“My father would never do that,” Dulceña said, shaking her head. “He would close down the print shop himself and move our family out of town before he would let Munro and his posse have A. V. Negrados.”
I couldn’t understand that. I would hope Don Rodrigo would think of his family first. “Why not?” I asked. “If it means keeping you and your mother safe. Why should he keep this woman’s name a secret? Wait. What did you mean, your investigations?”
“Because I’m A. V. Negrados.” Dulceña’s voice was a small whisper, barely audible in the hollowness of the abandoned mill.
“But how?” I stumbled on my words. “When?”
Dulceña took a deep breath. “We all wear masks, Joaquín. No one suspects young girls, especially a waitress, to be smart enough to understand the politics behind the rumor mill around town. Conchita brings me the news she overhears at work and together we listen carefully when we go on our walks.”
Of all the things I’d expected her to say, I never thought this was the reason her father might lose his business.
But why had Dulceña kept this from me? Why was I only now hearing about it? Did her father swear her to secrecy? Had she ever intended to tell me?
There were so many questions rushing through my head that I couldn’t put any of them into spoken words.
“I can’t believe it,” I said when I finally spoke. “I can’t believe you would keep this from me . . . especially with the way you’ve been chastising me. Even today, you told me I was insane. And all along, you’ve been doing crazy things yourself!”
Dulceña shook her head. “This isn’t the same — ” she began.
“It isn’t?” I asked. “This is worse. Why would you keep this a secret from me? I thought we told each other everything!”
“Dulceña lifted her chin and straightened her back. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before,” she said. Her voice was calm, loving, as she took my hand and continued. “You know I have dreams, and sometimes dreams come at a price. As a journalist, I have to get to the truth, even if it means keeping secrets. My father made me promise never to tell anyone I was A. V. Negrados. But I know I can trust you, Joaquín. I know you would never — ”
I didn’t let her finish her thought because I leaned in and kissed her, a soft, delicate kiss that I hoped let her see how very bad I felt. “I’m sorry I made things worse for you,” I said. “Believe me, if I’d known Munro would go after you for printing this story, I would never have done it.”
“¡Ay, Joaquín! I’m so sick of this rebellion! What it’s done to our families. How it’s changed everything. Even you. You would’ve never stolen those horses if you hadn’t seen what you’ve seen. I just wish we didn’t have to live in this nightmare anymore!”
Dulceña turned away from me then. She crossed her arms, as if she was suddenly frightened. I reached for her shoulder, but she didn’t open up to me. Instead, she turned and backed into the wall, sliding down to the floor.
After a moment, I hunched down in front of her. “We could run away together.” I took her hands in mine and held them tightly.
Dulceña’s head snapped up, her eyes haunted. “I can’t run away with you,” she said.
Her words wounded me, muddled me inside. I took a long, deep breath and released it slowly before I questioned her. “Why not? Don’t you love me anymore?”
“Of course I still love you, but I just can’t do that,” she continued. “I have responsibilities. Things I must do. Things that have nothing to do with us.”
“What could possibly be more important than us?” I asked, letting go of her hands.
Dulceña got up then, and so did I. We stood staring at each other for a moment, before she threw her arms around me and pressed her face into my chest. I hugged her back. She felt so small, so fragile in my arms.
She let me go and stepped away, rubbing a spot on the filthy cement floor with the toe of her fancy leather boot before she finally answered. “You have to understand,” she whispered. “As a reporter, I have a responsibility to the people of this community. They need me to stay here. I need to be A. V. Negrados — I need to keep writing their stories. If I were to leave, to run away, who would speak for them? Who would voice their fears and document their suffering? No, Joaquín. I’m sorry, but I can’t run away with you.”
“Dulceña! Hija, where are you?” a deep voice called from outside.
“Shh,” Dulceña shushed me by putting a finger against her lips. “It’s my father. Hide, quickly, before he finds you here.”
