RIO GRANDE WEDDING

by Ruth Wind

  So he was gone. He nodded and picked up his spoon and began to eat. It was exactly what he wanted. Not too much, but enough to take the hollowness out of him. He thought of her attempt at Spanish and said, "This … broth? We call it caldo."

  "Ah, caldo," she repeated "Not sopa."

  "Soup and sopa, broth and caldo."

  "I see." She linked her hands around her knee and smiled. He liked that smile, very much, and he smiled in return.

  A flicker crossed her face – something startled – and to hide it, she ducked her head for a moment. "Do you mind if I ask your name?"

  "I am Alejandro Sosa," he said. "And I am in your debt, señora."

  "No. The angels put you where I'd find you," she added with another smile. "So they must have meant for me to fix you up."

  He bowed his head, humbled. "I will repay you," he said with as much dignity as he could muster in his weakened state. He wished that he had his hair combed and his jaw shaved, so that he looked less like the fieldworker she had found and more like the son of his father. "Whatever you ask."

  "Don't worry about it," she said casually. "How is your stomach? Upset?"

  "No."

  "Good. Then I want to—"

  "Not bueno?" he said lightly.

  It snared her, that little question and littler smile. Her face, very businesslike, shifted again and she lifted her eyes to his, seeing him. And he saw her. The fine bones of her face, the clearness of pale, pale eyes, the wisps of hair loose around her jaw and neck. Huera, they would call her where he came from, and say it in a soft voice of esteem. And he noticed that her body was not large, as he'd come to think. She was tall but narrow-shouldered, wide through the hips and small through the chest. Very strong.

  She swallowed, looked away. "I'm sorry, Señor Sosa. I didn't mean to be patronizing."

  Regret touched him. "Oh, no. It was a joke, señora." He made a wry face. "A bad one, eh?"

  That drew a chuckle. "No. Just small."

  She took the tray and put the milk in his hand, then gave him a handful of pills. "You will feel much better by morning," she promised.

  "Buena," he said, and took them.

  She smiled. "Good night, Mr. Sosa."

  "Wait!"

  At the door already, she turned.

  "I do not know your name, señora. The saint who rescued me."

  "You can call me Saint Molly."

  Molly. Satisfied, he settled back down, wincing at the pain in his ribs, and closed his eyes. Just before he fell asleep, he realized he had forgotten to ask about Josefina.

  * * *

  Chapter 3

  «^»

  Josh couldn't sleep. He slid out of bed, careful not to wake his sleeping wife, and put on his robe, padding into the kitchen to get a drink of water. The buzz of the neon light overhead was the only noise, and somehow the silence exaggerated the noise of the raid, in his mind.

  The raid last night was what kept him awake. They'd been planning it for a week, timing it to hurt Wiley as much as possible, so that maybe he'd finally recognize he couldn't keep hiring illegals to work his land. Not that it did any good. Next week, there would be a whole new crew. But they raided him regularly anyway. It was so routine as to be boring.

  But last night, things had been off from the beginning. For one thing, there had been a lot more migrants than they'd anticipated, and there were more women and youths with them than usual, which always complicated matters. The deputies had also surprised them in the middle of a party, and the younger men were inclined to argue and resist, creating a tense and panicked environment. One young man had panicked and punched an officer, which led to complete chaos. Workers had scattered in every direction, with officers chasing them into the dark fields and the vast peach orchard at the western end of the farms.

  And that was when things went crazy. Josh kept seeing it, over and over, in his mind. Lifting his weapon, firing. Once, twice, the gun making a light in the darkness. He heard the man fall, and ran after him, but although he'd walked back and forth, side to side, for well over an hour, Josh had never found him.

  It made Josh sick. He'd not breathed a word of it to anyone. No one had said a word to him, either, although someone must have heard the shots. It wasn't the first time. Technically, they weren't supposed to use their weapons in such raids unless they were in physical danger. Realistically, the job was so frustrating, it had happened many times.

