When she said she was searching for the outfit with the new baby girl, Lani stepped onto the porch with her daughter and a cool stare. The newcomer only laughed. “Don’t worry, Se?ora. I’ve raised five boys; I don’t need to be a mother again. I’d be happy just being an aunt to a girl.”
Melisa was a handsome woman—long nose, high cheekbones, laughing eyes made more prominent by the few wrinkles around them. When Robert helped her out of her drenched coat, Lopez noticed that her breasts filled her blouse with curves impressive for any age. When Robert offered to help put up her horse in the barn, Lopez felt a sting of jealousy.
When the rain stopped three days later, Robert took Collin and Melisa to examine the abandoned cabin a mile toward the ocean. The next morning, they took half the supplies and inhabited the old homestead. At first Lopez felt an emptiness of his cabin; the bouts of darkness-closing-in increased. But he saw Robert and Collin in the fields, and Melisa spent most days with Lani and the baby.
Rain followed by weeks of clear skies covered the land with thick green grass. The baby suffered chicken pox, reducing Lopez to a nervous wreck until the spots disappeared. Then the days became warmer and warmer until, abruptly, the rainy season ended.
Word got around that the Lopez outfit boasted three female members and only five male. It had become a small, reincarnated piece of the ancient world. In town, men treated Lopez, Robert, and even the boys with respect.
When the summer fog began to roll in during the nights, Collin saw three strangers camping near their homestead. Robert and Lopez went out with rifles. Even at fifty feet, they looked like a rough lot, skinny and poorly clothed. Lopez suggested they talk. “All right,” Robert grunted and fired a shot above their heads. “That’s what I have to say.”
The strangers leapt into chaotic action, firing two shots while retreating. The next day, there was no sign of them.
The land dried out, turning the waist-high grass to golden brown. One night the baby spiked a fever so high she had a brief seizure. Panicked, Lopez ran the baby up to the doctor’s house. Dr. Lo put her in a cold bath and gave her a spoonful of bitter medicine. Though fussy, she passed the rest of the night without trouble.
Lopez, on the other hand, fell asleep next to Lani on the doctor’s guest bed and dreamt of being endlessly shoved into a sack made of scratchy, hot fabric.
Summer ended. On a trip to the coast, Robert discovered a baby boy floating above a tidal pool filled with spiny sea urchins. He brought the baby back to Melisa, who seemed neither excited nor upset about raising another boy.
One morning, when they were mucking out the stalls, Robert told Lopez, “When I first picked up the baby, I thought I’d name him Jacob. My favorite uncle was named Jacob.” He paused. “For a while, I thought I was going to name the boy after Uncle Jacob.”
“Now you think the baby is your Uncle Jacob?”
“I’m certain of it. It’s the strangest feeling, you know?”
“No, hermano, I don’t. I envy your certainty.”
The winter rains came, and again the world was covered with thick green grass. The baby girl began to speak simple words and stand on her own. She had a tangled halo of black curls. She giggled and shrieked with joy when Lopez would spin her about, hold her upside down. The boys wanted to be held upside down too. It was a good time.
When the rains stopped, Lani missed her monthly and the outfit began to hope that she was pregnant. Joe especially was proud. But midway through the fourth month, she had a dull pain in her belly and then bled profusely.
Afterward, she said she felt fine but didn’t want to talk about it. Joe had a harder time. When working in the fields, he felt a pain in his chest. Then during the hot, languorous nights of the late dry season, Joe drank too much in town. He woke up on the way home, a sour taste in his mouth. The next day he ran a fever, coughed up dark phlegm, complained of horrible chest pain. Lopez sent the boys for Dr. Lo. But during a coughing fit, Joe passed out. He fluttered in and out of consciousness for half an hour. Then he died.
They buried Joe in a clearing east of the cabin. Lopez was the only naturally born person left in the outfit. He held Lani and she wept. The folds of unseen darkness closed around Lopez’s mind. Nothing had changed since he had picked up the baby girl. His death was closer now than it had been before. The events of the last year—the work, the sex, the long and beautiful days—were only distractions from a final terror. For a moment, he hated Lani and Robert because they knew what would happen to them after death, while he had to die into such uncertainty.
But Lani’s despair was real, her need pressing. Twice her soft crying woke him at night. The comfort she took in him helped. Slowly the days regained their cadence. It helped to pick up his daughter and son, spin them around, hear them laugh. Summer’s morning fog dissolved into bright autumn mornings, darkened into winter rains. On the second anniversary of their daughter’s reincarnation, Lani and Lopez named her Olivia.