Gun Work

In one version of the story, Mano said that La Llorona was a woman named María, the “secret wife” of a man who jilts her for his higher-profile legitimate spouse. Enraged, she drowns their children and later kills herself in grief. In Heaven, God asks her where her children are. She does not know. In typical punitive pique, God condemns her to walk the earth in search of them, making the legend a cautionary boogeyman fable, since La Llorona might drown your wandering kids to replenish her family.

In a more tragic vein, La Llorona is said to have drowned her children to spare them from starving to death, or to preempt their death in an oncoming flood sure to kill them. In sorrow, she searches eternally to get them back.

More lurid versions of the legend have La Llorona stabbing her children to death and confronting their father in a blood-soaked nightgown; drowning bastards she bore as a prostitute, or killing her husband, then committing suicide out of remorse. Her manifestations — for anyone unfortunate enough to actually see her, sufficient grounds to mark the witness for death — included her in a flowing all-white or all-black gown, sometimes skeletal or with swirling black pits for eyes. One version has an ever-tetchy God sending her back to Earth with the head of a horse. Her signature wailing cry is sometimes said to be heard only by those about to die themselves.

“I heard her speak,” Barney said. “She said, ‘Drink from my breast, for I am your mother.’ “

“Impossible,” said Mano, his weathered visage dispensing an avuncular tolerance. “It is a myth, a legend. Not a real thing. You rest, now.”

“Mano,” Barney said some days later. “Do you have a gun?”

But Mano was not in the room. Barney realized he had been rehearsing aloud, trying to keep the question in his mind so he could sound less like a lunatic when the little man reappeared. He said it over and over, so he would not lose track.

The extent of Barney’s exercise in the better part of a month was limited to a half-situp in bed, which generally cramped his stomach something awful, and trips to the bathroom, reliant on Mano for mobility. Today Barney was alone in the house while Mano tended his business, or had possibly gone on an expedition to dig up new stones for cutting and polishing. Until recently, one of his sons or their wives drew babysitting duty, but none of them spoke a lick of English, and when Barney tried to communicate in his pidgin Spanish, it was usually hopeless, reducing them all to grunts, gestures and grade-school monosyllables.

He got the feeling that Mano’s family (none of whom lived with him, and that in itself was unusual for Mexico) did not approve of this half-dead gringo guest. They were all kind, but saw to Barney’s needs with a palpable air of burden. Barney guessed that the La Llorona anecdote had leaked. Being Catholic, they would race to distance themselves from the marked man; get thee behind me, Barney! Being Mano’s children, they would diddle rosaries and perhaps even go as far as to light a votive in church for the stranger, but as far as they were concerned, he was an agent of darkness sideswiping the familia. Barney noticed for the first time the absence of dogma-specific rickrack in Mano’s home. It could be that the vague rift he sensed between Mano and the rest of his brood had to do with his indifference to their faith. The few things Mano had mentioned about his late wife indicated that her death coincided with the point at which he and God had parted company.

Mano was a much rarer commodity, a religious man unencumbered by religious beliefs. What he cherished was abundantly on display: his stones, rescued from riverbeds and caliche, lovingly turned and polished, doing quiet honor to the very planet from which they all had sprung.

Barney’s first attempt to navigate toward the door of his little sickroom was either a catastrophe or a comedy skit.

It took him nearly ten minutes to upright himself in the bed. Every muscle in his arms felt sprung and dysfunctional, corroded by toxins into rusty obsolescence. His inner ear’s balance system fouled him up when he tried to stand. He managed two clomping, Frankensteinian steps and then took a header as the room swam out of focus around him. He destroyed a spool table he tried to clutch on the way down to the floor, and lay boneless in the debris like an infant awaiting a diaper change. With a drunken sense of mission he used his teeth to shred the bandages from one hand and stared blankly at his truncated forefinger. The stump was lumpy and awkward; not a human tool any more. It would offend anyone who saw it.

Worse, the big, bloody Q-Tips at the ends of his arms made it futile when it came to cleaning or feeding himself. He was entirely dependent on Mano’s good graces, and he hated himself for feeling beholden.