Free The Seamstress by Frances de Pontes Peebles Page B

ungrateful mutts that would turn on each other if given the chance. Some of her neighbors felt pity and fed the dogs. Emília preferred to keep her distance.
    As the mules slowed, the men drew closer. They wore flat-brimmed leather hats and green uniforms. There was so much brown below the mountain that the uniforms looked vibrant, alive. Their chaperone moved his hand away from his holster.
    “Checkpoint,” he murmured. “Monkeys.”
    Emília had seen a soldier only once before, during a visit to Caruaru, where she and Luzia observed a group of them drinking beer and catcalling women. Caruaru was the largest metropolis in the interior of the state, but even there real officials of the law were rare. Colonel Pereira complained about their current governor who, he said, had bribed poor city boys, given them ancient weapons, and proclaimed them soldiers before sending them to posts in the countryside. There, the soldiers made more trouble than good. They were boisterous one moment and vicious the next, as unruly and cruel as a band of cangaceiros. People in the interior had nicknamed them monkeys.
    The donkeys slowed. Luzia straightened. Emília tightened her scarf. The soldier held a thick-barreled rifle across his body, ready to aim. The gun was scratched, its wooden butt cracked. The other soldiers did not have weapons, but stood with their feet spread apart, blocking the mules’ path. The armed soldier surveyed Emília and Luzia.
    “Your business?” he asked.
    “Sewing lessons,” Luzia responded.
    The soldier nodded. “No chaperone?”
    “I’m their chaperone,” the old man said, removing his hat. “I work for Colonel Carlos Pereira.”
    The soldier shook his head. “And where is this colonel from? There are so many around here it’s hard for me to keep track.” The other soldiers laughed.
    The old man looked shocked. “He runs the land from that mountain”—he pointed before them, to the blue shadow in the distance—“and beyond. Taquaritinga and Frei Miguelinho. He runs it all.”
    “He may own it,” the soldier said, suddenly stern, “but the law runs it. The state of Pernambuco runs it.”
    Their chaperone looked down and nodded. Emília felt a surge of annoyance. If they had ridden in the colonel’s Ford, would they have been chastised like this? If she had Professor Célio beside her instead of an old farmhand, would they have been bothered?
    “All right,” the soldier said, motioning with his rifle, pointing it up the road. “Be on your way. But be alert. The Hawk’s in the area.”
    Their chaperone froze for an instant, his hat curled tightly in his hands, then thanked the soldier. He grabbed the mules’ reins and shouted for the animals to move. Emília felt a shiver. She held tightly to her saddle horn.
    Everyone knew his story. At eighteen, the Hawk had become a cangaceiro when he killed the famous Colonel Bartolomeu of Serra Negra in his own study, bypassing the colonel’s capangas and gutting him with his own letter opener. Citizens from Rio Branco later dubbed him “the Hawk” after a raid on their town, where he’d cut out his victims’ eyes with the point of his knife. There was a bird in the arid countryside below Taquaritinga—the caracará—a type of hawk that swooped down and ate the eyes and tongues of baby goats and calves. Aunt Sofia, like many other mothers in town, used the hawk as a way to keep Emília and Luzia from roaming too far from home.
    Caracará, Aunt Sofia used to sing in her deep, scratchy voice, looks for children who aren’t wise. When he catches them alone, he plucks out their eyes!
    It was said that the Hawk wore a collection of his victims’ dried eyeballs around his neck. It was said that he was enormous, with blond hair and blue eyes, like some ancient Dutch soldier. Some said he was thick, squat, and dark, like an Indian. Some said he was the devil himself. Padre Otto tried to dispel this particular myth. The devil, he warned, would not have