Thirteen Senses by Victor Villaseñor
“NOOOOOOOOOOO! VIEJA CONDENADA!” screamed the Devil. “You will not trick me again! Oh, I pray to God for the day all you ignorant, backward Indios sin razón are finally killed off the face of the earth, so I can then be free at last to do as I damn well please in the name of progress and greed and—stop it! STOP BLOWING ME KISSES, you imbecile! Jesus, I hate you!”
The Devil stopped dead in his tracks. Suddenly, realizing that he’d just used the Sacred Name of “Jesus” and before that . . . he’d, well, actually prayed to God . . . and so el Diablo now slapped himself across the mouth, and took off for the depths of Hell, hoping to find some peace at last!
And Doña Margarita was left here with clouds all about her and tears running down her face. For truly, she could see that her Love was finally beginning to get to the Devil, himself.
She made the sign of the cross over herself, thanking Papito.
And God smiled.
LEAVING THE HOSPITAL, Salvador and Lupe drove back across town to get her things from her parents’ house, so that they could then drive over to Corona to see Salvador’s mother and tell her the news of their baby. Carlota and Victoriano, who’d just come in from working in the fields, were both eating at the kitchen table like young, starving wolves!
“Hello,” said Salvador, smiling happily. “So how does it go?”
“Hot as always for those of us who work for a living!” said Carlota.
“Mi hijita!” said Doña Guadalupe.
“Oh, don’t ‘mi hijita’me,” snapped Carlota angrily. “Victoriano and I work hard while the princess, here, and her no-good, fish-poisoning husband do nothing all day long!”
“Fish poisoning?” said the old lady, surprised by this remark.
“Yes, I told you, mama, Salvador tried to poison me with a fish when we went to dinner to Long Beach and he talked Chinese, hiding the truth of his actions from us.”
“Oh, Carlota,” said Lupe. “But how can you talk like this? You ate no fish, and we who did, didn’t get poisoned.”
“See!” yelled Carlota. “That’s how tricky the Chinese are! But I knew, I knew, that’s why I was smart enough not to eat any fish!”
No one knew what to say. Carlota’s logic was one of a kind.
“Excuse me,” said Victoriano to Salvador, “but I need to know if you’ve seen Señor Whitehead lately?”
Mr. Whitehead was a local farmer for whom Victoriano had been working for several months now.
“No,” said Salvador, “in fact, I haven’t seen him for quite a while.”
Originally, Salvador had introduced Victoriano to Mr. Whitehead, months before he and Lupe had gotten married. Whitehead was a drinking man that Salvador had met years ago through the Moreno brothers from Corona. For more than ten years, Whitehead had been one of the top foremen for old man Irvine, but then a few years back, he’d bought some property and started farming on his own. He’d planted an orchard of oranges and started growing tomatoes, cucumbers, string beans and other vegetables.
Whitehead was a good man. Anyone who’d ever worked for him had nothing but the highest respect for el hombre. Whitehead paid all of his workers on time, and he never tried to cheat them on their hours, as did so many of the other farmers in the area—including old man Irvine.
And Irvine was one of the largest and richest landholders in all the area. His place stretched from the sea of Newport to the mountains of the Trabuco Canyon on the back side of Orange County. Originally, Irvine’s place had been a Spanish land grant, just as the O’Neil place and the huge Santa Margarita Rancho had also been Spanish land grants.
“Why do you ask?” asked Salvador.
“Because Whitehead is gone,” said Victoriano. “No one has seen him in days. And his wife is worried, not knowing if he’s . . . well, last year she said that he got himself a few bottles and tried drinking himself to death, when he lost that crop of oranges.”
“Yes, I remember that,” said Salvador, thinking back. “And there wasn’t a freeze or anything to kill those orange blossoms. Strange. Very Strange.”
“Exactly,” said Victoriano, “and this afternoon his wife asked me to go and find him for her. Poor woman, she told me last time they found him in a hotel room out by Long Beach on 17th Street, and he was just about dead. Could you help me, Salvador? My little truck isn’t running very well. I think I loaded my troquecito a little too much too many times.”
