by Edna Ferber
Vashti Hake in the front seat beside the driver had been markedly silent. “You certainly have got your best company manners on today,” Eula Jakes called to her, “for a girl who generally never stops talking.”
Vashti Hake turned in the seat and the anguished blue eyes fixed themselves on Leslie. “Some of the boys are going to be there,” she announced.
This Leslie had taken for granted until now. “I hope Jordan will be, at any rate. I haven’t seen him since—well, I haven’t seen him today,” she confessed.
This appeared to cheer Miss Hake. “There’ll be others too,” she announced mysteriously.
Eula caught this challenge. “Vashti Hake, you got a new beau and haven’t told any of us!”
“Old Eusebio?” Adarene inquired, laughing. Then, at Leslie’s failure to comprehend, “Old Eusebio’s the cook, he always does the barbecue at Reata, it’s been going all night.”
“I can hardly wait, I’m starved.”
Now they drew up in the bare dusty space surrounding the bunkhouse. The sun glared upon the group standing near the long wooden table. Hopefully Leslie saw a little clump of mesquite pale green and cool-seeming but it was soon to prove deceptive. She was to learn there was little comfort or shade beneath this thin-leaved prairie shrub.
There was Jordan, not only in the boots and spurs and tans and Stetson but in chaps like a movie hero. As this leather god came toward her Leslie found herself running toward him, she had no other single thought in her mind but to be near him again. The Girls, Luz, the half dozen men who had hailed them as they drove up, the figure squatted in front of a red-hot fire on the ground, the Mexicans bent over a steaming hole near by—all vanished in a hot haze and she heard, unheeding, only a thin echo of their indulgent laughter as she stood on tiptoe to meet his kiss, her arms about his neck.
“You left without even good-bye.”
“How do you know? You were sleeping in a tight little bunch as though nothing could wake you.”
“I know, dearest. I was exhausted.”
“I want you to meet some of the boys. I want to show you off, first chance I’ve had.”
“I’m so happy. Stay near me.”
He led her forward. “Boys, this is my wife Leslie. Leslie, Lucius Morey down from Dallas—you met Adarene…. Bale Clinch—you want to watch out for him he’s running for Sheriff…. Ollie Whiteside…smartest lawyer around. Keeps us out of jail…. Pinky Snyth from the Hakes’ place—say, Vashti, I hear your pa’s sick and couldn’t come.”
Vashti Hake looked at Jordan Benedict without replying. The plump rosy face flushed deeper, then paled ominously. Deliberately, and with a kind of awful dignity, this fat girl walked to the side of Pinky Snyth the little cow hand, so diminutive beside her, even in his high-heeled boots and towering Stetson. She took his hand in hers and as she spoke she abandoned the patois of the Texan.
“Pa isn’t sick. He’s sulking. But he’ll get over it. There’s more than one bride and bridegroom here at this barbecue. Mott Snyth and I were married yesterday in Hermoso.”
A final glare at Jordan Benedict, a look that was a tragic mixture of wounded pride and pitiful defeat. The triumphant bride burst into tears, bent to bury her face in the bridegroom’s inadequate shoulder.
A hubbub of cries and squeals, of guffaws and backslappings of congratulations uttered too loudly and disapproval muttered sotto voce.
Vashti Hake had made her point, attention was centered on her now, Bick had kissed the bride’s wet cheek and wrung the little man’s surprisingly steel-strong hand. Together, happily unnoticed, he and Leslie were free to move about unhampered. Only Luz Benedict bustled up to them as they turned away from the shrill group. She glared at Leslie, she jerked her gaze toward Bick.
“You’re the cause of this!”
“Fine,” said Bick equably and patted Luz’s shoulder. “Vashti should have been married five years ago, big bouncing girl like that.”
But nothing could disturb Leslie now. Here was Jordan, here was a day crowded with new sights, new sounds, fresh experiences. Vashti Hake and her little blue-eyed cowboy—they were part of the picture, touching, a little ridiculous. And this sinister spinster, this Luz Benedict with her plans and her frustrations—she was ridiculous too, and not to be taken seriously for a moment.
Leslie tucked her arm through Bick’s. “Show me the bunkhouse. I’ve read about them all my life.”
