His horse stepped backward, and he disappeared into the darkness.
Hetty sat on a large outcropping of caliche, her feet drawn up from the ground below. Jeremiah had invited them to stay for the barbecue. She knew the flames would keep animals away; she hoped it had the same effect on insects. Darkness had fallen, and that was when the scorpions came out of hiding. She heard a rustling and fancied it was their upraised tails brushing past leaves.
But it was just the two ranch hands coming to turn the thick steaks over and rub more salt and coarse pepper into the brisket. Then the wind shifted, and she caught a whiff of mesquite burning and the succulent sizzling of meat dripping down onto it. She looked around, feeling oddly exposed yet privileged. Garret wasn’t too far away. He and Odell had joined a gaslit poker game over at one of the parked cars.
Jeremiah came up to check the progress of the food, his face aglow with orange light. He smiled at Hetty. “Hungry?”
“Starved. Can we eat soon?”
“Yes’m, I believe so.” He muttered something in Spanish to the Mexican hands. They went to the other end of the pit and raked dirt off a metal sheet, yanked it back, then picked up shovels and began digging five large round objects out of the coals.
“What are those?” Hetty asked.
“Barbacoa. Baked cow heads. For the Mexicans. Want to try some?”
“No thanks. I’ll save myself for the bull’s testicles.”
Jeremiah broke into a grin. “You do that, ma’am. Just don’t take any eyes. Seca gets all of them.”
Maybe it was the dry air or maybe the aura of menace that hung over the camp making every sense crackle with alertness, but when Hetty was served some of the brisket with a slice of raw onion, a tortilla, and a jalapeño pepper, she swore it was the best food she ever had. She sat there on the rock, her senses adrift, when she noticed someone watching her from the tequilero camp beyond the mesquite flames. The horses and mules were all entrenched on the other side of the trough where the exchange of goods had taken place. She knew the eyes instantly, shadowed as they were by the brim of the leather Stetson. Bullets gleamed like war medals in the bandoleer strapped across his chest. She wondered if he slept with it on.
Seca was watching her with a dark glitter in his eyes, and she kept looking away, hoping he’d do the same. But every time she looked back, his eyes were there, mesquite eyes mysterious and full of flames. Then he smiled at her, and she found herself fascinated. What kind of man became a contrabandista? What did it take to risk your life daily carrying mescal across the Rio Grande and through the brush to Las Ánimas? Only a norteño was fearless enough to do something like that, the kind of man cut from rawhide and toughened by living on Mexico’s northern frontier. She’d heard about such men all her life. Nella said they were different from other Mexicans—they became outlaws like Pancho Villa. And now here was one of these wild fronterizos in the flesh, stalking Hetty as she sat near the fire. She felt her blood stir and stole a glance in his direction. He was walking toward her, fixing her with those eyes again. She panicked and looked for her husband, but he was nowhere to be seen.
“¿Se le ofrece un tequila?” he said, lifting up a bottle in his hand as he came near. He set his plate down on the rock next to her. It still had a few fatty-looking morsels clustered on it. She was afraid to look too close, for fear she might recognize an eyeball.
“I hear it’s like gin,” she answered brightly, trying to show him that she had a good line of gab even under these circumstances.
He just snickered. “No, no, gringa. Mexican liquor is different. Because you are an Ardra, Seca will show you how we drink tequila in Guerrero. Then you will teach the norteamericanos, no?”
She nodded in agreement, afraid to do otherwise.
He carefully laid out his supplies: a handful of sweet little round Mexican limes, a tin of some kind, and the bottle still packaged as it came across the border, wrapped in tissue paper and a protective coating of tule or bulrush.
“Tres,” he said. A silver knife appeared in his hands, which he passed slowly in front of her face. It flashed red in the firelight. He picked up one of the limes, fondled its juiciness, and then sliced it cleanly into quarters. He ripped the shucking off the bottle. Pointing to the label, he said, “Plata.”
“Silver. It has to be silver. . . .” She nodded.
