by Elmer Kelton
Danny, Manuel thought, was cut from the same cloth. He had a predatory eye, like a chicken-thieving coyote except that Danny was not interested in chickens. Manuel’s stomach always drew into a resentful knot when he saw Danny looking at his sister, arrogantly flaunting the thought that lay behind those coyote eyes. When Danny danced with Anita he held her close and cheek to cheek, something none of the other boys had nerve to do. Manuel sensed that it was part physical gratification with him, part exhibitionism. Danny Ortiz would always have the most money, the reddest car, the finest clothes, the prettiest girl.
Manuel tried not to look at Danny and Anita. He switched his attention to Paco Rodriguez, bumbling his way around the dancefloor with Flora Garcia. He felt almost an envy of Paco; he might be clumsy, but at least he was out there. Manuel had not summoned that much nerve.
Buddy Thompson came to the concession stand, breathing heavily from the dancing. He stepped up in front of Manuel and looked him calmly in the eyes. “Hi, Meskin.”
Manuel returned the level gaze. “What do you want, gringo?”
The words would have sent Manuel’s parents into a silent fury, or left Buddy’s father red-faced and stomping. But between these two young men they meant nothing; by using them they were somehow making fun of the prejudices held by an older generation. Buddy broke into a lazy grin. He slapped a quarter down on the wooden counter with the palm of his hand. “A Coke. Take somethin’ out for yourself, too. I’m buyin’ you one more drink before we pull up and leave here.”
Manuel smiled. “Finally goin’ to spend a little of it, are you? Damn, but you gabachos are tight.” He stuck two bottles under a pair of openers and popped off two tops at one time. He shoved one bottle at Buddy Thompson, then rubbed the heel of his hand over the mouth of his own before he turned it up for a long swallow. “I never saw you breathe that hard from workin’.”
“Workin’ never was worth it. Dancin’ is. You ought to try it.”
Manuel pointed his chin. “Paco’s dancin’ enough for both of us.”
Buddy chuckled. “Paco’s heart is in the right place; it’s just his feet that sometimes don’t work right. I’ll miss that clown.” His smile died. “I’ll even miss you, Manuel. We had some good times.”
They looked at each other, little of the barrier between them that stood between their fathers. Manuel said, “Looks like your dad could’ve found him someplace around here cheap enough to lease. Looks like there ought to’ve been somethin’ ...”
“He tried. There just wasn’t nothin’. So he’s got him a job with a feed company, travelin’ out of San Angelo. Times like this, there’s one thing that’s bound to sell good, and that’s feed.”
Manuel grimaced. “Big place, San Angelo. I bet they got forty-fifty thousand people over there. It’ll be like movin’ to New York.”
Buddy shrugged sadly. “Dad says we got to live where there’s a livin’. There’s no livin’ here.” He looked around the gym, slowly studying the people he knew. Most of them he had known all his life. “We may be just the startin’ of it; there’s liable to be a lot more leave here if things don’t pick up.” His gaze came back to Manuel. “Who knows? You may even wind up in Angelo.”
It was not a new idea to Manuel, but cold dread came whenever the thought intruded. “I hope not. I don’t know how I could ever stand to leave Rio Seco. This has always been a good town.”
“Everything dies someday.”
“It’s hard to say goodbye to people. I don’t think I could do it.” His eyes narrowed as he sought out his sister, on the dancefloor with Danny Ortiz again. “There’s one I’d like to say goodbye to.”
Buddy followed Manuel’s gaze. “Danny? Don’t you let him worry you. He puts on the dog, but he’s a nothin‘, a great big nothin’.” His eyes narrowed. “You don’t suppose she takes him serious, do you?”
Manuel shrugged. “Just because she’s my sister doesn’t mean she’s smart.”
“She is smart, Manuel. Anita’s about the smartest one girl I ever knew. Prettiest one, too.” Buddy watched the couple dancing.
Manuel saw something in Buddy’s eyes he hadn’t seen before, a wish that was plain to read. “She doesn’t really like Danny much; she’s told me that. He scares her a little, even.”
