Hacen más unos callando que otros gritando.
There are those who accomplish more being quiet
than others who are shouting.
For years I’ve wanted to have a talk with Narciso Trujillo. I did speak briefly with him once, some years ago, when I lived near him. I watched him cross an empty field near my house each day, leading a swaybacked old horse on his way home in the evenings. After observing this daily trek for several months, I walked over to Narciso’s house, an old adobe that intrigued me because of its antiquity and hand-built construction and because there was no road leading to it. Narciso had no need for a driveway, because he didn’t have a car.
Back then, I found Narciso sitting in the sun by his gallinero (chicken coop). He spoke to me only in Spanish and obviously knew a lot about the old days. I intended to go back, but one day he stopped walking by our land, and I noticed a mound of freshly turned earth near his route. Later I learned Narciso’s old horse had finally collapsed on the daily walk and was buried on the spot. Narciso moved from his house not long afterward.
Since then, I’ve moved away, too, and haven’t seen Narciso, but I have heard his health is failing. In fact, someone told me he had lost his sight and was staying with his sister, where her children could watch after both siblings. They said he probably wouldn’t be able to say much if I did talk to him. So when I began visiting Esequiel Trujillo, I asked how I might meet up with Narciso, who is his primo hermano (first cousin).
“Ya no vive en su casa.—He no longer lives in his house,” Esequiel confirmed for me, along with the fact that Narciso was losing his sight. “Vive con su hermana allá cerca del arroyo.—He lives with his sister over there by the arroyo.” When I asked for directions, he elaborated in Spanish on a number of turns down the road, across the Acequia de la Cañada Ancha and the arroyo, and finally, up a hill by a yellow house.
“Es muy fácil.—It’s very easy,” he assured me.
Now I’m trying to find Narciso’s sister’s house, and Esequiel can no longer advise me. He died last September, while I was away being a vagabundo again. I missed the velorio (rosary wake), the funeral Mass and burial, and the family gathering. It stings, especially when I remember the kindness and thoughtfulness of his last farewell to me, before I left on my trip.
I know this arroyo well but can’t quite remember the directions Esequiel gave me. At the first trailer home where I see signs of life, I stop and tiptoe around a pit bull on a chain, who regards me suspiciously but makes not a sound—which I find more unnerving than a snarling dog. No one answers when I knock at the door, but just as I’m driving away, a man in a white T-shirt emerges and shuffles toward me. I stop and roll down the window.
“Buenas tardes,” I call out over the sound of the idling engine. He replies the same. Sticking with Spanish, I tell him I’m looking for Narciso and understand he’s living with his sister somewhere nearby.
“Mi tío Nars,” the man says, smiling, and introduces himself as Juan Montoya. Squinting against the brilliant noonday sun, he explains to me how to navigate to Narciso’s sister’s house. “Go back to the pavement and follow the arroyo until you get to all those trailers, just before the school. Turn across the arroyo there, and go up a little bank and then up to the right. It’s right there,” he says.
The uneven bed of the arroyo jostles me along as I drive across it. This is the Arroyo de los Alamos. I once lived beside it, much higher up, where it enters Chimayó. I’ve seen torrents flood it during summer rains. It must be impossible for Narciso’s people to get home during these times. Beside the arroyo here, there’s a high mound of earth covered with branches intertwined with tires, and discarded objects of all sorts. I’m taken aback by the debris pile but then surmise it’s been placed here as a barrier against high flood waters. Behind the haphazard levee stand a tight cluster of houses and trailers and, jammed among them, a small corral with two horses and a tiny wooden cage holding rabbits. This must be the place.
As I orient myself I realize I’m only a short distance from Juan’s house, where I just got directions. He’s just a stone’s throw away up the arroyo, but the difficulty of getting down the eroded bed forces vehicles to take the circuitous route I just followed.
In front of two houses that form the nucleus of the compound, a bright green fifties-era Chevy gleams in the sun beside a defunct Grand Prix. An old man stands outside, ax in hand, in front of an enormous pile of split firewood. He wipes his brow and regards me placidly. I recognize Narciso. He hasn’t changed much in fifteen years, and I guess he’s not blind or bedridden, as I’d been warned.
Narciso wears a plaid shirt, heavy flannel jacket, overalls, a tall, broad-brimmed hat, high boots, and jeans held up in part by suspenders and in part by a belt cinched up tight. This seems to be much like the outfit he wore when I spoke with him years ago. His face bristles with a gray stubble of a beard. Leaning on a cane, he grins at me with a welcoming but bemused expression and holds out his hand, chuckling.
