1958

I was fourteen when I learned to keep a secret.

I should’ve stayed away from the Camileño, but it drew me like the moon draws the tide. Caballeros a hundred years past camped at the outpost while they dipped cattle for ticks and castrated bull calves. And even though the ranch hands grinned above our heads, my best friend Burt Charles and I believed their stories about vaqueros calling spirits forward to dissolve their fears. Only then would the deserted bunkhouse accept the engraving of their names on its stucco walls.

We rode out with every intention of signing our names on its antiquated stone, but Burt Charles pulled up his horse. “I’m not going any farther, Isabel Martin,” he said. “You can make fun of me all you want to. I am not going.” He was already turning his horse back to the barn. “Those old stories sound scarier in Spanish,” he called over his shoulder, managing to flaunt his fluency in the language while dignifying any qualms he had.

Here in South Texas, he was easily identified as a gringo with his hazel eyes and light skin. And his smile, wide and genuine, robbed you of all misgivings. He tanned golden. Despite the fact that I too was a gringa, I tanned the color of a wet pecan. Seeing my dark hair and eyes, most strangers who came up to the house let loose with a tornado of Spanish. I hated that. As Atlee Parr’s niece, I saw myself as different from the local folks—special. I followed Burt Charles back that afternoon, but I had much to prove when I was fourteen. Even as a dark flower of premonition blossomed in my belly, I said, “I’ll be going back out there, mister—with or without you.” Had I written my name that day, I would not have had to return. And that would have made all the difference.

***

April Fool’s Day, I lay in bed plotting my crime while the light at the edge of the earth began its slow bloom. Riding out alone to the Camileño was dicey. If I got caught, Mama would rant about the possibility of my lying unconscious and dying while the horse galloped off to the horizon. From Aunt Hilda, the likelihood of window washing escalated exponentially. But the hardest punishment to take would be the silent spell in which Tío, my uncle Atlee, cleaned his fingernails with the small blade of his knife.

Although he wasn’t blood kin, but my uncle by marriage to Aunt Hilda, he treated me more like a daughter than my own father had. Disappointing Tío would hurt more than all the punishments Aunt Hilda and Mama could concoct. But that was if I got caught. I considered myself a smooth operator.

The night air sifted through the open windows and seeped deep into the cotton fibers of the sheets. Though ironed and fresh the day before, the fabric lay limp and heavy on my legs. I kicked it aside, slipped into my jeans, and waited for the mourning doves to croon before I tiptoed out into the dawn.

All I could think about was the look on Burt Charles’ face when one day he might see in neat block lettering on the Camileño wall—“Isabel Martin was here. April 1, 1958.”

Holding my breath, I lifted the handle of the heavy door to the patio. No sleepy voice called out, “Isabel?” No grumbling or shifting weight on the beds from other rooms. I eased my way onto the pasillo that surrounded the patio of the house and in ten long seconds sprinted to the white walls surrounding the hacienda.

Squinting east, I imagined Marisol and her mother Estela patting down tortillas, scooping scrambled eggs and chorizo into them. They wouldn’t look toward our hacienda till they pushed open the screen door of their white adobe house. Not till they started out across the sandy distance to our place, tying aprons around their waists, pulling their long black hair into knots at the back of their necks. By then, I’d be past the open space to the barn and saddling my old mare, Canela.

We took the back way, where the road dipped down through creek beds and cooler currents misted. In South Texas, fog collects sound the way water in a cave does. It holds memories of javelinas, their curved tusks carved from their jaws and the flash of white-tailed deer. It hangs like ghosts of conquistadores in thickets and drifts like smoke among the trees. This morning the air was still enough to hear the scream of a red-tailed hawk and the rustling of underbrush where an armadillo worked its way back to its hole in the ground.

In the sunlight, shadows knifed long across the road and I caught sight of a jackrabbit. He sat up on the ridge, his over-sized ears so translucently pink against the sunrise that I could have counted my fingers through them.

A perfect morning.

I leaned back and laughed aloud into a pale blue sky.

From the hill, the walls of the Camileño appeared opalescent, but as I moved closer, it looked like a giant had spit chewing tobacco down its sides. Screeching and grinding, the windmill drifted in a slow spin that coaxed up precious little water. Only the pond scum retained its green. The hoof-pitted mud gave off a rich and fetid smell.

