Sitting down at the big game, Juan acted awkward and not too confident when it was his time to deal. He was the youngest player, after all, and so he figured that he’d go easy at first and let these older men bluff him out of a few hands, pretending that he was a reckless fool to loosen them up.
It was approaching midnight and everything was going well. Juan had lost a few small hands as he had planned. Someone brought in a bottle of bootleg whiskey from the back alley. They passed the bottle around, each man taking a good drink, and then it came to Juan. He took a small swig. It was the worst damn, rot-gut whiskey that he’d ever drank. He spit it out.
“That’s shit!” he said.
They all laughed.
“Where you from?” asked one Anglo.
“Montana,” said Juan.
“Whadda you drink up there?” asked the other Anglo.
“Canadian whiskey!” said Juan.
“You lucky son-of-a-bitch!” said the first Anglo. “Since Prohibition, all we got down here is this rot-gut shit. A man could make a fortune if he could bring down that good Canadian stuff.”
Juan marked these words down inside his head, realizing that the man was right. He pretended to drink a little of the terrible whiskey every time it came his way. After all, drinking men didn’t like to play with a man who was sober, and it was getting close to the time for Juan to make his move.
It was after midnight, and Juan figured that he’d set them up well. They were sure he was just a kid, and so they were beginning to drop their guard, becoming a little loose with their money. Greed, good old greed, was blinding these men, getting them to think that they could bet heavy and take all his money. Greed was a professional’s best friend. Duel had taught him this, too.
A couple of the men were pretty drunk and tiring fast, so Juan figured it was time for him to push. After all, he’d taken a nap that afternoon and the coffee, ham and eggs were holding him.
He hit the next pot hard and won over twenty dollars. That’s when he first saw the big Italian glance at the quick-eyed Filipino, but Juan didn’t think too much of it. What could they do? He’d won the pot fair and square. Besides, he was still mad. He didn’t like getting run out of two-bit little restaurants.
Two hands later, Juan pushed again, having faked at first that he didn’t have anything, and he won a huge pot of nearly thirty dollars.
He was just raking in his money, feeling good and indestructible, when the Filipino got up to leave, saying that he had to go to the bathroom.
At that moment, Juan should have realized that he’d gone too far. But he was flying so high, so drunk on ego, thinking about the fine car he was going to buy to show his nephews, that he didn’t see it coming.
He was piling up his winnings when he saw the big raw-boned gringo across the table jerk his head up. The gringo’s eyes went wide with terror as he looked over Juan’s left shoulder.
And in that hundredth of a second, Juan knew that he was a dead man. Still, with lightning-quick reflexes, he turned to look over his left shoulder just as the Filipino’s hooked blade came under his chin to take his head off his neck.
His razor-sharp knife, the kind they used in the fields for the grapes, didn’t get Juan’s open neck because he’d turned in time. Instead, it caught the right side of his chin, cutting along his jawbone all the way to his left earlobe.
A spurt of blood came shooting off Juan’s jawline, and everyone leaped back, thinking that he’d had his throat cut.
And in that moment of confusion, the Italian grabbed all the money from the table and ran for the back door, but Juan was young and strong. He still managed to lunge to his feet, drawing his .38, as he spun about to shoot the two men.
He had to get his money back for his family. He couldn’t die now. But the world turned black before he could fire, and he fell face-first into his pool of blood, holding his jaw together.
People were shouting, yelling. Far away, like in a dream, Juan could still make out the overhead fan blowing on him, making little waves in the pond of blood about his face as footsteps shook the hardwood floor under him.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
And so the stars above them smiled, and the angels of destiny brought her through his barrio in a caravan of trucks.
After crossing the border, Lupe and her family contracted to work the cotton fields of Scottsdale, Arizona. During the winter, they went to the town of Miami, just east of Scottsdale, where Victoriano and Esabel got work in the mines. Lupe and Carlota helped their father gather firewood in the surrounding hills to sell in town, and their mother and María took in laundry for extra money.
