Burrowed and Used

Burrowed and Used Written and Illustrated by John Paul Amaral

I was born into this valley countless years ago, back when grizzly bears nibbled blackberries under massive oaks, and the tule deer swam across the changing river. Turning acorns hung heavy on branches where squirrels and woodpeckers fought to add on to their bronzing caches. Those times, however, changed. Those rancheros trafficked our ursine family from deeper and deeper beyond Pacheco, just to chain them up to the oaks and fight their bulls. Barred from intervening, I saw those monsters gore into the berry-eaters. Not that I could intervene, but doing so would risk my already Spartan living where they paid me to live with a bed and off beef and bread, not with cash or tanned hides cabaneros received. Tools mattered little when any farm implement served to dig a man, too. Their machetes slashed flesh the same as how longhorns gored pelts. Such were the ways with a life tormented by Californios who fancied themselves a fiesta now and again. an old vaccaro. My last mortal pleasure is knowing I deprived those land-hungry Barbarians the satisfaction of good news when they found out that I died when they wanted him dead instead.

I wanted to be with my loved ones and to go the way they departed. Yet, the old vaccaro and Padre made that decision for me. They thought enough to grant me a Catholic burial. Their heaping loads of sentimental muer did as much good as their criss-crossed religion. Instead of a holy grave, they sealed me away in a wooden coffin worth fifteen hides, dug out a spot outside the graveyard, and made that my funerary plot. Their sickening thoughts and prayers aided little to my lot, except to pin me down in the dirt. A Catholic burial did me no good since my parents dissolved my baptism at the good age of two, but at least I won’t see that vaccaro in Hell.

The somber days arrived for them, too, when the drunken Ossos led by that adulterer Thomas Fallon paraded down the streets of San José. We shared the same burden: live to work, work to live, but rarely did we live for ourselves. The time finally arrived for me to die. I passed away in a single-room house on the property of Rotting wood barred me from my escapes and complicated the afterlife further. I needed to leave my body and belongings behind to make my trip along the western mountains, across their threshold, and down to the waves for the fourth sunset before parting onward. Due to that filthy rosary, a noose around my neck, and

blessings in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti on my brow, I am forced six feet under the ground outside the sanctuary of church land.

Whole-heartedly, I expected their dogs to dig me up within a few days for a quick feast—at least they would tear off that beaded shackle and let me breathe. No. Decades passed after worms, grubs, and ants ate me up and shitted me out, ground squirrels burrowed through my empty chest, and then for a short time a family of gophers used my pelvis as the back end of their nest. They moved out long before I finally felt light again on my weathered bones.

You took your sweet time, I thought, but for once I found my speechlessness helpful when I saw two pairs of greedy, beady eyes that pulled smiles apart between each set by the seams on the faces of two crooked men. Their beards sat like those of fat quails and their breath reeked of tasteless beer. Each huffed and whooped with their heads thrown back as they picked and shoveled out more dirt to expose the rest of my bones, but they decided to not rid me of that horrid rosary. It mattered little as how they plucked me from the earth and cleaned my skull off, or placed me in a crate with the rest of my bones and belongings. I still felt confined to my ragged body like the day I died.

One of the two demons plucked my skull out from the dirt, which exposed a different San José that I left. The pueblo, too, has decayed since I last saw it. Spring flowers from those orchards that they ordered us to plant years ago bloomed and filled the valley with every shade of pink, blue, yellow, and white possible. Orchards allotted by their cutting roads replaced the open fields. Patchworks sewn by gravel roads littered the valley, which included the settling road that sat only feet away from my grave, but nothing crossed it save for a few horses. Never before had I seen the valley with so many trees that choked up the sky.

Those bastardous dogs spent no time escorting my remains from the soil into a crate and plopped my new cell onto the back of a carriage. I waited and watched those men in heated intercourse with another group of men worse than wear. Finally, banknotes shifted between their hands and they carted me away northbound along the El Camino Real. The day bled out like the soil seeped from my crate that splotched the roadways. Houses and orchards passed on behind the carriage until buildings pooled together with smaller gardens. Voices, shouting, calls, and trotting filled out the expanse of the bustling city center. The screeching of a hefty machine scratched in my mind before I saw its source: a massive, hooded carriage with its passengers that slowly glided through the streets. However, we never stopped as we switched veins in the streets and headed east.

