Brother William assessed the old jalopy, barely hanging on after all these years. Then he glanced back at Fulgencio Ramirez. “Do you mind if I stay here?”
“No, of course not. You can have the bed,” Fulgencio said, mildly surprised. Brother William visited often but had never asked to spend the night.
“No, listen.” Brother William’s trembling hand grasped Fulgencio’s sinuous forearm, and he repeated the words slowly and quietly. “Do you mind if I stay here?”
At once Fulgencio understood. His heart grew even heavier, plummeting like a dense rock into a deep murky pond. Brother William intended to stay here for good, para siempre.
“My work in this life is done, child.” His eyes danced with glee (or was it mischief ?), like a pair of synchronized fireflies bouncing in the moonlight. “A few weeks ago, I was diagnosed with terminal cancer. I’ve thought long and hard about it, Fulgencio. And, with your permission, this is where I’d like to pass on. Maybe from El Otro Lado, I can do a better job at helping you solve the puzzle of la maldición. Anyway, this place now feels like home to me.”
“You know this land is as much yours as it is mine,” Fulgencio answered. “Even if you didn’t accept it on behalf of the church that first time I brought you out.”
“No, son,” Brother William said. “This place is too pure for the church. No, let the church own the giant basilicas and ornate cathedrals. Let the church own altars encrusted with gold and chambers draped in velvet. This place is for God and His creatures . . . for you and for me. This patch of salt will be here still after we’ve all expired, and after the church bells have tumbled to the ground, and after the towers have crumbled and washed out to sea. And even when the sun is silent and nothing but a ball of frozen, burnt-out gas, we’ll roam these flowing wisps of grass, your grandfather, Soledad Cisneros, Trueno and Relámpago, Cipriano, El Chino, the cows, you, and me.”
“Do they serve Irish whiskey in Heaven, Brother?” Fulgencio smiled, helping his mentor through the low arched door of the hut.
“They will now,” he answered, turning and clasping Fulgencio’s face with both hands. His watery eyes spoke volumes of his deep affection for his most loyal pupil. He wrapped his arms around Fulgencio and pulled him close to his chest.
As they stepped back from each other, Fulgencio realized for the first time that this man that had once towered above him, now stooped below him, the last strands of white hair clinging defiantly to his balding head. His heart of stone bled like flesh again, and he felt the familiar rage inside him as tears flooded his eyes. So much loneliness. So much death. So much despair. Why did it have to be this way?
“Todo lo que nace muere,” the ghost of his grandfather Fernando Cisneros recited from the wooden table in the front room. All that is born dies.
“And as the night leads to day, so does death lead to life,” spoke the Virgen de Guadalupe from her relief on the adobe wall. So had the Aztecs who conceived her once believed.
“A true champion always knows when to quit,” smiled the old coach. “Now let us rest. Tomorrow we begin again.”
Fulgencio insisted that Brother William sleep comfortably in the bed, and he excused himself. “Tonight, I will let you rest with the angelitos, Brother William,” glancing at the Virgen and his grandfather. “I’ll string up my hammock and sleep beneath the stars. Hasta mañana.”
The door to the hut swung shut by its own will as Fulgencio Ramirez walked slowly to the row of mesquites with his hammock slung over his shoulder.
Twenty-Four
“I understand everything now!” Brother William exclaimed.
It was three days after his death and burial beneath the mesquites, when he finally appeared at the breakfast table, looking as young and fresh-faced as he had the first day he arrived at La Frontera.
Startled, Fulgencio dropped his fork onto the packed dirt floor of the hut. Fernando Cisneros chuckled, which was a true rarity. The jaded gambler was pleased to see Brother William in his new form, reaching out and welcoming him with a warm pat on the back.
“Thank God!” Fulgencio pronounced. “I was worried. What if you couldn’t return?”
“How could you doubt me?” Brother William smiled ear to ear.
“You’re not from these parts. You’re not even Mexican,” Fulgencio said, picking up his fork and dusting it off. “Who knew whether you’d be allowed across the border?”
“True. How many days was I gone?”
“Three.”
“Interesting. Just like Jesus before the resurrection,” Brother William mused. “I must admit, with what I’ve seen since I’ve been gone, I was tempted to not return. But how could I leave you behind now that I can actually help you?”
“So you learned something?” Fulgencio’s eyes sparked with hope and curiosity.
“Everything.” Brother William rubbed his hands together just as he always did when he was excited about hatching a new game plan.
“Well? Out with it then.”
Fulgencio, his grandfather, and the Virgencita listened intently as Brother William laid out his findings.
***
In 1773 thirteen families had come to the region with their Spanish land grants. Caja Pinta belonged to Juan Jose Cisneros. It was a vast tract of tens of thousands of acres spanning both sides of the Río Bravo (or Rio Grande, as it would come to be known). For generations the family lived on the land, moved back and forth across the river that traversed it, raised cattle, and farmed along the fertile valley. By the 1840’s the head of the family was Fulgencio’s great-great-grandfather, Mauro Fernando Cisneros, who married Soledad in 1848 amidst the chaos and violence of the Mexican-American War.
It was that same year that the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo designated the Rio Grande the new border between the two nations. In effect, Caja Pinta had been severed in half. On the northern side of the border, gringos occupied Caja Pinta and called it their own. Enraged, Mauro Fernando Cisneros gathered a posse to travel north across the river and claim his birthright by either evicting or eliminating the squatters. Soledad, who was pregnant at the time, pleaded for him to let the land go. She loved him desperately and feared for his life. But, brimming with hubris and machismo, he would not listen.
Mauro Fernando led his men on horseback over the dusty plains and across the river. Soledad followed him, promising that she would wait as long as it took for his return, keeping watch on the dune near the banks of the river. But Mauro Fernando never set foot on Mexican soil again. Once across the border, his men were ambushed. A traitor amongst the men Mauro Fernando had recruited had slipped across the border the day before and warned the gringos of the impending assault in exchange for a small patch of land to call his own, robbing Mauro Fernando of the element of surprise. Instead, the gringos waited concealed within a thicket of gnarled mesquites and brush as Mauro Fernando and his men emerged from the waters and climbed over the dunes. They were shot and killed from a distance, unable to even meet their enemies eye to eye. Overcome by guilt, the traitor ensured that Mauro Fernando was at the very least given a proper burial in his family graveyard. However, that graveyard was located there on the northern section of Caja Pinta, on what was now American soil.