by Kate Whitsby
Alma closed the door behind them and slotted the latch bolt into its hole. At the same time, Amelia lit a lamp and placed it in the middle of the table. “Come on and get your supper, folks,” she said. “You left it late enough. Come now before it gets cold.”
She set the plate of tortillas, the platter of meat, and the bowl of grilled vegetables on the table.
“We’ll need another chair,” Allegra pointed out.
Alma and Amelia stared at the table. “I hadn’t thought of that,” Alma mumbled.
“Here, Jude,” Allegra continued. “You take my chair. I’ll get a stool from the barn to use until we can make another chair. Don’t pay any attention to Alma. Just tell yourself she was half out of her mind with excitement at the idea of marrying you that she forgot just about everything else. She very nearly forgot to pack her wedding dress in the back of the wagon this morning.”
“Allegra!” Alma gasped. “I told you not to tell him!”
“I’m trying to help you out, darling,” Allegra shot back. “I’m trying to smooth over the fact that you forgot to arrange for your new husband here to sit in a chair at the supper table. Now stop complaining and eat. I’ll be back in a minute.” She took a lit candle and stepped out into the night.
At her command, Jude sat down in her chair. Alma and Amelia took their usual places around the table along with their father. Clarence intoned his usual blessing, and the family fell to the food.
Jude observed them without comment as they each took a tortilla and filled it with meat and vegetables before eating with their bare hands. He watched one person and then another finish their first wrapped tortilla before starting another. Only then did he reach for a tortilla of his own and fill it from the platter and the bowl.
No one noticed his hesitation. They munched contentedly, occasionally making comments with their mouths full, and pushed more food in when they finished.
Allegra came back and helped herself. The chewing and casual exchange of snatches of conversation filled the little house.
Jude took his first bite and chewed. After the first few bites, he slowed, rolling the food over his tongue. Cautiously, he opened his tortilla and peered into it in the light of the lamp. He hesitated another moment. Then, he asked, “What is this vegetable? I don’t think I’ve ever had it before.”
The sisters glanced at each other. “It’s prickly-pear cactus,” Allegra told him. “Oh, and green chili.”
Now that he’d tipped his hand, the whole family watched him chew up the mouthful he’d already taken and waited for him to take another bite.
“Don’t you like it?” Alma asked.
Jude swallowed with great ceremony and took another bite of the tortilla in his hand. “I like it alright. I’m just not used to the taste. I’m sure I’ll get used to it.”
A glance flew around the table, and a smile twitched at the corners of Alma’s mouth.
They ate silently for a while. Jude watched the sisters help themselves to one portion of food after the other, but he didn’t take another for himself. The stack of tortillas shrank before his eyes.
“Is this what you have every night?” he asked.
“Yep,” Alma replied. “We’ve eaten this every night for as long as I can remember. Maybe you can ask Papa, but I think we’ve always eaten this.”
“Maybe Mama didn’t know how to cook anything else,” Amelia put in.
“I certainly don’t,” Allegra added. “This is the only thing I ever learned how to cook. How about you, Alma? Did Mama ever teach you how to cook anything else?”
Alma shook her head. “She died when I was nine. She’d just finished teaching me how to roll out the tortillas and keep the fire going when she died. I guess none of us ever really learned to cook properly.”
“What about you, Jude?” Amelia asked. “What would you eat at home in Amarillo?”
Jude’s eyes flicked across the table toward Clarence. “You know, meat and potatoes and some kind of greens. And we’d almost always have some kind of pie or pudding for desert. My mother makes good pies. She’s a very good cook.”
“I told you he was a Yankee,” Allegra growled to Amelia.
A chair screeching across the floor made them all jump. Clarence kicked his chair back and left the table, retreating to his usual position by the fire.
The younger generation watched him depart and then returned to talking among themselves. Allegra took the last tortilla. “What’s eating him?”
“Something,” Amelia mumbled. “He hasn’t said a word since the church.”
“Maybe he’s just emotional about our lives changing,” Alma suggested.
Amelia and Allegra drifted away from the table toward their beds. Amelia sat cross-legged on top of her quilt and started darning one of her socks. Allegra took off her gun belt and started cleaning the cylinders of her revolvers. Jude observed them. “Another work day tomorrow,” he remarked to Alma.
Alma nodded.
“Is this what you normally get up to in the evenings?” he asked.
Alma nodded again. “This is it. It’s my turn to clean up. What would you like to do?”
Before Jude could answer, Clarence called to him from the shadows. “Why don’t you pull up a chair over here by the fire? I want to talk to you.”
Chapter 13