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  ‘The first man, from Puebla, has behaved properly. He’s recanted his heretical behavior, pleads to die within the arms of the church and will be mercifully strangled by the executioner just before the flames are lighted.’

  ‘Wise man,’ Garcilaço said, for he remembered an occasion when an accused had refused to admit his guilt, and his death had been horrible.

  ‘The other man, from this city, is mad with lust for his own interpretation of God’s will. Refuses to recant. Says he’ll welcome the flames. He’ll get them!’

  On the morning of the auto, crowds began to gather along the route the procession would take, and as Garcilaço had foreseen, the streets were crowded with vendors, but the greatest crush came at the public square before the cathedral, where stakes had been erected and dry brush piled beneath the little wooden platforms on which the condemned would stand.

  Garcilaço found himself an advantageous spot atop a cask, from which he refused to be nudged by latecomers. Doggedly he held his ground, pushing off whoever threatened and once offering to climb down and fight a young man much bigger than he. When this fellow looked up and saw his opponent’s grim determination, hair in the eyes, scowl on the brown face, he desisted, left the cask, and elbowed his way to one less vehemently protected.

  At noon, with the sun blazing overhead, Indian women sold in wooden cups cool potions of a refreshing drink they made from the sweet limes for which the valleys near the city were famous, and Garcilaço thirsted for his share, but since he had no coins, the women passed him by. However, a Spanish official who had purchased two cupfuls could not finish his second, and sensing the boy’s desire, handed him a generous leftover. As Garcilaço gulped the drink while the vendor impatiently tapped her foot, waiting for the return of her cup, the Spaniard asked: ‘You’re a mestizo?’ and Garcilaço, between hurried gulps, said: ‘Yes, my father was Spanish.’

  ‘How did he happen to marry …?’

  ‘I never knew him. They tell me he was executed … before I was born.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Drink!’ the vendor admonished him, and Garcilaço drained the cup.

  ‘That was good. Thank you, sir.’ The man was about to ask further questions when the boy’s master ran along the edge of the crowd in the open space where spectators were not allowed.

  ‘There you are!’ he shouted when he spotted his helper, and he was about to pull Garcilaço from his cask when the Spanish gentleman gave the older muleteer a hard shove: ‘Leave the boy alone.’

  The master hesitated a moment, but when he saw the quality of the man who had pushed him and realized that this stranger was probably from Spain and would have a sword ready for instant use if his honor was in any way infringed, he backed away, but from a safe distance he growled at his assistant: ‘Bad news! We must deliver our goods to the army in Guadalajara.’ Since that city was more than a hundred and forty leagues to the west, Garcilaço knew that the journey would be a continuation of recent hardships, and that was bad enough, but now his master added: ‘You must come with me now.’

  This Garcilaço did not want to do, for it would mean missing the auto, but his master was insistent, whereupon the Spaniard said in a low, threatening voice: ‘You, sir! Begone or I’ll have at you,’ and off the master went, indicating by his furious stare that he would punish his refractory helper when the auto ended.

  ‘How lucky you are!’ the Spaniard said when the man had gone. ‘Guadalajara! Best city in Mexico.’ And when Garcilaço asked why, the man said: ‘From there you can move on to the real west, and along the road catch glimpses of the Pacific Ocean. China! The Isles of Spice!’

  He had served as a government official on the western frontier and said: ‘I’d always enjoy going back. You’re a lucky fellow.’

  Now the real business of the auto began, with functionaries running here and there to ensure proper observances, and in the hush before the procession appeared, the Spaniard tapped Garcilaço on the shoulder and said: ‘Your master, he seems a poor sort.’

  ‘He is.’

  ‘Why don’t you run away? I did. From a miserable village in Spain where I was nothing. In Mexico, I’m a man of some importance.’

  ‘I’d have nowhere to run,’ Garcilaço said, whereupon the man grasped him by the shoulder: ‘You have the world to run to, my boy. You could be the new conquistador, the mestizo who will rule this country one day.’ He corrected himself: ‘Who will help Spain rule it.’

