Amigoland Part 20

"Why not at least stay for lunch?" Carmen asked. "I can make more nopalitos con papas for everyone."

"That would be nice," Don Celestino said, "except we have a driver who brought us here and he must be in a hurry to get back."

But when they looked toward the road, Isidro had reclined his seat and was sleeping peacefully behind the wheel.

Most of the small kitchen was visible with only the light from the faint bulb above the sink. Carmen lit the gas stove and heated the two covered pans that sat on the burners. With a match she lit a third burner for the comal so she could make the corn tortillas. On the counter sat a molcajete half full with a pulpy chile verde.

"If we had more people come to visit, maybe her mind wouldn't get away from her as much." She handed Socorro one end of a tablecloth so they could spread it over the long wooden table.

"For things that happened so long ago?"

"More because she has trouble remembering what was good."

Together they scooted the table across the cement floor until it was more toward the center of the room.

"But all of us pa.s.s through times like that, no?"

"Yes, I suppose, but it gets worse when it feels like all you can remember was what made you sad."

Socorro took care of setting the plates and gla.s.ses on the table, and adding a fork and paper napkin from a roll on the counter to each setting. When the food was almost ready, Carmen brought out a pitcher of fresh orange juice from the refrigerator. She was about to call the others when Socorro asked to use her bathroom and then followed her upstairs, taking care with each step since there was no railing or anything to hold on to until the cement stairs reached the beginning of the second level and the door to the bedroom. A brand-new air conditioner, its thick cord lying unplugged to one side, jutted out from one of the windows. On the night-stand sat a portable stereo the size of a small suitcase, and at the foot of the bed two fruit crates held up a brand-new television. The music was turned down on the stereo, but the display panel continued to pulsate with a prism of colors. The only other piece of furniture was a small dresser topped with six or seven framed photos.

"Is this your family?"

"My son and his wife in Chicago, but the baby I still need to meet. And this one over here is my husband from the last time he came here for a few days."

In the photo they were standing outside near the tree and he had his arm wrapped around her shoulder, though neither one of them was smiling for the camera.

"It must be hard to be so far away."

"I had to accept it. Worse was when my sons told me that they wanted to follow him. And what could I do, if already they were men? Sometimes it feels like that's all I do, wait and wait for them to come back." She ran her hand along the edge of a smaller frame.

After she showed her guest the bathroom, Carmen walked back down to finish preparing the meal. Socorro washed her face and neck in the sink and then used a little water to pat down her hair. With the taxi ride and sitting out in the yard she could feel the thin layer of dirt, most of which was gathering into a grayish soapy water in the sink. Before long she heard Carmen calling everyone inside. As much time as it usually took Don Fidencio to eat, she wondered how long they would be here. She thought that later, when they got back to town, she would go ahead and buy a phone card. Her mother would be upset that she hadn't called again, but more just because she had gone on the trip. She wasn't interested in discussing this with her; she was calling only to let her know that they were coming home tomorrow. Later she would have to promise never to do anything like this again. For a few weeks she might have to come home a little earlier, before dark, just to not worry her. She could take care of herself, but her mother must have still been concerned those times she arrived after dark, as she had been doing for the last few months.

She ran her fingers through her hair one last time and was about to use a plastic clip, but then remembered that he preferred her hair down. As soon as she had it down, though, she wanted it up. She brushed it back and for a while tried to find some way to keep her hair up but also down, neither one of which was pleasing to her now.

They sat on long wooden benches that were on either side of the kitchen table. Sunlight now flooded in from the side door, which had stayed open with only the screen to keep the flies out. Carmen served each of the plates with the nopalitos con papas, then pulled the last two tortillas off the comal, wrapped them in a kitchen towel, and placed them at the center of the table. Her grandmother waited patiently for her to explain where everything was on her plate.

"There's no comparing a meal made at home," Socorro said once she had taken her first bite. "All these days we were going to restaurants or buying food to take on the bus."

"Maybe this will convince you to stay longer," Mama Nene said. "We have waited such a long time for this man to return and you want to take him away again so soon."

"Believe me, I am in no hurry to leave, not after what it took us to get here," Don Fidencio said.

"Then stay the night and you can rest here. Carmen will fix up the other bedroom for you."

He looked to his brother.

"Remember that we need to get back, Fidencio." He motioned toward the side door and the road, where Isidro was still sleeping in the taxi.

