Bill Pronzini - Beyond the Grave

“Right away. We can read the new ones together.” I looked at my watch. It was nearly three. Suddenly a flat feeling stole over me, the kind you get when you're anticipating something exciting and then realize how long it's going to be before it happens. Sam must have felt the same way, because he sighed and stood up, looking gloomy.

“Time for the Russian and French aggressions,” he said.

“And I think I'll go up to the ruins of the pueblo and commune with the spirits-if any are left there.”

He followed me to the front door. “Were you planning to ask Arturo to go along?”

“Yes. How did you know?”

“He told me you had mentioned doing that. He seemed to be looking forward to it.” Sam's eyes held a gleam-the same gleam my mother's get when she thinks some man might be interested in me.

I decided to ignore the insinuation and only said, “I'm looking forward to it, too.”

After promising a second time to bring the documents up to Las Lomas as soon as they arrived, I said good-bye to Sam and started across the square toward Arturo's log cabin. The day was warm and sunny, the air redolent of spring blossoms and new-mown grass. In the far corner of the weedy, overgrown area, a woman and two small girls squatted on the ground; they had cleared a patch and turned the earth, and the woman was showing the children how to plant seeds. I watched for a moment as they carefully measured out the contents of the little paper packets and placed them in the furrows, patting the dirt over them with chubby hands. I'd done the same thing as a child, and the wait until the first green shoots poked up into view had seemed unbearably long-much as the wait for Carpenter and Quincannon's files did now.

When I was halfway to Arturo's, I saw Gray Hollis come out of Marshall's grocery store clutching a paper bag that showed the outline of a liquor bottle. He walked with his head down, feet scuffing the hard-packed earth, and as he came closer I saw that his chin was stubbled, his hair greasy, his clothes dirty and wrinkled. Hearing my footsteps, he glanced up; his eyes widened in surprise, and then he nodded a curt greeting and kept on going.

I'd known men like Gray Hollis before-some of my relatives and their neighbors in the East L.A. barrio-who had been beaten down by disappointment and poverty or shattered by the loss of a loved one. They'd worked hard at destroying themselves, sinking lower and lower until one day they hit the stony bottom. Then their lives would go one of two ways: Either they'd pick themselves up and start putting themselves together, or-like my cousin Tom, the one who was now getting out of prison-they'd wallow until some final disaster finished them off. I wondered how soon Gray would hit that bottom and which way he would then choose.

As I crossed the street and started along the opposite side, I saw Dora Kingman in her garden. She was standing just behind the picket fence, one hand shading her eyes, looking at Gray's retreating figure. When she saw me, she let her hand drop and gave me a slight, nervous smile. “Elena, how are you? What brings you here?”

“I dropped in on Sam, to give him some documents and ask more advice about the research I'm doing into the Velasquez family. And now I'm on my way to ask Arturo if he wants to go up to the old ruins with me.”

Dora frowned. “I think I saw him ride out of town on his motor scooter about an hour ago, but he might be back by now. I don't see everything that goes on.”

Not everything, I thought, but most things that concern Gray Hollis. “Well, I'll stop by his place anyway.”

“Yes, do that. Arturo needs friends; it would help him overcome his shyness if someone took an interest. And when you pass by here again, I'll give you some tomato seedlings. They're quite hardy this year, and I've got more than I need.”

I thanked her and continued down the street to where the log cabin stood under a sycamore tree. It was only about twenty-feet-square and looked primitive, with its rough, peeling bark and overgrown roof, but there was a plastic bubble skylight protruding from the mossy vegetation. Like most artists, Arturo might be on the edge of starvation, but what money he made was invested in the practice of his craft; I'd never known a painter yet who would skimp on acquiring the necessary light.

Dora had been right about Arturo not being home. When he didn't answer my knocks, I gave in to my natural nosiness and went along the side of the cabin and peeked in one window. It was curtained in blue-and-white-checked material that looked like it had once been a tablecloth, but there was a space where the two sides didn't quite meet. Through it I could see a rough pine table covered with painting supplies and an easel that sat directly under the skylight. There was no canvas on the easel, although there were a number of them in varying sizes turned face to the wall. To one side was the edge of what looked like a wood stove, but otherwise I could tell nothing about the interior of the cabin. Probably Arturo lived spartanly; most good artists I knew seemed to care little about creature comforts; the work was the all-important core of their existence.

I turned from the window, realizing I was being as nosy as Dora Kingman, and started back toward Sam's house, where I'd left my car. Fortunately Dora had gone inside, so I wasn't obligated to accept any tomato seedlings, which-hardy or not-would surely die from my inattention. The mother and daughters had finished planting their garden and were observing it with satisfaction, hands on hips, the girls' stances miniature replicas of the woman's. Gray Hollis was nowhere in sight. When I got into my car, I could hear the reluctant tapping of typewriter keys from Sam's front room. I started the VW and drove out of town, leaving Las Lomas to its daily business.

The ruins of the church of San Anselmo de las Lomas reflected a white-hot glare in the afternoon sun. As I approached the stark adobe wall, I waded through the knee-high wildflowers, smelling their oddly bitter fragrance. It was hushed there on the hill; the only sounds were an occasional birdcall and a constant, reedy whisper as the wind blew through the leaves and tall grass. It had been warm in the village, but now I felt a chill in the air and gripped my bare arms above the elbow, trying to insulate myself.

I rounded the rear wall of the church and stopped by the crumbling foundation, once again attempting to picture the building as it had stood in 1846. The other day, by narrowing my eyes and viewing the scene through the haze of my lashes, I'd been able to raise the walls and bell tower and the cross crowning the red-tiled peak. Today, however, that didn't work; all I saw were the blurred outlines of the church's lonely remains.

A gust of wind swept across the foundations, rippling the vegetation that carpeted the cracked brick of the church floor. It tossed the tall grass in the adjacent graveyard, revealing the weathered granite tips of a few stones. Unbidden, the haunting words that Quincannon had found on the scrap of paper in Luis Cordova's dead hand echoed in my mind: “Mas alia del sepulcro … donde Maria.…”

I said them aloud, hearing their compelling rhythm, feeling their shape on my tongue. Released into the silence around me, they reverberated hollowly, and I clutched my elbows tighter, suddenly afraid, as if the words themselves had a dark, magical power. Then I started toward the graveyard.

The largest of the stones-cracked granite crowned with a dirty marble crucifix-marked the resting place of Don Esteban Velasquez. I knelt and brushed aside the thick blades of grass and foxtails so I could read the inscription: EN ESPIRITU ADMIRABLE. Great in spirit.

Several feet away from this stone was another, simpler one: Padre Urbano, UN HOMBRE BUENO Y RELIGIOSO. The date of death on the stone was the same as that on Don Esteban's. There were other graves, also plain ones, with inscriptions such as CRIADO FIEL-faithful servant-and TRABAJADOR BUENO-good worker. And there were two tiny markers, telling of the early deaths of Juan Gerardo and Manuel Nicolas Velasquez-Felipe's brothers, whose names had been inscribed in the family Bible. These reminders of days when many of one's sons and daughters did not survive to adulthood were finely carved, each topped with a marble angel whose chipped, upturned face was meant to inspire hope of a better life mas alia del sepulcro . I stood staring from one to the other for a long time, the haunting phrases once again pulsing through my brain.