Magnolia City

by Duncan W. Alderson

  “I only—”

  “Only, only, only! Ay, mujer—do you have any idea what it takes to produce a bottle of tequila?”

  “No, I guess I don’t.”

  “The jimadores must work the fields their whole lives. They only have one holiday each year, the feast of the Virgen. All day, in the hot, hot sun, they cut out the hearts of the agave plants—the piñas weigh three hundred pounds!” He lifted his Stetson up with both hands. “These must be carried to the hacienda when they are baked and crushed before the juices can be fermented. The men have to turn the great stone themselves. It is backbreaking work.” He slammed his hat down on the ground in front of her. “As if that’s not enough, when the juices flow into pits, the men have to jump in naked to work the must. It is their sweat that gives tequila its flavor—el sudor del hombre.”

  The passion in his voice rendered Hetty mute. She only sat there watching as he picked up his Stetson, blew the dust off, and slung it back onto his head.

  “That is why you must never ask for a discount on tequila. ¡Nunca!”

  “Perdóneme. I guess I didn’t realize what it’s worth.”

  “I should give you back to my men as a toy. You value nothing, Esther de las Ardras, least of all yourself.” He strode away from her in scorn.

  As Hetty watched from the rock, the big light Seca had promised her, la luna, floated into the eastern sky only to get moored in a drift of mesquite trees. When it finally washed free, its icy light settled upon her like a mist. Even though there were lots of men nearby, she felt completely alone there in the lunar coldness. She’d been shunned by the one friend she thought she could count on here in the desolate brush. She tried to think of something to say, some way to rescue the night. She was good at that. But nothing came to mind that she thought would work. It was useless. She might as well give up and go home.

  In the distance, the lone coyote began howling again.

  Once away from the fire, the watery moonlight flooded in all around her. Hetty had never seen the brush country glazed with such a silvery sheen, the creek bed rippling with light and shadow as she followed its twists and turns. Such unearthly beauty should have lifted her out of despair, but she was sunk in way too deep. She walked along the cleft of the sandy bottom in the track that would brim with rain in the spring. Her heart felt every bit as dry as the stream. She had driven all the men in her life away. When she’d wrapped Pick up in her wedding shawl, it was as if she were saying, “I’ve killed my marriage along with my friend. Both are dead to me now, and I must spend the rest of my life alone.” She had to stop pretending that Garret would come looking for her. It was time to admit the truth. He was gone for good, and she would have to walk back to the truck all by herself through moonlight that was the color of loneliness.

  She climbed the embankment, cranked open the door of the Wichita, and brushed shards off the seat. When she went to slide the key into the ignition, her hand emerged into moonlight. She remembered that the Empress stood upon the crescent moon, whispering, “Let not your heart be disturbed!” The black thoughts roosting in Hetty’s mind rose like a colony of bats. The air cleared. Her senses sharpened. And there it was. The scent of cumin and chilies emanating from the bag on the floor. She’d forgotten about the tamales.

  Hetty found Seca slouched on a straw mat by the fire. She knelt and spread the ten tamales in front of him, their husks yawning open teasingly in the flickering light. She knew what tamales meant to Mexican men, how they were always served at weddings and for festive holidays such as Cinco de Mayo. Opening the corn husk was a ritual, the moist pork stuffing that spilled out a treat no tequilero could resist after a long trip through the dry brush. She was right. He picked one up, parted the husk, and began nibbling on the corn masa. Wordlessly, he consumed four of them one after another with a swig of tequila in between. He licked his fingers and handed her the bottle.

  “I’m sorry if I seemed greedy and thoughtless before,” she said, “but there’s something I haven’t told you. My husband left me.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Mac . . . ?”

  “Sí.” Hetty couldn’t stop a few tears from trickling down her cheeks. “He’s gone. I’m alone now. He left me owing a lot of money to a lot of people, including my parents. That’s why I came to find you. I don’t know who else to turn to. Isn’t there anything you can do to help me? I’m begging you.”

