Wild Penance

and Manny was reaching out with his hands on the floor to help, pushing each time I pushed. We developed a wrenching rhythm, each of us throwing our pain-filled voices into it as we ahhed and ughed our way across the shrine. Each time I inhaled-heat searing my airways-I blew out hard, using the same force to contract my abdomen and give everything I had to the push.

Halfway across the floor, I had to stop. “Wait, wait!” I said, holding my sleeve over my face. My eyeballs felt like they were broiling. The room was an inferno; there was no air. A flaming torch of splintered wood rocketed out of nowhere, barely missing me, and I used this as impetus to move on. We pushed… breathed… pushed… and just as we reached the doorway, another viga began to cry out in pain.

I was dizzy from the smoke, hacking and gasping for air as we finally thrust outside. Heavy, wet snow had begun to fall and had already whitened the ground. I shoved one more time, and the table slid like a hockey puck on the snow. “The cart!” I yelled above the snap and roar of the flames. “Let’s get you on the cart!” I pushed him to it.

“?No, senorita! No, that is the carreta de la muerte!”

I ignored him, picking up the crucifix and throwing it onto the cart. “Come on!” I yelled. “You’re getting on the cart!”

“Oh, Dios mio,” he cried, “please forgive me!” He crossed himself, then he twisted himself to one side and rolled onto his one good knee and his two hands. The bundle fell from his lap and unfurled, the skull rolling away from him like a ball. I moved in close beside the useless leg and pulled beneath his arm. He was up. He hopped once and cried out as he did so. He eased himself backward onto the cart, which wobbled precariously as he put his weight down on it. I checked the tourniquet I had made, loosening it slightly. The blood began to pour. I tightened it up again and went off to catch Redhead.

I was panting. “Come on, girl.” I held out my hand to pick up her reins.

She volted to one side. She did not want to come, spooked by the fire.

I kept after her, whistling and talking as softly as I could and still be heard above the blaze. “Come here, baby!” I made a little clicking sound with my tongue.

She kept a pace or two ahead of me, torn between loyalty and fear. “Redhead, come on, girl.” The snow was accumulating so fast, soon none of us would be able to get out to the road. “Redhead. I need you.”

She stopped, fascinated with an expanse of drifting snow at her feet. I caught hold of her reins. She balked, but I led her back to the cart, soothing her as I went. “You’re such a good girl, yes, you are. I need you to help me, Redhead. I can’t do this without you. Don’t be afraid.”

The fire had stopped growing, and instead popped and spit like a huge crackling woodstove, the flames contained within the adobe shell. The vigas and wood furniture would have been all there was to consume in the earthen structure. A worse threat now was the relentless, pelting snow.

The horsehair harness attached to the front of the cart had been designed for a man to lash around himself at the chest and then over his shoulders several times, to feel its biting discomfort as he pulled the great weight in penance. I tugged frantically at these cuerdas, untwining them so that they would reach the length of a horse. Finally, I had a makeshift system, which I tied around the saddle horn. Manny had been moaning as I fought to untangle the cords, but now was silent. The tongue of the two-wheeled cart had been wedged between the arms of a short, F-shaped post. I turned the post to the side, freeing the tongue, and the cart immediately tipped backward, the tongue rising up in the air, Manny’s weight pulling the back of the cart down. Redhead complained loudly and began to stamp and try to free herself.

I went to her. Her eyes were gleaming black saucers. Her neck rippled with tremors. “Calm down, girl.” I patted her, pacified her. “Calm down. We’re going to make it out of here. Just calm down.” Then I went back to see if Manny could be moved forward. He lay on his back in the teetering cart, holding the crucifix again across his chest. The figure of Christ on the cross had slipped sideways and was dangling from just one wooden hand. Manny’s feet were hanging close to the ground. Blood dripped into the snow beneath them. He was unconscious.

