Read Guadalupe's Tears for Free Online

embarrassed at following such an impulse. Livvy, however, didn’t seem to mind. He stepped back and she said, “You can’t go downstairs just yet. You gots to listen to me or you’ll end up back up in here with the sunlight scalding your back. I know how to kill Phaedra and her mens. But you gotta do as I say.”
    “How do you know that?” Lee asked as he tucked in his shirt.
    “Because I’m a slave. White folks pay no attention to me unless they want something.”
    Lee nodded, understanding her meaning, then sat down on the edge of the bed. “Okay, pretty Livvy, tell me what you know.”
    “I know that right after Phaedra came here, the statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe started crying real tears. At first Father Miguel thought that maybe there was a leak on the roof or something and maybe water was falling on the Virgin, but the roof was sound. I know this ‘cause he sent ‘Lijah up to check. So he started collecting her tears every night after midnight mass. Padre got quite good sized jug full too before they came and got him.”
    “Who were they?”
    “The good white folks of Casey, of course. They liked the arrangement they made with that she devil and didn’t want no uppity Mexican priest getting in the way.”
    “And how are Guadalupe’s tears going to kill Phaedra and her men?”
    “Well, I figure,” Livvy said as she sat down beside him, “that them tears have healing powers. I seen father Miguel use ‘em to cure folks. So I asks myself, what’s the sickest critter in town? And that’d be Phaedra and her mens.” She leaned forward, her expressive eyes large and round, “So I figure that if someone were to dip some bullets in those blessed tears and shot one of her followers, that may not cure him ‘cause he already be dead, but, it could make him unravel like an old rope.”
    “I think you may have something there,” Lee agreed. “How do we get to your Father Miguel?”
    “You don’t, ‘cause he be dead.” Livvy said. “The townsfolk figured it out too. They may be afraid of the she devil and her mens, but they still have that bargain. And Phaedra do keeps the Indians off of us. They never come down here no more.”
    Lee thought it over, and then asked, “Do you know where he kept the jug of tears?”
    “Massa Bruce and the preacher found it and busted it up.”
    “And the statue?” Lee asked, half afraid that the virgin, too, had met a similar fate.
    “Father Miguel hid it before they came after him.”
    “Where did he hide it?”
    “I’ll show you, but you got to do something for me first.”
    “And what would that be?”
    “Massa Bruce is still asleep in his room downstairs. He don’t drag his lazy ass out of bed till about noon. He keeps his two boys chained to the stairway just in case they try to slit his throat at night.” She offered a half-hearted laugh and added, “And they’d do it too.”
    “And what about you?”
    “He don’t think I can do nothing except run away and he thinks I’d be afraid I’d get caught by the Indians.” She lowered her eyes and stared down at her hands. The wrists were scarred and raw. Lee felt a flush of rage stirring deep inside him. “I sleeps in the kitchen but sometimes he comes and...” Her voice trailed off. She swallowed a lump in her throat then looked up at him, her eyes glistening, and filled with hatred, rage and resolve.
    “And he ain’t missing you now?”
    “Nah, it’s time for me to be lighting fires in the kitchen. He thinks I be doing that, if he’s even awake yet. Which ain’t likely.”
    “The two men chained to the steps, are they going to cause me any trouble?”
    “No. They know what we’re gonna do.”
    Lee rose, stood in front of Livvy who gazed up at him with large innocent eyes. He placed his hand under her chin and tipped it up. He could feel the blood rushing through her veins, and it made him crave something dark and terrible. But not with her. Not with his dusky angel, his savioress. Lee