Love Maps Page 22

  The boy stood in the red swirling dust, his mouth moving like that of a fish out of water.

  “Who’s that?” Owen walked toward him. Under the mine grit, he could barely make out the fine features of Herrida’s son. “Ysidro? Is that you? What are you doing down here?” The boy was too young. “Who let you down? Who let you down? Speak!”

  “I came from Casa Grande, sir. Alma sent me.”

  The heat and clamor gave way to a cold still, the only sound now the steady drip drip drip of the mine. Owen leaned closer to Ysidro. The kid’s eyes were glassy with exhaustion and something else too, something more troubling. He almost didn’t hear the rest of the sentence.

  “Mrs. Scraperton is in labor.”

  “What?” He shook the boy.

  “Mrs. Scraperton, sir—”

  But Owen had heard. Warmth poured back into him. “Why didn’t you say so?” He laughed and jumped up, the good throb of Nature rushing through his veins. “Hear that, men?”

  The miners, who had been diligently pretending not to listen, crowded around, each one grinning larger than the last.

  “What about that! Can’t make it on time for dinner, but when it comes to the important stuff, blast it all! She’s early.” His men broke into a rowdy cheer, and Owen tossed his stop-watch in the air. It somersaulted in a high narrow arc, glittering in the dark. “Mother Dolores!” he boomed, catching the watch. “Hear that, boys? Feel that? That earthly shift and quiver!”

  He raced down the tunnel, hardly needing his torch, so firmly connected was he to its jags and dips. Past ore-laden tanateros, up gallina ladders. No one knew, not one of them even had a clue. Dolores had been terribly secretive about the entire thing. Now finally there would be no more quiet. He would shout it from the roof! He climbed up the emergency exit, his calloused hands slapping each rung with a grudging pleasure.

  He reached the top barely winded, not bad for fifty, and barreled past his men to the sweet-smelling afternoon, noting with pleasure the blueness of the sky. Exactly as it should be. He hopped on his bay and spurred her through town, panicking the chickens and almost running over Cleofas’s wreck of a grandmother, but she didn’t bother him now, no one did. Dolores! His Doe! His impossible D! Past the town, into blazing ocotillo and yellow-blossomed creosote. Lovely her, bringing him a son! A spring-born son! No Kronos he, he’d been waiting for this day ever since he first saw her, a tangled wave of hair flying behind her, galloping, even before she knew him, straight toward him, as if she knew too. He squeezed the horse’s flanks. Come on, you old bucket. She’d let him put his palm on her belly. He’d felt a single kick, then a valiant battery. It had to be a boy, with a volley that strenuous. They’d name him Theodore, after the young general of San Juan Hill. Theo Scraperton, pounding not up, but down into the drifts and stopes, with an army of miners as hybrid as the rough riders, and a campaign more true and glory-filled. Come on, you old bucket. Giddyap! He shot up the hill to his house. A son! A son! He shouted his arrival, but got drowned out by an earth-shaking scream.

  The sound lingered on, even after he could no longer hear it, a silent emanation of it agitating his temples, rendering him immobile. The French doors swung open, and the doctor trotted down the steps.

  “No cause for alarm,” Badinoe said, smiling, squinting up at him. “Your wife’s got her vocal chords in order, that’s all.”

  “Of course,” said Owen, regaining himself. He hopped to the ground and slapped the horse. “Well, I made it. Sounds like the babe’s still clinging in there.”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I see her?”

  “I don’t think that would be wise.”

  “I see,” said Owen. He’d been hoping that Dolores would change her mind. He frowned at the house. She screamed again. “It should be soon, right? The screams are coming close together.”

  Badinoe shook his head. “You can’t always tell.”

  “She’s not too early, is she? I thought you told us to expect a baby mid-April. It’s only April first.”

  “That was just an estimate. She sure looks big enough.” Badinoe smiled as if they were sharing an observation, but she’d kept herself so shrouded up that Owen had barely been able to see her. He rocked back on his heels, trying to mask his aggravation. Badinoe chuckled. “In all this time, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you straight from the mine.”

