Shortgrass Song (55 page)

“Bigger. I've got both legs.”

Javier laughed loudly and gave orders for the vaqueros to take care of Caleb's horse. “I almost didn't recognize you with that mustache.”

“I just started lettin' it grow in San Antone,” Caleb said, following Javier out of the corrals and into the village compound. “Saves me time shavin'.”

“I know better,” the alcalde said. “You are wearing that to tickle the señoritas.” He laughed, wide-eyed, and slapped Caleb on the back. “How about some enchiladas and tamales?”

“Sounds good. I haven't et much since I left Fort Stockton a week ago.”

As they walked briskly up the dirt lane, Javier asked about Ab, Pete, Buster, and the cowhands he had known at Holcomb Ranch. Doors opened as they passed, and curious faces peered out from the warm rooms.

“Me and the old man fell out after you left,” Caleb was explaining. “I've gone back every spring, but I've been mostly driftin' since I left home. How come everybody's lookin' at us?”

Another door opened, and a beautiful, slender, ample-haired girl leaned out. Javier didn't notice, but Caleb did.

“They think you are a Texan. Some of those goddamn Texans have been trying to get this valley from us. Besides, my people want to know what is going on with their alcalde,” he said, thumping himself on the chest.

“Their what?” Caleb was staring over his shoulder at the long-haired señorita.

“I am the alcalde here. The
jefe,
the mayor, the boss.”

Caleb's view of the girl was broken as they rounded a corner. “You mean you're the hookin' bull of this whole town?” Their boots clogged over the planks of a foot-bridge crossing the river.

Javier nodded proudly.

“How many people live here?”

“You know, it is a funny thing. We have exactly one hundred. Old Garcia died a few months ago, but then José Hidalgo's wife had a baby and now we have one hundred again.”

“I hope you won't mind me makin' it one hundred one.”

Javier stopped at the side door of the biggest house in the village, and the highest. It looked down on the town, the river, and the arid plains to the east. “Have you come to stay with us, then?”

“Lookin' for a place to winter. Got any work for a cow-boy?”

“You are welcome to stay, of course. I cannot pay you anything, but you will have food to eat and a place to stay. Anyway, as I remember, you were better with guitar and fiddle than with horse and cattle.”

“Well, things change, Javier. It'll take me a while to get you caught up.”

The alcalde put his hand on the door latch. “We eat first,” he said. “Then siesta. Then we play some songs and you can tell me about all the things that have changed with you. I have suffered some changes myself.”

When Javier opened the door, Caleb beheld a rotund, rosy-cheeked woman carrying a baby boy under one arm and setting steaming platters of tamales, wrapped in corn shucks, on a table of hand-hewn pine planks. Without even looking up, she lit into her husband in Spanish, rattling off syllables with woodpecker rapidity.

“Sylvia…” Javier attempted as she continued to jabber. “Sylvia…” he tried again.

Caleb saw a tiny girl child pull herself up to table height in one of the chairs.

“Sylvia!” Javier shouted.

She turned, scowling. Then she saw Caleb, gasped, and put on the sweetest smile and the warmest disposition. “Oh,
buenos días,
” she said, hoisting the baby to her shoulder. “Hello, hello.”

As Javier explained in Spanish, Caleb picked out the few words he knew: “… amigo … Colorado … Caleb Holcomb.”

“Welcome, welcome,” Sylvia said, pulling out a chair for Caleb. She turned her face to her husband and snarled a few words at him in Spanish. Then she smiled sweetly at Caleb again. “He is late,” she explained. “The food is getting cold.” She hurled a few more choice Spanish expletives at her husband for emphasis.

SIXTY-FOUR

Caleb moved into a room in the back of Javier's house with its own fireplace, a door to the outside, and a patio that stood on the edge of the pine forest growing above Peñascosa. Someone in the village brought an old violin, unused for years. Caleb strung it left-handed and began to relearn the art of fiddling.

