Magnolia City (48 page)

Then he came back and apologized for the way his men had treated her. Out of his pack, he offered her some pinole, the parched corn—spiced and sweetened—that he said all his men carried on the trail. A few bites, along with swigs of water from his canteen, drove away Hetty’s thirst. “
Gracias.
I’ll never find my truck in the dark.”

“The big light will come soon.
La luna.
Hold out your wrists.” He poured silver tequila over her abrasions, causing her to gasp from the stinging. He splashed some on her cheek.

“¿Y aquí?”
she asked, pointing at her lips. “I need a drink after what I’ve been through.” After a couple of shots, the trembling inside Hetty grew fainter and fainter, like the aftershocks of an earthquake. She wrapped up in the blanket and waited for her heart to stop racing. “I knew you were alive,” she told him. “I always believed it.”

“Coyotes are hard to catch.”

“
Ay, sí.
But, you used to be a snake. A rather dry one.”

“Nobody calls me that anymore.”

“So I heard, Gus.”

“Not Gus! Gustavo.”

“You’ll always be Seca to me, I’m afraid. It’s funny. I was thinking I was like a coyote tonight, too. The one in the fable with the fox.
¿Lo sabes?
”

“
Claro que sí.
That coyote was stupid.
Oye, gringa,
why did you come here alone?”

“
¿Por qué no?
You always said I was
muy brava
.”

“
Y loca también.
Where are your partners?”

“Odell’s in jail. Mac hasn’t been back here since the San Diego massacre.” She found herself talking a lot about Garret—how his prediction of the East Texas oil field surprised everyone, how his dedication at the drilling site surprised even her. “He worked sixteen hours a day to bring in the well. We’d be rich by now if the damned government hadn’t stepped in.”

“
¡Ay! ¡Los federales!
They are keeping us all poor.”

“So, to answer your question. That’s why I came back here alone. We made an agreement to pay back the interest owners on the well. I need to make some big money fast. I was hoping you’d help me.”

Seca didn’t say anything. He sprinkled some salty worm on the skin between his thumb and forefinger and tossed it into his mouth after a swig of tequila, then sucked on a slice of lime. He looked at her with glazed eyes as he chewed on the fruit.
“¿Cuánto necesitas?”

Hetty held her breath, then mumbled, “Three thousand dollars.”

“How much?”

She spoke up. “Three thousand.”

“And you have . . . ?”

“Three hundred.”

Seca spit the lime out.
“No, no. Es imposible.”

“¿Por qué?”

“How much you get for Mexican liquor in Houston?”

“Good silver tequila? We used to have clients who paid ten dollars a bottle for top grade.”

“Then you will need three hundred bottles.”

“It looked like a long pack train to me.”

“
Oye, gringa,
each bottle of Jose Cuervo is now four pesos. Two American dollars.”

“That’s six hundred dollars. I only have three. You’ll have to give me a discount.”

Seca leaped off the rock.
“¡Ay! ¡Que mujer tan mala!”

“Why? Why are you calling me a bad woman? I’m just trying to pay back a debt of honor.”

“¡Carajo!”
He paced as he cursed, circling her like a wild animal. “There will be no discount. Tequila is not a toy for gringas to play with. Tequila is the heart of Mexico, which is already crushed and roasted. And now you want to crush it again with your greed?”

“I only—”

“Only, only, only!
Ay, mujer
—do you have any idea what it takes to produce a bottle of tequila?”

“No, I guess I don’t.”

“The
jimadores
must work the fields their whole lives. They only have one holiday each year, the feast of the
Virgen
. All day, in the hot, hot sun, they cut out the hearts of the agave plants—the
piñas
weigh three hundred pounds!” He lifted his Stetson up with both hands. “These must be carried to the hacienda when they are baked and crushed before the juices can be fermented. The men have to turn the great stone themselves. It is backbreaking work.” He slammed his hat down on the ground in front of her. “As if that’s not enough, when the juices flow into pits, the men have to jump in naked to work the must. It is their sweat that gives tequila its flavor—
el sudor del hombre
.”

