Magnolia City (22 page)

Then she heard hooves, galloping fast, and a huge black horse rose out of the creek. She remembered what Jeremiah had told them about the man on its back, how he liked trampling people underfoot. He circled the two bodies in silence, armored with the rugged gear of the
vaquero:
chaps laced with a bramble of scratches from the thorny brush, a bandoleer of bullets slung across his chest, and a leather Stetson cocked over his black eyes. Hetty could hear a faint
amigos
rising up from Odell. They obviously needed an interpreter.

She opened the car door and snaked out a ghostly leg, smooth and white with its silk stocking. The rest of her followed and floated up out of the blue dusk like an apparition, white from head to toe, dripping with fringes and jewels, her eyes deep and beguiling. The
tequileros
peered at her stupefied, the barrels of their rifles dropping slowly through the air. Seca’s horse backed up a few steps.

“For God’s sake, stay in the car,” Garret whispered fiercely.

But she ignored him, stepping out and gathering the blue light around her as she decided what to say. Hetty draped the
rebozo
around her shoulders so they would know she was a married woman. What rose to her lips were phrases from the song she’d learned last night from Miguel. She reached into her purse and pulled out the lyrics that she’d written down. With her rich contralto voice, at first softly, then resoundingly as the Spanish couplets poured back into her memory and out through her throat, she began to sing.
“Ya la siembra no da nada . . .”

As she sang, Seca leaped off his horse and threw the reins to one of his men. He strode over, stepping across the bodies stretched out on the ground. She heard something jiggling as he walked and looked down—he had snake rattles hanging from his gun belt. What Jeremiah had said about his height was true: He was tall for a Mexican, a good six feet and muscular. She wasn’t surprised at the way his face looked as it swam into focus in the twilight—sun-bronzed, scarred, with a virile swag of whiskers where he hadn’t shaved in days.

“¡Ya basta!”
he shouted to silence her. “This song is a joke!”
Of course he would speak English,
Hetty thought.
He’s a borderlander
.

“It was taught to me by Miguel Delgado de San Antonio.”

“Where I come from, women do not sing such songs.”

“But where I come from, they do,” she answered. “Why is it a joke?”

“The three men this song was written about? They were trying to smuggle three bottles of tequila across Rio Bravo. They were killed!
¡Por tres botellas de tequila!
”

“¡Jejeje!”
His men laughed.

Hetty started talking, sometimes in English, sometimes in Spanish. She thanked the bandit for opening her eyes to the humor in the song, but said that it should really have been written about
El Víbora Seca
. He’s the one whose fame should be sung about. Only Seca and his men were brave enough to bring the mescal across the river, and that he is well named, for Seca is indeed like a snake that can slither his way through the underbrush and never be found.

The bandit’s eyes bored into her from under the leather Stetson. “Who is now crawling on his belly?” He snapped his fingers, and three rifles were lifted back into the air, pointing at the bodies on the ground. “I walk into Texas a free man, and I leave Texas a free man. I am Seca de Guerrero!”

Hetty held her breath. She felt as if she were standing on an eroding cliff and had to quickly find her footing. Those men would pump her husband full of bullets without blinking a dark brown beady eye. She began trembling but knew it would be fatal to show her fear to a man like Seca—it was like staring down a wild animal. She stopped holding her breath and let it fall, deep into her throat where it rose with her voice: “And I am Esther from the family of Ardras who also walked into Texas free! My
abuela,
Liliana Ardra Herrera, came to San Antonio from Guerrero many years ago.”

“You are an Ardra?”

“Sí.
Do you know the Ardra family?”

“Sí, como no.
Everyone in Guerrero knows of the Ardra family.” He squinted at her with new interest.

“We are a very close-knit clan,” Hetty boasted. It was a lie. She had never actually met any of her ancestors from Mexico, but Seca didn’t have to know that. “
Mi tía,
Cora Ardra, sent me to Miguel Delgado, who sent me to you. My husband and I have come to bring glory to Seca. We have traveled all the way from Houston to find you. The people do not know you there; they have not been touched by the god Tepoztecatl. Doesn’t Seca want to be the one who sends the famous brandy of Mexico to los Houstonians?” She poured on more Spanish
adulación
until he stopped circling her, and his growls turned into grunts. She could see a smile playing over his face in the dim light. His eyes melted a little. “But if Seca gives all the mescal to the men from Kansas, there will be none for us to take to the people of Houston. They are very thirsty.”

