Paloma and the Horse Traders (18 page)

Marco pulled off the nightshirt and helped
Claudio into the water. “Too hot?” he asked.

Dazed now, unused to help, overwhelmed, Claudio
shook his head. He sank down slowly, careful to keep his wounded
shoulder out of the water. To his embarrassment, he just sat there
and stared like an idiot.

“
I can take care of myself,” he
managed to say.

“
I doubt it,” Marco
replied.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Marco
remove his own shirt and leathers. He rolled up his underdrawers
and soaped a washcloth.

“
If I get my clothes wet, Paloma
will scold me,” he explained, as he began to wash Claudio’s chest.
“I like to keep her happy.”

Claudio sat there like a wooden figure while
his sister’s husband told his own story, how his first wife and
twin sons had died in a cholera epidemic while he was away on a
brand inspection trip.

“
I’ll admit now that I was on my way
to ruin. After eight dreadful years, each one worse than the one
before, I met your sister. She had been used pretty hard by your
uncle. Not the way Graciela was used, but cheated from your land
and cattle and made to work too hard by people who should have
loved her.” He shook his head. “She’s so short.”

“
I noticed. My … our parents
were both tall.”

“
I think the Morenos deprived her of
food right when she most needed it to grow,” Marco said, and
Claudio heard the anger in his voice. He even scoured Claudio’s
skin with more fervor, until he noticed he was hurting him.
“Sorry!”

“
I’m surprised such treatment didn’t
stunt more than her growth,” Claudio said.

“
Something burns inside Paloma,”
Marco told him, after long thought. “I take no credit for it. There
is some passion, some purpose that kept her whole and kind, so
kind, even to her cousin—your cousin—Maria Teresa Castellano, the
real mother of our Soledad. Teresa was so cruel to
Paloma.”

Claudio saw his brother-in-law’s embarrassment,
and knew he was not a man to speak frankly of such personal things.
You must know I need to hear this
, Claudio thought, and it
humbled him.

“
Paloma told me last night that
Soledad is actually our cousin.”

“
Soli is, but you will never know
that, if you choose to compare how Paloma treats her little cousin
and our own child,” Marco said. Claudio heard all the fervor and
love in his brother-in-law’s voice. “To us, Soledad is our
daughter, as surely as if we made her ourselves. That will never
change.”

“
Have you any idea how lucky you
are, Señor—”

“
Marco, only Marco. I know full well
how lucky I am.”

For one irrational moment, Claudio hated the
man who was helping him. Why should Marco Mondragón’s life have
been so easy? He repented immediately, thinking of Marco’s losses.
He sat there, dazed by his own unkindness, in water getting dirtier
by the minute as years of grime came away. He could blame the rough
men who saved his life and then exacted their own tolls, or he
could look to his own sins.

“
Paloma turned me into a good man
again, before I was ruined forever,” Marco said, his eyes on the
washcloth. “My God, but I love her.” Apparently it was Marco’s turn
for a self-conscious laugh. “Hold up your arm.”

Marco told Claudio next about his neighbors and
the stupid soldiers in the garrison at Santa Maria. Keeping up a
steady conversation, he continued to scrub away years of grease and
grime, while Claudio just sat there. As he slowly regained control
of himself, Claudio wondered if his brother-in-law had the
slightest idea what else was washing away, too. Of course he knew,
Claudio decided. The
juez
was nobody’s fool. Before Marco
finished a third washing of his hair and beard, Claudio was
smiling.

“
Let me help you up,” Marco said.
“One more good soaping and then I’ll pour clean water over you,
because the stuff you’re sitting in would make Paloma
gag.”

Claudio nodded. “She was always particular
about herself and her clothes. You would think that with two
brothers she might have tried to be a boy and compete with us, but
not Paloma.”

“
No. She’s very much a woman,” Marco
said. “You should have heard her when she found a mouse in the
kitchen last winter! I swear she climbed right up my
back.”

They laughed together. Marco poured cold water
over Claudio, which left him gasping, then opened the spigot in the
bottom of the tub. “See here?” He pointed to a smaller trough to
take away the used water. “It drains into the kitchen garden.
Paloma’s idea.”

Marco dried himself and dressed, then tossed a
dry towel to Claudio. “Put it around your waist. I’ll get some
clothes for you, and then I’ll turn the women loose on your
hair.”

After Marco left, Claudio sat down on the
stool. He held out one leg and then the other, pleased to see them
clean. His beard still itched, but he knew that any lice still
alive after Marco’s ruthless application of tarry soap would soon
meet their fate. He imagined that his little sister had a fine
tooth comb she knew how to use.

Claudio stared at the wall, wondering if a man,
perhaps him, with no hope and no prospect of anything except
overwork and ill-use, could change into something else overnight.
He had no intention of giving God any of the credit, so he was left
to wonder at the possibility.

Marco returned with wool pants and a cotton
shirt. He winced when Claudio winced, as the rough cloth touched
his stitched wound.

“
Come now, Brother, it is your turn
with the ladies. I hope you are not too attached to your beard and
hair almost down to your waist.”

“
Ruthless, are they?” Claudio closed
his eyes, nearly overcome with even the hint of a joke. He took
Marco by the arm. “I am not used to anyone doing anything for me.
Here I sit like a bump in the road. You must think me a weak
man.”

“
You’re a tired man,” Marco said as
he opened the door. “I know what it is like to not care, and maybe
even to wish that you could just lie down and die.” He crossed
himself. “Every step you take requires effort and you see only
bleakness ahead.” He put his arm around Claudio, still careful with
his shoulder. “Am I close?”

Claudio nodded, unable to speak.

“
With the horse traders, you could
brawl and wench and cheat people and drift around. No one cared
what happened to you. After a while, you thought you didn’t care,
either.”

