At the cemetery on the north side of Borden, Sammy Flores was joined by friends and relatives with guitars as they followed the dark wooden casket to the open grave.
“Buenos días, paloma blanca,” they sang. Good morning, white dove.
The full moon was a pale blue shadow above the cemetery as the priest said his last prayers. The group of mourners circled around the grave and huddled in their coats in the chilly morning brought on by a cold front. When the service ended, they walked back to their cars. A few briefly wondered about the stranger standing alone off to the side.
Francisco’s daughters each kissed his coffin. Víctor put his arm around his wife and led her back to the car. Aunt Lucille and Juanita each took one of Toni’s arms.
“Time to go,” Aunt Lucille said.
“Please, a little longer,” Toni replied in Spanish.
Aunt Lucille touched Juanita’s back. They stepped away.
Listening to the car doors slam behind her, Toni knew she had to leave soon but didn’t know where she was going.
“Toni.”
She turned. Michael held out his hand. Without hesitation or even surprise at seeing him there, she reached out her own hand. He took her into his arms. At last, she found the warmth that had eluded her for so many days.
Dishes of chicken enchiladas, chili, tortillas and sliced lunch meats and cheeses covered the kitchen table and every bit of counter space. Additional food filled the refrigerator in the kitchen, the one on the back porch and the one in Toni’s little house. Several people remarked how Francisco García would have loved such a get-together, which spilled out into the front and back yards. When Toni came in the door with Michael, the men shook hands with him. The women nodded as she introduced him.
“Carmen, Víctor, this is Michael.” Toni realized they never had met. She bit her lip, apprehensive at how her sister would react, after all that had happened.
Also unsure, Michael held out his hand, but Carmen threw her arms around him and cried. He hugged her, grateful and feeling welcome. “I’m so sorry, Carmen. I wished I had known him. It was my loss,” Michael said.
Throughout the day, as friends and relatives talked with Toni, Michael sat nearby her on the couch. He made up a plate of food for her, which she barely touched, and brought her coffee and later a glass of water. He caught a few people throwing suspicion his way, as if he had wandered into the house for an evil purpose. Toni noticed and scooted closer to him on the couch.
For the past few days, he had cleared his possessions out of his office in the bank and the pink flamingo house and moved them into a motel room on Bradley Street. He was amused at how little he took away—clothes, law books, photos of his mother. Most of the items fit into his sports car. He wasn’t bothered he had no job or a place to live. He only had one goal.
No one answered the door when he had gone to Toni’s house. He didn’t want to leave a note, fearing she would throw it away. Then he had called the hospital and learned her father had died.
For a moment at the cemetery, he’d sweated with worry that Toni would walk past and away from him. When she took his hand and let him hold her, his legs weakened with gratitude.
By ten at night, people began to leave the García house. Women started cleaning the kitchen and putting away the leftover food. They didn’t allow Toni and Carmen to help. Michael offered to dump trash in the can out back. There, a group of men drank beer by the back door. He again felt watched.
“Hey Mike, want a beer?” Víctor said at last.
“Sure.” Michael smiled.
“So you’re a lawyer?” a man asked.
“Yes, but don’t hold that against me.”
“You a good lawyer?” another man asked.
“I don’t know yet. I think I can be.”
“What ya charge?” another said.
“How much you got?”
The men laughed. After that, they talked about football and westerns on TV. He asked where they worked and how they were related to Toni and Carmen. They told him lots of stories about Francisco, about his cooking and his music. How everybody who entered his house was treated like family.
Michael indeed felt a loss at not having met him. He held up his beer. “To Francisco.”
“Salud,” the men answered.
“Salud,” Michael repeated.
By midnight, the house had cleared. Carmen insisted Michael stay in the little house instead of wasting money on a motel. Carmen hugged Michael again, and Víctor shook his hand. They went upstairs. The house was still as Michael and Toni sat on the couch, his arm around her. He told her how he had left Jenny and his job and, mostly, his father.
“We’re both orphans now,” she said.
He kissed her lightly. They sat without speaking for a long time before Toni went to bed.
Carrying a small case with clothes and toiletries he retrieved from his car, Michael walked to the little house out back. Toni was right. He was an orphan. We’re all orphans after we’re born. We tumble about, lost and loose in the world, ready to float away at any moment into darkness and quandary. That is, unless we are lucky to catch something so fine it provides us a foothold.
Toni’s hand had felt so sure in his at the cemetery. He prayed for strength enough to hold on. In the cold night air, he saw his breath and knew he was alive.
Verdict in the Desert Page 29