Let's go For Broke

by Mary Lasswell

  “It’s nice for the birds and the rabbits, an’ if they see it all cleaned up, they’ll raise the taxes on the man an’ he’ll raise the rent on us.”

  “It’s more dramatic coming onto it like an island, a private world hidden from the roads,” Miss Tinkham agreed.

  She was sorting out her costume to wear to the motion picture set next morning. Getting in and out of trucks and what not, she decided that the zebra-striped Capri pants would be best. But she would dress them up by wearing the new Mexican blouse N. Carnation made for her, trimmed with lovely red cross-stitch, and over that the fine poncho she had bought at a Garage Sale made out of a gay Mexican serape.

  She was glad that the proprietors of Fairy Oaks had remembered to bring back a few of the flower balls for samples, plus the information that they had already sold fifty of them.

  The momentous disclosures of Saturday had been too much for N. Carnation. She was prostrated with happiness and incredulity. Quietly she lay on her little bed with two leaves of sweet basil from one of her pot plants pasted on her temples. She made some tea from the leaves of an orange tree and told Jesse she would soon be fine. She felt atarantada, he told them, as if she had been bitten by a tarantula, dizzy and lightheaded, but it would soon pass.

  Miss Tinkham had the telegram written out for the boys to give to their friend at the Veterans’ Administration.

  “I don’t think there could have been very many Francis X. Heinzes in the outfit,” she said. “I do hope he is not a bigamist or anything like that. The little thing has had enough shocks already. She hardly knew him, but she has been faithful all these years thinking he would find her somehow.”

  “I can just see it happening,” Jesse said softly. “You know, Mexican migrant laborers go in gangs, enganches, they call them. They hire the whole outfit and men, women, and children all go to work in the beet fields of Michigan or places like that. They camp out and have a fine time.”

  “Did she go with them?” Miss Tinkham asked.

  “No. She said United States was Heinz country, and she thought Michigan was another country and wouldn’t go. She moved in with another Mexican family in El Paso when her refugee friends returned to Mexico, but one of the brothers kept bothering her all the time. He told her Heinz had made a fool of her and would never come back. He wanted her to shack up with him. Then she took her bundle, she says, and went to live with a very old Mexican man and his wife who were good to her. They were very poor and soon the old man died. Then some neighbors went to California from El Paso to work in the orange groves and N. Carnation didn’t know anybody else in Texas so she took the old woman and went with them. That’s how she got here.”

  “Did she say what happened to that family?” Miss Tinkham asked.

  “The same old story. One of the foremen wanted to take up with N. Carnation, so she slipped off and started to live by herself on what few cents she could make. She said she never looked at any man, because she believed Heinz would come back. Even if he had written to her, she said, the letter or telegrams couldn’t have reached her because the people she lived with hardly ever gave their names and hid when anyone came to the door. She says lots of them lived that way, afraid of revenge from the other side and afraid of investigation on this side.”

  “I’m getting worried about Heinz,” Miss Tinkham said. “It seems to me he could have got thirty days’ leave and come back to El Paso to look for her.”

  “Maybe he did,” Jesse said, “but Mexicans can clam up tighter than anybody you ever saw when anybody comes around asking questions. Even the F.B.I. has a hard time locating some of them, often while they are listening in the next room.”

  “I suppose,” Miss Tinkham sighed, “we’ll manage to live through the days somehow till we get a reply from the Bureau. The only solution will be to keep awfully busy.”

  “We thought,” James said, “that if you would give us the telegram, we would take it over to the Club tonight and give it to the Director of V.A. He could send it as a night letter tonight and it would be in Washington Monday morning.”

  “You’re absolute lambs,” Miss Tinkham embraced the three, “white, fleecy lambs.”

  “Another thing,” Bim said, “if anything has happened to Heinz, she can claim the widow’s pension.”

  “That would be just too much to hope for,” Miss Tinkham said. “Once she has her American citizenship, she will have the most valuable possession in the whole world. I think she knows that. Imagine the poor dear thinking Michigan was a foreign country!”