Narciso doesn’t recall our conversation at his gallinero. I’m not surprised. But when I tell him where I lived (next door to his niece), he does remember my place and seeing me there.
“Esequiel me dio direcciones para llegar aquí.—Esequiel gave me directions for getting here,” I tell him.
“O, sí,” he replies.
“Me dijeron algunos que usted había perdido la vista.—People told me you had lost your sight,” I say.
“O, sí,” he says, smiling more broadly still.
I point to the pile of wood and ask if he split it himself.
“Sí, poco a poco.—Yes, little by little,” he says, proudly.
He seems to need his cane while standing, but moves easily when he walks. To get out of the glare of the sun, Narciso ambles to the portal of a house near the woodpile. He stands, one hand on his cane and one on a battered enameled kitchen woodstove. After a few minutes, he sits down on a kitchen chair whose rotted seat has been replaced with a couple of pieces of weathered plywood.
In a while the November air begins to chill us both, so he goes over to a ragged old armchair facing into the morning sun and sits down. I remember noticing by the gallinero at his own house several easy chairs placed strategically in sunny and shady spots of his property. He’s done the same here. I imagine him moving from chair to chair throughout the day, depending on the temperature, thermoregulating. Beside the chair he’s chosen now, a used tire leans against an adobe wall plastered with concrete but never finished with a color coat. He’s the picture of relaxation as he lists to starboard, still regarding me with an expression of amusement.
We begin with the family names. With a series of nods and O, sí’s, he confirms he’s a cousin to Esequiel and brother to Magdalena, Grandma’s former student and our dear friend, who died just last spring. Another sibling, Abel—whom Magdalena raised—passed on not long before.
Narciso slouches comfortably in the sun as I tell him of my close connection to Magdalena and my acquaintance with Abel. Narciso nods and says, “O, sí.”
Narciso is a man of few words. But, I remind myself, “Hacen más unos callando que otros gritando.—There are those who accomplish more by being quiet than others who are shouting.” And, on the other hand, I can think of many people, unlike Narciso, who fit the dicho “Es más lo que habla que lo que dice.—He talks more than he says.”
Narciso shakes his head and looks down when I mention Esequiel, who has been dead only a couple of months. Esequiel and I had talked about visiting Narciso. I wanted to put them together and let the old stories flow, but it never happened.
Narciso bears scant resemblance to Esequiel in appearance or manner, although they were primos hermanos. Narciso is quiet, inscrutable even. Bright, watchful eyes and an ever-handy laugh belie his age, which I guess is about the same as Esequiel would have been—mideighties. When I ask him how old he is, though, Narciso just laughs and says, “No me acuerdo.—I don’t remember.” He has the same reply, in words and chuckle, when I ask who his and Esequiel’s grandfather was.
“¿No se acuerda?—You don’t remember?” I ask, to be sure. But he doesn’t recall his grandfather’s name. I should know it, because Esequiel told me; he and Narciso descend from the same Trujillo from Rincón, whose brother married my great-great-aunt. This makes Narciso and me distantly related, too, at least through marriage. When I tell him this, he lets out another little laugh.
We’re between Esequiel’s neighborhood, called Los Ojuelos, and closer to a neighborhood sometimes called Los Pachecos. I’ve seen the name on a map, and it’s mentioned in our papers, wherein José Ramón Ortega y Vigil (my great-great-grandfather, who was justice of the peace) registers a complaint from “la placita de los Pachecos.” (In this case, typical of the many José Ramón heard, José Lázaro accused a certain Ramona Salinas of infuriating him with palabras groseras—crude language—to such a degree that “era una sin vergüenza y ladrona—she was shameless and a thief.” Lázaro asked José Ramón to restrain Ramona from making these verbal attacks.)
When I ask Narciso if he’s heard of the plaza called Los Pachecos, he shrugs and says no. Plazas bearing surnames usually are named after the predominant family in the area, but I know of few people with the family name Pacheco living in the vicinity now. This place-name seems to be on the verge of disappearing, joining the ranks of countless Santa Cruz Valley names that few people, if any, recognize anymore. The old papers mention many of these, such as La Milpa del Llano, El Serrito de la Cruz, Barrancos Negros, Los Llanitos, Bosque de Ciruela, La Lagunita, El Charco, and many others.
A “Hello!” comes from down the driveway, called out by a man who emerges out of the collection of buildings and trailers surrounding us. He sounds suspicious and is clearly being protective of Narciso, but he’s friendly and open when he reaches us and shakes my hand. He asks who I am and introduces himself as Telesfor, Narciso’s nephew.
