studied a crack in the red tiles; the crack wandered like a river toward the old man's bed. Farias found himself staring at Don Fernando. Cigarette smoke hooded his face—a falcon's hood of gray.

"I want you to leave here early tomorrow. Check the crops along Santa Cruz del Valle. Go armed."

"Yes, sir."

"There's something else. Check the stone fences along our property; take time to fix them if they're down; we can't have cattle foraging on our corn. Understand?"

"Yes, sir. I'll check thoroughly. Anything else?"

"Expect trouble.... You may go."

Fernando attempted to see Farias walk to the door, but his eyes had shifted out of focus; he saw a brownish blur; he shook himself and waited. The click of spurs faded. He raised his cigarette and inhaled deeply. Slowly, his sight cleared. The window and its barred landscape returned. He welcomed the sight now, thinking of death with a throb of panic: death would remove all landscapes, however blurred. His shaky hand carried the cigarette to his mouth and then let it fall. He slept.

He dreamed of a fracas over the impounding of a stream on the lower slope of the volcano; that quarrel had taken place thirty or more years ago; yet now, in the dream, the angry voices of workers rose; his administrador drew a revolver; a peasant yanked away the gun....

Waking, Fernando clattered his copper bell, and this time his son appeared.

"Yes, Father," said Raul, near the bed.

"A drink of water."

"Yes."

Raul poured a glass of water from a bed-table water bottle; a great green fly buzzed about the mouth of the bottle; his father reached for the glass; the hand shook and drops spilled.

The room had been papered in egg-white paper with brown aviaries triangled on it; from every aviary a flock of birds—all resembling swallows—cascaded. A black wooden wardrobe that weighed half a ton filled one wall. Its double doors, sides, and corners were ornamented with carved eagles and brass gewgaws. Some of the eagles had conch-shell eyes. The eyes peered into a full-length mirror, framed in carved wood. Above a washstand hung a Swiss etching of the Matterhorn, a sketchy rendering. Fernando's bed was four-posted and canopied with a dingy white cloth.

Raul glimpsed himself in the mirror as he held his father's glass, and the reflection startled him. Catching the resemblance, he set down the glass with a jerk and began to walk out of the room.

"Raul," said his father.

"What is it, Father?" said Raul, compelling himself to speak politely.

"I sent Farias to check the corn fences."

"He'll check them carefully," said Raul.

"Will Velasco come this afternoon?"

"He'll come unless he has a sick person to take care of."

"I feel bad. I feel as if ... Raul, it's bad."

"But you've felt that way before."

"Yes, I have. Still, I feel...." He said no more.

"Velasco usually comes about seven."

"Very well," said Fernando.

Raul waited, and as he waited, standing in the door, his father dozed. He called Chavela and instructed her to check from time to time. Stepping into the patio, he paused to take in the warm sun; he felt more like himself as he assimilated the light and air, heard laughter in the kitchen, and listened to the twittering and jabbering of parrots, thrushes and doves in their wall cages, cages that decorated all sides of the patio. A stone fountain centered the patio. Many years ago, the pink stones had been brought by oxcart from a prehistoric pyramid in Sector 9. Carved snakes wound from stone block to stone block, to vanish, with reptilian grace, over the rim. Raul sat on the curb, under the cypress. A dragonfly rode a lily pad. Where bougainvillaea climbed the wall a white butterfly, as big as a woman's cupped hands, descended: it seemed to be coming down an aerial stairway a step at a time. Raul shut his eyes, wanting to forget his problems, the ugly face of his father, the threat of dissolving traditions.

Presently, he went to the stable where Chico stood, brushed and saddled, tail switching. Manuel was polishing the cantle, chatting with other men; hens and roosters scratched in the floor straw; the air boomed with flies.

"The sacks are on," said Manuel, punching a corn sack behind Chico's saddle.

"Let's go, then," said Raul. "Are you ready?"

"I'm all set," said Manuel.

