Penitente - Part 4

By Jane Hammons

Starr listened to the thunder rip open the sky. Gusting wind blew the screen door open then slammed it shut again. She flinched every time the door slammed. The crashing sound echoed through her head and added to the nausea she’d been fighting for hours. The stink of the sour rag in her mouth made her want to puke, but she controlled that impulse. She’d heard stories about a high school girl who got really drunk and choked to death on her own vomit. Starr did not intend to die that way. She didn’t intend to die at all.

A flash of lightning lit the darkness and she watched Mrs. Romero streak out her kitchen door and into the backyard where she began to quickly pull the clothes off the line. The door swung open and shut, begging for attention.

Mrs. Romero took her clothes into the kitchen, then peeked out the door and stared for a moment at Starr’s house. She hated going over there, but she worried about that little girl. If VeraMae was home, she was probably drunk or doped up and she’d scream a blue streak at her for interfering. Maybe no one was home and she could just close the back door like a good neighbor and go back to making tamales. She unlatched her gate and walked across the yard, approaching the back steps cautiously in the darkness. She didn’t trust these people.

As she walked up the back steps, Mrs. Romero saw Starr lying on the kitchen floor, tied to a chair. "Ave Maria," she whispered, quickly crossing herself. She hurried into the kitchen and picked up a knife from the counter. "Niña," she sighed, "what now?" She knelt beside Starr and pulled the stinking cloth from the child’s mouth and began to cut the laundry line.

Starr choked as she inhaled the fresh air a little too quickly and began to cry. Mrs. Romero rubbed the girl’s stiff limbs. Once the blood began to flow through again, Starr stretched out on the floor while Mrs. Romero covered her, pulling up her panties and cutoffs.

Starr crawled into Mrs. Romero’s arms and smelled the sweet dusty scent of cornmeal and red chile. She let Mrs. Romero rock her like a baby. She listened to the woman whisper quiet prayers in Spanish.

"Where is your mother?" Mrs. Romero asked, suspecting that VeraMae and Bill had done this to Starr.

Starr gagged when she tried to answer.

"You come with me," she said, pulling Starr to her feet. Starr’s legs gave way beneath her, so Mrs. Romero dragged her like a corpse across the backyard and into her house.

"Gabriela!" Mr. Romero shouted when he saw what she was pulling into the living room. He had just begun to stack some piñon in the fireplace. He glared accusingly at his wife but helped her put Starr on the couch. He hated it when Gabriela got involved with the white trash next door. He felt sorry for the little girl, but her people were nothing but trouble.

"Something bad," Mrs. Romero whispered to her husband as she put an afghan over Starr who stared blankly at the logs in the fireplace.

Mr. Romero followed his wife into the kitchen. "She was tied up like this," his wife explained. She sat down in her own kitchen chair, placing her wrists and ankles together behind her. "And her panties were down," she whispered, looking away from her husband. "We must call the police this time," she added. She had argued many times with her husband about turning VeraMae in for neglecting Starr.

"No police," Mr. Romero said firmly. He didn’t want to get caught between white people and the law. "We will call Padre," he said. "For now that is enough. He can decide what we should do." He went to the telephone while Mrs. Romero dished up a bowl of posole for Starr.

She knew the girl liked it as she had taken it to her many times when she knew Starr was alone. Mrs. Romero sat down on the couch beside her and spooned the warm stew into the little girl’s mouth. "Mr. Romero is calling," she began.

"No police," Starr screamed. She tried to scramble out from beneath the afghan Mrs. Romero had tucked tightly about her. They were going to arrest her. For liking Dunway. He was a killer and she had given him food and money and the car. Chapman! They were going to put her in a cell with Chapman. He would kiss her and touch her. She sobbed and fell back against the couch.

"No one will hurt you." Mrs. Romero sighed, hugging Starr.

"Padre is coming." Mr. Romero sat beside Starr and covered her small hand with his long slender one. "Padre will help you, niña."

"Padre?"

"Father Hidalgo," explained Mr. Romero, "The priest at our church."

"You can tell him what happened," said Mrs. Romero, "and if you tell him not to tell anyone what you said, he won’t."

"Why not?" Starr was suspicious.

"Because it is just between you and God," Mr. Romero said. "Telling Padre is like telling God. God cannot betray you."

Starr picked up the bowl of posole and ate slowly, savoring the stringy pieces of pork and the soft white corn. She loved Mrs. Romero’s posole. Maybe she would talk to the Padre if he promised to be like God and keep her secret and not send her to jail.

