Queen of America

by Luis Alberto Urrea

  What the hell, indeed. He liked his li’l Saintess just fine. Liked her face, the way it lit up in wicked humor when he said some japery. Liked her hands. Liked her slim build and her ripe-looking bottom.

  And he liked her potential—liked feather mattresses better than hard ground, boardinghouse bunks, and haylofts. Liked them a great deal more. He liked the thought that he could bend the Consortium to his will and deliver them to Manhattan.

  The night he went to kiss her good night, she cried.

  “No, please, John,” she said. She was afraid. She felt that slip, that slide into heat and tingles she had felt with Rodriguez. It was terror so profound she could not express it. No, she could not. No, she would not. She hadn’t the strength for more of it. Or the heart. Not now. Not again.

  But John was funny. And John kept the wicked away from her. And John took her hand to help her over puddles in the street, brought her a single flower at breakfast, told her she was pretty as maple trees in October. And though she did not know what that meant, she knew how lovely those words sounded.

  “You don’t care for me?”

  “I do.”

  “Be mine.”

  “Let me think.”

  “Go on, then,” he said, opening her door for her. “You think. I’ll be here in the morning.”

  She looked at him in that way he liked, from eye to eye.

  “The last time,” she said. “I…”

  He touched her lips with one finger.

  “Go on, now. I ain’t mad.” In their country Spanish, estoy had become ’toy.

  She went in and closed the door.

  He laid his forehead on the wood and sighed.

  Out to the street.

  He busied himself with discovering rhubarb pie and Busch beer—not, fortunately, at the same moment. The thought of that made him turn light green. He risked his last fifty dollars in a card game down by the river, and he walked away with a poke of $546. He felt flush, and enjoyed the overcrowded docks. Hogshead barrels, cursing sailors, geese, runty dogs, and strolling whores. Great hilarity, he found, along the west bank of the Mississippi.

  He got back to the hotel after everyone had gone to bed. Even the piano was abandoned. The lights were turned down low. Dawn was already sneaking along the prairies. He crept into his room. He lay on the bed and sipped from his hidden bottle.

  He stared at the connecting door.

  Somehow, its white paint felt like a rebuke. He sipped. He kicked off his boots. How could she scold him in her sleep?

  He blew her a rueful kiss and closed his eyes.

  She rapped on the door in the morning, as she did each day.

  “Are you decent?” she called.

  She unlocked the door and peeked in at him. She didn’t seem angry. She didn’t seem amused. She didn’t seem anything.

  He sat on his bed in a sleeveless undershirt, pulling his boots on. He stood, his braces falling to his sides.

  “Hey, bunkie,” he said.

  “Buenos días.”

  “Seeing you,” he said, “completes my morning.”

  He smiled at her.

  “Oh?” she said, coming in and fingering the watch on his desk.

  He stepped to the wardrobe and withdrew a stiff white shirt. It had so much starch in it, it looked like a thin slat of wood.

  “It’s my boiled shirt,” he said.

  He worked his arms into the resistant sleeves.

  “That shirt,” she noted, “looks more fried than boiled.”

  He chuckled.

  “I swear,” he said, choking a bit as he fastened the collar button. “You’re as fresh as a breeze in a garden.” He was giving it his cowpoke best. What the hell—it was the kind of line that worked on the girls in the cantinas.

  She tipped her head.

  “Gracias,” she said.

  He tucked the tails in, drew the braces up, and squared his shoulders; he took up his vest, watched her watching him as he did up its three buttons.

  “Are you mad at me?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “Not until I hear what you were doing last night.” She handed him his watch. He started winding it. “Then I might be mad at you.” She was angling for a sophisticated mature woman’s tone. It would have been worth a chuckle or two on the vaudeville stage.

  They tried on their roles as she went across his room and out into the hall through his door. He followed. Thus he met the rumpled Mr. Suits.

  They sat in the farthest corner of the dining room. Teresita and John took a booth, and Mr. Suits sat in a pulled-up chair on the side. Teresita sipped grapefruit juice. John and Suits downed epic drafts of French roast chicory coffee.