A prism of light flared from the mesquite. When I shaded my eyes and squinted in that direction, the silver crest insignia of my uncle’s Cadillac flashed in the morning sunlight. Another car sat nearby at the old corral, the midnight blue Chrysler Imperial of Tío’s brother, George. My uncle stood hunched over the driver’s window.

“Shhh….” I shushed Canela as though she were capable of talking. Kicking out of the stirrups, I slid down her side and led her back to a copse of scrub oak where I tied her out of sight. I untied her. I re-tied her. I should be heading back toward the house now, but there was an intensity in the way Tío’s arms had flexed against the doorframe of his brother’s car. What was Tío talking to George about now? Hadn’t it all been said and done? George’s trial was over but for the sentencing. He had sidestepped a charge of election fraud, but a determined federal jury convicted him of tax evasion for a second time. He was supposed to be standing in front of a federal judge this very minute, taking his punishment like a man, instead of hiding out in the bushes. Never mind I was hiding out in the bushes as well.

I threaded my way through the brush to within ten yards of the car. Still thinking about backtracking to the house before Tío could return, I reconsidered. I chose to do the sensible thing. I hunched over and scurried like a possum into the Camileño.

Skidding into the open hull of the ruin, I hugged the wall, and slid down to a squat. I clamped my eyelids shut in relief and waited. They had not seen me. Their voices rose above the drone of the wind. Crawling under the window, I pushed myself up on the other side to get a good view.

George’s knuckles wrapped around the top of the steering wheel. The brim of his hat bobbed as he spoke. “They can’t do this to me. I’m county judge!” George slapped at the steering wheel with both palms and glared up at my uncle. “But you could––couldn’t you, brother?”

Tío stood, his forearms braced against the car’s open window. His Stetson hid his face. Shaking his head back and forth, he looked down between his arms.

“At least I took care of Papa’s Mexicans, didn’t I? While you...you were playin’ cowboy!” George mimicked the phrase in falsetto and laughed before falling into a coughing jag.

Tío spoke so softly, I couldn’t make out what he was saying.

Amplifying as it ricocheted, George’s tirade rebounded off the hot fender. “And I know you gave me a hand every now and then, sure, but to make up for it, I gave you that horse that coulda made you a million.”

Tío straightened and walked to the Cadillac and picked up a package bundled in butcher paper from the seat. He glowered at his brother. “You gave me a lot of things, George. Mostly grief as I recall. I hate to see you go to jail. I’d hate to see you die there.”

George spit. I couldn’t see how close it came to Tío, but I tasted the tang of copper pennies bite deep behind my jaws.

Tío did not flinch. He did not gauge the distance between the spit and his boots. He did measure his words. “Take this. It’s all I can do for you now.” Tío shoved the package toward George. “Use it if you want to. Or take the jail sentence. But I don’t want to ever see your face again, George.”

“A little farewell present. Well, ain’t that mighty kind of you, Atlee. Bon voyage in a bag.” He didn’t bother to open the wrapper. “Probably a dram of hemlock. Or maybe a pistol. You’d like that wouldn’t you? Like to see me disappear off the place forever.”

Tío studied the ground before staring back up at his brother. “Your call, of course. Your call. You’re an old man. The years they give you in prison will seem a lot longer this time. An eternity. I doubt another Truman will come along to give you a presidential pardon.” Tío pounded the roof of the Chrysler with his fist. “Use it or not, George. I don’t give a damn.”

I rocked back. Never had I seen him hit anything the way he punched his brother’s car. And what did he just give George? Would he really give him a gun? Use it or not, George. I don’t give a damn.

With quiet viciousness George said, “You’d be the one with it all then—you sonofabitch.” He was shaking his head back and forth. “And if you think you’re gonna take over this county and my judgeship without my support, you’re…you’re…. You couldn’t even… aw…. Get your goddamned hands off my car!”

“You bet, brother. You bet. In fact, I’m washing these hands of you altogether as of this morning.” Pinching his cigarette between his fingers, Tío took one last drag, threw it down and ground it into the dirt with the heel of his boot before he stepped away and pushed behind the steering wheel of the Cadillac. He slapped the car into gear and was gone, dust spewing behind him like a fighting cock’s tail.

