Texmelucan - a short story from 2009

In Texmelucan, the town clock chimed three once again. Monotony, interrupted only by the irregular puffs of the Tres Virgenes volcanoes, was part of the daily existence. For the campesinos, the toiling of the land was their only means of survival. The languid slopes of the ravenous mountainside were more than willing to accept the fertile ash of its overshadowing peaks.

 

The men, women and children would venture out under the midday sun to plant the seed that they hoped would, one day, nourish them. 

 

Concha, a sixteen-year-old girl, daughter of Maria Josepha and Ephraim, would be the first out in the morning and onto the fields, leaving her disrobed parents draped in morning dew wandering off solitarily towards the imposing volcano ready to leave her mark on the laboured land. 

 

A conscientious girl was Concha, who would tend to the needs of her ailing grandmother, preparing hot foot baths with dissolved salts to aid with her poor circulation. When she was finally buried at the young age of fifty-six, Concha led the funeral ceremony reciting verses from the Bible by heart and placed her most beloved crucifix onto the coffin as it was lowered into the ground. 

 

The rest of the funeral procession retreated to their mundane activities, shielded from the outside world by their parched shutters. Concha returned to the hillside with a bagful of seeds contemplating the journey that her grandmother would undertake while the volcanic ash spewed gently from the snow-tipped mount and settled onto the barren land.

 

Every week, the town would announce the potential arrival of a wealthy gringo who would pass by in search of cactus plant for the growing tequila industry across the border. The townsfolk believed a true end to their problems could be heralded by the advent of this saint on horseback. All preparations had to be made to make the visitor feel welcome. 

 

A native from the neighbouring village, with a scarce knowledge of English, was solicited every week and would attempt to gather the residents of Texmelucan in the town square to teach them basic phrases in efforts to assimilate the gringo. Direct orders were given by the town’s mayor for all to gather on Monday when the clock chimed three in the afternoon. 

 

The lonely, dominating clock in the square, the solitary clock in the town, only ever struck three times. It was declared irreparable by the mayor. The singular person with sufficient knowledge of clocks had moved further north, closer to the border. Thereby, a system was devised, and the residents instructed to keep count of the three chimes throughout the course of the day. The first chime would be, at what would appear to be midnight, based on the position of the moon and the sun, and so on. Needless to say, the system rarely worked; seldom was there a time when more than a handful of the town residents would gather in the square simultaneously; the cries from Concha going unheard.

 

Concha, would appear in the square on the hour, every hour, after sunrise on what she believed to be Monday, in wait of the English teacher. Despite her continuous presence, she only coincided once with the foreshadowed teacher who merely walked past the small girl, declaring her to be of no use in the male world of business. No English was learnt. The town laid in wait for the gringo.

 

One night a week, the townspeople would gather in the hall at sunset. The shutters of the structure, peeling with the debauched decay of time, allowed slithers of the evening sunlight through their cracks; the light always landing on the askew crucifix that was hung on the west-facing wall. 

 

Texmelucan had a female mayor, which for them symbolized progress. She had been in the town for several years when she campaigned for the position, running against the incumbent, overweight bodach. A voting system had been put in place by the townspeople for election night, however, that same evening the town suffered desert winds battering from the east. The ballot boxes were swept away, and this was taken as a sign that a new era for change had been called upon by nature, and who better to take control than a female figure who would lead them along this undiscovered path to salvation.

 

The meetings, however, would follow the pattern of the men leering at the female representative, commenting on the length of her skirt, and the subject all-too willing to receive the demeaning praise. As the weeks went by and the drought and lay of the land became more severe, the mayor’s hem got shorter; a result of the heat, she claimed, and suffered from bad rash lest she liberate her loins. 

 

One afternoon, when the temperature had reached an unbearable high, the crucifix in the town hall fell from its tilted position and shattered on the ashen ground beneath. The residents claimed that with the heat, the walls had cracked and expanded causing the collapse of the crucifix, but no attempt was made by the seniors to repair their sacred object. 

 

Concha collected the pieces and buried them in the infertile ground and prayed that it would bring an end to their misery.

 

One evening, big celebrations were held for the eldest resident. It was a triumph to have survived to the hardened age of sixty-three they promulgated. Ephraim, Concha’s father, who had at one time been declared a madman, gave a speech dedicated to the old comrade. He addressed his brothers and sisters with surprising lucidity and spoke of death and time and the vicious, demonic cycle into which it had ensnared the town. 

 

Nobody had ever surpassed the age of sixty-three in Texmelucan, so each resident had taken a vow to live each day as they so pleased and promised to no longer take concern with the trivial matter of their desolate land. 

 

The last dusty drops of wine consumed; the remaining crumbs cleared off the table, the merriment had only just taken flight. Make-shift instruments were used to, at least, create a rhythm, a dull yet drowning drumming replicating the wearing tedium of their daily lives. The townspeople began to dance in circles, joined at the hands, kicking up the dust under their feet; the sounds echoing from the inclined slopes of their perilous neighbours in the Pinacate.

 

Concha watched the episode from the side, sheltered from the demonic dancing circle.

 

An aged, haggard lady approached the group, disheveled in appearance, severely under-nourished begging for any remains of food that could be spared. Not asking for money, she dropped to her knees and pleaded for mercy. Dust being kicked into her face as they continued dancing, the old lady was ignored. 

 

Despite her worn face, she still made for an attractive figure, with upright posture and pleasing demeanour. She waited patiently by the revelers, until the music stopped, in the hope that she would then be noticed. 

 

Once the men had tired many hours later, they turned their attention to the outsider, encircling her with a familiar predatory look. Maria Josepha, Concha’s mother, more than aware of what was to ensue, ordered her to go back to the house and close all the shutters, for she was too young to bear witness to the scene.

