Salomon 4

  Salomon – Part Four

  David Xavier

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  AT THE PRESIDIO DE LORETO in Baja California, Salomon Pico moved from one end of the stables to the other pushing a wide-panned shovel behind forty horses.

  “Respectable position, he says.”

  After patrols across the frontier, Colonel José Castro and his guards, wearing a film of dust and fringed with crusted mud, dismounted in the yard and left their horses for Salomon and Vicente to chase after and strip the saddles, comb their rough coats and pour the oats, and pitch straw for their bedding each night.

  Salomon had been a stableboy at the Presidio de Monterey long ago, but the skill of shoveling horseshit in sweltering heat was a skill he thought he would never again need.

  “I know you are Pío’s cousin,” José Castro said behind his desk when Salomon arrived trailworn months ago at his office door. “And I was told that you served as a scout under Andrés Pico in the Battle of Pasqual, but that was years ago. What have you done since then?”

  After a moment Salomon took a breath but José Castro spoke instead.

  “It does not matter. Military experience is not necessary in the stables. You are family to Pío and that is why I will employ you here.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But I was not in need of a scout, nor in need of any position, and this has been thrust on me without my request, you understand.”

  “I am grateful for the work,” Salomon said with his sombrero in his hands. “It is myself and my wife and our son. He is good with horses and more than capable of working the stables with me.”

  José Castro was already looking down at his paperwork. He motioned with a hand. “There is a small room behind the stables. If you move things around you will find there is enough space for you.”

  The room had been used for storage, and when Salomon opened the wood-slat door a pile of saddles and leather straps rolled out. After a day of work he was able to organize and arrange a sleeping quarters for himself and Marisela. The room smelled like the rear-ends of the horses that faced it, and Salomon cut a window in the back wall and put a hinge on it. Most days and nights he left it propped open to the breeze from the gulf.

  “I’d rather sleep in an empty stall,” Vicente told them, throwing his arms over his head as he walked away, and he spent his nights sprawled in nothing but his underwear upon a generous mound of straw, snoring alongside the horses.

  “We don’t have to stay here,” Salomon told Marisela in the half-light of the storeroom. “This is not what I had in mind when Pío said Castro would give me a job at the presidio.”

  “Where else would we go? No one knows us here. It is safe. You won’t push that shovel forever, and for you I would sleep behind twice as many horses.”

  They had married on the way down, holding hands at the altar of a small cathedral in San Ignacio.

  “I wish it had at least one stain-glass window,” Salomon had said, looking up at the slanting sunlight.

  “It would ruin the color of my veil,” Marisela smiled. “This is perfect.”

  Salomon had spent that morning combing a part in his hair and shaving with special care so as not to appear in the churchlight with bumps on his chin. Vicente walked his mother down the aisle and shook Salomon’s hand before handing over the bride. Marisela wore the same clothing she wore in their travels, but she had spent the morning wrapped in bedsheets in a back room, sitting on the side of a bed with her cheek in one hand, staring at the featureless handcarved Jesus on a small wooden cross tacked to the white wall, the sheets clinging to not fall from her body, while a woman from the village scrubbed her traildusted clothing for her and then searched the village while the wet clothing flapped in the wind.

  The woman came back to the bare room with a veil and pins in her hands and a needle and thread, a borrowed blouse folded over her forearm. She set the sewing things aside and came at Marisela with the bunched blouse held open.

  “I can’t,” Marisela said, stopping the woman. “I cannot pay you.”

  The woman scoffed and put the blouse over the bride’s head. She pulled Marisela’s hair back and brushed with such care, like an old woman with a granddaughter’s strands in her hands, and pinned the veil atop. She circled the bride and hummed softly. She held Marisela’s arms up by a pinch at the sleeves and shook her head, a few mumbled words. She circled and made adjustments. She put her hands to the bride’s breasts and pushed them up, took a pin from the corner of her mouth, and ducked beneath the bride’s outstretched arms and stitched the fabric in place with a few quick passes. Then she circled a finger at the floor and had Marisela turn several times before she smiled and clapped.