I closed my eyes and slid down the wall.

Against my back, heat filtered through my shirt. Thinking my clothing singed, I shrank away from the wall. Chicken scratch markings scraped the surface. Maybe they were confessions of fears scarred into the stone, festering like fossils. And as long as they remained there, they could not cling to the inscriber.

George’s Chrysler growled to life. Wheels spun into dirt as George throttled the car in reverse. He braked hard and cut the engine. Then nothing but the hot, still morning and dust roiling up from under the bumper of the Chrysler Imperial.

He had precisely blocked my path to Canela. I scrambled to the farthest corner of the room, hoping for George to leave. But he sat there, his chin sagging on his collarbone.

I waited.

Sweat slid down the small of my back. Maybe he’s sleeping. If he is, I can make a run for it. I couldn’t stand it any longer. Too afraid to stay, too fearful of getting caught, I slunk low, trying to avoid George’s rearview mirror. If I could get beyond the row of mesquite, I could slip around the back fender to see if he slept. Then it would be safe for me to get to Canela and make a run for it. I squirmed through the scrub oak and prickly pear, squinting ahead through the bramble, watchful for agave plants waiting to take out my eye. This country could strike any moment, its self-preservation so lethal.

The sun climbed higher. I scuttled to the rear of the Chrysler where I braced myself, hands on my knees and sucked air. When the panting stopped, I leaned out to the edge of the fender. I took a chance and checked the rearview mirror. There he was, motionless. But not asleep. He stared out toward the windmill.

The bawling of an old cow and the repetitive chirp of a cardinal chipped away at the silence. I imagined my mother shaking out my covers and putting out a search party. With my forefinger, I traced the letters spelling Imperial on the raised spare tire compartment and waited.

A snap of the glove compartment and another click. At last he would start the engine. George’s eyes shifted to the rear view mirror. He saw me. I knew he did. He would tell I sneaked out. No other choice occurred to me. I must smile, come forward to be polite. Say hello, like I’d been taught. Just say I was out messing around and wondered if this was his car. Just say for him not to feel bad about Tío. Something like “Oh you know how Tío can be…quiet.” Ask if he was gonna come over for breakfast. And if he would, please sir, uh…not mention he’d seen me…that I’d been out looking for…for a surprise for Mama and Aunt Hilda. And did he know about the spirits in the Camileño?

In the reflection of his side mirror, George’s grey eyes pinned me to the rear fender. My repartee caught in my throat. I was sure what George had to say would change my life, would pockmark it with a truth about my uncle that would finally erase all hopes of Tío’s innocence in George’s election fraud. But there were no words.

From the rear-view mirror, a glint of steel sparked in the morning light. Just a flicker.

Searing into my face, his eyes left the fevered burn of standing too close to fire. As though he were enlisting me as a co-conspirator, George put the pistol to his head. He pressed his lips together in a straight line, fine as a knife blade, depositing blame at my feet. Never taking his gaze off mine, he pulled the trigger.

A covey of bobwhites burst from the underbrush, but no shudder of wings buffeted the air. A bull opened his mouth in what should have been a leaf trembling bellow. The sound…the only sound…was a cherry bomb exploding. Nothing but the hot white roar of a single shot.

I stood there, wide-eyed, as if viewing myself from somewhere high above the mesquite…a small figure standing behind a dark car with her hands to her ears.

Until the full impact of the scene punched me into motion.

Flailing through the thicket, I pitched over the top of a low branch and fell flat on my back. I screamed once, I think, although I could hardly hear it. It was as though a nest of yellow-jackets invaded my ears. Crab-like, I scrambled backward against a flowering huisache tree. Its orange-colored blossoms drifted down dreamlike and filled the light about me. I swung at them and may have cried out “Stop!” It seemed I did. I flipped and belly-crawled yards before I could still the convulsions in my legs. I flattened my cheek against the sandy earth and became oddly aware of its comfort, a cool hand to mitigate the hot, hot light spearing through the sagebrush. Grit and blood in my mouth, I focused on a dung beetle’s single-minded bustling, a small white butterfly’s tentative probing of milkweed.

