El Cartero
After giving the horse some water he turned and to make sure he had closed the flap of the mailbag. It was only one bag today, and fortunately it wasn’t too heavy. His hands still hurt, though, as he inspected it then tied it carefully to the back of one of the burros he would also be taking with him. Most mornings it was the same ritual, arriving at the small office, attending to a few people who were dropping of mail, packing items carefully after he had sorted them out (big items here, delicate items there, correspondence in another pile), and when he had a chance and wasn’t being watched, rubbing his wife’s salve into his hands to try to calm the pain of arthritis. It was getting worse and worse, and before long, he knew, he wouldn’t be able to do this job. He could use some help but for the moment, though, he wasn't about to let this be known.
He stepped into the small office again, checking the small counter top in case he had forgotten something, making sure the drawers were closed, and the stamps put away. He hated to think he might have left a stray item out of place, a postal stamp, an ink pad or a receipt ledger, left out carelessly and calling attention to itself. You know that they say about old people, he told himself. Leave one thing misplaced, and people say he or she is losing their memory and needs to be put out to pasture. He was usually very meticulous about these things. He then checked himself in the long mirror next to the countertop, to make sure his uniform was spotless and his thin hair wasn’t too unsightly. He was stepping out to as part of official business, and he had an image to maintain. He then looked around one last time before closing the door and locking up.
It was still early enough in the morning so that the temperature was bearable. In a few hours the sun would be directly overhead and the air would be rising in simmering waves. He had lived all his life in El Comal, and temperature extremes were part of his life. He preferred the heat to the winter cold but, lately, his body seemed to make no distinction. It always seemed to ache and pain him in ways that made it difficult to move, and he found himself pausing to stretch or to rub his arms and legs, grimacing to himself silently and adding a quick sign of the cross.
He had always led an active life, and considered himself hale for his age. Many others of his generation were now planted to their chairs, moving only when absolutely necessary and then at a turtle's pace, forced to spend most of their time sitting and watching life swirling around them. At least he was still active and working. Looking out he saw that a few people were still in the dusty streets, hurrying to complete their errands. Things would soon grow very still in the pueblito, as people retired to their homes to wait out the suffocating afternoon. He wouldn’t be able to join them, however.
Things just weren’t the same, he thought to himself, as he mounted on top of his horse and led the two burros he was taking with him. Sure, the heat was the same, it would never change, and the church hadn’t changed, nor the peel of the bells that announced the call to mass. And, of course, the Brujo could still be seen up on the hill, sitting under the tree next to his shack, looking out to the south, always south, but from time to time turning to follow the movements of the people in the pueblito. People were never sure what he was looking for, but knew that it was part of his ritual, and they would wave to him out of courtesy; sometimes he even waved back. And the children of the pueblito were now in school, which was a ritual of recent introduction, one that took a little effort to take hold out here where people were so tied to tradition. By one o’clock they would be let out to scamper home and wait out the heat the way the rest of them did, in the interior of their adobe homes. A few would first linger for a while in the zocalo, of course, gathering in groups and chatting, but most were hungry by then and wouldn't wait too long. He remembered what it had been like, for he had done the same.
But there were things that had changed, though. It wasn’t just the fiery priest who had joined them almost twenty years ago, and who was always raging about the dangers of the outside world, and the loss of faith and unity among the people who he called out needed to come together and renew the faith of the martyrs. (He wasn’t from El Comal, ironically enough, and his dramatic flair gave abundant proof of this.) It was also the fact that new people were coming in, people without deep roots in the hill country who brought new ways of thinking, and insisted that others change and follow their ways.
They were merchants who had started setting up shops, a modest bodega here, a boarding house there, and even a pharmacy selling wondrous remedies from the “World of Science”. There had even been the arrival of a utility line to bring electricity to most of the small dwellings in the pueblito, with indoor lights for most and refrigeration for the few who could affort it, and new tools and wonders among which the most impressive were frozen popsicles in the summer. One of these was the big box that talked, the one that was called a “radio set” and which was said to bring in exotic voices from places far away. Father Remigio didn’t like it one bit, and warned about its dangerous influence, inveighing people to not buy them and instead listen to their inner voices, the ones that came from God. It was all moot, however, since most people couldn’t afford one, and yet it undeniably had a big impact on them. They couldn’t help but be curious, even though most of them couldn’t understand it, the voices speaking so fast, and the music being so unlike any of the slow and meandering cadences they themselves knew, accompanied by guitars and flutes and clapping. There were even people who insisted that the box harbored duendes who hid from sight, and they crossed themselves as they hurried by, trying not to pay too much attention. For the most part the older ones didn't understand what was being said, given that the voices didn't speak in the language of the pueblitos. The younger ones did, however, and often they would gather to listen to the set that was kept by their teacher in the school, or linger around the bodega to hear the programs when the owner turned on his display set.