He thought he saw relief in Buddy’s face. Buddy said, “She’s a real good girl. I always kind of wished ...” He let the statement drop.
Manuel frowned at his Coke. He thought he could finish the rest of the sentence: wish she wasn’t a Mexican. From someone he didn’t like so much, Manuel would have taken offense. With Buddy it was a natural consequence of his upbringing; it was a reflection of his father’s teaching. Manuel thought it wasn’t Buddy’s fault, not in the main; he couldn’t help the way he had been conditioned.
The tune on the jukebox was almost over. Buddy was still watching Anita. “Manuel, you reckon she’d mind?”
“Mind what?”
“Mind if I asked for a dance, just this once, this bein’ my last time here and all ...”
“One way to find out. Ask her.”
Buddy hesitated. “You don’t think she’d take it wrong, do you? I never asked her before. I was always afraid she might think ...”
Manuel knew the rest of that, too, though Buddy couldn’t or wouldn’t bring it out in words. Some of the Anglo boys regarded the Mexican girls as easy, fair game for anything they wanted to try, An Anglo boy’s motives were in question if they encouraged that attention.
Manuel pointed out, “Johnny Willis was dancin’ with her while ago, and Bill Jones. They weren’t afraid to ask her.”
Buddy’s courage came up. “I’ll tell her you said it was okay.”
“You better leave me out of it. She won’t figure I’ve got any business sayin’ one way or the other.”
The tune ended. Buddy handed Manuel his wet, empty bottle, wiped his hand on the leg of his trousers and walked hurriedly to the edge of the floor to catch Anita before anyone else could. Manuel saw with satisfaction that she seemed pleased. He also saw the knife-edge glare Danny gave Buddy.
As the music started, Danny came by the refreshment stand, eyes half closed in anger. Manuel said, “How about a Coke, Danny?”
Danny blinked at him, his mind still elsewhere.
Manuel said, “It’ll do you good, Danny. It’ll help cool you off. From the dancin’.” He supposed the malice showed in his eyes, for Danny flared perceptibly, mumbled something that didn’t carry above the sound of the jukebox and walked off to the chairs spaced along the wall. In a little while Danny was reaching behind the chair and pinching one of the Torres girls on her broad rump. That was something Manuel had long wished he had the nerve to do. But he could tell that Danny hardly took his eyes from the couple on the dancefloor; he had an idea Danny was mentally transferring the favor from Luz Torres to Anita.
Manuel scowled, making up his mind that he and Anita had something serious to talk about on the way home.
A girl spoke behind him. “Manuel, did you come here to sell soda pop or to dance?”
Turning, he saw Kathy Mauldin. His eyes widened in surprise. He had never counted her as a pretty girl and still didn’t, but he was not used to seeing her in a party dress like this ... or in any dress. A shirt and blue jeans had always been her style.
She smiled coquettishly at him.
Flustered a little he said, “I’m a pretty good pop seller. I’ve sold enough tonight to buy gas for the school bus from Rio Seco to San Angelo.”
“That’s a long way from Yellowstone.”
“We’ll get there. You want to buy a soda pop?”
“No, I just want to dance.”
He sensed she was hinting. “Then go out there and get somebody to ask you.”
“Why don’t you ask me?”
He knew very well why he didn’t ask her, but he said, “I never learned to dance.”
“You need somebody to teach you.”
“I’ll get Anita to, sometime.”
>
“Step out here and I’ll teach you. A little bit. Most of it you’ve got to learn for yourself.”
A faint alarm began ringing in the back of his mind. He tried to push her off by laughing gently at her. “I don’t believe you can dance. I’ve seen you shoe a horse, but I’ve never seen you dance.”
“You just come on out here and I’ll show you.”
He wondered what to do next; she was trapping him. “I don’t want to, not in front of all these people. They’ll laugh at me.”
“There’s nothin’ to it. You just shove one foot forward and then the other. Anybody can do it ... even you.
She caught his hand and pulled at him. He pulled back, resisting. “Kathy, you’re crazy. You know I can’t do that.”
