by Ponzo, Gary
“I really need a drink,” I said.
The hint of a smile grew into a sultry promise. “I think I can take care of that for you, vacquero.”
“I’m counting on it,” I said, surprised at the sudden undercurrent of sexual tension.
“What’s your pleasure?” she asked. When she finished speaking, her full lips remained pursed in my direction.
I tried to swallow, suddenly nervous.
“Tequila?” she whispered. “Beer?”
My throat was dry and I forced myself to swallow.
“Something else?” she asked innocently, but her eyes told a different story.
“Cerveza,” I managed.
The smile spread knowingly across her face. She was taking delight in her effect on me. Without a word, she retrieved a bottle of Carta Blanca, popped the top and set it in front of me. Then she drifted away.
I sat and sipped the cold, bitter brew.
No one spoke to me.
Sip by sip, I drained the beer. Without being asked, Isabella replaced it. I sat still and wondered about things. She’d been cool and distant to me ever since I’d been forced to shoot Pete Trower right here in this same bar. I realized with a jolt that he’d died just a few feet from the stool I sat on.
So why the change?
Every once in a while, I glanced up at the long mirror behind the bar. I recalled how it had been shattered by a bullet from Pete’s pistol that terrible night a year ago. I could still almost smell the acrid odor of gun smoke in the air. Could still see Pete’s pained eyes when he asked Isabella if she could ever love him.
I downed another beer and another and Isabella slid bottle after bottle in front of me. I drank her in along with my Carta Blanca.
The bar heated up as patrons filled the stools and the tables and the dance floor. The jukebox roamed from Mexican to country to classic rock and back again. No one said a word to me. I was alone in a sea of boots, buckles and cowboy hats.
Except for her.
I met her eyes several times over the evening. Most of the times she gave me a mysterious half-smile, like a Mexican Mona Lisa and flicked her gaze away. But once she caught my look and held it. Her eyes smoldered. I imagined her in the half-light of her bedroom, staring at me with those eyes out from underneath her long hair falling down.
She was a dream.
A voice ruined the moment.
“You think you’ll ever get into that?” Jack Talbott sneered at me from three barstools away.
I turned to him. Renny, who taught third grade at the elementary school, and Sal, who managed the Salvation Army Thrift Store, sat between us. Both shifted uncomfortably in their seats.
“Never happen,” Talbott said. “Never ever.”
I stared at him for a moment, my brain dulled by the many beers and maybe even more by Isabella’s presence. Then I drawled, “Ain’t you supposed to be in jail or something?”
Renny and Sal slipped off their stools in unison and moved away.
Jack didn’t show any anger. He smiled his best Public Jack smile. “I was out before you made it home that night.”
“That’s temporary,” I said and smiled back at him. “Soon as you go to court, you’ll get to spend a little more time in the gray bar hotel. It don’t matter who you are.”
Jack shook his head. “I already went to court.”
My smile faltered. “When?”
“This morning. Saw Judge Chavez.”
I squinted, trying to work things out. I didn’t get a subpoena to appear for testimony.
“Funny thing,” Jack said smoothly. “You weren’t there.”
“I was –”
“Whoring down in Mexico, way I hear it,” Jack finished. He motioned his head toward Isabella. “Probably trying to find some of that, right? Just a more basic version?”
Anger rushed up my shoulders and into the base of my skull. I tightened my hand around the beer bottle. The song on the jukebox ended. Aside from the occasional clink of glasses, the bar was silent.
Jack waited for the music to start up again, then leaned forward and spoke over the strains of Travis Tritt. “Since you weren’t available and my wife refused to testify...well, Judge Chavez said he’d just have to rely on the police report.”
The report would be enough, I thought. I nailed him in that report.
“’Course, there wasn’t any report.”
I narrowed my eyes at him.
Jack’s smile broadened. “I guess you’re not much of a cop, Carl. Making arrests and then not filing reports and all.”
“I turned in that report,” I said, and immediately wished I hadn’t.
He shrugged. “Not according to the Chief of Police, you didn’t.”
“I did,” I said, unable to stop the thick words from falling out my mouth. “I wrote every word of what happened.”
“Really?” Jack asked. “Did you keep a copy?”
My jaw fell open. I didn’t answer.
Jack slid off the stool and stepped in close to me. The rich aroma of his aftershave washed past my nostrils, out of place in this bar full of people who worked for a living. My anger returned. I wanted to blast him in the head with the bottle in my hand, but I knew if I did, he’d win.
“Welcome to the big leagues,” he hissed in my ear. He motioned at Isabella with his head. “Enjoy that attention while you can. She probably thinks you’re hot shit, mister big cojones, but this game ain’t over yet. Not by a long shot.”
Before I could answer, he turned and sauntered out, returning hellos with a wave and nod.
I called in sick the next morning.
The dry, dusty Texas air gusted through my small back yard, bringing the faint whiff of cattle with it. I sat on the back steps and sipped water, nursing a hangover. My thoughts climbed around the problem in front of me, grappling with my options. I didn’t see that either of them were good ones.
Stay in La Sombra and wait for Jack to find a way to get revenge.
