The Importance of a Piece of Paper

by Jimmy Santiago Baca

  The horses were neighing outside.

  “Well, it’s taking me out of this fucking bullshit talk.” Pancho slammed the screen door on his way out.

  “That worked out great,” Adan said to himself in disgust.

  The wind blew sharply against the tin roof. It banged against the corrugated metal sheds, making the sheep bleat nervously. Apple leaves scattered along the porch and flew across the kitchen window.

  That evening when Pancho came in, Marisol got him to sit down long enough for her to lay out the plans.

  “He’s agreed to give us a chance to raise the money—he’ll sell his share cheap to us. It doesn’t have to leave the family.”

  “How the hell you expect to get the money?” Pancho asked.

  “We could try a loan against the land we have. Maybe borrow it from someone.”

  “What the hell are you talking about!” He slapped the will papers off the table. “I’m not going over no will or anything else, we’re not selling a pebble off this farm. And the last thing we want to do is give it to a fucking bank. It’s against everything we stand for. Mom and Dad, their parents, and back generations all said—never sell the land!”

  “It stays in the family,” Marisol said. “He needs twenty thousand. The going rate is five to seven thousand an acre and we’re buying his share at a thousand an acre.” She paused, adding apologetically, “If he didn’t need the money, he’d give it to us, but he needs the money...”

  Pancho went to the window and stared out at the fields. He took out three leather strands from his back pocket and started braiding them in silence. He sighed, stretching his neck as if it were stiff. “How much time did he give us to get the money?”

  “He didn’t say, only that he needed it soon and that he couldn’t hold it for long.”

  “I got work to get done...” Pancho said.

  He went out to the barn, ran some water from the cold wellwater pump, filled a tin bucket, and carried it into the stalls. He petted the horses in the corral and lingered by Zapata. The black stallion had his own covered stall. Chico, their blue heeler, dashed in, leaped on him all soaking wet, and unconsciously Pancho sprang at him with a clenched fist, ready to beat him. Chico barked and whined back into a corner, then ran off through the barn door.

  He was beside himself with anger. He unlatched Zapata’s stall gate, snatched one of the leather reins hanging on a post nail, and haltered the horse. He led him out into the evening, rounded the corner of the barn, and decided to ride him bareback in the Bosque, along the Rio Grande. He mounted him, heeling the horse hard in the belly, and galloped across the field, water splashing at the horse’s hooves up to his knees.

  * * *

  Three weeks later, Pancho raced Zapata against the county’s best horses. County races were occasions for farm and ranch people, prairie people, foothill and mountain folk from the area to get together and share news and have a good time. The well-to-do horse owners parked their new trucks and expensive shiny trailers together. They wore mothball-smelling Stetsons, aviator glasses, squeaky new alligator cowboy boots, starched creased Wrangler jeans, stiff white-pearl-button Western shirts, bolo ties, and leather vests.

  The getting-by folk came with rusty trailers hitched behind their dilapidated pickups and parked them around the field. Their kids rode old mares, chased after goats, and lassoed sheep. Under cottonwood trees, teenagers brushed down their ponies, flirted with girls from other towns, and dreamed of one day competing in the national rodeo finals. Small-time ranchers scouted around to buy bulls to mix in with their herds or to exchange a cord of firewood or hay for a colt that might turn out to be a good racer. Others set beer coolers under card tables, stoked hot coals to smoke burgers on portable grills, and drank Jack Daniel’s in lawn chairs under trailer awnings with their country wives.

  They watched as a grader leveled a track around the field. No amenities, no bleachers, no hot-dog stands or toilets. Race-horses arrived and cowboys gathered to check each one out, taking note of what kind of trailer towed it in, how it got off the trailer ramp, how the trainer treated it, whether its nature was easy or high-strung, how the rider rode it, whether it shied from other horses or challenged them with defiance. Pancho and Marisol drove in and parked their shabby horse trailer alongside the old pickups.

  Most riders and trainers had heard about Zapata, and there was growing excitement to see him race. You could feel the observers’ mounting expectation flow into amazement as Pancho backed Zapata out and led him around on a halter. And when Pancho ran him back and forth to limber him up, heads nodded, impressed with the new blood on the scene, now believing the rumors that had spread through the whole lower Rio Grande valley—that the black quarter horse was something to see.

