'No, no,' he said softly as she bent over Manny like a poorly strung puppet, all stiff limbs and awkward swaying. 'I shall do that. Go inside and get me some more blankets.' He spoke as gently as he could, adding 'please' as an afterthought.
Miguel did not need any more sheets or shrouds; he had plenty, but nothing was served by having the girl there.
He was determined that she would not carry through life a memory of the terrible dead weight of her brother in her arms. One day, with God's blessing perhaps, she might remember Manny smiling and squealing as they wrestled on the floor of the homestead.
What God? he thought bitterly. No loving God could visit such horror on the world.
He turned again to Sofia. 'Could you see to the dogs, I can hear them barking; they are still tied up in the barn out by the pond.'
She nodded stiffly, as though she had hurt her neck, before moving slowly away. Miguel spit into the mud and tried to ignore the acid burning in his guts. Much of his body felt numb, his limbs in particular, as though he had lain awkwardly for hours and cut off his circulation. His fingers sometimes tingled painfully, however, a feeling not unlike having grabbed an exposed electrical wire. Having felt like it might explode out through his chest earlier in the day, his heart now beat slow and hard like a pile driver.
He covered Grandma Ana in the bright patchwork quilt she had begun knitting in the evenings in the refugee camp in Australia. Darkness stole in at the edge of his vision and a thick crust of salt hardened around his heart as he draped an army blanket over his son, little Manny. It had been given to them by the federales in Corpus Christi when they arrived to take up their place in the resettlement program. The children had driven Mariela to the edge of madness turning it into a tent in the lounge room on rainy days all through the winter just passed.
Corpus Christi, he remembered, was where he had first heard about the road agents, in a lecture from an FBI man about the dangers of the frontier. He had said nothing about them being Fort Hood's men, but Miguel had made it his business to find out as much as he could about them. He had thought he was being careful, but it had not helped.
As he moved from one member of his family to the next, covering them for the last time, he tried to murmur a prayer for each one, but found that the words would not come. He had no prayers to offer. Just once in the terrible business of collecting his dead did he falter, when he picked up Maya. Still so small and looking as vulnerable in death as she had in life. A high-pitched keening sound caught in his throat, and he had to bite his cheek hard enough to draw blood to regain some control over his feelings. He would mourn for her later. He would mourn for them all later, but for now Sofia still lived and it was to her safety and welfare he would have to attend first, after seeing to the remains of his family.
Only Mariela, his wife, his lifelong love, did he pick up and carry into the homestead without first wrapping her body in some kind of shawl. Her eyes were closed, mercifully. He would not have wanted to look into those lifeless orbs. It was bad enough having to hold her and feel her dead flesh against his. A primitive, irrational part of his mind tried to will his life into her where their bodies touched, skin on skin, hers still warm but slick with blood and so terribly still. He kissed her lightly on the forehead as he maneuvered through the screen door into the parlor, for all the world looking like a newly married man carrying his wife across the threshold of their future together. Miguel laid her gently on the couch and shook off the admonishing voice in his head that scolded him for getting her blood on the fabric. Mariela's voice, of course.
Once inside, he could hear Sofia upstairs in her room, crying like a small child. Obviously, she had not made it down to the barn to untie the dogs. He could still faintly hear their frenzied barking off in the distance. Sofia's crying reassured Miguel, oddly enough. It was at least a change from the cold, nearly unresponsive puppet of a few minutes ago. Part of him knew he should fly to her and fold her in his arms. But that was not possible. There were hard necessities of the situation that could not be avoided or denied.
The screen door clanged as he pushed through it out into the yard to continue gathering up his dead. The sun had climbed a little higher in the sky, but the morning was still cool. Trees on the horizon slumped heavily under a sheen of ice and a few clumps of snow, dragging their branches low to the ground. Overhead a pair of black crows cawed at him, the noise sounding like the laughter of cruel and stupid men. Dizziness came over him in waves, and he feared he might pass out, falling to the ground and possibly never getting up again.