Leave town and start over somewhere else.
I sipped the water, swallowing past the taste of bile in the back of my throat.
When I got my discharge from the Army at Fort Bliss, I was already in love with Texas. After growing up in Plasti-California, I found the genuine friendliness of the Lone Star State refreshing. The men always seemed straightforward and honest to me. And the women were kind, even in their rejections. Everyone seemed ready with a smile or a helping hand.
My discharge papers in my back pocket, I toured the state on my motorcycle, stopping off in Dallas, Houston and San Antonio. The bigger cities seemed like less sincere, though, almost as if they were playing at being Texan. They gobbled up the smaller towns nearby with that attitude like some giant, gaseous planet pulled at its moons.
Eventually, I circled back to West Texas and El Paso, unsure if I would stay or not. The day I rolled into La Sombra and stopped off at Tres Estrellas changed my mind for good.
I told myself it the friendly people that I’d been looking for all over Texas and found in La Sombra that made me decide to settle here. That I loved the mix of America, Texas and old Mexico that seemed to find a way to live together. That La Sombra put me at peace.
But it was her.
Isabella.
I knew she was the fantasy of every man in town. The way her hair hung in full curls around her brown face. Round, sultry eyes full of mystery. And every curve screamed woman.
It was more than that, though. I sensed it immediately, though I’d spent the last four years trying to define it. I don’t know if I can yet or if I’ll ever be able to. But there was an enigmatic quality to her, one that makes a man feel that if he can just be chosen by her, he will be complete. That if he can make things right with her, everything else in the world will follow suit. I wanted so much to be that man.
I took another long drink of water and wished the aspirin would kick in.
“Carl?”
I turned to see John Calhoun standing at the corner of
my house. His immaculate jeans and white shirt were the same he always wore on duty, but he was without his hat, gun belt or badge.
He pointed toward the front of my house. “I knocked, but...”
“It’s all right.” I waved him over to the wide steps where I sat.
John strolled over, his steps even and measured. I didn’t expect him to sit, but he lowered himself slowly onto the same step I sat on with the barest trace of a sigh.
“Get you something, John?”
He shook his head. “Reckon not.”
We sat in silence for a little while, staring out at my dusty back yard.
Finally, John gestured toward the sandy lot. “Ain’t had a chance to do much with it since you moved in, I see.”
I shrugged. “Always seemed that something more important needed doing.”
“Yup,” John said. He removed a small pouch of tobacco from his pocket and slipped a pinch of leaf into his lip. “Things work that way sometimes. If that’s the reason, that is.” He held the pouch toward me.
I shook my head and said nothing.
John leaned away from me and spat into the dirt. “’Course, a man might figure you left it like this ‘cause you didn’t figure on staying around long enough.”
“Long enough for what?”
John spit again and wiped his lip. “Long enough to sink roots.”
I clenched my jaw. My head throbbed at the temples. “Jack send you? Or the Chief?”
Genuine hurt seemed to register in his deep gray eyes. He gave his head a small shake. “No one sent me, son.”
“Then why are you here?”
He regarded me for a moment with the air of a father who knew any advice he gave his teenage son would go unheeded. Some mistakes a man just has to make on his own, his eyes seemed to say.
“I figure you might need someone to talk at,” he finally said. “What with all that’s happened recently.”
I looked away and took a long drink of water.
“See,” John paused to spit and continued, “I reckon that you’re thinking on what your next move oughta be.”
“Next move?” I asked, but I knew what he meant.
“Yup. Whether you should stay and fight or just cut loose and move on.”
“And you’re figuring to give me some advice.” I couldn’t keep the bite out of my tone, but John didn’t seem to notice or he chose to ignore it.
“Maybe not advice,” he said. “But some information, yeah.”
I didn’t answer. The clacking sound of a grasshopper’s wings briefly filled the silence.
“You’re thinking it ain’t right for Jack to get away with the things he does,” John said. “You’re thinking someone ought to do something and that if no one else will, well then maybe it ought to be you.”
“What makes you think you know what I’m thinking?”
“’Cause you ain’t the first person to go up against Jack Talbott.”
I turned to face him, searching out the craggy lines of his face for the truth behind that statement. His iron eyes held my stare without blinking.
“You?”
John shrugged. “It don’t matter none. What matters is this – you can’t win, Carl. It don’t mean it’s right, but it’s the way it is. He’ll find a way to destroy you. That’s what the sonofabitch lives for. All that money of his is just what makes it possible.”
“What’s he got on you, John? What did he –”
“It don’t goddamn matter!” John snapped.
I raised my eyebrows in surprise. The motion sent jolts of pain through my head.
John rubbed his eyes with both thumbs in frustration. Then he turned his gaze back to me. “You’re not listening,” he said. “You can’t win. You should just go. There’s nothing left for you here in La Sombra.”
I didn’t answer. John held my eye for a long minute, then dipped his chin in a nod. Without another word, he rose and strolled away. I listened to his footsteps disappear, then the truck door open and close and finally the engine rumble to life. When that sound faded in the distance, I looked out at my desolate backyard.
He was wrong.
There was one thing left for me in La Sombra.
