The Crossroads
Page 7
As much as Jaime wanted to, he found no contradiction to Don Vicente’s words. Better than, “At least she won’t continue suffering,” or, “She’ll be in a better place.” Empty words that would have left him hollow.
“I hate being here, so far away from everything and everyone I love. I just want to go home. To mi familia.”
Don Vicente reached behind him and patted Jaime on the knee. “I left México because I had no one. I didn’t think of it at the time, but I came looking for a family and found it in the people I met. You have a family in Guatemala, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have family here too.”
Except Jaime didn’t want anyone else. His family was perfect the way it was. Back when Miguel was alive and Tomás lived at home and the world seemed simple.
“I still want to see her, talk to her,” Jaime grumbled at the cowboy’s back.
Don Vicente pulled Pimiento to a stop on top of the ridge that gave them a sweeping vista. The cloudless blue sky and the brown land stretched to infinity with nothing but scattered vegetation to interfere.
“From here you can see anything, talk to anyone,” Don Vicente said as he took a deep breath of the dry desert air.
Jaime slid off Pimiento’s back and sat on a boulder. He turned his gaze to the south and imagined he could see beyond the cacti and juniper bushes, past the Río Bravo and through México where the land changed from desert to jungle, over the Río Usumacinta and into Guatemala until he could see a patio surrounded by individual rooms. His Tío’s house, where Abuela lived.
He saw into the kitchen and Abuela’s hunched back as she rolled out masa for tortillas. She turned around, gnarled hands tossing a ball of masa from one to the other, her gray hair pulled into a bun at the nape of her neck, and her dark eyes bright and proud.
Hola, mi’jo. Her voice cracked as it did when she was tired but she wanted to pretend she wasn’t.
Hola, Abuela, he replied to the figure in his mind.
They stood there in the kitchen for minutes, or even hours, with only the masa ball moving from one hand to the other.
You know it’s time, right? she said. He shook his head no, trying to clear his mind. He could choose what he wanted to happen, what he wanted her to say. But Abuela always did what she wanted, even in someone else’s imagination. You can’t change that.
I won’t let you go, he insisted. He forced his mind to think of her saying that she was getting better, that she was happiest staying with her family, that she wasn’t going to leave him. But just as before, she wrote her own script.
You don’t need to worry about me. I’m where I want to be. I love you, mi’jo. She tossed him the ball of masa and her image began to fade.
No, Abuela, please don’t. Abuela—
“¡Abuela!” Jaime found himself back on the ridge clutching a small rock in his fist. He stood and flung the rock with all his might toward the house in the Guatemalan jungle. Instead it flew a bit before landing on the rocky ground, scaring a black bird into the sky to circle above his head. Once out of his hand, he realized his mistake and scrambled to get the rock back. He picked it up again and held it to his face. It didn’t take too much imagination to think it smelled a bit like corn masa. He placed it next to his sketchbook in his backpack.
He got back on Pimiento without any help and Don Vicente nudged the gelding to walk down the other side of the ridge. Neither said anything for the rest of the ride.
They crossed over a small hill and the homestead came into view. A giant dust cloud traveled at a breakneck speed down the road and away from the ranch. Tomás in his truck. Jaime waved to his brother in the distance, silently begging him to come back, but the other continued racing along until only dust remained.
Quinto, the other ranch hand, sat on a bench outside the barn, listening to a fútbol game on the radio, instead of working.
“Where did Tomás go?” Jaime asked as Don Vicente steered them to the barn.
The ranch hand shrugged his shoulders and fiddled with the knobs on the dusty radio for better reception. “Who knows. Got a call and left.”
A call? Jaime’s breath caught in his throat. It was probably nothing. Other people called Tomás when the reception was good—Meester George, checking in to see that the calves were all healthy; the feed store saying the specially ordered shipment had come in; or kids wanting to raise a steer for the agricultural fair. But none of them made Tomás drive off like Wile E. Coyote on fire.