The palomino's beauty was obvious in many ways: bone structure, slant of ears, line of hocks, texture of mane and tail. Chico swung his head to watch Raul mount; his teeth ground his bit slightly. Lagoon and volcano came alive as the men rode side by side, Manuel on an Arabian bay. Each rider had a western saddle ornamented with silver, tasseled with red. They left the hacienda by the main road, lined on both sides with eucalyptus trees, four and five feet in diameter and fifty to sixty feet tall. The fragrant foliage sweetened the air; birds sang; dust puffs fitted like leggings around the horse's hoofs. Manuel's Arabian carried the heaviest sack of corn, but did not seem to mind. Raul packed a revolver in a new holster. Manuel had two pistols slung on a full cartridge belt. Both were dressed in white and wore straw hats with quail feathers under the bands.

Again volcano and lagoon swung with the riders; at a curve in the road, with the shore line close, ducks swam across the volcano's reflection. The double line of eucalyptus rambled on, but at the end of the lane, where a road intersected, they spread into a grove. Close to the grove, a white wooden cross pegged a hill. A tall man was looping dried marigold strands on an arm of the cross, his back toward Raul and Manuel. When he heard the horses, he faced about, his face luxuriously bearded with curly white hair. Picking up his hat out of the weeds, he walked toward the road.

"It's Alberto, the musician," said Raul, pleased.

"Ah, so it is. I hear he's been very sick," said Manuel.

"Good morning," said Alberto, smiling, bowing a little, big hat dangling in front of his stomach, gripped by both hands. His immaculate whites must have been ironed that morning.

"Good morning, Alberto," said Raul. "Sorry to hear you've been sick. I didn't know. How are you feeling?"

"Ai, patrón, I feel better, thank God. My legs troubled me. I'm old ... it is nothing. It will pass."

"When are you coming again to play for us?"

"Soon—God willing."

"Here's something for you."

Alberto limped close to Chico and patted his mane. The horse shied and blew through his nose, clicking his bit.

"Steady now, Chico," Raul said, and handed a few coins to Alberto. The old man accepted the money graciously, jingling it before pocketing it. For Raul, there was Christ in Alberto's face, the Christ of his own hacienda, of many haciendas. A few thorns, he thought, a few drops of blood ... He remembered Alberto at a fiesta years before: a drunk had struck him in the mouth. Alberto had toppled. Yet he had not complained. The jingle of coins in the open air, the cross on the hill, made Raul taste betrayal—he was offering the vinegar sop to his people. He hadn't the guts to free them! He jerked Chico's bit angrily, the horse reared, and Raul went on down the road.

Disturbed, Manuel eyed his friend doubtfully as they jogged along. Huts lay around another bend, and they rode slowly, over badly placed cobbles. The area was semi-arid, the soil rocky and alkaline. A few stone huts pimpled the ground among maguey and tangles of prickly pear and candelabra. Each hut resembled a cairn topped by a straw wig. The unmortared walls were made of lava, rough, porous, grayish-lavender. Big and suckling pigs slumped in front of a wooden watering trough that had a leak at one end; chickens fed here and there; dogs yapped at the horsemen.

Raul dismounted in front of a doorless hut, and began to pull off his corn sack, tugging at the leather thongs and henequen cords. A deep voice said, "Bueno," and Raul looked into the face of Salvador, the head man of the hutment, a three-hundred-pound fellow, with a paunch, a stevedore's shoulders, grinning jowl and swooping mustache.

"Let me take the sack, patrón."

"I heard you had no corn here," Raul said, backing away.

"No corn for three days."

"You should have come to me."

"Sometimes it's better to wait. We have our chickens and pigs. We're not starving."

"You can't make tortillas out of chickens and pigs," said Raul.

Salvador laughed soundlessly, and the upper part of his body shook. He untied the corn sack and shouldered its weight easily. Barefooted, standing there, legs spread, one hand balancing the burlap, he faced Raul, the sun streaming over his whites.

"Will you go inside and wait for me?" Salvador asked.

"I want to talk to you," said Raul.

He entered the low hut and sat on the packed earth floor and took a cigarette paper from his pocket. Presently, Salvador came in and sat against the wall opposite Raul, across the hut. Their feet almost touched. A broken candle lay on a termite-riddled chest that had been patched with a triangle of pine from which dangled a rusty padlock. Clothes and a folded hammock hung on pegs. There were no other furnishings. Outside, women gabbled over the corn sacks and children dashed about crying: "We've got corn.... Come, see the corn!"

