The Witches of Ruidoso by John Sandoval

Author:John Sandoval
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-55885-766-7
Publisher: Arte Público Press
Published: 2013-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

FOURTEEN

Señora Roja is a vile and evil woman,” Beth Delilah declared.

We were sitting up on the roof of the store, our feet dangling over the edge, watching the activity of the village below. It was late September and there had recently been just the slightest shift in temperature, the vaguest change in the color of the sky. And something else, something that one cannot exactly name or describe, but that tells of Fall soon and of winter approaching—a sad and lonesome sensation for me.

“You don’t like Señora Roja?” I asked.

“Does one like a scorpion?”

“Do you think that she is a witch, really, as Rosa says, as the Apaches believe?”

“I think that she is satanic and has enslaved Rosa.” Beth Delilah replied, then paused. “Have you ever smelled Señora Roja? She stinks of spunk water and doodle bug and of black rot from an out building. And she leaves behind, as she goes, grey smoke upon the ground.”

I thought perhaps Beth Delilah was imagining things. Just being a bit dramatic.

Knowing immediately that I doubted, she asked, “Has Señora Roja passed since we have been up here?” I shook my head.

“I wager that I can find her,” Beth Delilah said. I looked at her, shook my head. I should have known better.

It was not unlike watching a bloodhound scenting as Beth Delilah hurried up the road ahead of me: slowing, stopping, her eyes hardly leaving the ground, walking on, backing up, looking about, proceeding on again.

“What do you see?” I asked, looking where she looked, trying to see what she saw.

“Wisps of grey smoke.”

“Wisps of grey smoke?”

“Yes.”

“Does everyone have this smoke?”

She paused, looked behind us. “Yours is green, as is mine. Señora Roja is the only person I have known to have grey smoke.”

I looked behind us, saw nothing. We left the road, cut through the woods. “She paused here,” said Beth Delilah, stopping to study the ground beneath a tree.

“To do what?”

“To do what people do,” she said, wrinkling her nose, then hurrying on.

Not surprisingly, we eventually came to Señora Roja’s adobe house there next to the creek beneath the cliffs.

“Now that is clever—why would Señora Roja walk to her own house?” I said.

Beth Delilah stuck her tongue out at me. “Goose,” she said. “She is not in the house.” She paused, stared off. “She is down at the creek. And Rosa is with her.”

We began walking along the creek there beneath the cottonwoods, heading downstream. Soon, we heard voices and halted. The sound of Señora Roja was unmistakable—like claws screeching down a blackboard. Cautiously, we moved toward the sound, halted and peeked around a tree.

Señora Roja was standing on the bank of the creek. She was watching Rosa who was squatting in the water, naked and shivering, her arms wrapped around herself. “You are afraid of water?” Señora Roja cried impatiently. “What about snakes? There are many snakes in this creek—and they bite!”

Poor Rosa looked about anxiously, her eyes wide with fear.

“Lay down! The water must cover you! ¡Estúpida!” Señora Roja called, waving her arms about, spitting.

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