Silence.

Tears muddied my face.

Gripping branches, I pulled to my feet and stumbled back to the car. Maybe it hadn’t really happened.

A few steps closer revealed George’s slumped form, the thin strands of his grey hair smearing sticky color across the Chrysler’s sleek finish. Close enough to make out his liver-spotted hands twisted like dead sparrows. Close enough to recognize the crosshatched handle of a .45 Colt pistol cradled in his lap. Close enough to see brain matter splattered against the early growth of April.

I wheeled around and charged back through the chaparral. A mesquite thorn caught the flesh on my arm. Feeling the pull of it but not the pain, I cocked my elbow across my eyes and parted branches with the other till I found Canela. Breaking loose from her tie, she had trotted several yards away and consoled herself with green grass in a patch of sunlight. She didn’t leave me.

I clung to her. Sucking up heaves and tears and swiping my nose across my shredded shirt, I gulped air. It came in fits and swallows. “Okay, okay, we can do this.” I flipped the reins back over her neck and dragged myself up. My hands shook, but I clucked her on and we moved into a lope.

The lope accelerated to a gallop, a better rhythm to match my heartbeat. Don’t tell. Don’t tell. Don’t tell. The thoughts tattooed themselves in my mind. My head bent so low over Canela’s neck that her mane struck me in the face like so many whips. I tried to match her strides, pick up the cadence of a dead run. Don’t tell. She grunted with each lunge. Her sweat and my own stung my skin. I turned Canela across the pasture for a more direct route. She veered crazily around bunches of yellow flowers and tried to go back to the path. I kicked her then and hung on. Daring a glance over my shoulder, I saw blossoms scattering in our wake—a slow-motion shower of buttercups strewn behind us to make a pretty curtain to hide the horror I’d seen.

Canela skidded to a stop in the corral. Slinging the gate open, I ran her into the barn. I stripped off her bridle in one quick pull, loosened the cinch, but left her dripping with sweat and saddled. Joaquín would take care of her and never say a word to Tío.

I ran the hundred yards to the house until, of all people, Marisol Villanueva sauntered across the distance between our houses. “Ooo, look at you, girl. A horse run away with you again?”

I forced myself into a long-strided march.

“They’ve been looking for you. Better run faster.” She stopped and pointed in mock horror. “Oh, look! Even the sheriff came out to find Mr. Parr’s niece.”

The sheriff’s car loomed in the driveway. It couldn’t even be nine in the morning. How did he know George was dead?

“Hey! Where have you been?” Marisol squinted at me. “You don’t look so good.”

I felt the intensity of her eyes on my back. She would never follow me—too proud—but her suspicions would slither along to be extracted from her subconscious whenever she needed them.

Skirting around the house to the bedroom wing, I found it quiet. I tore off my shirt and stuffed it under the mattress, ran cool water over my face and arms and covered up the scratches with Aunt Hilda’s Erase make-up stick. Erase it all. I pushed too hard and the stick crumbled onto the dresser. A long sleeve shirt looked conspicuously hot, but it covered the rivulets of red that lined my arms. Plucking briars and leaves from my hair, I combed the top layer and pulled it back into a ponytail.

As I leaned my forehead on the vanity mirror, a hot print of sweat and breath blurred the image of my clamped lips. I jerked back and scrubbed at the worry line between my eyes. I wondered if the eyes that stared back at me could hide what I had to keep secret. I practiced a new look—blank and innocent.

Maybe I should tell. Maybe it was against the law not to. After all, I wasn’t supposed to be out there. Crazy thoughts shoved all reason aside. What if Tío had helped George with that election last year and George threatened to expose him? And didn’t Tío just hand George the weapon that would guarantee his silence? I remembered wishing that George might die before he ever got out of prison. But not like this. Never with my uncle standing in a puddle of guilt.

Dread for my uncle metastasized into selfish fear for myself. What would happen to me if he went to prison? Guilty or not, he’d given me a safe haven when my own father had been incapable. “I will never tell,” I said to the mirror. I was no April fool.

