“And Diego, how is he?”
“Very well, Mr. Michael. Getting older but still strong.”
“A great cowboy and a nice man.”
“He likes you, too.”
“Does he?”
“He said you had a dirty face and fire in your eyes when you were a kid.”
“Those were the days.”
Putting her apron to her face, she giggled. Michael picked up the tray and carried it into the kitchen for her. The cook, Michelle and Pablo froze. Michael placed the tray of dishes onto the counter.
“Thank you, Mr. Shaw,” Josita said.
“De nada.” Michael smiled at everyone. “Happy Thanksgiving to all of you.”
“And you, sir,” Jim said.
Michael left the kitchen.
“I’ll be a son of a bitch,” Jim proclaimed.
“It must be true what they say,” Josita said.
“What?” Michelle asked.
“About Mr. Shaw and the Mexican woman.”
Pablo continued mopping the floor. “And I heard he treated her real dirty. He’s being nice to us out of guilt.”
“Pablo, shut your mouth,” Josita said. “At least it’s a start.”
Upstairs, Michael opened the door to what used to be his mother’s bedroom. He hadn’t visited the place for years and didn’t know why he ended up there. All signs of his mother had been removed, as if he had dreamed her all along. A large pool table replaced his mother’s fine brass bed and pine furniture. Thick brown carpet and gold brocade replaced the white carpet and flouncy cream curtains. One year after his mother died, his father had married Lucille, ten years his junior and a former Miss Arizona. She redecorated the bedroom. After eight years, however, his father paid her off when the curvaceous beauty went as stale as lipstick left out in the sun—not to mention the rumors he’d heard of her affair with the country club golf pro. All Michael remembered of Lucille was her undying love for cigarettes and Hershey bars. She patronized Michael in the sight of Martin and ignored him the rest of the time. In retribution, he stole her supply of candy bars and fed them to the horses on the ranch. When she found out, she slapped him.
Michael shut off the light and went down the hall to his old room, which had not changed since the day he went away to Harvard. A flag of the Borden Panthers signed by his former teammates hung on the wall above his desk. On shelves were trophies for track, debate, golf and tennis. He couldn’t believe all the shit he had collected to prove what he had achieved. In the closet hung his letterman’s sweater, and a deflated football was stuffed in the corner. He grabbed the ball, put on the sweater and went outside.
Not wanting to hear the decorating tête-à-tête of Jenny and Melody, Martin kept to his study to smoke a cigar. He stood before the large window, the smoke curling against the glass. Under the porch lights in the backyard, Michael tossed a flattened football up and down. Martin put on his glasses. Michael wore his old letterman’s sweater. He smiled. The boy came around. He didn’t put up much of a fight about anything these days, not the house or a political run. Martin wondered if he had forced the nerve out of Michael after the business with the Mexican woman. Nonsense. Michael had simply become more flexible. His law work hadn’t suffered at all. His son worked harder than the younger attorneys fresh out of law school who wanted to prove themselves in the firm.
Martin studied a framed photo of his father, Monroe Shaw, sitting at the very desk that was now in Martin’s study. From the date in the corner of the photo, he figured his father was thirty. But hard work had aged his appearance to sixty.
“Hard work.” That phrase had been repeated to him so often by his father, it could have stood in for his middle name: Martin “Hard Work” Shaw. With a little money from his parents, his father had set off to Tombstone to make his fortune, as people did in those days. Monroe chose not to work in the mines that paid little and readily broke backs, but rather made money selling goods to the miners, gamblers, saloon owners and other inhabitants of the notorious town. With enough money in his pockets and enough smarts to leave before the silver ran out, Monroe settled in Borden. He bought land and started a ranch, which he expanded to one of the largest operations in the state, with forty thousand head. Though a drought crippled everyone for miles around, he survived by determination and by having the wisdom to fence everything he owned to keep people and free rangers out. Monroe garnered enough influence to persuade the railroad to run a line near enough to his ranch to ship his cattle. He used profits from the ranch to buy more land, grow cotton and invest in businesses and property in Borden and beyond, as well as purchase the services of men who would kill intruding wolves, bears, Apaches and an occasional sheepherder. Climbing up was all Monroe knew how to do. He had seen what lay below wealth.