  Until now, Josh had been a model deputy, but lately, as he struggled with his bills – particularly the high price of medical insurance for his family – his resentment grew. He bought groceries with hard-earned cash, and burned when someone presented food stamps. He was furious that the county was paying hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to cover the costs of the illegal immigrants in town from March to October, jail costs, housing costs, welfare and medical care, when the same county could barely afford his subsistence-level salary.

  He was barely surviving. Some months it was a choice between paying twenty on the electric bill or letting the long-distance portion of his phone get cut off. His new truck was a ten-year-old model that he'd had to have to get around this winter.

  He just didn't understand why he had to suffer, and yet hundreds and hundreds of people who weren't even citizens got taken care of. It wasn't fair.

  But it had been wrong to let his sense of outrage infect his job. He winced again, remembering. God, he hoped he hadn't killed anyone.

  * * *

  Molly moved quietly around the house the next morning. She had not awakened at her usual 5:00 a.m., but slept in until six-thirty, and light was pouring through the kitchen windows, splashing into the sink and across the terra-cotta counters and glazing the fashionably distressed cabinets. She'd done all the work herself, and the room was her favorite.

  The house, built in the twenties, had come with the land, which was about the only good thing Molly could have said about it those first few years. Not a single thing in it had been changed or updated in the intervening decades, and her husband had tackled each room one by one.

  Most of his time had been spent between his regular carpentry job and on the land itself, which had been his passion, so the interior work had gone slowly. When he was killed by a lightning strike, the kitchen had still been a nightmare – tin cabinets covered with peeling pine-style Contact paper, peeling linoleum, a stove with only two working burners.

  A few weeks after Tim was buried, the stove had caught fire. The resulting smoke damage and need for a working stove had been a blessing in disguise. Night after sleepless night, weekend after lonely weekend, Molly had expended her grief and loneliness on the kitchen.

  As she measured coffee into the automatic coffeemaker, she admired the baskets lined up on top of the cupboards, the African violets blooming in the wide greenhouse window and the display of her herb and rose gardens beyond – the project she'd taken up after the kitchen.

  She needed a new project, she supposed. Heaven knew, there was always something waiting in a house this old.

  Finally, having delayed long enough, she tiptoed down the short hall to the back bedroom and peeked in on her patient. Morning sunlight poured through the row of white eyelet curtains, and onto the man still asleep in the small double bed.

  She'd been hoping he might be a little less … overwhelming by daylight. No such luck. She paused in the doorway, admiring the smooth copper angle of his elbow, the breadth of his wrists and the fine, large hand cast loosely over his waist. Nearby the pillow, Leo was curled comfortably, his tail covering his eyes.

  As if her gaze awakened him, the man stirred, legs shifting below the blankets until the remembrance of pain in one of them stopped him. He went still again, and only turned his head, shaking hair from his face. He opened his eyes.

  Molly felt a hitch in her throat. Stunning eyes, startlingly dark irises against whites as clear as a child's. For a moment, he stared at her, perplexed, then lifted that big dark hand and brushed his hair all the way o
ut of his face. "I thought I dreamed you," he said.

  Oh, my. His voice, till now, had been rough with pain, his words broken. After sleep and antibiotics, the voice was as rich as Mexican coffee, the accent lacing through it like cinnamon, a delicious and surprising stroke. "I'm real," she said, crossing her arms. "How are you feeling?"

  He inclined his head, as if listening to his body. "Not bad."

  She smiled. "Not bad, or just better than yesterday?"

  He raised his eyebrows, a faint smile of agreement turning up his wide mouth. "Not great."

  "I'm going to make some scrambled eggs for breakfast. And there's coffee. Can you eat?"

  "Oh, yes." It was heartfelt.

  Abruptly, he sat up and Molly flew to his side when the stabbing pain of broken ribs made him put both hands to his chest with a strangled groan. His hair fell in his face. "Take it easy," she said.

  Leonardo, disturbed, made a plaintive noise of complaint and sat up by the pillows, but he didn't run this time. Interesting, Molly thought.

  The man's breath stuttered, then settled, and he raised his head. "Did you find my niece?"

  "Not yet."