  Many of them knew that Pancho had bred three generations of champion mares, and had worked on two of the best equestrian farms in New Mexico. While the owners bet on their own horses, many of the riders secretly laid their money on Zapata. It was Labor Day weekend and there were more riders and horses than usual, and a lot more money coming out of billfolds.

  Zapata won four elimination heats and placed first in the final race, proving beyond everyone’s expectations that he was the champion to contend with now. People could scarcely believe how fast he was at two years old, beating out the favored big bay thoroughbred by five and a half lengths.

  Marisol and Pancho were both elated: They had made the money needed to buy Adan’s twenty acres. After the races, Marisol wandered around with girlfriends, visiting other camps until they found one where musicians were strumming guitars and violins and singing corridos. Pancho gathered around a bonfire with the rougher crowd and drank with his old buddies. Their camaraderie was noisy, and they joked good-naturedly until, as always, Pancho had one too many shots of mescal or one too many lines of cocaine and challenged the biggest of the cowboys from another village to a fight. In the morning someone told Marisol where to find her brother and she went looking for him in a woman’s trailer. It was good timing, because the trailer was already hitched to the truck and they were ready to pull away when Marisol stopped them and found Pancho inside, fast asleep in the woman’s arms.

  Despite his hangover and a few bruises, Pancho was in good spirits as they came down the dirt road leading to their house by the river. Marisol was counting money stuffed in a brown envelope. They had gambled all they had to buy out Adan’s part of the land, and they had won.

  “He wasn’t even trying and he beat them,” Marisol raved proudly. She sealed the envelope and threw it to Pancho. He caught it and kissed it. “He could have trotted the last quarter mile and still won,” Pancho boasted. “I’m going to enter him in the Albuquerque and Santa Fe races. There’s a big entrance fee, but he’ll win. We’re talking serious bucks. For starters, I’m buying you new clothes, a nice pickup. A new tractor—a dually— fix the house up a little, build some pipe corrals, training rings, and—” Pancho stopped midsentence as they cleared the hill. He stared at the new BMW parked inside the open gate off to the side.

  A tanned man in his late thirties with sandy hair, wearing a blue blazer, casual slacks, a white shirt, and brown loafers, was looking over the fields.

  “Who’s that?” Pancho asked.

  “I don’t know.” Marisol’s excitement soured.

  Ranchers didn’t trust a person with an easy smile. Life was too hard to smile that easy, and if life had been such that a person could go around smiling openly at strangers, the rancher’s homespun opinion was that the man lacked character or was trying to hustle you out of something he hadn’t earned.

  Pancho pulled up beside him. “What’s your business?” he asked, a guarded caution in his voice.

  The stranger stepped closer to them. “I didn’t quite hear you,” he said, and maneuvered around cow droppings, not letting his pants catch on any briars or tumbleweeds. The sunlight brought out auburn highlights in his hair; even his eyebrows had dusky red bristle mixed in with the light brown. His eyes were
blue, glowing as clear and translucent as a piece of ice in light. Marisol noticed the scar on his chin, the small indentation on his right ear, the balding spot on the back of his head, his white teeth, the half-moon shadows under his eyes. She couldn’t take her eyes off him.

  Normally, she would have been the one to question a stranger, while Pancho remained sullenly quiet with an indifferent hostility to his attitude, meanness being an aspect of his character. He glared at the man, impatient with Marisol to ask him what his interest was here.

  The stranger slipped off his calfskin gloves, reached into the breast pocket of his blazer, and took out some papers. As he did so he looked at Marisol with a kindness she felt ripple through her.

  She fumbled for the door handle, got out, and latched the gate behind them. She looked down at the ground, feeling an overwhelming essence from the prairie rise up to her. It was inexplicable and unexpected to sense so strongly the prairie flowers and grasses, dizzying her as she walked toward the stranger standing by the driver’s side of the pickup. When she was within arm’s reach of him, she finally looked up and her eyes fixed on his longer than she would have liked.

