The Chili Queen (3 page)

“And how big are your chickens?” Emma asked.

Addie frowned. “They’re the size of chickens, same as any place. Don’t you know that?” She wondered if Emma would think her nosy if she asked about the bank again, but she didn’t care. She considered other people’s money her business. “You got money in the bank, do you?”

Emma didn’t seem to mind the question. “John does. I don’t have a pin. I suppose you heard what he said, that it’s all his money.”

“Most times that’s the way of it, leastways with man and wife, but you being brother and sister, I thought you might own something yourself.”

Emma turned the stitching right side up and smoothed it with her hand, then she examined the corner where three pieces came together. One was off just a fraction of an inch, and she pulled out the thread. Then she set the quilting in her lap and leaned back and closed her eyes, pressing her fingers to them. Addie stared at her. She’d never before spent this much time with a good Christian woman. Her mother was a Bible reader, but Addie had decided a long time back that she hadn’t been much of a Christian if she’d let her husband have his way with her own daughter. It was pie-crust religion, all crust and no filling.

“Half is mine. Half is rightly mine,” Emma said, her eyes still closed. “Father meant for the farm and the land—we have a good deal of it—to go to both of us. He trusted me. He said I had a better head for investment than John, who is too greedy for his own good. But Father didn’t think so highly of my ability to attract an acceptable husband, and he feared I’d marry a man who was after the money. So he left everything to John, with the understanding John would share with me. Of course, John didn’t, and there was nothing I could do because Father hadn’t put it in writing. It’s not that I have been hard used. I don’t want for anything, but John begrudges spending money on me. John’s stingy, except when it comes to spending money to make more money, but that’s greed, not good investment. The thing of it is, John doesn’t believe he’s cheated me. He thinks he has treated me fairly. You heard him: He even wants me to look for a New Mexico investment for him.”

Emma paused, but Addie didn’t say anything, hoping the woman would continue, and she did. There was a catch in Emma’s voice when she said, “To tell you the truth, I think John’s glad to see me go. Now he can do as he pleases with the inheritance and not have me there to reproach him. Well, I’m glad to be gone, too. We never had much use for each other, and toward the end, we came mighty close to hate. He has ten thousand dollars in the bank, and half is rightly mine, all of it, really, for John has the farm, too.” She gave a dry laugh. “All I got out of it was the makings for two bonnets and a one-way ticket to Nalgitas.”

Emma was indeed foolish in the ways of the world and much too talky. Addie leaned close to her and said, “You ought’n to tell people things like that. There’s men who’d kill you for less.”

“Well, it’s not what I’ve got that I’m talking about. It’s what I haven’t got, so it doesn’t matter.”

“Still, I wouldn’t tell it about in Nalgitas. There are are bad men there. Buck Sorrell for one.”

Emma opened her eyes wide. “Oh!”

“Well, not anymore,” Addie admitted. “But there are others. Ever heard of Butch Scanga?”

Emma sat up straight.

“And Ned Partner?”

“Ned who?” Emma asked.

“Partner. Ned Partner.”

Emma shook her head. “I guess not. Is he anybody?”

“Anybody?” Addie snorted. “Ned Partner’s the smartest outlaw in New Mexico is all. He robbed a bank in Santa Fe of five thousand dollars, they say, and the posse went after him with dogs. Those dogs, they picked up a scent, and they followed it to a line shack. They shoved in the door and commenced to howl in the worst way. The sheriff and his deputies drew their guns and surrounded the place and called out to Ned to surrender. When there wasn’t any answer, they shot their guns into the place, then ran up close and looked inside. But all they found was those dogs fighting over the leavings in a scrap bucket. Ned Partner wasn’t there, and the bank never got the five thousand dollars back. I guess Ned made fools of them. Everybody in New Mexico talks about it.” Addie shook with laughter, then daubed at her eyes with the handkerchief. “Oh, he’s the best there is, I tell you.”

“He got away with five thousand dollars?”

Addie started to nod, then stopped. She’d become as loose with her talk as Emma. “It might have been four thousand or maybe two thousand. Maybe there wasn’t any money in the bank at all. How would I know?” She shrugged and waved her hand, dismissing the subject of Ned Partner. “There’s outlaws all over New Mexico and Colorado and Arizona, too. Why, some of ’em are women. Did you know that?”

Emma looked alarmed.