  “Bueno. Belleza.”

  In an open drawer across the room, she moved things about, turning once to look back at the beauty in the center of the room who stood with hands clasped. The woman busied herself in the drawer again with an old cackle and came back to Marisela with a mirror held forth. Marisela took a moment with the image before smiling. The old woman lightened but her smile soon fell, and she moved in close with a concentrated look. Marisela leaned back. The woman touched a fat thumb to her tongue and rubbed a smudge from the bride’s cheek. Her smile returned.

  She pushed the door open with one hand and gestured with the other.

  “Now,” she said, smiling. “You are a bride to make love to.”

  Salomon stood with the priest beneath the crucifix, any penny to his name long buried and forgotten, a pursued man and hardly in a position to take a wife, but when he lifted the veil Marisela’s green eyes smiled in halfmoons as he had never seen before. It was as if the farther across the earth they fled the happier she became.

  And now living for months in a storeroom that smelled so bad it ruined any notions of love in the dark, a room so small one had to straighten against the wall for the other to pass by, shoveling beneath the swishing tails of the presidio beasts with their noses in the oats, he said again to himself, respectable position, I’ll tell him what he can do with this respectable position.

  “What?”

  Salomon turned to see Colonel José Castro standing in the stable doors.

  “I said when do the rest of the horses arrive? I am getting anxious to step around behind them.”

  José stood for a moment, a backlit figure in the door. Salomon held still with the shovel. He swallowed, and Castro began to laugh. Salomon stooped again and continued throwing shovelfuls into a bucket.

  “I wanted to invite you to the card table tonight,” José said.

  “I don’t gamble.”

  “You don’t have to put much in the pot.”

  “I don’t have much even if I wanted to.”

  “Well, come anyway.” Castro put his hand to the doorframe and put his weight on it. He pushed off and gestured to the streaked floor. “When you’re done playing around in here.”

  José Castro was a respected officer of the Mexican Army, a commander who several times led patrols against US Cavalry forces numbering twice in size. A hidden marksman once shot him from the white walls of the Mission de San Gabriel near Los Angeles during the lingering skirmishes trailing the Mexica-American War. Castro fell forty feet onto his back and a dark spread of blood seeped into the dirt while he caught his breath. Several soldiers rushed to him only to watch him recover in coughing curses and pull a horse from the corral, order the mission gates open with more curses, and charge into the open with a pistola raised. “The cowardly bastard.” Several shots filte
red from the treeline before Castro came leading his horse back by the reins with the marksman hanging unconscious over his saddle. He tossed his spent pistola to the nearest soldier and began untying his deadweight prisoner, laughing to himself while other soldiers ran to his side with a stretcher and a medic. “He will come to in a moment,” Castro blinked at them. “I only knocked him aside the head.” But the soldiers pointed to Castro’s shirt, and looking down he realized he had soaked every white thread of his shirt dark.

  With the amount of blood Castro lost it took three days of staring at the flies on the ceiling in a muggy room to recover. A priest came in every hour to flick holy water at him from the door, and Castro could not reach for enough things to throw at him. The doctor had to have him strapped to the bloodsoaked cot because he kept fighting his way out of the room out of sheer boredom.

  With the war long over, José Castro was sent south as the political chief of the Baja California frontier. La Frontera still glittered with minerals and wet leaves, a land that bristled under the same mists that swirled at the feet of Hernán Cortés and Francisco de Ulloa, and the same dark eyes still peered from the jungles as when the first ships anchored off the coasts and goldchested conquistadores rowed to land in small boats and hacked trails through the peninsula. The Jesuits followed and spread out in rope-soled sandals, then the Franciscans and Dominicans, establishing missions and raising their arms over the short heads of the Cochimi and the Quechan who emerged from the leaves naked and wide-eyed with silent mouths to touch the glittering crosses that hung from the Spaniards’ necks and rub their flatbrimmed hats and pinch at the gray habits that draped from their shoulders.

