The Chili Queen: A Novel

by Dallas, Sandra

  “Other dens of iniquity,” Emma finished for her. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to see an outlaw, but I wouldn’t care to be acquainted with one.” She threaded her needle and picked up the sewing in her lap. “Would you?”

  Addie cast a sideways glance at Emma, who was restitching the plucked-out seam and didn’t look up. “I would like a bath,” Addie said. “My bones need easing. The first thing I’ll do when I get home is tell the servant woman to heat water on the cookstove and fill up my bathtub.” She leaned back in the seat, thinking about lying in her tin tub filled with hot water.

  Emma seemed surprised that there were servants in New Mexico.

  “Oh, I’ve got just one. Tomorrow, when I get home, I’ll have her to cook me up a big beefsteak and bake a custard pie.”

  Emma said a custard pie sounded mightily good, then reached for her jacket and opened the little watch pinned to it. “It’s past suppertime. When does the dinner car open for business?”

  Addie snorted and told Emma there wasn’t any dinner car on the train. Passengers brought their own or bought from the train butcher. “But it looks like you brought yours with you.” Addie pointed to the hamper and restrained herself from licking her lips.

  “Oh, that’s not supper,” Emma laughed. “Those are my cinnamon-rose starts. I was known all over the county for my cinnamon roses.” She lifted the lid and showed Addie the wilted clippings wrapped in damp rags and newspaper. Then Emma offered to give her one, since Addie had been so friendly.

  “Oh no. Thanks to you anyway,” Addie said. “Land in Nalgitas is so poor it won’t sprout peas.”

  Emma insisted and even offered to plant it for her.

  Addie waved her hand. “I’m not much at tending things.”

  Emma put away the clipping and asked if the train stopped for supper, then.

  “Where would we stop in the middle of Kansas?”

  “Well, we have to eat something. I was so nervous about missing the train that I could not eat a morsel from the time I got out of bed this morning. I surely would like fried chicken and gravy or maybe a chop. And a slice of peach pie. Now that’s eating.”

  “Go ’way! It makes me hungry just to hear you talk about it,” said Addie. “You won’t find any of that here. You’ll have to make do with what you can buy, and you can’t be too particular about it. The food’ll keep you from starving is about all I can say for it. I guess I could see what he’s got.” She straightened her dress and stood up, as Emma turned aside so that Addie could squeeze past her. “I feel the need for some air anyway.”

  Emma returned to her sewing, as Addie moved up the aisle, her silk skirt rustling. A man got up and followed her out of the car. He returned in a minute, his face red. After a while, Addie came back, giving the man a contemptuous glance as she passed him. She had made up her mind to act the lady for the rest of the trip and didn’t welcome the advances of a traveling man. Addie handed Emma a pork sandwich wrapped in newspaper and a piece of gray cake, saying supper was her treat. The two women chewed silently until Emma gave up and wrapped the remains of her sandwich with the cake and put it under her seat.

  “It’s not much, is it?” Addie asked. “I’ll tell you what I’d like is a nice bowl of chili.”

  “Chili?” Emma asked. “It’s too hot for chili.”

  “Not San Antonio chili, not the chili they sell from the stands in the Plaza de Armas. There’s nothing in the world that satisfies so good. If you’d ever had a bowl of that, you wouldn’t say no.”

  Addie finished the sandwich and turned away from Emma to stare out the window at the sky, which was ruffled with pink and black and purple. The sky reminded her of San Antonio, too, the soft darkening evenings when the scents of coffee and chocolate, chili and sizzling fat filled the air. Addie had loved the peppery smell of the chili as she scooped the beans and meat and gravy into dishes and handed them to her customers. Some of the men refused to buy from any other vendor, giving their business only to her. Other chili queens worked there, too, selling tamales and enchiladas, tacos, menudo, and chili, but Addie was the favorite and best. Her customers stood shyly under the trees, smoking cornshuck cigarettes as they watched her work in the smoky lantern light, or sat on benches at plank tables, staring boldly at her as they ate. Sometimes they brushed their hands against her big breasts as they took the bowls or touched the ribbons in her hair. White men were rough with her, as though they were entitled to rub against her, but the others, the men whose skin was the dusky color of the night itself, had hands that were soft and gentle. Their touch made Addie’s insides feel warm and liquid, like lard on a hot stove. They were generous, those brown and black men, handing her dimes and quarters and sometimes even bills and never asking for change.

