The Father Sun was just about going down into the ocean way behind me to the west when I came across two skinny, old trail-worn cowboys herding a herd of horses down the railroad tracks. They told me that they’d been driving this herd of stock all the way over from Arizona. They asked me if I knew of a place where they could hole up in some corrals for the night.
They were just about the two wildest-looking old cowboys that I’d ever seen. They had huge hats, almost looking like sombreros, big wild beards, and they were packing sidearms and smelled worse than a dozen road-killed skunks. They told me that when they’d started out at a border town near Tucson, Arizona, they’d had four other cowboys with them and well over a hundred and fifty head of wild mustangs. But within a couple of weeks of being on the trail, all four of the other good-old boys had quit on them, and so they’d had to sell off some of their stock, lost a few others, and now the two of them were down to just fifty-some head of horses after nearly six months of being on the trail. I told them that my family had a ranch and lots of corrals, but that I couldn’t help them because I was…well, running away from home.
I’ll never forget how they glanced at each other, grinned, but didn’t laugh, then they looked over my horse and my equipment carefully. They saw that I had a blanket, my BB gun, a lariat, and my big red toothbrush was tied to the saddle horn.
“Well, it seems like you got everything,” said the taller one. “So where are you headed?”
“East,” I said.
“East?” he said, laughing. “Don’t you know that cowboys don’t ever go east? They go west!”
“Well, yeah, I know that,” I said, “but our ranch ends at almost the ocean, so I can’t go any further west unless I use a boat.”
Hearing this, they started laughing so hard that I thought they’d die. Then the one who was doing all of the talking asked me if I could maybe postpone running away for a day or two and ride home and ask my dad if they could hole up in our corrals for the night.
“Yeah, sure, I could do that,” I said, figuring that what the hell, it was a little too late in the day for me to run away anyway.
“Why—why—why are y’all running?” asked the other one, who hadn’t said a word yet. He was shorter and smaller and had real big blue eyes shaped like a squirrel’s.
I liked him. He seemed a lot more animal to me than human, which was good, of course, because my grandmother, Doña Guadalupe, had always explained to me that all humans were born with an animal-spirit to help guide them through life, and so the humans who realized this would always seem more animal than human, and this was wonderful. It kept us closer to God.
“Because…well, of school,” I said with tears suddenly coming to my eyes. I couldn’t talk anymore, I was so choked up.
“I-I-I done did-did-did the sa-same-same damn thing,” said squirrel-eyes with his two big blue eyes getting even bigger. Then he started scratching himself all over, first at the back of the head, then he started in on his ribs, scratching wildly. I guessed that maybe school had rubbed him the wrong way, too.
“Me, too,” said the bigger one who seemed to do all the talking. “School, I swear, it has ruined more wild-free-spirits than barbwire or a week of Sundays!”
Hearing this, I felt pretty damn good. And hell, I’d thought only Mexicans had it bad at school.
“Putting any young healthy boy or girl in a room and telling ’em to keep still all the time is as unnatural as putting a beaver on dry dock and telling him to forget his river-damming yearnings,” continued the talker. “Hell, kids need to whip it up and be wild, for God’s sake!”
Boy-oh-boy, these old guys were really talking my kind of language. Quickly, I turned my old horse Caroline around and started back for home on the railroad tracks. Never in all my life had I ever seen the looks of cowboys like these two old guys.
Getting home, I rode my horse past the corrals, right up to our house. “Papa!” I yelled, dismounting and running into the house through the back porch. “There’s a whole herd of wild mustangs headed our way, and the two cowboys herding them want to know if they can hole up for the night on our place!”
“Where are they?”
“On the railroad tracks just below the cemetery out by El Camino road. They’ll be here in a little while, papa.”
“I see,” said my dad. “Then you already invited them?”
I turned all red. “Well, not really, but, well, kind of, I guess. Because I did tell them that we got lots of corrals.”