  Men still fought for control of La Frontera, and lone filibusters like William Walker of Texas sought to colonize the land for the United States. Walker burned down half the city of La Paz and declared himself the president of a new republic, until Mexican forces, led by men like Colonel José Castro, chased him away after a few short months. The population in Baja California was not as dense and clustered as the original colonies in Mexico, and the initial migrations north, hundreds of years prior, had largely skipped the lower peninsula, favoring the excitement in Alta California, making the sparse colonies in the south easy pickings for thieves and murderers who plagued the land.

  Maintaining a peaceful frontier was a job most men would have had a hard time keeping up with, but for a born soldier like José Castro, who had spent time ducking bullets and dragging his rifle barrel across the horizon at horsemen, it was a dull existence, and he took to drinking too much in the Loreto cantinas and squinting blearyeyed at bad hands of cards and betting anyway. The drink often carried over to the following day, and Salomon had once seen Castro with his boots on the wrong feet, trying to mount his horse in circles, unable to step a boot into a stirrup.

  Salomon sat silent at his side of the cardtable and lost a hundred dollars he didn’t have, on bets Castro made for him, and when Ramiro Morelos threw his chair back and grabbed Salomon’s collar to collect, Salomon ran the guard across the cantina floor and pinned him against the wall with his hands on his throat. The other guards stood and drew their pistolas, their chairs tipping over behind them, but José Castro leaned back and filled the room with laughter. He raised a glass of tequila.

  “Wait until the end of the game, when the cards are bent and sweaty, before throwing a tantrum, Ramiro.”

  Ramiro’s head was changing color as he hissed through his teeth. His eyes had gone from angry slits to taking on a round, terrified look.

  José Castro poured another glass. “You can let him breathe when you’re done scaring him, Salomon.” He raised the glass again. “He is one of my finest horsemen, after all.”

  Salomon pulled his hands away and Ramiro fell to weak gasps, the kind a small girl might make when presented with a new doll. José Castro broke into laughter again, and the guards at the table looked from one to the other and joined in.

  After that José Castro no longer left his horse in the yard after long rides, but instead handed the reins to Salomon and exchanged small talk.

  “For a moment that night, I thought you might kill him,” José told Salomon later. “I was trying to decide if I should stop you or not. Ramiro is an excellent rider, and can shoot a cigarillo from a man’s teeth at a hundred yards, but he behaves like a rotten child.”

  Ramiro Morelos kept his distance from Salomon and instead put his bad temper on Vicente when Salomon was not looking. He kicked Vicente whenever he saw him bent over in his work, and he knocked over pails of oats and buckets of shoveled excrement.

  As time went on his antics grew in cruelty. He once cut the rope Vicente used to hold his pants up as Vicente was walking across the presidio yard with a heavy load of glasswares in his arms. Ramiro flicked a knife at the thin rope and pointed and laughed as Vicente squatwalked his way across the yard, then shuffled as his pants fell to his ankles.

  Vicente came back from the stables with a two-by-four over his shoulder, one hand grasping his pants. He found Ramiro grinning with his shoulder against a white pillar. Vicente swung and Ramiro ducked. He pulled the same knife and flicked a small cut between two of Vicente’s ribs. He ducked again and flicked what would become a thin scar across Vicente’s chin. He stood back and watched as red stained down Vicente’s white clothing.

  When asked about it later, Vicente said he had cracked one of the glasswares and the shards fell from the shelf. Marisela bandaged the gashes and told Vicente to apply a salve to the healing wounds for a month after the bandages came off. “You don’t want it to leave a scar.” His chin gleamed with grease in the sun and gave an odd smell in close quarters. But Vicente did not keep up with the healing regimen and a thin white scar remained. Ramiro gave him a mocking grin and pursed his lips whenever he saw him.

