“And if I’m wrong? Then it’s false hope.”
Pete wasn’t much for speeches, but he’d been thinking on one sort of like this since Antonia had given him an earful before the sun had even come up. So he laid it out for her. “Well, I reckon that’s what you just told me the problem was with the pilgrims, right? There’s an awful lot of things that go on here that don’t get said. A lot of shut doors and closed eyes, just to be on the safe side. Maybe if you want things to change, you should start in yourself. Tell him what you’re thinking. You might just find that it’s already occurred to him, too. Everybody’s thinking about Daniel, aren’t they?”
Beatriz was quiet for a long moment, processing his words. In that quiet, she could feel the prickle of an oncoming miracle, but she couldn’t tell if it was a Soria miracle or merely the potential miracle of a life-changing radio station in a box truck.
“I think,” she said, finally, “I think you might be right.”
In this way Beatriz left the house a slightly different person than she had entered it. This was to become a hallmark of this house once it was finished, although Pete did not know it yet. She signaled for Joaquin to leave off his pacing on the beam, and when he did, she quietly shared her hopes for the radio’s potential. Joaquin drank a bottle of water, and then he drank another one. He would have drank a fifth one, but he didn’t have one.
Eventually, he muttered, “I feel like I need to write a really good show for tonight.”
Pete said, “I know someone who wants to give you a hand.”
Francisco was of two minds about Dorothy’s rooster. One of those minds hated the rooster, and the other loved it. Francisco was accustomed to working on his own by now, and he was surprised to find how pleasing it was to have the rooster as a companion. Just the presence of another living creature puttering around, living its own life alongside him, was intensely grounding in a way that he had not expected. This was only when the rooster was in a good mood, however. The rooster was also of two minds, as much as a chicken can be, because of its fighting past. It had not been bred to be a fighting rooster; it had just become one as it took on its mistress’s bitterness, and so the chicken was torn between its more placid self and the furious creature it had become. It would sink into the former quiet for hours at a time, pleasing Francisco, but then the light would change in the greenhouse, and the windows would become mirrors. Ragefully, the rooster would hurl itself at its own reflection with such vigor that it threatened to crack it. Blood would smear the glass, but it was only its own.
Francisco had tried many things the first day: calling to the rooster, tossing pencils at the rooster, and ignoring the rooster. Francisco, after all, preferred to remain a nonparticipant in most wars, including this one. Eventually, however, he decided that he could not sit by and watch the rooster bloody itself on the glass. He felt it was cruel for an animal to harm itself in this way, and also, it was going to be a lot of work to clean all of the glass. So when the light changed as the sun set and the low windows became mirrors and the rooster began to attack itself again, Francisco climbed from his chair, pulled on the long gloves that he wore to protect himself from the roses’ thorns, and went to the rooster. The rooster was engaged in clawing the glass and did not think to run away.
Francisco wrapped his hands around the rooster’s body, pinning its wings to it, and merely held the rooster still before the glass. The rooster was forced to stare at this other impudent bird without attacking it. The bird struggled in Francisco’s firm grip, and for several minutes, Francisco worried that the bird might actually harm itself in its fervor to escape. It clawed the air and jerked its head. Its wings were miniature earthquakes beneath Francisco’s palms as the rooster tried to free them.
Finally, the bird stilled, panting, and gazed at itself. The rooster in the glass peered back as well, full of loathing. Francisco sighed and sat cross-legged, allowed the rooster to do nothing but look at the reflection. He remained as calm as he possibly could, so calm that the rooster would be able to feel this serenity and adopt it for itself, or at the very least, to prevent anger from turning to fear. Minutes became hours, but eventually, the rooster’s expression changed as it realized that the image in the glass was only itself. Its body sagged. Its eye turned wistful. The anger had gone from its body.
Francisco released the bird, but the rooster merely slumped to the ground, still peering at itself. Dorothy would not be pleased, but Francisco was. Her rooster would never fight again.
Francisco found, however, that he had become the opposite of calm. As he had been sitting there, holding the rooster still, he had been reminded of Daniel as a baby. Although it was not usual for men at that time to involve themselves in the care of an infant, Francisco had been given the lion’s share of dealing with young Daniel’s nightmares as Rosa, Antonia, Michael, and Nana could not soothe Daniel during them. It was impossible to say what the infant Daniel was dreaming so terribly about—possibly the memory of being hacked from his mother’s body—but one night out of every ten, he would wake in an inconsolable terror. Francisco would hold the infant, saying nothing, merely breathing, for as long as it took. Five minutes, five hours. Once, while Daniel was teething, five days. Eventually, this stillness would transfer to Daniel and the baby Daniel’s breathing would grow long and match Francisco’s. Finally, he would fall back into an unfrightened slumber.
As Francisco held the rooster, he remembered all of the nights he had spent doing such a thing, and by the time the anger had drained from General MacArthur, Francisco found he could not bear the thought of Daniel in the desert any longer. He could contemplate nothing else. Leaving the rooster pensive on the floor, he fled through the night to the place that held more of Daniel than any other place in Bicho Raro: the Shrine.
When he entered the Shrine, he found Antonia already there. His wife kneeled before the sculpture of Mary and her owls, all of the votive candles burning. She, too, had finally been overcome by the horror of Daniel’s plight and there was nothing she could do to avoid thinking of him, not even cutting paper flowers at her kitchen table. Wordlessly, he joined her, falling to his knees in the rut Daniel had worn in his years of praying as the Saint.