One Sunday, during their second winter in Miami, Lupe and her family were coming home from church when Lupe saw a beautiful dress in a store window. It was pale orange, almost the color of peaches, and it had tiny white polka dots all over it and delicate white lace about the neck and arms. It was the most beautiful dress that Lupe had ever seen, but the price tag said ten dollars, so Lupe realized it was completely beyond her family’s means. Even with all of them working, they made less than seven dollars in a week.
Two days later, Lupe got the shock of her life when she came home from gathering wood and found the very same dress lying on her bed.
“Oh, Mama!” she said. “Is it for me? Oh, you shouldn’t have! We can’t afford it!”
“You damned right, we can’t!” yelled her father, putting down the load of firewood. “Jesus Christ, a man makes less than a dollar a day at the mines and that dress was marked for ten dollars!”
“They gave it to me for six,” said the grey-haired old lady, “and it didn’t cost you a cent. I used the last of our gold,” she added proudly.
“The last of our gold?” screamed Don Victor. “Oh, my God! How could you, woman?”
“Easy,” said Doña Guadalupe, refusing to be intimidated. “And I’d do it again. All our lives we work and work, and for what . . . if we can’t have a little joy now and then? Now don’t you dare spoil this for Lupe, or I’ll brain you!”
“All right, all right!” said Don Victor. “Do as you wish! You’ve done it all your life anyway.” And he got his hat, took the fifty cents that they’d gotten for selling the firewood, and went out. “Kids, I swear, we should’ve had pigs! At least you can eat them when they grow too big!”
“Oh, Mama,” said Lupe, picking up the dress once her father was gone. “Really, you shouldn’t have done this. Papa’s right, and we should take this dress back.”
“Mi hijita,” said her old mother, “last year I bought a beautiful dress for Carlota, so why shouldn’t I buy a dress for you now?”
“But, Mama,” she said, “when you bought Carlota her dress, it was so she could go to the dances and we had lots of gold. Now we have no gold, and I don’t even like to dance.”
“Look, Victoriano and Esabel both have good jobs,” said the old woman. “And who knows? I might die tomorrow, and no one, but no one, is going to rob me of the pleasure of buying each of my daughters at least one store-bought dress before I die.” She laughed. “Isn’t it gorgeous?”
“Oh, yes!” said Lupe. “It’s the most beautiful dress I’ve ever seen in all my life.” Lupe just couldn’t stop caressing the dress. The pale orange material was so smooth and lovely, and the lace was so white and truly delicate.
“Well, try it on,” said her mother.
“Oh, no,” said Lupe. “I have to bathe and fix my hair first.”
The following Sunday, Lupe put on her new dress and they all went to church. After mass, they lit a candle for Sophia, and they were walking home when Carlota came running up with three young girls.
“Mama,” she said, “I just met these girls from Sinaloa, and they want me to go to the movies with them! Everyone is going! It’s a brand new movie!”
Doña Guadalupe could see Carlota’s excitement. “All right,” she said. “But Lupe and Victoriano will have to go with you, and you must all obey your brother and sit together and then come stra
ight home afterwards.”
“Oh, thank you!” said Carlota. And she kissed her mother in a big hurry, then took off with her new friends.
Carlota always made friends wherever they went. But Lupe and Victoriano were still too shy to talk to strangers.
Lupe and her brother went up the rocky, dirt street behind Carlota and her girlfriends. Miami was a company-controlled mining town, which supplied various forms of entertainment for the workers. The movie was called, “The Silver Automobile.” All the young people in town were excited about it. It was a series, and this was the third part. “The Silver Automobile” was always full of beautiful cars and rich, gorgeous people.
After the movie, Carlota and the other girls went giggling into the bathroom. Lupe and her brother stayed behind in the lobby. Then some young men that Victoriano knew from the mine came over and started talking to him as they gave Lupe the eye.
