“You mean that this is about money?” asked Harry incredulously.
“Yes,” said Salvador.
“Not another word,” said the white-haired man, looking greatly relieved. “With me, Salvador, you got credit. My God, I’d thought your beloved mother whom you’ve told me so much about was ill or something important! Money, that’s nothing, nothing, it comes and goes with the wind. It’s here, inside you, Salvador, amigo mío, that I value.”
Salvador could say nothing. He was speechless. Why, here it was once again, another miracle. What was this world coming to?
Harry took one of Salvador’s huge hands in both of his. “You can pay me next month or whenever you can,” he said. “I’ll never forget the first day you came to my store. You circled the block three times before you stopped.”
“You saw that?” asked Salvador, feeling slightly embarrassed.
“Of course! That’s why I took off my coat and I rolled up my sleeves and took out the trash, so I’d look like a workman, too.”
“You mean that you did all that on purpose?” asked Salvador, remembering the incident well.
“Sure,” said Harry. “I’ll tell you, Salvador, I wasn’t rich all my life. I know what it feels like to be afraid of being turned out of a store and . . . not necessarily as fancy as this one,” he said, squeezing Salvador’s thick hand in both of his. “Come, no more. You get fitted for your clothes, too. A wedding is supposed to be a happy time. It’s not until after you’ve been married for twenty years that you start having long faces.” And he laughed, truly enjoying himself. “This matter is closed.”
“Thank you,” said Salvador.
“So, where is the wedding going to be?” asked Harry as they walked across the store to where Lupe and Carlota were selecting material.
“Here, at the church in Santa Ana,” said Salvador.
“On what day?” said Harry. “My wife and I want to be sure to leave that date open.”
“You mean you’d come?” asked Salvador, never once having thought of inviting them.
“Why, of course,” said Harry. “You give the information to Bernice, and we’ll be there.” He stopped and looked at his wife helping Lupe with a dress. “You’re a very lucky man, Salvador,” he said. “Lupe is the most beautiful young woman I’ve seen in all my life, except for my Bernice. Oh, that girl could model clothes in Paris the way she holds herself.” He took a big breath. “She truly reminds me of my wife when I first saw her. Just look at my Bernice, the years have been kind to her. No one believes that we’re nearly the same age,” he laughed.
Salvador looked at Harry, and then at Bernice. It was true, the white-haired man looked far older than his wife.
They were in the shop for nearly three hours before they finished their business. Then, as they were going out the door, Salvador noticed that Lupe stopped to look at a beautiful, royal blue dress that was trimmed with beige lace and had a matching, full-length coat with a soft, dark brown fur collar.
“How much for that dress and coat, Harry?” asked Salvador.
“For you, Salvador, fifty percent off as my gift for your wedding.”
Salvador was overwhelmed once again. This man had just given him credit, and now he was giving him a break in price, too.
“Harry,” said Salvador, grabbing him in a big abrazo, “you’re a gallo de estaca, a prize rooster!”
Harry was only an inch shorter than Salvador, but he was half his size across the back and shoulders. “Gallo de estaca you, too!” said Harry, embracing Salvador in return.
Hearing the mispronunciation of the word, Salvador burst out laughing. Harry did, too. They filled the little shop with cheerful sounds.
After selling the first six barrels of whiskey, Salvador returned one hundred dollars to Kenny and bought a train ticket for Nellie back to Chicago. She’d decided to leave her newborn with Luisa and go back home and see if her husband wouldn’t take her back. Nellie was truly sorry that she’d ever left her family in the first place for this guitar-strumming man.
Doña Margarita, of course, agreed with her decision to return home to her husband and three children. She told Nellie not to worry about her newborn little girl; this was God’s will. She and Luisa would raise her daughter, giving her a good home, as they’d done for Emilia’s child who was now a grown woman and living near Fresno with her own husband and children.
It was the day of the trial and Salvador met Fred Noon at the foot of the courthouse steps. Salvador was dressed in his work clothes, as Fred had told him to do.
