Beatriz gazed at the rust holes until they became a ruddy bug-eaten leaf and then focused into a rust hole again. To her vexation, her mind drifted to Pete Wyatt and his elbows, but her irritation dissipated when this thought solidified into an idea. “What do you know about that man who came to work last night?”
“Man? What man? Oh,” Joaquin said dismissively. “That boy, you mean.”
Beatriz ignored the demotion. “He’s not a pilgrim. He could bring Daniel food and water.”
There was silence as both cousins examined this idea for fault. When neither found any, Joaquin handed Beatriz the letter and she folded it up again neatly. They both rolled out from underneath the truck. Joaquin collected his shirt but didn’t put it on; his skin was too dusty for him to risk sullying the fabric.
Both cousins looked in the direction of Francisco Soria’s greenhouse. Voices still battled from within.
Joaquin said, “We could wait until they’re done.”
But Beatriz set off without hesitation. If Daniel could face his darkness head-on, she could face one of her parents’ arguments.
At one point, the tale of Francisco and Antonia Soria had been the greatest love story to ever grace Bicho Raro, which was saying a lot.
Love in the high desert is a strange thing. There is something about the climate—the remoteness, the severity of the seasons, the dryness of the air, the extreme beauty—that makes people feel more deeply. Perhaps without trees or cities to dampen the enormity of the feelings, they spread out hugely. Perhaps the hard-packed dust of the San Luis Valley amplifies them, like a shout into a canyon. Whatever it is, the people of Bicho Raro were no exception. Everything was bigger: anger, humor, terror, jubilance, love. Perhaps this was why the darkness of the Sorias was considered a more dangerous thing, too. It, like everything else, was deeper and more uncompromising.
Antonia and Francisco had been born on the same minute of the same day, one hundred miles apart. They might not have met if not for the weather. In the dirty 1930s, drought had struck Bicho Raro, and the air was orange and thick from dawn until dusk. There was rarely wind, and when there was, it was also orange and thick. Temperatures seared. Cattle turned to statues in the fields and birds fell out of the sky.
One day, however, a cool, clear breeze caught Francisco’s hair as he was digging the family sheepdog out of a sand dune that had formed overnight. It was a strange breeze—from the north, unlike the usual southwestern weather—and when he lifted his head, he could see that the breeze was carrying blue sky with it: clear blue air that a man could breathe without choking. He put down his shovel, and he and the dog followed the breeze clear out of Bicho Raro, down through San Luis, over the border to New Mexico, past Costilla, past Questa, and clear into Taos, where they were having a fiesta.
Francisco, who had lived in the San Luis Valley his entire life and under the drought for half of that life, could barely fathom such festivities. Little girls in fiesta dresses rode painted carousel horses on a merry-go-round powered by men turning a massive wooden gear. Boys one-third his height wore crisp and dustless sombreros. The dancing was so vigorous that he felt his legs stepping out without his permission, his body an unwitting mirror. The music replaced Francisco’s blood, and he felt he could do anything. That was when the blue sky stopped, right over Antonia Alamilla, who was dancing in a white dress. He saw now that it was not blue sky at all, but rather a blue balloon whose string was tied around her wrist. When she saw Francisco in his dust-covered overalls, she immediately stopped dancing and declared, in facile Spanish, “I love dogs.”
The rest of the townspeople looked on in shock. No one had heard Antonia speak since she’d been born, and once she had met Francisco, she did not stop. He asked her to be his wife, and when they were married in Bicho Raro two months later, Antonia’s tears of joy coaxed rain from the sky and ended the decade-long drought.
But that was before.
On the day Beatriz climbed beneath the box truck to think, it was precisely one week before Francisco and Antonia’s fiftieth birthdays. In honor of such a distinguished occasion, Judith had proposed a massive celebration; this was the reason she and Eduardo had returned the night before, to help prepare for such a feast. But Francisco and Antonia’s union was becoming ever more fretful; unbeknownst to Judith, they had stopped talking to each other almost entirely.
Or rather, Francisco had stopped talking to Antonia. Once Antonia had begun to speak to Francisco, she had not decided to stop simply because he was not listening.
The yelling Joaquin had heard was because Antonia and Judith were confronting Francisco in his greenhouse. The greenhouse was a laboratory for plants, as Francisco believed in being scientific about his quest for the art of the black rose. A system of narrow metal pipes delivered precious water precisely where he intended it to go, and reflectors were attached to shutters so that he could direct the sun similarly. There were not only roses but also delicate lettuces that grew in a vertical grid arranged above an old claw bathtub, and secretive mushrooms that flourished in an old set of printmaker’s drawers. Francisco stood among them, his hands covered in soil, his clothing covered with soil, but his hair impeccably oiled back. He had only a very few things he required to be in their places, but those things were non-negotiable.
“People will not come all this way just for you to stay in here with your roses!” Antonia told him. “And do not say that there are plenty of other people here!”
“No one is even asking you to help with the preparations!” Judith added.
“Although she would be well within her rights,” Antonia continued. “She and Eduardo came back entirely for this. We only ask for you to promise to appear for one day out of the year. That is not so much for a wife to ask!”
“And don’t say that your roses won’t bear it!” Judith said. “We are supposed to be your roses!”
Judith was near tears at this point. Terror had accompanied her dreams that night, even though she had slept tangled with Eduardo’s warm body. She could not stop thinking of the pilgrims lurking so close to her mother’s home. All her life, Antonia had warned her shrilly of the dangers of the unhealed pilgrim, and Judith had forgotten what it was like to spend every minute alongside them. She did not know how her sister, Beatriz, could bear it—but then again, her sister had no feelings, and fear was a feeling.
“We were your roses,” Antonia countered hotly.
Beatriz and Joaquin arrived at this moment, and for the first time, Francisco made a sound. He said, “Close the door! The humidity!”
“What was that?” shrilled Antonia. “Do you believe this is a game?” Because, to her, it had not sounded like he had spoken. It had sounded as if he was making light of the situation by whistling. This was what Beatriz’s invented language sounded like when it was articulated aloud. Since it was mathematical, it was far more usable in musical form than with words.
Beatriz closed the door.