Truth is, if I’d been the one who announced to them one day—in silence or with my absence, as Simonopio did, or with a rambling speech, as I would’ve done—that I was going off into the wild and there was nothing they could do to dissuade me, my parents would have taken a belt to me and said, You little rascal, don’t even try it. With that, I would have quickly given up any plan to devote myself to wandering the hills, because I was always a relatively normal boy—although if she could, my mama, may she rest in peace, would say to you, Normal? I had to battle with him all my life! And like any normal boy, I hatched lots of plans for my life, plans for marvelous adventures, ideas that would change the world and eradicate injustice forever, all of which I gave up and forgot at the first sign of hunger, at the next invitation to play at a friend’s house, or on receiving a stern look from my mama or papa.
But from that year on, Simonopio, who had never really been a normal boy, was even less so.
My mama believed that sleeping under the vapors and fluids of his bees changed his character, so she felt obliged to insist to my papa—because it was impossible to persuade Reja—that he in turn must insist to Simonopio that he move back into the house. My papa listened to her but didn’t do as she asked, because he knew she was talking for talking’s sake, as a mother does when she doesn’t want to accept that her children have grown up and she feels obliged to continue fussing over them and organizing their lives. To decide for them. But her godson, this child with the body of a nine-year-old boy, had an old look in his new look, a look that suggested an unshakable wisdom and determination, like they had never seen in anyone.
So they respected his transformation. If he accepted the invitations to Tamaulipas, all the better. If not, they would try to insist, but then let him be. If he wanted to continue living under his bees’ roof, they would let him, because though my papa had extolled the virtues of the system, he had been unable to persuade Simonopio to use the wooden beehives that would soon be arriving from the United States. The boy had accepted the gift when he told him about it, grateful for the gesture, but my father understood right then that the boxes would do little except gather dust. What must my papa have thought? That just by having the wooden hives nearby, the bees would have the urge to leave the one that had been their home for a decade?
No. For the bees to move, Simonopio would have had to ask them to do so, and he would never do that voluntarily.
Anyway, like I was saying: my parents had a peaceful winter that year, with no invasions and fewer worries about their godson, who kept relatively close. They rested a little. But if they thought Simonopio had gotten over his eagerness to explore the hill paths once and for all, they were wrong: once again, with the bees’ first spring flight in 1920, Simonopio disappeared.
33
Back on the Trail
For a few weeks he had been feeling it in his bones, in his muscles, and in his nose: it was the end of winter. His bees announced it to him a day in advance with their frenetic, excited drone: Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.
Tomorrow they would go out again, like they did every spring. Tomorrow, winter would end. Tomorrow their life cycle and Simonopio’s travels would recommence.
It had not been as solitary a winter as the previous one. Since it had not been so cold, the bees ventured out more just to keep Simonopio company, with no work to do, in no hurry, as if they forgot for a few months that their community’s lives depended on their daily expeditions in spring. They flew without pressure, they stopped at will, and they returned whenever they wanted. They knew that the work had been done. They also knew that the work would soon be calling them back and that they would gladly heed the call. But in the interval between autumn and the following spring, the sole focus of the bees—aside from helping to keep the honeycomb warm for the next generation with their bodies—was Simonopio.
That winter, Simonopio was not idle either.
He knew that time had not lessened the danger Espiricueta posed, and that it would be a grave mistake to dismiss or ignore him. Simonopio’s previous year’s travels had not served to put such thoughts out of his mind; the purpose of the wandering was not to forget the fear the man had instilled in him. On the contrary: he fed the fear and allowed it to grow. He would not allow himself to become complacent, as easy as his days were, without the weight of that fear, without the weight of the responsibility he had taken on as the only one who saw Espiricueta for what he was: the coyote.
A coyote that, very deliberately, Simonopio had not seen again since the day he set foot on his land for the first and last time.
He was sorry to hurt his godfather with his constant absence, just as he was still sorry the family had been so alarmed on that first night he had improvised a camp away from the hacienda in the spring of the previous year and they had assembled a search party to look for him as night fell.
That night, Simonopio had camped close by. He had wanted to test his mettle spending the night alone but not very far away—he wanted to know that he could go home at any moment if his courage failed him. He expected to be afraid, but fear was not what kept him awake hours later. He missed his bed, for he had never slept anywhere other than a bed. The stones found their way under his blanket, making him miss his comfortable bed even more. Then he heard urgent voices. He specifically heard the desperation in his godfather’s voice, telling the rescuers to spread out in one direction or another, calling his name.
He would have replied immediately were it not for the fact that Espiricueta was among the group of men, silent. Simonopio did not want to see him. Nor confront him. Nor did he want the man’s hard eyes fixed on him. Which was why he had hidden in the bushes, dragging his improvised camp with him and erasing any trace of it, remaining silent. From there, he saw them pass by and go off into the distance. He watched Espiricueta come back and stop just a few steps away, yelling his name, urging him to come out. Simonopio closed his eyes, knowing that a look has the power to attract. A short while passed, which to Simonopio seemed endless. Espiricueta remained motionless, listening. Simonopio did not dare so much as breathe. At last the coyote, like the others, heeded the order to call off the search in order to resume it the next day.
Simonopio did not move from his hiding place for the rest of the night. Before they began searching for him again at first light, Simonopio returned home of his own accord. He would have liked to have cried the same tears that his godfather held in when he saw him, but Simonopio held back. He stopped at putting his arms around the man, though he could not reach all the way, remaining there until he felt peace return to Francisco Morales’s body.
Simonopio would have liked to explain his intentions to his godfather, but he knew that, even if he could have enunciated the words correctly, he still would not comprehend him. There was no way to explain to them why it was so important for him, and for everyone, that he reach the end of his journey with his bees. He was sorry for every step he took away from his bemused godparents, who thought they were hiding their concern for him while they left him free to do whatever he needed to do. But not even that stopped him. He had come and gone on his expeditions many times, and he knew that, when spring arrived, he would do it again.
Not even in winter, with his exploring on hold, could he give himself the luxury of resting and therefore losing what he had gained. He was adamant that, when spring arrived, his feet would still remember every crack and every stone on the trail, and also that the trail would remember him: that it would accept his footsteps as it had learned to do through his efforts. He had also allowed himself some days off. Days to visit the ranches with Francisco Morales. Days to go out into the hills, making sure he returned in time to welcome his godfather on the road at the end of the day. He also traveled a long distance for his godmother, to that place that made her so sad, where the land still bemoaned the conflict.