Perdido. Rick Collignon
all small and looked much like their father, a little thick on top with legs that could pump like hell.
When Will asked Felipe how it was he had come to have three grandfathers, Felipe told him that the one who had once been named Refugio was not really his grandfather but had only thought he was. Long before Felipe was born, there was some confusion in his family as to who was who, and according to Felipe’s mother, Refugio remained confused throughout his life. Felipe’s mother went on to say that it was no harm if her children wished to call Refugio their grandfather but that it was not wise to do so in front of their grandfather Isidro, since even the mention of Refugio’s name brought a blackness into his mind that was not pleasant to be near.
Will pulled up to the house and parked. He could see Felipe standing in the middle of his garden, his boots stained wet with mud, a shovel propped against his arm. Will got out of his truck and walked over to the edge of the garden. “It’s quiet,” he said.
“The kids are down the hill with their cousins. The garden looks good, doesn’t it?” Felipe worked all spring and most of the summer in his garden. He would plant early and then replant when the frost killed everything. He weeded and irrigated diligently, and Elena had once told Will that she had caught her husband talking quietly to these plants as if they had ears. Will thought the garden looked green and sturdy, even if it was too small for July. “Those tomatoes don’t look so good,” he said.
“Nobody can grow tomatoes in this country,” Felipe said, and he used the shovel to move some dirt so the water flowed down a different path. “I’m supposed to get the water Saturday morning,” he went on, bent over, working the shovel with the flat side. “I don’t know what it’s doing here today.”
“Maybe a ditch broke up above,” Will said.
“Sure. Or maybe Martin just messed up again and thinks today is Saturday.”
Martin Gonzáles was the mayordomo who regulated the flow of water from the head ditch to the homes and fields in Felipe’s area of the village. Felipe had spent the last two summers complaining bitterly about him. Martin hadn’t let enough water out of the ditch, so it never reached Felipe’s house. Martin drove his sister to El Paso, telling no one, and didn’t come back for three weeks. Martin got drunk on Friday night and slept late into Saturday and Felipe’s water showed up at midnight. The worst was when Martin completely forgot to shut off the water and Felipe’s infant plants not only drowned but washed down the hill. Whenever Will asked why he and the others on the ditch didn’t just get rid of Martin and make someone else mayordomo, Felipe would say, “Who needs the headaches?”
The ditch system had been in Guadalupe for over two hundred years. Ditches crisscrossed the village as if dug by madmen who thought they could defy gravity, which Will often thought they had. Water ran uphill and around corners and through the roots of cottonwoods and across hollowed logs that spanned arroyos. Not much had changed in the last two centuries. In the deep grass outside each house, even on the hottest day, was the sound of running water. No water rights had come with the land Will owned; they’d been sold off years before. Often, he’d walk to the creek and sit and watch the flow of water, feeling an envy that he’d never felt for money.
Felipe made his way out of the garden carefully, mud clinging to his boots. “I’ll let the water run a couple more hours,” he said and stuck the shovel in the ground. “Let me guess. You still want to go see that guy, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Will said. “If you’re not doing anything.”
“You mean if I don’t want to do anything.” Felipe looked up at the sky and squinted. “No clouds anywhere,” he said. “It’s going to get hot. Let me tell Elena. I’ll be right out.”
Delfino Vigil lived in an old adobe, not much bigger than Will’s, set back off the highway a hundred feet or so. The yard was thick with tall grass and weeds and shadowed by sagging cottonwoods and twisted, half-dead apple trees. The house had sunk in on itself with time, the gable ends leaning in tiredly, the center swaybacked. The metal roof was badly rusted, and tar was packed thick on the seams and around the stovepipe.
Will parked behind an old green pickup and shut off the engine.
“Wait here a second,” Felipe said. “Let me see if he’s home.” He went to the door and knocked. When there was no answer, he opened the door a crack and called Delfino’s name. After a few seconds, he looked back at Will and shrugged. Then he walked over to the side of the house and around it, out of sight.
Will could hear the soft sound of water running through Delfino’s yard, but the weeds were too high for him to see the ditch. He put his head back on the seat and looked at the house. The plaster was cracked badly on the walls, and Will could see dark stains of dirt where rain had run into the cracks and bled the adobe out. There was one small window on the wall facing him. The paint on the frame was long gone and the wood leaned with the rest of the structure. Will closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, he saw Felipe waving him over.
The rear of the house looked like the front except that the land was more open. The grass was still high, but the only trees were small apricots along the ditch. There were a couple of outbuildings that had seen better days, better years, and an outhouse that looked like it was still being used. Against one of the sheds was a small, fenced-in area that held six young pigs, all of them grunting, rooting, and shoving at each other with their bodies. Felipe and Delfino were sitting on wooden chairs up against the house, talking in Spanish.
Felipe introduced Will to Delfino, and the two shook hands lightly. He was a small man, far into his seventies. His face was clean shaven, the skin smooth but tight, pressed in on the bones. He wore a baseball cap, and the hair at his temples was white and sparse. Delfino sat forward on his chair, his elbows on his knees. He and Felipe went on talking, Delfino saying “no” loudly every once in a while and jerking his body back in his chair as though Felipe had brought news he hadn’t heard before. Will smiled when they did, as if he knew what was going on, but Delfino’s Spanish was too guttural for him to understand and Felipe was rushing on so quickly that his words became blurred. Will took his eyes off them and looked out over the fields of alfalfa spreading away from the house. Two horses, dust colored and stone still, stared back at him from farther down the hill.
Finally, Felipe said, “Delfino wants to know why you are interested in this girl.”
Delfino’s hat was shading his face, and Will could see fine lines running away from his eyes and down his cheeks. His lips didn’t quite cover his teeth, which were too large for his mouth and too white to be his own.
“I’m just interested in the story,” Will said.
“It was a long time ago,” Delfino said to him in English.
“How long?”
Delfino took off his cap and ran his fingers over his scalp. Will could see a few gray bristles, some liver spots, and not much else. “It was in 1968,” Delfino said. “In September, before the first frost.” He looked at Felipe. “How long is that?”
“A long time,” Felipe said. “I was twelve or thirteen. Almost twenty-five years ago.”
Delfino shoved his hat back on his head and looked up at Will. “When did you come here?” he asked. “I never seen you before.”
“Years ago,” Will said. “I live on Marcello Rael’s land. Near the baseball field.”
Delfino swiveled on the chair and turned toward Felipe. “Es verdad?”
“Oh, sí,” Felipe said. “But sometimes Will gets carried away with what he says. He likes to think he was born in Guadalupe.”
Delfino snorted and shook his head. “At one time,” he said, “my uncle, Tío Mario, owned all that land where that little house is. He was my mother’s brother, and he and his neighbor, Telesfor Ruiz, kept cows from the creek all the way to the foothills. Eighty head, maybe more. When my tio died,