Under the Feet of Jesus Read online

  The other spectators, mostly men, waited by the fence. One of them whistled a long, mournful ballad while another tried remembering the lyrics of Dos pasajes or Me voy pa’l norte. A few drank warm bargain beer in aluminum cans then smashed the empties for recycling with a stomp of a shoe. Two children sat on a fallen tree trunk not far from the gate and laughed without looking up, cracking unsalted peanuts and hurling the shells into the weeds. Someone had set a bonfire down the deep end of the road like a beacon for them to find their way back to their beds and Alejo could see the sizzling red sparks spear up into the night.

  Estrella waved away a whirl of gnats. The Holy Spirit came in the form of tongues of fire to show His love... and the words seemed to come alive because she saw nips of flames flick like tongues lapping the dark away. The owls hooted and every once in a while one of the men slapped a mosquito away or someone laughed hard enough to make her wonder about the joke. In front of her, one child rolled an abandoned tire to another, the wobbly tire often nicking her boots.

  There was glazed light in her eyes he noticed, but turned to view the full moon turning into a coppery blare. Alejo passed the blue bottle and she took it silently and pressed the thick spout to her lips and drank and licked her lips. Her boots looked like corks, light and airy, and she returned the bottle and he drank, amber it seemed against the diminishing light of the moon.

  His slicked back hair smelled thick with Brillecream. He tilted his head back into a long and graceful line, and the stone of his throat moved when he gulped. She recalled the curvature of the bottle in her hand, the velvet cool and sweet liquid lubricating her parched throat and she let her black hair fall over one shoulder and stroked—then realized she was the only grown female there. The mother had yelled No and Estrella should have been safely tucked away like the other women of the camp because the moon and earth and sun’s alignment was a powerful thing. Unborn children lurking in their bodies were in danger of having their lips bitten just like the hare on the moon if nothing was done to protect them. Is that what you want, the mother yelled, a child born sin labios? Without a mouth? And Estrella looked out to the barn. Behind her something dunked water, and Estrella listened. A frog splashed perhaps, or someone skipped a rock above the water of the irrigation ditch.

  She scratched a foot, a finger digging into her boot, no socks. Her knees. He saw her knees. She preened her hair and it gave Alejo the idea that it was a luxury for her to sit and rake her long hair, to fill her own nostrils with the newly washed scent of boiled chrysanthemum. She had tilted her head up to drink again and her hair fell back and the moon reappeared, puncturing the coppery night with its ever-glowing belly. The craters of the moon punched out the shape of a hare.

  Estrella bobbled her knees and passed the bottle to Alejo, her extended arm obscuring the moon just as the earth’s shadow had done a few minutes before, and he took the bottle and finished the drink. He dug in his pocket and felt for the stone.

  The crickets once again blasted from the vacant field, their chirping drowning the rustle of the trees. The whistling halted. A few yawning men started back down toward the bonfire, the children chasing behind them.

  —I’m sorry, Alejo said.

  —For what, she replied.

  —For whatever I said that made you mad.

  —It’s not you, Estrella said, and jumped down from the fence.

  —You sure?

  —Yeah, and Estrella pointed to the bottle because she wanted to tell him how good she felt but didn’t know how to build the house of words she could invite him into. That was real good, she said, and they looked at one another and waited. Build rooms as big as barns. He held the neck of the empty bottle tight and traced the thick spout with his thumb. Wide-open windows where she could put candlelights and people from across the way would point at the glow and not feel so alone in the night. Give it here, she said, and pointed to the bottle and Alejo thought that perhaps she wanted the deposit and gladly handed it to her. She dunked her top lip on the spout and placed her thumb near her lip and grooved a breath into the hollow and it sounded full of longing. Estrella blew some more deep and low notes, her thumb directing the flow of air.

  —Pretty good, he said, and she returned the bottle. When he placed his lips and blew, nothing came of it.

  —Like that, and she took his warm thumb slightly in her trembling hand, Here.

  —Here? Like this? He blew and a weak note emerged which made her smile but embarrassed him.