  She loved the life of a chili queen and considered herself fortunate that one of the vendors had employed her, since the girls were almost always Mexicans. She could have stayed there forever, but a gambler who saw how quick she was with her hands taught her card tricks and told her she could make as much in a day as a chili queen did in a month. She was ambitious, so she went with him. The two had worked the sleight-of-hand games together, until he’d left her for another woman. But he had taught her well, and she could make the pass, force a card, palm, ruffle, and slip the cards. She could make a card vanish from the table and be found in a man’s pocket or under his handkerchief or hat. There was little she couldn’t do with a deck of cards, until that night she was found out and beaten.

  When she healed, she gave up card games and turned out, walking the streets by herself and picking up men. After her experience with the gambler who had clubbed her, she was a little scared of men, however, so she accepted the protection of a fancy man. But he was the worst man there was for taking her money, and when she held back, he threw her out, and she drifted through Texas and into New Mexico. She worked at houses then, because even though the madams took half her earnings, Addie felt safe. She liked Nalgitas right off because it was filled with miners and cowboys and railroad workers, few of them with wives, and they were generous. When the madam she worked for decided to move on, Addie bought the house. She’d run it for eight years.

  That was too long, Addie thought, staring out into the darkness. It was time for her, too, to move on, maybe go back to San Antonio, perhaps even get married. She could buy a stand and hire girls to work for her, then expand into the other plazas. She’d serve first-rate chili, all beef, no pigeons or dogs or horse meat. Perhaps she’d even open a restaurant and become the queen of the chili queens. That was her dream, anyway, but it would take money. All of Addie’s money was in The Chili Queen, and where was a buyer for a whorehouse in Nalgitas?

  The train rounded a curve, and Addie made out a horse beside the tracks—a black horse. She shuddered as she leaned against the window and watched the animal fade into the darkness. She’d been uneasy around black horses ever since a chili queen in San Antonio had sworn to her that seeing a black horse meant death.

  When Addie turned away from the window, Emma was still sewing, squinting in the dim glow from the kerosene lamps on the ceiling of the car. “You’ll waste your eyes. You’ll go blind as a mole,” Addie told her.

  Emma took a few more stitches then pulled the needle through the fabric and straightened the seam. She anchored the needle in her sewing and put it away in her bag. “Sewing calms me. I guess I’ve quilted a hundred miles of thread in my life and could quilt another mile or two before we reach Nalgitas.”

  “You don’t look nervous,” Addie told her. In fact, Emma was calmer than Addie. Her back was straight and her face serene. Addie curled up against the window, and when she awoke several hours later, Emma looked as if she hadn’t moved. She sat bolt upright with her hands folded in her lap, as she stared out the window into the darkness. Addie reached over and patted her hand and muttered, “You might could sleep. I never saw a thing that was improved by worrying about it.” Emma turned to her and nodded once, then looked out the window again. Addi
e didn’t know if Emma followed her advice, because she was looking out at the countryside when Addie woke up in the morning. The train was at a standstill.

  “Breakdown,” Emma told her. “We’ve been here”—she opened the watch pinned to the jacket she had put back on to ward off the prairie cold and peered at it—“two hours and twenty-seven minutes.”

  “Oh, hell-damn!” Addie said, then glanced at Emma to see if she’d heard, but Emma was watching a workman walk down the track, swinging his lunch bucket.

  “I wanted a bath and a good supper before I opened up tonight. If this train doesn’t hurry, I won’t have time for even a quick wash,” Addie complained. She straightened up and smoothed the golden dress, rubbing a soot stain on her satin sleeve where it had brushed against the window. The stain turned blacker. “I should have worn black. Who cares if I look like a farmer?”

  Emma chuckled. “There’s something to be said for ugly,” she replied, smoothing her own skirt.

  “Oh, I didn’t mean—”

  “It’s all right. I never paid much attention to clothes before. Perhaps I will now. Is there a dress store in Nalgitas?”

