the bruja's story

julianna mccarthy

The Baja backroads dive headlong toward the sea, crash through arroyos so deep only the Mother of Sorrows is unafraid there.  The Bruja tells the story of lost men who left only names winding through generations like maps to shipwrecks, cattle drives, bad ideas.  Here even saguaros die of thirst while the ground blows away to where the shore drowns.  The Bruja draws a picture leading to anywhere since everywhere is new or different or brown.

A gringo was lost, the Bruja tells the story;  so lost the rain could not find him and his words dried in his throat.  But since he was a man of learning, he possessed a map.  An abuelo came walking, the Bruja tells the story, a man who knew where many paths ended.  He asked the gringo, ¿Senõr, you have disappeared?  Which, of course, he had.  But it is polite to ask.  The abuelo had never been world-swallowed, but he knew the signs.

Soon, the Bruja tells the story, the gringo was absorbed by a neighboring city, and the abuelo continued his walk.  The abuelo had disappeared many times, which could not be avoided because of his walking.  He had also reappeared many times, moving from the inevitable but to perhaps where the horizon changes, where Holy Mother waits by the roadside, where all gringos vanish, and the Bruja tells the story