Time trickled on some until suddenly, the vehicle stopped. The men copulated their desires for wealth while one took my crate in hand and walked in tow of the other man. Both men walked up to the wood-planked house slatted with long windows and decorated with a porch. A brief knocking rattled the door that swung open to another man who handed a check to the free-handed man as my crate shifted hands between seller to buyer.

I rarely saw the sun from that moment on. Instead, I saw laboratories, gauges, layouts, and dioramas. My time spent outside of study consisted of the closet where other crates containing the bones of others resided. I rested alone there with the other bones, most of which laid lifeless and lucky. Yet, I heard the grunts and groans of others stowed away in the closet. Some voices belonged to other ragged, old men, while others belonged to women. None from children, though. I felt lost for words when a fairly young, dead couple came in and mourned about their murder. It occured right after the Californios sold them out to the Americans who took away their young ones near the Cottles’. Time went on, and the laboratory changed with it. Some of the locked souls have grown quiet in acceptance of eternal observation, until one day the aged jailer came in with others to remove all of us from the confounded closet. They placed all of us in new boxes, but they still kept me with that immoral shackle.

He spoke with younger voices about a local college starting its collection, and then came the day when I saw people in white coats stepped into the room and took each box. I tried to see through the handle, but the White Coats’ fingers blocked the view until they placed me on the back end of a hooded wagon. Wide-eyed, I clamped my disjointed mouth shut while I heard others crying about what would come next. The couple made their sweet nothings, and continued on with them as we all rode down the street through a changed Valley of Heart’s Delight. Fortunately, I had the window view and saw a hodgepodge of older buildings in their symmetry and parlors, smaller two-roomed homes, and boxy buildings that lacked individuality. I must have moved up in society with my compact living space.

The wagon stopped abruptly at a building called Washington Square Hall. The driver stepped out and other men helped him lug each box into the building. They carried us down the wooden, white, and blue halls, down a low-ceiling stairway, and through a cavernous passage. They sat down our boxes along the shelves, and I immediately heard a woman’s cry. The couple grieved about how the White Coats placed them on two shelves, each across the room from each other. Both of them went on cursing at those Owl-Folk for as long as they loaded more of the boxes in the room. Their voices went hoarse after a couple of hours until everyone began to cry—some cried in tears, others to silence the misery, and few to hush the agitated to soothe the sting.

Periodically, the White Coats opened the locked door, turned on the lights, and stepped in to probe us for information in any way they could. The young couple spat spiteful words at them each time they intruded, but their words changed nothing since our jailers had always been deaf to all but themselves.

Time eventually came for them to examine me. Gloved, cream hands plucked me out of my box and rested me down on a pristine plate, followed by the rest of my bones until they aligned my whole body. That White Coat who exposed my body out in the open brought an audience, however; a bunch of young chicks prepared to learn from their mentor with young, hungry eyes and chirping novice quips. The head White Coat finally took out that damned rosary, along with other trinkets, and laid them on my side. I recognized what remained of my

funerary clothes. My neck ached as one of the brats fondled the accursed thing and dared to call me a Catholic—a Catholic! The image of that runt burned into the back of my skull with that insult.

That mentor went on about how haggard my bones were and my hard work, which I appreciated her input. I spent long hours herding cattle and constructing the ranchos while on a humble, meager diet. She read off from a board that I apparently lived a good sixty-four long years. Her gloved fingers held up my chewed and scratched pelvic bone to show her cooing charges ways to tell that I am a man. Yet, the compliments and good showmanship ended when one of them raised a hand, the same one who chirped about the rosary. The mentor White Coat agreed with her hatchling that I was most likely a Catholic because of the rosary, the site of my burial outside of Oak Hill, and shared similar bone trauma with other Californio bones through labor and nutrient deficiency. Hmph! she should speak for herself; that dancing corpse had no right to criticise my lifestyle with driedferns for hair, the way she shambled and quacked in what skin kept those bones bound together, and what else lived under her flowing cloth. She continued prattling between her and the clutch before she developed some sensibility to place my bones neatly back into my box, along with the rosary. Yet, she did not place me back on the shelf. Ceiling lights flicked off, and I heard the door close with a lock.

