Magnolia City (21 page)

Once she got used to the piquancy of the stew, she found it delicious, a burning mouthful of
chile ancho
and beef hash, delicately spiced with cumin seeds, garlic, and the leaves of wild marjoram. She finally set aside the wooden spoon and ate it like Miguel did, using the warm tortillas to scoop just the right amount of stew into her mouth. He fetched his guitar to serenade them, singing old ballads about cinnamon flowers, blue doves, and a silver boat.

Once the other customers had left and the candles had begun to dim, Miguel set his instrument aside and confided, “You came for something more than ice,
amigos?
”

“We’re looking for mescal,” Garret said.

“
¿Vino mezcal? Sí
—I can sell you some. How many bottles?”

“Señor Delgado,” Odell spoke up, “I don’t think you understand. We’re not wanting to buy a few bottles from you. We are looking for the source.”

“¿Cómo?”

“La fuente,”
Hetty said.
The spring
.

“Ah,
la fuente.
” He nodded, then shrugged.
“¿Quién sabe?”
He spread his palms. “Mexico.”

Hetty knew he was holding back. She told him their story, all about the stream of goods flowing through The Hammocks that had been dammed up once and for all by the Maceos.

“Of course, we are willing to pay you well for whatever information you have.” Odell reached for his wallet and drew out one of the freshly minted hundred dollar bills he’d brought for just such a purpose.

“¿Quién sabe?”
Miguel shrugged and left the room.

Odell whispered to Hetty fiercely, “Tell him you’re Cora’s niece.”

“All right!” Hetty whispered. She watched the serape. After a few minutes, it lifted and Miguel peered at them from the gloom on the other side.
“Soy la sobrina de Cora,”
she called to him.

His eyes flashed at her out of the darkness, like black pearls. “You are Esther Ardra Allen . . . ?”

“De MacBride,” she said, tipping her head toward Garret.

He rushed back into the room and came over to kiss her hand. “I am honored to meet the niece of Cora Ardra Groos and the daughter of Nella Ardra Allen. Why didn’t you tell Miguel?”

“Has my aunt told you about me and my mother?”

“Sí. Mucho.”
He couldn’t take his eyes off her.

Odell spoke up. “Now perhaps you would be kind enough to . . .”

Miguel began speaking passionately in Spanish, his eyes burning into Hetty as he spoke. His words were for her ears only. He told her how much he loved his friend Cora and that he had waited for years to meet her niece, the lovely young
mestiza
from Houston. Now that she was before him, his heart was full, half filled with light, half with blackness. Cora’s niece brought him joy, he said, because of her great beauty and her pale complexion. Already, he loved her in his heart. So he would send her to the one free state left in Texas—he pointed at himself and at Hetty—“that belongs to
us
. There we have our
patrón—
and there he is for the people.”

Hetty lowered her eyes to break the intensity of his gaze. “There is a
patrón
.”

“Oh really? What’s his name?” Odell asked.

“
Señor
Archer Parr. He is the Duke of Duval.”

Odell’s eyebrows shot up again. “An Anglo?”

“
Sí
—” Miguel pulled the bench out and straddled it. “But I tell you—he is for the people. He has helped us take our land back.”

“Indeed?
¿Dónde?
”

“In the free state of Duval. That is where you must go if you want mescal.”

“I knew it!” Odell slapped the wooden table. “I knew there had to be a pipeline flowing with cactus juice.” He kissed the one hundred dollar bill and slid it across to Miguel. “
Muchas gracias, amigo
. I take it you mean Duval County?”

Miguel nodded, folding the bill into his vest pocket.

“Where in hell is Duval County?” Garret asked.

“Just there. In hell. The brush country south of here. Any particular town,
amigo?
”

“Sí, San Diego afamado.”

“Famous San Diego,” Hetty translated.

“San Diego? We have to drive all the way over there?” Garret asked.

Odell chuckled. “The one in Texas, not California.”

“
San Diego afamado
. . .” Miguel repeated the phrase, this time singing it. “You see, it is a line from one of our ballads. Here—” He clutched his guitar. “I sing it for you. It tells all about
los tequileros
—the tequila trains.”

“It comes in by rail?”

“No, no,
señor.
” Miguel smiled, strumming chords. “Mule trains. One mule can carry eighty bottles.”

“And how many mules travel in a train?”

“
Quién sabe—
twenty, thirty.”