  Chapter 15

  A HUGE COVERED VAN of the type used to transport racehorses arrived at the Mansion about half past six Monday morning. Old-Timer and Miss Tinkham sat on the porch, flanked by Mrs. Feeley, Mrs. Rasmussen, and N. Carnation. The hearse was washed and polished. It was with great difficulty that Miss Tinkham refrained from applying just a little gold paint to it. Three men got out and carefully loaded the hearse aboard up a ramp. It rode on furniture-moving pads.

  “Don’t fergit your lunch.” Mrs. Rasmussen brought out a neat tin box. “Don’t buy nothin’ at them Greasy Spoons,” she admonished. “You got your beer money with you?”

  Miss Tinkham nodded. The morning was cool and she was glad she had her colorful poncho. She handed N. Carnation back a pencil and pad where she was practicing tracing her name.

  “Muchas veces,” she said gently. “Write it over and over. Escribei nombre, write your name, dear. Copy it from this. Make sure she practices it, instead of making flowers all day.”

  Jesse had already explained to N, Carnation that the design she was tracing was her name and how important it was to be able to sign it. Miss Tinkham wasn’t going to have any American citizen marking an X if she could help it.

  “I think N. Carnation V. Heinz is a nice-soundin’ name,” Mrs. Feeley said.

  “I sure hope that Heinz didn’t have no fifty-seven varieties.” Mrs. Rasmussen spoke from the depths of experience.

  “I suppose we’ll live, but I don’t know how,” Miss Tinkham said. “Nothing has ever seemed quite so important.”

  “Roll it,” one of the men said.

  Miss Tinkham and Old-Timer climbed aboard.

  “Normally, this would constitute a great adventure, but as dear Shakespeare has one of his ladies of the evening remark, more or less, you understand: I have small joy in this contract tonight.”

  Chapter 16

  ABOUT DUSK Mrs. Feeley saw the headlights coming and ran out to meet her friends.

  “What’s the matter with your face?” she cried. “Lookit him!”

  Old-Timer skulked sheepishly in the background while the men unloaded the hearse.

  “Make-up,” Miss Tinkham said wearily as the van drove off.

  In the house Mrs. Rasmussen and N. Carnation clustered around eagerly.

  “Did you see any stars?”

  “Did I see stars? I’m still seeing them where I fell on the back of my head going over the stockade!” Miss Tinkham rubbed her head dolefully.

  “Have a beer! What was you doin’?” Mrs. Feeley gasped.

  “They’re doing an Alamo-type picture and they wanted me for a Mexican soldier scaling a wall. I wore a sombrero and had a rifle slung over my shoulder. They painted my face and made me comb my hair down loose under the hat.”

  “Gawdamighty!” Mrs. Feeley cried. “What next?”

  “Probably the Witch of Endor,” Miss Tinkham groaned. “They painted Old-Timer up and put him in satin knee breeches and doublet with a white ruff around his neck. In this garb he drove the hearse. Everything they say about Hollywood is true, but seventy-five dollars is seventy-five dollars. Oh yes, and I am to get twenty-five for my performance. It would have been more but I had no lines to speak.”

  “Damn shame,” Mrs. Feeley snorted. “You coulda hollered ‘Chinguy, gringos!’ in Mess-kin.”

  “I have to work tomorrow. How is your signature, N. Carnation? Escribir?”

  N. Carnation proudly brought a collec
tion of papers covered with her name, the letters traced carefully, but not joined up. Miss Tinkham took the pencil and made little connecting hooks under the letters.

  “Momentito.” N. Carnation held up her thumb and forefinger half an inch apart. In a little moment she was back and wrote proudly but slowly the letters of her name carefully linked up.

  “N. Carnation’s supposed to start with a N, ain’t it?” Mrs. Feeley put in.

  “That’s how you pronounce it,” Miss Tinkham said, “but in Spanish it begins with an E. We must have it so that it corresponds exactly with the way her name is spelled in Mexico on her baptismal certificate and her marriage certificate.”

  “I thought Heinz taken it,” Mrs. Rasmussen said.