“Did he speak to the person in English?” Jaime asked.
“Don’t know. Spanish, maybe. I wasn’t paying attention. ¡Oye hombre! ¿Qué piensas?” Quinto shouted at the radio where the referee had just given the opposing team a penalty.
Jaime tumbled off Pimiento and crumbled to the ground from weak legs. Instead of dusting himself off, he hugged his knees and tried to look at the horizon as he had from the ridge, but the hills were in the way.
Don Vicente dismounted with the grace of a feather floating to earth and handed Pimiento’s reins to Quinto. “Untack him and offer him some water. Then give him a good brush and rub down before offering more water.”
Quinto crossed his arms over his barrel-like chest and gave the old man a glare. “Do I look like your groom?”
“Do you have anything better to do?” Don Vicente gave him a look. Quinto took the reins with a huff, raised the radio’s volume, and led the horse to the tack room.
Don Vicente watched his gelding clop away before placing a hand on Jaime’s head. His old joints made it hard for him to crouch down. Jaime leaned into the bony legs and sniffed.
“You said good-bye on the ridge?”
Jaime nodded but his mouth remained dry as the desert surrounding him.
“Then she knows she was loved and cared for.”
Yes, she knew. Everyone who knew Abuela loved her. Or at least respected her. Except those darn Alpha gang members. They beat a twelve-year-old boy to death as if it were nothing. They had no conscience about harassing an old lady, shoving her down the steps so that she broke her hip and was left with no life to live. Where was justice? How had God allowed these things to happen?
He stayed on the dirt with Don Vicente patting his head and the fútbol match crackling on the old radio. When he finally shifted, the rancher offered a strong hand to help him up. Jaime hugged his bag to his chest. Inside, he could feel the rock from the ridge and the edges of his sketchbook, his safety blanket. It had been Abuela who had bought him his first sketchbook when he was five or six. Before that, he had scavenged for loose bits of paper, drawing on receipts and inside food boxes. A vendor at the mercado where Abuela sold her tortillas was about to throw away two unlined notebooks that had been damaged by the rain. In exchange for half a dozen tortillas, Abuela came home with the two books for Jaime, telling him to “draw the world.” When he got back to the trailer, he decided, he would draw a portrait of her so that when he was as old as Don Vicente, he’d still remember what she looked like.
“You mentioned the other day,” Jaime’s voice rasped and choked as he struggled to talk to the old rancher, “that when it was your time to go, you’d ride into the sunset and disappear.”
Don Vicente stopped walking and turned to Jaime with a smile. His teeth were yellow, worn down, and crooked but all remained intact. “And I told you I’m not riding away any time soon.”
CHAPTER TEN
Tomás came home an hour and a half later with a bucket of fried chicken, a family portion of mashed potatoes, a big container of ice cream, and four DVDs from the rural library.
And Ángela. Who apparently had not appreciated being picked up early from the play rehearsal, even to mourn Abuela’s passing.
“Grieving is best spent eating with your family.” Tomás handed out forks and paper towels for napkins. “I thought of getting tortillas, but then we’d have to cook something to go with them.”
“I’m glad you didn’t get tortillas. No one’s would compare.” Jaime sighed as he bit into a drumstic
k. Even the chicken didn’t taste as good as Abuela’s, though she cooked hers differently. “Do you know how to make her tortillas, Ángela?”
“No.”
Jaime waited for his cousin to say more but she just picked bits off the chicken and piled it on her paper towel.
“I thought she showed you and Rosita that time Miguel and I—”
“She didn’t.”
“I’m sure your tortillas would be great,” Tomás said, scooping a large forkful of mashed potatoes into his mouth.
“I don’t know how to make her tortillas, so just leave me alone.” She removed a big chunk of chicken from the bone and shredded it bit by bit.
Tomás looked like he wanted to say something more but decided changing the topic was a better idea.
