The Farming of Bones Read Online Free PDF Page B

Rosalinda resembled most.
    The floor thundered under his boots as he ran from Papi’s automobile into the house to find his wife and newborn children, looking for hints of their presence in the parlor and all the different rooms in the house. Juana and I both followed him blindly, instinctively, to his wife’s room, thinking perhaps he might need something we could bring for him, or his wife, or their new children. Working for others, you learn to be present and invisible at the same time, nearby when they needed you, far off when they didn’t, but still close enough in case they changed their minds.
    Juana was more herself now. She watched with a reserved smile as Señor Pico rushed to the bed where his wife lay and kissed her hair and forehead.
    “Pico, let me see your face,” she said, her fingers pulling at his bristly tar-black hair.
    “Go look at the children,” Papi urged him with a hearty laugh.
    As he stood over his children’s cradle, Señor Pico’s body shook as though he wanted to scream; he held his fist to his mouth to contain his joy. His eyes lingered on his son, his heir. Raising the sheet covering the child’s body, he peeked beneath his diaper to check the boy’s testicles.
    “I will name him Rafael, for the Generalissimo,” he said as Juana reswaddled the children even more securely than before. The señora agreed to this name with a coy nod. And so the boy became Rafael like the Generalissimo, the president of the republic. Rafi for intimates.
    As he contemplated the splendor and uncommon elegance of his new son’s name, Señor Pico peeled off his cap and tunic, which formed a pile of khaki on the floor, where he dropped them. Juana walked over to collect them. This was precisely why we had followed him here, to perform the incidental tasks so he wouldn’t have to think about them at the peak of his joy.
    I glanced over at Juana’s man, Luis, who stood alone in the doorway, looking as though he were going to cry. Luis was still dressed in his daily gardening clothes, a mud-streaked shirt and a roomy pair of pants hanging like an opened parasol around his narrow frame. He held a straw hat reverently against his chest. His face showed the ache of wanting that I had seen in Juana’s eyes earlier. Because of his shyness, Luis hid all emotion behind his careful gestures of courtesy and respect. He did not venture past the threshold into the bedroom to see the babies. No one asked him to, either.
    “Wouldn’t you like your supper, Señor?” Juana asked, gathering our patrón’s tall laced black boots from the floor.
    Señor Pico motioned her away with a wave of his happy hands.
    “Should we draw you a bath?” she persisted.
    “Leave the water on the coals for me,” he said.
    Luis ran off to warm Señor Pico’s bathwater.
    “It must have been painful. Was it painful?” Señor Pico asked his wife.
    She smiled with a peaceful glow on her face. Juana placed Señor Pico’s clothes in the armoire.
    “Amabelle, Juana, you may both leave us now,” Señor Pico said.
    While the señor visited with his wife and children, I watched from a rocking chair outside the door to my room as Luis sat in the yard with a hurricane lamp, using his hat to fan the fire under Señor Pico’s bathwater. As the flames grew, the night breeze teased them, forming dancing shadows on the sides of the tin bucket. Juana walked over to her man and handed him a bowl of stew. Luis placed the bowl of stew near the bucket to warm. He cleared a spot on the ground and spread a rag next to him for Juana to sit on. She told Luis of having had word (and dried coffee grains) sent from her sisters. Juana spoke excitedly about Señora Valencia’s babies, how she could not believe that Señora Valencia—a child whose birth she had witnessed—was now a mother herself.
    As she chattered, Luis looked at the dark around him, seeming afraid of being attacked by the trees. Yet he remained silent, waiting for his turn to speak.