Sandi Ault - Wild Penance

“Here!” he grunted. The sound was ahead and to my left, just beyond the downed viga.

I saw him then, in its shadow. He was sitting on the floor before the altar, which was covered with a woven cloth embroidered with small black skulls, like the one covering La Arca. On the altar stood a bulto of Saint Francis, another of the Holy Virgin, and a human skull. Manny was still, his expression pained. He was holding a huge crucifix, its face against his chest, the top of the cross extending at an angle over his head, the arms stretching as if to embrace and comfort him. The splintered base of the cross passed like a stake through his right leg and pinned him to the floor.

“Oh, no!” I screamed, and ran to him. I straddled his legs with my feet, bent my knees into a deep squat for leverage, and pulled up on the crucifix, extracting it from his flesh. Blood pooled in the hole left by the cross, and the shards of Manny’s broken femur poked through the leg of his pants. He looked up at me with fear in his face.

I loosened the knot in my muffler and pulled it off. It took some maneuvering, but I got it to pass under Manny’s thigh, and found it soaked with blood as I pulled the end through. I tied it off above the break, and the pool of blood stopped growing.

“We gotta get you out of here!” I urged, trying to figure out how I would lift a man twice my weight.

“I’m not going without the crucifix.” He coughed, and then gasped as he inhaled smoke.

I winced from the heat. There was no way I could lift that big cross and help him, too. “Manny, we have to get out of here!”

“Not without the crucifix!” he shouted. He pulled at the altar cloth behind him and dragged the bultos on it toward him. Again, he started coughing.

I looked around, frantic. Then I spotted a square table in the corner. I rushed to it, turned it upside down, and slid it across the floor. “Let’s get you on this.” I reached down to turn him around.

“I can get on it myself! You get the crucifix!” He gathered the two bultos and the skull into a bundle and tied the ends of the cloth around them. He pushed down with both his hands and raised himself slightly off the floor, turning himself as he did so. He repeated this movement, edging himself over the lip of the table’s framework and cried out in pain as his broken thigh met resistance. I moved to help again, and he barked at me, “Get the crucifix, or I swear to God I will get up and get it myself!” He pulled the bundle onto his lap.

I hoisted the great cross again and carefully placed it beside him, then moved to the other side of the table. I leaned forward and-using the power of my legs-pushed on the upturned frame, sliding Manny, one thrust at a time, across the floor toward the door. This worked surprisingly well. The smooth adobe floor offered only a little friction, and Manny was reaching out with his hands on the floor to help, pushing each time I pushed. We developed a wrenching rhythm, each of us throwing our pain-filled voices into it as we ahhed and ughed our way across the shrine. Each time I inhaled-heat searing my airways-I blew out hard, using the same force to contract my abdomen and give everything I had to the push.

Halfway across the floor, I had to stop. “Wait, wait!” I said, holding my sleeve over my face. My eyeballs felt like they were broiling. The room was an inferno; there was no air. A flaming torch of splintered wood rocketed out of nowhere, barely missing me, and I used this as impetus to move on. We pushed… breathed… pushed… and just as we reached the doorway, another viga began to cry out in pain.

I was dizzy from the smoke, hacking and gasping for air as we finally thrust outside. Heavy, wet snow had begun to fall and had already whitened the ground. I shoved one more time, and the table slid like a hockey puck on the snow. “The cart!” I yelled above the snap and roar of the flames. “Let’s get you on the cart!” I pushed him to it.

“ ¡No, señorita! No, that is the carreta de la muerte !”

I ignored him, picking up the crucifix and throwing it onto the cart. “Come on!” I yelled. “You’re getting on the cart!”

“Oh, Dios mío ,” he cried, “please forgive me!” He crossed himself, then he twisted himself to one side and rolled onto his one good knee and his two hands. The bundle fell from his lap and unfurled, the skull rolling away from him like a ball. I moved in close beside the useless leg and pulled beneath his arm. He was up. He hopped once and cried out as he did so. He eased himself backward onto the cart, which wobbled precariously as he put his weight down on it. I checked the tourniquet I had made, loosening it slightly. The blood began to pour. I tightened it up again and went off to catch Redhead.

I was panting. “Come on, girl.” I held out my hand to pick up her reins.

She volted to one side. She did not want to come, spooked by the fire.

I kept after her, whistling and talking as softly as I could and still be heard above the blaze. “Come here, baby!” I made a little clicking sound with my tongue.

She kept a pace or two ahead of me, torn between loyalty and fear. “Redhead, come on, girl.” The snow was accumulating so fast, soon none of us would be able to get out to the road. “Redhead. I need you.”

She stopped, fascinated with an expanse of drifting snow at her feet. I caught hold of her reins. She balked, but I led her back to the cart, soothing her as I went. “You’re such a good girl, yes, you are. I need you to help me, Redhead. I can’t do this without you. Don’t be afraid.”

The fire had stopped growing, and instead popped and spit like a huge crackling woodstove, the flames contained within the adobe shell. The vigas and wood furniture would have been all there was to consume in the earthen structure. A worse threat now was the relentless, pelting snow.

The horsehair harness attached to the front of the cart had been designed for a man to lash around himself at the chest and then over his shoulders several times, to feel its biting discomfort as he pulled the great weight in penance. I tugged frantically at these cuerdas, untwining them so that they would reach the length of a horse. Finally, I had a makeshift system, which I tied around the saddle horn. Manny had been moaning as I fought to untangle the cords, but now was silent. The tongue of the two-wheeled cart had been wedged between the arms of a short, F-shaped post. I turned the post to the side, freeing the tongue, and the cart immediately tipped backward, the tongue rising up in the air, Manny’s weight pulling the back of the cart down. Redhead complained loudly and began to stamp and try to free herself.

I went to her. Her eyes were gleaming black saucers. Her neck rippled with tremors. “Calm down, girl.” I patted her, pacified her. “Calm down. We’re going to make it out of here. Just calm down.” Then I went back to see if Manny could be moved forward. He lay on his back in the teetering cart, holding the crucifix again across his chest. The figure of Christ on the cross had slipped sideways and was dangling from just one wooden hand. Manny’s feet were hanging close to the ground. Blood dripped into the snow beneath them. He was unconscious.

I managed to use my weight on the tongue, and the begrudging cooperation of Redhead, to gradually turn the cart so that it could proceed away from the post. Then there was nothing to do but climb onto the front of the cart behind its driver to balance the weight. The carved wooden skeleton nailed to the seat of the cart grinned hideously from under the hood of her black cloth robe, her ribs protruding through its open front. She had long black human hair, garishly oversized human teeth, and eyes made from mother-of-pearl, which gleamed in the firelight. She held an ax in one hand, and her two long, bony legs dangled over the front of the cart. I stood behind her, my arms around her, and flapped the horsehair braids across Redhead’s rump to get her going. “Come on, baby! It’s just us two big, strong women now! Let’s do it.”