by Rilla Askew
At the state capitol, things were different. You could count on an audience, for one thing, whether for committee meetings or full session, and you didn’t always know who the people lining the back of the room were, so there was that air of unpredictability and mystery; plus there was always the stir and excitement outside in the halls, all the deliciously complicated undercurrents, exchanges, personalities, history—much of which she’d understood intuitively from the get-go, and what she didn’t understand or couldn’t decipher, she’d had her mentors to explain to her. Plus there was Beverly and the rest of staff to do most of the grunt work, way more than city government. The fact is, from the moment she passed security in the mornings till she came home exhausted from whatever lobby-sponsored reception she’d attended that night, Monica loved her job.
“Folks,” Charlie said, slurping coffee.
“What?”
“The folks of the Eighteenth District. Not people.”
Monica sighed. “Right.” The man in the duster was looking at her again. A rich rancher, she told herself. Or one of those wealthy oilmen-cum-cowboy wannabes, judging by the turquoise on his fingers. The state was full of them. She smiled. He looked away. Monica stirred sweetener into her coffee but then pushed the cup aside. She was going to have a tough enough time getting to sleep tonight, what with all the excitement at the press conference, the excellent clips on News 9 and OETA, and everything—everything!—coming together like cream, including her new bill ready to be introduced next week, that lovely little coup de grâce. “Son of 1830,” the pro tem had called it. Too cute by half, but she’d take it. How frustrating that she wasn’t going to see anyone who mattered before eight o’clock tomorrow morning! It was tempting to stop by the reception on the way home. But no, she couldn’t do that. Leadership would not approve. She slipped her lipstick out of her bag, uncapped it, but then, glancing around, decided against freshening her color at the table; she grabbed her purse and excused herself to the ladies’ room. She ought to take a look at her hair anyway.
The old rancher leaned forward as she passed. “Miss Moorehouse.” She paused, offered her smile. In the shadow of his hat brim, the man’s face was more handsome and wind worn and also older than she’d thought. “I want you to know you’ve cost me a hell of a lot of money. You’re costing business all over this state a lot of money. You don’t know what you’re messing with.” He touched his fingers to his brim again, swiveled back to face the counter. She was speechless. She didn’t know what to do but walk on to the restroom, where she stood in front of the mirror poking at her hair, growing more and more furious, her mind running a tirade of everything she should have said. Of course he didn’t like it! That smug old man no doubt used illegal labor for his damn cows or soybeans or whatever, stealing good jobs away from real Americans, which was just exactly what her legislation was designed to put a stop to! And she would say that to him right out loud here in public! But when she returned to their booth, the leather stool at the counter was empty. Charlie was finishing off a piece of coconut cream pie. “I didn’t think you’d want any,” he said with his mouth full.
“Did you hear what that man said?”
“Who?”
“That old rancher in the duster.”
“What rancher?”
“Never mind. Let’s go.” She reached for her coat. All the way back to the apartment, she fumed—and not just at the insult and the insolence of the old man, but also at her husband’s obliviousness. She tried three times to explain the moment, but Charlie just shrugged.
“What d’ya expect, babe? You know you’re going to get criticism any time you put yourself out there. You know that. If you can’t take it, you’ll have to just stay home and be talented in your room.”
Stay home and be talented in your room. How she hated that line! If Charlie had used it once over the past fifteen years, he’d used it a thousand times. At the apartment she flounced up the stairs, flung her coat onto the hall chair, and stormed into the living room, where she fixed herself a drink and turned on the television, tuning it to Fox 25 Primetime News at 9.
Tuesday | February 19, 2008 | Night
Brown’s farm | Cedar
In the thickening dark Luis sits at the table with his head in his hands. His thoughts run this way, that way, but every direction carries him to a street without exit; he cannot see where the road from this place will go. He is hungry, a little cold, though not so cold as inside the barn. He did not climb through the window this night but walked into the house through the door where, yesterday, the boy cut away the yellow tapes. Inside the kitchen Luis stood in the cold light with the refrigerator door open, looking in. No food on the grated shelves or in the drawers. He knew this already, he had eaten already the last apple. He uncapped a jar of yellow paste, dipped his finger, but the paste was sour, made his belly hurt worse, and he carefully screwed the lid down, set the jar back inside, shut the door, groped his way to this room, where he sits now waiting for the clouds to open in the night sky outside. Then maybe the moonlight will slant through and show him where to search in the black kitchen. There will be tins of beans somewhere, he thinks, and soup maybe. But the night is thick dark, and Luis cannot seem to thrust away from his chest this despair.