He motioned to the men to lower their rifles. He walked back to his horse and mounted, gripping the reins tightly, and turning the horse to glance at the mule train then back at her.
“Tres,”
he said, pointing at three mules. “Next time, four.”

His horse stepped backward, and he disappeared into the darkness.

Hetty sat on a large outcropping of caliche, her feet drawn up from the ground below. Jeremiah had invited them to stay for the barbecue. She knew the flames would keep animals away; she hoped it had the same effect on insects. Darkness had fallen, and that was when the scorpions came out of hiding. She heard a rustling and fancied it was their upraised tails brushing past leaves.

But it was just the two ranch hands coming to turn the thick steaks over and rub more salt and coarse pepper into the brisket. Then the wind shifted, and she caught a whiff of mesquite burning and the succulent sizzling of meat dripping down onto it. She looked around, feeling oddly exposed yet privileged. Garret wasn’t too far away. He and Odell had joined a gaslit poker game over at one of the parked cars.

Jeremiah came up to check the progress of the food, his face aglow with orange light. He smiled at Hetty. “Hungry?”

“Starved. Can we eat soon?”

“Yes’m, I believe so.” He muttered something in Spanish to the Mexican hands. They went to the other end of the pit and raked dirt off a metal sheet, yanked it back, then picked up shovels and began digging five large round objects out of the coals.

“What are those?” Hetty asked.

“
Barbacoa
. Baked cow heads. For the Mexicans. Want to try some?”

“No thanks. I’ll save myself for the bull’s testicles.”

Jeremiah broke into a grin. “You do that, ma’am. Just don’t take any eyes. Seca gets all of them.”

Maybe it was the dry air or maybe the aura of menace that hung over the camp making every sense crackle with alertness, but when Hetty was served some of the brisket with a slice of raw onion, a tortilla, and a jalapeño pepper, she swore it was the best food she ever had. She sat there on the rock, her senses adrift, when she noticed someone watching her from the
tequilero
camp beyond the mesquite flames. The horses and mules were all entrenched on the other side of the trough where the exchange of goods had taken place. She knew the eyes instantly, shadowed as they were by the brim of the leather Stetson. Bullets gleamed like war medals in the bandoleer strapped across his chest. She wondered if he slept with it on.

Seca was watching her with a dark glitter in his eyes, and she kept looking away, hoping he’d do the same. But every time she looked back, his eyes were there, mesquite eyes mysterious and full of flames. Then he smiled at her, and she found herself fascinated. What kind of man became a
contrabandista?
What did it take to risk your life daily carrying mescal across the Rio Grande and through the brush to
Las Ánimas?
Only a
norteño
was fearless enough to do something like that, the kind of man cut from rawhide and toughened by living on Mexico’s northern frontier. She’d heard about such men all her life. Nella said they were different from other Mexicans—they became outlaws like Pancho Villa. And now here was one of these wild
fronterizos
in the flesh, stalking Hetty as she sat near the fire. She felt her blood stir and stole a glance in his direction. He was walking toward her, fixing her with those eyes again. She panicked and looked for her husband, but he was nowhere to be seen.

“¿Se le ofrece un tequila?”
he said, lifting up a bottle in his hand as he came near. He set his plate down on the rock next to her. It still had a few fatty-looking morsels clustered on it. She was afraid to look too close, for fear she might recognize an eyeball.

“I hear it’s like gin,” she answered brightly, trying to show him that she had a good line of gab even under these circumstances.

He just snickered. “No, no,
gringa
. Mexican liquor is different. Because you are an Ardra, Seca will show you how we drink tequila in Guerrero. Then you will teach the
norteamericanos,
no?”

She nodded in agreement, afraid to do otherwise.

He carefully laid out his supplies: a handful of sweet little round Mexican limes, a tin of some kind, and the bottle still packaged as it came across the border, wrapped in tissue paper and a protective coating of tule or bulrush.