Lupe grew self-conscious, excused herself, and went to join the girls in the bathroom. She was walking with her head down, avoiding people’s glances, when she entered the bathroom and looked up, only to see the most beautiful young woman that she’d ever seen in all her life coming toward her through a doorway surrounded by shiny little lights.
She stopped. The beautiful young lady stopped, too. They stood there, looking at each other, and Lupe saw how tall and slender and perfectly made this young lady was with a high, open forehead and large, dark eyes. Why, she took Lupe’s breath away.
Lupe saw that the young woman was wearing the identical dress that she was wearing. She laughed, realizing that this was why the young woman had stopped to stare at her, too.
Then in that moment, as Lupe saw the young women laughing, too, she suddenly realized that she wasn’t looking through a doorway, but into a large, full-length mirror surrounded by lights. The shock that Lupe felt in realizing that this marvelous creature was none other than herself was so complete, so stunning, that she would never forget it for the rest of her life.
Why, all these years that Carlota had been teasing her, calling her the beauty queen of the world, she hadn’t been ridiculing her. No, she’d been telling her the truth. And all those people who’d been staring at her in every work camp they came to hadn’t been ridiculing her, either. No, they’d all been telling her the truth. She really was a beauty. Why, she was even better looking than all the women that they’d just seen in the American movie.
Lupe blushed, turning this way and that way, looking at herself in the lovely peach dress. It was a whole new discovery, like finding a bright new star in the heavens.
The weeks passed and then one night, Esabel didn’t come home with his paycheck from the mine. Lupe watched as her sister María grew uneasy. The next day when Esabel still didn’t show up for work, it was rumored that he’d lost his check in a poker game the night before and that he’d gone back to Mexico.
All that day, Lupe watched María cry and curse the card sharks who followed the poor, defenseless workmen from camp to camp, tempting them with prostitutes and liquor, then cheating them out of their hard-earned money. Once more, Lupe swore that she’d never have anything to do with a man who gambled or drank.
The family got cold and hungry that year in Miami, Arizona. Their father was too old to go back to work inside a mine and women were not allowed to go underground. Victoriano got a second shift, and Lupe and Carlota climbed higher into the surrounding hills to search for firewood with their father, who got sick and almost froze to death when the hills turned white with snow.
Returning to Scottsdale to do the cotton late that summer, the weather was so hot that Lupe got sick from the heat and wasn’t able to work. María told Lupe to take care of her children, and she went to work with Carlota and Victoriano. They worked from sunrise to sunset, picking the cotton. Lupe felt terrible, but she just couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her. She’d done better in the cold in Miami. All she did was cough all day in the heat and dust. Carlota teased her for being lazy, but it was all Lupe could do to breathe.
This was also the summer that they began to fear that their mother was losing her mind. Doña Guadalupe refused to accept the fact that Sophia was dead and kept going from tent to tent, asking every stranger she encountered if they’d run across Sophia or heard of someone who had.
Then, finishing the cotton, they decided that they didn’t want to do another cold winter in Miami, so they decided to work their way west. Besides, if they could make it to California, it was said that there was year-round work and that Don Manuel lived in Santa Ana and maybe he’d heard of Sophia.
Working their way west through the deserts of Yuma, Brawley and Westmoreland, Lupe almost died. Her eyes became inflamed and her throat swelled up so tight that she could hardly breathe. But when they arrived in San Diego and smelled the sea breeze, something magical happened to Lupe. Once again, she was able to breathe. In no time, she grew strong, blossoming like a peach tree in full bloom. They worked their way up the coast, passed Del Mar, Encenitas, Carlsbad, Oceanside, and Lupe had so much extra energy that she began to crave books so she could study at night after work. They were doing pretty well by the time they reached Santa Ana, California.
Upon finding Don Manuel, they discovered that he knew nothing of Sophia and that there was year-round work in Santa Ana, but it didn’t pay much, especially after Don Manuel, who was a labor contractor, took out his percentage for getting them jobs.
