Fiction by C.S. Perryess
The icy night wind strikes me in the face. It pushes my back against the adobe graveyard wall. Such a wind, born high in the Juarapa Mountains—born of snow and ice.
Along the way, through the high deserts of Buitre Blanca, such a wind collects ghosts and cactus needles. Perhaps Adolfo is right. Perhaps I am still a child—my ghosts and needles are child’s play. Still, I would sooner dwell on such things than the task before me.
I force myself into the chill—into the moaning wind—toward the grave of Sister Lucia Maria, the shovel frozen in my hand, the hammer heavy on my belt.
I know they are watching. They sit in Adolfo’s workshop. They smile and laugh and slap one another’s backs. The ale and the companionship keep them warm, not to mention the woodfire I built, lit, and tended.
I push into the wind. My thin-soled shoes crunch the frosted sand, past the resting place of Old Señora Garcia, past little Aldo Marquez, and past the marble angel who flies forever in the place of Ana Teresa Campos.
It is a cruel thing they make me do, but I am the woodworker’s apprentice—Adolfo’s boy. What choice have I?
Mother Moon winks once through the clouds, then deserts me. I am alone with the village shovel, stumbling the last twenty paces. I lean into the wind, though it slashes at my face. Behind me, my serape flaps like boneless wings, and I am there.
Sister Lucia Maria, I am so sorry. My actions are not my own. You remember me? Compact, you said, hardworking, Adolfo’s boy? You remember Adolfo? A fine woodworker, yes, but a man of superstition, a man of mean spirit.
It is not an easy thing to cross oneself among needles and ghosts, with a shovel frozen to one’s hand. I look from one hand to the other. Each one seems a dull, frozen ache at the end of an arm. I watch as those hands place the shovel, as my poor frozen foot rises, then rests, then stomps down. The blade of the shovel slices into the frozen grit.
I dig and dig. The wind stops for a breath and from behind me—from the workshop—a laugh cuts through the night. The pale eye of Luna Madre—Mother Moon—flashes down from the clouds, perhaps for a better look. What does she think of this sorry little village, of this slashing wind, of the woodworker’s apprentice digging at the grave of Sister Lucia Maria?
What does she think of Adolfo, who brags that he arrived here a young boy with little more than a hammer and his skill? That he will never leave—not even for supplies—not for a solitary thing? That they will name the place after him? What does she think of a poor village’s most prosperous man, a man with more coins than kindness, a man who never had one thought for the good works of Sister Lucia Maria?
The gritty rhythm of the shovel brings me back, stopping with a dull thud sooner than one would expect. I suck in a frozen breath and look down, but all is in shadow. I reach in with the blade of the shovel to scrape free a small sector of the rough, pine box.
Poor Sister—even this indignity—no more than three hands below the surface. All goes dark. Luna Madre has pulled close her veil of clouds, too ashamed to know what I must do.
A distant flash of light skitters over the headstones and tired wooden crosses—someone has opened the workshop door. My shadow stretches softly over the grave, into the night. A yell, maybe a laugh, who knows? Of all things, the wind shows mercy, garbling the sound, throwing it back into the throat where it began. The blackness of my shadow suddenly expands to cover all. The workshop door has been shut.
It is an effort opening my hand enough to drop the shovel. I kneel on the frosty sand, but cannot see into the gloom. Still, I know what is there. Who would know the pine box of a Sister of Poverty better than Adolfo’s boy? Who would know the precise dimensions, the random placement of the knots, the pitchy scent as the handsaw makes its perfect cut? Who would know Adolfo’s orders to use the worst of the wood, to spend no valuable effort or time on the box of a crazy old woman?
Who would remember arriving here in the back of a coughing old truck on a rainy autumn night—a boy, too young to be on his own in an angry village suspicious of newcomers? Who might recall one friendly soul of six dozen inhabitants? Who might remember kind words, a shared wooden bowl of thin, strangely sweet soup, a rusty cot and a red wool blanket?
I reach my stiff hands into the grave, brushing sand across the box. Sister Lucia’s hands were bent and knotted. My hands cannot feel the slivers I know are piercing them. It is certainly the least I can do.
The wind howls from the Juarapas, over the Buitre Blanco, over the graves, over this kneeling apprentice woodworker, to Adolfo’s shop. I imagine their open-mouthed laughs, their off-key songs, but the wind somehow sucks the sound from the picture in my mind. They silently reel, pour more ale, slap one another’s backs, laugh at the foolish apprentice sent out into the night.