“Tres,”
he said. A silver knife appeared in his hands, which he passed slowly in front of her face. It flashed red in the firelight. He picked up one of the limes, fondled its juiciness, and then sliced it cleanly into quarters. He ripped the shucking off the bottle. Pointing to the label, he said,
“Plata.”

“Silver. It has to be silver. . . .” She nodded.

He cracked open the tin and sprinkled a salty-looking ash on the skin between his thumb and forefinger. He lifted it close to her face and said, “In Guerrero, we call this
gusano seco
.”

“Dried snake?” He shook his head. “Oh, I see. Worm. Dried worm,” Hetty said.

“Sí. De agave.”

“From the agave cactus?”

“Agave is not a cactus. It is a lily.”

“So we’re not drinking cactus juice. We’re drinking the milk of the lily. Wait till I tell Odell.”

“Sí. Un momentito.”
He fell silent and readied himself. Hetty watched closely, taking in every detail. She felt as though she were present at some kind of secret ritual. She had to be able to repeat this accurately for Garret and Odell. He took a large swig of tequila, chased it with a little mummified agave, and then sat down, sucking on a slice of lime and trying to recover his senses. Soon, a deep sigh escaped his lips, and his black eyes opened, slightly glazed.

“Usted . . .”
he said, handing her the bottle.

“Gracias.”

“De nada.” It is nothing.

When she spread her thumb and forefinger, he tickled the delicate skin between them before sprinkling it with the magic worm dust. Lifting the bottle to her lips, she gulped some down, licked up the powder, and chased it with lime juice. It was all she could do to keep from choking. The silver tequila was harsher than mescal, with the subtler flavors refined out, so she welcomed the salty kick of the spicy worm dust and the cool finish of citrus. How many times they did this she didn’t know, but she wasn’t about to let Seca drink her into the barbecue pit. The fire began to take on a glorious blaze.

“This stuff makes you plenty
bravo,
” she said.

“In Mexico we say, if a rabbit gets a drop of tequila, he spits in the eye of a bulldog.”

“And how, kiddo!” She didn’t know how to translate that into Spanish.

Seca smiled at her drunkenly. “Esther de las Ardras—
you
are plenty
brava. . . .
”

She smiled back triumphantly, knowing she no longer had to fear the dreaded dry snake of Guerrero. Later, when the fire had died down and no one could see their dark shapes on the rock, she asked him, “Can I buy some of that agave from you?”

He fumbled in the pockets of his coat and fished out a fresh tin. He leaned over and placed it in her hand, which he closed tightly around it. She couldn’t wait to tell Odell about the caterpillar crunch. That was the kind of thing that got all his cylinders pumping. Then Seca moved in even closer and turned his face up. His lips hovered less than an inch from hers, and his odor rose up to her nostrils. She’d never smelled a Mexican man before. His scent was different from Garret’s, gamier, a wild mingling of southern sweat and leather.

“Gracias,”
she whispered, not pulling back but joining her breath with his.

Seca breathed the word
nada
into her mouth. In the end, their lips never touched, but she knew that her soul, somehow, had been kissed.

It took them all autumn to get a bustling trade going in tequila. Odell told Hetty he was determined to make it happen by the time Christmas unfolded and holiday decanters demanded to be filled. She did everything she could to help. It was a tough sell at first, as most Houstonians were unfamiliar with the Mexican distillates and went on asking for the labels they’d come to expect from Weems Importing, such as rum from the islands, vintage Old Crow, and the best Canadian Club. Each type of import was aimed at a different market: mescal they sold as a fine brandy, the “favorite of Mexican lords and ladies”; silver tequila was pitched to the flapper crowd as a less expensive form of gin; whereas their more discriminating customers appreciated the subtleties of
añejo,
the most expensive tequilas that were aged in oak barrels for over a year. The tins of agave they saved for the rougher speaks along the Ship Channel, where the dockworkers dared each other to lick up the fossilized worms and slam down shot glasses of the rawest alkie. Everyone liked the prices, as Odell and Garret were able to undersell their competition by a significant margin thanks to the low cost of Mexican liquor brought across the border without any tariffs.