I never tasted better water. It made my words run together. “Glendon’s my neighbor up in Minnesota. He asked me to come along but we got separated. It’s taken me some time to catch up.”
“You are not one of his friends from the earlier days?”
“No.”
“What do you know of those times?” Claudio seemed amused.
“That they are long over,” I replied.
“They have no bearing on your friendship, these bygone sins?” I was quiet and looked at Glendon across the table. Clearly he had told this man something of me already, for Claudio said, as if to clarify, “That your friend was something besides his appearance—this was not important to you?”
“It seemed important, once or twice.”
On the kitchen wall hung a painting in a gilt frame. It was large for kitchen decor and represented a melded geometry of parabolas and planes. Its colors were reds and browns and there was a gold hoop at the bottom like an eclipse. Watching my gaze Claudio said, “My grandfather is responsible for that. Do you like it?”
It is better to say I aspired to like it. It was a peculiar painting—though it first seemed a portrait of confusion, it soon began to take the form of a landscape with trapezoidal fields, wishbone rivers, and orchard trees standing straight out from the curve of the world. The gold hoop was not the sun but a solar reflection in a pond or ocean.
“Was he famous?” I asked, to gain time. For the old man’s sake I wanted to like the painting, and felt it beginning to happen.
“Only a little, and too late to make him rich. Fame arrived when his worship Porfirio bought several of his works, but by then my grandfather was old, he was practically Moses.”
Glendon said, “Monte here, his wife is an artist too.”
Claudio nodded at the picture. “What would she think of this, then?”
“She would enjoy it,” I said, with increasing certainty.
“He spoke with an angel once—my grandfather,” mused our host. “The angel told him there were colors deep in the heavens that have no correlatives on earth.” He watched me with his merry weasel eyes. “Your wife the artist, has she spoken to angels?”
“Not that I know of.”
“God Himself loves artists,” said Claudio, adding, with a wince, “However, He is ambivalent about doctors.” He sighed and tottered with us back to the porch, where he lit two additional kerosene lanterns and lifted them onto ceiling hooks with his cane.
He was hoisting the second lamp when we heard the horse coming into the yard. Claudio was holding Glendon’s arm for support. Glendon himself wore a paralytic expression, and I knew I was about to meet the woman for whom he had crossed a country to express regret.
She cantered into the light on a leggy bay mare.
She was in her late forties, a little slumped, her silvering hair roped up in a braid behind her brimmed hat.
“Hello, carina,” said Claudio.
“Who is the visitor?” she briskly replied, looking me over. I confess to being surprised by her plainness. In all Glendon’s telling, Blue had appeared as a snap-eyed Guinevere, yet here was an ordinary round-shouldered woman with a lined and skeptical expression.
“This is my friend Monte Becket,” Glendon said. “Monte, here’s Blue.”
“Call me Arāndano,” she said.
“I’m glad to meet you.”
She smiled and swung down from the horse. She wasn’t plain to Glendon, of course; she was the most gracious part of his long history and evidence of the life he might have lived.
She half-hitched the reins to the porch rail and climbed the steps to Claudio, where she took his arm in a way that made him appear the strong one. She stood at his side with her arm around his waist. I felt a mighty sadness for my friend.
Claudio said, “Monte would like to stay with us a day or two.”
I said, “If it’s not convenient I’ll be on my way.”
But her eyes softened toward me and she said, “The writer of Martin Bligh.”
“Why, yes.” I was only startled for a moment—by Glendon’s sidecast eyes I understood he had given over his copy.
“I read your book,” Arāndano said. “You describe horses fairly well, Mr. Becket. Do you enjoy riding?”
“Honestly, no, ma’am. Horses don’t think much of me, as it turns out.”
She said, “Are you writing another story?”
“I’m afraid not, ma’am. That was the end of that.”
Nodding as though this were probably for the best, she shifted suddenly and said, “You arrive at a busy moment. Tomorrow my tenacious Claudio must cook supper enough for twenty men working at Pond’s. If you are rested, I will ask you to help.”
