Dark Water - Laura McNeal [4]
“Uno momentito,” Hoyt said to the workers, his stock phrase, and I looked kind of desperately at Amiel, hoping he’d somehow impress my uncle.
“That one,” I said.
Amiel saw me, so he pointed to himself with an extra-long, extra-expressive finger. He raised one eyebrow. He looked in an exaggerated way behind him.
“Oh my God,” Robby said. “If he gets into a box, I’m going to shoot myself.”
The mime walked slowly toward the pickup, which was angled so that he was approaching Robby’s side. Hoyt patted Robby’s knee and said, “Roll down your window, Rob.”
It was that kind of truck, where you had to roll, so Robby did, but very slowly. “This is not worth a donut,” he muttered.
“You know how to use a chain saw?” my uncle called out Robby’s window at Amiel.
All the other men were still holding Hoyt’s door like they were in deep water and we were a boat. “¡Sí! Chain saw!” they said, but Hoyt was still looking out Robby’s window at the boy who was now six inches from me.
He was slender to the point of bony, with a smooth, narrow, mournful face. His eyes were a lighter shade of brown than his skin, like gold sand in a river bottom, and his nose might have seemed large if his eyes hadn’t been so arresting. In contrast to his straightness and tautness, his hair seemed uncontrollably curly.
Amiel held one hand in the shape of a C, a gesture I later learned was his gesture for “sí.” He strapped an imaginary pair of goggles over his creek-glitter eyes. He pulled on an imaginary cord and started up an imaginary chain saw. He shuddered and appeared unable to control the weight of it, then nodded to himself and smiled at us before starting to cut through an invisible tree limb. He stopped the chain saw and picked up the imaginary log and presented it to us.
Uncle Hoyt laughed. Robby groaned. The other men, the ones at Hoyt’s window, made disgusted noises and looked angry enough that I knew things would be worse for Amiel if Hoyt just drove away.
But he didn’t. “What the hell. Hop in!” Hoyt said, then he nodded at the oldest man hanging around his door handle, a guy who couldn’t have been more than four and a half feet tall under his black cowboy hat, and said, “You too, señor.” I felt extremely happy and was full of affection for my uncle. I just knew he wouldn’t be sorry.
The very small old man and Amiel climbed into the narrow backseat.
“What’s your name?” Hoyt asked.
The tiny vaquero said he was called Gallo, and Amiel handed us a not entirely clean business card that said AMIEL DE LA CRUZ GUERRERO. HARD WORKER.
“Are you deaf?” Hoyt asked him, returning the card to Amiel.
Amiel shook his head and pointed to his throat.
“Well, mucho gusto!” Hoyt said, another of his stock Spanish phrases, and Robby looked like he was figuring out how fast he would have to roll if he jumped out of a truck going thirty miles per hour.
“Where are you from?” Hoyt practically shouted in Spanish to the old vaquero in the back. The truck was loud with the windows down, sunshine and wind whipping us all, the motor roaring. But it wasn’t just that. Uncle Hoyt, like just about everyone else, spoke louder in a foreign language, and I think he still thought Amiel was deaf. Bougainvillea flew by.
“Acapulco,” the old man said beautifully, like it was the name of a love song.
“This is my son, Roberto,” my uncle announced real slow and loud, and Robby shrank into the door. “I’m Hoyt, okay?” he went on. Then he added, “This pretty señorita here is my niece, Pearl!”
“You daughter?” the old one asked in English.
“Sobrina,” Hoyt said.
“Sí,” the vaquero said. “Sí. Sobrina.”
By this time we were crossing the freeway to Rainbow, population 2,026, elevation 1,043. Rainbow had its own elementary school, café, gas station, and fruit stand but was otherwise just a strung-out collection of ranches, packinghouses, nurseries, and farms. Huge boulders were clumped in all the hills like brown sugar that’s gone hard on you, and lilacs and oak trees grew crooked and wild in their shade.
Six months from this day,