“If this case was in San Diego, I could get the whole thing dismissed,” said Fred to Salvador as they went inside. “But it’s going to be a dirty fight up here. This Wesseley fellow, I did some checking on him. He was raised in Texas by a Mexican family. Seems like they treated him real well, so he raped their daughter and has hated Mexicans ever since. Also, he was a Texas Ranger before he joined up with the Feds.”
Salvador nodded, having thought some such thing. A man with guilt was a very dangerous animal, especially when he started lying to himself and twisting his guilt into vengeance.
Fred Noon was right. It became a dirty fight. Wesseley lied and twisted everything he could. But he was no match for Noon, who stood up tall and dignified, going over the evidence that they had on Salvador again and again, which was that he had sugar and yeast in his truck.
“Does this make Mr. Villaseñor any more a bootlegger than a housewife coming home with groceries from the store?” insisted Noon.
Wesseley and his attorney squirmed and pushed, but Noon remained cool and reasonable. On the third day, the case went to the jury and Salvador was found innocent, but Domingo was found guilty. On Wesseley’s recommendation, the judge gave Domingo the maximum sentence of five years. Fred Noon was outraged, saying that Domingo had no prior record and should only be given eighteen months, at the most. The judge told Fred to keep still or he’d find him in contempt.
“Damn it, Salvador,” said Fred, once they were outside in the parking lot, “you haven’t heard the end of this! I’ve drank whiskey with that judge. Wesseley must have something on him. You tell Domingo when you see him that I’m going to screw these bums yet!”
Salvador took Fred Noon in his arms. Fred was a good man. The best. He truly cared. He was a man of honor.
It was a dark, overcast day the morning that Salvador went to see Domingo before he was shipped off to San Quentin. Salvador paid the guard ten dollars so that he’d leave them alone. Once he and Domingo were alone, Salvador brought out a pint bottle of whiskey and handed it to his brother. Domingo’s whole face came racing away from the dead. He took to the bottle like a newborn, sucking down half of its contents, then he fell back against the bars.
“You saved my life!” said Domingo. “Oh, that’s good!”
Salvador was glad that he’d thought of bringing along the whiskey for his brother.
“So, has Nellie gone?” asked Domingo.
“Yes,” said Salvador. “I bought her the train ticket and gave her some money.”
“But our baby,” he said, “she left her here, right?”
“Yes,” said Salvador.
“And Mama, what does she say now?” asked Domingo.
“Not much,” said Salvador. “Except that it was God’s will and Nellie should’ve never left her family in the first place.”
“You know,” said Domingo, “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking here in jail, and I’ve come to think that whoever I’d brought home, Mama wouldn’t have liked her.” He drank again. “She just never gave Nellie a chance.”
Hearing this, Salvador tried to keep calm, but he just couldn’t. “Listen here, Domingo,” he said, “let’s not play stupid! You know damned well that’s not true. You brought home a woman who’d abandoned her children to a mother that’s gone to hell and back to keep her family together! What the hell did you expect? That our mother would approve of your choice in this woman?”
Surprisingly, Domin
go didn’t anger. He looked at his younger brother for a long time. “Yes,” he said, “I should have guessed that you’d say that. But that’s not the whole truth, and you know it. The whole truth is that our mother never liked me! She always liked YOU!” he added, bellowing with rage now. “So no matter what Nellie would’ve done, stay here with our child or go back to her other family, Mama would’ve found fault with her! And that’s the God-awful truth!”
“Bullshit!” said Salvador. “Our mother always loved you, too! She didn’t find fault in your woman because of her lack of love for you! And as far as maybe showing more affection toward me, that was only because our father hated me!” screamed Salvador, raging angry, too. He grabbed the pint bottle from Domingo and drank it down.
“What, you stupid cabrón!” yelled Domingo. “I’m the one going to prison! Not you!”
But it was too late. Salvador had downed it.