“Thank you, of course,” I said, and watched Arāndano grip her husband’s arm as he moved back into the house. When the door shut I turned to see what Glendon made of this request, but he had disappeared.
6
Pond’s was another frostbitten orchard a few miles up the Rienda. If anything it had suffered worse than the Sotos’ because, according to Claudio, it was another hundred feet above sea level where winters were incrementally colder. The twenty men were neighors from other farms and fruit concerns who threw in together when need occasioned. Sometimes the needs were fortifying ones such as a heavy harvest, but not lately. As Claudio remarked, “Turning a citrus grove into bonfires is depressing work all by yourself.”
Glendon was gone with the ox and flatbed before I woke. The world seemed old and in disrepair as I walked through heavy dew to the house, where Claudio had already set round loaves to rise under a floury cloth.
“Do you want breakfast?” he inquired, by way of greeting.
“I’ll wait.”
“Good. There’s an oven in the yard. Clean it out and make a hot fire. Wait—where are your shoes?” he demanded.
“They were wet.”
“Put on your shoes, then start the fire,” were his stern instructions.
The oven looked like a clay beehive or troll hut with its black chimney hole and scorched iron door. Ash ghosted out when I opened it; when I reached in with a shovel two pale scorpions slid into the sunshine. I felt a little sick—I’d gotten all the way to California without seeing any scorpions; honestly, a Midwesterner isn’t accustomed to scorpions. Peering into the oven I could see there was also a robust tribe of spiders in residence but hard luck for them.
I made the fire, watching where I knelt and where my hands went. Claudio had pointed out kindling and the woodshed, and I found an old bellows on the shed wall and wheezed at the flames until they drove me back. Leaving the iron door open an inch I returned to the house, where my host was stewing hens.
“Is it lit?”
“Yes.”
He nodded toward a counter. “There is a knife. Quarter the peppers and leave the seeds in. I am cross this morning, thank you.”
The directions seemed urgent so I blistered along, chopping and quartering until we had a pot of gravy to water your eyes. I said, “Did you always cook?”
“No. Arāndano used to cook; then she began taking in bookwork and left the kitchen to Joaquin. Now Joaquin works with the trees.”
“A big job, it appears.”
“Not as big as it used to be,” Claudio said. He touched a loaf under its sheet. “Go check the fire.”
It had burned to mostly white ash which he had me shovel out. We then lifted the loaves one at a time into the oven with a longhandled implement like an oar. It worked reasonably well, though one of the loaves tipped off and deflated on the earthen floor.
Claudio said, “Now the pies.”
Peach, blackberry, apple—he set me to peeling while he cut lard into flour with a pair of knives held between his fingers. While we worked he explained his orchard. Seven years earlier, “in fat times,” he’d read in a newspaper that a man near Sacramento had imported some dozens of young citrus from Tahiti. The trees were described as dwarfish with shiny leaves and knobby twigs; the orang
es they bore had a greenish tinge but were dawn-sweet, with so much juice they burst when dropped. Claudio at that time was well-off enough to fund intuitions. He sought out the captain of a trade barkentine running salt pork and liquor to the Cook Islands, sandalwood and native exotica back. The trader agreed to deliver three hundred saplings in watered burlap but required a stiff deposit. Five months later the bark arrived from the island of Rarotonga. The trader refused to see Claudio but sent one of his crew to demand he pay in full before the trees were off-loaded to the dock.
“It felt like a robbery in progress—what would you have done?” he asked.
“I have no idea,” I admitted.
In the end he accepted a cargo of bare sticks bagged in salty loam. Seeing his aggravation, one of the crew confided that the trees had been healthy when the voyage began—the problem was fresh water. The bark’s drinking reserves had been compromised by leaky barrels, and the sailors resented having to water young trees when they themselves were thirsty.
