The Kerr Construction Company

by Farmer, Larry

  “Are you Carmen?” I asked.

  “How did you know?”

  “Your boss.” Right in front of her I felt myself melt as her smile penetrated my senses.

  “That son of a gun,” she said with a wink. “Well, you know who I am now. I’ll be your waitress. Oh, yes. I already asked you, but you didn’t answer. Would you like a glass of water? And I can take your order, too, if you’re ready?”

  “Yes to both. I’ll take your special for today.”

  “The enchiladas?”

  “Yeah.”

  She returned with a pitcher of water and an empty glass for me. I watched the serious look on her face as she seemed to struggle reaching my table. Her hand trembled ever so slightly as she poured. I tried reading the book I’d brought, but couldn’t pay attention to it even after she left. I watched her from the corner of my eye as she walked to the kitchen and back, cleaned tables, and handed new customers a menu. I forced myself to refocus on the book. But I couldn’t remember anything the book said.

  Suddenly I heard a crash and looked up at the next table. She’d knocked over the glass of water while she poured. She gave an apology to the lady and then glanced at me, smiling shyly. “I’m so clumsy today,” she said just above a whisper.

  I still couldn’t concentrate on my book. Then another crash. It was from another table, and now there were two puddles on the floor. I grinned her way as if embarrassed for her. This time she apologized to me before she did the customer.

  “I’ll be right back,” she said as she rushed by my table. “I can’t believe this.”

  I heard myself humming the words to the Marty Robbins song “El Paso.” Felina, that was the girl in the song. Now I knew why the doomed cowboy in the song fell so strongly for the Mexican maiden named Felina.

  “I’m better,” she laughed as she walked by my table to clean up the mess close by. She kept looking up at me as she stooped to sop up the water.

  I put my book away. To even pretend reading was a distraction. I didn’t stare at her, but I wanted to be able to think about her freely.

  “Here’s your enchiladas,” she said a short time later. “They’re not as good as mine. Don’t dare tell I said that.”

  “Good to be back?” I asked her. “Your boss said you lived in North Carolina.”

  “It’s awkward now,” she said wearing a pained expression. “I guess in his biological sketch—” She stopped mid-sentence, realized what she’d said, and blushed slightly. “I mean, biographical sketch. I guess in his biographical sketch of me he said why I’m back.”

  She didn’t have an accent. All the Mexicans back home had accents.

  “Yeah,” I answered. “Sorry to hear it.”

  “I have to find my way again, so I’m living with my mom for awhile,” she said still wearing the pained expression.

  “It happens. I’m not divorced, and I’m living in the back of a panel truck.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I just came from Texas and needed a job. I didn’t have any money.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “A couple of weeks.”

  “That’s enough time to get a place.”

  “It feels too much like staying. I was like that when I lived in Houston, too, and that was for two years.”

  “You lived in the back of a panel truck in Houston for two years?”

  “Oh no.” I grinned. “I had an apartment. But I never bought a bed. I slept on the floor the whole time. Afraid to commit. Then went back to college to get my degree.”

  “You have a college degree and you live in the back of a panel truck in Gallup, New Mexico?”

  “Yep. Home’s where I hang my hat.”

  “Do you know your way around Gallup yet?” she chirped.

  “I suppose.”

  “I can show you around.”

  I almost heard myself swallow.

  “I’d like that.” I hoped I wasn’t blushing. “Nobody has, yet.”

  “Sure, I’d love to.” Her bright smile returned. “How about tonight?”

  “Yeah. Yes. Yeah.”

  “Hey, why don’t we just go to a movie?” she asked, her smile even broader now. “There’s a movie on about Woody Guthrie, at the cinema. He’s like you except he didn’t have any college.”

  I looked at her quizzically. “How am I like him?”

  “He hopped freight trains, you live in a van…I don’t know.” She laughed.

  I’d seen the movie the previous night, to tell the truth, but wanted to see it with her. “Yeah, let’s go.”

  “You don’t have a date or anything?” she asked shyly.