The passion in his voice rendered Hetty mute. She only sat there watching as he picked up his Stetson, blew the dust off, and slung it back onto his head.

“That is why you must never ask for a discount on tequila.
¡Nunca!
”

“
Perdóneme.
I guess I didn’t realize what it’s worth.”

“I should give you back to my men as a toy. You value nothing, Esther de las Ardras, least of all yourself.” He strode away from her in scorn.

As Hetty watched from the rock, the big light Seca had promised her,
la luna,
floated into the eastern sky only to get moored in a drift of mesquite trees. When it finally washed free, its icy light settled upon her like a mist. Even though there were lots of men nearby, she felt completely alone there in the lunar coldness. She’d been shunned by the one friend she thought she could count on here in the desolate brush. She tried to think of something to say, some way to rescue the night. She was good at that. But nothing came to mind that she thought would work. It was useless. She might as well give up and go home.

In the distance, the lone coyote began howling again.

Once away from the fire, the watery moonlight flooded in all around her. Hetty had never seen the brush country glazed with such a silvery sheen, the creek bed rippling with light and shadow as she followed its twists and turns. Such unearthly beauty should have lifted her out of despair, but she was sunk in way too deep. She walked along the cleft of the sandy bottom in the track that would brim with rain in the spring. Her heart felt every bit as dry as the stream. She had driven all the men in her life away. When she’d wrapped Pick up in her wedding shawl, it was as if she were saying, “
I’ve killed my marriage along with my friend. Both are dead to me now, and I must spend the rest of my life alone.
” She had to stop pretending that Garret would come looking for her. It was time to admit the truth. He was gone for good, and she would have to walk back to the truck all by herself through moonlight that was the color of loneliness.

She climbed the embankment, cranked open the door of the Wichita, and brushed shards off the seat. When she went to slide the key into the ignition, her hand emerged into moonlight. She remembered that the Empress stood upon the crescent moon, whispering,
“Let not your heart be disturbed!”
The black thoughts roosting in Hetty’s mind rose like a colony of bats. The air cleared. Her senses sharpened. And there it was. The scent of cumin and chilies emanating from the bag on the floor. She’d forgotten about the tamales.

Hetty found Seca slouched on a straw mat by the fire. She knelt and spread the ten tamales in front of him, their husks yawning open teasingly in the flickering light. She knew what tamales meant to Mexican men, how they were always served at weddings and for festive holidays such as Cinco de Mayo. Opening the corn husk was a ritual, the moist pork stuffing that spilled out a treat no
tequilero
could resist after a long trip through the dry brush. She was right. He picked one up, parted the husk, and began nibbling on the corn masa. Wordlessly, he consumed four of them one after another with a swig of tequila in between. He licked his fingers and handed her the bottle.

“I’m sorry if I seemed greedy and thoughtless before,” she said, “but there’s something I haven’t told you. My husband left me.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Mac . . . ?”

“Sí.”
Hetty couldn’t stop a few tears from trickling down her cheeks. “He’s gone. I’m alone now. He left me owing a lot of money to a lot of people, including my parents. That’s why I came to find you. I don’t know who else to turn to. Isn’t there anything you can do to help me? I’m begging you.”

Seca thought for a moment, then nodded.
“Sí.
You could buy
botas
.”

“¿Botas?”

“Goatskins. Five gallons each. You bottle it yourself.”

“I don’t know how to do that.”

“Your friend, Miguel—he will help you. He always bought
botas.
”

She took a gulp out of the bottle. “How much are they?”

“Forty pesos each. I can give you ten.”

“Could I . . . possibly . . . have twenty,
por favor?
”

Seca snorted. “Why should I do that?”

“You owe me.”

“Why I owe you?”

“Because I made you famous. You have a drink named after you—the Dry Snake. They’re even serving Dry Snakes in Dallas now.”

“¿De veras?”

“Sí.
I was just there this spring and had one. Everyone in Texas knows about Seca. You’re something of a folk hero, thanks to me. That’s why you shouldn’t change your name to Gus.”