She kissed me swiftly on the lips, a quiet whisper of a kiss that said she loved me, despite all that she had or had not shared with me that morning. Then, as her father’s voice got nearer, she pushed me away. I ducked behind the old machinery, a bulky piece of rusty metal that concealed my body as I squatted down. I held my breath when the door opened and sunlight crept into the dark warehouse brimming behind the slim frame of Dulceña’s father.
“What are you doing here, hija mía?” Don Rodrigo asked. He was frowning at her, a stern, disapproving cleft set deeply into his forehead.
Dulceña walked over to the door. Her back was to me now, so I couldn’t see her face. “I was looking for Coquito,” she said, sounding worried. “Conchita hasn’t seen him all day, and I thought I heard him meowing in here when I called his name.”
“He’s probably out tomcatting somewhere. You don’t need to look for him. He’ll be back when he’s good and ready,” Don Rodrigo said. He put his hand on the small of Dulceña’s back and gently guided her out the door. “You should get back to the print shop. Your mother’s waiting for you. She wants you to go with her to the dress shop.”
Dulceña walked outside, but her father lingered by the door. His eyes, narrow and sharp, swept every corner of the warehouse before he finally disappeared, leaving the heavy wooden door slightly ajar.
I didn’t move right away. I waited a good ten minutes behind that bulky piece of equipment before I slipped out of the warehouse, retrieved my horse, and hightailed it all the way back to Las Moras.
— from Joaquín, Friday, September 3, 1915
D —
Cariño mío,
Since Papá left, I have felt more anxious than ever before. His absence, the threat of attack, not just on Las Moras but on your family’s business as well, weighs heavily on my heart. I find myself wishing I could be two places at once, wishing there were more people like La Estrella, citizens willing to protect you and secure the print shop for what it bestows upon them. But freedom of speech comes with a high price these days and there are few willing to risk paying for it.
I know your father wouldn’t have it any other way, but I pray for your safety in the dark and think on you every waking hour. At night, I pull off my boots and rest my rifle on the wall beside my bed. It stands upright all night, waiting, listening to me scribbling by candlelight — rants and ruminations — a clumsy poem, this terse note, all of which are surely written in vain. For that is the fate of secret thoughts, quiet fears — nightmares — to dwell in darkness, to dissipate into mists, like fathers led into the chaparral by Rinches or deputies at dawn, their voices muffled, silenced, gone.
Before sleep overtakes me, the rifle slumps sideways, slides down, until it lies helpless on the floor, its barrel cold, dead against the fingertips of my hand as it dangles from the bed. Forgive the abruptness of this letter, corazón. I can think of nothing else but the weight of this rifle when I place it back upon my shoulder at dawn. I will write more lovingly soon. I promise.
Te amo,
— J
Chapter 15
The sky was burned out, almost blackened, the evening of September fourth when Doña Luz rushed into the dining room looking like she’d seen the Santa Muerte in the kitchen. “I’m sorry to interrupt, señora,” she said. “But Manuel needs to see you in the kitchen.”
At her words, I put my fork and knife down and got up, scraping the hardwood floor in the process. “Where is he?” I asked. “Where’s my father?”
Doña Luz moved aside to let Mamá get past her. “He’s all right,” Doña Luz said, following us down the hall to the kitchen. “Manuel said he’s going to be all right.”
“Señora,” Manuel said, taking his hat off and toying with it between his hands. “We were robbed. They took all the vacas. The entire herd. All gone. I’m sorry, señora.”
Mamá’s eyes sparkled, and I could tell she was trying not to cry. “Where’s Acevedo?” she asked. “Where’s my husband, Manuel?”
“He’s coming, señora,” Manuel said, shaking his head. “They’re bringing him now.”
“What do you mean bringing him?” I asked. “What’s wrong with him?”
Mamá gasped. She covered her mouth with a trembling hand, but only for a moment, before she asked, “How bad is it?”