“I don’t know if you know this, Jaime,” Tomás said between his next bites, “but before I left, I was in love with this gorgeous girl. It didn’t matter she was a few years younger than me, Marcela—”
Jaime let go of a drumstick halfway to his mouth. “I remember Marcela! Miguel and I used to argue over who’d get to marry her—”
“No way, bro, I saw her first,” Tomás teased as he stole the piece of chicken Jaime had dropped on the table. “I finally got the courage to ask her out and Abuela kept telling me I had to be a gentleman. Of course, I promised I would but she didn’t trust me—can you believe that? So Abuela sent me on the date with Ángela here and Rosita. The three girls spent the whole time talking with each other. It was like I was interfering on their date. I told Abuela later that she’d ruined my date, but you know what that viejita said? Abuela said, and I still remember this, ‘A family makes you who you are. If a girl doesn’t like your family, she’ll never like you.’ Turned out Marcela and Rosita became best friends but nothing ever happened between us. Not even a kiss. Do you remember that night, Ángela?”
“Marcela disappeared a few years ago.” Ángela ran her unused fork up and down the table until it scratched the surface. “They said she got kidnapped.”
“¿De verdad?” Tomás gasped. Jaime nodded. Those were the rumors when she got separated from her brother while trying to cross México. No one had heard from her since.
“Damn, I didn’t know.” The table fell quiet. Jaime knew what Tomás had been trying to do. Remembering stories about Abuela—funny ones, embarrassing ones. Ones that kept her close to their minds and hearts instead of ones that focused on the loss and grief.
Jaime figured he could do the same. “One time, Abuela caught Miguel and me—”
“I’m done.” Ángela scooped up all the bits of chicken she’d picked off but hadn’t eaten, and gave them to Vida. “Remember not to give her the bones.”
“Do you want ice cream?” Tomás asked. “Chocolate caramel nut fudge. There’s no room for it in the freezer so, poor us, we’re going to have to eat it all.”
Tomás removed the lid and waved the container of gooey goodness in front of her face.
“I’m not hungry.” She got up from the table and locked herself in the tiny bathroom.
“When Miguel died,” Jaime said in a soft voice, “she didn’t speak for a few days.”
Tomás nodded before digging into more food. It was Abuela who thought everything could be solved with food. Abuela also said her grandchildren had to eat what they were served and not complain. Jaime took that to heart as he reached for the next drumstick. If anything would be a way to celebrate Abuela’s life, it would be a full stomach.
A few pieces of chicken and a quarter of the mashed potatoes remained when Ángela finally came out of the bathroom. Jaime tried to put a plate in the microwave for her, saying it was what Abuela would have wanted, but she just shook her head and curled up on the bench to study the play script.
He sat at her side and put his arm around her, giving her shoulders a squeeze.
She shifted away, curled up smaller, and brought the script closer to her face.
Tomás made a sign with his hand to knock it off and give her some space. The trailer was so small, you could barely be in the kitchen area without bumping into the table. But their house in Guatemala hadn’t been much bigger. Papá had built it with the help of his family for Mamá as a wedding present. Just two rooms, a sleeping one and a kitchen, with no glass in the windows and a front door that hung off center, and they’d gotten along just fine.
Tomás took the remaining container of ice-cream soup into the sleeping area, and he and Jaime watched Guardians of the Galaxy on the TV/DVD player Tomás had rigged from the trailer’s low ceiling. Every few minutes, Jaime leaned over to check on Ángela, but she remained curled tightly, nose in the script, and even maintained her distance from Vida, the world’s best comforter. After Abuela.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Tomás’s truck pulled up in front of Jaime and Ángela as they exited the trailer. In the passenger seat sat Don Vicente. The lines of his face cracked deeper than normal, as if being confined in a vehicle instead of astride his horse was causing him great pain. His cowboy hat was less battered than the one he normally wore, his beaded belt cleaned, and his faded jeans had crease lines down the front; Doña Cici had probably ironed them for him. Jaime never saw a man look so out of place in a vehicle when he should be on a horse.