  “The copy,” Miss Tinkham explained. “The original will be in the church records and if we get good news from Washington, we will have to get a certified copy of both those documents to prove she is the person Heinz married. Only one thing worries me. Our dear neighbors to the south are delightful, lovable people, but inclined to procrastinate. Mañana and mañana before they answer official correspondence, especially in the small country villages. The trained employees in the government bureaus and agencies in the cities are very efficient. They work seven days a week, from seven in the morning till midnight. The picture of the Mexican taking a siesta under his big-brimmed hat is something made up for the tourist trade. You see how long and how hard N. Carnation works.”

  At the sound of her name, the little woman brought a big carton full of gorgeous feather fruits to show to her beloved “Meese,” as she called Miss Tinkham.

  “Her future is assured, certainly the necessities of life, simple as her wants are, if she keeps on at this trade.” Miss Tinkham handled the apricots, pears, and blue-purple plums with silver leaves attached. “They are downy to the touch and utterly enchanting.” She hugged the little woman whose head reached just above Miss Tinkham’s elbow.

  N. Carnation picked up a teakettle of boiling water and beckoned Miss Tinkham towards the bathroom. In the pocket of her apron she had a handful of rose-geranium leaves from her precious plant. Mrs. Feeley and Mrs. Rasmussen followed to watch her draw the bath and put the green leaves in. They sniffed appreciatively.

  “She’s fine as old silk,” Mrs. Rasmussen said. A different Miss Tinkham emerged later, still very pale from fatigue and the bump, but well-content to be home.

  Chapter 17

  WEDNESDAY NIGHT the friends sat subdued at the supper table. The day on location had been grim, with a fierce sun battering down. One of the wheels had come off the hearse and Miss Tinkham and Old-Timer had had to spend the entire day supervising the mechanic who put it back on. She had also had a wrangle with Mr. Dorman, the producer, who finally agreed to pay for the day the hearse was laid up.

  “When the shooting is over,” Miss Tinkham said wearily, “I am going to take an escape book, something like The Girl of the Limberlost and lie out under the trees for days on end.”

  “Do you good,” Mrs. Feeley said. “My seeds is all up an’ I got a fine catch. Be able to transplant ’em pretty soon. Got all the sweet-smellin’ kinds: carnations, pinks, sweet peas…”

  “A Chinese philosopher said:

  To raise flowers is a Common Thing.

  God alone gives them Fragrance.

  Miss Tinkham gazed dreamily ahead, thinking of the days when they would have Hearts and Flowers Floricians. The feather flowers were like her Jewish friends’ herring: for buyink and sellink. But violets, pansies, gardenias, and sweet-scented roses, not the big stiff modern blooms with no fragrance at all. She loved them because they were born, they budded, bloomed, shattered, withered and died. All part of our own life cycle. She used to like only tightly furled rosebuds, but now in her own full-blown stage, she enjoyed seeing roses open their hearts all the way.

  “Our tastes do change,” she said.

  “Just a week ago tonight N. Carnation come back,” Mrs. Rasmussen said softly. “We thought she’d run off. I near perished away thinkin’ of it.”

  “It cast a pall over all of us,” Miss Tinkham agreed.

  “Where’s all the cowboys?” Bim’s voice shouted from the porch. He kicked the door open and came in carrying a case of beer. Jesse was behind him with a big cardboard bucket full of fried chicken. James brought up the rear rolling a small portable television set. “We never use it. And it looks like we’re spending more time here than we do at the Club, so we brought it along.”

  “Sure lovely,” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “We can watch it while we’re helpin’ N. Carnation make flowers.”

  “Didn’t hear you drive up,” Mrs. Feeley said.

  “We came in my car.” Jesse pointed proudly to his new Chevrolet Impala. “Isn’t that some boiler?”

  Old-Timer appeared by magic, lured by the sight of a new car.

  Jesse pulled a telegram from his pocket: “Everybody sit down.”

  “My heart is pounding so I can scarcely bear it,” Miss Tinkham said.

  Mrs. Rasmussen sat by N. Carnation and took hold of her hand, just in case.

  Bim poured beer all around.