I managed to use my weight on the tongue, and the begrudging cooperation of Redhead, to gradually turn the cart so that it could proceed away from the post. Then there was nothing to do but climb onto the front of the cart behind its driver to balance the weight. The carved wooden skeleton nailed to the seat of the cart grinned hideously from under the hood of her black cloth robe, her ribs protruding through its open front. She had long black human hair, garishly oversized human teeth, and eyes made from mother-of-pearl, which gleamed in the firelight. She held an ax in one hand, and her two long, bony legs dangled over the front of the cart. I stood behind her, my arms around her, and flapped the horsehair braids across Redhead’s rump to get her going. “Come on, baby! It’s just us two big, strong women now! Let’s do it.”

We rode out of there encrusted with a thick coat of snow. The brim of my hat collapsed under the weight, and a landslide of white fell down my face, cooling my scorched skin. I had pointed us toward the Forest Service road above and to the north of the morada. I knew the snow would be heavier in the higher elevation, but I didn’t think Manny had much time. There would be a ranger posted somewhere up there, and we might be able to get help.

Redhead amazed me. A horse trained for trail riding, she was sensitive to the slightest pressure of my knees, hardly needed a bridle. But she was certainly not trained to pull a cart, and especially not from a drag on her saddle horn. In spite of that, she lowered her head and bulled into the storm, pulling us behind her as I yelled encouragement. “That’s it! Come on, girl. Good girl. Come on, Redhead!” The snow accumulated on her backside, on the cart, even on the horsehair ropes between us, and it piled into high drifts around us. Redhead plodded on, barely visible in front of me. Between my extended arms, La Muerte smiled and kept her silence.

As we neared the road, a streak of blue heat raced past my face at the speed of light. Behind it, a moment later, came a far-off crack, like a chair leg breaking. Gunshot! Oh, God! Someone is shooting at me! My rifle! I sent out a desperate searching look through the curtain of white ahead of me, as if my eyes could close the gap between me and what lay impossibly out of reach. I’d left my rifle in the holster attached to Redhead’s saddle!

Another shot whizzed past me. The horse lurched to a stop. I jumped out of the cart as the front tipped up again, and ran behind it for cover. Redhead! There was a loud choomfff, and shards of wood flew as a shot hit the skeleton. La Muerte slumped backward and slid down the bed of the tilted cart, her wooden spine severed at the waist by the bullet, her outstretched bony arm tractioned back and toward the ground by the weight of the heavy steel ax. I heard another shot crack and Redhead reared up and screamed at the danger. I looked out again, afraid of what I would see. I could barely make her out. She was standing amazingly still. She looked like she had her head down, but I couldn’t be sure. I could see nothing but snow. From far off came the sound of an engine grinding in low gear on the Forest Service road farther to the right of me, and beyond.

I waited. The shooter had stopped firing. I listened for the engine; it was still in the distance, but moving closer. I heard the whine of the wheels slipping, spinning, the sound of the driver trying to rock it out of the mire by alternating between drive and reverse. I looked at Manny, the ribs of the skeleton wedged against his head, the skull against his shoulder, La Muerte’s macabre eyes looking past me. Manny’s eyes were open now, too-and peering at me. I put a finger in front of my lips and mouthed a silent Shhhhh. I could see blood from his leg dripping off the back of the tilted cart again, in spite of my makeshift tourniquet. I heard a dull thud, felt the earth shake. I bolted around the edge of the cart, screaming, “Redhead!”

She was down, but before I could get to her, a figure came running toward me, covered in snow, a rifle pointed at my chest. The fur rim on the hood of the parka was coated with white, and the face within the hood was in darkness. Instinctively I backed up, my hands in the air, until I was standing behind the cart again. The shooter followed. “Get down on the ground,” he grunted.

I knew that voice!

He pushed me hard, shoving me face-first into the snow. He placed the tip of the rifle barrel on the bare skin at the back of my neck, under my hat. “Where is La Arca?” he demanded.

“I don’t have it,” I choked, my mouth filling with snow as he pressed me down into a drift with the rifle.

“You have it!” he yelled, pushing the barrel so violently into my neck that it snapped forward and my face hit hard against the ground, buried in the mound of white crystals beneath me. I felt a rent open on the inside of my mouth, and blood pooled behind my lower lip. He let up pressure with the rifle barrel and I raised my head and gasped for air.

“Where is it?”