The Seamstress by Frances de Pontes Peebles Read Free Book Online

edge. They sliced through rope; hacked cornstalks; cut melons from their vines; pierced the necks of goats and steers, then skinned and gutted them. If there was an argument, knives settled it. Taquaritinga had no sheriff—only a Military Police sergeant who appeared twice a year and dined with the colonel. Padre Otto encouraged men to settle their differences with words, and Emília felt sorry for him during these sermons. Before he arrived, there was no school. Words were elusive, awkward, difficult to grasp. A knife was much easier. People found bodies stabbed and abandoned on isolated paths. Almost always the dead man had insulted another man’s wife, or had stolen from someone, or had compromised someone’s honor, so he had to be dealt with. Sometimes the fights became feuds and families lost their men, one by one, leaving the women to bury them. Women, too, had their perils. Births were often accompanied by funerals, and one of Emília’s childhood acquaintances from church school—a quiet girl with buckteeth—had fallen prey to her husband’s temper. So death, with all of its rites and rituals, its incense and prayers, its long masses and white burial hammocks, was common, while life was rare. Life was frightening. Even Emília, who disliked superstition as much as she disliked sloppy dressing, ended her sentences, her plans, her prayers with “God willing.” Nothing, it seemed, was certain. Anyone, at any moment, could be touched—an arm caught in a manioc press, a swift donkey kick, or an accident similar to that of Uncle Tirço’s.
    The second portrait on Aunt Sofia’s wall was a painting of Emília’s uncle. The man in the painting was young—his mouth turned down and his chin lifted in a serious pose. He had a thick mustache and wore a short-brimmed leather hat that strapped beneath his chin. The painting was commissioned by the very first Colonel Pereira, who’d died in 1915 and left his only son—the second and current Colonel Pereira—one thousand head of cattle, eight hundred hectares of land, and his title. Many whispered that the first Colonel Pereira had purchased the title by bribing a politician in Recife. Colonels were not military officials, although they had small cadres of men who were loyal to them. In the backlands, colonels were the major landholders. Because of this, they made their own laws and enforced them. Many colonels employed networks of capangas and cabras—silent, loyal men trained to make examples of thieves and dissidents and political rivals by cutting off a hand, or branding a face, or making them disappear completely, sending a message to local citizens that their colonel could be magnanimous or he could be cruel, depending on their level of obedience.
    Emília knew that there were two types of colonels: those who had inherited or purchased their titles, like the current Colonel Pereira, and those who had earned them through sheer force—building indomitable reputations, hiring small armies of loyal men, and then forging a bloody path acquiring land, then money, and later, influence. Both types of colonels were extremely wealthy, but one was more dangerous than the other. Colonel Chico Heráclio of Limoeiro was so rich, it was rumored that he had a mouth filled with gold teeth. Colonel Clóvis Lucena shot a man for getting dust on his shoes. And Colonel Guilherme de Pontes, who ran Caruaru, was said to be the most powerful of all, owning so much of the state it was rumored that he had private meetings with the governor.
    Uncle Tirço had worked as a vaqueiro, herding cattle for the late Colonel Pereira during the great drought of 1908. According to Aunt Sofia, people and animals alike were subsisting on cactus. The old colonel’s cows were collapsing. “Losing a cow or horse was more tragic than losing a man,” Aunt Sofia often explained to Emília and Luzia. She told Uncle Tirço’s story in the evenings, while massaging their fingers and the pads of their