The clouds will not part, the despair tells him, and his sons will not find him, because they do not know he is here, and he will not find them because he had only the word written down, the strange name of the town somewhere in this Oklahoma, but the boy took the coat where the paper was hidden, and Luis cannot remember the name of the town, something like stupid monkey or hand, a name told to Beto on the telephone at the taqueria in the last message, delivered on the day Luis was readying to leave on his journey. His sons were traveling to a new town, they told Beto, a new job. They do not know that the tire broke, the truck stopped on the roadside with the people inside, no food or water, no toilet, no air—and so much time lost. By the time Luis arrived at the chicken plant where he was to meet them, his sons had been gone to the new town already a long time, and so they do not know about the men in their tan shirts and straw hats swarming the barn here, yelling, herding the people in clumps, the young women weeping, the faces of the young men steely and blank—this Luis saw from between the slats, his chest galloping, his breath knotted hard—or if his sons do know, they will think that their father has been bused back to Mexico with the others.
Maybe that is the best thing. Maybe he should put on the electric lights in every room, let the gringo sheriff with his round belly come. Then they will conduct Luis on the bus to the border and watch him walk across. All the world knows that this is how it is done. Unless they discover from the ink marks on your fingers that you have been carried to the border already many times, and then they will put you in their jails for many years before they ride you to the border again and push you out onto the street and watch with their hands on their holstered guns while you walk across the bridge. Then you will be in Matamoros or Tijuana or Ciudad Juarez, maybe five hundred miles from your village, maybe nine hundred, with no money and no means to go there except your two feet. Some of the people will telephone their families and ask for money for the bus to return home, but there is no one in Arroyo Seco for Luis to call. His wife, Margarita, has been dead almost ten years, and his daughter, Ausencia, is also dead now, since the summer. Cut down on the street by gunfire. Cut down for no reason. Her children scattered to live with the relatives of her husband, who has been working in the North for thr
ee years. No family now in Arroyo Seco. No reason, he thinks, to return there. He could die here this night. Inside this cold house. It would be no different than if he disappeared in the desert. He will be one of the vanished ones. His sons will wonder a little maybe—so the despair tells him—and then they will forget.
No! Luis chastises himself. This is a sin, not to hope.
He leans forward, presses his forehead against the hard table, prays now the same as he prayed on the journey inside the creaking truck, the supplications repeated then without ceasing, without count because he had no beads to count them, until the peace would come in his heart, until he could breathe, until he was not oppressed by the small space and the smell and the darkness. Then would he see Margarita as she had been when she was young, in the cornfield, on the path to the water well, in the churchyard, her shy eyes looking sideways, smiling. He would see his daughter, Ausencia, as a tiny girl, and his seven sons, each one a little size smaller than the last, Cesár, Eduardo, Mateo, Hedilberto, Tomás, Federico, and the youngest, Miguel, whose face Luis held longest before him, though he has not seen Miguelito since he was a youth of thirteen years riding away in the back of a hay truck, as the others had ridden away, one by one, year by year, in a wood cart, a produce truck, a bus, and who would have believed that Luis himself would one day make the journey? But it was Miguel who had written the letter soon after Ausencia was killed: Come, Papa, there is work here, our cousin owns a good business, Eduardo is here, Tomas says he will maybe come from California. What is there for you in Arroyo Seco? Come live with us, come work with us, you can send money home for the children, and when they are older, we will bring them here, we are their uncles, they will work with us, they will know their cousins in the North, our sons and daughters, you will know them, too, your grandchildren, come, Papa. Please come. And Luis had been persuaded, not knowing that he is too old—not too old to work, no. He is still strong, he can work as well as his sons, he knows this. But there was not a way for him to understand until it was too late that he is already too old for the journey.
GodSaveYouMaryYouAreFullOfGraceTheFatherIsWithYou
BlessedAreYouAmongAllTheWomenAndBlessedIsTheFruitOfYourWomb
JesusSaintedMaryMotherOfGodPrayForUsSinners
NowAndInTheHourOfOurDeath.
In the dark place behind his eyes she looks the same as on the walls of the church, hands clasped in prayer, golden rays circling her crown and blue robe. This is not a holy vision. Luis knows that he is not humble enough to receive a holy vision. It is an imagining, brought on by his hunger, but the image brings peace in the same way the images of his young wife and daughter and sons brought peace on the journey. Inside his chest the weight eases. He turns his face to the side. The room is lighter now, a tiny lifting of the darkness. In the next moment he knows what he must do. Very simple. He must find the boy. He does not know how this will be, but he believes that Our Lady will show him. Because the boy has the coat, the coat has the paper, the paper has the name of the town where his sons are working, guaymono, guaymano, Luis cannot remember how it reads, but the boy speaks a little spanish, he will tell Luis where this place is. Maybe he will tell him how he can go there. Maybe it is not very far.
He hears a small sound then, and his heart jumps. He sits up rapidly, prepares to run. On the far side of the table stands the boy. Luis thinks at first this must be a new imagining, materialized from his hunger, but then he smells the coat the boy holds in his hands. The odor is vivid, real. Not an imagining.
I have your coat, the boy says. He starts forward, but Luis flinches. Pardon me, the boy says. He places the coat on the table. The odor is familiar, the smell of manure transferred from the corral to the coat when Luis fell as the people pushed and shoved climbing into the truck. The scent is not sharp now, as it was in the beginning, but muted, soft. How strange, Luis thinks, to be glad for the smell of old cow dung. Thank you, he whispers.