“Okay, I’ll back your hand this time, mijito,” said my father, “but in the future, I never want you telling people what we have till you’ve seen their hand first, especially with strangers. Eh, understand? You got to always keep your cards up close to your chest. That’s a man’s power. Capiche?”
“Yes, I capiche, papa.”
“Good.”
I ran out the back door, got up on the porch railing, and remounted my horse Caroline and took off like a jackrabbit with a coyote on his ass. I needed to get back and help those two old boys bring in their herd of wild mustangs through that first narrow passage in the mudflats. If a man didn’t know those flats below our home, he could end up getting his livestock in a whole lot of trouble. And I knew all the country between us and El Camino like I knew the palms of my hands, especially now that we were getting hit on our hands so often at school that we kept needing to check our palms to see if anything had been broken.
“Yeah,” I yelled, riding up fast to the herd, “my dad says you guys can hole up at our place for the night!”
Quickly, I took over the moving of the stock. Hell, I’d been riding horses since I was three years old and I’d moved a lot of cattle and horses in my day. It took no thinking for me to figure out who the lead mare was, and I quickly zeroed in on her and got her going down the safe trail across the mudflats. And the lead mare really knew her stuff, so working with her, I was able to keep the horses together as we came in towards our ranch.
My dad was at the corrals to meet us with a bottle of whiskey. I watched my dad’s eyes look over the herd of horses real carefully as he handed the big bottle to the two old cowboys. The two old-timers each took a swig, wiping their mouths off with the backs of their hands. The taller one, the talker, introduced himself to my dad. He said his name was Jake Evans. Jake told my dad how the night before, they’d held up with their herd, just on the other side of Escondido—which lay about twenty-five miles east of us—and they’d been allowed to rest their stock up for three days.
Instantly, I could see where this was headed. Jake was now trying to pull a slick one over my dad and turn a one-night stay-over into three days. But my father didn’t fall for it, and asked where they planned to be tomorrow night.
Jake saw it hadn’t worked, so he then told my father that they planned on going all the way up to the Irvine ranch tomorrow, then work their way into Los Angeles by the end of the week, where they had a deal to sell their stock to a movie company that made Westerns just a few miles north of Hollywood. Jake then asked my dad if I could ride trail with them the rest of the way, since they’d seen how good a hand I was with horses.
I didn’t know if they were pulling my leg or not, but I yelled, “Hell, ya! I’m ready! And I’ll be saddled at daybreak!”
My dad and the two men laughed and passed the bottle of whiskey around one more time. Our conversation was all in Spanish. Our own ranch hands—who were vaqueros from Mexico—had gathered around and they, too, joined in the conversation. These two old gringo cowboys spoke their Spanish real good, and looked even more Mexican in their dress than some of our own cowhands.
My dad told the two trail-worn old boys that yes, they could keep their herd on our place for the night, and there would be no charge for the hay. They thanked him up and down and offered to pay him with one mustang, but he refused, saying that we had enough horses already, and they’d better hold on to what ever stock they had left. They looked mighty relieved and asked if they could shower, too.
“Of course,” said my dad, “and after you’ve cleaned yourselves, you can come down to the main house and eat with us, if you’d like.”
Both of the old boys turned all red. “No, gracias, señor,” said Jake. “We wouldn’t rightly know how to behave in front of a casa with women and all. We’ll just make us a fire out here on the ground and cook us up some beans.”
“Look,” said my dad, “wash up, come to the house, and if you don’t feel comfortable, then just take your plates of carne asada and salsa verde to eat outside. My wife, Lupe, she makes the best damn salsa and tortillas you’ve ever tasted.”
Hearing this, both cowboys’ mouths started watering with wet, drooling saliva. “O-o-o-okay,” said the nontalker. “Then that’s how we’ll—we’ll—we’ll do her!”
“Good,” said my father, taking the bottle of whiskey. “I don’t want you boys coming in all tanked up.”