They’d been in Santa Ana for almost a year when Doña Guadalupe insisted that they were doing so well that Lupe could go back to school. After all, education was their only hope of ever really getting ahead.
At school, Lupe was put in the third grade, even though she was going on fourteen, and the other students teased her because she was a head taller than all of them. But she’d been teased at school before and so Lupe ignored them and worked so hard that she was moved up to the seventh grade within three months. Her long hours of studying with Manuelita back in La Lluvia de Oro had given her an enormous amount of self-discipline.
Late one afternoon, Lupe came home from school to start dinner for her family who were still out working, when there was a knock on the front door. Lupe cleaned her hands on her apron and went to the door.
“¿Sí?” she said, opening the door.
“Excuse me,” said the small, tired-looking old man, taking off his sweat-stained hat, “but is this the house of the Gómez family?”
“Yes,” said Lupe, “it is.”
“And you come from La Lluvia de Oro, no?” he asked.
“Why, yes, that’s right,” said Lupe, taking a better look at the man, wondering if they knew him.
“Oh, thank God!” said the man, his tired eyes taking on new life. “I was so afraid it would come to nothing again.”
“But what are you talking about?” asked Lupe. She stood half-a-head taller than the man and she felt as awkward as she always did talking to men who were so much shorter than she.
“Please,” said the man, “I don’t mean to be a bother, but could I please have a glass of water?” He swallowed. “I’ve come a long way on foot, you see.”
“Why, yes, of course,” said Lupe. She closed the door and went through the tiny living room into the kitchen and got him a drink of water in an old, chipped cup and came back to the front door.
Lupe was tired. She’d had a hard day at school. Her new teacher was a man and he’d kept her after school to help her, but she had felt very uncomfortable with him.
The old man was sitting down on the steps when Lupe reopened the door. He didn’t look well at all. Quickly, she handed him the cup.
“Oh, thank you,” said the man, gulping down the water. “That saved my life. Now tell me, is your mother’s name Doña Guadalupe?”
“Well, yes,” said Lupe, “but really, I don’t see what—”
“And your father’s name is Don Victor?” he interrupted.
“Yes, that’s right,” said Lupe. “But I don’t think that we know you, Señor.”
“Oh, no, not me,” he said, standing up, and his chest filling with power, “but you do know the love of my life, your sister Sophia. I’m her husband.”
“Sophia? My sister?” said Lupe. “But she can’t be your wife. She was killed at sea years ago.”
“Oh, no,” said the man. “Sophia lives!”
Lupe’s mind went reeling, pounding at her temples. For the last year their mother had been going crazy, praying every night for them to find their lost sister. Everyone else had given up hope, including Lupe.
“Tell me,” said Lupe, still not believing this man, “and what does this Sophia of yours look like?”
“Why, just like you, but shorter,” he laughed. “You must be Lupe, no?”
Lupe’s legs went weak. “Then, Sophia didn’t die,” she said, beginning to cry. “She’s really alive!”
“Oh, yes!”
“And her little Diego?”
“He’s fine, too, and so is Marcos. And we have one more of our own and another one on the way.”
“Where?”
“In Anaheim,” he pointed, “just up the road six or seven miles.” He stood up as tall as he could, then he bowed to Lupe. “Francisco Salazar a sus órdenes!”
That same afternoon, when Lupe’s family came home from the orchards, she quickly told them the news and introduced them to Sophia’s husband, Francisco. Doña Guadalupe gripped her chest, thanking the heavens, and they all got into a neighbor’s truck, along with Francisco, and drove to Anaheim.
Sophia came to them, plump and older, but still very much alive, rushing out of her home with her two boys and another in her arms. “Oh, Mama!” she screamed, grabbing their mother in her arms.
It became a time of miracles, of hugs and kisses. Sophia took Lupe into her arms, then Victoriano, Carlota, María and their father. She just couldn’t stop hugging them and kissing them. It was one of the most exhilarating moments of Lupe’s entire life. A dream come true, a gift given to their family by God, Himself.
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