I have food for you also. In the . . . The boy gestures outside toward the barn. I look there but I dont see to you. The food is in my . . . He shakes his head, makes the motion of putting his two arms through straps and hoisting something heavy onto his back. I dont know the word.
Backpack, Luis says. He reaches across the table for the coat, searches the pockets for the paper, and holds it out to the boy. ¿You know this name?
The boy carries the paper into the kitchen, opens the refrigerator door, lifts the paper to the cold light so he can read. Guymon, he says, and looks back at Luis.
¿Is a town?
Yes. I think so.
¿A town or a city?
A town, I think.
¿Where is this town?
I dont know. The boy returns to the table, gives the paper to Luis. Is possible I can say to some person to tell me.
¡No! Please. If they know I am here it will go badly for me. For my sons also.
I dont speak nothing, no problem. I . . . The boy blinks, pushes his hair back from his eyes. Tomorrow I bring more food. If I am able. Is difficult. My aunt and my uncle . . . they are living me when my grandfather . . . while my grandfather . . . I dont know the words. The . . . police take him.
The police. Yes, I know. I saw this with my eyes. ¿Then the old one is your grandfather?
The old one. I suppose. He is not much old. A little old. Like you. The boy talks in english then. Luis shakes his head to show he doesn’t understand. The boy looks around a moment. It makes cold, ¿no? He steps back into the kitchen, clicks the refrigerator door closed, and returns, bringing a box of matches. The boy disappears into the next room, which is very dark. In a moment Luis sees through the archway an orange glow. ¡Come here! the boy calls. When Luis goes to the next room, he can see the shapes of chairs and a large sofa in the steady glowing light from a gas stove on the wall. The boy stands in front of the stove holding his flat palm in the air above it. He passes his palm back and forth. Warm, he says. Very . . . pretty. Luis goes to the stove, stands beside the boy, warming his hands. ¿How are you called? the boy asks.
Luis Jorge Ramirez Celayo.
My name is Dustin.
I heard your uncle calling. Luis cups his hands, makes the voice of the uncle softly: ¡Du-u-s-tee!
Dustin or Dustee. The boy shrugs. The other or the other.
If you want to capture the mare you will have to move more slowly, and then very sleek and fast.
The boy looks up. ¿What do you call her?
Mare.
¿Not horse?
Horse is one word, but mare is better. Mare is the right word for the female. She was teasing you. She wanted more sugar. A cowboy must learn to move suavely. I worked many years with the horses. I could show you. The boy answers rapidly in english. Pardon me, Luis says. I dont understand.
A moment, please. Is necessary I have more words. I have a book. He crosses the room, makes scrabbling noises in the drawer of a small table near the door. He flicks on a tiny flashlight with a narrow white beam and goes into the dining room. After a moment Luis can hear him in the far part of the house: thumps, small thuds, another sharp word in english. The boy returns with a small fat yellow book in his hand. He sits on the sofa and shines his little flashlight on the pages. Slowly, tediously, using bad spanish grammar and many turnings of the dictionary pages, he makes Luis understand: His mother is dead. He lives here in this house with his grandfather but his grandfather hides the mexic
ans and he will be in the prison a long time. The cousin of the boy has told him this. He wants to capture the mare but he has one big problem. His uncle carried away the bridle. Now he must walk to see his mother.
But you said your mother is dead, Luis says. The boy goes suddenly silent. He sits with his hands in his lap, unmoving, his head lowered, as if he is ashamed to be caught—doing what? Telling stories? Luis does not want to shame the boy. Maybe I didnt understand, he says. I dont hear very well. The boy says nothing. After a moment Luis asks quietly, ¿She is alive then, your mother?
The boy shakes his head no. He doesn’t look up.
¿A ghost?
¡No, not a phantom! She is . . . He flicks on the flashlight, thumbs through the pages. A voice.
¿You can see her?
No. I hear only. My mother is . . . a spirit voice. Suddenly the boy stands. I go now. I think my aunt . . . He speaks rapidly again, his fingers plucking fiercely at the thin pages of the book. The only word Luis recognizes is hospital.
¿Your aunt has sickness?¿She is in the hospital?
No. Yes. There is a man who my aunt . . . ¡oh, I dont know the words! This night my aunt goes to the hospital with a person. Later, when she arrives to her house, if she is not able to see me, she wants . . . to see for me here.
¿She will come search for you here?
The boy nods. If my aunt sees you also, is maybe a problem more big.
Luis takes out the paper with the name of the town written by Beto. I must go here, where my sons are working.
Guymon, the boy says.
Gai-mun, Luis repeats after him.
¿But how? the boy says.
Well, Luis says. This is a problem.
I have a good idea. When I bring more food, I bring also . . . He looks through the dictionary. Ah. He points to the page. Is almost the same word. ¿See? In the english and the spanish. Map.