My father and I then walked home, carrying the big bottle of whiskey. “Papa,” I said all excited, “could I really ride with them tomorrow. I’m sure I could help.” I wasn’t that interested in running away anymore. No, now I figured that I’d just become a cowboy like these two old-timers.
“Mijito,” he said, “it looks like fun herding horses, don’t it?”
“Yeah!” I said.
“Well, it isn’t. You just don’t have any idea what those two poor bastards have gone through. Sure, in the old days, two real good horsemen could move a herd of horses from here to kingdom come and have no real problemas. All they’d have to do is watch out for rattlers, bears, coyotes, rustlers, and know where to find water and grass. But now, in modern times, with highways, towns, and barbwire everywhere, those two men got to be half crazy-loco to have brought a herd of horses all the way from Tucson, Arizona.”
“But, papa, if I—”
“I’ve told you a thousand times, mijito,” he said, cutting me off, “there are no ‘buts’ or ‘ifs’ in life. If my aunt had balls, she’d be my uncle. And ‘but’ means that you didn’t listen to a damn thing of what the other guy just said. No, mijo, you listen good, and understand that yeah, sure it looks like fun to you, and it could be fun back in the old days when a man was young, but neither one of these old cowboys are young anymore. They’re old fools, mijito, trying to hold on to a way of life that doesn’t exist anymore.
“They remind me of some of our own people back in Los Altos de Jalisco still trying to be charros to the very end. And I can admire them here in my heart for their spirit and horsemanship, but I’m not going to romance what they do here in my head, any more than I’ll romance two people getting together and starting a family without having the means or guts to figure out how to make ends meet.
“Hell, it was almost dark when they pulled in here with that herd of horses. That’s not right. A man, mijito, has got to have the tanates, get me, the balls to know how and when to change with the changing times.”
I nodded. I could see that what my dad was saying was right. “Then it’s once again like the little crow and the father crow story, eh, papa?”
“Exactly,” said my dad, “each and every generation needs to add to the knowledge of the past generation, just like the little crow did to his father’s.”
This story of the little crow and the father crow, my dad had been telling me for as long as I could remember. How the father crow taught his little son-crow to be careful of two-legged people when they came close and bent over to pick up a rock. But then, the little son-crow thought even further ahead and told his dad that maybe they should fly off even before a two-legged bent over to pick up a rock, because maybe the tricky two-legged human already had a rock in his pocket.
“We can’t just hold on to the past with wild, foolish hopes,” said my dad, “and then get bitter and mad because things don’t work out or stay the same. What would these two cowboys have done, mijito, if you hadn’t come across them? And what would they have done if I hadn’t decided to give them free hay? They got no money. You can see that by the shape that their stock is in.”
I nodded. I could see that my father was right.
“Always remember,” added my dad, “dime con quién andas y te diré quien eres.” Tell me who you walk with and I’ll tell you who you are. “Your job is to go to school right now, mijito, and a good man does his job, no matter what.”
“Really, papa, no matter what? Even school?”
“Yes, no matter what, even school. My madre didn’t panic and die in the middle of the Revolution like my father and leave us kids to starve to death. No, she stayed with us kids, the three that she had left, and kept us alive no matter what. Capiche?”
I nodded.
“Good, then tomorrow, I’ll send Tomas out with these two cowboys to get them going,” continued my dad. Tomas was our foreman. “Maybe the Marines will let them pass through Camp Pendleton. A lot of horses could get killed between here and Los Angeles if they aren’t careful with traffic. Damnit, they’re grown men, mijo, and you can’t just be herding horses or cattle up the highways like in the old days anymore.”
That evening, I didn’t even recognize the two old cowboys when they came to the house all washed up and shaved. They were actually, maybe, even younger than my dad, and I’d thought that they were close to ninety-nine years old.
They decided not to take their plates outside to eat and sat right down with us at our big, old oak table. That night we heard story after story of how they’d had to fight off rustlers just on the other side of Phoenix, then they’d been hit by a hailstorm that had almost knocked them out of their saddles, then they’d had to go around on a long stretch of wild land to avoid the sandhill deserts at the California border so they could keep their herd from dying of thirst.