"But this afternoon?"

Don Celestino glanced over at Socorro and then finally looked back at his brother. "No, probably not today. But for sure in the morning."

"So you come for him early tomorrow, now that you know how to find the house, and from here you can leave to the bus station." The old woman cuffed the table with the palm of her hand. "That way at least we can hear more of his story."

"There isn't that much to tell really," Don Fidencio said, and continued chewing.

"The Indians take you with them and you come back here so many years later, and there is nothing else to say?"

He tried to stall, think of some way to change the subject, but the old woman was holding her milky gaze on him. He wondered how he thought he could ever get away with pretending he was his grandfather. And then he realized he had just accepted the old woman's offer to spend the night.

"I wish there was more I could still remember, but so many years later." He shrugged with his palms open to everyone else at the table.

"You remembered how to get back here to this place," the old woman said.

And what was he supposed to say to this? He kept chewing his food, hoping that if he took long enough the old woman would forget she'd asked him a question.

"The other day you told us some more of the story," Socorro said. "Maybe you can tell her how you rode on the horse with the army chasing you."

The girl must have thought she was being helpful. He set down his fork and looked toward the door at the light streaming into the room. A moment later he shut his eyes as he began to speak. "They had run the horses most of the night and stopped only two times to let them drink water. I had to ride on a horse with the same Indian who had shot my father with the arrow. This one must have been the leader because he rode in front and told them what to do. I wanted to jump down and run away, hide somewhere in the dark, but a little girl had screamed earlier when she saw that the army was following us. She stopped screaming when they cut her throat and threw her body down. I could hear the other horses trampling over her, how it sounded when her bones were breaking under the hoofs."

"Desgraciados," the old woman said. "For that reason they had wanted to run them off. That, or kill them all. n.o.body wanted them around, not here or over on the other side."

"And later when they stopped, maybe because of what happened with the little girl, the rest of the children, they wouldn't let them get down from the horses, not to drink water or just to stand up, for nothing. And what could we do, if none of us spoke their language?" Don Fidencio quieted after this. The others a.s.sumed he was trying to recall more details of his story, but after a long pause he opened his eyes.

"And the rest?" the old woman asked.

"Who knows?" he said. "That's all I can remember, after all this time."

"But you said the other part like it happened only yesterday."

She had stopped eating and was facing him again. It was clear to him that she wasn't going to let it pa.s.s until she heard everything that happened, whether it actually did or not.

"What I can remember is that as soon as they crossed the river, they left me there and rode off. And from then on, my life was on the other side."

"And the others?"

"Those ones, they took with them to the north. I stood there and watched the dust rise from the horses galloping away. The army crossed the river later, but they were still too far behind."

"But tell me why you, if they had taken so many other children?" she asked, her palms open now as if she were waiting to catch something in her arms. "Why not one of the other boys or girls? You said there had been at least six more."

Don Fidencio rubbed at the stubble on his chin. Now she was asking him questions he had few answers for. It seemed reasonable to want to know and yet he couldn't recall if his grandfather had even told him this part of the story.

"Sometimes G.o.d has a plan for us," Socorro offered.

No one disputed this, but as the moment pa.s.sed so did any of the influence her words might have had.

"Maybe it was so the army would stop to help when they saw a little boy that was left behind?" Don Celestino said. "They couldn't keep chasing after them and just leave him there. At least one or two of the soldiers would have to stop for him."

The old woman crossed her arms. "Maybe so, but it still doesn't answer why this little boy."

"If he was older than the rest, maybe they only wanted to keep the younger ones that were easier to control," Carmen said, though barely loud enough to be heard.

"And tell me, since when has it been so difficult for a man to control a young boy?"

Except for the old woman and Don Fidencio, everyone had managed to eat all of his or her meal. Carmen offered to pick up his plate with the others, and though he could have kept eating, he slid it toward her. What was the point? Without so much as looking in her direction, he could feel the old woman's eyes fixed on him.

"Ya, some more is coming back to me," he said finally, then removed the paper napkin from his shirt collar and again closed his eyes.

