“Now, we both know this isn’t the first time you’ve snuck out of the house to see Dulceña since that night,” he said. “But this thing with the horses, it’s . . . well, it’s insane.”
I jerked. Not many people knew about my secret meetings with Dulceña. Mateo and Conchita would never let it leak out. Other than the unknown person delivering her messages inside the house, I could think of no one else who would turn me in to Tomás.
“Who told you?” I asked.
Tomás tightened his lips for a second, then he let out a deep breath and said, “Mamá. She sent for me.”
“Mamá knows? ¡Ay Dios mío!” My head was suddenly pounding, and I could feel myself stiffen. I pressed my hand against the muscles in my neck and started rubbing the tension away.
“Of course,” Tomás said. “You think Mamá doesn’t know what’s going on in her own house? Come on, Joaquín. She’s too smart for that. She’s just letting you think she doesn’t know. But she’s been keeping an eye on you the whole time, keeping me abreast of the situation. Listen. I wasn’t going to say anything either, but you’ve never been this late getting back. We’re getting worried, Joaquín. Well, what have you got to say for yourself?”
“Nothing,” I said, scuffing at the floor with my wet boot. Making eye contact with him would have most certainly been my undoing. “Does Papá know?”
“Yes.” Tomás put both hands on the sides of my head, gently forcing my head up. “You know they don’t keep secrets. Except from us, of course. But not from each other.”
I turned away from him. I longed for Tomás to walk out that bedroom door, wished he would go back to the rectory and let me deal with my own life on my own terms. “I’m sorry it came to this, Tomás,” I said. “But a man’s got to do whatever he can to protect the woman he loves. You’re a priest. You wouldn’t understand.”
“You’re wrong, Hermanito.” Tomás came to stand behind me, but didn’t touch me again. “I understand that you want to protect Dulceña, but stealing horses isn’t going to fix anything.”
“Not in the long run, but for now they can’t go anywhere. It’ll be a few days before the Rangers can move around and go after our people again,” I reminded him. “And by then, I’ll figure something else out. Something to keep them from attacking. It’s the only way I know to fight back, to cripple them. You saw that girl at Calaveras. You saw Dulceña that night. Our people are suffering, our women especially. It’s our duty to protect them.”
Tomás nodded and paced the room, thinking.
“This is my doing.” Mamá stood just inside the door of my room. Her hair was half pinned on the top of her head, and she was holding her robe closed over her chest with her hands. “I was afraid I might have given you the wrong impression by taking you to Calaveras. You have to understand, m’ijo. Not all rebels are innocent underdogs. There are dangerous men out there too, Joaquín, cold-blooded killers and rapists, predators worse than Slater and his kind. You could get hurt if you don’t know who to trust, who to work with.”
“Is that why you sent Carlos after me?” I asked. “Because you think I don’t know how to defend myself? I know what I’m doing. I’m not a child anymore, Mamá. I don’t need a sitter. I can take care of myself.”
“Try to understand. I was worried about you,” Mamá said. “Please don’t be mad. Promise me you’ll stop doing these crazy things, Joaquín. It’s not enough to cripple the Rangers, anyway. There are other ways of fighting them — better ways.”
“Like what?” I asked. “Like sneaking Gerardo’s body across the Rio Grande or putting iodine on that girl’s face? How is that going to fix anything, Mamá?”
“We are not Sediciosos!” Mamá’s lips trembled. I knew she was really upset, because she never raised her voice at me like that. “We don’t go around destroying bridges and blowing up railroads. What we do, we do for justice.”
“But I don’t understand why!” I yelled back, fighting my instinct to be a good son, to back down, to comply. “Why do we just sit around waiting to be attacked? We know who they are. We have the weapons. We should just go after them.”
Mamá came forward. She put her hand on my face and stroked my cheek softly before speaking. “We don’t want any innocent lives lost,” she said. “That’s not what we do, not how we solve things. We’re not murderers.”
