Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya Read Free Book Online Page A

the priest who will decide when the time comes, but Tony himself!” He stalked past me. The smell of gunpowder was on his clothes.
    They say the devil smells of sulfur.
    “It is true,” Ultima added. My mother looked at them and then at me. Her eyes were sad.
    “Go feed the animals, my Toñito,” she pushed me away, “it is almost time for mass—”
    I ran out and felt the first cool touch of early autumn in the air. Soon it would be time to go to my uncles’ farms for the harvest. Soon it would be time to go to school. I looked across the river. The town seemed still asleep. A thin mist rose from the river. It blurred the trees and buildings of the town, it hid the church tower and the schoolhouse top.
Ya las campanas de la iglesia están doblando…
    I wanted not to think anymore of what I had seen last night. I threw fresh alfalfa into the rabbits’ pen and changed their water. I opened the door and the cow bounded out, hungry for fresh grass. Today she would not be milked until the evening, and she would be very heavy. I saw her run towards the highway, and I was glad that she did not wander towards the river where the grass was stained—
Por la sangre de Lupito, todos debemos de rogar,
    Que Dios la saque de pena y la lleve a descansar…
    I was afraid to think anymore. I saw the glistening of the railroad tracks and my eyes fastened on them. If I followed the tracks I would arrive in Las Pasturas, the land of my birth. Someday I would return and see the little village where the train stopped for water, where the grass was as high and green as the waves of the ocean, where the men rode horses and they laughed and cried at births, weddings, dances, and wakes.
    “Anthony! ¡Antoniooooooo!” I thought it was the voice of my dreams and jumped, but it was my mother calling. Everyone was ready for mass. My mother and Ultima dressed in black because so many women of the town had lost sons or husbands in the war and they were in mourning. Those years it seemed that the whole town was in mourning, and it was very sad on Sundays to see the rows of black-dressed women walking in procession to church.
    “Ay, what a night,” my father groaned. Today two more families would be in mourning in the town of Guadalupe, and indirectly the far-off war of the Japanese and the Germans had come to claim two victims in New Mexico.
    “Ven acá, Antonio,” my mother scolded. She wet my dark hair and brushed it down. In spite of her dark clothing she smelled sweet and it made me feel better to be near her. I wished that I could always be near her, but that was impossible. The war had taken my brothers away, and so the school would take me away.
    “Ready, mamá,” Deborah called. She said that in school the teachers let them speak only in English. I wondered how I would be able to speak to the teachers.
    “¡Gabriel!” my mother called.
    “Sí, Sí,” my father groaned. I wondered how heavy last night’s sin lay on his soul.
    My mother took one last cursory glance at her brood then led the way up the goat path; we called the path from our home to the bridge the goat path because when we ran to meet our father after his day’s work he said we looked like goats, cabroncitos, or cabritos. We must have made a strange procession, my mother leading the group with her swift, proud walk, Deborah and Theresa skipping around her, my father muttering and dragging behind, and finally Ultima and myself.
    “Es una mujer que no ha pecado…” some would whisper of Ultima.
    “La curandera,” they would exchange nervous glances.
    “Hechicera, bruja,” I heard once.
    “Why are you so thoughtful, Antonio?” Ultima asked. Usually I was picking up stones to have ready for stray rabbits that crossed our path, but today my thoughts kept my soul in a shroud.
    “I was thinking of Lupito,” I said. “My father was on the bridge,” I added.
    “That is so,” she said simply.
    “But, Ultima, how can he go to communion? How can he take God in