“You taking pictures of my Tío Nars?” he asks. I affirm that I am, explaining I’ve been making photographs, especially of older people, all over Chimayó. I open up a box of photos in the car to show him.
“Wow, these are beautiful. ¡Mira, mi prima Magdalena!—Look! It’s my cousin Magdalena!” he says, seizing upon a picture of Magdalena. “¡Y primo Esequiel! Can I have these?” he asks, and I assure him he can.
A woman with blond hair and blue eyes emerges from the house behind Narciso. She shakes my hand shyly and tells me her name, Betty. She’s Telesfor’s sister, Narciso’s niece. I’ve heard of her; Esequiel told me she was taking care of Narciso and his sister—although the idea that Narciso needs care seems farfetched at this point. But Narciso never had children, and he is getting on in years. The rationale for having him move in with his sister María was that it would be better for him to have family around than for him to stay alone in his aging adobe. And since Betty was taking care of her mom already, having her tío in the house would be little extra bother.
Betty turns to studiously looking at the photographs Telesfor is pawing over. Then Israel, another family member, appears. He’s young, slender, and bespectacled, a nephew to Telesfor and Betty. They call him Junior, since his father is named Israel, too. He cordially shakes my hand and then plants himself in another of Narciso’s easy chairs, this one in the shade of a battered old apricot tree. He watches me closely, sucking thoughtfully on a Tootsie Pop.
A small voice drifts up the driveway, along with a whinny from Telesfor’s horse in the corrals. A young girl comes running, bouncing a basketball.
“Esta es my nieta, Alissa.—This is my granddaughter, Alissa,” Telesfor says, beaming like only a grandparent can. “Mira, ’jita. This man is taking pictures of Nars.”
Alissa reaches out her hand, then gives Nars a little hug and sits on the ground against the wall, sunning herself. Narciso regards her with the same curious gaze he gave me when I arrived. Alissa announces she wants to be a famous singer and commences to sing for me, a pop song I’ve heard on the radio.
“Hey, I want to show these pictures to Mom,” Telesfor says. “Come on in and meet her.”
Narciso leads the way under a small portal and through a well-worn screen door into the house where María, Narciso’s sister, lives. Faux wood panels line a dark interior, lit by a single bulb and by the glare from a television on which an old western movie is playing. There’s an easy chair in one corner and a couch draped with a bright blanket. A simple print of the Last Supper hangs on one wall. Swaddled in blankets, María reclines in a La-Z-Boy. She stirs when we come in.
Smiling broadly and saying, “Mira, mamá—Look, Mom,” Telesfor hands María the photographs. She makes a small sound of approval. He introduces me as “Don Usner, from the Ortegas of the plaza,” and she nods that she remembers la Benigna and the others. She doesn’t talk, but forces smile-like expressions as she takes my hand and grips it lightly. Her slight frame disappears in the folds of the blankets. Remarkably, she has few wrinkles and no gray hair. Telesfor tells me she is older than Narciso, but it can’t be by much.
Telesfor explains to me that María, a Trujillo by birth, married his father, Manuel Montoya, forging a link between the two large families. Manuel died in April of last year. Tele asks me to take some pictures of his mom and his Tío Nars, and he coaxes the two of them mug for me, María lifting her head from the recliner, Narciso leaning over and smiling, with his hat still on. With some effort, María manages a bright smile, too. Then Narciso moves to the couch, where he’s joined by his Chihuahua, Brownie, who’s been growling at me suspiciously the whole time.
Afeita un sapo, parecerá mancebo.
Shave a toad, and he will look like a handsome youth. (Appearances can be deceiving.)
Caballo chiquito, siempre potrillito.
Small horse, always a colt. (A petite person always looks younger than a large person.)
La cana engaña y la arruga desengaña.
Gray hair deceives but wrinkles tell the truth. (You might get gray hair prematurely, but wrinkles will always reveal your age.)
Si no hubiera malos gustos, pobrecitas de las feas.
If there were not bad taste, pity for the homely. (Homely people are fortunate that there are those who appreciate them despite their looks.)
Vale más fea y con gracia que linda y sin ella.
Better to be homely and charming than beautiful and without charm. (Beauty is skin-deep.)
Ya está viejo Pedro para cabrero.
Pedro is too old to be a goatherder. (Said of older people who are too ambitious.)
Ya no se compone ni con jabón de La Puebla.
That can’t be fixed even with soap from La Puebla. (Said of something that is so dirty or illegal, it can’t be made clean.)
Ya no se le compone el ojo a la tuerta.
It’s too late for the one-eyed lady’s eye to be fixed. (Said of someone who tries hard to be attractive, to no avail.)