Free Clash of Star-Kings by Avram Davidson Page A

gate well shut again with a piece of wood. It clicked. She grinned a satisfied, snaggle-toothed grin. She considered a moment, her disheveled head cocked to one side. Then she tiptoed into the kitchen and filled one of the cups on the table from the coffeepot on the stove, added plenty of sugar —
white
sugar, not the stuff scraped from the coarse and sticky brown loaf of
piloncillo
— thrust some little cakes and some tortillas into her gaping bodice — gulped down the coffee and tiptoed out again. She decided not to bother waiting for anyone to return. Her hangover seemed quite cured. Coffee and white sugar … she made a mental note of that.
    It was much nicer than herbs, too.
    • • •
    “Poor little Evans!” said Sarah, through her sobs. “He never hurt anyone.”
    “Terrible, terrible!” cried Sra. Josefa.
    “What barbarity!” exclaimed her sister. They hugged Sarah and caressed her and patted her cheeks. “Poor little beast
… no tiene cuidado, Señora
— you can inter the poor little one over there in front of the rose bushes. Won’t that be pretty? Oh, poor
señora!
Oh, what a shocking thing!”
    And Jacob pointed out to her that the nature of the injury meant that Evans had died suddenly and therefore without pain. He got a shovel and dug a tiny grave in front of the denuded rose bushes, wrapped the little mangled body in two splendid new bandanas of scarlet and gold, and so the interment was accomplished. Señora Josefa then took Sarah to a remote corner of the patio where, behind the moldering ruins of the very last
diligencia
to ply the local roads, one small shrub forgotten in the previous day’s excitement offered sprays of tiny blue blossoms. And while Sarah, still weeping, cut flowers for Evans’s grave, Jacob knocked the earth from the shovel and said, bluntly, to his landlady, “Who did it and why?”
    “Ah, Señor! Last night … how shall I explain it to you … last night there was a big fight among the drunken Indios in that bad
Barrio Occidental
. They tried to obtain the Holy Hermit,
ai de mi!
— possibly with the intention of holding an oratory service in their little chapel there, although the Lord God knows how they have always neglected it since the days of Don Porfirio Diaz until it is falling apart. But at any rate, there was a big fight: sacrilege — simple sacrilege! And it was long before the Hermit was recovered, pray God that the Sainted One be not angry with us for not having taken better care — but Without doubt this baibaric mutilation was done by those hoodlums in a state of intoxication. It is a disgrace for our
municipalidad
. I shall complain upon your behalf to the authorities, Señor, to guarantee that it will never happen again.”
    Her concern and indignation was obviously genuine. Jacob decided not to tell her of what he and his wife had seen during the night, there on the lower slopes of Ixta. “Many thanks for your offer to make such representations on our behalves, Señora. When do you intend to do so?”
    “No tiene cuidado, Señor. Mañana, Señor
.
¡
Mañona!”
    • • •
    But at least Lupita came back.
    Sarah, who had been trying a spiritual exercise of determining that she would see in her mind’s eye only the image of the little heap of blue flowers and not the one of — Sarah was distracted by the sound of running water in the patio. She went to see … and saw Lupita washing the dishes. Most of the resentment melted in this infinitely welcome sight. Poor uneducated and downtrodden Lupita, washing greasy dishes so humbly and uncomplainingly in ice-cold water!
    “Buenos días, Señora
    “Buenos días
, Lupita. I to hope where your mother was much improvised in their infirmity?”
    “Ah, yes,
alabada sea Dios
. The most of the malignness is terminated. Thanks.”
    “Of no one.” Now that the dishes were clean, it was time to think about making lunch. But Sarah didn’t want to think about making lunch. Making lunch was a grunch.