Salvador fished out paper and tobacco and paper and tobacco became a cigarette with magical dexterity. The two smoked silently. They had met in this hut quite a few times through the years. Last September they had weathered a hurricane's tail behind these walls. As Raul smoked, he kept seeing the musician's face and sensing his own obligations.

"I want you to move to the house in a few days," Raul said. "I need your help, Salvador. I want you to turn out several carts; that means wheels, frames, and yokes."

"But Don Fernando doesn't want them," said Salvador, and his lip pulled away from his cigarette with a scrap of paper clinging to it. What was Don Raul thinking? What kind of quarrel would come of this?

"You do the job for me. I'm not waiting any longer. I've made up my mind to take over Petaca. We can't go on waiting and waiting. My father's day is over."

Raul felt his voice was trembling, and tried to distract himself with the ash of his cigarette.

"There will be a lot of trouble," said Salvador, skeptical of such a decision. "People will take sides. We'll have our hands full."

"Are you afraid?" scoffed Raul.

"Of course not, patrón."

"Our people are hungry and sick," said Raul, staring at a stone embedded in the wall.

"I'll do my part," said Salvador humbly, picking the shred of paper from his lip. "I know that we need new carts, that carts need repairing.... There's a lot that needs doing."

"When you come to the house, bring Teresa. She can help us."

"I'm glad to move, but I must continue to look after these people, too. They're my friends." A hunch of his shoulder indicated those who lived in the surrounding huts.

"You can do both jobs," said Raul, and glanced at Salvador confidently.

As Raul smoked, tasting the cigarette, liking the cool, rocky interior, a leghorn hen scratched, found a grub and beaked it in the sunlight.

Raul felt easier in his mind. The new responsibility was a challenge; he had no doubt as to his administrative ability. Back against the rocks, he smoked in silence. He was on the side of freedom.

As they headed for the hacienda house, Manuel rode in front.

Raul called him: "Ride beside me, Manuel."

Manuel checked his horse and gave his cartridge belt a yank.

A buzzard circled above them.

"I've made up my mind," Raul said, and his face brightened. "I've told Salvador that I will manage the hacienda from now on."

Manuel's fingers tightened with pleasure on the rein, his eyes became slits, and a slow grin began. He glanced at Raul and nodded, and then glanced away.

"I told Salvador to move to Petaca and make us new carts and repair old ones. We must begin to improve things."

"But your father?" Manuel asked, almost mechanically, fearing Don Fernando's domination; for a moment he felt his conflicting sense of duty, acquired through the years.

"I'll have it out with him," said Raul, working his horse closer to Manuel's, his knee rubbing the Arabian. "Things have gone much too far. He sent Farias to check the corn fences; you know how many boundary troubles have come of that; there's never any attempt to work out a sensible relationship with the del Valle people." His thin lips narrowed. "I want corn distributed to all sectors where there's a shortage. I want our people to know my father is not in control."

"He'll strike back," said Manuel.

"I've stood enough intolerance," Raul exclaimed.

Manuel was satisfied to jog along behind Raul, he wanted to weigh the abrupt change and consider possibilities; he was eager to accept and participate. Slit-eyed, he gazed about him. His nostrils expanded as he remembered Don Fernando had once whipped a young boy until blood streaked his back ... Tonio Enriques. Manuel rubbed his hand over the bullets in his cartridge belt and clucked to his horse.

For Raul, the return trip was melancholy and yet beautiful: Petaca appeared on the gradual slope above the lagoon. It was his job to administer the million and a half acres, to supervise crops, gardens, people ... little Carmen might race to him and cry, "Can we have another jug of milk for supper?" Gasper might come to the office and say, "Mama's sick, she's passing bile—" Dr. Velasco could live at the hacienda and receive annual wages, instead of having to make the long ride from town, at the beck and call of everyone. Should he be unwilling, Dr. Hernández would consent. Gabriel Storni would have his stained-glass windows for the chapel.... Some prayers would be answered. Debts would be canceled. Of course, it would take time.

