by J P S Brown
Every time Queta stopped after that she took stock of Mikey with that look and without asking questions about how he had been, or why he might have a bandage on his finger. Her gaze would inspect the changes that had taken place since she last saw him while she spoke of other things. The two could have been old lovers meeting after their affair was over and she did not want to ask him about the changes in his life for fear that he would want to start up feelings for her again.
She was so beautiful, even the most racist of men overlooked her dark complexion. She was famous along the border for her singing voice. She was a soloist at Sunday Mass for the Ave Maria, at the fiestas for ranchera country songs, and for love songs at suppertime in the best restaurants of Nogales, Sonora. Mikey hummed her songs to himself and remembered the gentle spirit with which she sang them. She was more company when he closed his eyes to go to sleep than even his guardian angel.
Sometimes Mikey would look up the street and see that she had already fixed him in her gaze and was bearing down on him. He would smile and when she reached him say, "¿Qué hubo, Queta? How have you been?"
She never smiled but would say something like, "Where have you been? I've been by here twenty times in ten days hoping to see you, but you have not been here. This has kept me triste, sad." Sometimes, if Mikey saw her coming far enough away, and had time enough to think about it, he would play her game and look steadily at her and not smile.
Then she might say, "Why are you so serious? Is it because you missed me as much as I missed you? Now you know how I feel when I come by and you are not here."
One day when Mikey was five, he saw Queta on the street with a tall, blonde Anglo man. The street was crowded, but she stopped and spoke angrily to the man, as though to plant him in place so she could walk away from him. She turned to leave, but he grabbed her by the arm and fell in step with her. When they came abreast of Mikey, Queta raised her eyes to look at him but made no greeting.
Mikey saw that she might go on by and said, "Queta, it's me, Mikey," and stopped them both. She pulled away from the man and hurried into the backseat of Maggie's car. "I won't be able to talk much today because I have to meditate," she said to Mikey.
"I've not been meditating enough."
The man grinned while Queta rolled up the window and shut him out.
"Enriqueta," the man said.
Queta would not look at him.
"What's this meditating you have to do, Queta?" Mikey asked. She put her finger to her lips and said, "Shhh," then very softly said, "necesito pensar. I need to think."
After a while the man walked away. Queta stirred, sighed, and said, "That was a good meditation," then stepped out of the car and walked away.
All the everyday girls of Mikey's childhood were brown from the Sonora and Arizona sun. Queta's burnt-brown-to-the-edge-of-black prieta complexion probably came from down in some hot, Moorish blood of hers. Even Lorraine Knox was browner than other blonde girls who did not grow up in Arizona. Children played outdoors all the daylight hours. Mikey was made to come indoors only in bad weather, or at night, and then he was planted in one spot where Maggie or Granny could keep track of him. He was not allowed to run and play or raise his voice in the house. He got spanked for that even before he could run and talk. Mikey was Black Man and like all the men of his family, he belonged outside during the day.
Panfilo Gandara was another regular passerby. Mikey had been told that Panfilo did not own more than half a brain. He did not have any skull above his eyebrows, and his face was vulnerably pale. Panfilo was not witless. He pretended to make entries in a ledger he carried. His family kept a discreet watch over him. They were wealthy, and they kept Panfilo in the Montezuma Hotel. His servant, a man who had retired as mayordomo of a Gandara ranch, delivered meals regularly to his room and stayed to make sure he ate them.
He seldom looked anyone in the eye. He was quick and restless as a fly, would pause to absolute stillness for a breath if someone spoke to him, then turn his back and flit away. Often, when he came by Mikey, he would turn his head purposefully away, then violently swing it back to stare the boy full in the face. Mikey began to think that he was the only one who was stared at by Panfilo Gandara for more than one instant at a time and he did not like it.
Panfilo came out of the Montezuma every morning in clean, pressed clothes and so freshly bathed that droplets of water dripped from his sideburns. Except for not having a forehead, Panfilo was handsome of face and figure. He had one thick, black eyebrow across his face that bridged the space between his eyes. His eyes were a solid, glittering black that seemed to have no pupils. He always wore a look of intense concentration. Every once in a while he would scowl, jot a line or a circle in his ledger, and move on with great importance, as though his compilation of jots and circles was urgently needed for posterity.