Hetty could almost hear the mechanism inside Odell’s head, counting bottles, as notes came spilling out of Miguel’s guitar, launching him into the wailing rhymes of a border
corrido: “Ya la siembra no da nada.”
“The crops are not productive; there is nothing more to say.” He sang the whole song through in a lisping Spanish, then intoned an English translation for them. It was all about the “proud sons of Guerrero”—who import the only crop that is profitable anymore,
la mejor cosecha,
the one that is
la que dan los barriles,
“given by the barrels.”

The last verse,
Pobrecita de mi madre,
he sang over two or three times, like a refrain, a lament. “Down the bars of this dark prison/ Flow her tears, so sad, so sad.” His sweet tenor voice hovered over the word for tears,
lágrimas,
and his eyes glistened in the candlelight.

Hetty loved the song and made him repeat it several times so she could write the words down. The melody was simple, and the lyrics were easy to remember because of their frequent rhymes.

He stopped singing. Everyone fell quiet for a few moments as another candle sputtered out. It was almost dark in the room. “Remember,” Miguel told them in a low voice, “we Mexicans believe anything south of the Nueces River is still our land. So be careful. And never go into the brush alone. Find your way to the ranch they call
Las Ánimas.
. . .”

“The spirits,” Hetty translated.

When they left the Delgado Cafe, there was only a single votive still burning on the shelf underneath the Madonna. It flickered across her face, and Hetty noticed for the first time that she had dark skin, like an Indian. There was also enough light to see the golden stars glistening on the deep blue mantle that cascaded from her head to her shoulders, eddying around the arms lifted in prayer. Hetty was about to ask Miguel about the Madonna of the Stars when he blew out the candle and whispered
adiós
. Then she felt him clutch her arm in the darkness and murmur in Spanish, “Come back to see Miguel soon—alone. I have more to tell you.”

Hetty pulled her arm out of his grasp and stepped into the street. She wondered what he meant. The sidewalk was so narrow she had to walk behind Garret and Odell. She looked up and caught a glimpse of the Milky Way streaming over San Antonio and thought about the celestial beauty of Mary’s mantle. It was like someone had taken the sky just before dawn, when it’s starting to turn blue but stars are still twinkling, and pulled it rippling down to earth, like a circus tent collapsing. She almost saw it floating above her head, settling down around her as the air escaped from under it. Then she realized that Garret and Odell were talking about her.

“Odell, no!” Garret’s voice was raised. “You’re not taking my wife into the brush country. She’s staying here with Aunt Cora.”

“But you heard what he said, Mac. Anything south of the Nueces is still Mexico. We need someone along who speaks Spanish.”

They were just on the edge of Milam Plaza, waiting to cross.

“Don’t make me do it, Mac,” Hetty shouted after him. “Don’t make me call you a flat tire.”

Garret kept going, dodging Model As.

She ran after him, shouting, “Flat tire! Flat tire!”

He was standing at the car. She came up beside him and looked into his face. His jaw was set.

“You’re not going. That’s all there is to it.”

Garret asked Odell to drop them off at one of the stairways leading down to the water. They strolled along in silence, following the flow of the river that washed through the town like a canal imported from Venice. Garret tried to hold her hand, but she pulled it away, hugging herself with her arms. Stone bridges arched overhead, and trees crowded the lush banks: fig and banana, cypresses spreading ancient roots, and weeping willows trailing their endless leaves into the rippling water. They could hear accordion music from a beer garden up above, its yellow bulbs leaving a long wake of shimmering light.

The riverbank became too overgrown for them to continue, so they had to climb back up to street level and follow Saint Mary’s south to the King William district. Hetty led Garret up a crumbling staircase, through a gate, and into the back of Cora’s stone cottage.

Garret stripped in the dark, and she heard the bedsprings squeak. She lit a candle, then undressed and wrapped herself in a kimono.

She slid into bed and turned her back to him. He moved his body against hers, and she heard something crinkle. He had unfurled the valentine he’d bought her. Its ribbons were tickling her arm.

“Are you my—what was the word?
Amorosa?
”

“I don’t know. I don’t feel like it at the moment.”

He kissed the back of her neck. He let the long valentine stream across her shoulder.

“I thought this was guaranteed to inspire romance. I want my money back.” He pulled her kimono up over her hips and wrapped his legs around hers. She usually found that very sensual, but it wasn’t doing a thing for her tonight.

“It’s not the card. It’s you. You’re being such a bore.”

He kissed her neck again and started that sexy whispering in her ear that he liked to do.
Whispering so no one can hear me.
“I can’t take you into the brush, baby,” he breathed. “Everything’s got thorns. They’ve got scorpions thick as ants.”