One afternoon, after fiddle practice, he saw an old woman and some children trying to herd a pig back into its enclosure near the corrals. They were having little luck, so he gave them a hand. When the pig was back in, he saw Marisol coming with an armload of pine pickets to be used in mending the pen. He became suddenly expert at fixing pigpens and stayed to see that it was done properly.

“Javier told me you speak English pretty good,” he said, sharpening a pine limb with a hatchet.

“Yes. I do speak some English. But not all of it.”

“Maybe we should talk more often. I could teach you English, and you could teach me Spanish.”

“Of course,” she said.
“¿Cómo no?”

“¿Cómo no?”
he repeated.

“That means ‘Why not?'”

“Como no,”
he said. They worked together in awkward silence for a minute. “Is this your pig?” he finally asked.

“No, it belongs to my grandmother. That old woman, there.”

The old lady smiled toothlessly when he looked.

“Where's your folks?”

“Folks?”

“Yes, your mama and papa?”

“Oh,” she said, driving a picket into the ground. “My mama is dead. And my papa…” She shrugged.

From that day on, Caleb met Marisol every afternoon so they could teach each other their native languages. He brought his guitar one day to have her translate a song Javier had taught him. When he found he remembered new words better if they came in the form of lyrics, he continued to bring the guitar. He embarrassed the daylights out of Marisol by making her sing to him in English. People would stop and stare at them in bewilderment as they repeated patches of songs to each other. But Marisol soon became accustomed to the method of learning, and even the people in the village accepted it after a couple of weeks. Her singing voice was timid but pretty.

Winter brought snow to the mountains and pushed the game closer to Peñascosa. When Caleb suggested a simple hunt one day, Javier delved into a week's worth of co-ordinating cooks, butchers, skinners, mule packers, wood choppers, camp rustlers, and guides. When the expedition finally got under way, it included twelve men, nine hounds, six pack mules, and four canvas wall tents complete with stoves, three guitars, a fiddle, and a case of tequila.

Their base camp was a mountain meadow a thousand feet higher than Peñascosa and ten miles away by trail. Smoke from the ever-burning tent stoves filtered up through the branches of towering ponderosa pines around the camp. After ten days the party had more meat than it could carry back to Peñascosa, so the hunt was judged a success and called to an end.

“You know, this would be a good place to build a huntin' cabin,” Caleb said the last night of the hunt as the men passed a tequila bottle between songs.

“A warm one with a big rock fireplace,” Javier added.

“There's plenty of straight trees to build with, and water runnin' at the bottom of the meadow. A cabin would sure beat these drafty tents.”

“We will build it next November when you come to spend the winter with us again.”

Thus it was suggested, with no argument from Caleb, that he might spend every winter in Peñascosa—hunting, singing, learning Spanish, and perhaps even working a few cows.

The hunting party returned in glory with sprawling antlers of elk and deer lashed to every mule and fine furs from two wolves, a bear, and a mountain lion in addition to the deerskins and elk hides. The entire village began to prepare for a wild-game feast to be held that evening.

The front half of Javier's adobe mansion consisted of a single large room that functioned as a public meeting place and dance hall called the
casa consistorial.
It had cavernous fireplaces at both ends and a hearth in the middle where red-hot rocks were piled for further warmth. The adobe walls stood all of ten feet high, and overhead, huge trunks of ponderosa pine, stripped of bark, spanned the breadth of the room. Lanterns hung around the inside walls on twisted wrought iron fixtures. The entrance to the public room was an archway closed by carved double doors.

The celebration didn't get under way in the
casa consistorial
until about ten o'clock that night. Then the big room became quickly crowded with people from great-grandfathers to babies. Children ran in packs like yelping coyotes. Dogs waited outside the double doors to catch the bones tossed out by the feasters. When they had washed down their sopapillas and honey with coffee, the musicians got the dance started.

Because its economy revolved around Javier's cattle herd, Peñascosa claimed a disproportionately large number of young vaqueros. Competition for available señoritas was intense. Few of the girls got to sit out even one dance. Marisol had a particularly long line of dancing partners to deal with.

