Dead or alive, if Simonopio was alive, he would find him—because, dead or alive, she wanted him back: to welcome him or to say goodbye to him. Even if she went after her Franciscos, with that final goodbye.
Before nightfall, in the company of their husbands, Carmen and Consuelo arrived from Monterrey to take charge of the preparations. They had imagined that on arriving they would collapse with grief into their mother’s arms and that she would console them like she always had. But seeing the state she was in, they understood, alarmed, that they did not have time to break down, that they had to take responsibility, because at that moment their mother was not capable of anything, not even offering comfort.
The family were all present, they said, so they announced the Requiem Mass and burial of Francisco Morales the next day.
They struggled to coax Beatriz away from her husband’s coffin, beside which she had stationed herself to keep vigil not over the deceased but over her missing son.
78
Honey on the Wound
Francisco Junior was lost.
Many hours had gone by, but the body was still unconscious in his arms, and Simonopio had been afraid for the same number of hours.
“Where are you, Francisco? Come back.”
Simonopio sang all the songs he knew to him over and over again. He told him all the stories, except the one about the lion and the coyote, because not even he wanted to remember either of them.
Sometimes the soul must be allowed to rest, kept away from the things that hurt it.
“Is that what you’re doing, Francisco? Resting?”
He had walked with Francisco in his arms to this place with clean air away from Espiricueta’s land, to what was more like a crack in a rock than a cave. It was not the ideal place to spend the night, but it offered some protection against the cold wind. In any case, he could not have gone on any longer: the run from the river had exhausted him, and carrying Francisco was no longer as easy as it had been when he was a baby.
So he had headed to this place he knew from some other occasion. He sat down, resting against the base of a rock, without letting go of Francisco, refusing to return him to the cold earth where he had spent so long under his father’s body. He was sorry that he had not brought his overnight bag, thinking that he would only be out for a few hours, though he was grateful that he never went out without the old pocketknife his godfather had given him. From the small inventory he had in his sack, he took out his jar of honey and dabbed some on Francisco’s wounds, to protect them. His arms would have to be enough to shelter the boy from the cold.
But he did not sleep, for fear of falling into the depths, like Francisco.
When the boy woke—Simonopio decided during the first night—they would go to fetch the cart in order to return home. But Francisco Junior would not wake up. The new day arrived and went, but the boy remained lost in unconsciousness. Simonopio knew that, by then, his godmother would be in a state of anguish because of her dead husband and missing child, and he would have liked to alleviate her suffering in some way, but it was impossible. He also knew that a group of men was searching for them, but they were far away and heading in different directions, and there was no way for Simonopio to go find them: on no account would he leave the boy alone or move him more than necessary.
“I won’t leave you,” he repeated between stories, between songs.
He had broken his promise once. He would never do it again.
Francisco would be all right. The boy would wake up, Simonopio told himself, though he was uncertain whether he was predicting it or merely hoping.
But Francisco was not waking up, despite Simonopio’s attempts to bring him back to the world with his voice.
Little by little, drip by drip, he gave him all the honey that he had taken with him to the river. With a corner of the blanket, Simonopio persevered in collecting the water that seeped and filtered through the rock, so that, drop by drop, he could also keep the boy’s tongue and body moist. Now the honey was all gone, and soon he would have to decide whether to get up and walk, to set off home in spite of the boy’s delicate condition and the danger of the coyote.
Because while Simonopio knew that a search party was scouring the hills, he did not know whether the coyote was among them, as he had been on that occasion years before, when they had given Simonopio up for lost. He could not know, because his bees remained in an unfamiliar silence from which they transmitted no news to him of any kind. Simonopio did not know with certainty whether they had managed to hunt down the murderer. He did not know whether they had survived the night to continue the hunt the next day.
Almost forty-eight hours had passed when, finally, he sensed that a search party was close. He decided it was time to come out of hiding. With his pocketknife in his hand as a precaution and Francisco Junior in his arms, trying not to mishandle or move him more than necessary, Simonopio went out to meet them.
He saw with relief that it was Uncle Emilio Cortés, accompanied only by Gabino and Leocadio; although Simonopio preferred Martín, both men could be trusted. He trusted his uncle especially, and he knew that Uncle Emilio had not stopped searching even to rest or eat. Even so, Simonopio flatly refused to hand the boy over to him, because he was still the one who had to carry him, in spite of the many hours he had spent doing so, in spite of being exhausted, in spite of his cramping arms.
He and no one else would take him to his mother.
79
Alive or Dead
Francisco Morales’s burial was at noon that Monday, just after Mass, which the new Father Pedro had gone to great pains to make moving and personal, speaking of Francisco Morales with genuine respect, admiration, and affection.
His daughters broke down in tears in anticipation of the pain of missing the father whom, with so many preparations and legal formalities to take care of, they not yet had the chance to miss. Sinforosa, the deceased’s mother-in-law, saturated one of the handkerchiefs she had brought with tears. The other handkerchief, which she had given to Beatriz, was still unused, for only one pair of dry eyes remained in the church: those of the widow, who was incapable of paying any attention to what was happening around her.
Years later, once she had built up the strength to talk about the episode with Carmen and Consuelo, Beatriz continued to be unrepentant of her rude—albeit temporary—catatonic state, because it had protected her from suffering the same pain she had suffered during the funeral process for her father, when she had remained sane, despite the loss. If, in the days of her husband’s wake and burial, some well-intentioned visitors had told her that what had happened was a test from God, she did not listen. If other insensitive and senseless people spoke to her of the two angels, summoned by God, that heaven had gained, she did not take it personally. If the new Father Pedro had approached her, declaring that her recovery hinged upon her capacity for forgiveness and upon prayer for her dead husband, her missing son, and the enemy, she pretended that she was made of wood, like Nana Reja.
All of a sudden, all that remained of the whole process was the three masses that would be offered for the salvation of Francisco Morales’s soul, since he had died without being anointed. Beatriz would go: her mother, showing a strength that had appeared to have faded when she was widowed, would not allow her to do otherwise, just as she would not allow her to refuse to eat, wash, and sleep, even if all Beatriz wanted to do was look out of the window and be the first to see her son return.