He pressed her arm close. “Nothing much to see.” It turned out that he was right. Cots, each covered with a thin grey-brown blanket. A bit of mirror stuck on the wall and their meager belongings ranged on shelves—a razor, a broken-toothed comb, a battered clock. Dust-caked boots on the floor, a saddle, a bit of rope, a leather strap. A guitar on an upended wooden box.
At the look on her face Bick laughed indulgently. “What did you expect to see?”
“Pistols. Poker chips. Silk garters. Silver spurs.”
“Serves you right for reading so much. Our boys aren’t allowed to carry guns unless they’re out on the range, and sometimes not even then. Or hunting, of course.”
She threw a final look over her shoulder at the bare, hot gritty little room. “Another girlish dream gone. Tell me, darling, how much are they paid, your vaqueros?”
“Oh, twenty a month—some of them thirty. The top hands. Plus mounts and food, of course.”
She stared in unbelief, she started to protest, thought better of it, was silent. It was high noon now, as they came again into the clearing the heat struck like a blow. Other than the bunkhouse the sole shelter was an open shed attached to the house. From the rafters hung strings of dried peppers and onions and herbs. There were strips of something dark and thick toward which she turned puzzled eyes until she realized that these were long hands of beef drying in the sun and wind and dust while over them flowed a solid mass of flies. She turned her eyes away. She detained him, her hand on his arm.
“Jordan, was it pique? That sounds like a novel. I mean did that poor girl marry that little man because of you—and me?”
“I suppose so. But it had to be somebody. Think no more of it.”
“Jordan, if you hadn’t met me—if you hadn’t happened to come out with Papa that evening to look at My Mistake—where is she, by the way?”
“She’s in pasture, under a canopy for shade, and she asked for you this morning. We’ll go see her this evening when this thing is over.”
Having started she must go on. “But would you? Would you have married her even if you couldn’t possibly have—I mean she is ever so nice but she isn’t very attractive.” She couldn’t say, Would that sister of yours actually have deviled you into it, finally.
“Well, now, honey, while we’re asking questions, would you have married that fellow in the pink coat?”
“Him—or someone. But you——”
“The girls are looking for you. The barbecue’s about cooked, I guess.”
She gave it up. As they walked toward the others she saw that the company had separated into two groups, male and female. The Girls were clustered near the table talking all together in high shrill voices. The men stood apart, bunched, low-voiced. Leslie thought the men looked strangely alike. Little Pinky Snyth was a miniature copy of the giants who towered above him. They all wore wide-brimmed hats of the same dust color, rolled at the brim; they wore the same khaki clothes, the same high-heeled boots, their strangely boyish faces were russet from sun and wind, their voices were soft and rather musical. Her arm through Bick’s, she strolled with him toward the men’s group. He disengaged his arm. “The girls are over there.”
The dark shadowy figures of the Mexicans came and went. Some of these wore sombreros made of plaited straw and there was a strap of leather under the chin, very foreign-looking and somehow dramatic.
One of the women called to the grouped men, petulantly. “Now you boys come over and talk to us, I bet you’re telling Pinky stories and they ain’t fit to hear and we’d like to hear them. You come on, no
w, or we’ll be real mad!” May-ud.
And when the men replied, speaking to the women, it seemed to Leslie that they changed their tone, it was as adults change when they speak to little children, coming down to their mental level.
The women were fair-skinned, without a trace of sun or wind-burn. She never had seen women so unrelaxed out of doors. She decided they must spend their days indoors, in the dim rooms. It was as though they regarded Nature as their enemy rather than as their fragrant soft-bosomed mother. Perhaps with good reason, Leslie reflected. There was no lolling on the cool fresh-smelling grass, for grass there was none. There was no lifting one’s face to let the cool breeze blow gratefully over one, for the wind was the hot noonday Gulf wind.
Now the preparations for the meal were accelerated and she came forward interestedly to see and to learn.
In the center of the cleared circle, its perimeter neatly swept, was the red-hot bed of live wood coals on the ground. This was no ordinary picnic bonfire, this was a hard-shaped mound that must surely have been going for many hours. Leslie put the thought of the beef strips out of her mind and joined the women chirping and fluttering about the long wooden table.