As he rode between the rows of tall eucalyptus, he felt that time was his friend. Perhaps current political and economic tensions would ease. President Díaz was not his man ... his corrupt regime would last as long only as he could make it last. Reason told Raul that he himself could not alter, singlehanded, the feudalistic setup of the hacienda system. It was Petaca he wanted to change.

Breaking off twigs from a low eucalyptus branch, he crumpled the foliage in his fingers. As he went inside the house he smelled the aroma of the crushed leaves; as he stood in the doorway of his bedroom he sensed the oily pungency.

He found Angelina sitting in front of her circular mirror, brushing her hair. Gazing into the mirror, she smiled at Raul and went on brushing.

"You're back quickly," she said, covering her knees with her skirt.

"I was down along the lagoon," he said.

"I was playing with the children in the garden and messed up my hair."

He tossed his belt and revolver on their bed. Going up to her, he wanted to touch her, stroke her hair, but instead he thought of Lucienne and remembered her smile. Angry with himself, he said, loudly:

"I've told Salvador and Manuel that I'm taking over the hacienda. Sectors are in need of grain. People are hungry. I want Velasco to move here and help the sick. I want no more beatings. I can't wait any longer. It's my job now!"

Angelina stared at him in the glass, until his eyes found hers, and he sensed her disapproval at once. She did not speak. Her brush in her lap, she was thinking that he was a dumb fool, that from now on stability would be a thing of the past. Still looking at him, she reached for her comb, and her brush fell to the floor.

He stooped to pick it up and said, "I'd like to change things slowly."

"Your father will fight you," she said.

Her fingers rolled her hair into a competent bun. She slid a dark green band of velvet around the pile of black hair and got up and paused by the window. Their room was on the upper floor, facing both front and patio sides, a long, broad room with shuttered windows on each side, allowing cross ventilation, so desirable in the summer. He stood beside her and they watched a boy spin a wooden top in the sunlight by the serpent fountain. Someone was patting tortillas in the kitchen. The smell of stewing beef crossed the patio.

"I'm going to the corral and stables. I know the animals haven't been getting enough grain," he said.

"What about Pedro?" she asked. "Have you thought of him?"

"I'll dismiss him," Raul said.

"I wonder whether you can do that?"

"What do you mean?"

"He works for your father."

"Pedro's been a killer long enough. I'll get him out of here!"

"Remember, change things slowly," she warned, huskily.

"I'll do the right things," he protested. "Pedro will be the first man to go. I can't work with him here. I see no reason for delaying his dismissal. With all there is to do, I want no complications."

"Pedro has friends. Talk with Gabriel. Maybe he'll be helpful. Your father will know of your decision by tonight, because someone will tell him. Manuel and Salvador will talk, and the news will travel fast." Angelina's voice had taken on a harsh quality. She stared at the sky, dreading responsibilities. "There are so many of us here at the hacienda," she said.

The boy went on spinning his top by the fountain.

From the corrals came the noise of a horse being shod: the crack of hammer against nail sounded as if it had all the time in the world behind it.

Raul decided to talk with Gabriel. Perhaps Gabriel, who had the hacienda problems at heart, could judge things reasonably.

Angelina had gone back to her dressing table and was scenting her hair. A peacock screamed in the garden and from somewhere along the lagoon another answered, putting in amorous cackles, ironical and derisive cries.

When Raul went out, she leaned far back in her chair and stretched and yawned. It had been nice in the garden, nicer still playing the organ for Caterina in the chapel, the chapel cool, Caterina singing, humming, tapping the organ keys ... que chula ... her face serious, why so serious, as if she were old? She would be able to play pretty well soon. She'll play for me and I'll sit and gaze through the ex-eye window ... cielito voices.... When St. Catherine played, the roses fell about her ... Philadelphia organ ... in gold letters on the front ... a long way to Philadelphia, a long way to happiness sometimes.

Tears came but she squeezed them back with her knuckles.

Tears ... why tears? We buried our love long ago. Go to Guadalajara, see Carlos and Rico, see Estelle....