“I don’t know why not.”
He pulled his hand free, feeling the warmth stronger in his face. He looked around to see if anyone was watching; so far as he could tell, no one was except sharp-eyed Chuy Garcia. Chuy Garcia saw everything, always.
Kathy Mauldin had never been one to mince words. “You mean because you’re a Mexican?”
Reluctantly he said, “That’s part of it.” It was all of it.
“Does that give you an inferiority complex or somethin’?”
“No, but ...”
“Your sister’s dancin’ with Buddy Thompson. If you’re a Mexican, so is she.”
“But it’s different with her; she’s a girl.”
“So am I. Be damned if I see any sense in that.”
Manuel’s lips tightened. He never used that kind of language except with other boys of his own age; certainly he never used it around girls. “It’s just the way people look at things. It’s all right for Anita to dance with Buddy; she’s a girl. But I can’t dance with you.”
“You have got an inferiority complex, Manuel.”
“I haven’t, either. But I just don’t want people to talk.”
“They’ve got to talk about somethin’. It’d just as well be us.” She took his hand again and began to pull firmly.
He said, “Kathy, your head is as hard as a rock.”
“I get that from my daddy. Come on, this is an easy step to learn.”
He was out on the floor then, looking down at his feet as she tried to show him how to move them. He was conscious that two or three people besides Chuy were starting to look at him, and he imagined everybody was. “Kathy, I tell you they’ll all be talkin’.”
“Does it make your ears burn, or somethin’?”
“No.”
“Then there’s no way they can hurt you. As long as they’re talkin’ about us they’re leavin’ some other poor son of a bitch alone.” She led him into the step. “If you’d been Page Mauldin’s boy instead of Lupe Flores’s, you’d be used to people talkin’ about you. You’d of quit worryin’ about it a long time ago.”
The music ended, and he made a move as if to return to the concession stand. Kathy held onto him. “They can count their own change.” The jukebox started another tune, a faster one. “Same step,” she told him. “You just have to pick it up a little bit.”
Gradually he lost some of the worry of being watched. He began to enjoy the feel of the girl, the easy touch of her hands, pressuring him one way or the other as dancers crowded around them. He stepped on her toe and apologized, his face warming. “I’m sorry.”
She shrugged. “Happens to me when I shoe horses, too. Thing is, they weigh more.”
“I’m not used to you lookin’ like this. I wasn’t sure you even knew how to put a dress on.”
“You didn’t think I knew how to dance, either. I don’t spend all my time around horses,.”
The tune ended. Kathy smiled up at him. “There. That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“No,” he admitted, “it was all right.”
“All right hell, it was pretty damn good. You need to spend more time away from horses. You’d be surprised what I could teach you.”
“Nothin’ would surprise me very much.”
She left him then with a promise that she would be back. He had mixed feelings about that, hoping she would and hoping she wouldn’t.
Chuy Garcia came up to the concession stand, his face furrowed. Chuy always had the look of one who smelled onions burning. “What did you do that for, Manuel?”
“Do what?”
“Let a gebacha like that Kathy make fun of you.”
The word was one in common usage among the Mexican people, referring to Anglos, and it had a slightly unpleasant connotation. The use of it in reference to Kathy brought an unexpected rise of anger in Manuel. “She didn’t poke fun at me.”
“They always make fun of us. Why else do you think she would dance with you in front of all these people? You don’t think she wanted you in her arms just because she liked you, do you? You, a damn Meskin?”
Manuel had heard those words many times. From someone like Buddy Thompson they meant little because they were used in jest. But he had heard them from older Anglos like Buddy’s father, and from them they stung like the popper on a whip. They stung a little now, coming from Chuy.
“You don’t know Kathy,” Manuel said defensively. “She’s not like that.”
“They’re all like that. I hope someday you’ll have the sense to see it.” Chuy gave him a look of disgust, then walked away.
Manuel’s face was warm. He had expected his dancing with Kathy to arouse some criticism, but he had expected it from the Anglos, not from his own. He began picking up Coke bottles and shoving them roughly into the empty wooden cases, making a lot of noise about it.