There was also the fact that his grown children had left. One used not to see old people who were left alone, for it was a tradition that families stayed together, even if some of their members moved to other pueblitos in the hill country. However, in the past few decades, there were many families that had lost children to the outside world. He and his wife had had four in all, three boys and one daughter, and they had always thought that their children would remain in the town with them, sharing the long evenings sipping chocolate and chatting with with their parents and neighbors. They expected to be surrounded by grandchildren who would talk to them about their adventures, about their expeditions up the nearby hills, or to the river, or the things they had learned in school. The children had so many plans, and they saw things with fresh eyes that made their grandparents forget the passage of the years. However, many of the young adults had been leaving in recent years, and in his case, things had been particularly disastrous. He had lost all four of his children to the pull of the outside world.
The ones who left were rarely seen again in El Comal. They went to places east and north and even west, to the far off Pacific coast, and their absence left a dark ache that no salve could diminish. He missed his children, he missed Salvador and Joaquín and Norberto and the youngest one, María Remedios, the one who whose name ironically promised a succor that had been denied to them.
“Buenos días, don Perico, ya sale al camino?”, said an elderly man who tipped his hat as he stepped out of the bodega that was blaring a music program from far away.
“Sí, don Emilio, buenos días, voy por el correo”, he answered.
“Ya sabe, compadre, no se vaya a tardar, ya ve que los animales no aguantan mucho, y menos nosotros, que dependemos de ellos. Me saluda después a doña Inés, y cuando guste, pase a la casa para tomarse un refresquito por la tarde”, said don Emilio, who waved his hat then walked off in his black boots down the dusty street.
Don Perico chuckled. He appreciated the words of his friend, but wondered how much longer they would be depending on animals. It seemed more and more likely that the age of the machine had come to replace them, both animals and humans alike, and before long, he thought, they would all be hiding in boxes, like the duendes who were said to inhabit the radio consoles. He wondered who would listen to them then. Maybe only the animals who wouldn’t know any better.
He didn’t want to be late for his meeting with Mr. Silva. The whole point of this trip was that they needed to meet to exchange bags, he turning over the one with outgoing mail, and Mr. Silva turning over to him the one with incoming mail. As ever, he looked forward to seeing what was delivered, even if he had to confess he didn’t quite understand the man himself or appreciate the way he was treated.
Sometimes Mr. Silva delivered big and heavy packages, and he would feel a twinge of fear in his gut. His arthritis being what it was, added to the fact that Mr. Silva never stayed to help him, he had no idea how long it might take to load the packages on the burros he had brought with him. He never despaired, however, carrying a carved saint in his satchel that he prayed to every morning before he set out, and giving thanks that he wouldn’t be traveling far from the pueblito the way he used to, when he was the one who had to make the trip through the open countryside to Las Perlas. Still, the aches pained him, and he remembered in particular an episode just a few weeks ago, in early June, when he had been unable to close his fingers and grasp the bags, and had had to spend the better part of an hour lifting his arms and smacking them against the roadsign, hoping that no one would come and see him in his agony, an old man with two heavy bags of mail, unable to load them on his animals and praying earnestly all the while.
Now, it wasn’t much of a journey out to the meeting place. It involved a trip of about three miles along the dirt road that connected the pueblito to the new interstate that had been completed just six years ago. He would usually leave after 10:30 a.m. and be there at the meeting place before noon, this place being the roadsign that announced the presence of El Comal to the world. The sign was necessary because otherwise there wasn’t much to mark the existence of the pueblito, at least to those intrepid souls who might be traveling on the interstate and couldn’t see the pueblito, encircled as it was by hills. There wasn’t much traffic on the dirt road that marked the turnoff, but that was changing. The postal truck couldn’t be trusted to navigate the road, and the volume of mail being what it was, which was still quite modest, it had been accorded that don Perico would ride out there every morning to meet the truck by the interstate. Sometimes, as he rode out there, he might see someone driving slowly to or from El Comal, and he would move to the side, escaping the choking trail of dust left by the vehicles. He didn’t mind. He had seen worse out in the open country, towering vortexes of swirling air that meandered and zigzagged wildly in the open spaces, veering off in unexpected directions and willful like a stubborn and malevolent animal. How many times he had had the narrowest of escapes! At least he knew where the drivers were heading.