  Addie snorted. “No dress store, no bonnet shop, just a general store with a shelf of calico, red mostly. I myself shop in Kansas City.” Addie liked the way that came out. It made her sound cosmopolitan, and she repeated it. “I buy in Kansas City. They got nice stores.”

  Emma stretched her arms then stood up and said it was her turn to forage for food. As Emma walked down the aisle, Addie took in the woman’s slim waist and hips, wishing she herself weren’t spread out in back like a cold supper. Emma returned in a few minutes with two apples and a handful of walnuts.

  Addie hadn’t seen them at the train butcher’s the night before and asked where Emma had acquired them.

  “Off a track worker. They were in his dinner pail. He wouldn’t sell his sandwiches or the pie but said he’d take a dollar for the rest. They’ll have to last us to Nalgitas, I guess, since the train butcher’s out of food,” Emma said. She took the scissors from her bag and gave one of the walnuts such a sharp crack with the handle that Addie’s head jerked back. The nutmeat inside was withered. “Well, damn!” Emma said.

  Addie smiled at the swear word, but Emma didn’t notice because at that moment the train jerked, then jerked again and began to creep down the tracks. Addie ate her apple, then fell asleep again against the window. She slept most of the day until, in the late afternoon, Emma nudged her to say the train was approaching Nalgitas—six hours late.

  Addie squirmed, then stretched, letting her arms hang in midair when she saw Emma. The woman sat rigidly in the buttoned-up black suit. The brooch was pinned to the neck of her shirtwaist, the watch secured to the jacket. She looked just as she had when Addie first saw her—except for the pink hat on top of her head. Addie stared as she slowly lowered her arms.

  Emma’s face turned the color of the hat. “Do I look too bold?” Emma asked.

  “Oh, no.” Foolish, addle-brained, Addie thought, but not bold.

  “I’m a plain woman, as plain as homemade soap. I wanted to make a good first impression.”

  “It’s a nice touch,” Addie told her. She was too good-hearted to tell the woman how silly she looked. Instead, Addie retied the bonnet strings so the bow was on the side of Emma’s face, not under her chin. And she adjusted the hat to sit on the back of Emma’s head.

  By the time Addie was finished, the train was slowing. Addie tried to see the town through Emma’s eyes. It was mud brown, dusty—the streets, the storefronts, the houses. Even the cottonwoods seemed dirty, their leaves listless in the still air. The two blocks of false-front buildings that made up the main street needed paint. Several structures were boarded up, a few ready to fall down. Spread out from the street were blocks of squat houses, many of them made of adobe bricks and plastered with dirt. Addie found them homey, but she thought Emma would not be impressed. She’d prefer the frame houses with curlicues of sawn lumber for trim, although they were shabby, their paint peeling from the sand that blew against them. Addie looked for The Chili Queen and felt such a touch of pride when she spotted it, off by itself, close to the railroad station, that she pointed it out to Emma. But Emma was distracted, scanning the faces in the depot, as the train slid to a stop.

  “You see him?” Addie asked.

  Emma shook her head. “All I have is the picture. But he’ll recognize me. My photograph is a better likeness than his.”

  “Maybe that one.” Addie pointed to a man who stood off on one side. “Kind of short, isn’t he? Is your gentleman short?”

  Emma looked startled. “I don’t know.”

  Addie rolled her eyes, and Emma blushed. “I guess you’ll find out soon enough,” Addie said.

  She stood up, but Emma touched her arm and nodded at a man leaning against the depot. “Do you think he’s Mr. Withers?”

  Addie squinted at the big man who stood with one foot braced against the wall. “Not likely. That’s Charley Pea. He’s the blacksmith. He’s got him a wife. I know it for a fact. Mayme’s her name.” Charley had taken a trip to Texas the year before and had returned with a bride, who’d put on airs, pretending to be a lady. But Addie had told it around town that Mayme was a whore from Ft. Worth, a hussy so depraved she’d been thrown out of the whorehouse where Addie’d worked—for corrupting the other girls. Mayme had picked a fight with her once and had broken Addie’s nose and pulled out a chunk of Addie’s hair. Although the fight wasn’t Addie’s fault, she’d been docked by the madam. So Addie had been all too happy to expose Mayme, although Addie had paid for it. Now she had to take her horses twenty miles away to be shoed. The blacksmith still fairly hated her. In fact, when Addie passed him on the street not long before she went to Kansas City, he had spit tobacco juice on her skirt. And he was the one who’d thrown two kittens down her well. Addie was sure of it.