The next morning, I drove over to her small house. I knew it well. I’d given her a ride home from Tres Estrellas a few times. Once, we even shared a cup of coffee at her kitchen table. She told me her dream was to buy the Tres.
“So do it,” I’d told her. “If it’s your dream, do it.”
“Oh, Carlos,” she said with a sad, knowing smile. “No banker is going to give this senorita a loan.”
“Maybe they would.”
She’d only shaken her head and said, “No, it’s all about numeros y dinero. I have no collateral.” She sighed and smiled tiredly at me. “Working there is as close as I’ll get to my dream.”
“You should never give up.”
“Who said I gave up?” Her tired smile perked up a bit. “What about you, Carlos? What’s your dream?”
I never told her. Not that night. Not ever.
Maybe the looks she cast my way were true and maybe they weren’t, but I needed to know. I knew I wasn’t going to find out inside the Tres, so it had to be at her house.
I stopped half a block away and stared.
I rubbed my eyes and stared some more.
Jack Talbott’s oversized red truck sat prominently in her driveway.
I stared and stared, a hole of fire burning in my chest. I stared until it had burned out everything that mattered. Then I left before I had to see that son of a bitch saunter out her door and to his truck.
The badge clattered onto the Chief’s desk. He looked up at me from his newspaper.
“What’s this?” he growled.
I dropped my issued gun belt next to the badge. “You got your way,” I told him.
He folded the newspaper and regarded the gun and badge in front of him. Then he looked up at me. “I didn’t figure no Yankee’d last round here.”
“You crooked bastard,” I whispered.
The Chief laughed and returned to his paper. “Crooked? Oh, that’s good. That’s good.”
I turned away and headed toward the door.
Behind me, the Chief continued to chuckle into his newspaper.
I tucked the two manila envelopes into my backpack and zipped it shut. The sound held a sort of finality to it, but I didn’t mind.
There was a knock at the door. I shouldered the bag and strode across the room.
Wes stood on my porch. He gave me an embarrassed grin when I opened the door.
“Hey, Carl.”
“Wes.”
“You really leaving?”
“Really.”
He sighed. “Madre Mio, Carl. I’m sorry.”
I waved his apology away. “It doesn’t matter.” I handed him my keys. “Just send whatever money you can get for this stuff to my parents’ house in California. The address is in an envelope on the kitchen counter.”
He nodded. “All right. I can do that.”
“Square up the rent with Mrs. Gallion first, though.”
“Sure.”
I held out my hand. “Good knowing you, Wes.”
He took my hand and clenched it tightly. “Hasta Siempre, Carl.”
I cut the motorcycle engine in the bare parking lot outside the Tres. It was early yet, but the neon “OPEN” signed burned a blood red in the small window next to the front door. Below it, a new sign pronounced, “Under New Management.” Beneath those words, a picture of a beaming Isabella smiled out at me.
She found her dream. She got her chance and she took it.
I wanted to go inside and ask her if it was worth it. If she felt like she’d given up something more than the obvious that night she let Jack Talbott into her bed. I wanted to think that he played her just to get to me, but I didn’t want to hear her answer. I didn’t want to hear that she’d played him, that this was the way the world worked and that dreams weren’t free.
Most of all, I didn’t want to see her again now that everything had changed. I didn’t want to admit that she was only a shadow of a dream. I wanted my last memory of her to be that mysterious, smoky gaze she gave me from across the bar.
I thought about the envelopes in my backpack, one addressed to the Texas Attorney General and the other one to the U.S. Attorney General. Maybe they’d make a difference and maybe they wouldn’t. I’d mail them once I hit El Paso.
After that, I was turning north. I knew if I went south, all I’d find would be pale imitations of Isabella. Maybe I’d find my dream somewhere else up north, if the price wasn’t too high.
Or maybe I’d just have to accept that some dreams don’t come true.
I started the motorcycle and swung a wide, slow circle in the gravel lot. Once I hit the main street, I goosed the accelerator and headed out of Jack’s town for good.
Notes
In the Shadow of El Paso first appeared in the 2007 anthology, Map of Murder (Red Coyote Press).
Jack’s Town is previously unpublished.
One of the things I wanted to capture is the character of Isabella as that mysterious, sensual, “perfect” woman that most men desire at some point in their lives. I wanted to show that such women do not exist except in our own minds – every one of them is a real woman when you get right down to it. A real person, with far greater wonder and weaknesses than that fantasy image. My means of making this point was two-fold. One, Carl doesn’t “get” the girl. Two, her actions, particularly in “Jack’s Town,” show her own humanity.
The issue of domestic violence shows up in “Jack’s Town.” This is something I’ve seen far too much of in my “other” career for it not to make an appearance somewhere here.
I also try to explore classism and social dynamics in both of these stories, both in comparing the Mexicans to the Texans, the Texans to the New Mexico cowboys, Jack Talbott to the rest of La Sombra, and the citizenry of La Sombra to Carl, the outsider, even though he’s been there for years.
All of this may not even register with the reader, which is fine. This is a short story, not an essay. Still, these were the things that were on my mind as I penned these two Texas tales.