Sometimes he was made to sit with his family for a snack at the lunch counter of the Owl Drugstore or Bracker's Department Store. On these occasions, he did not look at his food or seem to want it. He stared at everything else in the room until one of his relatives called him back to his food. He would then humbly redirect himself to his snack for a moment or two.
On the day that Queta had taken refuge in the back of Mikey's car, Panfilo came by, stopped, and stood with his pencil poised above the open page of the ledger, as though prepared to make an entry, and stared into the faces of people who passed. Mikey wanted to see inside the ledger, but when he spoke to Panfilo, the man stared blankly at him and then turned away unconcerned, the way an ape in a zoo might look and turn away from the millionth tourist who walked by.
The look of an ape on Panfilo's face made Mikey laugh. Panfilo went up the street and Mikey thought he was gone, but he stopped, turned around, and headed back. When he came abreast of Mikey's window, he turned and screamed with laughter in Mikey's face. He then stepped back, shaded his eyes with his hand, and gazed upon a mountain in Nogales, Sonora. Mikey thought that pose was funny, so he laughed again. Panfilo whirled and bawled in Mikey's face. Mikey recoiled, recovered, bawled back at him, and laughed again. Panfilo took hold of him in the big grip of one hand, shook him, and jerked him so close to his face that Mikey saw right down his throat when he bawled again. Getting hot breath and spit on his face angered Mikey. He braced his feet against the door and hauled the man's head and shoulders through the window.
All of a sudden, the fight went out of Panfilo. His mouth closed, he let Mikey go, and he backed away from the window. Black Joe had taken him by the back of the neck the way a hawk takes a rabbit. Panfilo mewed and flailed his arms. Joe pushed Panfilo's head down to his knees. Panfilo was tall and broad shouldered, young and muscular. People were afraid of him because of the animal way he moved and looked at them, but Joe's hand on the back of his neck made him want his mama. He dropped his ledger and pencil and tried to unlatch Joe's hand, but Joe opened the front door of the Montezuma, shoved him into the lobby headfirst, and deposited him in an easy chair.
The Gandara family manservant appeared, picked up the ledger and pencil, and turned to Mikey. "¿Te lastimó? Did he hurt you?" he asked.
Mikey shook his head. The servant opened the front door of the hotel for Joe, waited for him to come out, then went in and took Panfilo by the arm and walked him toward his room. Mikey tried to keep a good eye out for old Panfilo after that. One day the loco walked by so close his sleeve brushed the car door. Mikey thought he might turn and bawl at him again, but he went on to accost some poor lady with his ledger. Mikey turned away for something better to look at. When he turned back, Panfilo's big teeth were grinning inside his window again.
Poor Panfilo. Uncle Joe had been teaching Mikey to box and had told him that the best defense any little boy could have against a mean grown-up, if he could not run, was to sock him hard on the end of his nose and yell for help. Mikey was not given time to aim for the end of Panfilo's nose, but he connected solidly with an eye-ball. Panfilo covered his face and howled into his hands. The end of his nos
e showed between his hands, so Mikey followed Uncle Joe's orders and poked that, too. Panfilo cried, "Ay, ay, ay," and backed away to the middle of the sidewalk.
Mikey figured he was in for a big fight. He turned away for help and looked straight into the eyes of the Anglo who had bothered Queta. The man had watched the whole skirmish from five steps away, but he turned and sauntered away. The Gandara manservant led Panfilo away before he was able to look out from behind his hands.
In the year that Mikey was five and just before his parents separated, Maggie got pregnant with his little sister Maudy Marie. Paul went to Mexico to work for Cabezon and his visits home were infrequent, unscheduled, and never much appreciated. Maggie's temper was bad and everything Mikey did made her unhappy. She could not deal with her son without punishing him. Everything was a capital offense. At least once a day he got called in by Maggie, bawled out, jerked into the grasp, and executed on the nearest block over which he could be draped. Mikey became certain the woman would kill him. Thanks be to God, because Maggie always pulled up while he was still in good enough condition to go on, forget the fear of death, and resume his depredations.