  Seca thought for a moment, then nodded. “Sí. You could buy botas.”

  “¿Botas?”

  “Goatskins. Five gallons each. You bottle it yourself.”

  “I don’t know how to do that.”

  “Your friend, Miguel—he will help you. He always bought botas.”

  She took a gulp out of the bottle. “How much are they?”

  “Forty pesos each. I can give you ten.”

  “Could I . . . possibly . . . have twenty, por favor?”

  Seca snorted. “Why should I do that?”

  “You owe me.”

  “Why I owe you?”

  “Because I made you famous. You have a drink named after you—the Dry Snake. They’re even serving Dry Snakes in Dallas now.”

  “¿De veras?”

  “Sí. I was just there this spring and had one. Everyone in Texas knows about Seca. You’re something of a folk hero, thanks to me. That’s why you shouldn’t change your name to Gus.”

  “Gustavo!”

  “Besides, I’m going to be bringing you more business.” Hetty ferreted a bent cigarette out of her pocket, lit it, and told Seca all about her plans to start a new business called the Kelly Bushings Bootleggers. “My ladyleggers will be coming here every week to pick up supplies.”

  “Women? You want me to do business with women? You are muy mala.”

  Hetty fed him some more tequila, then tried to make him understand why women made better rumrunners than men because of their ability to elude arrest. She could feel her line of gab coming back in spades. “Take New York, for instance,” she said, sending a plume of smoke into the night air, “did you know it’s crawling with ladyleggers making pots of money? They’re almost more popular than the men. I’m going to do the same thing right here in Texas! Houston first, then Dallas.” She made it sound like she knew what she was talking about, even though every word she uttered was taken straight out of the article she’d torn off the front page of the San Antonio Express and still carried in her purse.

  Seca admitted he found this strange. “In Mexico, we say a woman belongs at home . . . with a broken leg.”

  “Charming. I’ll relocate immediately. Look, amigo, if you want to do business with Americans, you have to be up to date. Things are changing.”

  “More than you know, gringuita.” He looked at her mysteriously, then explained how his father—the patron of all Tamaulipas, the state that wormed its way along the Rio Grande just south of the brush country of Texas—was positioning himself to become a legitimate importer of mescal, as he saw sentiment turning against the Volstead Act and knew it would only be a matter of time before the law was repealed. His political connections confirmed this.

  “So if you’re going to become a—¿qué dijiste?—ladylegger,” Seca told Hetty, “you’d better do it pronto.”

  “That means Odell will be getting out of jail soon,” Hetty realized. “Wait’ll I tell his wife!”

  The tequila was working its alchemy in her blood, transmuting the world around her. She lay back on the mat and peered into the sky directly overhead. The moon looked to Hetty like a great glowing pearl whose surface had been scratched. It rose higher, radiantly full.

  After midnight, Seca stretched out on his straw mat and invited Hetty to join him under a wool blanket.

  “Don’t you think I should have my own?”

  “Gustavo only has one.”

  “That’s convenient.”

  “Conveniente, no. Necesario, sí.”

  She climbed in without further comment, groaning as she stretched out her bruised legs. He
did unstrap his bandoleer to sleep but kept his gun belt on. As she lay beside him in the moonlight, she caught his wild scent again, that savory mingling of leather and Latin musk. El sudor del hombre, what gives tequila its flavor. He had his back to her, his head resting on one arm. She edged a little closer and whispered, “Tell me about the town of Guerrero,” but there was no response. He was fast asleep.

  Hetty was startled awake by the blue light of dawn. The moon still swam in the west, reluctant to submerge itself for another day. When she rolled over, stiff and aching, Seca was lying on his side, watching her.

  “You can have fifteen botas,” he said.

  “Seventeen.”

  “You are very beautiful, gringuita.”

  “Then why didn’t you touch me in the night?”

  “Because you are still in love with him—that Mac.”

  “I am?”

  “Por supuesto que sí! That is why you are here.”

