Bless Me, Ultima: Chapters 1–5

The move lowered my father in the esteem of his compadres, the other vaqueros of the llano who clung tenaciously to their way of life and freedom.

And I had heard that Ultima could lift the curses laid by brujas, that she could exorcise the evil the witches planted in people to make them sick.

The road dropped into the flat valley and revealed the adobe houses of the peaceful village.

The river was silent and brooding.

They were an exuberant, restless people, wandering across the ocean of the plain.

We will bury it in our fields to renew their fertility and to assure that the baby will follow our ways.

My mother said the Marez clan was full of freethinkers, which was a blasphemy to her, but my father only laughed.

His forefathers were conquistadores, men as restless as the seas they sailed and as free as the land they conquered.

Thieves! Always on the move, like gypsies, always dragging their families around the country like vagabonds—

I was to hear the confessions of the silent people of the valley, and I was to administer the holy Sacrament to them.

My nostrils quivered as I felt the song of the mockingbirds and the drone of the grasshoppers mingle with the pulse of the earth.

Then the owl returned and gathered up all the babes of Limbo and flew them up to the clouds of heaven.

Deborah and Theresa were happy because Ultima did many of the household chores they normally did, and they had more time to spend in the attic and cut out an interminable train of paper dolls which they dressed, gave names to, and most miraculously, made talk.

My father’s dream was to gather his sons around him and move westward to the land of the setting sun, to the vineyards of California.

She taught me to listen to the mystery of the groaning earth and to feel complete in the fulfillment of its time.

“Perhaps it is better if you wait here, hombre,” my father said with consolation.

They stood transfixed, looking down at the mad man waving the pistol in the air.

“Go back to your drinking and leave this job to men,” one of them jeered at him.

A low, sad mournful cry tore itself from his throat and mixed into the lapping sound of the waters of the river.

One single shot sounded, then a barrage followed it like the roar of a cannon, like the rumble of thunder in a summer thunderstorm.

I had not yet been to catechism, nor had I made my first holy communion, but my mother had taught me the Act of Contrition.

Or would God forgive him and grant him Purgatory, the lonely, hopeless resting place of those who were neither saved nor damned.

I lay back and watched the silent beams of light radiate in the colorful dust motes I had stirred up.

The colony had first settled there under a land grant from the Mexican government, and the man who led the colonization was a priest, and he was a Luna.

My mother took one last cursory glance at her brood then led the way up the goat path.

“I am beginning to understand why your mother calls you the inquisitor,” she said.

Also, my mother admonished us to bow our heads when we passed in front of the house.

Today it was not just telling us that in five minutes mass would begin, today it was crying the knell of Lupito.

“You that grow well here in the arroyo by the dampness of the river, we lift you to make good medicine,” Ultima intoned softly and I found myself repeating after her.

“You that grow well here in the arroyo by the dampness of the river, we lift you to make good medicine,” Ultima intoned softly and I found myself repeating after her.

It could cure burns, sores, piles, colic in babies, bleeding dysentery and even rheumatism.

Then her voice would trail off and my thoughts would be lost in the labyrinth of a time and history I did not know.

I ran to the cactus and gathered a shovelful of the succulent, seedy pears.

It was sad to hear their plaintive voices in that candle-lit room.

At times the road cut into the cliffs made by the mesas that rose from the river valley, then the river was far below.