Martin’s father did not have time for a family until his late twenties. His mother, Sarah, was the spinster daughter of a prominent banker who understood her place was building a home, just as her husband was building his empire. Martin remembered a slight, timid woman who asked for nothing. His ex-wives could have learned a thing or two from her.
Of course, Martin had disliked his father tremendously. Monroe never had a kind word to say about anybody and was miserly, preferring to spend his wealth on impressing guests instead of on his family. His father would be gone for months on end and treated his home like another business. He crept over household ledgers and acted the despot to his wife, son and servants. Whenever his father spoke to him, it was always in short bits of advice. Save your money. Don’t lend money. Buy land. Invest wisely. Trust no one.
His parents died in their late fifties—Sarah from an asthmatic attack and his father from a busted heart while touring a cotton gin he was preparing to buy. At Monroe’s funeral, Martin finally comprehended his father’s death was just one more sacrifice to their family’s legacy. He had left the tenth largest fortune in the state.
Martin conceded he might not have toiled as hard as his father, but his own kind of labor had increased the Shaw holdings more than twofold. Monroe Shaw would have been proud.
In his study, Martin drew in the cigar smoke, which now tasted bitter. For all his success, he wondered why he couldn’t get Michael to understand the imperative of ambition. Martin sat at his father’s desk and opened a file to a new case.
Outside, Michael glanced at the light in his father’s study. He took off the letterman sweater and placed it and the football in a trash can. He walked to the edge of the garden and to the brick wall separating his father’s yard from the desert. He opened an iron gate and stepped out a few yards, not even watching for the stubby cactus brushing his pant legs. The silence buzzed in his head like a mass of flies.
He cursed himself for not having taken the steps sooner.
44
CARMEN PUSHED HER WAY through the crowd at the Azteca Bar. Since their waitress spent more time arguing with her boyfriend than serving people, Carmen took the initiative and ordered beers for Víctor and Toni and a soda for herself. Toni had finally come out with them, even though she had had to bully her sister to leave the house. Toni had quit the county job, worked at the laundry, cooked, cleaned the house and read books. She didn’t want to talk about the lawyer. All their lives they had shared secrets, worries and dreams. Even when their mother died, they had talked into the night about how they were dead inside, as if they had followed her into the grave. Now her sister had sealed herself off.
Damn that Michael Shaw. Carmen vowed if she ever saw him again, she’d spit in his blue eyes.
They sat at a table in a corner. Carmen had made sure they left home early to get a spot because the band playing was popular and the place filled quickly.
“Here you go.” Carmen spoke loudly over the music and the talking of the people packed into the bar.
Víctor took a beer. “Thanks, babe. Aren’t you glad you came out, Toni?”
“Yes, thank you.” Toni hoped her lie sounded convincing.
The lively music could
shoo away any grief, at least for the couples dancing with verve and abandon. Those who already had had too much liquor weaved their way to the bathrooms and back again for another round.
Carmen held up her soda bottle. “You two, drink up, ’cause I’m driving.”
Toni glanced around the bar. “Nothing’s changed.”
Carmen was encouraged. Toni appeared to relax. “See, mujer, people are having a good time.”
“So that’s what it looks like.”
Carmen bought another round for her husband and sister. The beer settled in Toni, heating her stomach. She fought the respite. If she made herself like the steel her father forged, nothing could damage her again.
“Toni, how you doing?” Jesús approached at the table. He wore a blue cowboy shirt and dark pants pressed crisp as a fresh-minted bill.
“Hi, Jesús.”
Víctor reached out his hand to Jesús. “Sit down, bro.”
Jesús took a seat. “Congratulations on your baby, Víctor.”