  “This mud’s stout enough to hold up a fence post,” Mr. Suits quipped to his own profound amusement.

  He wore a dented bowler and needed a shave.

  They stared at him.

  He turned to Teresita, whose hands were upon the table, wringing each other like wrestling badgers.

  “Terry,” he said, “you got my men boogered.”

  She looked at John with an eyebrow raised. “Confused,” he explained. “Beat.”

  She looked back at Suits.

  “And?” she said.

  He did not want to be here, but business was business. His men had reported John’s worrying interference. All right, sure, the Saint was still under contract. But this could slow things down, bog them up pretty good, John being made of fairly stout mud himself.

  “I come all the way out here to consider your conditions.” He raised his hands. “Fully understanding we reached a consensus once before. This here is a whole new game.”

  “I want nothing, I told you,” she said.

  He sighed. Drummed his fingers.

  “How do I parlay with a saint?” he asked John.

  “She answers to God.” John shrugged.

  “You a churchy man, John?”

  “Of occasion.”

  “What do I do, sacrifice my oldest son on the altar?”

  “That’s funny,” John said, and translated for her. She did not smile, simply stared at him. He busied himself with his coffee.

  “I’ll be honest,” Mr. Suits said. “You make me jittery sometimes.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  John came to his rescue: “Teresita requires her two thousand dollars a year.”

  “My God, man, that’s exactly what she’s getting.” He sneered. “You do realize the average salary in America is four hundred a year. I’d say we’ve been generous. So. Why am I here?”

  “Me.”

  John sat back and smiled so wide his eyes crinkled.

  “I require a touch more worldly recompense than she does.”

  Suits drew his pencil and notebook from his pocket and sat there shaking his head.

  “Where’d you learn that one?” He snorted. “A book?” But he licked the pencil.

  “Begin,” he lamented.

  It wasn’t such a bad deal, really. Of course, nobody in the Consortium would be happy with it. But John pointed out that it was better for its members to meet his demands than to receive the nothing they would earn if he took Teresita back to the old frontier; better for the group to satisfy him than to deal with the lawsuits he would bring against the Consortium, which he thought he could win, what with the organization’s criminal record of white slavery and all. And besides, with him around with his pistola, they could fire a centurion or two, balance things out somewhat.

  A load of new clothes and a good fat regular payday and some custom-mades for his feet. Not bad. It was the hotel rooms that would cost ’em. That and the relocation to New York City.

  “Looks like you found the golden stew pot, Mr. Van Order,” Suits grumbled. He ordered a whiskey.

  “Early drink, Mr. Suits?” Teresita said.

  “Kentucky breakfast,” he muttered.

  He looked at her for a long while, then consulted his notes.

  “I can do all this,” he said. “Sure. I’ll sor
t it out.” The drink came. He sipped once, then tossed the whole shot back. “That’ll work,” he noted.

  John bit his lip.

  “What we have to prepare for,” Suits said, “is all the scandal.”

  “What scandal?”

  “Your enemies have engaged in, shall we say, tawdry stratagems already. This here situation can only degenerate into calumny and loose talk.”

  John squinted at him. He shook his head a little.

  “You want to chew that one a little finer, Mr. Suits?” he said. “We don’t follow.”

  Suits reached into his jacket and withdrew a ragged bit of newspaper.

  “This here,” he said. “From right here in St. Louis. Regardez le horseshit right there.”

  John took it.

  It was an advertisement promising that Teresita would pay ten thousand dollars and furthermore deliver five thousand armed Yaqui warriors to any man who would marry her.

  She leaned over and looked at it as John fumed.

  “Kind of insulting, I’d say,” offered Mr. Suits.

  “Inflammatory,” said John.

  “Makes Terry look like a crazy spinster and a renegade besides.” Suits wiggled in his chair and glanced around for the waitress.