Sometime after noon, while standing next to the signpost patiently, trying to squeeze into the little shade that was offered by a meager sign that proclaimed “Los Comales”, and underneath, scrawled in smaller but very dignified letters, “somos los primeros”, he would scan the eastern edge of the road, waiting for the tell-tale shimmer in the air. There was still little traffic on the new interstate, and one might see one or two cars pass every half hour, with drivers who would invariably honk as they drove past, waving a hand out the window. People were still friendly out here, and he wondered what destiny they were pursuing, and if his children would ever make it back here, triggering a heave that he quickly suppressed. There was, however, one shimmer on the road for which he kept watch, and he never had to wait long before he was it, rising and falling on the undulating road, bearing down on him like a crazed tecolote pursuing its prey, swooping down on an unsuspecting mouse. It never took very long to reach him after the first glimpse, and soon the grey truck would slow down and stop next to the sign where he was waiting. Inside, he would see Mr. Silva, a man wearing big horn-rimmed glasses but with nothing of the wizened look of an owl. Instead, he always looked irritated, and had never been much for pleasantries.
Out of force of habit don Perico would lift his hat in greeting, but Mr. Silva almost always went out of his way to studiously ignore him, clambering out of the truck after bringing it to a stop next to the sign, then walking to the back, where he would open a few doors and look for the bags he was to leave with don Perico. Usually he was muttering under his breath, and from the little that could be understood, he gathered it was a running complaint. He hardly even looked at his colleague, and seemed to care not a whit for the meticulous care the older man took with his appearance. Mr. Silva, in contrast to don Perico, usually had his shirt half open and untucked during the summer, and was always perspiring freely, with his hair sticking up this way and that, giving the impression of having been tearing at it while in the pursuit of his prey. His shoes were also invariably untied. He was out of his element, here in the hill country, so close to El Comal, so far from civilization as he knew it.
Sometimes don Perico would offer him a drink from his leather pouch, but Mr. Silva never relented, and would rebuff him brusquely. Don Perico had never judged him at fault, however, especially since he knew that Mr. Silva came from old stock out here in the hill country, in fact from a family in the pueblito of Los Peñasquitos. He had apparently been taken by his father and raised out in Johnson Way, a town that stood at the intersection of the cattle trails and had grown fat on meat processing. He had later moved to Las Perlas, from what he had been told by others, for Mr. Silva had never shared much with him, and wasn’t a man for small talk. It must have made him surly, thought don Perico, his having been yanking out of the hill country at a young age, and missing out on the support of an extended family left behind. The outside world wasn’t too kind with people who came from little pueblitos, and he knew that they were subjected frequently to much ridicule. It must have left him unsettled, his being made to feel that everything about him was wrong, and his having no one else to share this with, no cousins or uncles or aunts or grandparents to tell him otherwise. Whatever it was, Mr. Silva made no attempt to disguise his disdain for the people of the hill country and their “backward” ways. He even made it a point not to speak the language of the people out here, insisting instead on speaking a clipped English that sounded as if he were throwing rocks at those he addressed. It was very uncomfortable for don Perico, but he tolerated it. He had to admit to himself that it made him sad, to think about his children and grandchildren who were also lost out there in the outside world, and he wondered whether they might be dealing with the same things that Mr. Silva was facing. He hoped they had fared better.
They had an unspoken arrangement, these two men, which meant that words were kept to a minimum between them. There were no pleasantries, no inquiring as to how each one’s family was doing, no talking about the weather or about the heat or about what they had dreamed last night or what their pets had done or what they were planning on eating for dinner. No, that was the type of talk that was best reserved only for people who had too much time on their hands, like those from pueblitos such as El Comal. For these two men, it was a matter of asking how many bags were being exchanged, how much money had been collected, whether or not don Perico needed any special supplies, and if there were any special packages that needed to be handled with special care. (There were still some who wanted to send, for example, a live snake to a relative in town, and it wouldn’t do not to inform Mr. Silva and fail to reassure him that the bag was quite safe, but that under no circumstance should he open it himself, and he should best leave it to Rodrigo, another refugee from the hill country who had made a life in the city but who still knew the old ways and knew what to do with a package such as this one, filled with a writhing shape. Mr. Silva’s eyes would open and shut in exasperation, and he would of course refuse to touch the bag, and tell him he was to put in in a box he kept with a key, muttering loudly and with added ferocity about the savagery of the old people, and the fact that he was going to lodge a complaint, and it would serve them right if there were reprimands issued.) Then, they would exchange bags, sign each other’s ledger, and Mr. Silva would utter a curt “See you tomorrow”, to which don Perico would answer, “Tenga cuidado, nos vemos mañana”, and that would be it. Don Perico would do his best to smile, and would incline his head slightly, watching as Mr. Silva started the truck and turned it around, eager to return to civilization. He always waited for a few minutes until the truck had faded into a shimmer in the distance before picking up the packages that had been left on the ground and loading them onto the animals. It seemed more respectful that way, to see a person off calmly and without any hurry. Old habits died hard.
