Jim Kane - J P S Brown (27 page)

"
Ahh," Chato said. "A fine cigar. One
of Don Tomás' cigars. Where is he keeping them?" Kane showed
Chato where the humidor was. Chato went back inside. On his way to
the humidor he stopped to talk to a
mariachi
who carried a big
guitarr
ó
n,
the big, pot-bellied guitar. The
mariachi
unslung the strap from over his shoulder and
relinquished the instrument to Chato. Chato took it and went on to
the humidor, passing clumsily and with many apologies through a group
of people sitting with Don Tomás in the corner of the living room.
He took a handful of cigars from the humidor, apologized again to the
people visiting with Don Tomás as he bumped and twanged the
guitarrón
back
through them, and returned to the
portal
.

"
Hee, hee, hee," he said to Kane. He handed
Kane two of the cigars he had looted.

"
Are you going to the dance in the patio?"
he asked Kane. "It is about to start."

"Maybe later," Kane said.

"
Later we'll go together and I'll introduce you
to my daughter. You are the one who hit Juanito Vogel, are you not?"

"
Yes, we fought. My name is Jim Kane."

"
Pedro Delgado, your servant. They call me
Chato. Come on. We'll sing for a while. It is always good to sing on
a full stomach, like a coyote."

Kane and Chato went to a square building that stood
apart from the main house. Chato found a key above the doorsill and
opened the door. He crossed the dark cement floor and lit a petroleum
lamp on a heavy wooden desk. Mayo Indian rugs were scattered on the
floor. A fireplace with a bell-bottomed chimney was set in the center
of the room. Racks holding saddles and tack lined one side of the big
room. A short and battered oak bar stood on another side. Long,
axhewn, lacquered beams a foot apart held the high ceiling.

"
This is the clubroom of the charros,"
Chato said. "What will you drink? Tequila? Good. We'll have
tequila so the fiesta may continue for us." He poured a water
glass full of brown tequila and handed it to Kane. Kane sipped it.
Chato took it back, drank from it, and handed it back. Then he built
a fire in the fireplace.

"
La lumbre
," he
announced when the kindling was burning. "Now we have the fire,
the full bellies, and soon, the music."

More charros came to the clubroom. Chato introduced
them to Kane as they arrived. A guitar and a mandolin arrived with
them. The music began. Chato plucked with two fat fingers on the
strings of the
guitarr
ó
n
,
keeping time. The other charros took turns singing solos. Each would
present himself to sing, stand formally with his back to the ones
that were playing, throw his head back, and sing as though five
thousand people were listening.

They sang "El Novillo Colorado," the red
steer; the
huapango
"Torero"; "Cuatro Milpas," the four cornfields;
"Siete Leguas," Seven Leagues, the horse of Villa; and "Los
Amarradores," a local
corrido
about a band of cattle thieves that had been caught by Don Tomás.

The charms asked Chato to sing "El Prieto
Azabache," the song about the black horse that saved its master
from Pancho Villa's firing squad. Chato didn't get up from his chair.
He played his own accompaniment on the
guitarrón
.
He closed his eyes as the sentiment of the song affected him. His
voice broke and sobbed. Two minute tears escaped the corners of his
eyes, glistened, and dried instantly on each side of his large,
broken nose. At the end of his song he set the guitarrón down and
wiped the end of his nose with his fingers.

"
Hee, hee, hee," he said. He was very
happy. He took up the
guitarr
ó
n
and began picking up and slapping down its strings
again. "Thump thump . . . thump thump . . .thump thump,"
the potbelly of the guitarrón obediently said.

"
¿Cuál otro?
"
Chato asked. "What other song shall we play?"

"
¡Yá, Papá!
"
a plump, delicately complexioned girl who had come in during the song
said. "The grand march of the dance is about to begin."

"
The dance," Chato said. Everyone left the
clubroom and walked through the darkness under the mesquites back to
the main house. They passed through a long, beamed passageway between
the front room and the dining room to the patio. The whole building
made a square around the patio in the old colonial style. The door of
each room opened onto the patio. A
portal
shaded a brick walk around the inside of the patio.
Chairs were placed side by side under the portal. The guests and
their ladies sat formally straight in these chairs.
Vaqueros
of Don Tomás in their work clothes and sweat-stained
straw hats sewed drinks to the guests.

Chato left Kane and he and his companions of the
clubhouse went to find their wives. Later Chato, washed, his bald
head hatless, appeared with his wife and they took their seats on the
edges of the dance floor.

The band of
mariachis
formed at one end of the patio. Don Tomás stood in
front of the band facing the people. He wore a dark gabardine suit of
gala
, the formal wear
of the
charro
, adorned
with a pistol belt and revolver. He wore a black felt
charro
hat embossed with silver. He made a speech.

"
Brother
charros
,
ladies and gentlemen," he said. "You know this fiesta is to
honor Saint Patrick, patron saint of my late wife and my daughter. On
this occasion I wish to thank my daughter for the love and fine care
she bestows on her brother and me here in this house. I know her
mother, Patricia Piedras, may she rest in peace, is proud of her
today. Now, in honor of Saint Patrick, divert yourselves."