  Teresita said nothing. She had been attacked before. She didn’t even waste time wondering who had placed the ad. Warriors? What warriors? Men and war, that boring refrain. What really stung her was that someone thought that she had to pay a man a fortune just to marry her. Am I so bad? Am I so damaged?

  “I didn’t know you had enemies,” John told her. Had he forgotten her history? Mexico? Revolution? Ghosts? Apparently he had, though he’d never been much for looking back on events, large or small.

  She looked at Suits and shook her head. Who would have paid for such a proclamation?

  “I am surrounded by darkness,” she said.

  John stared at her.

  “Makes you look bad, Terry,” Suits reiterated, gesturing for the waitress to bring him another shot. “People don’t like women acting up. Perhaps they’re dry-gulching you in the press to queer your play. Unless it’s true.” He grinned nervously. “You got Yakis waiting out there?”

  “That’s ridiculous!” John said.

  “Maybe so, maybe so.” Suits received the shot glass and sniffed it. He took it in and felt it spread through all his aching muscles. “That’ll work.” He sighed. He retrieved the advert, smoothed it, folded it, and put it back in his pocket. “They’ll discredit you at every turn. That’s the game. The heart of man being a dark sombitch and all.”

  They’ll.

  “Better a shamed face than a stained heart,” Teresita announced.

  “Well put!” Suits yelled. One whiskey shot too many, Teresita was thinking. “But look here. You two lovebirds…”

  They both snickered.

  “… whatever you are. You two livin’ together? Travelin’ together?” Suits sat back, crossed his legs, shook his head. “Say good-bye to the saint business. It’s a dirty scandal, and your enemies are going to make the most of it.”

  He put his hand out and touched her wrist.

  “You are a Mexican,” he reminded her.

  John would have popped him one, but he was thinking about what the man had said. By God! The weasel was correct on that point: they were going to fall into scandal.

  “Well, Suits,” John said. “We’re in a pickle, because I’m not leaving.”

  “We have formed a… consortium,” Teresita told him.

  Suits stared at the table, arranged his spoon.

  “Funny,” he said. “Witty.”

  “Business,” said John. “Nothing personal.”

  “I see,” Suits replied. “It will seem personal indeed to your followers, pardon me for saying.”

  “What would you have us do?” asked John.

  “Far be it from me to tell you to hobble your ambitions,” Suits said softly. He looked John in the eye. I’ve got your number. He smiled a tight little smile devoid of any warmth whatsoever.

  Before John could say anything, Teresita spoke.

  “Then say we are married,” she said.

  “What?” both men blurted.

  “Release the news to the papers. John and I were married. It was a joyous event. And they can keep their opinions to themselves.”

  The men sat and gaped at each other.

  “I think,” John said, “I might join you in a drink. If my bride doesn’t mind.”

  She sat back, smiling mildly.

  “You are a grown man, mi amor,” she said. “You do not need my permission to drink.”

  John tipped his head to her and winked at Suits.

  “That,” he said, “is what I like to hear.”

  Forty-Seven

  MR. SUITS WAS so persnickety after his breakfast that he marched to the lobby stiff-legged and fired all four centurions and kicked them out of the hotel. If there’d been a dog about, he would have put the boot to it too. He tossed the morning pianist a nickel to ease his mood and requested the tune about Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines. He and the pianist sang it with gusto: “ ‘I’m Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines, I feed my horse on pork and beans, and often live beyond my means, I’m a captain of the a-army!’ ”

  This goddamned Saintess and her cowboy pal would no longer be his concern; after he finished the business of this morning, he’d be on a train back to San Francisco and his little candy shop. To hell with the whole dirty business of holiness. He’d quit the Consortium and live in peace. He imagined the sign he’d put in his window: NO MEXICANS OR INDIANS.

  “Your ride has arrived,” Suits called into the dining room, wishing the day were ending instead of beginning.