My hands sweep in numb arcs across the box from sides to center. I scoop up the gritty mounds of sand. I drop the handfuls at my side to form a tiny pile.
Adolfo had left me to build the box. He would never come check my work. He had taught me well how to build a box, even of the saddest pine, how to compensate for warped wood, how to set the nails just so, how to deliver the box, not with his cart, but balanced on my back.
Adolfo would never inspect it, just as he had never taken a second look at Sister Lucia, at me. He would collect his pay for my work, a few coins from the other Sisters, then he and his compadres would disappear until the sun dropped and the cold set in.
After putting poor Sister in the ground, I waited, shivering in the workshop, the workspace brushed, the floor swept, the fire set for his return. As the winds howled and the sun dropped behind the Juarapas, Hector pulled the door open, held it there for Adolfo’s entrance. Neither was as drunk as he might be.
I knew Adolfo’s routine and braced myself. The others blew in the door, flapping their arms with the cold.
“The fire, boy,” Adolfo demanded, reaching out to the top shelf. I bent to strike the match, listening to his beefy hand slapping back and forth in the dark, listening to the intake of breath.
“Mi venturosa uña!” he yelled.
“Your lucky nail?” Hector asked. “It is gone?”
The flames leapt on the hearth. Adolfo’s hand dug into my shoulder, pulling me to my feet, turning me to face him.
“Boy?”
He did not expect a response. He would tell me what had happened, I would agree. His audience stood ready to hear the proclamation.
Instead, they heard my small voice. “The good sister,” I said, surprised that I should speak at all, breathing in, trying to speak with certainty, trying to keep the register low. “It seemed she deserved at least one lucky nail.”
The beating was not as bad as it might have been. He needed me to do the work. Only I knew his hands had grown weak with drink—too weak for good work. We all knew Adolfo could never face a night without his lucky nail. I should have held my tongue.
Still, it seemed my words, my daring, filled an empty space too long left hollow.
Back at Sister’s grave, a flash of light from above, and I look up to Luna Madre, suddenly free from the clouds. I look down to the box, its dark knots scattered over the moonlit whiteness of the pine. Strange. Thin dark lines arc from the sides of the box to the center. No such lines were there when I built the box—only knots and slivers.
Of course. I lift one hand to my mouth, bear down, and pull a sliver. I feel nothing. I pull three more and wipe my hands on the serape. Hands will heal.
Luna Madre sends me light, and there is the shining silver glint—the very top of la venturosa uña—Adolfo’s lucky nail. It glints in the corner above Sister’s left shoulder. I fumble the hammer from my belt and run my hand over the newly smoothed ash of its handle. It balances well. Funny what one can do with some time, a discarded hammer head, a broken axe shaft, and a bit of skill.
The nail’s head glints in the light of Luna Madre.
I can pull the nail, leaving the tiniest hole, just as I assembled the box, striking each nail perfectly, leaving no dent—not the slightest impression—just as I carefully sawed the sad, discarded pine. It is good to have skill. The smooth ash handle catches Luna Madre’s light, and here I am, a boy with a hammer, with skills. A boy remembering Adolfo’s story. Remembering.
Slowly, with certainty, I stand and slip the hammer back into my belt. Strange. It is no longer heavy.
Sister Lucia Maria, you may keep the nail.
Luna Madre throws a last flash of light to glint on the nail’s silvery top as the first shovelful lands on the pine box. The next ones come with little effort.
The sand crunches lightly underfoot. They say the next village is a mere two days’ walk. Luna Madre looks on from behind a thin veil of clouds. The village shovel makes a fine walking stick. The hammer swings at my belt.
This night may be cold, but not near as cold as I had thought.
C.S. Perryess taught middle school for years and now runs an academic day camp for middle schoolers at Cuesta College while maintaining a blog about words at Perryess.com. His short stories have appeared in Highlights for Children, READ Magazine, Pangolin Papers, Eureka Literary Magazine, With, and elsewhere. His work was anthologized in In Short: How to Teach the Young Adult Short Story (Heinemann 2005), and Lay-Ups and Long Shots (Darby Creek/Lerner, 2008). He’s a Patti Gauch acolyte, a baker, a cyclist, and a musician, and he drives for the local food bank.