The Almanac of the Dead: A Novel Read online

  Lecha had easily identified their father in the waiting room of the bus depot. He was standing apart from the rest, in starched khakis, polished half Wellingtons, reading The Wall Street Journal, Far East edition. Lecha had laughed. He did not disdain the poor Indians in the bus depot so much as they simply did not exist for him. He had never associated Amalia with the Indians; as far as he was concerned, she had been white. Lecha had always joked that if their mother and they had been chunks of iron feldspar, he would have been far more engaged, far more excited than he had ever been. Zeta was not so sure. Their father had been almost sixty when they were born. When he came to Potam to survey the ore formations and new shafts, he always took the girls along. That had been their visit, their time together with him. Lecha had been the one who had gone running to him with the chunk of iron feldspar in her hand. Zeta had watched from a distance.

  He had taken the dark, heavy rock and had pretended or perhaps had examined it, but without any interest. Lecha had not let his lack of response interfere with her excitement over the glitter and sparkle in the stone. But Zeta had realized then nothing there mattered to him—not the shafts or the ore samples red-tagged for him by the mine foreman, not Lecha’s excitement; though Zeta did believe he was concerned with relieving his sense of duty. After the separation, their grandpa Guzman had maintained the mining engineer had married their mother because he had been worried the partners had become dissatisfied with him and were about to hire a new geologist.

  The rumors and reports had arrived in Canenea that while the mining engineer could still name the formations and the ore-bearing stones and rocks, and could recite all of the known combinations for that particular area, his calculations on the maps for known deposits and veins had been wrong; he had directed the miners to nothing. When other geologists had been called to evaluate his projections and the samples and assay results, they could find no fault with his work. They could not account for the absence of ore in the depths and areas he had designated. They had of course been reluctant to pass judgment upon a “brother”; the geologists had discussed at length the “scientific anomaly.”

  Yoeme said the veins of silver had dried up because their father, the mining engineer himself, had dried up. Years of dry winds and effects of the sunlight on milky-white skin had been devastating. Suddenly the man had dried up inside, and although he still walked and talked and reasoned like a man, inside he was crackled, full of the dry molts of insects. So their silent father had been ruined, and everyone had blamed Yoeme. But Lecha and Zeta had sensed the truth years earlier. They had both felt it when they walked with him and he had lifted them into his arms: somewhere within him there was, arid and shriveled, the imperfect vacuum he called himself.

  Yoeme had been contemptuous of the innuendos about witchcraft. What did these stupid mestizos—half no-brain white, half worst kind of Indian—what did these last remnants of wiped-out tribes littering the earth, what did they know?

  Yoeme had not wasted a bit of energy on Amalia’s ex-husband. The geologist had been perfectly capable of destroying himself. His ailment had been common among those who had gone into caverns of fissures in the lava formations; the condition had also been seen in persons who had been revived from drowning in a lake or spring with an entrance to the four worlds below this world. The victim never fully recovered and exhibited symptoms identical to those of the German mining engineer. Thus, Yoeme had argued, witchcraft was not to blame. The white man had violated the Mother Earth, and he had been stricken with the sensation of a gaping emptiness between his throat and his heart.

  Zeta could feel an empty space inside her rib cage, an absence that had been growing even before their mother died. She felt a peculiar sadness when she remembered their father, the detached white man who smiled and spoke and who was a dead man already.

  BOARDING SCHOOL

  ZETA HAD HOPED she might be with her father long enough to learn something more about the emptiness inside her. But the day she and Lecha stepped off the bus in Tucson, Zeta had seen it was too late. Their father had already purchased their train tickets to El Paso. He had greeted them formally, holding them both to his chest awkwardly, his body and arms rigid. He was pleased to see them both looking so well. He did not know how to express his condolences to them at the loss of their mother, but they must not worry. That subject finished, he had directed the porter to a taxi with their trunks and boxes. Driving to the hotel, he had told them he regretted the boarding school in El Paso was run by Catholic nuns, but there had been no other choice unless the girls went East to school. He told them he thought God was of no use. They had rooms at the Santa Rita Hotel if they did not want to spend school vacations with him at the ranch west of Tucson. He preferred the Santa Rita himself. Money had been deposited for them in a bank in El Paso. The mother superior would see that they got their school uniforms and whatever else they might need.

