Santa Catarina would not be the country that it was without the gaucho, and the gaucho would not be the gaucho without Santa Catarina. We worked under a wealthy landowner, who was referred to as a patron. A patron would not think of muddying their boots to drive a herd of cattle from one clearing to the next. A patron would not rise with the sun to feed the horses and cattle that made them wealthy. A patron would not leave the warmth of their bed in the middle of the night to help a cow give birth to a calf, not caring about the blood and mucus that came with. But a gaucho would. We didn’t need noble titles to know that we were the true owners of this land, with its lush green mountains that languidly stretched to the heavens. A wilderness that opened before us like the expanse of the ocean was better than any heaven promised to us by priests.
I was at my happiest when I rode out with these dirty, unkempt men who braved the wilds, through the downpour that attempted to cleanse all living things from the earth. No, I did not envy my sisters and former classmates. While they stayed in the airless classroom listening to a useless lecture, I was getting a real education.
Working as my father’s apprentice at first, I lined up his tools, making sure they were all in working order for him. I quickly became experienced enough to work alongside him, a full gaucho in my own right. At the end of the day, we cleaned the tools together, talking. My father told me stories about his people, the Azoreans who resided on the lush, exotic islands off the coast of Portugal.
“When I was a child, my parents couldn’t keep me on the ground.” He smiled as he wiped the mud off his prized facón, the knife that he had kept by his side since he first moved here. “There was this one bluff in particular that my friends and I liked to climb. It was so high that you could see for miles over the ocean.” He put the facón away and picked up another tool as I sat on the stool watching him. “When you stand on a bluff like that, you understand just how small you are.”
“What did you do after you reached the top?”
“We jumped.” His eyes got big as he tickled me. “But don’t you go getting any ideas now, little lady. I will not have you jumping off cliffs until you are at least…twenty.”
“Twenty? Why twenty?”
“Because by then you will be your husband’s problem.”
I wrinkled my nose at the thought, but then another question struck me. “Papai, why did you come here?”
He thought for a moment as he closed the toolboxes. After a while, he finally answered, “I understood there was more to the world than my little island.”
Two
January 1833
As ran the course of my life, the omens came, and with them came trouble.
One morning while my father and I were preparing for our day’s labor we heard my mother call out from the house. We dropped the tools that we had been packing and ran to her side. She was standing in the kitchen, staring at a little black bird with a bright red belly, sitting on the back of a chair, his little head rhythmically bobbing up and down.
“This is bad. Very bad.” My mother crossed herself as the color left her face. “There are spirits here.” She crossed herself again. “Something terrible is going to happen.”
I slowly walked up to the bird so that I didn’t startle him, setting one foot cautiously in front of the other. The bird turned his little head toward me. His eyes, as black as his feathers, shone brightly under his white-streaked brows. Gingerly I reached out toward him, stroking his little chest. The bird didn’t move or flinch. Our eyes met and for a moment I felt a kinship with this creature. Moving slowly, I scooped him up in my hands and carried him outside, where I released him back to the wild where he belonged.
It was a hot January day when my father volunteered to figure out where the leak was coming from in the community storeroom, where our small village’s produce and dried meats were stored during the rainy season. Any amount of moisture in that hut and we would all be starving for the rest of the season.
I volunteered to go with him, but he wouldn’t let me. “You’re too small. You might get hurt.”
“Just last month I helped catch a wild bull.”
“And you nearly got yourself trampled.” He gathered his rope and hammer. “You are eleven years old. You will have plenty of time to risk your life chasing cattle and climbing on top of rickety sheds.” He kissed the top of my head and left. I sulked, wishing I could go with him. They may have let me help rope the bull, but it was only because I was quicker with the lasso than the rest of the gauchos we rode out with.
Later that morning I was out at the stables, grooming the horses, when the news swept in like a rushing storm destroying everything in its path. The whole village went running to see the damage to the storeroom. Bile rose in my throat as I began pushing forward.
“He was walking on the roof,” one of my neighbors murmured. “They say he fell.”
“Of course he fell; that roof was so brittle that I don’t think it could even support the weight of a bird.” Their words died on their lips as they looked down, noticing me for the first time.
Weaving through the crowd that gathered, I made my way to the center of the room. It was only when I gasped at the sight—my father, white and waxen as he lay impaled by a beam through the abdomen—that I think I screamed. I couldn’t tell. Lurching forward, I tried to grasp his outstretched hand. That’s when one of the gauchos grabbed me. He threw me over his shoulder and carried me out the door.
The next day family, friends, and other kin gathered for the processional to bury my father. They hollered and cried, thumping their chests and pulling at their hair. My mother led the group, the loudest mourner of all. When the horse-drawn carriage came to a stop, she threw herself over the coffin, beating the lid as she exclaimed, “How could you leave me?” Two women pulled her away, her wails a low fog rising above the crowd of mourners.
I stood in the back, watching the spectacle that played out before me. People crowded around me as the whole village pushed past me to follow the casket. Clinging to a tree, I did my best not to get swept away by the current of faces that moved toward the graveyard. Looking around, I could no longer see my mother or my sisters. Suddenly, I felt alone and scared in this sea of people.
Their noise was a cacophony that made me feel disoriented. Their sweat clung to my nostrils as I was jostled along the pathway. I had to leave. I was feeling myself go mad. Fighting through the procession, I made it to the river, my pulsing lungs on fire, and collapsed by a tree, gasping for breath. This world suddenly felt cold and dark without my father. He was the only one who understood me.
That was when I heard the footsteps behind me. I turned my head sharply, expecting it to be a wild animal, only to see Pedro, the village drunk. He smiled; half of his teeth were missing, and I could see his tongue in the gaps.
“Such a little thing. So sad that you are all alone now.”
“Go away, Pedro,” I said, looking back at the river but keeping watch on him from the corner of my eye.
He swaggered over to me and took one of my braids in his hand. “Such pretty long hair you have.” He let the braid slip through his dirty fingers. “Such a shame that you don’t have a father to protect you anymore.”