“Get in the back of the truck,” Tomás called out from the open window. “We’ll drive you to the bus stop.”
“Where are you going?” Jaime asked.
“Hell,” Don Vicente muttered.
Tomás sighed as if the two had already been through this a million times. “Mr. George wants us to take a look at a new bull calf on another ranch. We need to get some new blood in the herd and this calf is supposed to be top of the line.”
Don Vicente spat out the window. “Manuel Vegas wouldn’t know a quality bull calf if it gored him in the gut.”
“Mr. George said its sire is a champion,” Tomás said for Jaime and Ángela’s benefit.
“A good dad don’t make a good son,” Don Vicente went on.
“Then you can tell that to Mr. George—after we’ve checked him out.” Tomás sounded like he was trying to be patient.
“Waste of my time,” the old rancher mumbled.
“So stay. I’ll send Mr. George photos along with what I think. I know what he’s looking for.”
Don Vicente muttered some choice swear words but didn’t get out of the truck. When it came to the cattle and the horses, nothing happened without Don Vicente’s approval. Meester George might say they needed a new bull calf, but Jaime knew it would be up to the foreman to decide which bull calf they bought.
Jaime and Ángela hopped into the back. Apparently it was illegal to ride in the back of a truck on a public road here in El Norte, but since the dirt road belonged to Meester George until the highway, there was no one to get them in trouble. It was like being on top of the train cars in México—without the fear. But within a minute, Ángela banged on the truck for Tomás to stop, and climbed into the cab, claiming something about the wind messing up her hair. Girls.
At the end of the drive, Jaime got out of the back with his bag. Next time, he’d ask Tomás to go faster, take the turns a bit tighter. A few minutes remained before the bus was due and Tomás leaned out the window while Ángela exited the cab on the other side.
“We might not be back when you get home from school, so make sure you let Vida out of the house right away,” Tomás said. “There’s sandwich makings and some cans of beans if you’re hungry, but we’ll be home for dinner for sure.”
“Is he going to be okay?” Jaime whispered, nodding toward Don Vicente, who sat as straight as he would in a saddle except his arms were crossed and he continued muttering curses under his breath.
Tomás leaned farther out the window to whisper in Jaime’s ear. “Truth is, he’s scared of driving.”
“I’m not scared of driving,” Don Vicente grumbled, though that did nothing to convince them it wasn’t true. “I just think horses get the job done better.”
“Wait just a second,” Jaime said. The bus wasn’t visible yet. He opened his sketchbook, grabbed a pencil, and quickly drew some rough lines on the page. He gave the completed image a good look, checked for the bus, and added a few more details before carefully tearing it out of the rings. It was far from his best, but it was still recognizable.
Jaime walked to the other side of the truck and handed the sketch to Don Vicente. The old man’s grumpy face relaxed as he finally broke into his first smile of the day. In his weathered hands, Don Vicente held a picture of himself sitting astride his Appaloosa gelding. He folded the top edge into the airbag groove so the drawing remained visible and in place in front of him.
“I don’t think Pimiento has ever looked so good. Maybe you can draw us a new bull calf. It’s certain to be better than this live one we’re looking at.”
The roar of the bus’s diesel engine cut short the conversation. As always, Ángela dashed to the rear of the bus with her snooty friends without looking back. Jaime climbed in after her and turned before going to sit with Seh-Ahn. From the rundown truck the two cowboys, one young, one old, waved before heading in the opposite direction. Jaime watched them retreat, wishing with all his might that he could have gone with them to check out the bull calf.
CHAPTER TWELVE
For the first time, Don Vicente wasn’t waiting for him on Pimiento when Jaime got off the school bus. He searched the rocky ridge and the various hills in the direction of the homestead for any movement before scuffing his shoes down the dirt road. Tomás had said they probably wouldn’t be home, but the reality of not having a ride back and having to walk home alone hadn’t occurred to Jaime.