That damn Chuy, he hates harder than any gringo I ever saw, he thought harshly. Sometimes he felt like drawing back and punching Chuy in the nose. Yet he could not shake a gnawing suspicion that behind Chuy’s constant smoldering anger lay a hard truth. Even in his sheltered life on Brushy Top, Manuel had seen and heard plenty. He knew that not all the Anglos were like Charlie Flagg. And even Charlie Flagg, he was gradually coming to realize, was not without his faults. Now that Manuel was old enough and experienced enough to detect them, he could see that even Charlie Flagg held some old-fashioned notions that dated back to the border wars.
“There’s not a one of them,” Chuy had told Manuel once, “that you’ll ever want to turn your back on.”
He heard laughter and looked up. He saw Buddy Thompson at the wall, sharing a joke of some kind with Paco Rodriguez. He realized Anita was no longer with Buddy. She stood in a dark corner with Danny Ortiz. The music was playing again so he could not hear what they were saying, but the jerky motions of Anita’s hands told him she was angry, that she was arguing. Manuel watched for a minute, decided it was serious and walked directly across the floor, cutting through the dancers.
He heard Anita saying in Spanish, “I’m not dancing with you any more, Danny, not tonight. I’ve given you enough dances. Now leave me alone.”
Laughter was much more a part of his sister’s makeup than anger, but through the years Manuel had seen her flare into anger often enough to know she could do it, and to know it took considerable provocation.
Danny was saying something in a harsh voice when Manuel broke in, grabbing Danny’s arm. “My sister says for you to leave her alone. Why don’t you go pinch Luz Torres’s butt some more?”
Danny turned, taken by surprise. His ill temper quickly transferred from Anita to Manuel. “You mind your own business, little brother. Go dance with that gabacha again.”
Tears were in Anita’s eyes. “Take me home, Manuel.”
“All right. Go get your sweater.”
Danny caught Anita’s arm, but his eyes were still on Manuel. “You go peddle your Cokes, boy.”
Manuel grasped Danny’s wrist and dug his fingers in. He had a good grip that came from squeezing the teats of a Jersey cow twice a day. He gave Danny’s wrist a hard twist that had to hurt, bad, then he flung it free.
He was aware that the commotion had attracted the attention of those near enough to hear it
. Manuel glanced back and saw that his sister had picked up her sweater from the chair where she had draped it early in the evening. He gave Danny a final scowl and turned to follow Anita out the door.
The wind was blowing, and a strong smell of dust was in the air. He made his way to the old Flores family car and unlocked the door for Anita. She was sobbing a little. He said, “You ought never to’ve spoken to Danny in the first place. A dance or two and the damn creep thinks he owns you.”
He heard a girl shout behind him, “Manuel, look out!” The voice was Kathy’s.
A hand caught Manuel’s shoulder and roughly spun him around. “A creep, am I?”
He saw the fist coming and turned quickly to one side. It struck him on the shoulder with a force that made the hat fly from his head. He staggered against the car, bringing his hands up defensively in front of him. His dust-burning eyes focused on Danny Ortiz, drawing back for another swing. Rage surged up in him like coffee bubbling from a big camp pot. He dropped low and jumped forward, meeting Danny more than halfway. He drove a fist into Danny’s stomach with all the strength that years of hard work had given him. It felt as if it went in all the way to the wrist. He heard the breath go out of Danny. Danny stumbled back, almost falling. He crouched there, gasping.
Anita cried, “Let’s go, Manuel. You’ve stopped him.”
Manuel stood his ground. He had no intention of being accused of running away. “When he says.”
Danny stayed put, glowering while he struggled to regain his breath. As his lungs started to fill he began cursing, in little more than a whisper at first, then louder, using words Manuel wished Anita couldn’t hear.
Danny reached toward his pocket. Manuel thought with alarm, A knife. He’s always got a switchblade knife. Mouth suddenly dry, Manuel backed up a step and found himself trapped against the car. He could only move to one side or the other but not away from Danny.