Old Eusebio, squatting on his haunches before the fierce heat of the fire, was manipulating four cooking vessels at once. First, of course, there was the five-gallon pot of steaming coffee. Near by, on a crude tripod, was the vast skillet of beans. As Leslie watched, fascinated, Eusebio lifted the top off a still larger skillet and gave a stir to the mass of rice and tomato bubbling around chunks of beef. Chunks of beef. Leslie thought of the hanging strips with their crawling burden and decided against that luncheon dish. She was hungry in spite of the heat and the dust.
“Starving,” she said sociably to Adarene Morey.
Adarene pointed to the pit near by about which three vaqueros were stooped. They were lifting something out of the hole in the ground and a delicious steam permeated the air. “They’re taking out the barbecue. Here, have a piece of this. Have you ever eaten Mexican bread, it’s delicious.” They were all nibbling wedges of something crisp and stiff.
On the table were stacked disks a foot in circumference and thinedged, they were piled a foot high and now Leslie saw the last of these being taken out of the third skillet and placed neatly on top of the stack. Adarene broke off a generous wedge from one of the crisp disks—the last one, still hot from the skillet—and Leslie munched it and found it rather flat-tasting and said it was delicious.
Adarene Morey moved closer, her voice was low in Leslie’s ear. “Talk to Vashti Hake, go over and talk to her, will you?”
Leslie looked into the kind intelligent eyes. “Thank you, Adarene.”
Adarene Morey’s voice went on, very low. “The Hakes are old ranch family. Texas ranch girls don’t marry cow hands much, no matter what the storybooks say.”
Casually Leslie strolled over to where Vashti Hake stood smiling defiantly, surrounded by a little group of the Girls. They were drinking coffee again, before dinner, steaming tin cups of the hot brew. They wandered about in their pretty shoes and their delicate summer dresses.
“Now Pinky! You, Bick! It’s a scandal the way you’re neglecting your brides, I’m surprised they stay with you.”
The little knot loosened somewhat to disclose a bottle and the tin cups. “We’re drinking a toast to the brides. Any you girls like a splash of bourbon?”
Leslie slipped her hand into that of the moist and rumpled Vashti, she searched in her bewildered mind for the right thing to say—she, one of the quick-witted Lynnton girls. “Uh—it’s wonderful to come to Texas a brand-new bride and find there’s a bride even newer living on the next ranch.”
The big bosom heaved. “Oh, I guess you and Bick won’t have much time for me—and Mott.”
“Oh, but we will. We brides must stick together, you know.”
“I noticed you call Bick by his right name, Jordan. I do that too. I call my husband by his right name, Mott. Everybody else calls him Pinky but I think the way you do, it’s more dignified to call your husband by a name isn’t just a nickname everybody uses. A wife is something special.”
“Oh, very special,” Leslie said, “I couldn’t agree more with——”
Floundering for an end to this speech Leslie was saved by the shout that went up as two vaqueros bore the steaming succulent treasure that had emerged from the hold in the ground. Leslie came forward with the group round the table. Tin plates. A clatter of steel cutlery. Leslie had known the fish dinners and clambakes of the Atlantic shore—the steaming pits from which emerged the juicy lobsters and clams and crabs and the sweet corn, all drenched with hot butter sprinkled with salt and pepper, the whole melting on the tongue, sweet and succulent beyond description.
These men were carrying a large sack, dark, wet, and steaming. This outer sack they deftly slit with sharp bright knives. Beneath it was another cloth, lighter and stained with juices. Still thus encased, the burden was carried to the table and placed on a great flat wooden board. They were crowded all round the table now, and in each hand was a wedge of the crisp thin bread.
The feast dish. Cloths that covered it were unrolled carefully, there floated from the juice-stained mound a mouth-watering aroma of rich roast meat. Leslie thought of her school days when the class had read Lamb’s essay on roast pig, and how all the children’s mouths—certainly her own—had watered at the description of the crackling savory meat.
The final layer of wrapping was removed. A little Vesuvius of steam wafted upward on the hot noonday air. There on the table was the mammoth head of an animal. It was the head complete. The hide—hair and the outer skin—had been removed, but all the parts remained, the eyes sunken somewhat in the sockets but still staring blindly out at the admiring world. The tongue lolled out of the open mouth and the teeth grinned at the Texans who were smiling down in anticipation. Collops of roast meat hung from cheeks and jowls.