  Addie and Emma made their way down the aisle and onto the platform, which was crowded with men dressed mostly in rough clothes. Ranchers and miners stood beside the freight cars, waiting for shipments. Mexicans silently moved around them as they unloaded barrels and boxes. Men and a few women milled about the tracks waiting for passengers or just watching the train to see who got off. Addie knew some of them, but it wasn’t wise to greet customers in public, so she merely looked them over, raised an eyebrow at one, smiled at another. She touched Emma’s elbow and pointed her head at a neatly dressed man holding a hat in his hand and smiling in their direction. But just then, a woman made her way past them and joined him.

  Emma’s eyes darted about, and she seemed to lose her composure. “He’s not here,” she whispered.

  “Oh, you don’t know that. Maybe he’s inside, waiting for folks to leave. He might be shy,” Addie replied. “Or he went to the saloon for his dinner. Train’s awful late, you know. Now, you go sit on the bench in the shade and wait for him. He’ll be along directly.” If Emma was sitting in the shadows of the depot, the man might not see right off how old she was.

  “Will you wait with me?” Emma asked.

  Addie was tempted, since she was curious to see this Mr. Withers. But she didn’t fancy having the man recognize her and explain to Emma that she’d been keeping company all night and day with a whore. That wouldn’t bother Addie so much, but she didn’t see any reason to turn the woman into an enemy. And if Mr. Withers were as upright as Emma believed, he wasn’t likely to approach Emma with Addie sitting beside her. Besides, it was late—and a Saturday night, Addie realized with a start. She had to find out what had gone on at The Chili Queen since she’d left. She wanted a tub and her supper before customers arrived. So she shook her head. She tipped the stationmaster to store her trunk until one of the Mexicans could deliver it to The Chili Queen, then picked up her valise. “Luck to you,” she told Emma.

  Emma was too distracted to reply. Addie squeezed her arm. Then she started down the road to The Chili Queen. When she looked back, Emma was sitting on the bench beside
the depot, the pink hat in her lap. Except for Charley Pea, who was still watching the train, she was alone. There but for the grace of God, Addie thought.

  Two

  “Where you been? I darn tired of looking at whores,” Welcome said by way of greeting as Addie came through the kitchen door. “You was supposed to come home two days ago. I skillet the ham and pan the biscuits when I heard the train whistle blow that day, but you didn’t come, so I ate them myself. I thought maybe you got kilt.” The big woman grinned as she used one hand to lift a huge cast-iron wash pot and set it on top of the stove. Addie couldn’t have hefted the pot with both arms. The servant woman was strong enough to play marbles with a cannonball.

  “You certainly don’t live up to your name, do you?” Addie asked.

  “I hired on to cook and wash, and I work early and quit late.

  But I never agreed to tend three whores,” Welcome said.

  “Two now. Miss Broken-Nose Frankie ain’t here.”

  “What?” Addie dropped her things on the floor and slumped into a chair.

  “Miss Broken-Nose run off. That leaves Miss Belle Bassett and Miss Tillie Jumps. They’re upstairs sleeping. Might be they’re fixing to leave, too, and you’d have a whorehouse with no whores.” She laughed. “Ain’t been nobody come around looking for work, neither.”

  That didn’t surprise Addie. In the past year, Nalgitas had slumped, and bad times didn’t bring hookers looking for work. She sighed. It was Saturday night, and if business were decent, she would have to pitch in. Her bones ached too much. “Any other good news you got for me?”

  “The window’s broke out in your bedroom. Don’t ask me who done it. I’m not allowed to sleep in the house.” There were three rooms for girls upstairs. Addie’s room was off the kitchen, which was connected by a hallway to a large parlor. Welcome had a shack out back, a converted chicken house.