Afte these encounters Don Perico always thought about his children, and about the changes he had seen. Before, when he was young and about to take over the job from his father, the father who had been the first postman for the pueblito when the new authorities swarmed over from the east during the middle of the 19th century and proclaimed the hill country part of a new nation, the job had involved making a weekly overnight trip to the nearest administrative center that had been set up on the eastern edge of the hill country. This was, fortunately or unfortunately, depending on where you had found yourself when the partition was set, the town of Las Perlas, which had been a mirror image of El Comal, except for the fact that it was located on flatter land, and didn’t have the benefit of the protection and isolation offered by the hills. As a consequence the town had changed dramatically, and about the only part of the old identity that remained was the name; pretty much everything else about it was erased and replaced.
Back then, of course, there was no interstate, and the only roads that crisscrossed the region were the trails that had been used for hundreds of years, and that had been here before the settlers from the south, his own forefathers, had arrived. He would ride out, as his father had ridden out, to the town of Las Perlas, which was located almost thirty miles to the east. It was a precarious trip, filled with many dangers in that time when swarms of greedy and unhinged settlers as well as fugitives and criminals swept west, and the community tried to weather the storm the way they dealt with heat and the cold: they hunkered down and, when necessary, hid in caves. The encroachments had been difficult to withstand, and his father had been assaulted numerous times on his weekly trips by desperate gunmen, once even being stripped of all his belongings and left with little other than his undergarments to try to find his way, barefoot and without food, water or a hat, to wend his way to help. But someone who grew up in the hill country knows where to find the things he or she needs, and he had made it through, in the middle of the heat, fashioning sandals for himself from peeled cactus leaves and finding water and eating insects where he knew he could find them. He was self-reliant, and he had taught his son these same skills himself, emphasizing the virtue of being prepared for any eventuality.
Back then, in those first few years after the imposition of the new regime, his father had been viewed with mistrust by the people of the pueblito. In those first few years, a bureaucrat accompanied by a few loafish soldiers with firearms and good aim had been sent to the pueblo to take up residence and ready if for the coming of progress. One of his responsibilities involved setting up a post office station. He had appropriated a small residence for himself, turning out the widow and her two children to take refuge with her sister down the road, and furnished it with a table, shelves and a modest counter. Next to the door he had posted a sign that read “Postal Service”, and started to take inventory of the possessions of the inhabitants, with a view towards assessing values and setting up a system of taxation. He was to be much loathed for this and for other impositions, but no one dared to express their true feelings, for the memory of the appropriation of the house was one that lingered. Besides, few people could understand him, outside of the parish priest, who in those years had been a patient man who had immigrated from Galicia and who was ever wary of English-speakers, trying always to soothe over any tensions.
The bureaucrat was in charge of setting up postal service during those first few years, and in the beginning he despaired of getting the people to recognize the value of this new service. It was simply the case that the people weren’t ready for progress, he complained over and over to the priest, and didn’t appreciate the value of the postal service and the benefits that would come from opening contact with the outside world. Now, the priest who himself didn’t believe in these benefits, and worried that the identity and faith of the people of the pueblito would prosper only if left in isolation, offered little aid to the bureaucrat, telling him that the people had no conception of things they didn’t need. He had no wish to see the people subjected to further influence from the new regime that had stormed over from the east and taken over the hill country, and he hated to admit it, but he came to miss the chaotic regime of the south that had had a healthy tolerance for isolation in these settlements to the north.