She turned and gave him a long kiss with her tongue. He tried to climb on top of her, but she kept holding him down. “Remember the time you took me out to the sandbar and I was so scared?”

“Mm-hmmm.” He kept trying to kiss her again.

“I felt safe as long as I was sitting on your lap. As long as I didn’t have to touch the bottom. That’s what this is like for me, Garret.” It was true. She pictured them driving across the prairie until they came to the shore of the brush. Everything would crackle and hiss around them. An ocean without water, dry and fossilized. The chaparral was the coral; the scorpions were the crabs. But none of it would wound her as long as he lifted her up. She’d be like the picture she’d glimpsed today of Mary standing on the crescent moon, above it all. She would wrap herself in an ultramarine mantle glittering with golden stars, and nothing would harm her because she would have the protection of the sky. The sky was male—Nella had told her that once, long ago. It was the earth that was a woman.

He was trying to get his arms around her. She knew if he succeeded she was lost. She pinned them to the bed, straddling him. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Yes, yes. Okay,” he whispered, grinding his hips.

“So you’ll take me? Promise?”

“Yes, I mean it.” He rose on his elbows. “We’ll drink and fornicate our way to hell and back. Now let me up.”

“Oh no, you don’t.” She shoved him back down. “Just lie back,
señor,
” she said, peeling the kimono away from her hardening nipples. “
Mamacita’s
got
chile
in her veins tonight.”

A
s they headed south down Route 281 the next day, the river gardens of San Antonio gave way to gray-green hills of brush. Hetty looked through the dusty windows and watched the terrain whipping by: Everything looked as if it had been sprinkled with ashes. Stretching out luxuriously on the soft leather seats, she lowered the window to get a little air. She was not only hungover, but her body was still languorous from all the lovemaking last night. Cora had been right, that back bedroom was the most romantic. She fell into a trance of happiness until the pavement ran out, then every rut Garret rattled over made her head throb a little more. Odell drowsed beside her. To distance herself from his snoring, she hummed the
corrido
Miguel had taught her.

Places drifted by in the haze: Pleasanton, Campbellton, Three Rivers. South of the Nueces River, the Lincoln rolled out onto the Gulf Prairies, as bald and flat as a tortilla. It looked like a steamroller had come along and leveled the land all around. The road ahead seemed endless.
What the hell?
Hetty thought, but didn’t say anything.

When they reached Alice, Texas, Garret turned right on Route 96. They headed west for a quarter of an hour—back into the brush. Hetty watched for some kind of sign. Currents of heat blew past like sheets rippling on a clothesline. Mirages of mesquite trees began to appear through the shimmering air. Chaparral arose like patches of fog. When Hetty first spotted San Diego up ahead, she wasn’t sure it was real. The twin towers of the Catholic church swam into view. Palm trees rustled overhead.

Garret chuckled. “Look at this godforsaken place.”

“My dear fellow.” Odell shook himself awake. “We fought a war to wrest this land away from Mexico.”

“Yeah? Well, maybe it’s time to fight another one and make them take it back.”

As Garret drove down one of the avenues, dodging the chickens that strutted freely everywhere, Hetty started to wonder if he was right. She peered out at the buildings they passed: a brick courthouse, a wooden shack called Rodriguez Groc with an awning that had rotted away, a building made from some kind of coarse white block. She was wondering where the stone came from, when Odell read her thoughts.

“That building? It’s constructed out of caliche,” he said. “A sedimentary rock. You find great encrustations of it here in these arid climes.”

They had crept their way down to the foot of Texas, grown dry and callused from constant exposure to the sun.

A chicken fluttered up in front of the car, screeching at Garret. He ground to a stop. “We’re nowhere,” he muttered.

Hetty looked out the window. And there were the wild dogs. “No, we’re in the right place. See if there’s a hotel.”

Garret turned up St. Peter’s Avenue and slid to a stop in front of a two-story frame building laced with a veranda.
M
ARTINET
H
OUSE
,
the sign read. Hetty followed Garret through the doors in case they didn’t speak English. But the clerk behind the counter was a burly Anglo man. He took one look at Garret’s slicked-down hair and said, “Second road to your left, o’er the creek, three miles south. Y’all come to the gates of a ranch. . . .”

Garret just stared at him.

“How’d you know?” Hetty asked.

The man smirked at her. “Lady, I can smell that brilliantine a mile away.”