He cracked open the tin and sprinkled a salty-looking ash on the skin between his thumb and forefinger. He lifted it close to her face and said, “In Guerrero, we call this gusano seco.”
“Dried snake?” He shook his head. “Oh, I see. Worm. Dried worm,” Hetty said.
“Sí. De agave.”
“From the agave cactus?”
“Agave is not a cactus. It is a lily.”
“So we’re not drinking cactus juice. We’re drinking the milk of the lily. Wait till I tell Odell.”
“Sí. Un momentito.” He fell silent and readied himself. Hetty watched closely, taking in every detail. She felt as though she were present at some kind of secret ritual. She had to be able to repeat this accurately for Garret and Odell. He took a large swig of tequila, chased it with a little mummified agave, and then sat down, sucking on a slice of lime and trying to recover his senses. Soon, a deep sigh escaped his lips, and his black eyes opened, slightly glazed.
“Usted . . .” he said, handing her the bottle.
“Gracias.”
“De nada.” It is nothing.
When she spread her thumb and forefinger, he tickled the delicate skin between them before sprinkling it with the magic worm dust. Lifting the bottle to her lips, she gulped some down, licked up the powder, and chased it with lime juice. It was all she could do to keep from choking. The silver tequila was harsher than mescal, with the subtler flavors refined out, so she welcomed the salty kick of the spicy worm dust and the cool finish of citrus. How many times they did this she didn’t know, but she wasn’t about to let Seca drink her into the barbecue pit. The fire began to take on a glorious blaze.
“This stuff makes you plenty bravo,” she said.
“In Mexico we say, if a rabbit gets a drop of tequila, he spits in the eye of a bulldog.”
“And how, kiddo!” She didn’t know how to translate that into Spanish.
Seca smiled at her drunkenly. “Esther de las Ardras—you are plenty brava. . . .”
She smiled back triumphantly, knowing she no longer had to fear the dreaded dry snake of Guerrero. Later, when the fire had died down and no one could see their dark shapes on the rock, she asked him, “Can I buy some of that agave from you?”
He fumbled in the pockets of his coat and fished out a fresh tin. He leaned over and placed it in her hand, which he closed tightly around it. She couldn’t wait to tell Odell about the caterpillar crunch. That was the kind of thing that got all his cylinders pumping. Then Seca moved in even closer and turned his face up. His lips hovered less than an inch from hers, and his odor rose up to her nostrils. She’d never smelled a Mexican man before. His scent was different from Garret’s, gamier, a wild mingling of southern sweat and leather.
“Gracias,” she whispered, not pulling back but joining her breath with his.
Seca breathed the word nada into her mouth. In the end, their lips never touched, but she knew that her soul, somehow, had been kissed.
It took them all autumn to get a bustling trade going in tequila. Odell told Hetty he was determined to make it happen by the time Christmas unfolded and holiday decanters demanded to be filled. She did everything she could to help. It was a tough sell at first, as most Houstonians were unfamiliar with the Mexican distillates and went on asking for the labels they’d come to expect from Weems Importing, such as rum from the islands, vintage Old Crow, and the best Canadian Club. Each type of import was aimed at a different market: mescal they sold as a fine brandy, the “favorite of Mexican lords and ladies”; silver tequila was pitched to the flapper crowd as a less expensive form of gin; whereas their more discriminating customers ap
preciated the subtleties of añejo, the most expensive tequilas that were aged in oak barrels for over a year. The tins of agave they saved for the rougher speaks along the Ship Channel, where the dockworkers dared each other to lick up the fossilized worms and slam down shot glasses of the rawest alkie. Everyone liked the prices, as Odell and Garret were able to undersell their competition by a significant margin thanks to the low cost of Mexican liquor brought across the border without any tariffs.
As 1928 bubbled over into 1929, people all over Harris County began referring to Garret and Odell as the Tequila Kings. The bartenders even invented cocktails using the exotic new ingredients: Milk o’ the Lily involved cream in some way, and the Dry Snake was a popular mix of citrus, salt, and silver garnished with a coiling twist of lime.