  Hetty started to object, then fell silent. She knew he was right. Underneath it all, she was starving for her man, suffering through a famine of love’s needs so deep she would have given herself to Seca last night without a thought. But it was Mac she hungered for, that particular smell of his, his silly cigarette breath, his pleading blue eyes—just some word of where he was and whether he missed her, too. He should have been along with her on this trip. It wasn’t right for her to be here alone with so many unpredictable men. If only she could get the investors paid off, then maybe she could hunt her husband down and persuade him to come back to her.

  She heard the other men stirring and pulled the blanket over her head. Seca ducked under with her, and they whispered together there in the pale light. “Tell me about the town of Guerrero.”

  “It is very old, and the houses are all built with great stones from the quarry.”

  “There’s a quarry?”

  “Sí. At Rio Salado. And a waterfall, too. There are citrus trees that make the whole town smell like orange blossoms in the spring. My father and I go hunting.”

  “For what? Coyotes?”

  “No, no. In Tamaulipas, there are wildcats and jaguars, pumas and wolves. They eat the cattle.”

  “But what’s the town like—describe it to me.”

  “There is a beautiful old church, Nuestra Señora del Refugio, whose bells you can hear all through the streets. There is the Hotel Flores and the Municipal Palace and great stone benches in the plaza where the old ones go to tell stories because there is nothing else to do.”

  “Tell me more about the houses.”

  “They stay cool in summer because of the thick stones. They have high ceilings held up by one long beam of wood. There are no addresses.”

  “How do you send a letter?”

  “Every house has a stone over the entrance with a carving on it—a snail, a monkey, a sandal, different things. When you send a letter, you put the name of the person, then the Snail House, or the Jaguar House. Guess who made the carvings?”

  “Giants!”

  “No. Ardras.”

  “Oh, that’s right! I forgot, we were stonecutters.”

  “They were artists, gringa. Makers of beauty. That is why you must not bring yourself so low. You are an Ardra.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  “Seca commands it. And I am jefe.”

  “Sí, mi jefe. Gracias.”

  They smiled at each other, their faces close. He breathed the words “De nada” into her mouth just as he’d done three years ago. Only this time, he followed it with his lips, kissing her gently. “Vete con Dios, Esther de las Ardras. Never forget who you are.”

  She kissed him back eagerly, opening her mouth. It made her senses reel. “Take me back to Guerrero with you.”

  “No, no.” Seca chuckled. “That is not your way. You must find your own sendero.”

  And so he sent her off with seventeen goatskins gurgling about in the bed of her truck. They loaded them as dawn broke so she could elude the sheriff and his mordida. She watched the light creeping toward them on the ground and knew she had to rev up the windowless truck and retreat quickly, speeding up the risky road to San Diego, but she couldn’t tear herself away from Seca. She kept hugging him and kissing his hands and muttering “Muchas, muchas gracias” over and over. She was radiant with gratitude in the clear morning light, not so much for the three extra botas he’d thrown in as a bonus, but because he’d reminded her that she was not only descended from the founders of cities but was also a daughter of the Ardras, makers of beauty and carvers of stone.

  Hetty left a plume of dust behind her as she roared through the thickets of mesquite, expecting to encounter a roadblock at any moment. But luckily, there were none. She arrived back at the ice house before lunch. When Miguel saw her bruised face and the cargo she carried in the bed of her truck, he panicked and spit out, “¡Hijole!” ordering her to move it immediately to the back of his shop, where he quickly transferred the botas into his storeroom and covered them with burlap bags—lecturing her the whole time in Spanish about what a foolish coyote she was.

  “But it worked,” she protested. “Now I can pay off my debts.”