Once they crossed a creek, the brush engulfed them. The narrow road must have been hacked out with machetes, because on both sides rose impenetrable walls of mesquite trees twisting over the brittle branches of chaparral. Occasionally, a Spanish dagger plant cut through or a pasture opened up. There Hetty saw a windmill turning listlessly or an old cow stretching its neck to reach the beans on the topmost branches of the trees—the only things that hadn’t shriveled up in what had obviously been a long dry spell. They were whole colonies of
nopalitos
—prickly pear cacti with their flat round leaves studded with thorns.

Hetty sang the
corrido
to cover the itch of anxiety. She was certain they’d driven farther than three miles and were lost out here where everything had thorns. Were they being set up for an ambush? She was about to warn her husband to turn around when they came to an opening in the brush: a rough mesquite fence, a lane that led straight off to the right. Garret slowed to a stop.

“They wouldn’t advertise themselves, of course.” Odell smacked his lips.

Garret nosed the Lincoln into the narrow caliche lane, muttering that he wouldn’t be able to get the long car turned around. Odell egged him on, and Hetty remained silent, in spite of the doubts she felt looking out at the desolate landscape. Much to her relief, the undergrowth rushed back, and they came out into the
placita,
the “little plaza” that surrounded a South Texas ranch like a moat. In its midst spread the structures she’d been hoping for: barns, loading pens, a great wooden wheel of a windmill turning above the squat rock ranch house. Hetty’s faith in her dreams was restored, and she felt an odd sense of connection to the place. She could even see a barren beauty in
la broza,
the underbrush so ashen and wild all around them.

Then they spotted the cars.

Garret whistled. “Look at those wagons!”

On the dry bones of the clearing, a ring of automobiles sparkled like a chrome necklace in the bright sun. Hetty recognized a white Cadillac V8 and a long black Bugatti, but had never seen some of the other exotics.

“There’s a brand-new Duesenberg,” Garret said.

“You think it’s a ’28?” Odell asked.

“Looks like it to me.”

“What’s that one?” Hetty asked, pointing to a luscious model up ahead that was the color of cream.

“That, my dear, is a Hispano-Suiza,” Odell said. “Look at the license plate.” It was from Oklahoma.

In the shade sat the drivers of these glorious cars, men with their pin-striped vests unbuttoned and their white shirtsleeves rolled up. They stopped their poker game and eyed the newcomers suspiciously. Hetty saw what the fellow back at the hotel had meant: Many of them wore their hair like Garret, sheik-style. But something else they wore brought her anxiety rushing back: shoulder holsters.

Garret slowed to a stop in front of the car from Oklahoma. Hetty leaned forward. “I wouldn’t go any farther if I were you.”

“Take it slow.” Odell motioned him forward.

Garret eased the Lincoln toward the ranch house. Through the dusty windshield, Hetty spotted an Anglo hunched in a chair under the tin roof of the porch, smoking. Only his dusty boots stretched out into the sun. Over by the loading pens, a couple of Mexican ranch hands were stooping over a rectangular pit in the ground, throwing mesquite logs onto hot coals. The man on the porch watched them warily through trails of smoke. Then he came over.

“Is this
Las Ánimas?
” Garret switched off the engine.

“Who wants to know?” He leaned into the window and looked them over.

“Mr. MacBride. And this is my partner, Mr. Weems.”

The eyes under the Stetson spotted Hetty in the back. “Who’s the woman?”

“Mrs. MacBride.”

“You brung your wife here?”

“We’re looking for
Las Ánimas
. Are we in the right place?”

The man straightened up and tipped his hat at Hetty. Holsters dangled off both hips. “Miss.”

Hetty sat on the edge of the backseat. “Mr.—?”

“I’m the foreman, Jeremiah.”

“Looks like you’re expecting a pack train,” Garret said, gesturing to the other cars.

“This here’s a ranch, Mister. You want cows. We got cows.” Jeremiah dropped his fuming butt and bruised it with his boot. “Now if y’all excuse me,” he said, tipping his hat at Hetty again. “I’d get her out of here if I was you.” He walked back to the porch.

“You heard him,” Hetty said. “Take me to the hotel.”

Brandishing his cane, Odell opened his car door. “Nobody intimidates Odell Weems.” He followed the man. Garret hustled after him, leaving Hetty abandoned in the passenger compartment of the Lincoln. She panicked for a moment, then reminded herself,
I’m the one who wanted to come here. Take heart!
She sucked in a deep breath and opened the car door. She made her way across the rocky ground and up the worn steps of the ranch house.

“As a matter of fact, Jeremiah,” Odell was saying, “we’re more interested in mules. We were told you import mules from Mexico.”

The man squinted into the sun. “Oh, yeah? Who told y’all that?”