"I told you that they wouldn't let us get off the horses. Riding and riding, it must have been more than twelve hours without eating or sleeping or stopping to make water, and that last one was something I had needed to do for a long time. My father had bought me an agua de naranja earlier that day. Imagine how hard this was, and then for me, who before then had never been on a real horse. At first I thought that I could last until we got to wherever they were taking us, but things changed when the sun started coming up." He paused at this point, as if unsure whether to keep going. He could hear dogs barking off in the distance, but otherwise the room was silent, waiting. "I meant for only a little to come out, only to relieve some of the pressure from not making water for so long. But no matter how much I wanted to stop right then, it kept coming, until I could see my pants filling up like a balloon. Maybe it would have pa.s.sed, but the Indian felt the sides of his legs getting wet. I had wet the horse, too, only it had been running all night and was already sweating. He grabbed me by the hair and yelled at me, telling me something in his words that I would never understand, but I knew it was bad. I thought he was going to hit me or throw me to the ground and I would get trampled like the little girl. How was I to know what he was capable of, and then so angry? We rode this way for at least another hour, with my wet pants stuck to my legs and other places where I could feel my skin rubbing against the sides of the horse. I thought there would be some relief when he reached the river, but it took time because they were looking for a good place to cross. It had rained hard only days before and the river was high. I could see the current was strong, taking with it tree branches and a large black dog that at first looked like it was swimming but then went to one side. With all that water rushing in front of us, I felt that I wanted to go again. From where, I don't know, since they had not given me anything to drink and only an hour earlier I had let go a stream of water, everything inside me. I was afraid of what the Indian might do if it were to happen again. Throw me into the river to drown? I was lucky that before long one of them found a good place to cross and they all turned the horses in that direction. As soon as we entered the water, my pants began to fill up again, only now it was washing away what had happened to me earlier. The Indians were moving through the river slow and with much caution, waiting for the horses to get their footing before making them go forward. The animals were struggling against the current. I remember the Indian wrapped one arm around my chest and held on to me tighter than he had since he had put me on the horse. This man who had killed my family and now he was protecting me. And me, after thinking all night of how I might escape, I was holding on to him as if he were my father, the one who had brought me into this world." He stopped to wipe the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. "The horses struggled more when we finally reached the other side and they had to climb out of the river. By that time the army was not so far behind. I thought the Indian wouldn't be mad anymore because the river had rinsed everything away, but with the morning sun the smell was still there. Then he grabbed me by the hair and dragged me to the ground, and there he left me."

Don Fidencio sat back and crossed his arms. No one spoke for a long time, unsure if he would remember more.

Finally the old woman dropped her hands to the table. "At least we should give thanks that it turned out in this manner, that they didn't take you away to live with their people."

"Still, the way it happened," he said.

"Some other way and you might never have returned to this place."

He knew he had made up most of what he'd said, but now he wasn't exactly sure which part this was. Maybe his grandfather had told him some of these details. He wondered if he hadn't confused some of his own story with the one he'd heard as a young boy. Or if it wasn't the other way around. If it wasn't really his grandfather's story mixed up with his own, which would mean he might not have had the accident in the yard and then the other one in the hotel room. It was possible, he thought. And why not? Why couldn't he have imagined one for the other, then mixed up which was which? If he had trouble knowing when his dreams weren't real, why couldn't the same happen when he was awake? But then he remembered that one of the accidents led to him being locked up in that place and all because of The Son Of A b.i.t.c.h, whatever his name was. So no, it had happened to him at least once, that he could clearly remember. But the rest?

No one had said anything for the last minute or so, making the silence and its uneasiness all the more obvious. It seemed the only thing left for him to do now was open his eyes.

36.

On the way back to the hotel, Isidro remembered a shorter route that avoided the long loop around town and instead cut through the country, skirting alongside the orange groves that buzzed with workers up in and around the base of the trees. Don Celestino and Socorro held hands but spoke very little along the way. They kept all four windows rolled down in order to stay somewhat cool on what was easily the hottest day of their trip. Then later, when there was another vehicle on the road, usually a truck loaded with oranges, they would quickly roll up the windows on the driver's side until the dust had settled behind them.

Once they were back in town, Isidro took some of the less-busy streets until he pulled up in front of the jardin. Don Celestino paid him for his services, including a little extra for his efforts in locating the ranchito, and reminded him to come around early in the morning. After stopping for dinner in the same restaurant as the first day, they crossed the street and walked to a pharmacy so Socorro could buy a calling card. Back in the jardin, he waited on a bench near the pay phone while she dialed her mother's number. The phone was still ringing when she smiled back at him, then cupped a hand over her other ear and turned away to say h.e.l.lo.