And now they, too, were wiping off their hands on the tablecloth like my dad. In fact, they seemed to just about copy everything that my dad did, figuring, I guess, that these were proper table manners. That night, I got to feeling a lot better about mi familia. I could see good in my familia once again, without all-that-stuff-from-the-school going off inside of my brain. School, in fact, now seemed so far away that I could hardly believe that I’d ever gone to that stupid place at all.
In the morning, I got up real early, planning to sneak off with the cowboys, whether my dad liked it or not. Hell, I wasn’t ever going back to school again. I wanted to live my whole life up on top of a horse where I could run and leap like Superman, himself!
The two old cowboys were surprised to see me saddled and ready to go when they rolled out of their bedrolls. They’d slept in the hay barn, which was smart, because I figured that’s where I would have slept, too.
“Are you sure that your dad said that you can go with us,” asked Jake.
“Oh, yeah, sure,” I said, lying, and suddenly remembering that this was exactly what they were always telling us at school that Mexicans did: lie. “But we got to get going fast, so we can beat the Sunday traffic going to church,” I added.
“Look,” said Jake, “last night, after you went to bed, we told your dad how we’d come across you running away from home.”
“You did?” I said.
“Yes, we did. It was the honest thing to do, son. And you should’ve seen the hurt look on your dad’s face, because, you see, Mexican kids don’t run away from home. White kids, gringo kids, like me and Luke, we’re the ones who run from home, but Mexicans, they ain’t never do that.
“And do you know why they don’t?” added Jake in that same soft tone of voice in which he always spoke. “Because Mexicans are just naturally warm, loving, good people.”
“Really? Mexicans are good people?” I said, tears coming to my eyes.
“You’re damn right! Great people! The best! Hell, all the way out from Arizona to California, in every town, they’d be the first ones to open up their doors to us two old coots and share their frijoles with us, no matter how poor they were. And that’s what we saw around your dinner table last night, too. Good, old-fashi
oned, honest family hospitality with lots of love,” he added.
“Big Jake’s a’right!” said the other cowboy, talking with his half wild-nervous stutter. “Last night, she-she-she were the most, most—” It looked like he was just about ready to burst open, trying to get the words out that he wanted to tell. “—loving, damn good-good homemade-cheese night a’me life!”
“Luke’s right,” said Jake. “People dream of una familia like yours. Big, old, long dinner table with plenty of homemade cheese, carne asada, salsa, and fresh lemonade. Son, you got the whole world here, you understand, so you don’t let no damn school cause you to run off. You dig in, you see, keep your powder dry, and don’t let no son-of-a-bitch teachers run you off your homestead, you hear?”
“I hear,” I said, feeling ten feet tall.
And that morning I stood shoulder to shoulder on horseback with my father and brother as we waved goodbye to those two old cowboys as they rode off with their herd of horses, headed for Los Angeles, then to a place north of Hollywood. Maybe Mexicans really weren’t bad people, after all. So, then, maybe, it was all right for me to love mi familia. I had tears in my eyes watching these two old guys ride off, herding their stock.
“You really want to go with them, don’t you?” said my dad.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Well, then, go on,” said our dad. “You and your brother go with them and Tomas as far as Camp Pendleton, then come home.”
“My brother Joseph and I were off in a flash, slapping leather like real CHARROS DE JALISCO!
CHAPTER seven
I really don’t remember too much more about the rest of my year in kindergarten. All I know was that, looking back, I could now see that those two old cowboys from Arizona were like a Godsend to me. After all the negative crap that had been pounded into my brain at school about Mexicans, no one in my family could have ever turned me around to believe that Mexicans were maybe okay people. But these cowboys had been able to do this. One, because they weren’t Mexicans and were Anglos; and two, because they spoke Spanish as well as anyone in my family and they’d been armed and looked so tough, and yet, I’d also seen how much they’d admired, respected, and looked up to my dad and mom.
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