Hetty enjoyed their success thoroughly. Never had she known a New Year so spangled with promise, a winter so cushioned with luxury. Her husband was making thirty times the average salary, so she no longer had to restrain herself. There were new fur coats to snuggle into, new rings sparkling at her fingertips, new gowns of a breathless elegance to wear out dancing at clubs where the bandleaders were their customers. Garret spent $488.99 on one ring alone, hoping to show her that Lamar wasn’t the only one who could afford to buy diamonds. The flow of money reached flood stage, and they spent it recklessly, happily, feeling wildly rich and more in love than ever.
Christmas day dawned mild and sunny, as it often did in Houston. On a trellis overlooking the driveway, climbing roses bloomed, while in the still-green post oak shading their bedroom, she heard a redbird trilling his traditional spring song. The screen was broken on one of the windows of their bedroom, so Hetty reached through and hung a Japanese lantern in the branches. She would light a candle in it to signal when she was feeling amorous, which was often.
Garret wanted to go on living in the apartment over the garage so he could be near the thriving business downstairs. Hetty agreed on one condition, that she could take some of the thick wads of cash he handed her every week and give the place a little more swank. She wanted a whole new kitchen and bathroom. As soon as the renovation was finished, she promised Garret, they would start saving toward a well. Odell had told them about a mysterious new syndicate that promised to discover “an ocean of oil” somewhere in Texas. Garret wanted to get himself a lease in the field right away, but Odell refused to disclose the location of this important new find. He seemed to enjoy tantalizing Garret with the news, saying only, “I have bought myself a share.” Meanwhile, Hetty hired Henry Picktown for the heavy work of updating their carriage house, spending the cold rainy months of February and March picking out paint colors and going on shopping sprees downtown at Munn’s.
At nine a.m. every morning except Sunday, Pick showed up for breakfast, then spent the day sanding woodwork and stripping off the old, faded wallpaper. They lacquered the walls the color of lipstick and the woodwork black as mascara to match Hetty’s Chinese dresser. He added a closet in the bedroom, muscled her new golden oak kitchen cabinet up the stairs, and helped the plumber wedge clean white fixtures into the bath. While Pick worked, he sang one of the spirituals he’d learned singing in the choir at Elijah Missionary Baptist Church, his deep-set voice booming over the drum of rain on the roof:
O, poor sinner
Now is your time
O, poor sinner
What you going to do when your lamp burn down—
The apartment was finished by mid-April. Hetty began having the Weemses up for Sunday dinner every week to toast the completion of the weekly run to Duval County. She gloried in the new elegance around her, spreading out elaborate feasts on a round pedestal dining table. Even Pearl was impressed by the luster of the service Hetty set, gleaming with candlelight across diamond-cut crystal and Stieff sterling silver. Oriental carpets spread underfoot, a portiere hung over every door, and music drifted by from a new Silvertone Radio. Hetty was in her element. Small though they were, these four rooms became home. She could call them “a carriage house” now with complete confidence. She even mailed in the application for the Cupola Club.
In early May, Garret and Odell were late coming back from a liquor run. They always returned by Friday afternoon, in time to unload the Lincoln and make deliveries for the evening shift. When they hadn’t returned by five p.m., Hetty began to fret. She called Pearl to see if she’d heard anything.
“What can’t be cured must be endured, I always say. I wouldn’t worry if I was you, hon. It’s probably just the pack train being late.” Pearl chattered for a while, her words taking the edge off Hetty’s fears. But she still spent a restless night, curling into the sheets, listening for the sound of footsteps on the stairs. She had good reason to be worried. She had just that day read in the Post-Dispatch that Congress had passed a law elevating the selling of liquor to a felony punishable by ten years in prison and a ten-thousand-dollar fine. She remembered the name because it sounded so innocuous. The Jones Act.
By Saturday afternoon, she was beginning to get calls from their clients. Garret had tutored her in the language of liquor dealing. She was never to offend the customer by using direct speech; she was to keep everything vague and impersonal while still delivering the necessary information. Some of the voices she recognized; others were strange. Most were polite; a few were rude and pushy. She would have stopped answering the phone altogether, but every time it rang, she hoped to hear her husband’s voice on the other end.