  ‘Look!’ Garcilaço cried, and into the square where the kindling waited to be lit came four black slaves carrying the poles of a palanquin on which sat a prelate, dressed in deep purple and wearing an ornate miter, who stared steadfastly ahead. He was Bishop Zumárraga, most powerful churchman in Mexico and personally responsible for the arrest and sentencing of the two heretics who were to be burned. It was obvious from his stern countenance that he was not going to pardon the wretches.

  ‘They deserve to burn,’ the Spaniard muttered as the great procession made a circuit of the square, and when the executioner appeared with the condemned, it was this Spaniard who led the jeering.

  The ceremony was swift and awesome. Bishop Zumárraga, from beneath his canopy, accepted the repentance of the man who was to be strangled and ignored the contempt of the man who would be burned alive. Soliciting God’s approval of the punishments about to be administered, he turned the prisoners over to the secular arm of the government and left the square, followed dutifully by his priests. It would be the soldiers, not the clergy, who would actually light the fires under the heretics.

  At dusk, when the flames had died, Garcilaço walked quietly to the compound where his mules waited, aware as never before of the glory of the religion he professed and of the power of Spain. His mind was confused by a kaleidoscope of images: powerful Bishop Zumárraga’s red face as he cried: ‘Let the will of God be done’; the soaring chant of the priests as they marched by; imaginary Guadalajara, ‘prettier than Mexico City’; and the great Pacific Ocean, ‘much more magnificent than what you see at Vera Cruz.’

  Most of all he remembered what that unknown Spaniard had said: ‘You mestizos can do things. Run away. Accomplish something.’ And his own response: ‘I’m soon to be eleven,’ for he was convinced that when he reached that golden age, things would be better and he would find himself more qualified to reach decisions. With these reassuring thoughts he sang a few verses and went to sleep.

  At Guadalajara, which was indeed more attractive than the capital, his master received the unpleasant news that his cargo was needed by the army at Compostela, fifty leagues farther on. He was unhappy, but now Garcilaço was delighted, for the added journey would bring him closer to the Pacific, which he longed to see.

  He did not reach the ocean at Compostela, for when he led his mules into that depot new orders awaited: ‘Take your goods on to Culiacán, a hundred and forty leagues north. The army waits.’ And it was on this leg of the journey that Garcilaço finally saw the Pacific Ocean, that grand, sleeping majesty.

  ‘Oh!’ he cried as he gazed westward. ‘To sail upon that ocean! To faraway lands!’ During the next nights, as he approached the end of his long journey, he could not sleep, for although he had left the ocean, he was aware that it continued to lie just off to the west, and he knew that a daring boy might leave his harsh master, run away, and somehow reach the freedom of the sea.

  At Culiacán, the present frontier of the Spanish empire in Mexico, another new order awaited: ‘Carry your cargo thirty leagues farther north to our military outpost up there,’ and it was on the date Garcilaço had chosen as his birthday that the caravan arrived at that bleak outpost and his Christian zeal was tested, for a soldier came running with astounding news: ‘Ghosts!’

  Excited at the thought of seeing ghosts in daylight, everyone followed the man to the edge of the settlement, where he kept pointing north and shouting: ‘Ghosts! Naked ghosts!’

  Down the trail from the mountains, on foot, came four naked men, three white
, one black, unlike any Garcilaço had seen before, because they had no bellies. From eating almost nothing for many months, they were perfectly flat from rib to loins. Not a fingernail’s thickness of fat showed anywhere. Their feet had soles as thick as leather; their beards were long, except for the black man, who had none; their hair was matted; but their eyes were clear and defiant, with a look that seemed to challenge: ‘We have seen everything and know ho fear.’

  Garcilaço would always remember the first spoken words: ‘What is the month and the year?’

  ‘The twentieth day of March, in the Year of Our Lord 1536,’ a soldier replied, whereupon the ghosts fell to marveling, and the one who seemed to be their leader repeated: ‘March in ’36!’ and a look of fierce pride came across his face. ‘We’ve been lost for seven years, and missed our calculations by only two weeks!’

  When the soldier asked how this could be, he replied: ‘The stars were our calendar, and we were only fourteen days in error.’