  Despair flickered over his face and he closed his eyes. "I have to find her."

  "Señor, you are not able. Don't worry – I haven't stopped looking." She put a hand on his arm. "Let me get us both some breakfast, and give you some more medicine, and I'm going over to the orchard to see if Wiley has found her."

  "Wiley." He nodded very seriously, put a hand on her shoulder, patting. "Yeah. That's good."

  "Need some help up?"

  "Sí." He said it with resignation, and Molly chuckled.

  "You'll be better in just a day or two, I promise." He nodded. "I do not like this—" his dark hand swept out, as if to fling the weakness away "—fault."

  "I know." With practiced gestures, she indicated he should put his arm around her shoulders and they stood up together. She glanced up to his face, and saw his jaw set very tightly, that licorice hair hiding everything else. The pain had to be intense, but he bore it fairly well.

  She helped him limp across the hall, and left him, pointing out towels and soap and a plastic, wrapped toothbrush she'd put on the sink, before leaving him to it. "Call me when you're ready, and I'll help you get to the kitchen," she said. He gave a single nod.

  Molly went back to the kitchen and without thought, she turned on the radio, and poured a cup of coffee and turned to the fridge, opened the door and stared for a long time without seeing anything but the fall of his hair, his bladed face, the red-gold burnishing of his skin.

  Slowly the vision faded, leaving her staring blankly at the contents of her refrigerator. Eggs. Right. She took the carton out, grabbed the butter, closed the door.

  From around the corner came Leonardo, with that air of a busy tiger, a prize in his mouth. Molly smiled. "Found a sock, did you?" He adored socks for reasons Molly couldn't fathom. He stole them from the laundry pile and the bathroom and bedroom floors, where she all too often left them, and carried them proudly to a corner of the dining room. He hustled now to that stash, where one green one and one pink-flowered one waited. The significance of the fact that the one he added now was white – and therefore belonged to Alejandro, sunk in. "Oh no you don't. Wait a minute, Leo."

  "Señora?"

  Deciding she could rescue the sock later, Molly rushed back down the hall. "Yes?"

  "I need … um … pants?"

  "Oh!" Her eyes slid to the opening in the door, thinking of the silky hair on his thighs—

  Startled by the vividly erotic memory, she blinked.

  "Of course you do. I'll be right back." Pants. Hauling open a drawer in the heavy Spanish colonial pine bureau, she riffled through a stack of clothes that she'd been unable to bear getting rid of. "Ah-ha!" She grabbed a pair of drawstring gray sweats and hurried back. "Here you are," she said.

  He stuck a hand out of the door, his face at the opening. "Gracias."

  "I'll wait this time."

  In a moment, he opened the door and, holding on to the jamb, his shoulders hunched, he mugged an old man's voice and posture, his feet shuffling. "El viejo needs you."

  Molly laughed and settled his arm over her shoulder and tried not to notice the feeling of his body close to hers. He smelled of soap and peppermint toothpaste, a somehow intimate scent.

  At the doorway of the kitchen, he paused, lifting his head, his free hand still clasped to his chest. "Oh, very nice."

  "Thanks," she said briskly and deposited him in a chair. "Coffee?"

  "Yes, please."

  "Anything to put in it? Milk? Sugar?"

  He waved a hand as she settled a mug in front of him. "Everything."

  Conscious of his frank gaze, Molly grabbed the sugar, then opened the fridge again for the milk, feeling a little heat in her cheeks as she thought of herself mooning over the eggs a few minutes ago. How embarrassing – she was acting as if she'd never looked at a man before.

  But no matter how she tried to keep her body in a normal posture, move it in the ways she'd moved it a thousand billion times over the thirty years of her life, it was impossible. She was aware of her fingers around the neck of the milk carton, aware of the swing of her arm as she took it out, aware of her knees moving her across the buff-colored ceramic tiles she'd laid herself, on those very knees. She was aware, especially, of her breasts beneath her T-shirt, and of her rear end when she turned around to start cooking breakfast.