“Por favor, Joaquín,” Tomás whispered from behind me. “Just promise us you’ll stop going out on your own. The Rangers will get what’s coming to them, eventually.”
“I’m sorry.” I lifted my chin. “But I just can’t do that. Eventually is not good enough. They need to be stopped. Now.”
The way I saw it, I was on a mission to punish the lawmen in Monteseco now, as often as possible, and nothing Tomás or my mother said was going to deter me.
Chapter 13
As I lay awake for hours, mulling over the conversation with Tomás and my mother that night, wondering why my father had not been part of it, I realized he couldn’t have stayed awake worrying about me. He had a herd of cattle to move out in the morning. More than likely, my mother had not mentioned my disappearance to him to ensure he got plenty of sleep before he left.
How could I have forgotten that? What kind of a son am I? I chastised myself as I tossed and turned in my bed. Too ashamed to sleep, I sat up and wrote in my journal. But my poems felt weak — self-indulgent — so I flipped the journal shut and pushed it under my pillow. Then I blew out the candle on my nightstand, lay back, and closed my eyes.
The sounds of our household stirring at dawn awakened me. Remembering that my father was departing, I tossed the covers aside, jumped out of bed, and scrambled into my clothes.
Pulling my suspenders over my shoulders, I rushed downstairs. Mamá was coming down the hallway. She put her arms out and motioned her desire for a morning hug. “Slow down. You haven’t missed him. He’s in the library,” she said, hugging me. “He’d never leave without saying good-bye.”
I kissed her cheek quickly and rushed to the library. My father was stuffing some papers into his mochila. He looked up at me when I walked in. “Joaquín,” he said. “You’re awake. Good. Good. Come on in, Son. We need to talk.”
“About the horses?” I blurted. A gentle heat flushed over my face. How could I defend my actions in light of his departure? It was one of his many ranching duties. The tedious trail ride was yet one more sacrifice he made for us every year.
My father cleared his throat. “About the horses, yes,” he said. “Among other things.”
When I hung my head and didn’t say anything, my father finished closing his mochila, threw it over his shoulder, and came to me. He put his hands on my shoulders and I lifted my eyes to his.
“I might have been a bit . . . irrational,” I began.
“You’re a young man, with a young man’s passions in a young man’s heart,” my father said. He squeezed my shoulders with his big hands and I cringed, embarrassed. Did he think me too juvenile now? Had my actions in the last few weeks altered his opinion of me? Was I unworthy of his respect? It occurred to me then that he hadn’t asked me to go on the trail with him this year. Was he that upset with me? Did he want to create some distance between us?
Discomfort turned to anger and frustration. “I know you’re disappointed.” I lifted my chin. “That’s why you don’t want me on the trail with you. But perhaps it’s best I should stay here.”
“I need you to stay here,” Papá said, dropping his hands to his sides. “It’s important to me to leave someone I can trust in a leadership position at Las Moras. Your mother is a good woman, but she can’t be expected to do it all. Not with everything else that’s going on now.”
I nodded. “Things have changed a lot for her,” I admitted. “For all of us.”
“That’s right,” my father continued. “As it stands, she and Carlos have all they can handle trying
to keep our gente healthy and safe at Las Moras. That means someone else needs to keep up with the work around here. The ranch is not going to tend itself, Joaquín. The campesinos need a patrón, not just to supervise and give orders but to lead by example, to finish clearing that field for next year’s sugarcane crop and to look after the animals.”
“That’s why you’re leaving me here?” I asked, my spirit stirring, soaring, forming a sense of purpose inside me, filling me with pride — and dignity.
My father shook his head and smiled. He put his arms around my shoulders and hugged me tight. Then, releasing me, he backed off a little. “Yes. You are the man of the house now, Son.” He pressed his index finger into my chest for emphasis. “In my absence, you are in charge. I expect you to take your responsibilities very seriously.”