Addie chuckled. She was enjoying herself. “There’s Ma Sarpy, only she’s in the Breckenridge jail up in Colorado, and Cross-Eyed Mary Foster, and Little Bit, and Anna Pink.” The last three actually were prostitutes since Addie couldn’t think of any more female outlaws. “I can’t remember every and all of them.”

“Why, that’s so—depraved,” Emma said. She put her hand to her throat and fingered a brooch pinned to her collar.

Addie felt a twinge of guilt at having alarmed Emma and said, “Oh, I shouldn’t worry if I was you. I never personally saw a woman outlaw in Nalgitas, and the men, when they come into town, they keep to the saloons and hook—” She stopped, searching for a better word than
hookhouse.

“Other dens of iniquity,” Emma finished for her. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to see an outlaw, but I wouldn’t care to be acquainted with one.” She threaded her needle and picked up the sewing in her lap. “Would you?”

Addie cast a sideways glance at Emma, who was restitching the plucked-out seam and didn’t look up. “I would like a bath,” Addie said. “My bones need easing. The first thing I’ll do when I get home is tell the servant woman to heat water on the cookstove and fill up my bathtub.” She leaned back in the seat, thinking about lying in her tin tub filled with hot water.

Emma seemed surprised that there were servants in New Mexico.

“Oh, I’ve got just one. Tomorrow, when I get home, I’ll have her to cook me up a big beefsteak and bake a custard pie.”

Emma said a custard pie sounded mightily good, then reached for her jacket and opened the little watch pinned to it. “It’s past suppertime. When does the dinner car open for business?”

Addie snorted and told Emma there wasn’t any dinner car on the train. Passengers brought their own or bought from the train butcher. “But it looks like you brought yours with you.” Addie pointed to the hamper and restrained herself from licking her lips.

“Oh, that’s not supper,” Emma laughed. “Those are my cinnamon-rose starts. I was known all over the county for my cinnamon roses.” She lifted the lid and showed Addie the wilted clippings wrapped in damp rags and newspaper. Then Emma offered to give her one, since Addie had been so friendly.

“Oh no. Thanks to you anyway,” Addie said. “Land in Nalgitas is so poor it won’t sprout peas.”

Emma insisted and even offered to plant it for her.

Addie waved her hand. “I’m not much at tending things.”

Emma put away the clipping and asked if the train stopped for supper, then.

“Where would we stop in the middle of Kansas?”

“Well, we have to eat something. I was so nervous about missing the train that I could not eat a morsel from the time I got out of bed this morning. I surely would like fried chicken and gravy or maybe a chop. And a slice of peach pie. Now that’s eating.”

“Go ’way! It makes me hungry just to hear you talk about it,” said Addie. “You won’t find any of that here. You’ll have to make do with what you can buy, and you can’t be too particular about it. The food’ll keep you from starving is about all I can say for it. I guess I could see what he’s got.” She straightened her dress and stood up, as Emma turned aside so that Addie could squeeze past her. “I feel the need for some air anyway.”

Emma returned to her sewing, as Addie moved up the aisle, her silk skirt rustling. A man got up and followed her out of the car. He returned in a minute, his face red. After a while, Addie came back, giving the man a contemptuous glance as she passed him. She had made up her mind to act the lady for the rest of the trip and didn’t welcome the advances of a traveling man. Addie handed Emma a pork sandwich wrapped in newspaper and a piece of gray cake, saying supper was her treat. The two women chewed silently until Emma gave up and wrapped the remains of her sandwich with the cake and put it under her seat.

“It’s not much, is it?” Addie asked. “I’ll tell you what I’d like is a nice bowl of chili.”

“Chili?” Emma asked. “It’s too hot for chili.”

“Not San Antonio chili, not the chili they sell from the stands in the Plaza de Armas. There’s nothing in the world that satisfies so good. If you’d ever had a bowl of that, you wouldn’t say no.”