Later, she turned on the radio and tried to distract herself. She stretched out on her new chaise lounge and listened to “the RKO Hour,” then caught an episode of Amos ’n’ Andy. Andy was giving Amos a hard time about not working.
“Where yo’ taxi?”
“At de mechanic.”
“Is dat automobile broke?”
“Nosir, it fixed.”
“Den how come yo’ ain’t driving it?”
“Ain’t got de money.”
“How yo gonna make de money widout de taxi?”
“Yo’ gonna float me a loan.”
“A loan? I tell yo’ what. Yo’ don’t get dat car out yo’ gonna be alone awright. All alone.”
Laughter relaxed her and, without realizing it, she drifted off, dipping into a shallow sleep in a warm bubbling pool, waking only hours later when the phone echoed through her hypnotic dreams. Static crackled from the radio. Half awake, she turned the knob off and fumbled for the receiver, thinking it would be Garret at last.
Instead, it was Pearl. “Any news?” Hetty asked sleepily.
“Nothing but bad to tell,” Pearl sobbed.
Hetty threw the receiver back onto its sleeve and slid off the chaise, wide-awake. She shoved her feet into shoes and rushed down the stairs. It was a clear spring evening, the air soft, slightly scented. She looked up. The crescent moon cut its way through the stars, razor-sharp. Gleams of white light glinted along the driveway, which was empty. No brougham. Pearl must have gotten a phone call, she told herself. The big house loomed over her, lightless from the looks of it. Hetty felt her way to the screen door, edged into the kitchen, and stood perplexed.
Darkness chilled the room. Only one ceiling fixture had been flicked on, out in the hallway, driving a stake of light across the breakfast nook. Garret sat there alone, his face in his hands. What’s he doing here? Then, something moved in the shadows. A hand, all bone and nail, grappled onto Hetty’s arm.
“Nothing but bad to tell,” came the strangled voice. Hetty put her arm around Pearl’s frail shoulders and felt them shaking. She took the woman in her arms and held her tight while she cried. She kept glancing over at Garret for an explanation. The skin on his hands had been torn. She held on to Pearl while the sobs came choking out, stroking her back. “They got Odell, hon,” she was finally able to say. Hetty lowered Pearl onto a kitchen stool in the dark and went over to Garret. She slid her hands into his and pulled them away from his face. She gasped. It was horribly scratched.
“Honey, what happened? Where’s Odell?�
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His eyes were lowered. He wouldn’t look at her. “Odell’s still there,” he said in a dry, hollow voice. “They almost got me, too.”
Pearl rocked back and forth, repeating, “I’ve rolled snake eyes again.” Then she started moaning. Hetty held Garret, not knowing what to say. The moans welled in the gloom, raw and distressing, then settled into quiet weeping that ended with a hostile whisper. “You left him, didn’t you?”
Anguish twisted Garret’s face as he looked across the room. “I’m sorry, Pearl. I’m really sorry. But there wasn’t anything I could do—you got to believe me.”
“Just tell us what happened,” Hetty breathed.
“I need a drink first.”
Hetty went into the dining room and retrieved a bottle of mescal from the sideboard. She found some snifters in the china cabinet and poured them each a generous shot. Garret downed his in two gulps. In a tense, ragged voice, he tried to explain to Pearl what had happened.
“First of all, the pack train was delayed. It didn’t get there till yesterday—late afternoon. We made the exchange as usual. Odell was over at the trough paying Seca. The car was backed up to the live oak tree—the one we always parked under for shade. I had climbed into the trunk to lift up the false bottom when I heard a shout: ¡El lobo!”
“The wolf—” Hetty whispered.
“Then there were gunshots. I crawled into the cavity where we put the bottles and pulled the false bottom over me. I lay there in the dark, breathing axle grease, trying to figure out what the hell was going on from the sounds. There was a lot of gunfire, back and forth. I heard screaming in Spanish, horses running by. Then, everything became quiet. Deathly quiet.”
“What happened to Odell?” Pearl asked.
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