  “You are just like your madre,” he muttered. He put her to work, emptying the tequila into a basin, then ladling it into the dusty glass bottles he had stashed on his shelves. In the lull of the afternoon, he came back and helped her. By dinner, Hetty had three hundred and forty bottles of crystal clear tequila plata that she knew she’d be able to sell to connoisseurs back in Houston for ten dollars apiece. Miguel even had labels she could glue on the bottles. She would be able to pay off Cleveland and still have enough money to live for at least a year without worry. She parked the Wichita along the dark street at the back of the ice house, and Miguel helped her wrap and load her plunder between layers of burlap bags.

  Hetty gave him a long, lingering hug and kissed his hand. “Will you accept my apology, Tipo?”

  “No, but I love you, my little Tipa. ¡Ándele!” He waved her into the truck.

  She glowed with triumph and pride until she returned to Cora’s for a late supper and saw the look on her aunt’s face.

  “You’ve been back into the brush, haven’t you?”

  “You knew about that?”

  “Of course, Miguel told me.”

  Hetty blushed deeply, exposed in front of the person she probably loved more than anyone else. She sat on the sofa, too stunned to know what to say.

  “How did you get the bruise?” Cora came and sat beside her.

  Hetty blurted out the whole story of her kidnapping, her rescue by Seca, and the purchase of the seventeen botas. “I guess I didn’t learn my lesson after all. I’ve put people in danger again.”

  “Yourself, most of all. You should have been honest with me, m’ija. I would have warned you. The trade has become bloodthirsty since the massacre. Even Miguel doesn’t go there. I wouldn’t honor those men with the name tequileros anymore. Now they’re just ratones.”

  Rats. Hetty shuddered, remembering the faces of the men who’d captured her. “I’m sorry, Aunty. What I regret most of all is taking advantage of your kindness. Do you forgive me?”

  “Of course I forgive you. I’m a Guadalupana.”

  “You are?” Hetty looked around, surprised. “But you don’t have her efigie anywhere.”

  “Look closer.”

  Hetty wandered through the rooms searching for some trace of the Madonna Morena, but no tins glinted on the walls. She rifled through drawers and opened cupboards. Nothing, not even a rosary. The last room she entered was the studio, and there, finally, she saw what her aunt was talking about. How could I have missed it? Every painting Cora had created for her new show Quimeras was composed in front of a deep blue sky blazing with stars. “I put the stars on with gold leaf,” Hetty remembered Cora saying. She was creating a whole suite of paintings shimmering with the radiance of the Madonna’s veil.

  Cora came in behind her. “They’ve been making scientific studies
of the tilma since 1751. Astronomers tell us that the stars on the mantle match exactly the constellations that would have been visible in the sky over Mexico City on the day Diego had his vision, December 12, 1531. I’ve taken it upon myself to conceal one of these constellations in each of my new paintings. There’s Libra,” she said, pointing to the painting of the flooded town, “Scorpio behind the nuns with the animal heads, and Hydra over the melting boulders—all the southern constellations. Then, from the left side of the mantle, the northern constellations in these works”—she waved toward a group of canvases stacked against a wall—“the great bear, the hunting dogs, an entire map of the cosmos on that historic night—the only appearance of the Virgin in the Western Hemisphere.”

  Hetty’s eyes grew wider as she looked from one painting to another. “You’re too clever for me, Tía. You’ve hidden these clues right in plain sight across the background of your new work.”

  “Many of the Madonna’s secrets are hidden right in plain sight. For instance—” Cora reached into a drawer of her painting cabinet and handed Hetty an actual photograph of the image on the tilma. “What body part does this remind you of?”

  Hetty studied the oval aura around the Virgin, the rippling folds of her mantle. She caught her breath. “Oh my God, it’s a vulva.”

  “Exactly. She’s our yoni—both sacred and profane.” Cora let Hetty contemplate this for a moment. “I hope I haven’t spoiled it for you.”

  “No!” Hetty handed the photograph back. “It makes me adore her all the more. Does the tilma still exist?”

  “They say it’s remained in pristine condition for four hundred years even though the fibers of the maguey should have rotted after thirty. You can view it at the temple in Mexico City. Which, by the way, sits at the exact geographic center of the Americas.”