  “Hi, I’m Jaylen Maguire... your new neighbor. You must be Marigold? And Pancho? That’s an awful nice-looking horse.” He went to pet Zapata’s head sticking out of the side trailer window.

  “Keep your hands off him,” Pancho growled, looking ahead through the windshield. “What do you mean neighbor?”

  “I’m the new owner of this property.”

  “You’re mistaken about that.”

  “I’ve got the deed right here—bill of sale too.”

  Everything seemed to come in from all sides of her experience and sift through the lovely sound of his voice, which seemed to pour purely into her, redefining in a unique and exhilarating way everything her eyes were seeing, her breathing, her standing there. And in this strange frame of mind—though maybe because she was stunned by the sudden news—she handed the envelope to Jaylen and said, “Here’s the money... for the land.” She noticed he wasn’t wearing a wedding band.

  He looked at her oddly. “I’m not selling it, I bought it.”

  “Get in the truck, Marisol,” Pancho demanded. He glanced at the man with enmity. “Don’t forget to close that gate behind you. You open it—you close it.” He spun his tires, sending up a cloud of dust and gravel in Jaylen’s face. Pancho turned to Marisol. “What the hell’s the matter with you—what, are you mute and deaf now?!”

  She too wondered about her peculiar behavior and didn’t say anything until they parked in front of the house and went in. Marisol threw the envelope on the table in the living room and picked up the phone. Pancho got on the extension. When Adan answered, she cried, “You get our land back! We have the money to buy your share.”

  “I already sold it. I didn’t think for a second you’d be able to come up with the money. How did you get it?”

  Pancho yelled, “Zapata won the race—”

  Adan broke in, “I didn’t know about the race.”

  “You can’t decide on your own—just sell the fucking land— we’re all in this—can’t do that.” Pancho threw the phone down and yelled at Marisol, “Hang up on his ass, we’ll get our land back our way!” Pancho stormed out of the house, slamming the door.

  She stood at the kitchen window listening to Adan apologize for not waiting a little longer, regretful that he didn’t know about the races. As he talked, she watched Pancho. He was under the tractor shed with a big toolbox beside him, and in a fury he started dismantling the hydraulic lifts on the front end of the tractor. Beyond him, dark storm clouds gathered on the horizon. She felt disoriented, fearful. She told Adan she would call him back and hung up.

  After a while, Marisol took out some boxes from her parents’ closet and started sorting their belongings. She could hear the rain outside. It started as a light patter at first and grew into a thunderous drumbeat. Her mind floated back to Jaylen; she felt a deep contradiction in the lingering way he looked at her as if he were some familiar instinct, older than their combined years.

  With each load of clothes that she washed and ironed and folded and then placed into cartons and stacked on the porch for Goodwill, Jaylen’s features surfaced in her mind. They didn’t fade until she finished the clothes and started sifting through her parents’ personal things, which they had kept in shoe-sized cedar boxes with bear and wolf designs on the lids. She had never looked in them. Now she was amazed by the contents.

  The boxes contained each of the children’s umbilical cords, wrapped in sandwich bags. White infant booties each of them wore after birth. Belt buckles. Blue beaded sandhill crane tail feathers. Bolo ties. Silver bracelets. Turquoise rings. Old coins. Necklaces. A red woolen bag filled with arrowheads, a leather pouch filled with rocks shaped like moons, trees, mountain ranges, and other rocks imprinted with fossils. Marriage photos. Eyeglasses. Jeweled pendants and hair clips. Black-and-white snapshots of Adan, Marisol, and Pancho at various stages of growing up. Newspaper clippings of poems and prayers. Old pocketknives and ancient pocket watches. Matilda’s silk headscarves. Guadalupe’s Mexican leather billfolds.

  She heard the screen door slap shut and expected to hear Pancho in the bathroom, but he entered her parents’ room where she was kneeling on the floor, surrounded by the scattered items from the keepsake boxes.

  “We gotta get that asshole out of the mud.”

  She looked up at him, wet, wiping his hands on a rag. Grease and smoke smears smudged his face and clothes.