“Of course, Whitehead is a good man,” said Salvador, taking a deep breath. “But what happened? Did he lose another crop?”
“Yes, his string beans, and now . . . they’re going to lose everything, his wife said.”
“String beans!?!” said Salvador. “But tell me, how in the hell can a man lose string beans? Ejotes are tough, especially in our climate here, they always manage to live! Damn, what bad luck!”
Salvador kissed Lupe good-bye, and he then followed Victoriano out the door.
“Good riddance!” yelled Carlota as Salvador and Victoriano went out the door.
“Carlota!” said their mother in a stern voice. “You will do the dishes for being so disrespectful!”
“No, make her do them! She’s not working! I’m too tired!”
“But not too tired to insult a guest under our roof!”
“But he’s no guest anymore! The no-good is her husband now!”
“Start washing! Now!”
“Oh, I could kill with this frying pan!”
“Salvador,” said Victoriano once they had gotten away from the house, “his wife also told me that he took his gun.”
“His gun?” said Salvador, opening the door to his Moon. “But what would Whitehead do with a gun? He’s one of the nicest, easiest-going gringos you’ll ever meet.”
“Yes,” said Victoriano, “but the rumors in the barrio are . . . that, well, old man Irvine poisoned his crops.”
“No!” yelled Salvador. He also knew old man Irvine very well. And Irvine could be tough, but this was beyond words!
“Yes, they say that old man Irvine’s still so mad that one of his best foremen quit working for him and went out on his own, that he actually got the county sprayers to poison Whitehead’s crops when they did their seasonal spraying for insects.”
“I’ll be damn,” said Salvador. “But how did you find out?”
“Because, Salvador,” said Victoriano, “one of the men who actually did the spraying is Mejicano, and he talked, saying that he had no idea what they were doing at the time.”
“Then you think Whitehead took the gun to kill Irvine?”
“No, Salvador, Señor Whitehead is one of these good guy gringos de todo corazón who doesn’t believe that the Devil lives inside people’s souls, even if he saw him eye to eye, staring him in the face.”
Salvador nodded, and they got into the Moon and took off. Salvador knew exactly what his brother-in-law was talking about. It just seemed like some gringos were so good-hearted that they couldn’t believe the simple fact that the Devil lived Here on Earth as sure as the Sun came up and the Sun went down.
“Well, then tell me,” said Salvador, “why would Whitehead take a gun with him if he isn’t going to kill Irvine?”
“To kill himself,” said Victoriano.
“WHAT!” screamed Salvador, almost driving off the side of the road, this surprised him so much! “But no man ever thinks of killing himself!”
“Among the gringos they do,” said Victoriano, making the sign of the cross over himself. “His wife is going crazy. They’ve lost everything.”
“So what! Most of us live our whole life with having nothing!”
Victoriano laughed. “Yes, us, the Mexicans. But among the gringos, Salvador, most of their lives they’ve always had something, so nothing is something that they know nothing about.”
“Well, okay, but to kill yourself over nothing, it just makes no sense.”
Victoriano nodded. “I agree.”
“My God, my God,” said Salvador. “Then you mean, that this poo
Victoriano nodded again. “Exactly.”
“But still,” said Salvador, “how can he think that killing himself is the answer? Shit!” yelled Salvador, hitting the steering wheel and the muscles of his neck coming up like thick cords. “Hell, I’d kill Irvine in a second, then burn his house down, and drag his body through the streets behind my car for all to see, having gusto a lo macho cabrón, before it would ever even enter my mind to kill myself!”
“But of course,” said Victoriano, laughing, “you’re un Indio sin razón, not a good-hearted gringo!”
Hearing this, Salvador burst out laughing! Oh, life, la vida, really was so full of wild contradictions. Hell, he’d actually started thinking that only los Mejicanos had any problemas! Why, the poor gringos were all caught up in the struggles of living, too!
Nearing Long Beach, Victoriano spotted Whitehead’s truck parked in front of a little hotel.