“Thanks, man.”
Carmen punched Jesús in the arm and pointed to her rounded stomach. “How about me? He didn’t do it all himself, tonto.”
“Carmen, all women have to do is have the babies. Men have to pay for them.”
“Listen here, Jesús, I remember when you had mocos running down your face and we had to tell you to wipe your nose.”
“Víctor will have to live with all those stretch marks and chichis out to here.” Jesús extended his arms out as far as they could go.
Toni and Víctor laughed.
Carmen wanted the last word. “Go to hell, Jesús.”
“Probably. First, I want to talk to your pretty sister.”
“Pendejo,” Carmen said.
“Gordita.”
“Moco face.”
“Big chichis.”
Jesús scooted his chair closer to Toni. “Now we can go out, right?”
“She’s nursing a broken heart,” Víctor said, slurring his words.
Carmen glared at Víctor.
Víctor put his hand up in defense. “What’d I say? What’d I say?”
“A broken heart?” Jesús said as he gestured for Toni to join him on the dance floor.
The band started up a ballad.
“You’ll forget everything in my hands,” Jesús said, pulling Toni to the middle of the dance floor.
“That I’d like to see.”
He held her closer than she wanted. His hands were rough as her father’s. He smelled of a fresh shave.
“You know, Toni, we could try it again. We were pretty good for a while there.”
“For a while.”
“Your dad likes me.”
“My dad likes everybody.”
“Toni, I don’t know why you don’t want to talk about it. Everybody knows that white guy dropped you as quick as he picked you up. You should have kept with your own,” he said into her ear as if sharing a secret.
“Christ, this is a small town. I’m surprised somebody didn’t put it in the church bulletin.” She pulled away a little, though he held her and continued dancing. “It’s nobody’s business. You can put that in next week’s bulletin.”
“I’ll bet your old man even knows what happened.”
Toni’s hands grew hot. “Leave my father out of this.”
Jesús whispered seductively, “If we start seeing each other, everybody will know you haven’t gone gringo on us.”
Her feet stopping moving.
“You don’t want to be called a coconut, do you, Toni? All brown on the outside and white on the inside. Fess up. Since you came back to town, you’ve changed, girl. Then you go out with that rich white lawyer. ¡Híjole!”
“I went to college to be a teacher,” she told him in Spanish, evenly, deadly. “And as for … ” She didn’t want to say Michael’s name, although she didn’t know why she should protect him. “My God, Jesús. If that’s what you think of me, why do you want to go out. Unless you just want to screw me.”
By that time, couples around them were listening more than dancing, including Carmen and Víctor, who had joined them on the dance floor.
“You’re making a damn fool of yourself,” Jesús said.
“You’re like all those people who can only see I’m brown. And who the hell are you or anyone to tell me what’s Mexican and what’s not?”
Toni stalked off. Jesús took off in the other direction.
“Toni, wait,” Carmen yelled. Her sister had already reached the door of the bar and pushed through.
Couples shook heads, whispered and started dancing again.
Carmen and Víctor went back to their table and gathered their coats.
Víctor helped Carmen on with her jacket. “What did I tell you, babe? Hanging with white people will make you crazy every time.”
45
Winter 1959–60
AT FIRST, Francisco decided his stomach was on fire because of the bean burritos he had had for lunch. The heat spread out through his body. In the dirty mirror in the locker room at the mill, he saw an old man fighting for life. He wet his face in the sink. Sluggish footsteps sounded behind him. He straightened with effort. Ricky Villanueva, a young, muscular worker, had already unbuttoned his pants as he entered the bathroom. “Francisco, you feeling okay, man?”
“Only heartburn.”
“I hear that. Like farting fire.” Ricky entered a stall.
Agony seized Francisco’s chest. He gripped the sink.
Ricky emerged after a long pee. “See you back in hell,” he said on his way out, not noticing Francisco’s face.