  They had waited three days for the next train to El Paso. Their father had not left his room until late afternoon each day when he met them in the hotel lobby. He had said nothing about restrictions, but the girls had felt shy about walking alone in downtown Tucson, which was so much larger than Potam. He never smiled or spoke, merely nodding in the direction of the hotel restaurant. His forehead was continually wrinkled and his pale gray eyes intent as if he were working constantly to solve a mathematical formula even while he sat with them and soaked bread in his coffee.

  Zeta had tried to guess what it was that filled their father’s head so full. She began to awaken before dawn and hear small muffled sounds—the creak of a chair, the opening of a drawer—sounds of a man who no longer slept. He had not invited them to his room. Lecha wanted to see because she thought the clues might be there. She had ruled out women and love affairs immediately, but confided that strange philosophies or religions might be responsible. Zeta had felt a surge of anger in her chest at Lecha’s stupidity. “It isn’t anything. There’s nothing. You won’t find anything,” she snapped as Lecha had started for his room. When he had opened the door, Zeta saw he did not recognize them immediately. Lecha was looking past him into the room and did not see this. Zeta felt her heart fall in her chest. The bed had not been slept in. The pillows and spread had not been touched since the hotel maid. The black wire hangers in the closet nook were empty. He had been sitting at the small desk. The desk top was bare, although for an instant Zeta had mistaken cigarette scars along the edges for a pattern of decoration. “Where is everything?” Lecha said, walking around and around the small room impatiently. Their father had turned as if he suffered from stiffness in the neck and shoulders. He had begun to hunch under long, unkempt white hair. They had always spoken English with him since he had never been able to learn Spanish. But Lecha had had to repeat the question twice before he could answer. “Everything?” he had said in a steady voice. “I am trying to think about it,” he had answered. The farewell at the train station had been brief. Staring past them into the distance their father had announced, “You will never see me again. I am going to die. My life has never interested me much. I think about myself and this room. The longer I think the less I understand.”

  Zeta had never forgotten the room. She had gone back, years later, to the desk clerk at the Santa Rita Hotel, to ask if she might look at a certain room on the third floor. She had been dressed in her business suit, hose, and heels carrying her briefcase. She could not remember the room number and had to take the elevator up to find it. The desk clerk had informed her the room was already taken.

  But she had returned, and from time to time she rented Room 312. She did not care what the clerk or bellboy thought. She spent afternoons sitting at the desk. The wall behind the desk had been plastered and painted many times. She sat and stared at it and was soothed by the emptiness.

  DRIED-UP CORPSE

  THE NOTE HE left had said simply, “This should have been done years ago.” He had done “it” in this room. The mother superior refused to give them any details. The relat
ives at the big house in Potam had known nothing of his death until months later when Lecha told them. Zeta had to smile at the mystery. Her father had not used a necktie or belt. Zeta had searched old county records to know. The report said he had simply sat at his chair not eating or drinking. It had been as if he had consumed himself. When he had been discovered by the hotel maid, he was not a swollen corpse, nor was there a terrible odor. He had been as dry and shriveled as a cactus blown down in a drought. Zeta had laughed: “He sounds like one of those saints that don’t decay!” The report noted the condition of the corpse had been somewhat unusual. The corpse had begun to mummify, possibly, the coroner had theorized, because of the dry summer heat and the circumstances of the death. The report included autopsy results. Zeta could not make much of these technical notations, but the coroner’s assistant had noted the deceased’s body weight. “All that was left of him was fifty pounds,” Zeta told Lecha later.

