Joseph’s eyes opened delightedly. “No, I did not, but I will. What would be a good time, Old Juan?”
The peddler spread his hands and pulled his neck between his shoulders at having so much honor put on him. “Why, señor—why in this country any time is good. But some days are better. There is Christmas, the Natividad.”
“No,” Joseph said. “It’s too soon. There won’t be time.”
“Then there is the New Year, señor. That is the best time, because then everyone is happy and people go about looking for a fiesta.”
“That’s it!” Joseph cried. “On New Year’s Day we’ll have it.”
“My son-in-law plays the guitar, señor.”
“He shall come too. Who shall I invite, Old Juan?”
“Invite?” The old man’s eyes filled with astonishment. “You do not ‘invite,’ señor. When I go back to Nuestra Señora I will tell that you make a fiesta on the New Year, and the people will come. Maybe the priest will come, with his altar in the saddle-bags, and hold the mass. That would be beautiful.”
Joseph laughed up into the oak tree. “The grass will be so high by then,” he said.
16
THE day after Christmas, Martha, Rama’s oldest girl, gave the other children a bad fright. “It will rain for the fiesta,” she said, and because she was older than the others, a serious child who used her age and seriousness as a whip on the other children, they believed her and felt very badly about it.
The grass was deep. A spell of warm weather had sent shooting it up, and there were millions of mushrooms in the field, and puff-balls and toadstools too. The children brought buckets of mushrooms in, which Rama fried in a pan containing a silver spoon to test them for poison. She said that silver would turn black if a toadstool was present. Two days before New Year, Old Juan appeared along the road, and his son-in-law, a smiling shiftless Mexican boy, walked directly behind him, for the son-in-law, Manuel, did not even like to take the responsibility of keeping out of ditches. The two of them stood smiling in front of Joseph’s porch, caressing their hats against their chests. Manuel did everything Old Juan did, as a puppy imitates a grown dog.
“He plays the guitar,” Old Juan said, and in proof, Manuel shifted the battered instrument around his back and displayed it while he grinned agonizingly. “I told about the fiesta,” Old Juan continued. “The people will come—four more guitars, señor, and Father Angelo will come,” (Here was the fine successful thing) “and he will bold mass right here! And I,” he said proudly, “I am to build the altar. Father Angelo said so.”
Burton’s eyes grew sullen then. “Joseph, you won’t have that, will you? Not on our ranch, not with the name we’ve always had.”
But Joseph was smiling joyfully. “They are our neighbors, Burton, and I don’t want to convert them.”
“I won’t stay to see it,” Burton cried angrily. “I’ll give no sanction to the Pope on this land.”
Thomas chuckled. “You stay in the house, then, Burton. Joe and I aren’t afraid of being converted, so we’ll watch it.”
There were a thousand things to be done. Thomas drove a wagon to Nuestra Señora and bought a barrel of red wine and a keg of whiskey. The vaqueros butchered three steers and hung the meat in the trees, and Manuel sat under the trees to keep the vermin off. Old Juan built an altar of boards under the great oak, and Joseph leveled and swept a dancing place in the farmyard. Old Juan was every place, showing the women how to make a tub of salsa pura. They had to use preserved tomatoes and chili and green peppers and some dried herbs that Old Juan carried in his pocket. He directed the digging of the cooking pits and carried the seasoned oak wood to the edges. Under the meat trees Manuel sat tiredly plucking the strings of his guitar, now and then breaking into a feverish melody. The children inspected everything, and were good, for Rama had let it be known that a bad child would stay in the house and see the fiesta from a window, a punishment so staggering that the children carried wood to the barbecue pits and offered to help Manuel watch the meat.
The guitars arrived at nine o’clock on New Year’s Eve, four lank brown men with black straight hair and beautiful hands. They could ride forty miles, play their guitars for a day and a night and ride forty miles home again. They staggered with exhaustion after fifteen minutes behind a plow. With their arrival, Manuel came to life. He helped them to hang their precious saddle-bags out of harm and he spread their blankets for them in the hay, but they didn’t sleep long at three o’clock in the night, Old Juan built the fires in the pits, and then the guitars came out carrying their saddle-bags. They set four posts around the dancing place and took the fine things out of the saddle-bags: red and blue bunting and paper lanterns and ribbons. They worked in the leaping light from the barbecue pits, and well before day had built a pavilion.
Before daylight Father Angelo arrived on a mule, followed by a hugely packed horse and two sleepy altar boys riding together on a burro. Father Angelo went directly to work. He spread the service on Old Juan’s altar, set up the candles, slapped the altar boys and set them running about. He laid the vestments out in the tool-shed and, last of all, brought out his figures. They were wonderful things, a crucifix and a Mother and Child. Father Angelo had carved and painted them himself and he had invented their peculiarities. They folded in the middle on hinges so carefully hidden that when they were set up the crack could not be seen; their beads screwed on, and the Child fitted into the Mother’s arms with a peg that went into a slot. Father Angelo loved his figures, and they were very famous. Although they were three feet high, when folded both could fit into a saddle-bag. Besides being interesting mechanically, they were blessed and had the complete sanction of the arch-bishop. Old Juan had made separate stands for them, and he himself had brought a thick candle for the altar.
Before sunup the guests began to arrive, some of the richer families in surreys with swaying top fringes, the others in carts, buggies, wagons and on horseback. The poor whites came down from their scrabble ranch on King’s Mountain on a sled half filled with straw and completely filled with children. The children arrived in droves and for a time stood about and stared at each other. The Indians walked up quietly and stood apart with stolid incurious faces, watching everything and never taking part in anything.
Father Angelo was a stern man where the church was concerned, but once out of the church, and with the matters of the church out of the way, he was a tender and a humorous man. Let him get a mouthful of meat, and a cup of wine in his hand, and there were no eyes that could twinkle more brightly than his. Promptly at eight o’clock he lighted the candles, drove out the altar boys and began mass. His big voice rumbled beautifully.
Burton, true to his promise, remained in his house and held prayer with his wife, but even though he raised his voice he could not drown out the penetrating Latin.
As soon as the mass was done, people gathered close to watch Father Angelo fold up the Christ and the Mary. He did it well, genuflecting before each one before he took it down and unscrewed its head.
The pits were rosy with coals by now and the pit-sides glowed under the heat. Thomas, with more help than he needed, rolled the wine barrel up on a cradle and set a spigot in its end and knocked the bung out. The huge pieces of meat hung over the fire and dripped their juices, and the coals jetted up white fire. This was prime beef, killed on the range and hung. Three men brought the tub of salsa out and went back for a wash boiler full of beans. The women carried sour bread like armloads of wood and stacked the golden loaves on a table. The Indians on the outskirts edged in closer, and the children, playing by now but still diffident, became a little insane with hunger when the meat smells began to fill the air.
To start the fiesta Joseph did a ceremonial thing Old Juan had told him about, a thing so ancient and so natural that Joseph seemed to remember it. He took a tin cup from the table and went to the wine cask. The red wine sang and sparkled into it. When it was full, he raised the cup level with his eyes and then poured it on the ground. Again he filled the cup, and this time drank it, in four thirsty gulps. Father Angelo nodded his head and smiled at the fine way in which the thing was done. When his ceremony was finished, Joseph walked to the tree and poured a little wine on its bark, and he heard the priest’s voice speaking softly beside him: “This is not a good thing to do, my son.”