“
I didn’t.”

“
You’re certain of that?” Marco
asked.

“
I should know myself.” Claudio felt
a sudden burst of anger. “What makes you so smart?”

“
I have known desperation.” Marco
took him by both shoulders this time, but gently. “Brother, your
fortunes have changed. I know it. Paloma knows it.
You
need
to believe it.” He startled Claudio by kissing his forehead. “That
is the hardest leap of faith there is.”

In
which Soledad is puzzled by grownups

H
er brother was sitting on a
straight-backed chair in the kitchen garden, his eyes closed, his
face turned up to the sun. Paloma watched him through the kitchen
window, suddenly shy. She leaned back against her husband, whose
arms automatically circled her. “Do I even know him?” she
whispered.

“
He’s had a hard life, riding with
rough men,” Marco said. “Even then, Claudio Vega was kind to me,
trusting me with horses and paying my bill at the inn.”

“
That is what our father would have
done,” she said, and knew the answer to her question. “I know him.”
Paloma looked at the fine-toothed comb in her hand.

“
It looks sort of puny for the task
ahead. Sancha, what do you think?”

Early in her marriage, on Marco’s advice, she
had started asking Sancha her opinion. The housekeeper had come
with Felicia when she married Marco. At first Paloma had asked her
advice, just to assuage any pain at seeing another take her beloved
Felicia’s place. Now it was a matter of habit, nurtured by the
reality that Sancha did know best.

Sancha joined them at the window. “He looks
better. I know he must smell better. Still, that is a lot of
hair.”

Sancha stood another moment, then snapped her
fingers. She went into the storeroom and returned with
shears—serious shears, the kind to tackle thick layers of
fabric.

“
Use these. Put a sheet around his
neck and just … just whack off his hair until it is shoulder
length, like the hair of this man behind you. Then use that little
comb. Do the same with his beard.”

“ ‘
This man behind you?’ ”
Marco asked with a laugh. “Sancha, am I in your
libro negro
?
What did I do?”

Sancha gave him a terrible stare. She jabbed a
finger toward his chest. “Paloma threw up this morning. It is
your
fault.”

Paloma leaned against the bad man, hoping that
in some comfortable ring in paradise, Felicia could look down and
nod with approval how thoroughly her own Sancha had become the
champion of her husband’s second wife.

“
We won’t blame him entirely,
Sancha,” Paloma said as she took the shears. “I had something to do
with this turn of events, too. Could I ask you to get me an old
sheet?”

Sancha left the room grumbling, and Paloma
turned her face into her husband’s chest and laughed quietly. “All
your
fault that my skirts won’t button in a few months, and
I’ll be forced to set over the buttons on my bodices,” she
whispered. “I’ll show you! I’ll make you buckle my shoes for me
when I don’t bend so well.”

They laughed together. Marco kissed the top of
her head, gave her a pat on her rump and went into the garden,
where Toshua stood now, eyeing her brother Claudio, who was
returning stare for stare.

“
Oh, dear. Claudio, you will have to
learn as I learned,” she said, looking through the wavy glass at
the three most important men in her life. “Don’t bear him a grudge,
Toshua.” There was no way the Comanche could have heard her, but he
looked squarely in her direction. “Yes, you, Toshua.”

Feeling the need for an ally and a better
barber, Paloma went down the hall to her children’s room, where
Graciela had just finished braiding Soledad’s brown hair into an
intricate design.

“
My dearest, you are lovely!” Paloma
said, clapping her hands.

Soli twirled around, trying to look at the
braids, until she fell into a giggling heap next to
Claudio.

“
Graciela, wonderful,” Paloma said.
“Is this a design from your cloudland home?”

The young woman nodded, her eyes lively with
the praise.

“
Could you fix mine that way
sometime? I have no skills along these lines.”

“
I can,
dama
,” Graciela
said.

“
Do this for me now,” Paloma said.
“Let us go to the kitchen garden where you will help me shear my
brother’s hair and beard. He is a wild man and I do not even know
where to start.”

“
Shall we take these wild ones with
us?” Graciela asked, and she held out her hand for
Soledad.

“
Most certainly! Come, Claudito. I
have a digging spoon and you can build a ditch next to where the
peas used to be.”

He took her hand, skipping ahead, tugging her
after him, until Soli stopped him. “Ladies walk slowly,” she told
her little cousin/brother. “Like this.”

Paloma felt her heart grow a size or two to
watch Soledad clasp her little hands together at her waist, just as
she did. She thought of her cousin, Maria Teresa Castellano, and
all her spite and meanness. Soledad was none of that, because she
never saw it in her own young life.
I could not give you a
kinder present, cousin
, Paloma thought, as tears tickled her
eyes.
She is my treasure, as she might have been
yours
.

Hands on his hips, her small son watched them
both, walking slowly side by side. “That is not fun,” he declared,
and skipped ahead of Graciela, into the kitchen and out the door,
banging it behind him.

Soli tugged at Paloma’s skirt. “Mama, I would
rather run, too.”

“
Then run, my love. You have years
and years to become a lady,” Paloma assured her.

“
You see how I need your help,
Graciela,” Paloma told the slave as they walked into the kitchen.
“They will only get livelier, while I get more awkward.” She looked
out the window to see little Claudio just staring at his namesake,
whose face was still turned to the healing sun.

“
Look at him. I wonder how long it
has been since my brother just sat in the sunlight.”

He opened his eyes when they came into the
garden. His face was rough and weathered, and old eyes looked back
at her. Somewhere under all the layers was her brother. Paloma said
a prayer, the same one never far from her mind and heart since he
walked into the children’s room last night, singing Mama’s Canary
Island lullaby:
Oh, how I thank thee, Lord
.