“M-m-m-m!” cried the Girls.
“There’s another down in the pit where this came from,” shouted Pinky Snyth jovially. “Can’t fool me. I saw it.”
“We’ll sure enough need it,” Bale Clinch bellowed. “Appetites these girls have they’re liable to leave us boys with nothing but the ears.”
Curiously enough they stood as they ate. Deftly Eusebio jerked the tongue out, he sliced off the crown of the head, someone began to peel the smoking tongue and to cut it neatly on the wooden board. The hot spicy tidbits were placed on the pieces of thin crisp bread held out so eagerly and there arose little cries of gustatory pleasure.
“Here,” Vashti said, and hospitably extended to her erstwhile rival a moist slice on a wedge of bread. “If you don’t say this is about the best barbecue you ever ate.”
“It’s been eighteen hours cooking,” Ollie Whiteside explained in his slow pontifical voice that was to stand him in such good stead when years later he attained his judgeship.
“How interesting,” Leslie murmured faintly.
“Needs a sprinkle of salt,” Vashti cautioned her.
Bick was regarding her with some anxiety and, she thought, a shade disapprovingly. Through her mind, as she smiled and accepted the food held out to her, went an argument founded on clear reasoning against instinct. You’re being silly and narrow-minded. You’ve eaten cold sliced tongue, where did you think it came from—did you think it was born on a silver platter bordered with sprigs of watercress? After all, perhaps Texans wouldn’t like the idea of lobsters and oysters and crabs, they’re not very attractive either when they come up from the baking pit, with all those claws and tails and whiskers.
Bick was talking, he was explaining something to her. His low charming voice flowed over her soothingly. “This is the real Spanish-Mexican barbecue, Leslie. They despise what we Americans call a barbecue—meat roasted over coals. This pit-cooking is the real Mexican barbacoa. That’s where we get the word.”
“How fascinating,” Leslie managed to murmur again. “Barbacoa.”
&nb
sp; “You see, we take a fresh calf’s head and skin it and place it in a deep pit dug in the ground on a bed of hot mesquite coals. We wrap the head in clean white cloths and then tightly in canvas and down it goes the night before, and it cooks down there for eighteen hours——”
Now spoons were being used. With glad cries the Girls were dipping into the top of the head and removing spoonfuls of the solid gelid brains and placing them on fresh pieces of bread with a bit of salt sprinkled on top. Joella Beezer, a hearty matron, brought up an eye with her spoonful. Leslie turned away, she felt she was going to be very sick, she steeled herself, she turned back, she smiled, she felt a little cold dew on her upper lip and the lip itself was strangely stiff.
“Eat while it’s hot!” Miz Wirt Tanner urged her. “They’s plenty more.”
“I’m not very hungry, really. Perhaps if I just had a little of the rice and some coffee. I’m not accustomed to the—the heat—yet.”
“My gosh, this ain’t hot. Wait till July!”
She ate. She drank. She talked. She laughed. She said delicious how do they make it the rice is so yes indeed we eat it in the East though we usually think of Virginia as the South but of course it must seem East to you there is a dish we sometimes calves’ brains with a black butter sauce.
The second head was brought up from the pit, was eaten though perhaps without the gusto of the first. Replete, then, the little company wandered off and left the littered table to the vaqueros and to old Eusebio. “It was wonderful,” Leslie said to him. Her new word came to mind. “Delicioso. Gracias.” The old mummy face with the live-coal eyes bowed statelily, accepting his due as a culinary artist.
She had not disgraced herself, she had not disgraced Jordan, she drew a long breath of achievement. She laughed and chatted, seated on a tree stump, feeling strangely lightheaded and cool in the blinding sun. One of the vaqueros at the table so recently deserted was pouring a full measure of molasses into a tin cup and now he sat spooning it up with relish, as though it were ice cream. In a corner under the open shed another of the Mexicans had got hold of the calf’s head from which the company had so recently eaten. As she watched him he took a piece of bread and plunged his hand into the open top of the empty skull, he wiped the interior briskly round and round with the bit of bread, he brought the morsel up, dripping, and popped it into his eager open mouth.