Bless Me, Ultima: Chapters 7-9

My three brothers would be coming home, and I yearned for them.

Virgen de Guadalupe, thank you for your intercession!

When my father came home he had to pry the letter from her hand.

We prayed rosary after rosary, until the monotonous sound of prayers blended into the blur of flickering altar candles.

We prayed until our faith passed into an exhaustion that numbed us to sleep.

The door to Rosie's house opened and I caught a glimpse of the women who lived there.

I peered into the dark mist but could see no one.

The thick mist swirled in gray eddies and curled about the trees.

I turned and saw the three dark figures looming over me.

Eugene scowled, you beat your breast like a holy­ roller, but you too will find your way here.

The dream of moving west was revived.

Then fatigue and its brother sleep came for us, and we stum­bled off to warm beds while in the kitchen the questioning of the sons who had returned continued into the early morning.

My father was happy and full of life, regenerated by talk of the coming summer and moving to California.

I struggled and stumbled, but with the help of Miss Maestas I began to unravel the mystery of the letters.

It was true, I thought, it is the Marez blood in us that touches us with the urge to wander.

They were like turgid animals who did things mechanically.

The money they had mustered out with was gone, and they had signed notes in town and gotten into trouble.

He always took his cues from Gene even though he was the oldest of the three.

His forwardness and audacity often caught them off guard.

The three dark figures silently beckoned me to follow them.

Oh, where is the innocence I must never lose, I cried into the bleak landscape in which I found myself.

There where the lonely wind of the llano sang to the lovers' feat of your birth, there in those hills is your innocence.

I opened my eyes and heard the commotion downstairs.

They knew that it was within the power of the father to curse his sons, and ay! a curse laid on a disobedient son or daughter was irrevocable.

"No," he chuckled.

"We just can't," he grimaced.

We passed under the dark shadow of the gigantic railroad bridge.

I looked up at the black girders of the huge bridge and saw a figure scamper precariously from perch to perch.

Some­ times the townspeople came to stand on the bridge and watch the struggle as the carp splashed their way back to the pools from which the flood had uprooted them.

It was a beautiful sight to behold, the struggle of the carp to regain his abode before the river dried to a trickle and trapped him in strange pools of water.