At one point, the tale of Francisco and Antonia Soria had been the greatest love story to ever grace Bicho Raro, which was saying a lot.
Love in the high desert is a strange thing. There is something about the climate—the remoteness, the severity of the seasons, the dryness of the air, the extreme beauty—that makes people feel more deeply. Perhaps without trees or cities to dampen the enormity of the feelings, they spread out hugely. Perhaps the hard-packed dust of the San Luis Valley amplifies them, like a shout into a canyon. Whatever it is, the people of Bicho Raro were no exception. Everything was bigger: anger, humor, terror, jubilance, love. Perhaps this was why the darkness of the Sorias was considered a more dangerous thing, too. It, like everything else, was deeper and more uncompromising.
Antonia and Francisco had been born on the same minute of the same day, one hundred miles apart. They might not have met if not for the weather. In the dirty 1930s, drought had struck Bicho Raro, and the air was orange and thick from dawn until dusk. There was rarely wind, and when there was, it was also orange and thick. Temperatures seared. Cattle turned to statues in the fields and birds fell out of the sky.
One day, however, a cool, clear breeze caught Francisco’s hair as he was digging the family sheepdog out of a sand dune that had formed overnight. It was a strange breeze—from the north, unlike the usual southwestern weather—and when he lifted his head, he could see that the breeze was carrying blue sky with it: clear blue air that a man could breathe without choking. He put down his shovel, and he and the dog followed the breeze clear out of Bicho Raro, down through San Luis, over the border to New Mexico, past Costilla, past Questa, and clear into Taos, where they were having a fiesta.
Francisco, who had lived in the San Luis Valley his entire life and under the drought for half of that life, could barely fathom such festivities. Little girls in fiesta dresses rode painted carousel horses on a merry-go-round powered by men turning a massive wooden gear. Boys one-third his height wore crisp and dustless sombreros. The dancing was so vigorous that he felt his legs stepping out without his permission, his body an unwitting mirror. The music replaced Francisco’s blood, and he felt he could do anything. That was when the blue sky stopped, right over Antonia Alamilla, who was dancing in a white dress. He saw now that it was not blue sky at all, but rather a blue balloon whose string was tied around her wrist. When she saw Francisco in his dust-covered overalls, she immediately stopped dancing and declared, in facile Spanish, “I love dogs.”
The rest of the townspeople looked on in shock. No one had heard Antonia speak since she’d been born, and once she had met Francisco, she did not stop. He asked her to be his wife, and when they were married in Bicho Raro two months later, Antonia’s tears of joy coaxed rain from the sky and ended the decade-long drought.
But that was before.
On the day Beatriz climbed beneath the box truck to think, it was precisely one week before Francisco and Antonia’s fiftieth birthdays. In honor of such a distinguished occasion, Judith had proposed a massive celebration; this was the reason she and Eduardo had returned the night before, to help prepare for such a feast. But Francisco and Antonia’s union was becoming ever more fretful; unbeknownst to Judith, they had stopped talking to each other almost entirely.
Or rather, Francisco had stopped talking to Antonia. Once Antonia had begun to speak to Francisco, she had not decided to stop simply because he was not listening.
The yelling Joaquin had heard was because Antonia and Judith were confronting Francisco in his greenhouse. The greenhouse was a laboratory for plants, as Francisco believed in being scientific about his quest for the art of the black rose. A system of narrow metal pipes delivered precious water precisely where he intended it to go, and reflectors were attached to shutters so that he could direct the sun similarly. There were not only roses but also delicate lettuces that grew in a vertical grid arranged above an old claw bathtub, and secretive mushrooms that flourished in an old set of printmaker’s drawers. Francisco stood among them, his hands covered in soil, his clothing covered with soil, but his hair impeccably oiled back. He had only a very few things he required to be in their places, but those things were non-negotiable.
“People will not come all this way just for you to stay in here with your roses!” Antonia told him. “And do not say that there are plenty of other people here!”
“No one is even asking you to help with the preparations!” Judith added.
“Although she would be well within her rights,” Antonia continued. “She and Eduardo came back entirely for this. We only ask for you to promise to appear for one day out of the year. That is not so much for a wife to ask!”
“And don’t say that your roses won’t bear it!” Judith said. “We are supposed to be your roses!”
Judith was near tears at this point. Terror had accompanied her dreams that night, even though she had slept tangled with Eduardo’s warm body. She could not stop thinking of the pilgrims lurking so close to her mother’s home. All her life, Antonia had warned her shrilly of the dangers of the unhealed pilgrim, and Judith had forgotten what it was like to spend every minute alongside them. She did not know how her sister, Beatriz, could bear it—but then again, her sister had no feelings, and fear was a feeling.
“We were your roses,” Antonia countered hotly.
Beatriz and Joaquin arrived at this moment, and for the first time, Francisco made a sound. He said, “Close the door! The humidity!”
“What was that?” shrilled Antonia. “Do you believe this is a game?” Because, to her, it had not sounded like he had spoken. It had sounded as if he was making light of the situation by whistling. This was what Beatriz’s invented language sounded like when it was articulated aloud. Since it was mathematical, it was far more usable in musical form than with words.
Beatriz closed the door.
“Beatriz!” Judith said gratefully. “You speak sense to him.”
“How are your roses?” Beatriz whistled to Francisco. “Any luck?”
“Too soon to tell,” Francisco replied to her. Father and daughter had an easy relationship that came from possessing complementary needs. Roses and tomatoes are not precisely the same, but they both flourish in the same soil. He caught the dissonant, sour note in her sentence and asked, “Is everything all right?”
“What was that?” Antonia stormed again. “I don’t understand why I must be deliberately excluded!”