  Their father had left them a ranch in the Tucson Mountains. The land was worth next to nothing. Even in the best years, many many hundreds of acres were required to keep a few cattle from starving. The mountains were all that had remained of a giant volcano that had exploded parts of itself as far east as New Mexico and as far north as Phoenix. Every square foot of the remaining foothills was covered with rock—volcanic rock, ash, and combinations of volcanic material fused with molten limestone and sandstone blown up with the molten rock. At one time, he had told them, the area had interested him immensely, because the explosion had been one of the more rare sort—alkaline rather than acidic. The day he had hired a taxi and driven them to the site, he had had the look of an exhausted man performing a chore. He had not looked at the rocky ground though he was describing highly technical rock conglomerates created by the intense heat of the explosion. When he had pointed to the south and north, where old mining claims marked ore outcroppings, he had been looking at the sky, not at the bluish-gray veins of ore-bearing rock. The girls had gathered that he meant to make a study of the area and of the relationships between the particular sort of volcanic explosion and the deposits of silver, copper and galena. But it was also very clear that he had lost whatever interest he had once had in the geology of the mountains. Now he preferred his room at the Santa Rita Hotel.

  “This will be yours,” their father had said as they walked back to the taxi. The driver had been under the car poking at the tail pipe and mumbling about rough road. “I did not buy it for ranching. Eighty acres isn’t enough to raise anything. But, I suppose, it is something. Or maybe it isn’t.”

  COYOTE YEARS

  THE INTERVENING YEARS was a phrase Zeta liked because it described nearly her whole life. She and her twin sister had turned sixty in March. “The month the wild flowers blossom,” their mother had said one day when old Yoeme was there. Yoeme said, “Yes, the same month the coyotes whelp,” and burst out laughing, anxious to see what the twins would say. Lecha had answered right back, “Well, Grandma, that means you yourself are a coyote with us!” To which Yoeme had clapped her hands, but their mother had looked upset because it had already become clear that her twin daughters listened far too much to the wild old Yaqui woman.

  Coyote might best describe the intervening years—Lecha constantly traveling, from lover to lover and city to city. Lecha’s best stunt had been the birth of Ferro one Friday morning; by Sunday noon Lecha had been on a plane to Los Angeles, leaving Zeta with her new baby.

  Lecha had sworn the trip was very important and she had promised to return no later than “Tuesday.” But Lecha had never said which Tuesday, and Zeta did not see or hear from Lecha again until the following year.

  When Zeta had asked her why she did not at least call collect or send a postcard, Lecha had said that she was sorry and she knew that she should have but she just didn’t. “I thought maybe you might think about the baby,” Zeta had continued, interested in her twin’s excuse. “Oh, the baby!” Lecha had exclaimed as if she had completely forgotten. “Where is he? What do you call him?” By then Zeta had left town and had moved into the old ranch buildings to take advantage of the remote location for her work with Calabazas and the others. Calabazas had found an old widow from his neighborhood who wanted nothing more than to sit all day holding a baby and rocking in a chair as long as there was plenty of food and clean diapers. Later when Ferro was a fatty and suffered teasing from the other children, Lecha had blamed the old widow for always stuffing Ferro’s mouth with food.

  Right then Zeta had told Lecha that unless she planned on staying around or taking the baby with her, she had better keep her mouth shut. “Well, you don’t have to get so mad!” Lecha had said, and from that time on they had not discussed Ferro again.

  Coyote years certainly described Zeta’s time with Mexico Tours and Mr. Coco. When members of tour groups had asked Zeta why they did not run tours farther south or to other Mexican states, she used to look them in the eye and answer calmly that she did not know. She had begun to make it her business not to answer questions when the answers did not truly matter anyway. What difference did it make why Mexico Tours and Mr. Coco did not venture farther south than Guaymas or Chihuahua City? Lecha could have had ten different answers for that question: that Mr. Coco was running things other than just tours or Mr. Coco had committed crimes farther south and could not safely send his clients farther or the old Greyhounds he buys and repaints parrot yellow can go no farther without major breakdowns.