“I don’t know,” Manuel said, dropping his eyes to the floor. “He won’t tell us. But he was riding very slowly, señora, so we unloaded the provisions and put him on the wagon, just to make sure. You understand?”
Mamá took a deep breath and said, “Go into town and get Dr. Hammonds. Tell him this can’t wait.”
As Manuel rushed out the back door, Doña Luz crossed the kitchen. “I’ll boil some water,” she said, looking for a pot in the cabinet under the kitchen table.
“Yes. Boil two pots,” Mamá said. “And tell Sofia and Laura to get fresh linens and meet me in my recámara.”
I didn’t wait for instructions. “I’m going to ride out to meet them,” I told Mamá as I crossed the kitchen and rushed out the back door.
I didn’t have to ride out very far, as the campesinos who had gone with him on the cattle drive were already halfway up the road to the main house.
“Papá!” I called, when I met up with them. “Papá! Are you all right?”
My father didn’t try to sit up in the bed of the moving wagon, but he did wave a hand in my direction. “Yes, son.” His voice sounded small and weak, and I wished I could see his face in the darkness.
“Are you shot?” I asked, circling the back of the wagon, searching for a better angle from which to see my father. “How bad is it?”
“I’ll be all right,” my father said, his voice sounding more winded than before. “No need to make a fuss. Just sore from all this jostling around.”
From what the campesinos described and the way my father was sounding as we made our way to the main house, he wasn’t all right. He had been shot in the stomach the night before, not even a week into their drive. The worst of it was the bullet was still in there because he wouldn’t let any of the men touch him.
“I just wanted to get home as soon as possible,” he explained when I questioned his sanity. “Doc Hammonds will fix me up when he gets here.”
It took four of us — Carlos, Chavito, Pollo, and me — working together using a thick blanket as a harness to lift Papá out of the wagon and into the house. Mamá tried to stay out of the way, but she held his hand the whole time we were hauling him down the hall, past the sala, and into their bedroom, only letting go of it when we were placing my father on the bed.
“It’s good to be home,” Papá whispered, reaching for my mother. He held her hand against his chest and, with his other hand, stroked her long, lustrous dark hair as if he’d feared he might never see her again.
Mamá touched his face tenderly, but only for a moment. “Let’s take a look at this, shall we?” she asked, undoing the buttons down the front of his shirt.
“It’s not that bad,” Papá said, drawing a hand up to stop my mother.
“You’re bleeding!” Mamá cried, and I ran to my father’s bedside. A bright crimson liquid was seeping slowly into the brown cotton of his shirt.
Taking my mother’s hands in his, my father kissed them. “Please,” he said. “Let’s just wait for Doc to get here. It’ll be okay. I promise.”
“¡Por favor, Acevedo!” She pushed my father’s hands aside. “Don’t be difficult! I have to stop the bleeding!” With trembling hands, Mamá pushed and pulled again at the shirt’s buttons and managed to open the garment wide enough to reveal Papá’s poorly wrapped torso.
Papá leaned forward to let Mamá undo the makeshift wrap and examine him more closely. “It’s not that bad. They weren’t trying to kill us, just drive us away from the herd.”
“Joaquín,” Mamá turned to look at me for the first time since Papá’s arrival. “Pour some hot water in that basin and bring it to me.”
“Who did this, Papá? Was it Mexican revolutionaries?” I asked as I handed Mamá the porcelain basin, a family heirloom she kept on her dresser.
My father cried out, a short, startled howl. Then he gritted his teeth and said, “I’m not sure, Joaquín. They were wearing masks. We couldn’t stop them. There were just too many of them. They took every last head of cattle.”
“In broad daylight?” I winced as Mamá cleaned a long, angry laceration that oozed fresh blood from Papá’s ribcage. I couldn’t tell if the wound was infected, but I prayed that it wasn’t.
Mamá put the basin on the floor so she could press on the wound with both hands. I picked it up and put it on the dresser.
