Amigoland (32 page)

Maybe I should have stayed and not come — only you know what you want.

And that was all. No name at the top, no signature at the bottom. As if the last guest in this room had left the message for
the next traveler. He tried to remember their last conversation, if it could actually be called a conversation, with only
one of them eager to talk and the other ready for sleep. If this was about meeting her brother, then fine, he would meet him,
shake his hand, talk to him for a while, whatever made her happy. Because he didn’t want to jump on a bus in the middle of
the night was no reason to leave this way.

He dressed and washed his face, barely taking his usual time before the mirror, and then hurried next door to grab the bag
with his brother’s medicines. Outside the hotel the dim streetlights guided him along the sidewalk that led past the municipal
building and to the taxi stand. Two cars were parked, one behind the other, and he found Isidro sleeping soundly in the driver’s
seat of the first one. The windows were rolled up, with only a tiny crack at the top.

The other driver stepped out of his car with a cigarette in his hand. “Taxi?”

“I arranged yesterday for him to take me,” Don Celestino said. He tapped on the window, but the sleeping man only scrunched
his nose as if a fly were trying to disturb his sleep.

“With this one, you might be here all day,” the young man said. “Let me take you where you need to go.”

“Do you know how to get to a ranchito they call De La Paz?”

The driver blew out a trail of smoke. “How hard can it be?”

“We took a long time to find it yesterday.”

“Only because you went with Isidro. He can get lost going from the front to the backseat.”

Don Celestino glanced at the sleeping man. “I set everything up with him.”

“I can make you a special price,” the young man said. “The half of whatever my friend said he would charge you.”

“That would be good, but he already knows the way.”

The driver didn’t respond at first, then said, “However you want it.”

“Thank you,” Don Celestino said, “but I should go with him.”

“That’s fine.” The young man stamped out what was left of his cigarette. “I was only trying to help.”

“Yes, but thank you for offering.”

The driver nodded as he looked over at the other taxi. Then he reached into his own car and laid on the horn until Isidro
jolted up. “Now you can thank me,” he said.

The sun had risen by the time they reached the outskirts of town. From there they retraced many of the same dirt roads from
the last two days, passing this windmill or crossing that ironwork bridge. At one point the same old man and his grandson
in the mule-driven cart waved to them the same way they had when they first arrived in Linares. A short while later Isidro
stopped and doubled back, shaking his head as if overnight someone had changed the roads on him. Before they could turn left
off the main highway he had to wait for a bus passing in the opposite direction. Don Celestino craned his neck in time to
see the blackened and soot-covered back windows as the bus headed eastbound, in the direction of Ciudad Victoria. He turned
around to the front before this image had completely faded, then a second later twisted around again, but by now it was gone.

“You would be more lost if you had gone with another driver, believe me.”

“No, I wanted to wait for you,” Don Celestino said. “This will only take a few minutes for me to get my brother. And from
there you can take us to the bus station.”

“And your wife?”

For a second he considered ignoring the question altogether. And then he wondered what Socorro might say if she were the one
sitting back here.

“Really, we’re only friends.”

“Friends?” he said, as if he had heard the word before but not used in this particular context.

“She had to leave early,” Don Celestino said, “so she could see her family.”

“To tell you the truth, in my mind I had the two of you married.”

“Maybe one of these days.”

Don Celestino brought his other arm down from the seat back. They were passing the first set of groves, and the workers were
only beginning to pull their ladders from the trucks. He blamed himself for not making more of an effort to stay awake. It
was one thing for him to accidentally fall asleep and another to will himself to fall asleep so he wouldn’t have to talk.
But even if he had stayed awake, he wasn’t sure he had the words to make her understand his hesitation. Less than a year ago
he had promised himself not to remarry, and not because of some loyalty to his deceased wife but simply so he wouldn’t have
to go through the experience of losing someone again. If the right words had come to him last night, he might have told her
that he had resisted getting closer for fear of putting her through the same. Because to meet her family was to get closer
to her, and to tell his family was to say that he was serious about this young woman he had met, otherwise why risk telling
them something that might hurt them? And to be more serious was to get married and to know that this marriage, as wonderful
as it might end up being for both of them, would inevitably end someday. All of this he had done for her.

His logic made less and less sense to him the longer they took to arrive. Did he think he was the only one who understood
what was happening? Wasn’t this the same woman who had seen them loading him into an ambulance with his eyes glazed over and
the oxygen mask covering most of his face? And still she had come to visit him in the hospital later that day. She had met
his brother and seen what their future together might look like if she chose to stay with him, which apparently hadn’t been
much of a choice until earlier this morning. So what exactly was he protecting her from? And what exactly had he convinced
himself she was too young to comprehend? And then he realized that she had already been alone herself, and for much longer
than he probably ever would.

They crossed the iron bridge from yesterday and near the next grove Isidro pulled alongside a truck and waved to a teenage
boy hanging on to the wooden slats that rose from the bed. A second later the boy tossed an orange down and the driver caught
it, then tapped his horn as he drove off. Farther along the road he handed the orange back to his passenger. “For when you
see your lady friend again, a little souvenir from Linares,” he said. “Maybe it will help her to make up her mind about you.”

S
he might not have noticed if not for the wisp of white hair she thought she saw coming from the back window of the taxi. If
it was him, he would have to catch up to her in Ciudad Victoria. And if it wasn’t him, so be it. She had waited a full half
hour at the bus station before going up to the ticket counter.