  It took Owen a moment to realize what the doctor meant. He hadn’t de-ored. His suit was cracked and stiff with cinnabar dust and his hands were stained a flagrant red. He had raced right past the shower house. He rubbed a clump of mineral-laden dirt off his suit, astonished at himself. He took great pride in following the rules along with everyone else. “I must have forgotten,” he said as much to himself as Badinoe. “I’ll have to pay the fine.” He stood stunned a moment longer until he realized that he could turn this into an oration. We must strive not to let immediate excitements blind us to long-term considerations. We must train ourselves to see near and far simultaneously.

  She screamed. The words running through his head withered into nothingness. “Is there no method to speed it up?”

  “I wish there were.”

  Owen growled in disgust. He paced backward and forward across the driveway, not wanting to look at the doctor, whose uselessness mirrored his own. She screamed. The mine dust drifted off him, getting lost in the dirt. “Do I have time to run back to the shower house?”

  Badinoe regarded him thoughtfully. “That is probably a good idea. Alma and I have things under control here.”

  Owen hurried back to his bay. Anything was better than waiting, and he could at least salvage what dust remained. The shower house and the accompanying laundry were equipped with a drainage system that took the grit from the miners’ skin and clothes and rerouted it to the furnace. This way, every last cinnabar mote was captured and refined. He trotted down the driveway, wondering how much ore was caught in his knuckles, fingerprints, palm lines. It would be interesting to measure it, to know how much dust you carried away with you, the exact quantity. Dust that, because of you, will remain dust instead of turning into something of value.

  Another scream, fainter, but still plenty loud. He stopped to listen. After she had finished, he kept staring at his redcrusted hands. A bolt of understanding shook through him and he laughed. He had not made a mistake. He was meant to have forgotten. This dust, this dust on his hands and suit and hair, wanted to be here, to witness, to honor the arrival of his son. It had clung to him purposefully.

  He returned to his house. Dolores screamed, but now he heard the deep reservoir of strength within her. Why had he been so distraught? She was not one for doing things quietly and serenely. And why should she? Births were tumultuous. That was Nature’s Way. Great things were born of great upheavals. His very own mercury was born of volcanic eruptions. He dismounted firmly and led the bay into the dark, straw-scented stables. In the next stall, Generalissimo, Dolores’s stallion, tossed his head and pawed the ground. Owen strode over to him. “She’s doing great,” he said. “Bringing forth a big one.” The stallion looked at him fiercely and flared his prodigious nostrils.

  Owen had first seen Dolores on Generalissimo, skimming across the Coahuilan plain, nothing like the side-saddled women he’d grown up with. It was incredible to him, finding her. Religion had warped every woman he had met to one extreme or another. And there in Mexico, with the whole country under the pall of dictators and priests, Dolores rode on her horse, free as the day she was born.

  The stallion eyed him distrustfully. “You miss her, huh?” Owen laughed. They were competitors, and Owen was in the lead. “But you’re not that far behind,” he said.

  He could picture her so clearly, galloping out to the crumbling gate of her parents’ hacienda. That time when Generalissimo had looked like a poor circus beast, his mane strung with red and gold ribbons. “In honor of your visit,” Dolores had said, explaining that the horse and she both had to look their best, for they came together. He
’d started toward the hacienda, but she shook her head, trotting in the other direction. Her entire family had gathered there. “Toda la familia.” She widened her eyes, evoking a natural disaster on the scale of the great Lisbon earthquake. “But don’t worry, I brought you a bite to eat.” She took a bun from her pannier. It was still warm, glazed with honey, a lone raisin at the top. “The staff of life,” she said, “a horse and bread. Without them,” she drew her finger across her neck, gesturing decapitation, then laughed and spurred Generalissimo. He had chased her. But she didn’t—she never let herself be caught.

  He now returned to his house, almost too grand a house, with double chimneys and plate glass windows. When he was alone, he’d lived in town, happy in a couple of rooms across from his office. But Dolores needed her Casa Grande, and children needed space, and he did love the view from the roof. He entered by the back way, quietly so as not to alarm Dolores, though not so quietly as to feel that he was sneaking onto his own property. Upstairs, in the room that Dolores had prepared for the baby, everything was so clean and new, a hobbyhorse, a rocking chair, quilts piled up in an open trunk, a washstand painted with spotted horses. Framed, above the crib, was his sole contribution: the Principles of Pristina. The baby would be too young to read it, but perhaps the ideas would have some influence nonetheless. He looked it over, his brow creasing.