  —See you tomorrow, she said as if she believed it.

  —Yea, okay, he replied, very pleased. See you around, See you.

  She started across the vacant corral, buried in the hip-high mustard grass, her boot chafing against her bare ankle bone. Estrella felt a pinch and her finger lingered on her lips and she became suddenly startled by the moon and the harelip boy and the No of the mother. To her relief, she heard wind groaning over the mouth of the bottle, notes far and wayward in the night. She stopped and turned. Alejo receded to the camp, all the while blowing notes as deep as a basement until all she could see was the blue bottle floating toward the yellow glow of the bonfire.

  The mother had covered the windows of the bungalow with newspapers and a paste made of flour and water. She asked for Perfecto’s keys, forbid Estrella from going outside. What do you want with the keys, Perfecto asked, and the mother placed the keys in the pocket of her apron, near her belly, without answering.

  White butterflies and golden wasps and green and brown lace flies swooped and hovered before her as she trudged across the brittle thistles to meet Perfecto. Her shoes were caked with mud and laced above her trousers dusty from a full day’s work. Estrella wiped her forehead with the back of a sleeve. The late afternoon skies sheened a hubcap silver over the barn and the orchards, and a flock of ducks flew above her like an arrowhead, their beaks and necks dipping in flight. Her body slouched, and when she remembered, or when she saw her own shadow against the tall grasses, she straightened her shoulders and pushed her chest out. A few stray ducks pumped their wings.

  She finally spotted Perfecto. He leaned on a sideboard of the corral fence and waited where the mother said he would be waiting because it was urgent and he needed to talk with her right after work. The skullcap of his balding head glistened with sweat and she could see him glancing in the direction of the peach orchards. She heard the faint buzzsaw engine of a biplane as she approached the fence. Rather than straddle herself on the top board as she had done a few months back, she found a loose board and pulled one end down. She climbed over and raised the worn wood plank up again into the notch of nail. She waited for him to say something.

  Perfecto cleaned his thumbnail with a corner of a matchbook. He thought of the matchbook, then of a cigarette, and then of a smoldering heat burning on the bare skin of his head.

  —Can you help tear down the barn? Perfecto asked. He was not a man who minced words. His hands were big for such a wiry body, with veins that surfaced like swollen roots. The twins loved to play with his hands. Whenever they caught Perfecto sitting, they would join him like bookends and place his hands, palms down, on their laps and entertain themselves by pressing the veins in, then watching the veins gradually surface from his skin like running streams on parched land.

  —You listening to what I’m asking?

  —Weren’t they gonna spray the orchards next week? Estrella asked matter-of-factly, and pointed to the biplane which dusted the peach trees not far from the barn. She tilted her head for a better look. Such a big noise for such a small plane.

  —Since when do they do what they say? Perfecto put the matchbook in his front shirt pocket and waited for the noise of the plane to lessen before speaking again. He leaned his elbows on a side board of the fence as Alejo had done a few nights before. Well?

  —Makes a lot of noise, don’t it?

  —I need for you to help me.

  —I thought I had no business in the barn, Estrella replied. She walked over to its shade. I tho
ught you said it was dangerous.

  —It means extra money.

  —How come me?

  —If I get Gumecindo to help tear it down, I gotta pay him.

  —How ’bout Alejo? she asked, and Perfecto kicked pebbles before answering. His boot was splitting at the toe.

  —Same thing. Less for your mama.

  Perfecto rubbed his head. He had forgotten to put his hat on and the sun beamed on his baldness. It angered him just thinking of the wide rim hat with its darkened sweatring around the crown, sitting on a nail next to the door instead of on his head. This was the third time he had forgotten the hat. Se me va la onda. What was he thinking?

  —Are you gonna help or no?

  —It’s not fair, Estrella said. Except for the dress she’d pulled over her work clothes, she resembled a young man, standing in the barn’s shadow. She looked up at the barn as she had done when they first arrived, and tried to imagine herself with the ball of a hammer, pulling the resistant long rusted nails out of the woodsheet walls. The nails would screech and the wood would moan and she would pull the veins out and the woodsheet wall would collapse like a toothless mouth. Nothing would be left except a hole in the baked dirt so wide it would make one wonder how anything could be so empty.