  “This long number,” Jesse said, “is his pay number. It’s Francis X. Heinz, all right, and she was listed as his legal dependent. They want her to send proof of widowhood right away. That’s her marriage certificate or a copy, the director told us. And if they had any children, their birth certificates. This is the rough part…Heinz was killed in a truck accident about two weeks after he left El Paso, in January, 1917. He was driving a government truck, so he was killed while in service and she’s entitled to compensation. They said the notification-of-death telegram was returned three times and is attached to his folder. Now we got to tell her she’s been a widow nearly forty-four years.”

  “Give it to her straight,” Miss Tinkham said.

  Jesse spoke quietly and solemnly for several minutes. N. Carnation sat very still looking right into his face all the time. She did not cry at all.

  “Es tan distante, estoy tan acostrumbrada a vivir sin él,” she said.

  “She says it’s all so far away, and she’s been used to living without him for so long…I guess he’s like a shadow to her more than a person.”

  “Tell her she is a bona fide citizen, and is also going to get money every month from the government. She could have had it for forty-four years. I wonder if it is retroactive?” Miss Tinkham said.

  “We asked and it’s not,” James said. “It is the responsibility of the claimant to contact the Bureau. But I can tell you, compensation is a good deal larger sum than the widow’s pension.”

  “It is all so splendid,” Miss Tinkham sighed. “Tell her her life is assured now, in reasonable comfort, in what must seem to her like luxury, for the rest of her days. The next step is to get the proofs that are required. One, a certified copy of her marriage certificate from the church at San Gerónimo, and it would be well to get a copy of her baptismal record at the same time to establish her age and identity. Two, a copy of her entry record and vaccination at Columbus, New Mexico. It will take quite a bit of writing and waiting.”

  “Writing nothing!” Jesse said and turned a rapid spate of Spanish loose on N. Carnation. “I just told her I would drive her there in my new car. I get my two weeks’ vacation Saturday, but she says she wouldn’t cross the Border, not even if they dragged her.”

  “It’s not far to Columbus,” James said. “Go across Arizona and then to Columbus. I wonder how far it is into the interior?”

  “Ask her if she remembers,” Miss Tinkham said.

  “She said it was only part of a day in the truck…those old things didn’t go over thirty miles an hour then,” Jesse said. “It doesn’t make any difference anyway. My mind is made up to go, and I can slip the presidente municipal, the mayor, a five-spot, and he’ll give me a signed and sealed copy with all kinds of red ribbons on it. I’ve always wanted to see that part of Mexico anyway. Bim’s going with me. James can’t get off.”


  “I’m tired of regular vacations like Lake Tahoe and Piker’s Peak,” Bim said.

  “What does N. Carnation say to your going? Does she approve?” Miss Tinkham asked. He spoke at length to the bemused little woman. Suddenly she smiled.

  “She says only if she can pay me for the trip with her flower money.” He smiled.

  “You’ve got to let her,” Miss Tinkham said softly.

  “It’s the only way in the world the money will ever mean anything to her,” James said. “You’ve got to take something, even if you use it to buy her a present.”

  “Bueno. Chócale!” Jesse stuck out his hand. “Agreed!”

  N. Carnation said something to him.

  “She says she wants to keep at least ten dollars to have a Mass said for ‘mi Heinz.’ She says she can make that up by making more flowers and fruits.”

  “’Fore you get off anyplace, Jesse,” Mrs. Feeley said, “an’ we ain’t got nobody to tell her what we say, you tell her we want her to be studyin’ how to make a whole lotta big fat hearts outa purty red shiny feathers. I need ’em for my trade-mark when I git my flowers big enough to sell. Tell her pretty ones, big an’ round, fat like a red satin pincushion.”

  “May I insert a suggestion?” Bim smiled.

  Before he had a chance to continue, N. Carnation spoke rapidly to Jesse.

  “She says to tell you she loves you all, that her heart was withered up inside her like a little hard knot, but you sprinkled it with your kindness and it sent out green shoots again. She says to tell you she is encantada de la vida: enchanted with life, and she will make you anything you want.”

  Nobody said anything. After a moment Jesse continued: “She says to tell all of you, that if she tried to make a heart as big as yours, there wouldn’t be enough feathers in the world.”