  The Principles of Pristina

  Drink of this Cup & Rejoice

  That which Man has hitherto understood to be God is in fact a sublime apperception of the Beauty of Nature. In obscuring this most basic Fact, the religions of the world have caused great confusion and unhappiness. We at Pristina honor the Wisdom and Beauty of Nature and proudly follow her Laws and Principles.

  Clarity

  Without Clarity, Man cannot directly apprehend Nature and thus is wrenched from Natural Law, Purpose, Knowledge, and Satisfaction. To achieve Clarity, the following Obscurants must be abolished:

  —Alcohol, opium, tobacco, and other such narcotics and excitements that confuse Man’s sense of time and proportion.

  —Gambling or any other such pursuit that encourages irresponsibility, idleness, and superstition.

  —Superstition, that is Artificial Knowledge, knowledge not directly acquired. Artificial Knowledge erodes the faculties and senses, depriving Man of his capacity for original, unmediated, natural thought. For example: Christianity in its various cults and sects, Judaism, Hindooism, Mohammedism, Spiritualism, Theosophy, Masonism, Witch Doctory & Etc.

  Unity

  As white light seen through a prism reveals a spectrum, so too does the essence of Man. Man is comprised of many races, races that by their very survival have proven themselves fit and ingenious. Consider the Mestizo, who felicitously combines the Nobility of the Spaniard with the Bravery of the Indian. In the Future, he will be further refined through the addition, either through Association of Amalgamation or Anglo Ingenuity, though truly, at that point he will no longer be a Mestizo. He will be a Pristinian, a Unified Man, inherently suited to his Labor.

  Purpose

  Labor is no punishment for sin. Labor is our Means and our Pleasure. Labor is how we participate in the Symbiotic Relationship between Nature and Mankind that characterizes the History of Civilization. Labor is the key to a unified society and a catalyst for Social Evolution. Labor is the birthplace of Happiness, Pride, and Beauty. Labor is to be cherished and honored as our bridge to the Future.

  Never before had the words seemed overbearing. He had not intended a list of no’s. He did not want rejection, but a colossal embrace of all the beauty and force that Nature so willingly gave when people threw off their shackles and dared to receive. That was it exactly, a world generated by a colossal pure-minded Yes!

  Another bout of screaming began. Owen pressed his forehead to the window. Huge cumuli had formed, enormous stacks of cloud billowing, glowing so brightly they hardly seemed real. From behind, rays of sun illuminated patches of desert and gilded the thick coils of smoke that rose from the reduction works. A strange new scream broke forth, its pitch cutting into the marrow of his bones. He hesitated, the possibility that it would not be a boy, or a girl either, flitting into his mind. He had heard of nameless things, finned or hoofed, caught between male and female. But it would be impossible for he and Dolores to produce something like that. It would be a boy. Theodore. He’d felt the kicks—and listen to that scream, far more healthy and fulsome than the last. The girls would come afterward. He had a name waiting for the first. Victoria. The next century’s Victoria, more virtuous than the last, on account of the Republican blood coursing through her veins. He appreciated the rough democracy of names. The colored were always naming their offspring after the prestigious and monumental. He’d known two George Washingtons, a Jefferson, an Abraham. You could learn a thing or two from the colored. You could learn from everyone.

  The screams came faster, piling on top of each other, mounting, mounting, until they crystallized into words. “Me cago en la puta Virgen!” Impossible. She must have said agua, not puta, but agua. Why would she curse the Virgin if she didn’t believe in her in the first place? Her accent sometimes mangled things. He hurried to the kitchen for a glass of water. Badinoe entered, rubbing his eyes.

  “She needs something to drink,” Owen said.

  “I thought you were in the shower house.”

  “She won’t mind if I take her this?” Owen held up the glass of water.

  “I’ll take it,” said Badinoe.