“Shit!” said Domingo, grabbing back the bottle, lifting it up to see if there was any left. There was only a drop. He put the bottle to his lips, raised it up in the air and waited patiently for all the droplets to gather inside the bottle and come sliding, gliding down like little rivers to his mouth. He sucked them in, one by one.
“Hell,” he said, blowing out. “This is truly some life, eh hermanito? Here we are, two grown men, sitting in jail, and we argue about our parents’ love.” He wiped his mouth. “Remember, Salvador,” he continued, “the time that pig ate the chayote plant outside the ramada?”
“How could I forget?” said Salvador. “Papa was going to kill me for it.”
“But I protected you.”
“Yeah, you did, for a change,” said Salvador. “Usually, you were always hitting me, instead.”
“True,” said Domingo, “I did hit you a lot back then, but this time I saw the injustice of our father’s anger toward you. So, well, I took the blame.”
“And he didn’t hit you.”
“No, he didn’t,” said Domingo, “but he would’ve hit you.”
“You damned right!” said Salvador. “He might have killed me. My God, he was crazy with rage. And it wasn’t my fault the pig ate the chayote plant. I was a child and I’d fallen asleep.” Salvador took a big breath. “I’ll tell you one thing, I’m sure as hell never going to favor one of my children over another. I’m going to work hard to be the best father the world has ever seen,” he said. “And raise my kids with love and understanding and never hit them!”
“Well, I hope you do it,” said Domingo. “Because so far, I haven’t done even as well as our parents. I’ve left children everywhere. Just like the gringos have done to our women, I’ve done to theirs from Chicago to Texas and back again. And . . . I know that this is partly why Mama is mad at me, for leaving my seed all over the land like a dog, but, still, you have to admit that Mama has always preferred you, just as I admit that Papa preferred me.” He wiped his eyes. They were beginning to water. “Now, of course, she wasn’t as obvious as our father, but, still, it was there. She did little things all the time which showed me just how much more she loved you.
“Like the corncob she always gave you before you went to bed at night. She’d heat it up special for you, telling you to warm your feet with it, and then munch on it if you got hungry during the night.” His eyes were pouring with tears.
“Yes, that’s true,” said Salvador, “but I was little, Domingo, and the Revolution was going on and I was always hungry.”
“That’s not true,” said Domingo, wiping his eyes. “She did that for you even before those hard times came. I remember, and I was always so jealous of that corncob. In fact, I stole it from you many times and put chile on it so you’d burn your tongue when you ate it at night.”
“You put chile on it?” asked Salvador, grinning with surprise.
“Yes,” laughed Domingo.
Salvador laughed too. “And all these years I thought that hot taste came from rubbing it against my dirty feet.”
“No! You thought that?”
“Yes!” said Salvador.
“Oh, no!” said Domingo. “That’s FUNNY! I’d get up and steal the corn from you and put chile on it and then wait up, hoping to see you burn your mouth out, but you never did.”
“Well, of course not, because I’d just wake up and eat it, thinking it was hot because of the dirt it got off my feet. Oh, that’s wonderful!” continued Salvador. “So then you really had jealousy toward me, too, eh?”
“Oh, I hated you with jealousy!”
“Great!” said Salvador. “I only wish I’d known about it so I could’ve enjoyed it!”
And then they were both laughing, big laughs from the gut, and it was a sight to see: two brothers at last together, heart-to-heart, but surrounded by iron bars.
“You know,” said Domingo, “I wish we could have talked like this the first night I came in from Chicago.”
“Me, too,” said Salvador. “But you were so full of yourself . . . trying to impress us with everything you’d done. I couldn’t say a thing without you saying you’d already done it, except bigger and better.”
“I was that awful?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll be, I never knew I was doing that. Damn, if only a man could live two or three lives back to back, then I think maybe we could get it right.” He reached out and gripped his brother. “I love you, hermanito,” he said.
“I love you, too,” said Salvador.
And there they held, looking at each other, eye to eye, and it was good.
“You know,” said Salvador, “I’ve been doing a lot of talking with Mama now that I’m getting married and, well, she’s told me about the days just before her own marriage and how she found out about our father and his love for his first cousin. Did you know about that? About Papa killing his cousin’s prospective husband in a duel?”