Spider veins of blood seeped through the thin cotton of my shirt. I spit on the hem and smudged the stain to pale rust. I thumbed down the door lever and stepped into the veranda and on into the breakfast room.

Mama and Aunt Hilda sat staring at each other over eggs and bacon. My aunt raised both eyebrows at Mama and nodded in my direction.

“Where’ve you been?” Mama asked without turning around.

I pretended I didn’t hear.

Mama turned to stare at me. “Cowboys would say you look rode hard and put up wet.”

“Yep.” I made the corners of my mouth turn up, but my lower lip hung heavy and trembling. “Warm.” I nodded toward the April sunlight. I tried to say that breakfast looked good, but when I mumbled, “Mmm,” it burbled on my lips. One-syllable words were all I could force into speech without losing control.

The swinging door to the kitchen scraped open.

“Atlee?” Aunt Hilda’s eyes shot up in question.

Tío stepped into the room. He looked over our heads and out the window, his eyes unreadable. He spoke in monotone. “Looks like my brother cut out for the border.” Tío put his hands in his pockets and took them out again. “He missed his sentence hearing this morning, but...uh....” Focusing on his empty plate, Tío took his place at the head of the table.

Why was he lying? I poked at the scrambled eggs. Tío’s words resounded in my mind: “Use it or not, George. I don’t give a damn.” My fingers trembled like stuttered words. I set the fork down and twisted the linen napkin in my lap around and around my forefingers till they stung.

Act normal, I thought. Normal was ravenous, frequently requiring reminders of good manners. I could not eat. Not a bite. But I was so thirsty. “Orange.…” I nodded at the juice. Mama placed the pitcher in front of my plate. I unraveled the fabric from my fingers and reached out. Whether it was my numbed fingers or the chill of condensation on the glass, I did not know, but I saw myself lifting the pitcher to pour, and then it was slipping in a slow glide from my hand and crashing onto my plate in a flood of juice and uneaten eggs.

I screamed. “No!” I pushed away from the table and jumped to my feet. I felt the hot flash of tears in my eyes. “Sorry.” I grabbed my napkin and tried to sop up the mess. “So so sorry!”

Mama, Aunt Hilda and Tío lunged back from the table, napkins pressed against the rush of orange juice. Mama recovered quickest and rushed around the table to grab my shoulders. “It’s all right, honey. It’s all right.” She pulled me to her and I saw the confusion in her eyes. “I’m sure Aunt Hilda understands. Don’t you, sister?”

Already out of her chair, Aunt Hilda hovered near us. “Why sweetheart, how could you imagine this such a crime?” She squeezed my hands.

I looked up at her and broke down again.

“Now, it doesn’t matter.” Mama gave my shoulders a little shake. “Can you stop crying?”

I smashed the orange-juice soaked napkin to my mouth and bumped my head in a nod.

“Estela!” called Aunt Hilda.

“Mande?” Estela appeared from behind the kitchen’s swinging door.

“Would you help us out here? It seems we’ve had a little mishap.”

“Oh, of course, Miz Parr.” And to me, Estela said, “No te preocupes, mijita. No importa.” She handed me another napkin and patted my arm.

I tried to bear up as Marisol stepped into the breakfast room with more towels. She sucked air through her teeth. “Chihuahua.”

I could feel Mama and Aunt Hilda looking at each other over the top of my head. I glanced up in time to see Aunt Hilda mouth the question—hormones?

“Oh, and look sweetheart, you have really scraped your knuckles.” Mama gripped my fingers till they whitened at the tips. “Oh honey, no wonder you’re upset. Your ring....”

My birthstone was gone.

Mama was making excuses for me and I let her. Losing my special black opal would have made me cry under any circumstances, but I couldn’t register the significance. I raked my thumb over the gold prongs that splayed like hawk talons.

Tío cleared his throat and scooted back the chair with a screech on the tile. I could not keep my eyes off him. He stood and frowned out at the grounds. Morning light danced across the windowpane and reflected in his fine, clear eyes like sun on shallow creek water. We followed his gaze until a hum in the air became a roar that buffeted the fig trees, the pecan, the orange and tangerine. I slammed my hands against my ears. Helicopters, in search of George Parr, swarmed like angry red wasps over Rancho de Las Higueras.