  “Why can’t I go in?”

  “There are women who like company and women who like privacy. I advise bowing to their natures.” Badinoe looked amused.

  “What’s so funny?” asked Owen.

  “Nothing. I just never imagined I’d be delivering your child.”

  Owen frowned. Why not? He was a doctor. And what was so funny about it? But Badinoe laughed at things that weren’t funny. Always had. Owen remembered him in school, giggling and sputtering, unable to control his tongue. Owen turned on his heels. He could take his own wife water.

  “Owen, wait! You need to boil water for the sheets.”

  Owen knew that boiling water was a ruse to keep nervous husbands occupied. He wasn’t nervous, not anymore. The water sloshed as he marched down the hall. He knocked on the door, but didn’t wait for an answer. Dolores squirmed on the daybed, her body half-covered in wet, tangled sheets, her face mottled and red.

  “Dolores,” he said.

  She moaned.

  “Honey.”

  “Please,” she said. “Get out.”

  He marched down the driveway. He could not understand. It was perverse. She acted like she was ashamed. She hadn’t left the house for months. She’d said that she looked fat. Burgeoning, maybe, taut, satisfying, but not fat. And now, not letting him be there, at the culmination of everything? He stopped. Something silver glimmered inside the spears of a sotol plant. He leaned down. His framed etching of John Brown. He wiped the dust off the glass. How had it gotten out here?

  He brought it to his study. None of Dolores’s fancy furniture here, just a good, solid desk, his spine-cracked Emersons, the fossils he picked up on his walks. He propped the etching on a shelf, adjusting the angle so that it faced the painting of his mother. The etching had originally belonged to her. She’d been a great abolitionist. She’d hosted meetings where they burned the Constitution.

  He gazed at her steel-gray hair, her intelligent brow, her sharp, sharp eyes. For the ten thousandth time he wished that she could see him now. At this moment, the wish was so big that he could barely swallow. She had died without any grandchildren. Without even a hope for them. He reached into the bowl he kept under her portrait, a glass bowl with layers of differently colored sand. He kept the sand beneath her because she had loved Natural History. When he was a boy, they had walked beaches together, wondering about the vein-streaked cliffs, the shells, the bulbs of seaweed. She would have been amazed at all the colors of the sand out here, the blinding whites,
shale blues, clay reds, and more subtle hues too, pale blond stained with green, mustard, rusty peach. Colors that, the first time he had seen them, had made him dismount and scrape up the earth with his bare hands.

  Dolores screamed. He closed his fingers into a hard, tight fist. Had his mother screamed like this? Had his father heard? He could only picture him sunk into an armchair clipping a cigar. He wouldn’t have had the mettle to bear it. He’d been good for nothing but smoking and evasion.

  Owen recalled the look in Ysidro’s eyes when he’d brought him the news. Terror, that’s what it was. He’d had to repeat himself twice before Owen realized that the news he was delivering was good.

  He hurried away from his study as if he were moving away from the memory of the boy’s eyes, down the hallway and out the back door into the cool of the approaching evening. A lizard scuttled across his shadow, a cold-blooded egg layer. Maybe it would be better laying eggs.

  Another terrible noise. He walked twenty steps in one direction, twenty steps in the opposite. He saw neither house, nor stables, nor mountains; he saw the dried mud on his boots, the color of blood. This agony could not be natural. The women of Africa popped out their babies, strapped them on their backs, and returned to their squash fields. The toxicities of Civilization had done this to her, reaching all the way out here to the desert. They’d have to study the Africans. Maybe all that squatting and weeding developed some muscle. He should have had Dolores take up gardening. He hadn’t thought any of this through.

  He headed off to the farthest knob of the hill, then got pulled back. He strode past Casa Grande in the opposite direction and again was pulled back. The house acquired a magnetism, one that reeled him in, then spat him back out. He walked in circles, the house the nucleus, looping around and around, up and down the hill, crisscrossing it from every angle. The sun grew huge and orange, and the clouds rolled into lavender cigars. He made his way to the porch steps and sat there, his exhausted ears receiving her exhausted screams. In the lulls between the screams, the grasshoppers chirred shrilly.