“Are you sure?” I asked nervously. “I thought you were mad at me — let down — because, well, I haven’t necessarily been forthright with you lately. I didn’t know you thought I was . . . ready.”
My father waved a hand in the air dismissively. “Nonsense. You’re ready,” he said. “Your passion, your conviction for justice, that all tells me you’re ready to take on a man’s responsibilities. The question is, can I trust you to act accordingly, Son? Are you willing to focus, to change course and move in this direction? Are you ready to take on full charge of Las Moras?”
“I want to.” My voice cracked for a second, and I thought I heard myself croak out the answer, so I cleared my throat a couple of times before I continued. “I need to. Thank you, Papá, for believing in me.”
As my father patted my shoulder brusquely, I promised myself I would do everything in my power to keep my word, to honor his trust in me. It would be hard, not letting my dislike for the Rangers get in the way of that promise. But unless they attacked Las Moras directly, I couldn’t let anything blindside me. Papá was counting on me. I couldn’t — I wouldn’t — let him down.
Chapter 14
At first I didn’t know what Uncle Carlos wanted when he came to talk to me in the barn. I was cleaning my saddle when he walked in and handed me a folded piece of paper.
“We made the newspaper?” I asked after I unfolded and read the torn-up clipping from El Sureño, another article by A. V. Negrados.
Carlos nodded and cleared his throat. “Yes, we did. Unfortunately.”
“What do you mean, unfortunately? This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, you know,” I said. “The Rangers are probably stewing over this one. I bet Munro is making dirt devils with his tail feathers, running around all over town trying to figure out who stole their horses.”
“Yeah, but the story’s gotten the newspaper man and his daughter into all kinds of trouble.” Carlos took the news clipping and folded it before putting it back into his pocket. “Word is Munro is threatening to shut down their whole operation.”
“He can’t do that!” I said. “Freedom of the press, everybody knows that.”
Carlos let out a long, heavy sigh and scratched the side of his neck. “¡Ay, Joaquín! What lawmen get away with these days could fill more than a few of those journals you like to write in. Munro could burn down this whole town if we made him mad enough, and nothing would happen to him.”
After hearing from Carlos that our antics had made trouble for Don Rodrigo and Dulceña, I could think of nothing more pressing than going into town and making sure she was all right. It had been too many days since I had set eyes on her, so I rode out of Las Moras with the excuse that I wanted to visit my brother. Because I was in a hurry, I waved at the guards posted at our gate and didn’t stop until I got to town.
I tethered my horse in front of a boot shop at the end of Fourth Street, where I knew it could sit for a while. Then I meandered over to Donna’s Kitchen to ask Conchita a favor. At my request, Conchita drew Dulceña out of the print shop and away from her father by asking her if she wanted to take a break from work and go for a brief stroll along the boardwalk. Don Rodrigo took no issue with that sort of thing. He encouraged her to go out for a brisk walk, get a bit of fresh of air.
Half an hour later, in the dimness of the old mill, I broke off my kiss with Dulceña to speak to her. Not because I didn’t want to keep kissing her, but because we only had a few minutes to talk before she had to get back to the paper.
Clearing my throat, I began, “I have to tell you something.”
“What is it? What’s wrong?” she asked, cocking her head sideways.
I took her face in my hands and kissed her forehead, worried that by having her meet me here, I might be putting her in danger. “I did it.”
“Did what?” she asked.
Taking a deep breath, I said, “I stole the horses. Well, not by myself, of course. But it was my idea. I started it. I’m sorry, mi amor, but I’m the reason Munro’s threatening to shut the print shop down. I’m sorry. I had no idea it would cause any kind of trouble for you.”
Dulceña stood listening to me without interrupting. When I was done, she shook her head and said, “That’s insane! Joaquín! Why would you do something like that?”
“I’m sorry. I really am,” I whispered, shame washing over me for the first time since I’d done the deed. Not even my brother’s frustration or my mother’s anger had the effect Dulceña’s disappointed voice was having on me at that moment. She was the one and only person who could make me feel this wretched.