The appearance of Beatriz gave Judith more strength. She said, “What Father is doing is despicable. He is deliberately ignoring her. I arrive home last night and she tells me that Ed and I can stay in their bedroom as she has moved into mine! ‘Mama,’ I asked, ‘how do you and Papa fit in that room?’ And she tells me that Papa stays in the greenhouse all the time and never sleeps, so she is sleeping alone now! She stays in my room because the loneliness there is smaller! How do you think I felt coming home to that news, Beatriz?”
Beatriz didn’t believe she needed to think about the answer, as it seemed clearly telegraphed in Judith’s tone.
Judith went on. “I don’t care what they are fighting about. Papa cannot extort her in this way! It is not fair and it is not how a husband of forty years behaves!”
“Gosh, forty years?” Joaquin said.
“I was estimating,” Judith snapped.
“Is that how old you think we are?” Antonia demanded.
Judith told Francisco, “This mistreatment won’t do. You must move back into the house. You cannot turn your back on her this way! If you don’t like her moods, you have to know that withholding your presence will only make it worse!”
Some may have felt she was being unfair or frivolous. But for newly wed Judith, the party represented something else—a promise that a pure and passionate love was still a pure and passionate love years down the road, despite tragedy and differences in personality. It also represented security. She had remained safe at Bicho Raro all these years only because she had her mother and her father standing guard over her sister and her. But now, if they had separated, anything could happen. Darkness could swallow them all. If there was not going to be a party, she wanted to flee again immediately. She would have fled again immediately, if she did not love her family too much to leave them to their fates.
Francisco did not reply. When he did not like the sound of something, he merely went away inside his head, where it was quieter.
Beatriz joined her father and inspected the plants before him. These were not roses nor mushrooms nor lettuces but instead tender garlic bulbs, broken open for investigation. He offered her two to smell and she did, experimentally, one then the other.
“Make him understand, Beatriz, that really all I want is to make certain that he will celebrate his birthday with the rest of us!” Antonia said. When Judith had lived at home, both she and Antonia had often exhorted either Beatriz or Francisco in this way, as if Beatriz and Francisco had feelings as a second language and that someone who spoke fluent logic was needed to accurately convey their meaning. In reality, father and daughter were capable of deep feelings, but both were victims of that old saying, “believing your own press.” After years of being told they had no feelings, they began to give the opinion credence themselves, which was why Beatriz was having the crisis of decision over Daniel’s letter in the first place. If she had recognized herself capable of such deep distress, she might have been able to better address it.
When Beatriz didn’t answer, Antonia said, clearly hurt, “You always take his side.”
Beatriz said, “That is not true.” She did not take sides.
“It isn’t,” Joaquin agreed. “Beatriz is very fair.”
This statement reminded Beatriz very acutely of a similar statement made by Daniel in his letter. Realizing that there would be no good time to address the task at hand, she produced the letter now without unfolding it.
“I need to tell you something. I have a letter from Daniel,” she said.
“A letter?” Antonia asked, with confusion, unable to imagine what would drive Daniel to do such a thing.
Beatriz went on. “He helped one of the pilgrims.”
This news traveled into the interior of the brains in the room at different speeds. Francisco put down the garlic bulb he had been holding. Judith blinked, and then her eyes widened.
Rage seized Antonia.
Here are things that happen when rage overtakes you: First, your blood pressure begins to tick upward, every escalating beat of your heart punching angrily against the walls that contain it. Your muscles tense, fisting in preparation for action. Adrenaline and testosterone leap from your glands, twin horses dragging a red-faced chariot through your thoughts. It is an interesting and peculiar twist of anger that it is jump-started in the part of our brains responsible for emotions, and it is only after the blood-boiling process has taken hold that our good old cortex, the part of the brain we rely on for thought and logic, has a chance to catch up. This is why we say stupid things when we are angry.
Antonia was nearly always angry.
Pacing, she ranted, “What an idiot! He knew better! We told you all!”
“Did he say what form his darkness took?” Francisco asked calmly. His tone further fanned Antonia’s rage.
Beatriz shook her head.
“Soria darkness?” Judith whispered. Fear built in her just as rage had mounted in Antonia, only it was a lighter, more feathery structure, batting around in her rib cage.
Joaquin broke in. “But we have an idea. Even if we can’t help him with his darkness, he doesn’t have to be helpless.”
Francisco, Antonia, and Judith stared at them both, as intent as the owls that had gazed at Beatriz earlier.
Beatriz added her thought. “That boy from last night could bring him food and water. Pete Wyatt. A Soria can’t help, but there is no reason why he can’t interfere.”
Immediately, Antonia said, “Absolutely not!”
“No,” Francisco agreed. Everyone stared at him, shocked by the agreement and by the firm denial of such a simple solution.
“But why not?” demanded Joaquin.
Antonia said, “We can’t know if helping him in any way would count as interfering with his miracle, even if it is through Pete Wyatt. If it counted against us as interference … where would we be? In the same foolish place he is! And what good would that do any of us?” She opened the door—humidity escaped—and shouted, “Rosa! Rosa! Rosa! Come here! Oh, come here.” She swooned against the door. Judith gasped as if she was sobbing, but she did not cry.
“Oh, Mama, Judith, you’re being dramatic,” Beatriz started.
“You’re just like your father,” snarled Antonia.
Neither Francisco nor Beatriz rose to this remark; they never did.
“I don’t see why going through that guy is a risk,” Joaquin insisted. “We don’t avoid the pilgrims who live here any more than that.”
“We can’t do nothing,” Beatriz said.
“Look, all of you. A Soria’s darkness spreads like nothing you have seen before.” Antonia’s voice was ironclad. “I forbid all of you from going to find Daniel. Over my dead body!”