There were few people that the bureaucrat could even speak to, other than his soldiers and the priest, and in that first year, he found himself having to mimic what he considered their "primitive" language without much success, his mouth being unwilling to host the sliding and unruly sounds of a speech that he considered twisted and made for deception, and that prided itself with servile formulas of courtesy that he found intolerable, and that he was sure could only be described as savage and incapable of reaching the poetic heights of his own speech, the speech of Shakespeare. It was becoming more and more urgent that he find an assistant to train to take over as postman, and he knew intuitively that if he found a local, the people of the pueblito might be more inclined to accept it, and to start valuing the benefits of this service.
One day, while standing outside of the “casa expropiada”, as the locals called in, he was watching the men lead their animals in the early morning to the fields on the outskirts of the pueblito. As he did, he noticed one young teenager who was having trouble with a horse that kept on bucking, and that had evidently been spooked by a snake. He heard the teenager call out, as clear as the blue sky, “Come here!”, as he wrestled with the animal, trying to calm it down. Everyone knew that this horse was more temperamental than most, lacking the practical and common sense of a good burro and unwilling to listen to the boy, who his father hoped would learn to tame the animal and tame as well his own slightly rebellious nature. It turns out this was don Perico’s father, a teenager who at the time was still known by his name, Joaquín, and who had heard the phrase once while out in the open country, when he had come across a vagrant lying exhausted under a tree, unable to take another step and calling out to the boy who he half suspected was some kind of unearthly vision, desperately, “Come here! Come here!”, confusing him with a personfication of the death he so desired to put him out of his misery.
He had said it with a tone of both anger and desperation, and the befuddled teenager took it to mean, then, that it was a term used for scolding others. So, the teenager had appropriated it as his own, not knowing what it meant, but using it when he grew frustrated, which he did frequently when forced to handle this horse, which was notoriously finicky and unwilling to follow his instructions. (He had actually tried to help the vagrant, running back to town to fetch help, but by the time they had returned and found him, they had time only to hear him mutter a final “Oh, God, receive me in your bosom and help this boy” before he expired.)
Well, the postmaster, who had never known the vagrant, nonetheless took this phrase as uttered by the teenager on that street that morning as a sign from the cosmos or fortune or any other agent other than God that he had found the apprentice that he needed (he was a freethinker, after all), and he called out to the teenager, “You, come here!”, which confused Joaquin, who thought for a moment that he was being addressed once again by the vagrant, or by the ghost of the vagrant who had taken over the body of the bureaucrat who expropriated people's houses. (Which would serve him right, after what he had done to doña Imelda.) It sent a chill down his spine, but he was nonetheless a polite teenager, and one could add that it was a bright morning, so he felt a little more brave, and there were other men about, leading their animals to pasture but lingering before the home and stopping to look, and he didn’t want to lose face, so instead of turning around and running away, which was his first and instinct, he walked up to the foreigner, wishing to find out why he was being scolded. The bureaucrat took this as another sign that he had an obedient candidate for apprentice, the kind that he needed, and by with his hadn invited him in.
While inside he shared his food with him, and showed him the books he had on his shelves, and the table and the counter, and the pens and the paper and the ledgers he kept in the drawers. He treated the teenager with utmost consideration, and began to give him a lesson in the English alphabet, writing letters on a chalk tablet and having him repeat them. The men outside would look in through the open window, and they heard Joaquín repeating the sounds dutifully, over and over, and in the next few days, repeating words and expressions he was being taught. By the early afternoon he was release and given a meager coin, and dismissed to go join his parents for the siesta, being told to come back the next day.
This was tolerated by the teenager’s parents, for they also had no wish to court any difficulty with the foreigner and his soldiers, not wishing to risk the fate of doña Imelda and her house. Furthermore, the teenager had shown little inclination for working out in the fields, and even less for taming the horse that had been assigned to him. Soon, the teenager was learning the language of the foreigner, and learning as well the rudiments of reading and writing, the first youngster of his pueblito to receive any formal schooling, and he was so adept at quickly learning the speech of the foreigner that he was derisively referred to by the nickname “don Perico”, which was meant to mock him for his “airs” of superiority as well as the alacrity with which he repeated everything that was said to him.It was a nickname that would be inherited by his son, the current postmaster of El Comal and the one we had seen by the roadsign next to the interstate, but by now, after the passage of the years, the nickname had lost its sting, and was instead an affectionate term, one that had become habituated to the ways of the people. They knew, after all, when they had to accept a necessary evil and recognize it for what it was, a sign of the new era.
TO BE CONTINUED
Copyright 2014 (C) Oscar G. Romero