“Do you even understand the magnitude of what you just told me? If they had caught you — if they had arrested you — you could be hanging from a tree right now!” Dulceña put her hands on her hips, like Mamá when she’s about to lay down the law. “You still might! Who else knows about this?”
“Just Carlos — and his men,” I said, hanging my head. “And my family, of course. I know that sounds like a lot, but it’s okay. Nobody’s going to say anything. I’m more worried about you and your family.”
Dulceña pressed on her forehead with her fingertips, massaging it gently, like she was trying to put off a migraine. “Oh my God, Joaquín!” she cried. “What are we going to do now?”
“Nothing,” I said, putting my arms around her and kissing her cheek softly. “You’re not going to do anything. You’re just going to go back to the paper and pretend I didn’t tell you any of this.”
“Pretend!” Dulceña said, looking deeply into my eyes. “¡Ay, Joaquín! You have no idea how big this is. There’s a lot more to it than that.”
“Like what?” I asked.
Dulceña rested her forehead on my chest for a moment, then she reached up to stroke my cheek again. This time, she didn’t hesitate. “The reason Munro is threatening to shut us down is not because of the story about the stolen horses. It’s because my father won’t tell him who wrote it.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “A. V. Negrados wrote it. It was printed in the paper.”
Dulceña shook her head. “No,” she admitted. “Someone who goes by the name A. V. Negrados wrote it. More often than not, stories like this — wild, outrageous stories — come over the wire. It doesn’t matter who wrote them if the writer is not from the area. However, sometimes the stories are written by local reporters, people my father trusts to bring him credible accounts of what is happening out there in the chaparral.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Why don’t they just do what I did — write anonymously?”
Dulceña lifted her chin. “Well, these people want to get credit, because the stories are important to them, so they take a pseudonym. The story about the stolen horses was written by A. V. Negrados, a reporter who uses the pen name to hide her true identity.”
I repeated the name, letting it roll off my tongue for a second longer while I thought about its significance. “A. V. Negrados. I’m familiar with her. My mother loves her stories,” I said.
“Everybody does,” Dulceña said. “A. V. Negrados took that pen name to echo the
voice of A. V. Negra, the reporter who wrote articles for La Crónica to call attention to the poor working conditions of the families of campesinos working on this side of the border.”
“I can see why your father wouldn’t want to turn her over to Munro,” I said.
“My father’s been publishing A. V. Negrados’s stories for months, and now Munro is demanding that we turn her over to the authorities for questioning. It’s ridiculous, but he thinks she might be La Estrella.”
“No — ” I said, shaking my head. “It’s not my mother.”
“What?” Dulceña asked, her voice going up an octave. “Are you saying your mother is La Estrella? In all my investigations, that’s the one thing no one would tell me! Now I know why!”
Realizing what I had just done, I covered my eyes and rubbed my face harshly. I tried to settle my nerves by reminding myself that Dulceña would never say anything to anyone about my mother’s secret. She loved me too much to do anything that might hurt me or my family. Of that, I could be sure. “Yes,” I finally admitted. “I just found out about it. So much has changed. It’s been a crazy week at Las Moras.”
“So that’s why your father reacted so harshly when my father printed your poem in the paper!” Her eyes grew wide and luminous as she pieced together that mystery in her head. “He wasn’t mad at us. He was just protecting your mother. If Munro found out you’d written that poem, it would have meant an investigation into Las Moras. He couldn’t afford to take that chance.”
I thought about it for a moment. Dulceña might be right. His refusal to have our families associate with each other had never made sense to me until now. “It’s a man’s job to keep his family safe at whatever the cost,” I said, thinking about Don Rodrigo’s predicament with regards to the reporter. “So what’s your father going to do? Is he going to give in to Munro? I don’t think anyone would blame him.”
Shame the Stars Page 13