  Now Garcilaço’s master growled: ‘What are you saying, you ghosts?’ and the leader answered gravely: ‘I am Cabeza de Vaca, native of Cádiz, forty-six years of age, and I have been wandering up there, in El Gran Despoblado [The Great Unpopulated],’ and he pointed over his shoulder.

  Clothes were thrown over the four and they were led with great excitement down to Culiacán, but in the town no one could be found who had ever heard the name Cabeza de Vaca. However, since the man spoke excellent Spanish, his interrogators had to pay attention, and he told the commander: ‘I sailed from Sanlúcar de Barrameda at the mouth of the Río Guadalquivir near Sevilla nine years ago on the seventeenth of June, 1527.’

  Still no one could believe him, so a man of knowledge asked: ‘On which bank of the river is Sanlúcar,’ and he replied without hesitation: ‘On the left bank, where they make a fine white wine.’

  Another man being sent for, this one said: ‘When I served in Cuba, I knew all the sailors who came to New Spain, and there was never a Cabeza de Vaca, and anyway, that’s a very foolish name, Head of a Cow.’

  ‘My name is Alvar Núñez,’ the ghost said with noble gravity, ‘but I prefer the name Cabeza de Vaca, given in honor to my ancestor by the king, whose life he saved. This is my trusted lieutenant Andrés Dorantes, and this is Alonso del Castillo Maldonado, a very brave man, and this,’ he said, touching the tall black man with affection, ‘is Esteban, a doctor of medicine … in some ways.’

  The two white men bowed low at their introductions, but the black man just did a little dance on nimble feet, smiling, showing very white teeth.

  And that was the beginning of Garcilaço’s real life, for these four strangers from another world traveled with him to Mexico City, and on the journey, which took many weeks, the boy heard such wondrous things that he swore to write them down some day, if ever he learned to write.

  Garcilaço first experienced the noble quality of Cabeza de Vaca as the result of error on a cold, wet morning as he led his mules south toward the junction town of Compostela. The fault was his, as he admitted later, for he was listening so attentively to any words spoken by the ghosts that he allowed his mules to wander, whereupon his master started belaboring him about the head. He had struck four times when Cabeza de Vaca leaped forward, grabbed his arm, and warned: ‘If you strike that lad again, I shall kill you.’ From the trembling of his right hand as he restrained himself, both boy and master knew he meant what he said.

  When the master retreated, Garcilaço made bold to ask his rescuer: ‘Why did you do that for me?’ and as they walked together at the head of the column, a little mestizo boy and a grizzled Spanish veteran, the latter told an amazing story: ‘I was a slave for long years. I was beaten, and sent into the thorns to collect berries. I was abused. At night I wept from my wounds and the loss of hope. I know what slavery is, and I will not permit that man to treat you like his slave.’

  ‘Did pirates capture you?’ Garcilaço asked, and the Spaniard replied: ‘Worse. Savage Indians. Up there.’

  Whenever he uttered the words up there, and he used them often in his tales, he did so with a mixture of awe and reverence, as if he feared the vast empty spaces but also loved them.

  ‘I sailed from my home in Spain in 1527, when I was thirty-seven. We stopped at Cuba, then explored Florida. We lost our ships, and in boats made principally from the hides of our horses, which we had eaten, we sailed west to join our friends in Mexico, but on the sixth day of November in 1528 we reached an island which we named Malhado [Galveston], where ninety-three of us beached our boat.

  ‘Through cruel bad luck, we lost all our clothes and the boat, too, when we tried to launch it again, and while we were completely naked the hideous north wind which sometimes blows up there struck at us. Within a few days only sixteen of us were left. For the next seven years, under conditions I prefer to forget, I lived stark naked, and on more than a dozen occasions when that terrible north wind howled at me, I thought I would die, and sometimes hoped that I would.’

  (No part of Cabeza de Vaca’s story is more difficult to believe than this. He certainly said, repeatedly, that he was desnudo for seven years, and that word means naked. But was he naked in our sense of the word? Yes, with the qualification that his captors must have allowed him a loincloth and perhaps a deerskin to sleep under during the coldest nights.)