The anguish faded, although Francisco’s breathing was as shallow as a footprint in the desert. Señor, he prayed, let me not be afraid of what waits for all of us. Wipe away my sins so I can stand tall at your feet and be united with my Maricela and my mamá. May I act like a man in the face of death and not stumble before heaven.
He had started reciting that prayer as soon as the doctor told him his lungs had been shredded. He realized he was set to die, and soon. He had seen the sickness in other mill workers, among them his late foreman, Jimmy Ralston. The redheaded man was said to have cursed the mill with his final words.
Francisco refused to spend what time he had left in anger. He counted himself lucky to have lived at all and to have a family he loved and who loved him, which should make any man thankful. He blessed God for each day he had seen the morning light sweep past the curtains and light the faces of Antonia and Carmen.
Walking out of the bathroom, Francisco put on his work glasses and entered the open hearth. He didn’t get a chance to repeat his prayer before he collapsed in the shining crimson air of the mill.
Through the laundry, Víctor searched for Toni. Sweat soaked his shirt as he hurried. She panicked when she saw the worry on his face.
“Come with me, Toni. It’s Francisco.” He shouted to be heard above the din of the machinery. “He’s in the hospital. Carmen’s there already.”
Toni dropped the pile of clothes she carried.
Her supervisor, a big woman with yellow curls like soap bubbles, came up to her. She touched Toni’s back. “Go ahead, now, sweetie. Your brother-in-law explained everything. I’m sorry about your dad.”
As she and Víctor drove up to St. John’s Hospital, Toni took out a compact and handkerchief and dabbed powder on her red nose, but her eyes remained puffed. She didn’t want her father to see her so despairing.
The hospital’s gigantic cross threw a shadow over the front entrance.
“I hoped I’d never have to come back here,” she said.
“Don’t talk like that. Your old man is strong,” Víctor said as he parked his truck.
They ran to the third floor. Francisco lay in the last bed by the window in a ward of six patients. Carmen sat by their father, holding his hand.
“Toni,” she cried out, “I’m so scared.”
Their father slept, but his respiration came from a buried place and had to stru
ggle to be free.
A thin nurse shoved in between them to put a thermometer into Francisco’s mouth. “Dr. Custer is finishing up his rounds. He’ll talk to you about your father in the waiting room down the hall.”
Later, the doctor’s voice sounded of sympathy but was eroded by exhaustion at the end of long day. Dr. John Custer fell back into a pale green chair and lit a cigarette. The smoke made Toni want to join him, if only to postpone what he had to say. “Your father is suffering from a type of pneumonia due to his damaged lungs.”
Carmen grabbed Víctor’s hand. Toni put her own hands to her mouth to stop from crying out.
The doctor let the cigarette dangle from his thick fingers. “We’ve seen a lot of this condition in men who work at the mill and in the mines.”
“Can he come home?” Carmen asked.
“Not right away. He needs oxygen and rest. I want to watch for infection.”
Carmen buried her face in Víctor’s chest.
The doctor stood up. “Your father will be comfortable here, and you can visit him anytime.” He put out the cigarette in an already full standing ashtray and placed a hand on Carmen’s shoulder. “If you have any questions, the nurses know how to get a hold of me.”
They thanked him. But Toni wanted to ask how long. The question stayed inside her.
Dr. Custer knew what she wanted. “Miss García, your father’s heart is strong, and so is his will, so let’s wait and see.”
Toni and Carmen hugged each other for a long time while Víctor placed his hand on Carmen’s back. Toni pleaded to God to strike her down instead of her father but was too educated to really believe in miraculous bargains. She prayed for another miracle that had even less hope of coming true.
Michael.
“What time is it, hija?” Francisco whispered.
Toni leaped up from her chair. “How are you, Pops?”
“What time is it?”
“About eight at night.”
“So late,” he said in Spanish. He tried to sit up but coughed and perspired. “Where’s Carmen?”
“She was exhausted, so I sent her home.”
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