“Gustavo!”

“Besides, I’m going to be bringing you more business.” Hetty ferreted a bent cigarette out of her pocket, lit it, and told Seca all about her plans to start a new business called the Kelly Bushings Bootleggers. “My ladyleggers will be coming here every week to pick up supplies.”

“Women? You want me to do business with women? You are
muy mala
.”

Hetty fed him some more tequila, then tried to make him understand why women made better rumrunners than men because of their ability to elude arrest. She could feel her line of gab coming back in spades. “Take New York, for instance,” she said, sending a plume of smoke into the night air, “did you know it’s crawling with ladyleggers making pots of money? They’re almost more popular than the men. I’m going to do the same thing right here in Texas! Houston first, then Dallas.” She made it sound like she knew what she was talking about, even though every word she uttered was taken straight out of the article she’d torn off the front page of the
San Antonio Express
and still carried in her purse.

Seca admitted he found this strange. “In Mexico, we say a woman belongs at home . . . with a broken leg.”

“Charming. I’ll relocate immediately. Look,
amigo,
if you want to do business with Americans, you have to be up to date. Things are changing.”

“More than you know,
gringuita.
” He looked at her mysteriously, then explained how his father—the
patron
of all Tamaulipas, the state that wormed its way along the Rio Grande just south of the brush country of Texas—was positioning himself to become a legitimate importer of mescal, as he saw sentiment turning against the Volstead Act and knew it would only be a matter of time before the law was repealed. His political connections confirmed this.

“So if you’re going to become a—
¿qué dijiste?
—ladylegger,” Seca told Hetty, “you’d better do it
pronto
.”

“That means Odell will be getting out of jail soon,” Hetty realized. “Wait’ll I tell his wife!”

The tequila was working its alchemy in her blood, transmuting the world around her. She lay back on the mat and peered into the sky directly overhead. The moon looked to Hetty like a great glowing pearl whose surface had been scratched. It rose higher, radiantly full.

After midnight, Seca stretched out on his straw mat and invited Hetty to join him under a wool blanket.

“Don’t you think I should have my own?”

“Gustavo only has one.”

“That’s convenient.”

“Conveniente, no. Necesario, sí.”

She climbed in without further comment, groaning as she stretched out her bruised legs. He did unstrap his bandoleer to sleep but kept his gun belt on. As she lay beside him in the moonlight, she caught his wild scent again, that savory mingling of leather and Latin musk.
El sudor del hombre,
what gives tequila its flavor. He had his back to her, his head resting on one arm. She edged a little closer and whispered, “Tell me about the town of Guerrero,” but there was no response. He was fast asleep.

Hetty was startled awake by the blue light of dawn. The moon still swam in the west, reluctant to submerge itself for another day. When she rolled over, stiff and aching, Seca was lying on his side, watching her.

“You can have fifteen
botas,
” he said.

“Seventeen.”

“You are very beautiful,
gringuita
.”

“Then why didn’t you touch me in the night?”

“Because you are still in love with him—that
Mac
.”

“I am?”

“
Por supuesto que sí!
That is why you are here.”

Hetty started to object, then fell silent. She knew he was right. Underneath it all, she was starving for her man, suffering through a famine of love’s needs so deep she would have given herself to Seca last night without a thought. But it was Mac she hungered for, that particular smell of his, his silly cigarette breath, his pleading blue eyes—just some word of where he was and whether he missed her, too. He should have been along with her on this trip. It wasn’t right for her to be here alone with so many unpredictable men. If only she could get the investors paid off, then maybe she could hunt her husband down and persuade him to come back to her.

She heard the other men stirring and pulled the blanket over her head. Seca ducked under with her, and they whispered together there in the pale light. “Tell me about the town of Guerrero.”

“It is very old, and the houses are all built with great stones from the quarry.”

“There’s a quarry?”

“Sí.
At Rio Salado. And a waterfall, too. There are citrus trees that make the whole town smell like orange blossoms in the spring. My father and I go hunting.”