Salvador and Victoriano came bursting in on Whitehead, just as the tall, handsome man in his early forties, was putting the long, black barrel of the .38 Special to his mouth.
Victoriano screamed, and the .38 Special EXPLODED!
Hundreds of birds took flight from the inlet of water behind the little hotel that came in with the tide from the beautiful green sea!
9
The Devil was tired, really exhausted, but still be was a long way from giving up. One way or another, be was determined to slip fast that old she-Fox ... but then be beard the Singing of the Stones!
IT WAS DARK by the time Salvador and Lupe got to Corona, but Salvador’s mother wasn’t at her house, so they could tell her about the baby. Luisa told them that she was probably still at church, but when Salvador and Lupe drove over to the church, made of river rocks, they found the place already closed up. Then they spotted one of Doña Margarita’s old church friends and the old woman told them that she’d gone off with the young priest a few hours ago.
“Do you know where they went?” asked Salvador.
“No,” said the old lady, “but I did hear that your mother found a purse full of money inside the church.”
“Really,” said Salvador.
“Yes, a lot of money!” said the old woman.
Salvador thanked the old lady and he and Lupe drove back to Luisa’s house. Inside, Luisa was feeding her boys.
“Weren’t you able to find her?” asked Luisa.
“No,” said Salvador. “They told us that she drove off with a young priest hours ago. That she found a purse with lots of money inside the church.”
Salvador was all upset. He really wanted to tell his mama about the baby, before Lupe and he had to go back to Carlsbad.
“But why in God’s name are you worried, Salvador,” said Luisa to her brother in her loud, happy, vociferous way, “our mother is too old to get pregnant, so what harm can it be that she’s out late with a priest, having fun with all that money she found.”
Saying this, Luisa burst out laughing and laughing, truly enjoying herself. But Lupe wasn’t laughing, she was shocked for a woman to talk like this, and especially in front of her own children.
Seeing Lupe’s shocked look, Salvador yelled at his sister. “Luisa, damnit, do you always have to talk so wild?”
“Wild, how? That I’m realistic enough to admit that priests are human and have fun, or that our mother is capable of—”
“Luisa, shut up!”
“No! Not in my house! Now, sit down and eat and have a drink so you’ll calm down! Our mother is fine. She’ll be back in no time.”
“Luisa!” said Salvador, turning his eyes at Lupe.
“Ah, bullshit!” said Luisa. “Stop hiding from Lupe. She’s no fool! She knows that—well, you and I have a drink now and then. Don’t you, Lupe?”
“Yes,” said Lupe. “Especially since I found that bottle, Salvador,” she added.
“See!” said Luisa. “I told you so!”
And so Luisa poured herself and Salvador a drink from a bottle that she kept under the sink and she offered Lupe a drink, too. Lupe declined, saying no, thank you, and she watched Salvador and his sister have their drink. Also, Lupe was beginning to notice that every few minutes a different man would come by with an empty jar and Luisa would take the jar to the back of the house, then meet the man outside. Lupe wondered if maybe Salvador’s sister Luisa, like Domingo, was in the bootlegging business, too, and she was selling jars of whiskey out of her home.
But no, Lupe didn’t dare ask this question. Besides, it was no business of hers what people did in the privacy of their own home.
It was nearly midnight when the young priest drove up with Doña Margarita in a Model T. Lupe had long ago gone to bed in the living room where Salvador’s two older nephews, Jose and Pedro, normally slept. Benjamin, the baby, slept in Luisa’s bed.
Ever since Lupe had lain down, Luisa and Salvador had begun drinking and talking wild. And now it was Luisa who was worried about their mother’s whereabouts and Salvador was the one trying to calm her down. All her life Lupe had seen how alcohol changed people so much. She prayed to God that this type of behavior wasn’t Salvador’s normal way of life. Luisa was acting like a crazy woman.
“Mama” yelled Luisa, running to the front door when the priest drove away, “where have you been? It’s almost MIDNIGHT!” “Calmate, mi hijita,” said the old Indian woman coming into the house, “I’ve been out doing God’s work. And look what I brought you. The rich don’t live like you and me. No, they have the softest, smoothest, best-feeling ass-wiping paper I have ever felt! And their toilets are so comfortable that any king would feel honored to make his daily calling!”