"More?" asked Mrs. Romero, taking Starr’s empty bowl.

Starr nodded and watched Mr. Romero build a fire. Her mother never bought logs for their fireplace. They only burned trash in it. She pulled the afghan tightly around her shoulders. She liked the way the logs smelled as they burned. Piñon, from the mountains.

***************

Blinded by the lightning crashing above him, Chapman plunged about in the forest. For hours he had called out His name. But no answer. It was raining now and he was cold and wet. He stepped into the mouth of a shallow cave and tried to believe in Jesus.

Mama Shug believed in Jesus. He wished the old woman were with him now to tell him the stories about the baby Jesus, the man, the Holy Ghost. He couldn’t remember them all. He had not listened carefully enough as a child. “Mama Shhhuuugggg,” he cried out her name the way he had when the nightmare of his life crept into his dreams. She would come to him, lay down beside him. Soft and old. Sweet-smelling and clean. Her body was comfort. It was there to warm him, Chapman remembered, snuggling into the cave, curling back against the stone wall. He fell asleep with nothing but a filthy blanket and carefully selected memories to keep him warm.

He awoke to the gentle shush of water. He stepped out of the cave and trudged back into the forest. The sun separated the morning clouds. The sky lost its bruised color and a faint reddish glow tinged the green leaves, the blue stones and the clear water of the stream that rushed past him. He began to cry. He remembered that he had come in search of the Brotherhood, the Penitentes, the body of Christ. But he was lost. Sobbing, he crashed through the trees and brush until, through his tears, he saw the body before him.

Chapman looked at the sprawled, twisted body without really seeing it, thinking it was the answer to his prayers. He got down on his knees and picked up the handgun that lay near the body. It was familiar, so he held it in one hand. With the other he held the hand of Christ. To become Christ, he must eat it. He bit into the stiff flesh, but it was not easy. He bit harder and pulled some of the rubbery skin away from the bone. He swallowed, then took a smaller bite. He ignored the painfully human face of his bruised and bloody host.

With his teeth he continued to tear away more skin. He had climbed the mountain for this. He felt the cold eyes of other predators—coyote, bear, mountain lion—upon him, circling him, enclosing him. He bit and chewed and swallowed more rapidly. He pushed the sleeve of Dunway’s prison work shirt up past the wrist and gnawed the stringy stump.

A man retched; another groaned. Chapman turned to see a circle of men in uniforms, all carrying guns. All pointed at him. He tore furiously into Dunway. He had to finish. He waved the men away with the pistol.

"He’s got a gun," several men cried at once.

Chapman heard the report of gunfire thundering against the mountainside, resounding throughout the Sangre de Cristos. He fell over next to Dunway, and the storm of bullets nailed him to the ground.

***************

Starr sat in front of the TV with the sound off. Newscasters had been telling the same story over and over for days. Chapman was dead. He had killed Dunway and then tried to eat him. She was tired of hearing about it. But she never tired of the film footage because it always showed VeraMae’s white Tornado parked across the road from the truck where they loaded the big body bag containing Chapman. Next to it they set the smaller bag that held the tattered body of Dunway. She was glad she hadn’t been Chapman’s snack. She pulled impatiently at a strand of orange yarn in one of Mrs. Romero’s afghans. The Romeros didn’t even have a color TV.

Mrs. Romero came into the room, and Starr watched her cross herself as she glanced quickly at the TV. Mrs. Romero crossed herself a hundred times a day—when Starr ate, when Starr cussed, when Starr danced along with songs on the radio the way VeraMae had taught her. That and all the quiet little prayers were really getting on Starr’s nerves. None of it made any sense to her. When Father Hidalgo had talked to her about God and Jesus and some other people she never heard of, she just got confused. All the time he was telling her about communion and how with instruction she could become a member of the family that shared in the body of Christ, Mrs. Romero smiled encouragingly at her. Starr had no intention of following instructions on how to eat Christ. It reminded her too much of what Chapman had done to Dunway. She knew it wasn’t the same thing. Dunway sure as hell wasn’t Christ. But it was still gross.

Starr dropped the afghan to the floor. She hated the color orange. She went into the kitchen and poured herself a cup of cold coffee. She looked out the back door, checking under the steps where she had hidden Mr. Romero’s flannel jacket. In her back pocket she had the money she took from the old Crisco can where Mrs. Romero hid her cash. It wasn’t much. Not even a hundred dollars. The setting sun cast a pink light across the Sangre de Cristos. She waited anxiously for night to fall. As soon as it did, she was headed straight into the darkness.

© 2006 Jane Hammons

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