  Is that what happens? Estrella thought, people just use you until you’re all used up, then rip you into pieces when they’re finished using you? She scratched under her hat, the day’s sweat working its way into her scalp. She should have taken a drink from the cooling bucket of water before coming.

  The blue bottle and the brand cola and pulp of the moon over the cedar shakes of the barn wouldn’t have been so strong if she wasn’t so thirsty, so hungry, so tired she wanted to curl up in the straw and shut the trapdoors, let the dust settle in the dark and close her eyes.

  But there was no wind today, and when she noticed the silence of the birds in the quiet trees, she realized the plane had stopped its fumigation.

  —Why does the barn have to go down?

  —Someone died there, Perfecto said. This was true. This one was not a lie.

  —In there?

  —It’s no business of ours.

  —I don’t believe you.

  —Why do you think people stay away?

  —The harelip boy comes here all the time.

  —You must be dreaming.

  —Who told you someone died?

  —It’s no secret.

  —I’m not scared, Perfecto, she lied.

  —You should be.

  Perfecto Flores thought it best not to get angry. He removed his bifocals and scratched his ashen scruffy chin, the back of his loose neck skin, then slipped his bifocals on again.

  —I need you to help.

  -No. I can’t do it.

  He turned and left Estrella looking at the barn, her face blanked out under the shadow of her hat.

  Alejo had not guessed the biplane was so close until its gray shadow crossed over him like a crucifix, and he ducked into the leaves. The biplane circled, banking steeply over the trees and then released the shower of white pesticide.

  —What the... ? They’re spraying! But Alejo couldn’t hear Gumecindo’s response because the drone of the motor like the snapping of rubber bands drowned out his words.

  —Run! Alejo screamed, struggling to get himself down from the tree, Get the fuck outta here!

  Gumecindo dropped the sacks and ran, jumping over irrigation pumps, crunching the flesh of rotting peaches, running just ahead of the cross shadow.

  Alejo slid through the bushy branches, the tangled twigs scratching his face, and he was ready to jump when he felt the mist. He shut his eyes tight to the mist of black afternoon. At first it was just a slight moisture until the poison rolled down his face in deep sticky streaks. The lingering smell was a scent of ocean salt and beached kelp until he inhaled again and could detect under the innocence the heavy chemical choke of poison. Air clogged in his lungs and he thought he was just holding his breath, until he tried exhaling but couldn’t, which meant he couldn’t breathe. He panicked when he realized he was choking, clamped his neck with one hand, feeling his Adam’s apple against his palm, but still held onto a branch tightly with the other, afraid he would fall long and hard, like the insects did. He swallowed finally and the spit in his throat felt like balls of scratchy sand. Was this punishment for his thievery? He was sorry Lord, so sorry.

  Alejo’s head spun and he shut his stinging eyes tighter to regain balance. But a hole ripped in his stomach like a match to paper, spreading into a deeper and bigger black hole that wanted to swallow him completely. He knew he would vomit. His clothes were dampened through, then the sheet of his skin absorbed the chemical and his whole body began to cramp from the shrinking pull of his skin squeezing against his bones.

  He wheezed and almost fell, and if it wasn’t for the fact that he was determined not to fall, he would have tumbled like the ripe peaches hitting the ground with a hard thud. His body swung forward and he caught himself by hitching on to a branch and he scratched his face against a mesh of leaves. As the rotary motor of the biplane approached again, he closed his eyes and imagined sinking into the tar pits.

  He thought first of his feet sinking, sinking to his knee joints, swallowing his waist and torso, the pressure of tar squeezing his chest and crushing his ribs. Engulfing his skin up to his chin, his mouth, his nose, bubbled air. Black bubbles erasing him. Finally the eyes. Blankness. Thousands of bones, the bleached white marrow of bones. Splintered bone pieced together by wire to make a whole, surfaced bone. No fingerprint or history, bone. No lava stone. No story or family, bone. And when he awoke from the darkness of the tar, he was looking up into the canopy of peach trees, his forehead a swamp of purple blood and bruise and hair, and into the face of his cousin.