  “Me? No.” I’d get rid of her for you anyway, I thought to myself wickedly.

  I didn’t meditate when I got home from the movie, thinking of her. I barely slept the whole night. At the movie and on the drive to her mom’s house I behaved myself and wondered why. I wanted to pounce, every second with her, and the only reason I didn’t wasn’t because I was a gentleman. It was because I felt so shy and so vulnerable. So cowardly. But how was I not going to pounce the next time? And there was going to be a next time. We both knew it. Neither one of us made plans for a next time, but I was going back to that same restaurant, and we were going back to the same movie, or whatever else happened.

  All night long until time to get up, even in my sleep, that’s all I thought about. Seeing her in the restaurant after work and going somewhere afterwards. And probably pouncing. Except I was also a gentleman, so I wasn’t sure I’d really pounce. But I wasn’t going to be shy anymore, for sure. Amen.

  ****

  “We got us a new guy,” the one that hired me said to Doug the next day as he walked beside a short, skinny guy. “He’ll be working with us as a laborer.”

  Somehow I inherited this guy. I had to teach him things I didn’t know, and he was dumber than me about them.

  “That pole is bent, McIlhenny,” Doug yelled as he drove by where we were building a fence. “I know I said I wanted them in line, but I didn’t mean bend them to get them lined up. Didn’t you use the level?”

  “They’re straight, Doug. I used the level.”

  “They’re not straight,” he sneered, “they’re bent. I’m glad you’re big and strong, but don’t bend the poles to get them in line with one another. I thought you went to college. I thought you grew up on a farm. Did you bend the poles on your farm?”

  “Probably.” I laughed. I hated being stupid, but it was funny, too. I had been through such with my daddy.

  Doug looked to see if I was being a smart ass. I put on my guilty face for him, which made me look even more like a smart ass. But I knew he wasn’t going to fire me. He liked me, I could tell. The huge guy that was field foreman stood next to him and scoped me out. His name was Ira Hays Moonseeker. One of the few Navajos with position. He lit up a cigar and grinned my way, then followed Doug back to the pickup.

  I thought work would never end. I was anxious to see Carmen again. I didn’t have a watch, which irritated me because I was dying to know the time. I didn’t ask anyone with a watch either, afraid I’d end up telling them why I was so impatient to finish work today. I was tempted to ask the time every five minutes, but managed not too. Somehow. The sun was the only clue I had. It seemed like the Old Testament at Jericho the way it just hung up in the sky immobile for hours at a time.

  The new worker came in handy for some things. At least for me. He lived with a couple of guys in an old house and said he’d let me use his shower when we came in from work. Now I could consistently freshen up at the end of the day with a nice warm shower instead of washing out of a sink.

  ****

  I looked serious and aloof as I walked into the restaurant after work. Carmen saw me and stopped dead in her tracks just to stare as I walked to an open table. She then returned to her work after a wink my direction.

  “Enchiladas,” I said when she came to my table to place my order.

  “They aren’t
the special today,” she said.

  “Then I’ll have them at your place. You invited me last night, remember?”

  She puckered her lips to keep from smiling. “Rather bold today, aren’t we?”

  “To make up for lost time,” I answered. “I blew last night trying to be polite. I want to get to know you.”

  “I enjoyed last night,” she said with a nod. “Especially all your comments about Woody Guthrie and all after the movie. You know so much about him.”

  “Yeah, I like those times and his music. But I was nervous, too. And shy.”

  “Shy? You don’t seem the type. What’s there to be shy about?”

  “You.” I sighed. “I was shy, and talking gibberish helped. I want to get to know you now. I loved being with you. So, I’ll take your invitation. Okay?”

  “My mother wants to meet you,” she said. “We had a long talk about you this morning. Someone got my mind off the divorce I just went through. She wants to meet him. And see if he’s all she’s hearing.”

  “What’s she been hearing?” I asked quizzically.

  “What I told her.”

  I kept waiting for what that was.