Mikey was usually able to recover quickly, because when Maggie was angriest she grabbed up bludgeons that were too unwieldy for her to handle. She almost always had to throw them away and use her hand. The switch that she took to his legs when she had time to think about it really hurt, but that was his own fault. He had given her permission to use a peach switch.
However, he knew Maggie worried that sooner or later her son would kill her with exasperation, anger, and worry, or her hand would slip and she would deal him a lethal swat.
Mikey went too far the day he decided to amuse himself by pulling a trick on Maggie. He did not consider that she was going through a dangerous time. She hated being pregnant and her temper was shorter than the last click of a time bomb. Rules were more than strictly enforced. Justice was ignored. The plush spots on Mikey's butt got sore and stayed that way, and his spankings were coming with no more warning than lightning bolts. Foolishly, he did not think to postpone his mischief until a safer time. Instead he stepped up the pace. Then Satan took him over. He discovered a way to be clever and mean without violating Maggie's rules. Mikey now rode the bus to and from kindergarten. The rule was that he come straight home from school on Mrs. Clark's Little Kids' Bus, change from his school clothes to his running clothes, and play in the yard with Baxter.
He could not violate the first rule because Mrs. Clark always made sure he caught the bus, even though she sometimes had to track him down and put him on the bus herself. Most of the time his having been away from his haunts all day made him feel an obligation to go right out on patrol as soon as he reached home. He would not remember that he should have changed clothes until he picked himself out of a mud puddle or tore a hole in a garment.
That was not all he did to get regular spankings, though. He left the yard for the slightest of reasons and he did not head home until he heard his mother call at dark, and he seldom heard the first call. If he was not home when Maggie came home, he got a spanking when he returned. Sometimes complaints from the neighbors about his activities in his own yard got him a spanking.
One day, he climbed into the topmost branches of his alamo tree and waited for Maggie to come home from work. She drove in, got out of the car, went in the house, and asked Bica for a report on him. Bica was the girl Maggie had hired to take care of him and keep their house. Even though Bica reported that she had not seen Mikey get off the bus, Maggie did not get excited until she called for him at dark and he did not answer. She went out on the highway, stopped directly beneath his tree, and called again. He forced himself not to answer. He let her march down the highway to Nina's to look for him. Nina told her that she had not seen him all day, either.
"Well, he's gone," Maggie said. "This time he's really done it." Then Maggie's worry caused a strange new situation that Mikey had not foreseen. Now his Nina was worried. When both his mothers went out and stood on the highway and called for him with a different kind of concern in their voices than he had ever heard, he knew that he was in the most fatal kind of trouble. That was not the end of it. Carmen Horrel, who lived in the house between Nina's and Maggie's, came out of her house and told Maggie she had not seen Mikey, either. Bica heard them calling and she went to the back door and started calling. Then Granny started calling. The Wingos on the other side of Granny's came out and told Granny that they had not seen him, and they started calling.
When Maggie passed underneath Mikey's tree again, he giggled out loud as a sign of surrender. The giggle was his white flag. A real giggle happened uncontrollably, but he wanted Maggie to take this one as the sound of innocent joy of a boy who had only been playing a harmless joke, not a disrespectful boy who waged war. The sound that actually came out was about the sourest, phoniest giggle any kid ever tried to fake in the history of kids. Maggie looked up, found Mikey in the tree, and their eyes locked. She later told people that she was astounded by the terrible thought that came to her at that moment. She thought, "My God, I'm looking at myself in the mirror, and I'm a devil. I've given birth to my own, personal devil. There I am, my very own demon staring down at myself with my own green eyes."
Maggie's face did not cloud up and she did not yell for Mikey to come down out of that tree this instant, as she usually did. She turned pale and spoke in a quiet, measured tone that told her son that he was about to be treated as strangely as he had treated everyone else that day.
"Now, mama, I came home and changed my clothes and stayed in the yard, so I can't get a whipping," Mikey cried.