“Why didn’t you just buy grafts?” I asked. “They could’ve been kept damp with little trouble and perhaps brought home successfully.” I knew an apple grower in Minnesota, a proud amateur geneticist, who was forever sending away for new grafts—he loved to confound people by showing them three or four obviously different fruits all hanging on the same tree.
“It wasn’t the bearing branches I wanted,” Claudio replied. “It was the rootstock. That is what you rely on. The rootstock is where a tree survives.”
He’d set the famished sticks immediately in crates of fresh damp soil and rigged canvas over them to prevent scorching on the ride home. It was months before he knew which ones would live and which would die. In the end, nearly two hundred of them made it. Since then they had survived several hard freezes while trees around them perished—a lucky development, Claudio said, since you wouldn’t expect hardiness from those tropic latitudes. Of course the Rarotongans hadn’t borne a crop yet, either.
“The past two seasons, no harvest at all. We sold most of our land. Arāndano feeds us with her bookkeeping. If she were not solid with numbers we would be back in Oscuro, eating frijoles with her relatives. I like her relatives and frijoles but prefer to be here.”
“You’re a fortunate man,” I said.
He placed a lump of dough on a smooth board and worked it flat with a rolling pin. “When I was young and not as you see me now,” he said, “I used to have a little influence. I was listened to in chambers. Once before a jury I argued the case of a neighbor accused of theft and won his acquittal, although I am not an attorney. Some people believed I should run for this or that office.”
“That’s not hard to believe.”
He laid a sheet of dough into a pie pan and turned to the next lump. “Now I am older, my clothes fit wrong. My work has gone out with the tide.”
“Tides turn. It won’t freeze every year. There are the Rarotongans,” I pointed out.
“You are kind to say so. All the same I am decreasing. There is a hard growth in my guts the size of a pigeon. I am told it will kill me.”
To hear this news in such a guileless tone deprived me of words. I could only sit back and watch him.
He said, “Fatigue is a rotten condition and entirely new to me. Energy was never my problem.”
“You’ve been to doctors, of course.”
“I felt something happening years ago, before the trees arrived—a pain like a faint taste in my center, a metallic taste. I thought it would disappear but instead it took hold. I picture it as a brave little colony. There is a craven doctor in Lury who diagnosed a frenzied imagination, as if I was too happy and must create myself an agony. In the meantime the colony prospered, it declared statehood. By the time the doctor could be convinced, it was too late for him to do much. He did recommend a priest, although I was friends with one already.”
“That’s unforgivable,” I said.
“Nothing is unforgivable, although I admit I have yet to pardon this doctor. I will have to do so before the end lest the Almighty rethink my standing. There are certain unfairnesses I don’t much like, but then it is His story to tell.” Suddenly Claudio looked up. “Do you smell the bread? Don’t let it burn!”
I went out on numb legs and indeed the loaves were brown as buckeyes. I removed them with the long paddle and wrapped them in sacking. When I returned with the steaming bundle Claudio was crimping the edges of fruit pies—dipping his hard fingertips in a cup of water, pinching the top and undercrusts together. He took a knife and slitted the crusts in a cordial geometry, dashed them with cane sugar, and stooped to examine the pies one by one as though vigilant for things to fix. I could imagine him arguing the accused neighbor’s case—oh, yes. It was easy to see the defendant feeling at least reasonably confident with Claudio Soto walking to and fro before the jury. Aware of me watching he said, “Don’t feel bad for me, Monte. The smaller I get, the better I cook. If I am given another year I will shrink to the size of a large dog but my pies will be extremely famous. Here, help me put these in the oven.”
7
Arāndano returned with Joaquin in the late afternoon. They drove a tall unsteady truck with thin tires aslant on their axles. The truck was Pond’s. Arāndano was tired and kept blinking her eyes to make them focus—she’d spent the day cutting a path through a two-year jungle of Pond bookwork.
“It’s worse than he knows,” she told Claudio. “He’s a poor bookkeeper, the ledgers are frantic. He is at the end of his funds.”