“You and that priest bought toilet paper with all that money you found in church?” asked Luisa, looking at her mother suspiciously. “Oh, my God, I’m scared to even ask what you and the young priest were doing all this time.”
“Then don’t ask,” said Doña Margarita, laughing happily.
“But mama?” said Salvador, “where have you been? Lupe and I have been waiting for you so we can—”
“Are you HUNGRY, mama?” yelled Luisa, cutting in. “I saved you some dinner!”
“Of course, I’m hungry! Doing God’s work while He sits on His behind up in Heaven, relaxing like the lazy male He is, is tough some days! You know,” continued Doña Margarita, sitting down to eat, “after wiping myself with this fine paper, I got to thinking why so many of us Mejicanos don’t know how to read so well. Hell, we’ve been putting the printed word to the wrong end of our body for so long, that the words now all look backward to us when we put them to our eyes to read!”
Saying this, the old lady burst out laughing with such gusto that Lupe— in the next room, lying down—now knew where this whole family got their loud voices and blasphemous attitude. Why, if Lupe didn’t know better, she’d think that Salvador’s mother was a wild Indian. How could any sane person accuse God of sitting on His lazy—oh, she couldn’t even have the thought inside of her head, it was so awful!
Now they were all talking at the same time, Salvador, Luisa, and Doña Margarita—when Salvador finally yelled the loudest of all! “WE’RE GOING TO HAVE A BABY!”
The whole room suddenly went silent. Not another sound. Then Doña Margarita was the first to speak.
“A baby?” she asked, oh, so softly.
“Yes, a baby,” said Salvador full of excitement.
“A baby from my baby,” said the old woman. “Oh, Lord God, thank You! Gracias! My prayers have been answered! And where is Lupe? Where is this wonderful woman full of the Holy Grace of God!”
“In the next room sleeping,” said Luisa.
“Let’s go and peek in on her. Ssssssh!” added Doña Margarita.
Lupe could now hear them sneaking into the room, trying to be quiet. But Salvador and Luisa were drunk and bumping into things, snapping at each other, and making so much noise that Lupe was having a hard time not laughing.
“Just look at her, Salvador,” said his mother in a soft voice, “she’s an angel! My God, no prettier woman has ever lived!”
“Well, yeah, sure,” said Luisa, “and we, too, would all be better looking if it wasn’t for you, mama.”
“Well, I did the best I could,” said their mother. “I married a very hand-some man.”
“Sssssh,” said Salvador. “You two will wake her!”
“Wake her, HELL!” said Luisa. “She’s out like a fart amid the sounds of thunder!”
“Sssssh! Both of you shut up! Callense!” said Doña Margarita.
They were now all tiptoeing back out of the room, bumping into things. Salvador hit the wall, face first, almost fell, and his sister, Luisa, had to help him out.
With one eye open, Lupe watched and Doña Margarita stopped at the door before closing it, and she watched the old lady make the sign of the cross over herself. “Dear Lord God,” Lupe heard her mother-in-love say softly, “Holy Be Your Name, please give this young mother peace of mind so her heart can then keep calm, feeding this child in her Sacred Womb the Holy Rhythms of Your Eternal Love!”
Lupe now watched the old woman make the sign of the cross once again, touching the center of her forehead this time, then kiss her fingertips and blow Lupe a kiss. “From our family to Your Most Holy Familia,” she said, “as it is in Heaven, it is Here on Earth, too.
“And don’t worry, Papito, I might be getting a little deaf and ill-mannered in my old age, but mi familia and I are still strong, and so You and Your Loved Ones can continue depending on Us to Do Your Earthly Work.
“And about Your lazy behind, God, well, I was just a little tired and hungry, so don’t You get too upset. We’re doing Good, You and I, God, We’re doing Good. So Good Night, Maria, Papito, y Todos los Santos! And help Lupe sleep the sleep of an angel so that then her milk will be as sweet as honey!”