A Santo in the Image of Cristóbal García
A Santo in the Image of Cristóbal García
RICK COLLIGNON
This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2002 by Rick Collignon
Originally published in hardcover by BlueHen
First Unbridled Books trade paperback edition, 2010
Unbridled Books trade paperback ISBN 978-1-936071-62-3
All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not
be reproduced in any form without permission.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Collignon, Rick, 1948–
A santo in the image of Cristóbal García / Rick Collignon.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-399-14921-X (pbk.)
1. Spanish Americans—Fiction. 2. New Mexico—Fiction. 3. Villages—Fiction.
I. Title.
PS3553.O474675S36 2010
813’.54—dc22
2009053804
Printed in the United States of America
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
To Gaudalupe
One
THE MORNING THE MOUNTAINS CAUGHT FIRE and the village of Guadalupe began to burn, Flavio Montoya was once again standing beside the irrigation ditch behind his sister’s house.
“This field is turning to dirt,” Flavio said, and then he turned his head and looked at the foothills. There had been no moisture in Guadalupe for four months, and the hills were dusty and too dry. The trees had grown faded and listless as if they had forgotten altogether what rain was. There was a shadow moving between the piñons, and Flavio thought idly that it seemed too large and moved too haphazardly to be a deer.
“My sister’s field,” he said again, to no one but himself, “is dying.”
It was just past dawn, and the sun was still far below the mountains. Flavio had been trying to irrigate Ramona’s field for the past twelve days, and he had come to wonder how such a simple chore as moving water, a thing he had done all his life, had suddenly become so difficult. While it was true that there had been no rain for months, it was also true that the ditches in the village were running full from the heavy snows the winter before. More than enough water to keep the fields wet. Where the ditch ran, the alfalfa was green and sturdy, but stretching away from it was cracked earth and a scattered army of stunted yellow plants. And although the drought and the harsh spring winds were much to blame, Flavio knew that he, too, was at fault.
Each morning, long before dawn, Flavio would come to the field. But after just a few minutes of digging, he would tire and then stand motionless with his shovel as if both were spaded in the ground. He would stare blankly at the dark shadow of the mountains or at the back of Ramona’s empty house with its small curtained windows and think about nothing. And then, suddenly, as if there were no such thing as time, he would wake and find himself standing in the heat of the sun. Then he would walk slowly to his truck and drive home.
This morning, the morning Flavio saw the shadow of Felix García moving between the piñons and the morning Guadalupe began to burn, Flavio and his shovel were again standing quietly beside the irrigation ditch. He had once again forgotten how dry his sister’s field was, and staring absently at the foothills, he remembered the time his Grandmother Rosa told him that Demecio Segura had been born into a snowbank.
“DEMECIO WAS JUST A LITTLE MAN, MI HIJO,” Rosa had said to her grandson. “Almost no bigger than you. And for all his life the only luck he ever had was poor at best.”
It was early October and snow had fallen for the first time on the village of Guadalupe. Flavio had walked that morning from his own house on the other side of the valley to his grandmother’s. He had never walked that distance by himself before, so when Rosa opened the door and saw him standing proudly in the snow with wet feet and no hat on his head, she had shaken her head and smiled. Then she told him that, although she was happy he had come to visit, if he ever did such a thing again she would have his grandfather sit him down and they would have a little talk. Rosa and Flavio sat in the kitchen together, Flavio ate biscochitos and drank warm milk with coffee while his grandmother told him about Demecio Segura.
“Demecio had always sworn,” Rosa said, “that he could remember distinctly the moment of his birth. And he would tell this story over and over to anyone who would listen.
“‘It was the coldest night of the year I was born,’ Demecio would say. ‘When there is no daylight and Christmas has just passed and there is no reason to live. I was born on that night. Although it was my mother’s good luck not to endure the severe pains of childbirth, it was my bad luck to be born into a snowbank.’
“Demecio’s luck was always like that,” Rosa said to her grandson. “His cows were not only sickly, but grew to the size of large dogs and were so mean-tempered that when Demecio was near they would bark and try to bite his feet. His wife, who was not from here, was fond of climbing trees until one day she fell while picking piñon and broke the bones in her neck. Not long after that, Demecio went to live with his nephew, Luis, a man who never spoke but only grunted. It was said that Luis would hit Demecio with a stick whenever Demecio complained, which was always. He was not a happy man, hijo, and he went about his life as if the air was full of stones.
“‘I remember clearly,’ Demecio would say, ‘that life before this life was warm and without trouble and that the first time I took a breath it was snow.’
“Demecio’s mother, who was named Demecia after her own mother, became pregnant one spring night. She was forty-six years old and unmarried and an only child who lived with her old parents. Demecio’s mother told no one she was with child because she did not know she was pregnant until the moment her son sprang from her womb like a fish jumping from the river. Although Demecia was a good-natured woman, there was, since her own birth, a blankness about her eyes and around her mouth and in her movements as if a fire inside her had never been lit. She did not know she was pregnant for the simple reason that she was unable to comprehend the idea of yesterday.
“On the day of Demecio’s birth,” Rosa had said, “Demecia was returning home from the church where she had dusted with a dry rag, as she did every Thursday evening, the fourteen stations of the cross. As she neared her parents’ home, a sharp spasm racked her lower stomach and Demecia gasped in pain. Her feet slipped out from under her, and she fell hard on the frozen path. She wrapped her arms around her belly and moaned, and in that instant, Demecio, in his haste, burst into the world and landed face first in the snow. He lay there half buried without moving, his voice shocked into silence. If he’d had one coherent thought it would have been that life is full of surprises and none of them can you see coming.”
…
ROSA LEANED BACK IN HER CHAIR and folded her hands in her lap. She looked across the table at her grandson. “So you see,” she said. “You must always be careful and never walk across this village until you’re old enough.”
Flavio, who’d had no idea his grandmother’s story had anything to do with him, suddenly saw the village full of small vicious cows and men who did not speak but only hit you with sticks. A place where babies could be found in snowbanks.
“Grandmother,” Flavio said. “Will those things happen to me?”
“Which part, hijo?” Rosa