  Vicente could have loosened the buckles on Ramiro’s saddle before one of their long frontier patrols, but no, he would not be there to see him pitched from the horse’s back. He could also have snuck into Ramiro’s room at night and swung a sack of horseshoes again and again in the darkness, but he had never seen inside the guard barracks, and might sneak into the wrong room and raise the heavy, clinking sack above the wrong cot. It was a criminal act anyway, and other small thoughts of retaliation grew more violent in his mind and surprised him, so he quickly discarded any plans for revenge and bent to work in silence alongside Salomon.

  “Salomon,” José Castro said. “You were a scout under the Generalissimo Andrés Pico, were you not?”

  “He was a capitán back then.”

  “I need a letter taken to the Mission Santa Rosalía de Mulegé. You will be paid to take it. Get a horse saddled.”

  “I don’t ride with a saddle.”

  Castro was already walking away. He stopped and looked back. “Our horses don’t ride without one.”

  He came back minutes later with the letter in hand and a blue coat slung over a forearm. Salomon had already said goodbye to Marisela and was tightening the saddle straps.

  “I also brought you a coat,” Castro said.

  Salomon held his own tattered army coat open by the faded lapels, looking down at the edges and torn corners.

  “Yours does not even have all the buttons,” Castro said. He held up the new coat. “This is Ramiro’s coat. You look about the same size. Put it on.”

  Salomon did. Castro pinched at the shoulders and brushed the sleeve in one quick movement. He tugged at the hems. “It fits like it was made for you.”

  He slid the letter into Salomon’s inside pocket and told him who to leave it with at the Mission San Rosalia. He watched as Salomon put his sombrero on and prepared to leave.

  “We will work on your hat next,” he said. “Now get going,” and he slapped the horse’s rump so hard it left a handprint in the hide and the horse launched straight up and went into a series of kicks. Salomon hung on as the horse jumped around the yard, and Castro squatted with his hands on his knees and laughed. Salomon quickly gained con
trol, shouting commands to the horse, then reined left and right. He gave Castro a look before kicking the horse into a run. The presidio gates opened and Salomon rode fast through the gap.

  Four days later, Salomon returned. José Castro was walking from his office door and lighting a cigar as his rider came through the gates. He stopped and waited. Salomon rode up to him directly, dismounted and handed over a response letter. His face was worn and smudged in dirt. His lips were cracked. Castro eyed him as he opened the letter.

  “What’d you go crawling in the marshes?”

  “I had to,” Salomon said. “I was chased by thieves.”

  Castro pointed to Salomon’s hand. There was an open sore the size of a coin on the back of his hand. “What is that?”

  “I was hit by a dart. When thieves weren’t chasing me, natives were. That road is a deathtrap.”

  “I know it is. All my soldiers refused to go. And I couldn’t send a whole patrol for just one letter.”

  “What if I didn’t make it back?”

  “Then I would marry your widow for you.”

  Salomon whipped his arms out of the coat and held it up.

  “Don’t look at me that way,” Castro said. “I was confident in you. I would not have put a married man in danger unless I had full understanding of his capabilities. And I had to find out.”

  “Find out what?”

  “If you could handle the road. I knew you would. I do not take Pío’s recommendations lightly. Keep the coat. You are the new presidio scout.”

  “You said this was Ramiro’s coat.”

  “You’re right. It is.” Castro took the coat and held it up by the shoulders. “I’ll have a new one tailored for you. Same measurements?”

  Salomon looked the coat up and down. He licked his lips. “Yes. Same measurements.”

  They moved their belongings from the stables to one of the presidio rooms, where the walls did not whistle with breezes and they did not wake up each morning smelling as if they had covered themselves in manure for warmth. The room had a washbasin in the corner and a pitcher on the floor for fresh water. A mirror hung on the wall, and Marisela looked closely at her skin from different angles and touched her face and sighed. The bedsheets were made of cotton. They sank into the mattress.