Chapter 3

The hilltop hamlet of San Adriano was nothing more than a few small farmhouses and the twelfth-century pilgrim chapel. The Chapel of San Adriano, with its thick walls of uncut stones and little bronze bell hanging in a tiny, off-center bell tower, sat on the coastal route of the Camino de Santiago—the medieval Way of St. James. Pilgrims walking from Irún, in the Pyrenees, to Santiago de Compostela, 200 miles farther on in Galicia, had trod the dirt lane from Naveces and passed through the village for eight centuries. Each year on September 8, the feast day of San Adriano, people from across Castrillón made their own small pilgrimages to the chapel for the fiesta to honour the district’s patron saint.

Don Pelayo and the Moors was one of the boys’ favourite games. In 722, a Visigoth chieftain named Pelayo ambushed a Muslim expeditionary force in the Cantabrian mountains near a place called Covadonga. According to the legend, the Virgin Mary appeared before Pelayo and his men as they cowered up in a hillside cave. She assured them victory if he rallied his fighters and led them into battle carrying their priest’s wooden cross. Divine visitation or not, Pelayo and his pack of armed Asturian farmers found the courage to descend on the foraging Muslim soldiers, killing many and forcing the survivors’ retreat back into León, south of the mountains. The Battle of Covadonga marked the birth of the Kingdom of Asturias—the only part of the Iberian Peninsula not incorporated into the Umayyad Caliphate—and the beginning of the Reconquista. “Asturias is Spain,” the Asturians still like to say, “and the rest is just reconquered territory.”

* * *

San Adriano, Asturias

September 1891

“José! José!” Mercedes shouted at her brother when she saw him horsing around with some village boys in a small pasture on the hillside below the church. She had walked with Manolo, Noelia and their children along the winding, unpaved roads from their farm on this Tuesday morning to attend the annual festival of San Adriano, for whom the church and the village were named.

Luck had remained with Manolo and Noelia since that Sunday afternoon six years before, and Mercedes had as well. Anselmo and Carmen’s fortunes had slowly improved. However, they never felt confident enough about the next growing season to bring their niece back to live with them, and though neither of them would admit it aloud, relations with Bernardo were less complicated without Mercedes under their roof.

Bernardo still acted as if his only daughter did not exist. He never permitted her to visit the family farm called Las Cepas. But Carmen made sure Mercedes knew her brother José who still lived at the farm with their father. Her brothers Antonio, Ramón and Manuel were only characters in stories for Mercedes. They had gone to the Spanish colony of Cuba to seek their fortunes before she was born.

“José! José!” Mercedes cried more urgently as he kept playing with the boys. When they stopped to catch their breath, sweating profusely on the clear, sunny day, José saw Mercedes waving her arms and jumping up and down. He ran over to her.

“Hi, little rabbit!” José said, returning her tight embrace. He always used the moniker their Aunt Carmen gave Mercedes on the day she was born. “That’s a very pretty dress!”

“Noelia made it for me, for the fiesta!” she exclaimed, twirling around for her brother. It was the first new garment she had received in her life. Noelia made such a traditional dress for each of her daughters when they turned five. Mercedes’ fifth birthday, and then her sixth, passed without one, and it reinforced the sense of displacement she frequently experienced. When Noelia surprised her with the dress that morning, Mercedes stood for ten minutes in front of the mirror, admiring the dark green, deeply pleated skirt, the white, puffy-sleeved blouse, and the black pinafore which covered her shoulders and tied in a bow around her waist. She finally felt like a member of the family.

“It’s the prettiest I’ve seen all year,” José said.

Mercedes twirled again and beamed.

“So, they’re still being nice to you? Manuel and Noelia?” José asked.

“Oh, yes,” Mercedes said, patting her skirt straight and adjusting the bow of the pinafore. “I have my own bed off the kitchen, and I get all I want to eat. Noelia’s teaching me to read and write, and she made me this beautiful dress.”

“And the kids?” José asked. He had heard some stories.

“Mostly,” Mercedes replied. “Covadonga isn’t very nice to me anymore, but the others are, and I just stay away from her as much as I can.” Mercedes could tell how Covadonga’s behavior irritated her brother. She was not eager to stoke his quick anger, but she did wish he would find her tormenter and throw her into the nearest manure pile.

“You should tell Aunt Carmen next time you see her,” José said. “She’ll talk to Noelia about it.”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t do that,” Mercedes said. “I don’t want Noelia and Manuel to make me leave. I like it there with them.”

José grunted and looked around the increasingly crowded festival. Everyone they knew was there, most of them wearing the best articles of clothing they owned to honour San Adriano.

“Have you seen the cows yet?” he asked, turning his attention back to his sister. “There are some beauties up there at the fair.” He pointed up the hill toward the cluster of houses. “Papa has entered one of ours in the competition, and I’m sure she’ll win!”