“A certain Señor Delgado of San Antonio. I think you know him. He runs an ice house on Haymarket Square.”

“You mean Miguel? Bowler head?
He
sent you?”

“With his personal recommendation,” Odell said. “He gave us some delightful samples of... uh, what shall I call it? Donkey piss?”

This made Jeremiah chuckle. “Whoa, shit. If Miguel sent you . . .”

“And, of course, we are perfectly willing to contribute a little”—Odell rubbed his thumb and forefinger together—“
mordida,
as the Mexicans say.”

Hetty jumped. She thought she’d felt something tickling the toes that peeked out of her white summer sandals. “I’m afraid of scorpions.” She smiled at Jeremiah.

“I imagine they’re asleep now, ma’am. You don’t need to pay them no mind. Just turn your shoes upside down before you put them on in the morning.”

“Is it true you have rattlesnakes six feet long?”

“Tall.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Six feet tall.
El Víbora Seca,
to be real exact.”

The name caught Hetty’s attention. “The dry snake,” she translated.

“He’s bringing them mules you’re so interested in. You don’t want to tangle with him, though. He’d just as soon eat y’all for dinner tonight. Got a taste for barbecued Anglo, which he acquired at the age of fourteen fighting in the Mexicans’ civil war. His idea of fun is to bury you up to your neck then trample your head with his horse.”

“Charming,” Hetty said. “When can we look forward to meeting this person?”

“
Quién sabe
. Smugglers are like your scorpions, ma’am; they only come out at night. Some time after dusk, you’ll see them—riding up that dry creek. But I wouldn’t expect much. See Baldy over there? The one that never takes his coat off no matter how hot it gets? He’s come all the way from Kansas. I’ll tell you one thing—he ain’t leaving here without enough drink to make the trip worthwhile. He and his men alone own four of these fancy cars. And they all got guns.”

Odell and Garret exchanged glances. Garret cocked his head impatiently toward the car. “Thank you kindly, sir,” Odell said, bowing. “I’m sure we’ll be meeting again.”

Rather than take their chances, Odell urged Garret to drive out into the brush and head off the pack train. Hetty insisted on going with them. As the car creaked along the ranch roads a few hours later, she kept busy in the backseat. New luster glimmered in her dark eyes thanks to the right touches of eye shadow and mascara. She crowned them with a cloche that completely swallowed up her hair in cool, white felt. She had thrown on long earrings and lots of beads and unpacked the wedding shawl with its deep antique fringe.

Garret glanced at her in the rearview mirror. “Aren’t you a little overdressed for a trip into the brush?”

Hetty just smiled at him and pulled the
rebozo
around her shoulders. She might have to do a little snake charming of her own tonight.

Garret found a narrow dirt road that edged along the bed of the arroyo. They followed it for several miles, losing the creek then finding it again, passing through sandy mesquite flats and low gravel hills. Tree branches slapped into the car, bringing shadows with them. Something howled in the distance. Hetty glanced back to be sure no cars were following them. She rolled up her window and gathered the shawl about her shoulders. She could see why Miguel had warned them: “Never go into the brush alone.”

Odell was riding up front, keeping an eye out for the creek, while Garret gassed his way slowly over the gullies that had washed out of the road. But neither foresaw what happened next. From the backseat, Hetty saw the nose of the car rise up, the hood ornament—a leaping greyhound—lifting into the air as they rose over a gravel embankment, then dipped down a slope into the creek bed itself. Directly in front of them were mules, gray as dusk and heavily loaded, trudging along and hardly noticing the car motor throttling down upon them. Garret braked, and the Lincoln slid sideways to a stop in the sand. Hetty didn’t wait to be told to duck down, but fell to the floor immediately, making sure the window was open into the driver’s compartment.

“Get down,” Garret whispered.

“I am down, you idiot. What’s happening?”

“They’re riding up—pointing rifles at us.”

“Let me handle this,” Odell said, clearing his throat. He climbed out of the car, shouting,
“Amigos, amigos.”
Then Garret’s door opened, too.

Someone shrieked Spanish so fast she couldn’t follow it, bawling the same phrase over and over. She rose on her knees and peered cautiously over the top of the seat. In the fading light, Garret and Odell were nowhere to be seen, but three Mexicans mounted on horseback pointed 30-30 rifles at the ground in front of the car. Shouts ricocheted up and down the mule train, which had come to a complete stop. They were calling for the
jefe,
the boss. That would be
El Víbora Seca.
She recalled the Virgin of the Stars she’d seen last night at the Delgado Cafe and found a prayer forming on her lips.