“Who would do this?” I asked, turning slightly left to address Carlos directly.
“Insurgents, more than likely.” Carlos said. He had been waiting patiently by the door while my mother cleaned Papá’s wound. “Tejano rebels or Mexican revolutionaries — there’s no way of telling them apart anymore. There’s too many bad guys to keep score.”
“I can’t believe they would hurt an innocent ranchero!” I said. “Papá’s just minding his own business.”
“It’s the way of revolución, Joaquín,” Carlos said as he moved to the foot of the bed. “I know it’s hard to believe, but not all tejanos are like us. There are some mean rebels out there. Most of them straddle the fence between good and bad — just look at those Sediciosos. Then you have rebel gangs like Los Matadores who don’t care whom they kill or steal from. To them, nothing is off-limits. Nothing is sacred.”
“But the rebels know Mamá is on their side,” I said.
My father shook his head and said, “There are no clear lines anymore, no boundaries, Joaquín. Evil has rooted itself into our lands, dug itself deep into the souls of mejicanos on both sides of the border. While most are out for blood, some just want food or the money to buy it, and a well-maintained herd of cattle is both of those things.”
“The herd is branded,” I said. “They won’t be able to move it. No one’s going to buy stolen cattle — not around these parts. We need to find them before they cross over into Mexico. We can’t let them get away with this!”
“No one moves cattle across the river without the Medina brothers,” Pollo said. “If anyone knows where they’re taking the herd, it’s the Medinas.”
Carlos nodded. “The Medinas do control most of the riverbank on this side of the border,” my uncle said. “They’re not necessarily friendly to our cause, but they might know who took the cattle.”
Mamá dropped her medicine bag onto the floor with such a loud thump that it caught everyone’s attention. “This isn’t the time for this!” she said, standing up and crossing the room to open her bedroom door. “You and your men need to go back to the field house, Hermano. Joaquín has to stay and help me take care of his father for now.”
“But Mamá,” I began. “If we don’t — ”
Mamá held her index finger straight up in front of her. “If you don’t stop talking, this night will only get longer. Now, I’m sure there are plenty of thing
s these gentlemen need to take care of out in the field house before they can get some rest. It’s not fair to make the campesinos do all the work while we stand around chatting all night, Joaquín.”
About an hour after Carlos and his men left, Doña Luz escorted Doc Hammonds into the room. As I sat on a chair on the other side of my parents’ bed, Doc Hammonds pulled the bullet out and stitched Papá’s wound. I resolved to find out who was responsible for this.
“Go to bed, Joaquín.” My mother’s hand on my shoulder made me jerk. “Go on. I’ll keep an eye on him.”
I stood up and patted my father’s hand. He opened his eyes and smiled wryly at me, a crooked little smile that told me he was still in a lot of pain. “Hasta mañana, Joaquín,” he said, closing his eyes again. “Try not to worry about me. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Mamá followed me out of their bedroom, closing the door behind herself. She waited until we were down the hall, by the stairs, before she pulled me into a fierce embrace.
“Thank you for listening to me,” my mother whispered against my temple after she kissed me. “I’m sorry if I was a bit curt. But I didn’t want to upset your father.”
I hung my head for a moment. “I didn’t want to upset him either,” I admitted.
“You’re a good boy, Joaquín,” Mamá whispered, pushing a stray lock of my hair away from my eyes. “You always have been. That’s why I love you so much. ¡Eres mi alma — mi corazón!”
“I know I promised not to take matters into my own hands anymore,” I said, letting her caress my face the way she used to when I was a child. “But I need to find out who did this to him.”
“I know,” Mamá said, then she covered her face with her hands and cried softly. “I just don’t — I don’t want you to go out and do anything crazy.”
“Mamá — ” I started.
“No. Please,” my mother interrupted me. “Just listen to me, Joaquín. “You’re a good son, and you want to take care of us, but this is my battle to fight — my river to cross.”
Shame the Stars Page 14