The mention of Bernardo doused Mercedes’ bright mood. “Is he here, too?” she whispered, her eyes darting over the crowd along the far side of the churchyard where the boys had been playing. She hoped to catch a glimpse of her father, and she hoped not to at the same time.

“Oh, he’s around somewhere,” José said. “Probably on his fifth bottle of cider by know. You know how he is.”

She did not, actually. Not in the first person.

“Hey, why don’t you come down to the stream with us,” José said, trying to lighten her mood again. “Munch thinks he’s found an old stone fortress in the woods, and we’re going to play Don Pelayo and the Moors.”

“No,” the dejected Mercedes said. “If I go to the woods, I may ruin my new dress.”

“Oh, come on,” José insisted. “Ramón just sent me this shirt from Havana, and I’ve already torn it!”

The mention of one of the brothers she had never known—and one who sent gifts, but not to her—only made Mercedes feel worse. “Thanks, José, but I’d better go find Noelia. She’ll be cross if I miss the mass.”

“Hey, José! Are you coming?” Munch shouted from the edge of the woods. “Or are you just going to stand there yakking with your orphan baby sister all day?”

“Shut your mouth,” José yelled back.

“Why don’t you come over here and shut it for me?” Munch taunted.

José turned to Mercedes, who was stricken by the succinct verbalization of her familial circumstances. Her face was crinkling up to cry. José turned his burning eyes to Munch, who was laughing and stoking on the other boys. He looked back to his sister.

“You pay that loudmouth no mind, Mercedes,” José said. He hugged her stiff, skinny body.

She loved that he cared about her, but at that moment, José’s embrace did not make Mercedes feel any better. And his eruptions of anger, though never unleashed on her, always frightened Mercedes. The summer before, she had seen him beat a boy bloody over a practical joke he played on José.

“Look at him now!” Munch laughed to the boys, shouting loudly enough for José to hear. “Maybe he should just go play with the girls.”

“You’re going to pay!” José shouted back over his shoulder. To Mercedes he said, as calmly as possible: “Go on now and find Noelia and the kids, and have some fun at the fiesta. Mrs. Álvarez is selling her almond pastries, and I’m sure she’ll give you one if you ask.” The rich, almond paste pastries called carbayones were one of his sister’s favourites. “You know how much she liked mama,” he added.

“Okay, José,” Mercedes mumbled, her eyes downcast. She was disappointed that her happy day had soured so quickly, and that her time with José was clipped short. “See you later.”

“Yes, see you soon, little rabbit,” José said, giving her one last quick hug before sprinting across the pasture to pummel Munch, who had already taken flight into the trees.

Mercedes climbed the hill to the chapel forecourt, which was enclosed by a semi-circular stone wall, and threaded through the worshippers chatting and lingering outside. She entered the chapel and sat on the top stone step, leaning back against the opened door. Mercedes again smoothed the pleats of her green skirt. She stared hard at the resplendent statue of the Virgin of Covadonga, the patron saint of Asturias, adorned in a red and white cloak and bejewelled crown. The painted wooden Madonna stood on a platform at the altar rail, its base wreathed in freshly-cut white and yellow flowers. Mercedes’ anguish eased. Sitting in a church and marveling at the saints always comforted her.

The live Covadonga, Manolo and Noelia’s oldest daughter, came rushing in after a while and saw Mercedes sitting on the cool, grey slab of stone. “Mercedes!” she said sharply. “We’ve been looking all over for you. Mama is terrified we’d lost you!” Grabbing her firmly by the upper arm, Covadonga pulled Mercedes to her feet.

“Ow!” Mercedes cried. “That hurts!”

“Stop whining, you little brat,” Covadonga barked. “You come with me this instant, and stop making trouble!” Covadonga dragged her outside and up the hill toward the village.

When Mercedes saw Mrs. Álvarez and her pastry stand, she tried to pull away from Covadonga. “I want to get a carbayon,” she squealed.

“And what do you plan to pay for it with?” Covadonga asked. She tightened her grip on Mercedes’ arm. “Or did my mother give you some pesetas to go with that new dress?”

“I won’t have to pay anything for it!” Mercedes yelled, thrashing around trying to free herself. “She was friends with my mama, and she’ll give me one.”

“Oh, your mama! I’m sick and tired of hearing about your dead mama, and about poor, abandoned little Mercedes!”

At that, her hatred of Covadonga leaping to a new level of intensity, Mercedes bit the girl hard on the wrist. Covadonga recoiled and turned her loose. “You little viper!” she shouted as Mercedes ran off down the hill.

Mercedes tore across the pasture as quickly as she could run and disappeared into the woods, looking for her brother José.

* * *

In 1895, when he was fifteen years old, José boarded a ship in the Asturian port town of Gijón and followed his brothers to Cuba. Two years later he was dead, killed in a fight with three other Asturian migrants over a dispute about money. Though José had fled Bernardo, he could not so easily leave the rage behind. He went to his Caribbean grave with raw knuckles and a knife wound to his heart.