But there was still Sofia. He had to get her away from here and the agents as soon as he could. The need for haste helped, hurrying him through the awful business of collecting the bodies of his family and carrying them inside so that he might escape with all that remained for him in the world. With Sofia.
The silent farmhouse sat nestled at the edge of a thick glade of myrtle and basswood trees on the southern foot of a small rise overlooking his fields of lima and pole beans. A whitewashed two-story wood-framed house with deep verandas around three sides, it had been crowded with all his relatives crammed inside, but Mariela had insisted on keeping everyone together. He chose not to dwell on the bitter irony of that as he carried the last of his extended family into the parlor.
He could not bear to stand and look at them, even shrouded as they were, for more than a few moments. It was not just that he could feel his heart seizing up painfully; there seemed a good chance that he might go mad if he gave in to the urge to lie down among them and give up. Instead he forced himself to make the sign of the cross before backing out of the room and closing the door. He would never set foot in there again. Instead, he trudged upstairs, where he could hear his daughter still crying.
The door to her bedroom was closed, the room she had shared with her little sister Maya. He hesitated outside for a moment before pressing on to the master bedroom. Everywhere he saw evidence of violation: drawers pulled out and the contents emptied, clothes on the floor, toys scattered around, a chair knocked over and left lying halfway out the door. On a normal day Mariela would never have allowed such chaos in her domain.
He clenched his jaw, tasting his own blood, and hurried into the bedroom, quickly stuffing spare Levi's and shirts and two pairs of boots into a sports bag. He dug an army surplus arctic-rated sleeping bag out of the bottom of the closet and a thick lamb's wool coat. There would be nights when they would not be able to find shelter, and the chill of the deserts and badlands after dark was enough to finish off the unwary. Although he would doubtless be able to scavenge much of what they needed on the trail, there was no point leaving things to chance at this early stage. The main thing right now was to get the hell away from Blackstone's territory with Sofia, to seek out help wherever he could.
He knew he was alone among his neighbors in believing the road agents to be tools of Jackson Blackstone, but Miguel had invested a good deal of time, before arriving here, consulting much more widely than the 'experts' on offers to prospective settlers. He had sought out a number of Mexican sources, vaqueros like himself, some of them settlers, some bandits working the border regions. To them there was no question. The agents did the bidding of Fort Hood.
Miguel was about to leave when his eye fell upon a small silver-framed photograph of Mariela and the children resting on an old mahogany chest in which all the drawers stood open. Hesitating momentarily, he finally picked it up and carefully removed the picture from the frame. His hands were shaking but he allowed himself a few seconds of indulgence, gazing at his family as they had been just a few short hours ago. He struggled with the enormity of it all. That happy time was now as distant and impossible to touch as the surface of a cold star twinkling in the night sky. How could there be so much life in his gnarled brown fingers as they stroked the image of his beautiful wife and children when they were all gone now.
Miguel stuffed the picture into his wallet before his emotions could boil up again and unman him.
He padded softly out of the room with his bag, painfully aware he would never set foot in there again. The vaquero paused outside his daughter's room, listening to her wretched, strangled sobs. He knocked lightly and entered, not waiting for a reply. Sofia lay on her side with her knees drawn up under her chin, shivering violently, crying, and hugging a small stuffed bear she had carried with her from the day she had found it on the Aussie Rules. Aware that every moment's delay put her in danger, he nonetheless approached quietly and cautiously, easing himself down on the mattress beside her. She jerked away from him, her tear-reddened eyes wide with fear. Miguel tried to brush her long hair away from her face, but she flinched.
'Easy, Sofia. Easy. I know it is hard,' he said softly, 'but we must go. Now. The men who did this will be back, and if they catch us here, I cannot protect you.'
She drew in a shallow hitching breath and tried to speak but was unable to form any words at first. Miguel was worried by the violence of the tremors racking her slim body. He glanced briefly out her window, which overlooked the area in front of the house, including the driveway winding up toward the main road. How long would it be before