Empty wine and tequila bottles began to pile up as the night wore on. The guitar players worked in relays, so the music never flagged. Caleb made a debut with his left-handed fiddle, playing an easy waltz with great success. He also made a profound impression on the crowd by singing, in near perfect Spanish,
“Mujer sin Corazón.”

When finally he saw Marisol sitting in a chair and refusing offers to dance, he put his guitar aside and filled two glasses with wine.

“Hola,”
he said, taking a seat next to her and handing her the wineglass.

“Thank you,” she answered, taking a little energy from his arrival.

“I wish I could ask you to dance,” he said, “but I don't know how to dance to these Mexican songs.”

“I can teach you how,” she said.

“You can?”

“
¿Cómo no?
I can teach you right now.”

“In front of all these people?” Caleb said. “I wouldn't know how to take the first step.”

“You are not afraid, no?” She tilted her head and let a cascade of dark, rich hair tumble over her shoulder.

“Yes, I am afraid. I'm afraid of makin' a fool out of myself. How do say it?
Bufón?
”

Marisol laughed. “Yes, that is right.
Bufón.
”

Caleb was aware that every gossipy crone and every jealous vaquero in the room was staring at him.

“You need to take your dancing lessons
privadamente,
” she suggested.

“What's that mean? Privately?”

She nodded as she lifted the wineglass to her lips.

“You're right. Private dance lessons, that's what I need.”

“Give me about five minutes to get away,” she said. “Then come to my room. We can hear the music from there. I will teach you how to dance.” She got up, leaving the wineglass on the table. “Don't let anybody see you come in. The old women will gossip.” She left without waiting for his response.

He wandered casually back toward the musicians, forcing himself to ignore Marisol. After a couple of minutes, he picked up his fiddle and strolled into Javier's kitchen. He felt his way through the dark house to his room, left the fiddle there, and went out through the door to his patio. Sneaking along the side of the house, he hid behind a woodpile and waited until the way was clear between Javier's house and the rest of the village. Then he rushed to the footbridge and crossed the river.

Walking with the closest thing he could manage to an ordinary gait, he swung down the lane toward Marisol's door. When he saw the firelight leaking out around the portal, he glanced over his shoulder and, seeing no one behind him, leapt at the door and knocked on it. It swung open immediately, and his dance instructor pulled him in.

“Did anyone see you?”

“No. Everybody's at the
baile.
”

The only light in the room came from the bell-shaped fireplace that bulged from one corner. Marisol's straw-filled mattress was rolled, tied, and placed against the wall to make room for dancing.

“Stand over here out of the way and I will show you some steps,” she said. “They are playing the music for the bolero. Watch.”

As the musicians played, barely audible away up the hill, Marisol whirled and stamped her feet on the tiled floor, sweeping her hands over her head, striking sudden poses. Her hair enveloped her face when she spun, raked the whitewashed walls with shadows, and even brushed her student as he stood watching.

“There,” she said. “Can you make those moves?”

Caleb took a step toward her. “I don't think so,” he said. “Let's start with somethin' a little easier.
Más fácil.
”

“Something like what?”

“Come here and I'll show you.” He put his right arm around her waist and took her hand in his. “We'll have to be real quiet to hear the music.”

“I am not the one talking,” she said.

They stood together for a moment, trying to hear the distant guitars above the crackling of the fire. He saw the reflections of the flames in her eyes. His heart was pounding in his ears. He couldn't hear a thing. The musicians had stopped playing. He pulled Marisol closer to him; closer, until she was looking almost straight up at him. He faintly heard the band strike up a waltz.

Instead of dancing, he kissed her. She didn't resist. In fact, she pressed herself against him. Then, after a few seconds, she pushed away.

“You did not really want to learn how to dance, did you?” she whispered.

“No. I'm hopeless at dancin'. I never was any good at it.”

“Then why did you come to my room?”

Caleb stammered. He could never tell what women wanted to hear. “Because I … Well, I … I want to get to know you better.” He felt her hand move on his shoulder and showed a sudden surge of foolish courage. “I mean, a
lot
better.”