Twelve-year-old Mercedes was living in Naveces, working as a house maiden for a different family. She wept for three days when word arrived that the only brother she’d known was gone.

* * *

West Virginia, USA

July 1976

Robert was terrified. As he lay flat in the center of his bed, he felt as if an icy electric current was racing through his eight-year-old body, down his back and legs, up his arms and through his shoulders, and back down again.

Robert loved his new bedroom in the daytime. His parents let him choose the scarlet carpet and navy blue colour for the walls, as well as the ceiling light with its baseball globe and three miniature Louisville Slugger bats at the top. He liked the big window looking out at the woods near ground level, through which he could watch the birds flutter and squirrels scurry. He even liked the windowless storage room through the door on the wall opposite the window, into which he could retreat. He would close the door, and sit in the silence to read by the light of the single bulb mounted on the wall beneath the staircase.

But at night, his bedroom became a chamber of imaginary horrors. He thought over and over of how easily someone could look in the window at him, or break in and carry him off into the dark woods. He worried that vampires lurked in the storage room and that some terrible creature skulked under the bed, waiting to grab him if a hand or foot broke the vertical plane of the sides of the mattress.

Two nights before, he had braved the creature’s grasp as he leapt from the bed and went down the hall to tell his parents he was scared. His father had come back with him to the room and turned on the light, showing him that there was nothing under the bed or in the storage room and that the window was locked. Robert could not go back into their room again tonight. He felt they would be angry and disappointed, and he feared that worse than abduction or vampires.

So there he lay: flat because he could not bear to turn his back either to the window on his left or the door to the storage room on his right, and in the center of the bed so the creature below could not reach up with its scaly, clawed hand and grab him. He tucked the blanket tightly up to his ears so the vampires could not get to his neck. Somehow, he managed to sleep.

He woke to the scent of bacon frying and the sound of The Today Show on the television in the kitchen upstairs. The summer morning sunlight was greenish filtering through the trees out the window. He loved his room.

“Hey, mammaw,” Robert said as he climbed onto the stool at the breakfast bar in the kitchen.

“Hey, Robby,” his grandmother Virginia said, flipping the bacon sizzling in the pan. There had not been a case of trichinosis in West Virginia in decades, but she still fried all pork until it was the consistency of chalk. It was just as Virginia’s mother did on the farm before she died, when Virginia was Robert’s age. “I thought you were going to sleep all morning,” she said to her grandson. “You want some bacon and eggs?”

“Yes, please,” Robert said enthusiastically, “with toast and jelly.” He watched the little television on the kitchen counter as his grandmother prepared his breakfast. His parents, Brenda and Tom, both worked full-time. Virginia had taken care of him every weekday since he was a baby. She had never learned to drive, so her husband Sam brought her to Tom and Brenda’s house in the mornings and collected her in the evenings after Brenda arrived home.

In addition to caring for Robert, Virginia cleaned the house, did the laundry and ironing, and often started preparing the family’s dinner. During the school year, she also packed his lunchbox, but now it was summer break. Usually, they ate sandwiches together for lunch while watching the first of Virginia’s afternoon soap operas.

After Robert finished his breakfast, he changed from his pyjamas and bounded outside. At the bottom of the big, sloping back yard stood a soaring, old, oak tree. Its thick roots spread out from the base of its fat trunk along the ground. The tree was one of his favourite places. Even the hottest August day seemed to be cool under its thick canopy.

Robert unpacked his Matchbox cars from their vinyl valise and went to the woods to collect as much moss as he could carry. Then he went back for twigs. He spent the morning digging tunnels under the tree’s roots and constructing a town from the twigs and moss. He drove the cars along the roads he had built and imagined all manner of activities in the settlement. Robert did not want to come inside when Virginia called him to lunch, so she brought his sandwich and cherry Kool-Aid to him.

At four o’clock, she came back down from the house. “Look! Look, mammaw!” Robert shouted when she was halfway across the yard. “Look at my town!” He pushed around some of the cars for her, demonstrating every tunnel and bridge and explaining the functions of all the stick-and-moss buildings.

“That’s very nice, Robby. You’ve built some place there,” Virginia said. She adored the boy and loved the summers when he was around every day. “But it’s time to come in and get cleaned up. Your mommy’ll be home soon. You can play down here again tomorrow.”

Robert packed up his cars and followed Virginia up the hill to the house. He rarely complained or disobeyed his parents. “You are such a good boy, I love you very much,” they had told him frequently all his life. They did not intentionally link the two—being good and being loved—but that was the message which Robert unconsciously internalized.

After his bath, Robert lay on his belly on the family room floor and watched reruns of Gilligan’s Island and The Munsters as he waited for Brenda and Tom to return from work and for Sam to come for Virginia.