"I'm your mother, but you don't listen to me. I only try to keep you in the yard so you won't go off and get run over by a car or bitten by a rabid dog," Maggie said. "Instead of appreciating how I feel about you, you had to show me how ornery you really are. Without batting an eye, you just scared me out of ten years of my life and caused this whole neighborhood to be afraid that something awful had finally happened to you. Do not say one word. Just come down from there and get in the house."
Maggie usually ranted at him and kept his safety under scrutiny as he climbed down. This time she did not even watch him come down. Even though a slip or an error could cause him to fall and be maimed, Maggie was not in the mood to care. The realization that his proud show of verve and recklessness in the tree mattered not at all was more punishment than a whipping. This time, Mikey's sorrow for having done wrong did not end with a good spanking when he touched down on the ground. He was told that he would not be absolved with a whipping. Maggie said that she was curious to see if he could find out what shame was.
"Frankly, I'm so ashamed of you, I don't know if I can live out the day," she said. "You're to blame for all the upheaval, but I'm the one who has to tell Granny, your Nina, Carmen, and the Wingos that I'm sorry, but my son hid in his own yard and gloated while all our friends and neighbors called for him. In another minute we would have notified the sheriff.
"Now, I don't care where you go with your face, but don't show it to me anymore today. Get in the house where you belong and don't let me see or hear from you until you discover how you can help me make up to everybody."
After a spanking, Mikey would have been himself again in ten minutes, but this new tack of Maggie's made him realize how mean he had been. She had tears in her eyes and her mouth trembled when she spoke to him. He went out to the porch to lie on his bed. He listened to his poor mother tell Bica that she was finally full of him. She was pregnant and did not want to deal with him anymore. He bawled for a while, then decided that he could still pay his debt to society, so he went to Maggie and apologized, apologized to Bica, then went out to apologize to everybody else. The Wingos looked at him with no expression and only said that it was all right; they had only been worried about him. Carmen Horrell stood behind her screen door and told him that if he did not someday kill his mother with worry, he would kill himself, and she would die of sadness. His Nina
only sat down when he came in, gave him a very brief hug when he said he was sorry, and told him to go home.
Maggie decided that Paul would have to take charge of Mikey for a while. That could not be easily arranged, because he was a full day's drive and a three-day ride over a horseshoe trail down in the Magdalena Mountains of Sonora. After a strenuous use of telephone and telegraph did not flush Paul out, Maggie told Buster to go down and get him.
Buster pointed out that it would require superhuman diligence to find Paul Summers and bring him home. Furthermore, Buster would have to leave bed, board, a formidable wife, livestock, and his ranch estate to do it. Before he agreed to go, he made Maggie acknowledge that this awful sacrifice was not his idea. Every respectable friend of Paul, Buster, and Maggie knew that he was the one who had to go because he was the only one in the world who would do it. Nobody else cared enough to brave the Mexican wilderness and its water holes. Maggie also knew that it was a shame, but Buster would enjoy every minute of the errand. He would like it down there with Paul so much that he might forget to come back. This time a miracle happened. Buster made it out of Mexico with Paul in only three weeks. He sounded sober when he called Maggie from the Montezuma Hotel on the Arizona side of the line. Paul got on the phone and told Maggie to bring Mikey and they would have supper across the line at the Cavern Restaurant. Maggie and Mikey bathed, dressed up, and drove to the hotel to meet Buster and Paul. They were not in the Montezuma lobby where they had promised to wait for Maggie, and they were not in the bar. They were not in the Owl Drugstore next door, either. Maggie and Mikey sat down in the lobby to wait.
At first Maggie was entertained by a parade of cowmen from both sides of the line, some of them with their wives and families, who stopped to visit with her. They stopped first on their way to supper and invited Maggie to go. Then they visited with her on their way back to their rooms after supper. After that Maggie and Mikey had nothing to do but watch the people go by on the street. Roy Adams, Paul's cousin, strolled into the lobby with Vivian O'Brien and stopped to talk. Both of the cowmen were half tight with liquor, but they were gentlemanly and proper. They had been crossing cattle on the border all day had been to supper at the Cavern, and were on their way to bed.