Domingo nodded. “Yes. Papa told me.”
“He did? Well, I’ll be!”
“Yes, Papa and I talked a lot.”
“Well, Domingo, that’s when I think that the problems with our parents’ love started,” said Salvador. “Our father loving a tall blue-eyed woman like himself, he never really let himself love Mama, José or any of us short, dark ones.”
“Hey, that’s not true,” said Domingo. “The problem started when Mama kept throwing Don Pío’s greatness in our father’s face, making Papa look so bad all the time.”
“No, you’re wrong,” said Salvador.
“Bull, it works both ways,” said Domingo. “Our mother was as much in love with her father as our father was with his cousin.”
“I’ll be; I never thought of it that way,” said Salvador.
“Of course not, you only listened to our mother.”
“And you only listened to our father,” said Salvador.
“True,” said Domingo.
“I’ll be damned,” said Salvador. “Do you realize how long we’ve been talking and we haven’t gotten in a fight?”
Domingo grinned. “Like the Mexican expression says, ‘I thought I’d died and gone to heaven until they told me I was in jail.” They both laughed, truly enjoying themselves. “Hell, for us mejicanos being behind bars is like a vacation,” added Domingo.
The guard came up, saying that it was time for Salvador to leave. Salvador slipped the guard another ten.
“All right,” said the guard, “but only five more minutes.”
“Okay,” said Salvador.
“Oh, Salvador,” said Domingo, shaking his head, “the truth is that everything could’ve come out fine if the rangers hadn’t tricked me and sent me to Chicago. I would’ve found Papa and come home with him and we would’ve had money. Then we could’ve all migrated to Del Mar and waited out the war and you would’ve never gone to prison and I’d never gotten lost like a dog in the streets for fifteen years!
“Oh, hermanito!” he screamed, grabbing Salvador. “If only the cards would’ve fallen different! We’d be kings right now!”
“Yes, I’m s
ure you’re right,” said Salvador. “But what can we do now? It’s all gone, Domingo.”
“Oh, no!” said Domingo. “It’s not gone! I’ve been thinking that when I get out of San Quentin we can all return to Mexico and reclaim our family’s land!
“And, also,” he said, drawing in close to Salvador, whispering to him in the ear, “I know of a gold mine in Sonora that this Indio told me about just before he died in Chicago. It’s in the bag, Salvador; we’ll get the gold and go back and buy up the whole Cerro Grande of Los Altos and be kings, you and I!”
And saying this, Domingo grabbed Salvador with all his might, squeezing him chest-to-chest in a big abrazo.
“And I’ll find all my sons from Texas to Chicago!” continued the big man who’d once been so handsome that the women just couldn’t resist him. “And I’ll raise them strong and pure in Los Altos and Mama wouldn’t have to look at me with shame in her eyes anymore. I swear before God!” he added, gripping Salvador with love’s desperate need.
The guard came up. “It’s time,” he said.
But Salvador and Domingo still continued hugging each other in a big abrazo; two big, strong men, unafraid of showing love and affection.
“All right,” said Domingo, releasing Salvador and wiping his eyes, “you better go now. I got to be alone and start preparing myself inside my heart, here, for San Quentin.” He laughed. “San Quentin, the prison especially made by the gringos for our people!”
Salvador nodded. “Yeah, you’re right.” He took a big breath. “The gringos sure prepare for us.” They laughed, looking at each other quietly. “Mama, Luisa, everyone sends you their best.”
“Good, and tell ’em not to worry,” he said. “I’ll be fine. The whole prison is full of our people from Los Altos, I’ve been told.” He kissed Juan Salvador on one cheek and then on the other. “You go now, get married, and have lots of sons. And don’t worry, I’ll serve this time for both of us, like a man! Hell, Nellie’s gone, so I got no one, anyway.” He looked at Salvador in the eyes. “I love you, hermanito,” he added.
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