Red Sky at Morning by Richard Bradford

Author:Richard Bradford [Bradford, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780671836955
Amazon: 0060931906
Publisher: Pocket
Published: 1980-02-02T16:00:00+00:00

13

A rattly blue bus makes a daily circle of the little mountain towns in Cabezón County, from Sagrado to the valley at Yunque, and then up through the hills—San Esteban, Santa María, Villa Galicia, Ojo Amargo, Río Venado, Río Conejo, Amorcita and, at the end of the route, nearly 11,000 feet high, La Cima. No matter what the weather is like, the bus is always at full boil when it reaches the high point, and the driver has to give it an hour to cool off before he starts down again.

I skipped school the next morning and rode up to Río Conejo to find the Montoyas. Once before, when I was seven or eight, we had driven there for a Fourth of July dinner at their house, but I remembered nothing about the village except a tiny stream bordered by giant cottonwood trees, a little adobe church with a galvanized tin roof, and a baked-clay open space occupied by what seemed to be hundreds of sleeping dogs.

The bus stopped in front of Montoya's Genl. Mdse. U.S. Post Office Liquors Wines, a low, crumbled building that apparently served all the needs of Río Conejo. It was about eleven; the driver told me he'd be back through around three, and to be waiting at the same place if I wanted a ride. A young girl was behind the counter inside, and I asked her, pointing down the road, if the Montoyas lived that way. She said sure, and the other way too; everyone in Río Conejo was named either Montoya or Romero. She, herself, was a Romero. I asked specifically for Amadeo Montoya, the one with a wife named Excilda and twelve or thirteen children, and she gave me directions.

The road snaked between the hills, roughly parallel to the Río Conejo, lined with bare cottonwoods and poplars. The houses were scattered widely along the road, each with a rural mail box, each mail box painted with the name Romero or Montoya, distinguished only by first names or initials. Amadeo's was a mile uphill from the post office.

It was a fine house, solid, old and inviting. From the road it was difficult to tell how big it was. One story and pitch-roofed, it rambled and spread in several directions from the central room, which was log and mud, to the outlying bedrooms and storerooms of adobe brick, freshly mud-plastered in the fall. Several cords of wood were neatly stacked under the portal near the front door, and strings of dried red chile hung from the vigas. As I walked toward the house on a path shoveled from the snow, an immense dog, part shepherd and, to judge from his size, part horse, barked once and trotted to me for a scratch behind the ears, or a fight, whichever I wanted to offer him.

I was scratching him behind the ears when a small, round-headed boy opened the front door and looked at me gravely. I said hello, and he ducked back inside, to be followed by an older child, a girl.

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