Arroyo Hondo lay before them, a scatter of adobes nestled in a steep-walled canyon cut by a creek. The man styled Jean Lafitte Childress saw his salvation, but knew it would come only at the price of his mortification. He sat nakedly upon the cart, with a cargo of naked people. It would not be easy.
He spotted an adobe church or chapel, and two hundred yards behind it, through trees, a black-clad crowd that plainly was burying someone. Probably most of this rural village was there.
“We’re close,” he said to those huddled miserably behind him. “A long plunge downslope first.”
He steered his Clydesdale down a steep incline, trusting the heavy horse to brake the cart, and when the land leveled he found himself among cultivated fields. And coming toward him was a bent old woman in black, supporting herself with a staff.
He wished he had encountered a male, but there was no help for it. He slid his Panama off and onto his lap, not that it would help much.
She tottered forward, paused at the amazing sight of the red cart driven by a naked man, and waited.
“Señora,” he began in Spanish, “we have been waylaid
by the Apaches, and they took everything from us, even our clothes.”
“Yes, it is true,” she replied. “Dios! I have never seen a man in such condition in sunlight.”
“We need help, señora. Por favor, could you find something for us to wear?”
She peered up at him, shaking her head. “Señor, finding something for you is a task beyond my poor ability. The amount of fabric! It would take a month to weave it and another to sew it. And what of the others?”
She hobbled slowly toward the rear of the cart, paused, peered in at the cringing occupants, who presented their backs to her. “Yes, they need covering also. The pale man looks burnt. The women endure the sun. It has been a long time since I have seen such nakedness.”
“You are our salvation, señora!”
“I wish I were thirty years younger,” she said. “I would have a body like those women. Then I would attract the smiles of men. I have not been smiled upon for longer than I can remember, now that my paps are withered. Ah, to be young and smooth!”
“We are all suffering from the sun, señora.”
She leaned on her staff, pondering. “Let us go to the church, and there will I find something for you. But you cannot let that monkey in. It would be a sacrilege.”
“The church! Where that crowd is burying someone?”
She nodded. “They are burying Manuel, my son-in-law.”
“Your son-in-law? Why aren’t you there?”
“Because he is my son-in-law.”
The last place Childress wanted to drive was the church.
“But that crowd—”
“Naked man, that crowd has only begun to bury him and they are on the other side and will not see you. He was a prominent man, so they will take their time hating him and wishing perdition upon him. They want to make sure he is
good and buried, so that his bones will not escape and haunt us.”
“Ah … What will we find there? A sheet? Altar linen? I don’t think—”
“Come,” she said, and hastened toward the long adobe edifice, rapping her staff on the clay. Colonel Childress followed, grateful that the adobe walls and trees hid the graveyard beyond, and the reproachful eyes of that crowd.
At last they pulled up before the dark doors.
“I’m not going in there, mate,” Skye said slowly, peering over the top of the cart.
“Me neither, Skye, but she says it’s the place to get help.”
She paused at the hand-sawed plank door. “I have the honor of sweeping this holy place each day,” she said. “I know everything. Come with me.”
The women peered out of the cart but didn’t move. Childress felt glued to his bench. Finally Skye eased to the ground, and crabbed his way toward the door, hunched over with whatever modesty he could summon. He had found courage that eluded the colonel of the militia of the Republic of Texas.
Childress sighed, lowered himself to earth, and followed, his mind swarming with disasters and shame.
They watched the old woman enter, curtsey, then trot along the shadowed wall of the nave toward the sacristy, pass a bulto in its niche, and vanish around a corner.
“I can’t go in there, Skye. Not without a stitch.”
Skye grunted, plunged into the gloom, and knelt suddenly at the back of the nave.
Childress could scarcely imagine such an act.
“Forgive us this trespass, Lord, and we thank you for our salvation,” Skye said. “We mean no affront to you. We are desperate, and you have promised to help the naked and the poor.”
Skye was speaking for both, and Childress was comforted.
The privateer knew suddenly that Skye had inner resources that were quite beyond his own. Skye stood, with quiet dignity, and walked through cool shade, no longer crouching in desperate modesty. The chapel was a simple place, with pine benches. No candle flickered. A small dark cross stood upon the altar.
The old woman in black beckoned from the door of the sacristy, so Skye and Childress padded there. Not even Skye’s desperate prayer made it right to be naked in such a place.
The woman headed straight toward a closet where robes hung.
“See, señor,” she said. “He is a Franciscan who is the priest here, and fat like you.” She squinted at him, and pulled a brown-dyed woolen habit from the closet. “Though I doubt that his parts equal yours, but with a priest, who cares?”
It was a generous one, a monk’s attire, with a hood and a soft white rope at the waist.
Childress had a fit of conscience. “Is this right, señora?”
She sniffed. “Would you prefer to offend little girls?”
That did it. He pulled the brown habit over him and knotted the rope at the waist. The presence of that cloth over him was as comforting as a keg of rum, he thought. She gave another to Skye, who gratefully slipped it on and sighed. It was a little long for Skye, and trailed in the dust.
“I have never appreciated what clothing means,” Skye said. “It is more than warmth and protection. It is dignity and safety. It keeps us from offending.”
Childress turned to the woman. “We cannot pay. We have nothing. The Jicarillas left us in a wilderness to perish. Is there something for the women?”
He eyed the embroidered vestments, chasubles and surplices, albs and stoles, but she shook her head. “Those belong to God,” she said. “God forbid that I surrender them. But these that you wear belong to our padre, and I will confess this to him.”
He hunted for sandals, and she saw his intent.
“The feet of Franciscans are bare,” she said. “It is a mortification of the flesh.”
Childress wanted to get out of there before the burial crowd broke up. “Señora, let us find something for our women.”
She nodded, led them through the nave and into the sunlight. Standing Alone and Victoria stared at the brown-robed men.
The old woman walked to the rear of the cart and clambered in. “I will show you, señores,” she said.
Childress steered the horse away from the little church and followed the woman’s instructions. They headed down a lane, and finally stopped at a flower-decked patio enclosed by a low adobe wall. Even in this raw frontier place, these people had fashioned serenity and beauty.
“A few things of my daughter will suffice,” she said, sliding off the red cart. The women followed her shyly, while Childress and Skye settled themselves in the courtyard.
“Do you realize, Brother Skye, that I was more famished for cloth over my carcass than for food?” he said.
“Brother Childress, that will pass,” Skye replied. “I am ready to eat lizards again.”
“Do you suppose we can find a begging bowl? If I beg in my bastard Spanish and you keep silent, we might be taken for a pair of mendicant monks.”
“With concubines,” Skye said.
“And a red cart with a Jolly Roger upon it.”
“Are your bare feet fit for walking, Brother Childress?”
“Alas, we will have to master the ways of this country.”
The monkey had fled the back of the nag, and was swinging through a peach tree.
“There is nothing there, Shine. It is much too early and they are green,” Childress said.
The monkey chittered and swung toward a string of red chiles. He bit into the end of one chile, spat out the vile contents, and scolded the monks.
When the women emerged into that courtyard, each wore a simple shift of unbleached linen, modest and plain. The dresses fit loosely, and the women looked pleased to be shielded once again. The covering would suffice. The women, too, had been transformed from crouching creatures to dignified persons.
The old woman appeared, this time with two round loaves of bread. “Take this, my friends. It is warm still,” she said, thrusting the loaves toward Childress.
Bread never tasted so fine.
“Señora, to whom shall we give thanks for this?” Childress asked, wanting a name.
“I was christened Milagro,” she said.