Juan’s child. She bemoaned the wretched luck that would impregnate her on a single mating with the patron, while all of her husband’s tenacious efforts had thus far been fruitless, much to his disappointment. She debated with herself for days before deciding she would go to the curandera of Santa Rosalba, who was said to be highly skilled at relieving this sort of difficulty. The decision of course carried risks. Some girls had died in consequence of the procedure. And even if it went well, her visit to the curandera was sure to attract the notice of nosy villagers who would speculate about its purpose. What if such talk should make its way from the village into the compound and maybe even somehow become known to Alfonso? Still, what other choice did she have?
But bad fortune was not yet done with her, and on the morning of the day she intended to go to the curandera, Corporal Alfonso Avila came rushing through the door with a great loud laugh and snatched her up in his arms and spun her around as he told her of the ten-day leave the army had granted him and wasn’t this a wonderful surprise! He lofted her onto the bed and didn’t even fully remove his pants in his rush to make love to the wife he had not seen in so long. For the whole week he was home they mated at least thrice daily—and thus was Katrina’s course set. Maybe this time we will be lucky and make a baby, Alfonso said.
We can only hope and pray, she said.
A visit to the curandera was now out of the question. Should Alfonso learn of it, he would believe she had murdered his child. It was all she could do to wait a scant month before sending him the happy news of their baby in the making. In his response by dictated letter Alfonso proclaimed great joy but asked how she could be so sure so soon.
She wrote back that there are some things a woman just knows.
By then, some of the older women with whom she worked at the dairy had begun to suspect the truth, and their gossip reached the casa grande and Josefina’s ear. When she told John Roger that he may have seeded a child in Katrina, he put his head in his hands. I do not mean to be disrespectful, Don Juan, the old woman said, but perhaps it would be best to do it only with courtesans from now on. They do not have such accidents. That was the word she used—“cortesanas.” Her scolding sarcasm galled him, but she withstood his glare with equanimity until he looked away.
Katrina delivered a son in July, much earlier than she had claimed to expect him, and the child’s complexion and facial features told the truth of his paternity to everyone who saw him. As the news made swift circulation of the hacienda, there was little faulting of Don Juan and much malicious derision of Katrina Avila, who was mortified. On learning from Josefina that he was without doubt the father, John Roger cursed. Then sighed. Then sent a man to Katrina with a purse of silver specie. Beyond that, he could only wish her well.
Katrina kept to her house to care for the baby and lived in terror of the day Alfonso would know the truth. She waited for more than two months before sending him the news of the baby’s birth, allowing him the assumption that it had just been born. Alfonso’s response was full of joyous declarations of love but included also a profane tirade about the goddam army, which in the past month had reduced him to the rank of private and was restricting him to the post indefinitely, all because of a little fight with another soldier who happened to lose an eye.
The baby was nearly six months old before Private Avila at last received leave to go home and see him. And as Katrina had feared, he perceived the truth at once and flew into a rage. The neighbors too had expected him to know at first sight that the child was not his and they had debated among themselves whether he would kill Katrina or merely maim her. They in any event expected a loud and impassioned entertainment and they got it. But they were disappointed by its brevity. Alfonso had hit Katrina only a few times before she was able to divert him with the purse of silver. He sat at the table and counted it twice. It was more money than he’d ever thought he might hold in his hands.
Everyone would agree it should have ended there. Like everybody else, Alfonso knew that many a man’s wife on many a hacienda had been obliged to attend a patron’s bed. It was a common humiliation of hacienda life, one against which hacienda workers had no legal recourse, which they could only endure. But it was a rare thing for a patron to make any sort of recompense for an act he could by right exercise with impunity. Like everybody else, Alfonso knew that too. But Katrina was his
Katrina had of course been afraid he would ask that very question. She knew how much worse it would go for her if Alfonso should learn that the full extent of her perfidy included having withheld from the don the fact of her wifehood. She had thought about lying if Alfonso should ask, but she knew the lie would not stand up to the patron’s denial, and so she determined to tell the truth. Tell it and hope to survive the consequence. But tell it only if Alfonso asked. And he didn’t.
She would later say that Alfonso had seemed resigned to the situation. He sat at the table and toyed with the silver pieces and drank from a bottle of aguardiente. He did not say anything about the patron that could be taken as a threat. His sole reference to the don seemed directed to himself as much as to her—that at least the father wasn’t some stupid good-for-nothing. A neighbor woman looked in to see if Katrina was still alive, then took her and the baby to her house to treat the bruises on her face.
Alfonso counted the money once again, then drank the last swallow from the bottle. He was pleased about the money but felt in need of more drink to soothe his agitated soul. He could have bought another bottle in the hacienda store but he did not want to chance running into anyone he knew and having to converse, so instead decided to go to the cantina of Santa Rosalba. As he walked across the compound plaza toward the main gate, those who recognized him were surprised to see him and would later say he seemed disturbed by their smiles of welcome. Not until afterward did the possibility occur to them that he thought they were laughing at him for the horns on his head.
Earlier that day John Roger had gone out to the coffee farm, and that afternoon he happened to come riding back through the gate as Alfonso Avila was crossing the plaza. According to witnesses, Private Avila stopped in his tracks at the sight of the patron on his trotting stallion. One observer would describe Alfonso as looking like he had just remembered something very important. John Roger was unaware of him but would not anyway have known who he was, never having met him. He reined up at a fruit stand and told the vendor the mangos looked delicious. As the vendor sought the best one for the patron, Alfonso walked over to a gardener’s wagon parked at the fountain and took a machete from it.
Cries of warning drew John Roger’s attention to the soldier running at him with a machete raised to strike. He reined the horse around hard just as Alfonso swung at him and the blade sliced into the animal’s neck. The horse screamed and reared and there was a fount of blood as Alfonso yanked the machete free and fell down. John Roger tumbled from the saddle and landed on his back amid an outburst of panicked shrieks. The screaming horse bolted and Alfonso barely managed to roll out of its way. Then got up and started toward the don again. Supine and breathless, John Roger drew his revolver from under his coat and shot Alfonso twice, the first bullet hitting his shoulder and jarring him half-about and the second punching through his side and knocking him down. Alfonso struggled to get up, still gripping the machete, lung-shot and streaming blood from his mouth. He was on all fours when John Roger shot him above the ear and the bullet exited the other side of his head in a scarlet spray and ricocheted off a stone wall and smacked the haunch of a tethered burro and the animal flinched and brayed.
John Roger’s breath returned in a rush. The fruit vendor helped him up and people came out from behind the wagons and trees and walls where they had taken cover. Somewhere his horse was screaming without pause—and then a rifle shot silenced it.
He stood over the dead man and asked “Quien es?” and was told he was Alfonso Avila. And then remembered Katrina’s husband was a soldier, and understood why the man had wanted to kill him.
The flesh, he thought. The damnable flesh.
Take him to Santoso, he said. And headed for the casa grande as Alfonso was gathered up and borne away to the coffin-maker.
The six-year-old twins had been playing in a room at the rear of the house when they heard the faint screams and the first two gunshots and then the third. They ran through a series of hallways to the forward part of the house and out onto a shaded balcony from where they could see the plaza. A crowd was flanking their father, who held a pistol and stood beside a soldier sprawled in a puddle of blood, a machete in his hand. The twins would never speak of their witness of this scene except to each other and it would be a few years yet before they came to know the particulars of it. But observing unseen from the shadow of the balcony, they understood that their father had been attacked and had in retaliation killed the attacker. They grinned at each other, proud of a sire so adept at