Addie finished the sandwich and turned away from Emma to stare out the window at the sky, which was ruffled with pink and black and purple. The sky reminded her of San Antonio, too, the soft darkening evenings when the scents of coffee and chocolate, chili and sizzling fat filled the air. Addie had loved the peppery smell of the chili as she scooped the beans and meat and gravy into dishes and handed them to her customers. Some of the men refused to buy from any other vendor, giving their business only to her. Other chili queens worked there, too, selling tamales and enchiladas, tacos, menudo, and chili, but Addie was the favorite and best. Her customers stood shyly under the trees, smoking cornshuck cigarettes as they watched her work in the smoky lantern light, or sat on benches at plank tables, staring boldly at her as they ate. Sometimes they brushed their hands against her big breasts as they took the bowls or touched the ribbons in her hair. White men were rough with her, as though they were entitled to rub against her, but the others, the men whose skin was the dusky color of the night itself, had hands that were soft and gentle. Their touch made Addie’s insides feel warm and liquid, like lard on a hot stove. They were generous, those brown and black men, handing her dimes and quarters and sometimes even bills and never asking for change.

She loved the life of a chili queen and considered herself fortunate that one of the vendors had employed her, since the girls were almost always Mexicans. She could have stayed there forever, but a gambler who saw how quick she was with her hands taught her card tricks and told her she could make as much in a day as a chili queen did in a month. She was ambitious, so she went with him. The two had worked the sleight-of-hand games together, until he’d left her for another woman. But he had taught her well, and she could make the pass, force a card, palm, ruffle, and slip the cards. She could make a card vanish from the table and be found in a man’s pocket or under his handkerchief or hat. There was little she couldn’t do with a deck of cards, until that night she was found out and beaten.

When she healed, she gave up card games and turned out, walking the streets by herself and picking up men. After her experience with the gambler who had clubbed her, she was a little scared of men, however, so she accepted the protection of a fancy man. But he was the worst man there was for taking her money, and when she held back, he threw her out, and she drifted through Texas and into New Mexico. She worked at houses then, because even though the madams took half her earnings, Addie felt safe. She liked Nalgitas right off because it was filled with miners and cowboys and railroad workers, few of them with wives, and they were generous. When the madam she worked for decided to move on, Addie bought the house. She’d run it for eight years.

That was too long, Addie thought, staring out into the darkness. It was time for her, too, to move on, maybe go back to San Antonio, perhaps even get married. She could buy a stand and hire girls to work for her, then expand into the other plazas. She’d serve first-rate chili, all beef, no pigeons or dogs or horse meat. Perhaps she’d even open a restaurant and become the queen of the chili queens. That was her dream, anyway, but it would take money. All of Addie’s money was in The Chili Queen, and where was a buyer for a whorehouse in Nalgitas?

The train rounded a curve, and Addie made out a horse beside the tracks—a black horse. She shuddered as she leaned against the window and watched the animal fade into the darkness. She’d been uneasy around black horses ever since a chili queen in San Antonio had sworn to her that seeing a black horse meant death.

When Addie turned away from the window, Emma was still sewing, squinting in the dim glow from the kerosene lamps on the ceiling of the car. “You’ll waste your eyes. You’ll go blind as a mole,” Addie told her.

Emma took a few more stitches then pulled the needle through the fabric and straightened the seam. She anchored the needle in her sewing and put it away in her bag. “Sewing calms me. I guess I’ve quilted a hundred miles of thread in my life and could quilt another mile or two before we reach Nalgitas.”

“You don’t look nervous,” Addie told her. In fact, Emma was calmer than Addie. Her back was straight and her face serene. Addie curled up against the window, and when she awoke several hours later, Emma looked as if she hadn’t moved. She sat bolt upright with her hands folded in her lap, as she stared out the window into the darkness. Addie reached over and patted her hand and muttered, “You might could sleep. I never saw a thing that was improved by worrying about it.” Emma turned to her and nodded once, then looked out the window again. Addie didn’t know if Emma followed her advice, because she was looking out at the countryside when Addie woke up in the morning. The train was at a standstill.

“Breakdown,” Emma told her. “We’ve been here”—she opened the watch pinned to the jacket she had put back on to ward off the prairie cold and peered at it—“two hours and twenty-seven minutes.”

“Oh, hell-damn!” Addie said, then glanced at Emma to see if she’d heard, but Emma was watching a workman walk down the track, swinging his lunch bucket.

“I wanted a bath and a good supper before I opened up tonight. If this train doesn’t hurry, I won’t have time for even a quick wash,” Addie complained. She straightened up and smoothed the golden dress, rubbing a soot stain on her satin sleeve where it had brushed against the window. The stain turned blacker. “I should have worn black. Who cares if I look like a farmer?”