The driver was pulling over onto the shoulder of the road for another passenger, and he took the opportunity to turn and smile
at Socorro. He had been smiling at her since she boarded the bus alone, the only woman to do so. On the road, he would glance
at her in the mirror from time to time, hoping to catch her looking back. Of all the things she needed right now. To have
pulled herself away from one man who couldn’t see a future with her and now to be pursued by a man whose job it was to be
somewhere else every day.

After lying in bed most of the night, she decided that even if he did wake up, there was little for them to say that wasn’t
by now obvious. So maybe he had done her a great favor by not pretending to feel something that he wouldn’t be able to continue
as time went on. But the bigger favor was helping her decide to collect her things and leave. Because this right now was the
first time she could say that she had been on her own, without Rogelio or her mother or Celestino. And really, when the bus
arrived in Ciudad Victoria, she didn’t have to buy a ticket for the next one headed to Matamoros. She could travel south to
San Luis Potosí or farther to Querétaro or, if she wanted, go along the coast to Tampico. She could go anywhere she wanted,
she didn’t have to be looking back to see if some man was coming for her, she didn’t have to.

T
he old man swished his mug about until the coffee turned to a muddy brown color. He was used to adding cream and Sweet’N Low,
but here they had only evaporated milk and sugar. He supposed it was something he could get used to with time. Certainly there
were more difficult things in this life that a person might have to endure; nobody had to explain this to him. Earlier the
granddaughter had made him some huevos a la mexicana with just enough chiles and spices that he realized he had forgotten
what a real breakfast was supposed to taste like. She wasn’t his granddaughter, he realized, but her name had gotten away
from him again, and in any case, she treated him like he imagined a granddaughter might treat a grandfather. Just yesterday
evening when they had already left the store, it had occurred to her to turn the truck around and go back so she could buy
him a pack of cigarettes, just in case he ran out in the middle of the night. And this morning after his breakfast, she had
brought the coffee to where he was sitting outside, smoking. A few feet away the chickens walked inside their small fenced-in
yard, pecking at the feed she had scattered for them.

Dew still hung from the lowest branches, making it seem as if the tree were as crouched over as the old man who sat beneath
it. This was the first chance Don Fidencio had had to examine the tree without someone talking to him or asking that he make
up stories. The trunk itself was wider than the house it loomed over. It was no wonder they had built it several feet away
and left room for the long horizontal roots that stretched far beyond the base of the tree. He strained to look up past the
first forty feet of the trunk, as the branches became more dense and entangled, eventually blocking out most of the rising
sun and leaving only a narrow passageway to see where the sky opened up.

He looked down when he heard barking coming from somewhere off in the distance. The dogs had met the taxi at the end of the
road and were now growling and yapping at the grille. Carmen finally yelled at them to back away from the doors.

“I hope this isn’t too early,” Don Celestino said over the last of the yelps.

She opened the gate to let them pass. “We were waiting for you since earlier. I made some food, if you would like to come
in.”

“I came only to get my brother and say good-bye,” he told her.

She nodded as she led him to where the old man was sitting on a metal chair with his cane hooked on the armrest. Her grandmother
had opened the side door of the house and was waiting for some help getting into the yard.

“You had a good visit?”

“We talked for a long time, until late in the day,” his brother said.

“You remembered more of the story?”

“Some, but later we discussed other things.”

“Then we have something to talk about in the taxi.” Don Celestino handed him the cane, but his brother only held it between
his legs without moving.

“And the girl?” Don Fidencio asked.

“She left earlier this morning.”

“Without you?”

“Because of her family,” Don Celestino said. “Her brother came home and she wanted to see him. He was only going to be there
a few days.”

“And you let her go, just like that, by herself on the bus?”

“She wanted to,” he said, trying to avoid his brother’s gaze. “It was her idea.”

The old woman and her granddaughter were now standing near them.

Don Celestino reached down to help him get to his feet. “We should get going, eh?”

“You have to go alone.”

“Why, you feel bad?” His brother wasn’t moving from the chair.

“Not because of that,” the old woman said.

“And then?”

“They invited me to stay, to live here in the house.” Don Fidencio poked at the ground with his cane.

Don Celestino tried to smile at the two women before he looked at his brother. “But we have to go back, remember?”

“What I remember is where I have to go if I let you take me back.”

“Maybe Amalia will change her mind, after she sees you were strong enough to make the trip.”

“That’s what I was thinking when we started talking about coming here,” Don Fidencio said. “Then last night they took me into
town so I could use the phone to call her.”

“Knowing that she was just going to blame me?”

“She never mentioned you. All she cared about was that nothing had happened to me. I told her it was my idea to leave, and
now this, what I told you.”

“And she believed you?”

“What else was she going to do? She argued with me like her mother used to, but I told her I had made up my mind. Then she
told me that if I came back I could live with her and her family, that she would talk to you know who.” The old man laughed
to himself. “Suddenly I have so many places to live — everybody wants me for themselves.”

“That’s what you wanted, no? To go live somewhere else?”

“It was, but I can see now it wouldn’t last and they would send me back and this time for good. No, it would be better for
me to just stay here.”

“You talk like this is already decided,” Don Celestino said, then reached for his brother’s arm. “It was nice that they offered
this to you, but the decision isn’t for them to make.”

“If the man wants to stay, tell me who else needs to decide?” the old woman said.

“I only want to do what is best for him, to make sure he’s taken care of.”

“And you know better than he does?”

Don Celestino looked back at his brother, hoping to put an end to this discussion. They would have been halfway to the bus
station by now if he had simply gotten into the taxi. “Can I talk to you over here?”

Then he helped him to stand up from his chair, and together they walked toward the shade. The sun was filtering through the
branches, causing the delicate light to shift from one brother to the other.

“Why are you doing this, Fidencio?”