Five minutes past, and the door unlocked and slightly opened, but without the click from a switch or fluttering of the lights. A small crack of light from outside the room leaked in before it snuffed out. I heard soft footsteps growing closer to where my box sat, followed by a sudden shudder near me. No noise escaped my teeth as I heard a strong grinding that heightened and relaxed over and over. It grew closer until it filled my box and my hollowed skull. I felt a few small puffs of hot air and a strong intake. Something sniffed my forehead and rubbed it with soft fur. It took me a few seconds to figure out that I became a victim of an affectionate gatito.

It sniffed around some more until I felt a slight tug on my neck. It found the rosary, played with it with one bat of the paw and another until it firmly grasped it, yanked the cord out of the box, and it clattered on the ground. I felt a sharp snap at that moment. Slightly humid air filled my lungs as I breathed it in for the very first time. The weight of my weathered bones left me as I stepped out of my box and stood there. My good eyesight returned in what could have been over a century, and I saw the small storage room in its minute glory, including the shelves of boxes that contained the remains of the others. I took a step forward to see one of many shelves that formed a maze in there, only to step and crunch on a few scattered round beads under my sole. The broken remains of that rosary rolled across the cold floor. I turned to face the gatito that sat on the table and it looked at me, rolled onto its back, and exposed its fuzzy white underbelly.

“Alright, you deserved it,” I spoke with my lips once again. It felt good to have lips to smile with again as I rubbed and scratched its soft spot. “Thank you for freeing me.” It blissfully purred in response with smiling eyes.

Although the cat freed me, something

nagged me to look at two boxes, each one across the room. I struggled to read them, but their labels described a man and a woman from the same digsite and positioned next to each other when found, so I took the box that belonged to the miss. She startled and began to panic, but I hushed her whining. I found her husband, swapped out his right-side neighbor’s box with her’s, and placed the make-shift coffin with its silent long-dead bones on the open shelf space from across the room. The two profusely thanked me and wished to see me again when they, too, should leave.

I exhaled and turned to see my box on the table and the broken rosary on the ground. Anxiety choked me up with the thought that the White Coats could try to find the beads and restore that profane entrapment. Thoughts wrapped and constricted my throat until I figured the gatito could help me with the issue.

“Do you know the way out; can you help me make sure She does not bind me here again?” Its deergrass green eyes stared back at me. The gatito sat up, leaped from its place, and helped me collect each bead into my cupped hand. Nothing prepared me to find out the vacarro and Padre buried me with a wood-beaded rosary. Yet, such a cheap trinket made it all the easier for me to pull the aged leather cord bits out and break them apart. We finished gathering the remaining broken pieces, and I took one more glance at my bones as I placed my old box back on the shelf. The gatito then sat down, thumped its tail, and called for me. I knew the time had come.

It led me through the labyrinth of shelves to the wooden door. It pawed and pried it open wide enough for us to slip past. I carefully closed it behind us to cover our tracks as I made my escape from that necropolis. It led me down the same corridor and stairs the White Coats carried me down decades before, both discolored by time. The faux light leaked into the night and we stepped out past the glass doors and mosaic arches into the sanctuary of the gentle cold breeze I have not felt in ages. Task completed, the chocolate and white gatito sat down and looked at me once again. I gazed around and saw massive glass structures, a mighty brown tower, and a small, gated garden. My lips broke up into a grin as something tugged at me in a single direction: west. Laughter broke my grin once I realized I secured my release. None of the people who walked their dogs or played their games in the open field saw a free man, and I intended to keep it that way.

Inspired by my liberation, I tossed a bead into the garden, and cupped the rest in my hand as I ventured west. Occasionally, I dropped another bead into the soil somewhere here and there, or in the old river to float down the way, and even down a couple of gopher and ground squirrel holes. I walked away a free man prepared for my next life.