  Perfecto contemplated the forked path. Under the shade of some trees, he bent his wiry limbs, an old weathervane of a body, the rusted axis of his knees rattling like pivots in the wind. He raked his throat of phlegm, spit it out. Jittery flies settled on his shoulders to work their forelegs together while a yellow jacket wasp tested his ear. The winds shifted and he breathed in a faint trace of saltwater and coughed.

  Perfecto desired to return home. To his real home, not the bungalow. This desire became as urgent as the money he brought in for Petra’s family. He kept forgetting his hat, stumbling over his memories like a child learning to walk; as if in seventy-three years he had traveled too long a distance to keep himself steady and able and willing. What would happen if he forgot his way home?

  This morning, he awoke next to a young woman and it thrilled him because this was the woman who he had loved boldly in the canyon right under the cataract eyes of God. Without the church’s legal signature, he had pushed his trousers down to his ankles and sat, the hot limestone against his bare buttocks, and reassured her that this was love, trust him, and he had pulled her into him right under the open sky and sun and cloudy eyes. She had straddled him, her knees folding open like a waxed cactus flower, her heels digging into the small of his back, the grind of the stone, his face under the cotton of her dress, the smell of peeled cucumbers, fleshy red opuntia fruit. The glossy semen had flashed out of him and into her and out of her and down his thigh and had evaporated on the limestone like clear water.

  This morning he toyed between the crescent cloves of her shoulder blades and she turned to him and it wasn’t Mercedes of another life, and he awoke a second time and the scent of garlic startled him. He got up and didn’t know where he was and he fumbled for his bifocals and he rattled out of the bungalow in his calico drawers, stumbling to his car. He looked in the sideview mirror of the station wagon and saw that his hair was not full black as it had been in the dream, and his naked skin was not tight taut as he had seen himself with Mercedes of some forty years ago. He tried to rack his brain, shake out the contents of his memories to remember who he was and who he wasn’t.

  Mealybug beetles dripped like crisp curls on Perfecto’s knees,
then fell to the ground, and he studied the black beetles, the armor of their backs, their legs jetting and jerking. He remembered their firstborn, the color of a plum. Perfecto poked the beetles with a finger. Mercedes buried her head in shame at her failure but did not bury her accusatory stare. She told him the women hadn’t schooled her in the ritual of birthing because it was against his church; to know the ceremonies would be to know demons and heathens. She wanted no part of his God after that. But Perfecto knew better; there was no absolution for their love in the canyon. It was about travesties, about transgression. It had nothing to do with rituals. A few lace wing flies jutted across the soft soils with furious flapping. They had other children, but the lesson of that one life came at too high a price.

  They returned the blue silenced baby to the soil days later, without the blessing of the priest, a plastic wreath wrapped with fake flower stems. Only a baby’s blanket was left. Mercedes washed and folded and buried the blanket in the basket of her own things. But no one believed him when he claimed that the sweet-sour baby smell still clung to the blanket. He could not find words or colors to describe the smells. He could only describe what the blanket smelled like: citrus and mint, rosewater, sometimes cloves. Even years later, while Mercedes’ cancer burrowed into her chest, Perfecto would take the blanket out of the basket, and press the cloth to his nose. Each time a child grew and left, he inhaled, and when Mercedes died that crazy night centuries ago, the scent of pure cloves fired the memory of such a short life into his nostrils and rushed to his lungs, flashing his heart till it pumped so fast it made his head spin and his eyes water endlessly. No one believed him, but he swore year after year he could still smell the living scent of their first-born baby.

  Perfecto coughed into his fist, and his nose began to run and he blew his nose and sneezed again. Flies tumbled like leaves from the bushy trees, dropping onto his shoulders and then onto the ground. Perfecto slowly rose to his feet and pulled out his handkerchief again and he jammed it against his nose. Dying insects lay on the soil everywhere.