Bless Me, Ultima(3)

“Qué lástima,” my mother answered, and I knew her nimble fingers worked the pattern on the doily she crocheted for the big chair in the sala.

I heard her sigh, and she must have shuddered too when she thought of Ultima living alone in the loneliness of the wide llano. My mother was not a woman of the llano, she was the daughter of a farmer. She could not see beauty in the llano and she could not understand the coarse men who lived half their lifetimes on horseback. After I was born in Las Pasturas she persuaded my father to leave the llano and bring her family to the town of Guadalupe where she said there would be opportunity and school for us. The move lowered my father in the esteem of his compadres, the other vaqueros of the llano who clung tenaciously to their way of life and freedom. There was no room to keep animals in town so my father had to sell his small herd, but he would not sell his horse so he gave it to a good friend, Benito Campos. But Campos could not keep the animal penned up because somehow the horse was very close to the spirit of the man, and so the horse was allowed to roam free and no vaquero on that llano would throw a lazo on that horse. It was as if someone had died, and they turned their gaze from the spirit that walked the earth.

It hurt my father’s pride. He saw less and less of his old compadres. He went to work on the highway and on Saturdays after they collected their pay he drank with his crew at the Longhorn, but he was never close to the men of the town. Some weekends the llaneros would come into town for supplies and old amigos like Bonney or Campos or the Gonzales brothers would come by to visit. Then my father’s eyes lit up as they drank and talked of the old days and told the old stories. But when the western sun touched the clouds with orange and gold the vaqueros got in their trucks and headed home, and my father was left to drink alone in the long night. Sunday morning he would get up very crudo and complain about having to go to early mass.

“—She served the people all her life, and now the people are scattered, driven like tumbleweeds by the winds of war. The war sucks everything dry,” my father said solemnly, “it takes the young boys overseas, and their families move to California where there is work—”

“Ave Mariá Purisima,” my mother made the sign of the cross for my three brothers who were away at war. “Gabriel,” she said to my father, “it is not right that la Grande be alone in her old age—”

“No,” my father agreed.

“When I married you and went to the llano to live with you and raise your family, I could not have survived without la Grande’s help. Oh, those were hard years—”

“Those were good years,” my father countered. But my mother would not argue.

“There isn’t a family she did not help,” she continued, “no road was too long for her to walk to its end to snatch somebody from the jaws of death, and not even the blizzards of the llano could keep her from the appointed place where a baby was to be delivered—”

“Es verdad,” my father nodded.

“She tended me at the birth of my sons—” And then I knew her eyes glanced briefly at my father. “Gabriel, we cannot let her live her last days in loneliness—”

“No,” my father agreed, “it is not the way of our people.”

“It would be a great honor to provide a home for la Grande,” my mother murmured. My mother called Ultima la Grande out of respect. It meant the woman was old and wise.

“I have already sent word with Campos that Ultima is to come and live with us,” my father said with some satisfaction. He knew it would please my mother.

“I am grateful,” my mother said tenderly, “perhaps we can repay a little of the kindness la Grande has given to so many.”

“And the children?” my father asked. I knew why he expressed concern for me and my sisters. It was because Ultima was a curandera, a woman who knew the herbs and remedies of the ancients, a miracle-worker who could heal the sick. And I had heard that Ultima could lift the curses laid by brujas, that she could exorcise the evil the witches planted in people to make them sick. And because a curandera had this power she was misunderstood and often suspected of practicing witchcraft herself.

I shuddered and my heart turned cold at the thought. The cuentos of the people were full of the tales of evil done by brujas.

“She helped bring them into the world, she cannot be but good for the children,” my mother answered.

“Está bien,” my father yawned, “I will go for her in the morning.”

So it was decided that Ultima should come and live with us. I knew that my father and mother did good by providing a home for Ultima. It was the custom to provide for the old and the sick. There was always room in the safety and warmth of la familia for one more person, be that person stranger or friend.