  Mr. Coco had been a light gray color without his clothes. He had sat in the armchair in his office watching her undress. All Zeta had been able to think about were the staples, coarse sand, and other debris on the rug beside his desk. She had known when he promoted her to tour coordinator that this moment was somewhere on the horizon. Mr. Coco had only two suits: a winter suit of black flannel and a summer suit of blue, pin-striped seersucker. He wore one until the weather changed, and by then, the sleeves of the coat would be stiff at the wrists with oily dirt. The trousers would be blotched where Mr. Coco had compulsively wiped the palms of his hands across his own thighs. One sunny morning in March at the beginning of the hot Tucson spring, Zeta saw that Mr. Coco had changed suits. He had just promoted her from the diesel fumes, the chattering tourists, and the drunken bus drivers who stared at her breasts. But after she had undressed, Mr. Coco remained in the armchair merely staring at her breasts. Between his legs in its nest of white pubic hair, the penis lay like a pale grub or caterpillar. It did not move. Although this was to be her first encounter with a man other than Uncle Federico and his fat, dirty fingers, Zeta felt nothing. No fear, no embarrassment, no horror at standing naked in the dingy sales office of Mexico Tours, at five-thirty on a Friday afternoon. The swamp cooler droned in the window behind her and emitted periodic drips into a flat pan on the floor.

  The sound of the water leaking out of the cooler seemed to arouse him. They had both known all day this would happen. He opened his arms in a gesture Zeta took as an invitation to sit in his lap. The armchair was ragged and filthy, but it had deep cushions. Zeta had never been a small woman, and when she crawled into his lap, facing him, he sank so low in the chair his lips barely reached her nipples. It seemed like a lot of exertion bouncing around on his lap, having to brace herself against the chair arms with both her knees and her elbows. Mr. Coco moaned and groaned and nibbled away at her breasts. Zeta thought she should feel some revulsion, but she did not. She felt sweaty and her legs were cramped, but nothing about the scene was remarkable. She had not expected it would be any different.

  Lecha claimed sex put a new odor on you. Well, it had got the bus drivers off her. The drivers knew only Mexico Tours would employ them. They assumed Zeta belonged to the boss after that. Mr. Coco himself had been subdued. Zeta pretended not to notice. He had a wife. Zeta realized somehow she had emerged from the Friday-afternoon fucking with a considerable measure of new power. It had been the power that had attracted Calabazas. He said so. He said he had been waiting to see how the twin beauties of Potam were goi
ng to do in the big city of Tucson. Himself, he had gotten out of Sonora years earlier. “Because you are much older than us,” Lecha had teased. He was a clan brother who had invited himself to dinner. He was after both of them. They both looked at him as if he were crazy. Lecha said she had a date and she left. Over the years Calabazas had learned a great deal, but not about women.

  Now it was only Calabazas and Zeta. “It’s about time your job worked for you,” he said, lighting up a Lucky Strike and blowing smoke rings as he spoke. “I know good people who want to make arrangements.”

  “Arrangements?” Zeta looked closely at him.

  In those days Calabazas had been handsome and wild. Calabazas had been working with their clanspeople and relatives in Sonora. His pants pocket was fat with cash. When Lecha had pointed at the wad, Calabazas laughed and pretended it was his cock. “You can get this for yourselves anytime,” he had joked, meaning the money as well as sex.

  As soon as Zeta had become acquainted with the people Calabazas worked with in Mexico, she had saved up a bankroll to work a few deals of her own. Calabazas should have expected Zeta to pull a stunt like that, Lecha had confided later. Her sister was not to be trusted. Zeta had quit both Mexico Tours and Calabazas at the same time. She had taken two of the bus drivers with her, leaving Mr. Coco in his sour black suit, looking stunned as she told him she was bored with smuggling live green parrots and fake Rolex watches across the border in the bellies of tour buses.

  AT WAR WITH THE U.S. GOVERNMENT

  YOEME HAD GUESSED immediately what Zeta was doing with her tour bus business and her partnership with Calabazas. When Yoeme had exclaimed “You will be a rich woman!” Zeta had only shrugged her shoulders. Zeta realized old Yoeme was leading her on, setting Zeta up for a tirade. Old Yoeme had made a big point of shaming those who would sell the last few objects of the people who had been destroyed and worlds that had been destroyed by the Europeans. Yoeme had looked Zeta right in the eye when she said it. Yoeme said that the work that faced Lecha had been made more difficult because from time to time, weakhearted keepers of the old almanac had sold off pages here and there for frivolous reasons.