  When the pair had become firm walking companions Garcilaço asked how he had acquired such an odd name, Head of a Cow, and he explained: ‘In the year 1212 the Spanish Christians were fighting the Moors who had occupied our country for centuries, and as usual, we Spaniards were losing. But my grandfather many times back, a peasant named Alhaja, showed King Sancho how a triumph might be achieved by sneaking along an unguarded path and taking the infidel by surprise. To mark this path for the king, my grandfather crept among the Moors and placed the head of a cow at its secret entrance. Before dawn our men ran to the skull, sped along the unknown path, and won a great victory, which freed our part of Spain. That afternoon the king summoned my grandfather and said: “Kneel, peasant Alhaja. Rise, Cabeza de Vaca, gentleman of my realm.” ’

  He then returned to the tale of his own incredible adventures: ‘We few Spaniards who survived the shipwreck and the cold were divided into two groups by the Indians who captured us. Most were moved south, but I was left at the north end of the island with an aggravating man named Oviedo. In our previous travels he had shown himself to be the strongest and in many ways the ablest of our group, but in captivity his will power dissolved. Suddenly he was afraid of everything, and although I begged him each year, from 1529 to 1532, to escape with me, he refused, preferring slavery with the Indians we knew to the risk of worse treatment from others we did not. It became apparent that he was prepared to end his days as a slave, but I was not.’

  ‘You kept hoping?’

  ‘You must always hope. It keeps you alive.’

  One part of Cabeza’s story the boy found almost unbelievable: ‘We lived like this, lad. During the terrible months of winter when useless old men were encouraged to die, we ate only oysters, which were plentiful in the backwaters. During the summer months we ate only blackberries. Best of the year came when we moved inland and gorged on tunas.’

  ‘I love tunas,’ Garcilaço interrupted. ‘I’ve eaten them many times when I was hungry. Were yours the same as ours?’ Garcilaço asked, and Cabeza said: ‘Yes, a cactus flat and round like a dish. And along its edges yellow flowers appear in spring. Then a man’s heart leaps with joy, because each flower becomes a prickly fruit, a tuna. When it ripens to a dark red, you peel off the skins, best fruit you ever tasted. We lived on it for months.’

  ‘That’s the same,’ said Garcilaço, and for a moment he felt that he had been with Cabeza ‘up there.’

  ‘In the autumn,’ Cabeza continued, ‘we ate only nuts of a kind not known in Spain [pecans], a wonderful food. But as the year ended, there was a gap between the end of nuts and the beginning of the oysters.’

  ‘What did you
do then?’

  ‘Caught a few fish. Mostly we starved.’

  ‘What did you eat with the oysters and the blackberries?’

  ‘Lad, when I say we ate only, I mean just that. While I was a slave, no meat, no fowl, no vegetables, no overlapping the seasons. We ate ourselves sick on whatever we had, maybe a hundred oysters a day …’ He paused in the middle of the road, recalling those fearful days, then said something which clarified things: ‘I would eat nuts until I vomited, and if you placed a bowl before me now, I would once more feel compelled to eat them till I got sick. Because storing their rich oil in our bellies kept us alive through the weeks when there was no food.’

  ‘Which food did you like best?’ Garcilaço asked, and he was surprised at the answer: ‘The oysters, but not because they were fine eating. When they came, I knew a new year had begun. Stars and oysters, they were my calendar.’ Remembering his friend’s joy at having his dates confirmed, Garcilaço asked: ‘Why was the calendar so important?’

  Now Cabeza de Vaca stepped back in amazement: ‘Lad, you must always know where you are, in time and space.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘If your body becomes lost, your soul is lost, and you wither. If we had not fought to keep our calendar and our distances, we would have surrendered, and died.’

  ‘How did you know where you were? You had no maps.’

  ‘Each night as I checked our latitude I would imagine where we would have been on the map of Africa: “Tonight we’re the same as Marrakech” or “This night we sleep in Cairo.” Lad, I went clear across the continent, Florida to the Pacific, nearly seven hundred and seventy leagues, and always I knew how far we’d come.’ (Florida to Culiacán, straight line east to west, about 1,750 miles; their route, about 2,000.)