  “What?”

  “That gringo up the road—he’s stuck in caliche. That brand-new car of his don’t work as well as it does in the city.” He frowned, muttering at the inconvenience, “Sonofabitch!”

  Marisol glanced out the window. “Looks like a gully washer...”

  “Some of the road’ll be washed out,” he said. “I got the tractor tore down. We’ll have to do it with horses before it floods that road away and his car with it. All we need is to get his car floating in our fields...” He grinned at his own joke.

  The downpour was so heavy she could barely see out the back pantry window into the orchard. They pulled on their galoshes, gray raincoats, and cowboy hats. When they got to the gate, Marisol saw that Jaylen’s car was stuck in the middle of the road. Just beyond the gate, the blurry image of Jaylen came running in the mud toward them, soaked to the bone in his suit clothes, coughing and shivering, his head to one side shielding it from the hits of rain.

  Marisol drew up her Appaloosa, holding the reins of a big bay mare. The wind whipped the rain sideways and she snugged her hat on tight. Pancho dismounted Zapata. He got into Jaylen’s new BMW sports coupe, shifted into reverse, and accelerated. Mud spattered everywhere from the rear tires. Pancho gunned it again, trying to rock it back and forth, burying the back tires to the frame. The rain was hard and stinging. Pancho got out, took the reins of the extra horse, and threw them at Jaylen. “Get on her.”

  Pancho tied three ropes to Jaylen’s rear bumper, then noosed the loose ends to the saddle horns on the horses. Jaylen mounted his horse with some trepidation. Pancho knew by looking at him that he’d never been on one before. “Sonofabitch,” he cursed, and spat. He swatted Zapata’s rump and swung around fiercely, facing them. Drenched, he yelled, “We’re pulling it to the side of the field, enough to get a truck through. If we need to, when the rain slows we’ll bring up the tractor when I get it running.”

  Marisol nodded, rain pouring from her hat brim. Pancho motioned Jaylen to guide the horse as he was doing, easing it back step by step until the rope was taut. He and Marisol were on the ends, Jaylen in the middle. The horses strained back, foot by foot, their legs deep in the mud. They were slowly pulling the BMW out of the mire when Jaylen almost fell. He yanked the reins as he was trying to regain his balance and inadvertently forced his horse to whirl left. Instead of grabbing the saddle horn, he lunged one way and pulled back on the reins, causing the horse to rear wildly and spin
again.

  The rope somehow looped around his waist. Now spooked, the horse was hard to control and it stamped violently in a circle, swinging and shaking its ochre-colored mane and head, twisting the rope around Jaylen and drawing it tighter. Jaylen’s face turned red. He had the breath knocked out of him, his eyes bulging as the big bay mare shook him back and forth like a lifeless mannequin on her saddle.

  It was not something Pancho or Marisol expected. The extra, loose length of rope had tangled up around Jaylen’s torso, and as Pancho maneuvered in beside Jaylen and reached out to free the tied end from the saddle horn, Marisol already had her pocket knife out and was about to cut the rope. With a voice louder than the thunder, he yelled, “Don’t you ever cut any rope of mine for this sonofabitch!”

  The reins slipped from Jaylen’s hands, and Marisol held him up, her horse butting his as she grabbed the reins with one hand and with the other slipped the rope off the saddle horn. Jaylen lunged back, groping at the air, and tumbled down into the mud, groaning in pain from his rope-burned flesh. It took them a good half hour to finally get the car out.

  Back at the house an hour later, while at the table having supper, Pancho cleared his throat and asked, “You feel like airing it out?”

  “Airing what? That you enjoyed seeing him almost get seriously hurt?” Marisol said.

  “Listen here, he ain’t no one to me, and yeah, it would have been kind of funny seeing him yowling like a hurt pussycat. Something’s bothering you,” Pancho muttered. “What’s going on?”

  “What’s going on, Pancho, is you better get over this bitterness you have toward people. I’m sick of it.”

  “You leave my bitterness to me, and tell me what’s really going on.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it right now,” she stated flatly, forking her fried potatoes and pinto beans and corn together in a pile and scooping them into her mouth.