 

Concha, obeying orders, returned to the house and promptly closed her eyes. She slept alone.

 

The men undressed the beggar. The women waited as sightless accomplices in the wings, discussing the mundane matters of the chores of the following day. Each man had his turn with the stranger, collapsing, exhaling to the side of the woman.

 

She lay surprisingly still throughout, covering only her eyes, not wishing to see those who had betrayed her, evident that it was not the first time she had endured such an ordeal. 

 

Once the scene was over, the faithful wives rejoined their husbands’ sides and fell asleep on the dust, each one as complicit as the other in the crime that had been committed. 

 

The beggar lay serene, hands held over her eyes, paralysed into stillness.

 

That same night a dense air settled in the surrounding valley of Pinacate. The sparse greenery of its hills wavering in the waking rumble. 

 

Like a dominant beast, heaving at its prey, the volcano erupted. A cloud of volcanic ash settled on the town, leaving no area uncovered. Texmelucan had, once again, returned to dust.

 

That dawn, the residents of the town awakened from their slumber, learning only of the previous night’s expulsion from the ash they could feel on their naked bodies. The ash settling on their faces had blinded the townsfolk, and in careless hysteria, ran around the square pleading for mercy from God. 

 

Tears escaping the corners of their eyelids, flowed singularly down their faces, rapidly turning from clear to murky grey as the liquid absorbed the ash that caked their countenances. Once the crying ceased, each set of cheeks was left with contrasting markings from the desiccated tears and dried cinders, each individually scarred for their sins.

 

Concha, locked away in the house, was left unscathed.

 

The doctor from a neighbouring town heard of the eruption and made his way to Texmelucan. With Concha’s help the residents were all moved back inside to be examined. The square was cleared but for the beggar who lay calmly in the same place. Once the feverish commotion had died down, she removed her hands from her eyes, rose elegantly and walked confidently away, secure in the knowledge that, by measure of some divine fate, she had been instructed to keep her eyes covered.

 

The doctor eventually reached a diagnosis and prognosis. He professed that the swelling of the eyes, if cared for religiously, would recede slowly over the course of the year and full sight would likely be regained thereafter.

 

Concha would be left to care for her relatives and for the town. 

 

That same afternoon, the long-awaited gringo arrived on horseback and Concha first caught sight of the imposing figure as he rode past the town clock. The residents of Texmelucan, locked away with bandages over their eyes, were unaware of the arrival.

 

Concha walked quickly over and stood in front of the dismounted gringo. His tall frame cast an extended silhouette across the entire length of the square. Concha walking into his shadow to protect herself from the soiled glare of sun; his marked face coming into sharp focus. 

 

His eyes, although piercing, contained a warmth that Concha had never felt before. Immaculately dressed and groomed, he was, for Concha, the exact anti-thesis of Texmelucan. Concha, beautiful, innocent native of Sonora, instilled a desire within the depths of the gringo.

 

Without utterance, he mounted the horse and hoisted the young woman onto his lap. The horse, heaving its hoofed muscular frame, made eagerly for the high peaks of the Tres Virgenes. The rhythmic thudding of the gallop regulated, for Concha, an otherwise prosaic existence, however this time, thundering and thumping a fresh beat that vibrated through her core.

 

There, on the incline of the vulnerable peaks, the strong man laid the girl’s naked arched back onto the ash of the previous night. Intertwined in a cloud of dust, Concha was awakened, her senses electrifying; a rebirth into her once arid surroundings. So intense was the experience that she held herself back, afraid that if a single person were to experience too much pleasure at once, they would die. Nevertheless, held firmly within the man’s grip she felt secure, and Concha’s shell was broken becoming, forever, a woman.

 

For the next nine months Concha diligently prepared the ointments from a mix of nopales and herbs to obtain the right consistency. She would wake at sunrise, tend to the residents, carefully changing the bandages and rubbing the warm liquid directly onto the charred eyelids of the Texmelucan residents. The afternoons were devoted to the care of the land, which still infertile, was a constant worry for Concha. She had tried different forms of irrigation and had even tried the more unconventional fertilisation methods of the ancient gods; at the same time attempting to ensure the safety of the child that she was carrying, sleeping for short periods in the afternoon heat.

 

Even though the gringo had left to pursue the economic possibilities that the rest of the state had to offer, Concha was quite content. The child she was carrying would be the product of the one moment of true, shared passion and love in Texmelucan. The child would be a constant reminder, for her, of that enduring afternoon in the ash. 

 

The memory alone sufficed.

 

One day in June, whilst Concha was hunched over the barren land, she felt a rupture from within her. Concha’s water broke in the midday sun. The fluid trickled down her inner thigh and ran down onto the dry, split soil beneath her feet. There, on the slopes of the peaks she gave birth to a vibrant young girl who would be called Adela, a strong name for the powerful character that she would become.

 

Within days, Concha began to notice the changing fertility of the surrounding hillsides. Growth, as never seen before, accelerated until the entire mountain was covered in fruitful crop. The water of her womb, product of compassionate love, was the only fertilized soil that Texmelucan needed. The birth of Adela chimed in the rebirth of the land; born out of the ash, she returned to it.

 

Over the next months, the residue of the dust from that fateful night was finally swept away. Bandages were removed and the townsfolk were greeted with visions of incinerating colour. Concha had successfully repaired the cracks in the walls in the town hall and hung another crucifix to serve as a constant reminder of the peril into which Texmelucan tumbled.

 

As the townspeople walked out, united, to work the fertile ground, they heard the town-square clock chime in the distance. It chimed four times. 

 

Denial was over.