  They were greeted by David Rowland Francis. It was quite the coup for the Consortium, this event, and it was intended to remind her of the power and connections the group enjoyed. The trip had been planned days earlier, and its timing was now off, but the visit was still worthwhile. Mr. Francis was the former mayor of St. Louis, the former governor of Missouri, and the current president of the World’s Fair. Cameras clicked and blew light at them as they all shook hands. John noted Francis’s shoes—cream and brown and slick as ice. Every thread of Francis’s suit announced his position. John was embarrassed by his own clothes—he’d thought he was dapper, but this governor made him feel like a ragpicker.

  “It would be an honor to introduce you to the site of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition,” Mr. Francis said. His teeth were perfect. “Shall we?” he said, gesturing with his ivory-colored hat.

  They went to his Packard auto car as if in a dream. It had a canvas top like a prairie schooner held in place by spidery iron legs that folded down in a cunning fashion to expose the passengers to the salutary Mississippi breezes. The car came to life with a bang after a stout spin of the crank by the chauffeur. Its motor made a jolly racket, going bucketta-bucketty-bucketta-bucketty. Everything seemed slow. Cameras. Applause from a few gathered. WITCH on a placard. They mounted the green car with its liveried driver in his brass buttons and silly cap. Mr. Francis offered John a cigar; they reclined in the leather seats. “Robusto or figurado?” Francis asked. Ah, Cuban, sweet and brutal. John accepted the flame and chewed a mouthful of smoke.

  Teresita was all excitement and glory. She exulted every time Governor Francis pointed to some new golden detail on one of his fat buildings. John—uncommonly, the one who looked for the unseen—saw beggars in the alleys between these behemoths, saw a cart horse with a bum leg being lashed, limping along with a teeming cart of refuse dragging behind. Dogs lit out after the puttering auto, barking and trying to bite its wheels as Mr. Francis tipped ash over the side and regaled them with the most elegant talk John had ever heard. Teresita placed her hand on John’s knee. Mr. Francis glanced at this. John moved his knee. He would have to teach her to dissemble a bit. Play the cards tighter to the belly. Sometimes, she went around as open as this Packard.

  “Aren’t you happy, John
?” she said.

  “Oh, I’m happy,” he said, tossing her a smile and patting her hand. He turned to Governor Francis and came up with a translation. “She is exulting over your fine city, sir,” he said.

  Francis beamed.

  And there it was before them, this massiveness: the World’s Fair a-birthing. Cranes and smoke and tumbling herds of workers below, overflown by birds in huge numbers on high, banging and hammering and shouts and whistles. The great exposition’s bay had been dug; scooped canals led from it, visible through the gates and the gaps in the walls. The water in these was green. Indians in canoes paddled back and forth, and small electrical launches puttered between them.

  “Isn’t it marvelous?” Governor Francis cried, excited as a boy by his grand folly.

  They leapt from the halted car, and the governor lit out at a fast clip, waving his arms excitedly. John dawdled a bit, watching. Francis and Teresita paused to sign autographs, to pose for pictures hugging strangers. John stopped well away from the white gates and regarded the rabble. A ragamuffin in striped shorts and a dirty cap stood near him, peering in at the tumult.

  “You goin’ in?” he asked the boy.

  “Cain’t do it.”

  “Sure you can,” John said. “Who’s stopping you?”

  “Don’t got no money, mister.”

  “Son,” said John, “I never had a red cent. Look at me now.”

  The kid sniffled and stared.

  “C’mon,” said John. “Let’s stroll.”

  The kid followed him through the gate and nodded to the various coppers and roustabouts standing in his way.

  Over here was the fast-rising Festival Hall, soon home to the greatest pipe organ on earth, said to be as loud as Creation Day itself. Along the other side rose the Colonnade of States, leading to the dining halls. Frantic sputters announced the awakening of the four white-water fountains out in the bay. In the west, through the columns of the Colonnade, a cascade began pitching water down a stepped facade. The spiderlike object in back was the two-hundred-and-fifty-foot festival wheel, so recently a sensation in Chicago. The great statue by the bandstand was of the patron saint of St. Louis, France’s King Louis IX. Neither John nor the kid was impressed. Teresita noticed the boy and smiled at him.