  “You just wait on me here until I’m off work,” she said. “You’ll get the gist when we get home. Have a beer or two on me while you wait. Read your book. Keep yourself occupied for a couple more hours.”

  Her mother’s house was a two-bedroom wood-frame yellow cottage with a screened-off front porch. A middle-aged dark-skinned woman, slightly overweight, let us in. She was the same height as Carmen, I guessed five feet four, which was tall for a Mexican-American woman. She still had good looks, with occasional streaks of gray in her hair.

  “Mother’s been a widow since I was in high school,” Carmen explained. “My dad was killed in a car accident. I have a younger sister, but she’s in Germany. She married a soldier from Albuquerque.”

  “Have a seat on the couch,” Carmen’s mother said. “I prepared you some enchiladas after my daughter called me on the phone tonight. I’ll bring them in after I microwave them. They got cold. Eat all you want.”

  “You know,” I commented to Carmen, “the Mexican-Americans back home all have accents and they seem just as Mexican as they are American. You just seem an American with brown skin to me. It’s almost confusing.”

  “Is that okay with you?” she asked. “Would you rather me talk differently?”

  “No, I love it. Even the Mexican-Americans in college had accents. Not strong, but something. You don’t have any accent at all.”

  “I don’t know, I’m just me. Some of us here talk with an accent. Those just here or a generation removed. Most of my friends are just as American as can be. I have a lot of Anglo friends. I don’t even know Spanish.”

  Carmen got up to leave but looked back toward me at the entrance to a bedroom. “I’m going to take a quick shower,” she said. “I won’t be long. I get all sweaty, and there’s a tobacco stench on my clothes, too. So many smoke, you know.”

  She hadn’t returned when, several minutes later, her mother came out with two plates of enchiladas. One, I assumed, was for Carmen.

  “Go ahead and start without her,” Carmen’s mother said. “I know you must be starving. My daughter tells me you’re from Texas and that you work as a laborer even though you have a college degree.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “That’s strange. So many here don’t have any college, much less a degree. If I had education, I would be so far away.”

  “I like it here,” I replied.

  “It’s okay,” she admitted. “It’s home. The people are nice, and there are some exotic landscapes around. But I would think you could say the same thing about Texas. I don’t understand what brings you here.”

  “I wanted something I’ve never seen before.”

  “Go to Alaska. Or Hawaii. I would love to go to Hawaii.”

  “So would I,” I said, smiling. “I might do that someday.”

  “You and Carmen just met yesterday?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Last night was the first time we went out together.”

  “She really likes you. You seem nice, and you’re tall and muscular, have an education. What do you see in my daughter? Am I being too forward?”

  “I don’t know yet the attraction about her,” I answered. “It’s just there. She’s got a spark, she’s pretty, she seems really bright.”

  “Carmen seems bright to you? She was a terrible student. That’s why she’s a waitress. I told her to study and go to college and make something of herself. But here she is a waitress and just got through a divorce. I don’t know if that’s very smart.”

  “She seems very smart to me. It’s in her. Some people just don’t like books. Or some don’t like the structure and discipline of a classroom. She’s smart. I see it.”

  Her mother smiled.

  “Who’s smart?” Carmen asked, as she reentered the room. I nibbled intensely at my lower lip as a smile eased through. She had her hair wrapped in a bright white towel and was wearing a white bathrobe made of the same coarse material. I loved the contrast of her dark brown skin against the whiteness of her robe and the thick blackness of the strands of hair escaping at the edge of the towel wrapping her head like a crown. What had taken me so long to grasp the cosmetic allure of dark skin, I wondered. She was the sexiest woman I’d ever seen. As much as I now felt liberated, I cursed the trap of a past that had kept me from knowing all of this sooner.

  “My goodness, Daughter,” Carmen’s mother said. “Girlie, you can’t come into a room with a man you just met, dressed like that. I have rules in this house.”

  “I know, Mother, but I didn’t feel like getting dressed again. I have a slip on under this. Can’t I relax a bit, please?”

  “It’s against my better judgment,” her mother said before turning back to me. “You understand why I have rules, don’t you? What’s your name? Dalhart, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I absolutely understand.”

