Philipp Meyer - The Son

I stood there with the door open, expecting her to draw a pistol, or rush with a knife, but she didn’t move. She was smaller than I remembered, her clothes ragged, sun-beaten, beyond worn, her skin leather over bone, scabs on her face where she had fallen or been struck. Her hands hung at her sides as if she did not have the energy to lift them.

I tried to recall her age, thirty-three or — four, except she would be older now… I remembered her as a pretty girl, small with dark eyes; she now looked her mother’s age. Her nose had been broken and it had set crooked.

“I came to see our house,” she said. “I was hoping to find my birth certificate.” She shrugged. “Of course they assume I’m not a citizen when I try to cross.”

I looked away from her. There was something troubling about her accent — she had spent four years at a women’s college — compared with the way she looked.

“You may have trouble finding it,” I said quietly, referring to the birth certificate.

“Yes, I saw.”

Still I could not look at her.

“I’m very hungry,” she said. “Unfortunately…”

Every time I tried to lift my eyes, they wouldn’t. It was quiet and I realized she was waiting for me to say something.

“I’ll try at the Reynoldses’,” she said.

“No,” I said. “Come in.”

SHE HAS BEEN living in Torreón for two years with a cousin, but the cousin was a Carrancista and the Villistas had come to his house and killed him, then beaten up María and the cousin’s wife, perhaps done worse. What money she had was long spent and she had been on the road for nearly a month. Finally she’d decided there was nothing else to do but come back here. She reminded me, several times, that she was an American citizen. I know that, I told her. Though of course she looks as Mexican as anyone else.

Was it polite to offer condolences for her family? Probably the opposite. I didn’t say anything. We stood in the kitchen as I heated beans and carne asada, some tortillas Consuela had made, my hands shaking. I could feel her eyes on my back. The beans began to burn and finally she pushed me aside. I smiled at her, I didn’t usually do this sort of thing, but she didn’t smile back. As the beans were stewing she cut some tomatoes and onions and a few peppers and mixed them together.

“If you will excuse me, I am quite hungry.”

“Of course. I have a few things to do upstairs.”

She nodded, not taking her eyes off me, not touching the food until I’d left.

I SAT IN my study as if all the life had been sucked out of me… all the energy I’d once had, my years at university, smashed against the rocks of this place. I nearly picked up the phone to call the sheriff to come remove her, though what my reason would be, I couldn’t say. We had killed her family, burned her house, stolen her land… she ought to be calling the sheriff on us… she ought to have shown up at our door with a hundred men, rifles cocked.

I considered climbing out the window onto the roof of the gallery — it was only fifteen feet to the ground — I could drop to the grass and walk away, never to come back.

Or I could simply wait until someone, perhaps my father, more likely Niles Gilbert, would take her outside, walk her into the brush, snip the last frayed end. I see Pedro, the tear weeping from beneath Lourdes’s eye, I see Aná’s head tilted back, her mouth wide as if trying to scream even in death.

I decided I would tell her. I had done my best — perhaps she had been watching? I had stood between the two lines and the shooting had begun anyway. I went to the safe and counted out two thousand dollars and put it into my pocket. I would drive her to the hospital in Carrizo or wherever her birth had been registered, procure the necessary papers, and help her on her way, polite but firm; there was nothing for her here.

SHE WAS TRIMMING the skin off a mango.

“What are your plans,” I said, as gently as possible.

“Right now I am planning to eat this mango. With your permission, of course.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Do you remember the times we sat out on our portico?” She continued to peel the fruit. The knife slipped but she continued as if nothing had happened.

“Do you want a bandage?”

“No, thank you.” She put her thumb into her mouth.

I looked at the table, then around the room, at the patterns in the tin ceiling. Her shoulders were shaking; her head was down and I couldn’t see her face. But there was nothing I could say that wouldn’t be taken the wrong way.

It was like that until I decided to put the dishes in the sink.

“Of course I shouldn’t be here,” she said.

“It’s not inconvenient,” I told her.

“It was inconvenient to my cousin.”

“Do you have other family?”

“My brothers-in-law. I’m hoping they’re dead but they are the type to survive.”

Of course it was obvious what any normal person would do. We had provided a place to live for numerous of my father’s old friends, decrepit herders from another age, men who had no families, or who no longer had anything to say to their families; dozens of them had lived out their last days in our bunkhouse, taking their meals with the vaqueros, or with us, depending on how close they had been to my father. But this was a different matter. Or so it would be said.

“I live here alone,” I told her. “My father has his own house a little ways up the hill. My wife has left me; my remaining sons are in the army.”

“Is this your way of making a threat?” she said.

“It’s the opposite.”

“I imagined you might shoot me,” she said. “I imagine you still might.”

The sympathy began to go out of me. I continued to wash the dishes, though they were already clean. “Then why did you come?”

No answer.

“You’re welcome to stay the night. There are plenty of spare rooms on the second floor, just go up the stairs and turn left and pick one.”

She shrugged. She was sucking at the pit of the mango, the juice had run down her scabbed chin. She looked like she belonged on a stoop in Nuevo Laredo, the old combination of hopelessness and rage. I began to hope more than ever that she would turn me down, that a meal in the house of her enemy would be enough.

“Okay,” she said. “I will stay the night.”

JUNE 23, 1917

My bedroom did not feel secure so I lay back down in my office, door locked. I loaded, unloaded, then reloaded my pistol. I listened for her footsteps in the hall, though the runner was thick and I knew I would likely hear nothing.

Around midnight I unloaded the pistol a second time. Of course I am no different from the others, the same dark urges inside me. I was not afraid of her physically. It was something much worse.

AROUND FIRST LIGHT, I drifted off. Then the sun was coming in; I rolled over and fell back asleep. In the distance was a sound I had not heard in a long time; when I realized what it was I woke up immediately and got dressed.

Downstairs, Consuela was standing at the entrance to the parlor, watching. She saw me and walked away as if I had caught her at something.

María was sitting at the bench, playing the piano. She must have heard my footsteps because her back went straight and she missed a few notes, then continued playing. Her hair was down around her shoulders, exposing her neck; I could make out the vertebrae easily. What she was playing, I didn’t know. Something old. German or Russian. I stood a few paces behind her; she continued to play without turning. Finally I went to the kitchen.

Consuela looked at me. “Should I prepare breakfast for her?”