As Don Celestino had missed his afternoon nap, he was having trouble keeping his eyes open. Their visit had lasted much longer than he had imagined it would. The lunch had led to coffee and more talking, mainly between his brother and the old woman. Twice more she invited him to spend the night, forgetting that he had already accepted her offer. Don Celestino finally stood up and excused himself and Socorro, saying they'd be back early tomorrow morning. Now he worried if he had done wrong in leaving his brother out there. If he fell or got sick in the middle of the night, they probably wouldn't have a doctor nearby. Though his brother wouldn't need his medicine again until the morning, Don Celestino would have felt better knowing he hadn't left the pills back at the hotel. They had come all this way with him still healthy, and he could just imagine getting back the next morning and learning that something terrible had happened to him. Then how would he explain it to Amalia? Against your wishes we took your father from the nursing home and went to Mexico, but then left him to spend the night at a ranchito with a confused old woman and her granddaughter, and it just happened that he got sick on us. What did she care about some old promise her father had made to their grandfather a lifetime ago?

"That was fast," he said when she came back. "Was she mad?"

"She wasn't the one who answered," Socorro said, and sat next to him on the bench.

"So you talked with your tia?"

"No, with my brother Marcos. He came to visit the day after we left."

"And he plans to spend some time with your mother?"

"He said two more days," she said, "but that before he leaves he wants to meet you."

37.

She hadn't wanted to exactly, but she didn't want to tell him no either. They were supposed to be packing, then checking out of the hotel, then finding the driver, then going for his brother even though they had promised to let him stay the night, and then finally heading to the station so they could take the next bus to Ciudad Victoria. Once they were back in the room, though, he had started with a little kiss on her cheek, followed by an innocent-enough hug, but then another kiss behind her ear and a longer one at the back of her neck, near her shoulders, and finally one on the lips as tender as the first. And once he had so easily undone the metal fasteners, she knew they wouldn't be leaving anytime soon.

Only when the evening light had dimmed and he was holding her from behind did it seem there was time for her to say anything. "But I thought that was why we came back to the room?"

"It was, but you saw how it got late on us."

"You were the one who said it wouldn't take long."

"Yes, but if we leave now, we'll be on the bus all night, then get there tired, and what good will that do us?"

"Then tomorrow, when we get back?"

"Maybe. Remember, I have to take Fidencio across. Who knows what kind of a fight he's going to give me."

"And after that?"

"If it's not too late. You saw how long it took us to get here."

"That was because we left late. If we leave early, there should still be light."

He didn't respond because it didn't seem her comment needed a response. Right now what he wanted was to hold her in his arms. How was he supposed to know when the first bus would pull out of Linares and after so many stops arrive in Ciudad Victoria, only so they could wait around for the next bus to take them the rest of the way to Matamoros? After being intimate, his favorite part was the time when he could relax and be grateful they had found each other and could be together in this way. Was that asking so much, to be able to enjoy this quiet moment?

"Then you don't want to?"

"I didn't say that," he answered, opening his eyes once again. "We go to sleep now, and tomorrow we see how things turn out, that's what I meant."

"Say if you don't want to meet him."

"You were the one who at first didn't want me to meet your family." He pulled away some and turned over onto his back; it was clear that she wasn't going to let him enjoy the moment. She stayed where she was, as if she had failed to notice his retreat or, if she had, that it didn't matter.

"That was before, with my mother and my tia, the way they are. This is different with my brother."

"And how do you want me to know how they do things in your family, when you tell me 'no' and then suddenly you tell me 'yes'? At least I told you how things were from the beginning."

But he did know, and knew that she knew that he knew. So why pretend? She had explained to him how her mother had been against the relationship before she could even invite him to come over to the house. She remembered telling him that maybe someday he'd be welcome, if one of her brothers could change her mother's mind, at least get her to accept him. And now Marcos, her youngest brother, was here, so why was it such a mystery that she would want them to meet? Even more, he knew the reason his children were neither for nor against them was because he had avoided telling them anything for fear of how they would react. So there was nothing to say about the relationship, since for them it didn't exist.

"Tell me what's going to happen with us, Celestino," she said a few minutes later. "After we get back."

Earlier he had turned the other way, onto his side, so now they had their backs to each other. Lying there in the dark and with the drone of the air conditioner, she wanted to believe that he could have somehow dozed off, but she knew better.