  And worse, it was nothing he did to make her so aware. He did not stare inappropriately. His gaze did not particularly linger on her. He was polite and graceful, and openly looking around himself to see where he'd landed.

  It was just him. Having a man in her kitchen after so long, a man unrelated to her.

  "Señora, may I ask what you learned about Josefina?"

  The formality of his words, the dignity in his question brought her to earth. With relief, she seized the sense of normality and broke eggs into a bowl, turning on the burner at the same time to heat the cast-iron skillet. "Very little, I'm afraid. I asked a sheriff if any children had been taken in the raid, and there were no girls her age. So she's out there, somewhere."

  "Thank you." He bowed his head.

  Beating eggs with a fork, she said, "How did you come to leave her behind?"

  He took a breath, blew it out. "She cannot run so fast. I hid her." He met her gaze. "I have no visa, no green card."

  Molly smiled. "I gathered that."

  He nodded, the dark eyes troubled. "This could make trouble for you."

  She lifted a shoulder. "I know that, too."

  "So why did you help me, señora?"

  "I couldn't leave you there." Turning, she put butter in the pan. "No, that's not true. I was going to call an ambulance, but you started calling for Josefina." She looked over her shoulder, and met his gaze honestly. "I could tell you love her, and you were worried."

  He swallowed. Nodded.

  She scrambled the eggs briskly, poured them onto two plates and carried them to the table. "Anything else?"

  "No, no." He frowned. "Please sit. This is very good."

  From the corner of her eye, she noticed that he put his napkin in his lap, and sat with his back straight, and he held his fork correctly. No, more than correctly. Elegantly.

  What had she expected? The answer shamed her. Not this. She had expected ignorance and sloppiness. A hand clutched around the midsection of a fork that shoveled the food into a mouth that chewed openly.

  "Where are you from?" she asked.

  "A place called Jaral, Mexico. Do you know it?"

  "No." She smiled. "I'm afraid I don't."

  He swept a lean-fingered hand. "It is very small. A long way from here."

  "You must have been here a long time. Your English is very good."

  "Not so long." He sipped some of the coffee. "When we were children, we lived in Mexico City. I had good schools. And when I came here, two years ago, I read the new
spapers every day, to remember."

  "Really?"

  He straightened, putting his fork down. "You want to know why I am in those fields if what I say is true, no?"

  Molly lifted her shoulders, let them go. "Yes."

  He nodded. "I will tell you. Later. When you come back from Wiley."

  She smiled. "Fair enough." Finished, she took her plate and gestured toward his. "Do you want something more to eat?"

  There was strain around his mouth. "No. Thank you. Viejo goes back to bed." He attempted a smile, but it was plain that the simple business of washing and eating had drained him.

  "Let's get you back to bed, then, viejo."

  * * *

  Josefina did not feel so good when she woke up. Her back hurt from the cold ground and her arms and legs were stiff from the long night without covers. The little dog had helped, but it was getting close now to winter, and in the cool bite of the morning, she could feel winter coming.

  And her cough, usually no problem in the daytime, was bad this morning. It burned through her chest like the fingernails of a ghost, clawing at her. The inhaler didn't help, either. She coughed so hard she thought she was going to lose her stomach through her mouth. Finally the hacking stopped, and she leaned against the tree under which she'd slept, her eyes closed, just breathing, the way Tío showed her. In, out, very even, very slow, till all the feeling went away.

  She wanted him to fix her tea with lemon and honey, so hot it almost burned her tongue. It would make her throat feel better. It would warm her tummy. It would—

  Where was he? Where was everybody? These orchards and fields had been full, full for all the days they were here, and now they were completely empty. And the crop had not been brought in. Overhead, she could see the heavy fruit, almost too ripe, most of it. Her stomach growled.

  She shimmied up the slender branches and nabbed a peach, so big it nearly didn't fit her hand, and then, not knowing if the dog would want to share with her, got another. He didn't want her fruit when she let him smell it, and so Josefina had two big peaches for breakfast. Later, when it got dark, she would go to town again, buy another hot dog for supper, maybe two – one for her and one for her dog.