  “We can’t have mischief,” she explained further. “This is my home. It has sanctity.”

  “I understand that,” I said.

  “Your food’s getting cold, Dalhart,” her mom said, relaxing again. “Come, Daughter, he waited for you. He’s a true gentleman. Both of you eat now, or I’ll have to warm it up again. It spoils the texture after a while.”

  Carmen’s mother left us to ourselves as we sat on the couch next to each other, far enough away to be polite but close enough for me to feel her energy. And body heat. Occasionally, our elbows bumped as we cut the food with our forks while eating awkwardly from the plates on our laps. They had a dining table in the kitchen. I didn’t know why we were eating on the couch, but was glad. It was cozy this way, and informal. When I thought perhaps this coziness was the reason why we were here instead of the dining room, it made me feel all the more relaxed.

  Shortly after we finished eating, her mom reentered the living room. “I’m going to bed, Carms. I have to get up early to get to work. It was nice to have met you, Dalhart, and I’m happy we have our understanding. Our mutual trust, I’m saying.”

  “Mother,” Carmen sighed. “Dalhart doesn’t have a place to shower and then sleeps in his van. Can he shower here and then sleep on our couch? Please? He is a guest here in Gallup. Please let’s help him.”

  “Oh, Carmen, no,” I said. “I’m fine. I couldn’t even consider imposing. I’ve already showered anyway.”

  She whispered pointedly, as if telling me to mind my own business, “I’m talking about from now on.”

  “People will gossip, Carms,” her mother replied. “I know that sounds like a lame reason to you, but it matters. This is a small town, and you just arrived back and with a fresh divorce.”

  “They can’t live our lives for us, Mother. He needs a place. If you are worried about us, I promise to behave. I’m a grown woman, but I will behave for you in your house that you are letting me stay in. But please be fair.”

/>   “Carmen, I’m fine,” I said, feeling awkward. “I’ve been doing this for two weeks now. I have a place to shower now, and I sleep well in my panel truck.”

  “You understand, don’t you, Dalhart?” Carmen’s mother looked sheepishly at me. “My daughter just back from a divorce and here comes another Anglo staying in our house before the ink is dry on the papers.”

  “I fully understand,” I said to her. I looked at Carmen. “Carmen, it’s important to me. I want to get to know you before I impose on you.”

  Carmen gave a quick, deliberate, grudging nod with her head and stared straight ahead, holding her thoughts.

  “Good night, ma’am,” I said to her mother. “I won’t stay much longer. We’re just getting to know one another and want to talk a bit more.”

  “I understand, Dalhart,” her mother answered. “I’m very glad to get to know you, and you’ve brought some excitement back into my daughter’s life. Good night, the two of you. I’m glad I can trust you and depend on you.”

  “Good night, Mother,” Carmen said. “I do understand. Just disappointed.”

  She then turned to me, and it seemed as if her black eyes glowed. “You are so sweet to her,” Carmen said, smiling. “You show respect. It’s so old-fashioned, but it’s nice. I like it. I can’t believe I’m saying that.”

  “You can’t believe you’re saying you like old-fashioned?”

  “I suppose,” she explained. “That must sound rather loose to you. Maybe I’m a bit loose. I had fun growing up. I’m not saying I was promiscuous, but I had some fun. But here I am now. My marriage was based on fun, and it wasn’t so much fun after all. Old-fashioned seems rather refreshing for a change.”

  “I’m not going away,” I said. “I kind of like going slowly.”

  “Yeah, well.” She sighed. “All that said, I couldn’t believe we didn’t even kiss last night. I kept waiting for this Texas guy to seduce me. You were the perfect gentleman. Like some knight in shining armor. I hated you for it.” She laughed.

  “I’m not as honorable as you might think. My hormones were raging. Still are. I felt nervous and vulnerable more than honorable. But if I had felt a hot juicy kiss on my lips last night, I might have not gone home. So I talked about Woody Guthrie instead.”