The mariachis began the song, "Adelita."
Don Tomás went to the edge of the dance floor and brought Adelita
out of the shadows of the
portal
.
He circled the dance floor with his daughter on his arm, presenting
her to his guests. The girl, in high heels and stockings, in a dress
with a short, hooped skirt and off-the-shoulders bodice, her hair
beribboned and braided and shining, was beautiful. A Mexican eagle
spread his wings in sequins on the front of her skirt. A large gold
Virgin of Guadalupe medal on a heavy gold chain hung between the tops
of her breasts and the moisture of her skin there caught the
lamplight exactly as the gold of the medal did. Her straight, slim
legs stepped precisely, the sway of her small waist causing the
hooped skirt to spin slightly under the hips. When Adelita and her
father had completed the full circle of the floor the other guests
rose and all the ladies were presented in the same manner. After the
grand march, Chato came up with his wife on one arm and his plump
daughter on the other and presented them to Kane. Kane walked the
girl to the dance floor and danced the first set with her, conscious
of the dust, sweat, and manure smell of himself and the nostrils of
the girl quivering frequently in distaste. After the dance he figured
he was through with the dancing. He went in search of a drink.

The smiling
vaquero
who had helped Kane at the
charreada
was serving at the bar in the living room. When he saw
Kane he poured him a large portion of Don Tomás' whiskey.

"
Why so much?" Kane asked him. The man had
poured him exactly the amount he had come looking for.

"
In case there are any sore places," the
vaquero
said.

"None that matter," Kane said. "The
buckskin didn't get a virgin."

"
You bounced like rubber."

"
I bounced because I was lucky."

"
Still, you bounced with great style. You are
with friends here."

"
Thank you, but I should not get drunk."

The vaquero poured another measure of the stuff into
Kane's glass.

"
Sometimes it takes a good quantity of this for
a man to realize he is not among strangers but among friends.

"
Thank you," Kane said.

"
Placido Ruiz at your orders."

"Thank you, Placido. Jim Kane at your service."

"Divert yourself here," Placido said,
smiling.

"
That is what I have set out to do," Kane
said.

He took the big drink and walked out of the house. He
lit another cigar and went purposefully back to the clubroom. He
found the key and let himself in. He lit the lamp and replenished the
fire. He thought, and now to see how it is that I shall divert myself
here.

The saddles were singed and grooved under the horns
where the maguey ropes ran with the dallies. The hats were big and
heavy and, Kane thought, must get in the way when a man swung a loop
over his head. Kane had always liked heavy spurs because of the good
balance they gave a man's feet in the stirrup. One jab, well placed,
and a horse with any sense would remember why he got it and do his
best to avoid another like it for a long time.

Like Jim Kane, Kane thought. He will do well to
remember how the spurring feels. He bet that Adelita would keep the
hair flying off the cowboy she found to work her cattle for her. Jim
Kane would do well to keep away from dances and willful girls and
Fine future fathers-in-law.

Fiestas had better remain for Kane times to watch,
fill the belly as Chato said, fill the spirit with wine, and listen
to music. Listen to the music from here by the fire. The music is
plainer, less noisy, and does not carry with it good-looking dancing
legs here by the fire. Legs you'll want to get into bed and then legs
that would drive the spur to make you go someplace you don't want to
go. Better not be nice and polite and join the race after those legs.

Kane picked up a
maguey
and sat down with his feet on the platform the fire
rested on. He built a small loop in the
maguey
and began roping the toe of one of his boots. He roped
the boot and tried to jerk the slack quickly before the loop settled
on the platform. In this way the rope would touch only the toe, never
catch the boot below the instep. Very diverting.

Juan Vogel came into the clubroom. "What the
chingados
are you
doing here,
gringo
?
Have you quit the fiesta or what?" he asked Kane.

"No. I came to look at the tack. I was going
right back," Kane said.

"
I thought you would like the fiesta. That is
why I brought you. This is a Mexican fiesta,. a time to get drunk,
dance, and steal a girl. Not a time to think and look at saddles. Are
you afraid of the girls?"

"
Now you are being funny."

"
Just grab their little soft hands with one hand
and their nice little waists with the other hand, get up close to
them, and you will see how nice and helpless they are."

"
Lead the way then," Kane said.

At the patio Juan Vogel quit Kane and picked on one
of the girls of the
escaramuza
to
dance with. Mariano was dancing with another of the escaramuzas. His
hat hung by its chinstrap from the butt of the pistol he wore. He was
hugging the girl tightly and barely moving her around. His face was
vacant and preoccupied with the great amount of getting acquainted he
was doing. The bull rider was dancing with Adelita. The rhythm of the
ranchera
song they
were dancing was exactly the same as the high pace or prance of a
horse. Kane knew how to dance a little but he knew he would never be
able to dance the
ranchera
the
way it should be danced because he had not been born with the
exclusively Mexican hitch in his getalong for the dance. Adelita and
her partner were dancing the way the
ranchera
needed to be danced to. They were kicking up their heels
to the tune of the music and doing it for the joy of what the music
made their feet want to do.

Kane sat down in a chair under the
portal
while he watched the doings. Chato and Placido, arm in
arm, came over to him.

"What a beautiful dance this is," Chato
said.

"
What a beautiful dance!" Placido, who was
no longer smiling but was dead-eyed, wobbling drunk, said. Chato's
hat was on the back of his head. The ends of the chinstrap hung over
one ear. He and Placido settled themselves in chairs beside Kane.

"
My drinks are risen," Chato said. "I
must rest. Hee, hee, hee."

Kane heard the tap of high heels on the brick walk, a
sure stimulant to his interest wherever he was.