Joaquin and I were packing pies and bread into blanketed fruit crates in the truck bed.
Claudio said, “I’ll go along. Pond should have his friends there,” but his voice was changed from earlier. I was jolted to see him suddenly withered; the day’s baking had cost him his vigor and several inches of height.
“Joaquin will go to Pond’s,” said Arāndano. “You will go to bed.”
He didn’t argue and in fact lowered himself onto the grass.
Arāndano said to me, “Why don’t you help my spent hero into the house?”
Claudio’s eyes were closed. He said, “Hero, yes. Baker intrepid. Captain Bread.”
I took his hands and lifted him to his feet. We got him into the parlor where there was a bristly purple sofa full of pillows. These Claudio shoved onto the floor minutes before falling slack-jaw into a nap. His wife motioned me to sit in one of the armchairs nearby. I thought we would be quiet on account of Claudio but she spoke right up.
“He’s your neighbor then—Glendon.”
“Neighbor and good friend.”
“Does Glendon have many friends there?”
“Not many.”
“He used to have friends,” she said. “In Oscuro it seemed everyone was his friend. Tell me, what is it like where he lives?”
“He has a little place near our own on the Cannon River.”
“What kind of place—a farmstead? A shack?”
Encouraged that she wanted to envision Glendon’s home, I provided a few scenic details—how the structure sat on a bend of the river and so had water on three sides, how it rose out of the fog if you arrived early in the day. I emphasized Glendon’s orderly habits, his swept workshop, and omitted the fact that his house was a barn. “He has a little garden of herbs,” I concluded, “and always brings some fresh-cut when he comes for dinner.”
“So he didn’t go to drink,” she said. “I half expected he would go to drink.”
I made no answer and for a little while we sat listening to Claudio sleep. He breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth, his lips making faint pops on the exhale.
She said, “What has Glendon said about me?”
Again I felt the need to choose well. “He told me how you met, while he was repairing your great-uncle’s boat.”
“He was a handsome boy,” she admitted. “He made that job last a long time.”
“He said it took him three weeks just to make you laugh.”
She smiled. “My un
cle told me laughter encouraged young men. If I had laughed, he would’ve told my father about it. That would’ve been the end of things.”
“He told me about the casita where you lived.”
“It had a nice garden.”
I said, “It tormented Glendon, that he never came back to you.”
“He left for himself. I doubt he would deny it. He stayed away for himself. Now he has returned for the same reason.”
“He came back out of repentance,” I replied. “It would be generous of you to hear his apology.”
She turned to me with surprising tenderness. “Do I look angry to you?”
“No.”
“I was for a time, but Claudio is a man who turns away anger. Eventually I lost the habit. However, I am not silly enough to believe I owe Glendon anything. If he wants absolution let him seek it from God.”
“Maybe he wants it from you as well.”
Her voice was kind but without concession. “You’re his friend, Monte, so listen. His conscience doesn’t concern me. His apology does not benefit me. His work for us on the orchard is another matter—that’s real enough and comes at a good time. That is why we allowed him to stay. There is no other reason.”
I nodded. Sometimes it seems every woman I meet is more than a match for me.
8
In the morning I borrowed Glendon’s horse Sparrow and ventured down to Lury. Glendon had described the horse as temperate and amenable, but in fact he kept wanting to turn around and trot back to the orchard; I had to rein him up half a dozen times. On the other hand, he didn’t flare when a red fox abruptly appeared smiling in the tall weeds beside the road. One moment there was the fox’s grinning face, the next nothing but its white-tipped brush, and this horse kept its gait as if designed by the Swiss. I don’t understand these animals. Down we went into that scraggy mission town and I located the telegraph office, a scantly built room with a lean-to where the agent had a hand pump and a copper sink.
“I need to send a wire,” I told the agent. He was probably my own age but looked older, so I imagined, in his brim and banded sleeves.