The Rosas Affair. Donald L. Lucero

her in the woods above her home.

      7

      A Place as Parent

      The riverside forest of cottonwood was full and cast a darkening shadow along the river corridor. In the groves the bottomlands were replete with the rich marish drift of the river, an earthy scent from which one could derive a sense of pleasure, place, and well-being. The sounds of the river could be heard far along the cottonwood passageway, its honeyed flow a roar and babble of fast water in dappled light.

      The homes of several members of the Baca and Perez de Bustillo clan were clustered along the margins of the river where family members engaged in the common pursuit of ranching. Grazing in the foothills, and tended by herders from not one, but several ranches, were the families’ cattle and sheep, the numbers of which were nearly doubling every 15 months. Sheepfolds and corrals to enclose these animals when not at pasture lay near the individual compounds.1

      Above these homes and lost in the upper reaches of the crystalline stream was a presa, or rock-filled dam, diverting water from the parent river to acequia madres, one on each side of the watercourse. The acequia madres, or so-called “mother canals,” were barely three feet wide and half that deep and were full of numbingly cold snowmelt from the 10,000-foot peaks in the distance. The gentle gravity-fed canals, gurgling slowly along their grassy banks, were hidden beneath tall stands of cottonwoods and lazy willows. Meandering past plots of beans, squash, chile, and alfalfa, the small streams splashed through creaking headgates on their ramble along the canyon walls. Although partially drained of their life-giving waters by their parciantes (ditch members)—all of whom were family members asserting their right to a full derecho (a share of water)—the small streams nevertheless returned sufficient amounts of water to the parent stream. The waters thus diverted were but a small portion of the full river. The main stream ran down through the canyon over a white-rocked bottom, with cottonwood, green willows, deep hay grass, and wild flowers growing in profusion along its banks. Evening primrose, fire- and butterfly weed, grew brilliantly among the sedges.

      So slender and overgrown by weeds that it was invisible from a distance, the northern canal, and its lateral ditches, could be traced by the green ribbons of vegetation trailing them through the valley. Apple, peach, October pear, black plum, and apricot orchards grew along the margins of the river, and next to the orchards was the home of the Simon Perez de Bustillos. The adobe structure had grown through the years as the family had grown. All rooms faced inwards toward the security of its courtyards, its outer walls facing a forest of orchards as well as open country. A wide, double-doored entrance the depth of a room, led into it. The doors of this covered passageway, or zaguan, were barred and secured from the inside with a massive oaken beam.

      Beginning with a series of rooms that had been built around a large, square patio and its well, the initial home, now almost 30 years old, had grown into a second house to accommodate the Perez children, as well as the many Indian servants the family had obtained. The walls of the rooms and compound, three feet thick and invulnerable to penetration, were built of huge adobe blocks, covered over with mud mixed with straw. The rooms’ transverse rafters, or vigas, were made of heavy cedar logs, overlaid by aspen saplings (savinos), all of one size, lying close together in a herringbone design. By day, the rooms were cool and dim, illuminated by deep-set, tiny sheets of fused mica (known as talc lights). These windows, which were further covered by wooden shutters and Indian-tanned hides, or gamuza (chamois), were additionally shaded on the outside by the overhang of a porch. By night, the rooms were illuminated by candles and by the blaze of a fireplace in each room. The floors, except for those in the great room and kitchen, were of rammed earth. This was black earth mixed with fine sand and moisture and spread on the ground with the palm of the hand. The floors were then polished until they shone. The kitchen was a long room where the family’s criados (servants) worked and where the family sat down to meals. Near it were larders and panaries, granaries and banks for dried fruits, pinon nuts, cider, both fresh and hard, applejack, round-bottom jars containing olive oil and wine, wheat and corn. The river house of the Simon Perez de Bustillos threw its high adobe walls around all the purposes and needs of its existence.

      * * *

      Maria fingered the edge of a trough-shaped wooden bowl and thought how much she loved it. Carved from cottonwood and smoothed by years of loving use, it was, she thought, one of the few things she had been given that had belonged to her maternal grandmother. Taking an apple from the batea (wooden bowl) and holding it in the fist of her left hand, she worked at it with a small knife, turning it around and around in a random fashion, holding the knife steady and at an angle, letting the blade do the work of removing the peel. She botched the job, however, which resulted in large chunks of the fruit lying on the table, and here and there, the green of unpeeled sections staring back at her. Her mind was obviously elsewhere.

      “Where are you?” asked her mother, who was standing before an open cabinet. “You look like you’re a million miles away.”

      “Oh, I was just thinking, Mama,” she responded pensively. “Why can’t we have a window there?” she asked as she pointed to the room’s eastern wall. “Wouldn’t it be nice to have light coming through that wall?” Leaning across a trestle-supported pine-plank table, she placed the apple on a wooden tray in front of the bench where her mother had been sitting, and dreamily took another from the wooden bowl.

      Although the cocina, or kitchen was in many ways the richest room in the house, it was dimly lit for its patio windows, which were made of translucent, but not transparent selenite, were deep, and low, and shaded by the overhang of the porch. Against a wall stood three armarios or tinajeros, tall wooden cabinets (often called trasteros) with locked double doors whose upper panels were latticed revealing the wealth inside. Maria’s mother was replacing dishes in one of these. “We’re just going to have to give some of this away,” she said regarding the dishes she was attempting to fit into the cabinet. On its wooden shelves, among the jugs and bowls that had been secured from the pueblos, were rows of white, crystal and green dishes. There, too, among the glassware and pottery, were a silver platter, several silver trays, and two silver dishes. Although treasured, the silver bore the little pits and dents of daily use, for to eat in the kitchen on silver was both don Simon’s earthy simplicity and his pride.

      “Don’t you dare give them away, Mama,” Maria said to her mother who had again taken a seat at the table. “I’m not like Catcha and Juliana, wanting only things that are new. I want the old things, too, the things they wouldn’t have in their homes. I want them all. Not only the silver ones, but the other ones, too,” she repeated, “especially if they were Grandma’s.”

      “When you get married,” her mother said, “I’ll give you the silver ones, but not now. You may have the glasses if you want. Do you want to pack them?” she questioned as Maria’s father entered the room.

      “Hello, Papa, Maria said in a wistful voice.

      “There’s not going to be anything between you and Ortiz,” her father responded sternly as he took a cup from one of the armarios. Then, sitting next to his wife with the empty cup in his hand, he said, “You’re not to see him anymore! Do you understand that, Maria? You must remember that the men who work here or at the home of your uncle or other family members are not of your calidad and are not men with whom you’re to have any contact. They have nothing to offer you,” her father continued, as Maria looked at him apprehensively, unable to understand what she had done to provoke her father’s comments. “Their only responsibility is to keep the required number of horses, for God’s sake! And those without land may only earn three or four hundred pesos a year, hardly enough to feed themselves and their horses, much less raise a family. When the time comes,” he continued, while waving off his wife who had attempted to fill his cup, “—and I don’t know why we’re even speaking of this now, for you’re too young to marry—I’ll find you a proper husband, one marked out above the rest, a Dominguez, or a Lucero, a Gomez, or a Chavez, a man with land, and livestock and a name!”

      “You let both Catalina and Juliana marry a man of their choice,” Maria challenged.

      “Well, that’s no different from what I’m telling you,” her father responded, his dark features flushed