Feast Day of Fools - James Lee Burke [157]
“Options.”
“Can you translate that?”
“An intelligent man creates choices. A stupid man lets others deal the hand for him.”
“You’re not going to hurt that woman, are you?”
“You must think pretty low of me.”
“Not true. But I got to have your word.”
“That’s what my mother used to say, right before she made me cut my own switch and skinned me into next week,” Jack said.
The front porch light was on when they parked in the yard of the gingerbread house and knocked on the screen door. “Just an advanced warning, Noie,” Jack said. “I think some lies are being told about me. So don’t necessarily believe everything this lady says.”
“What lies?”
“If people faced the truth about how governments work, there would be revolutions all over the earth. So they blame the misdeeds of the government on individuals. I happen to be one of those individuals. You never read Machiavelli up there at MIT?”
“¡Venga!” someone called from the kitchen.
“You heard her,” Jack said.
They went inside and sat on the couch. A heavyset Mexican woman with a wooden spoon in her hand and her hair tressed up in braids came into the living room. Jack’s Stetson was propped on his knee. He rose from the couch, his hat hooked on one finger. “Where’s Ms. Ling?” he said.
“She went to the store. She’ll be right back. I’m Isabel,” the woman said.
“Mind if we wait?” Jack asked.
“The people are coming. If you don’t mind them, they won’t mind you,” Isabel said.
“What people?”
“La gente. The people.”
“Yeah, I got that. But what people?”
“The people who always come. You can sit at the tables in back if you want. I already put Kool-Aid out there. You can help me carry out the food,” Isabel said.
“We don’t mind in the least,” Noie said. “Do we, Jack?”
Jack’s expression made Noie think of a large yellow squash someone had just twisted out of shape.
They carried out lidded pots of beans and fried hamburger meat and plates of hot tortillas smeared with margarine. They set them on the plank tables under the trees and helped light the candles affixed to the bottoms of jelly jars. In the distance, they could see the headlights of several vehicles headed up the dirt road toward them.
“You have a bunch of wets coming through here?” Jack said.
“No, no wets,” Isabel said, wagging a finger. “These are not wets, and ‘wets’ is not a term we use. You understand that, hombre?”
“When is the lady of the house due back?” he asked.
“Any time now. Sit down. We have plenty of food for everyone.”
“We’re not here to eat,” Jack said.
“You should. You look like a scarecrow,” Isabel said.
Jack stared at her back as she walked away.
“What are you thinking?” Noie asked.
“That woman has a figure like a garbage can with a pair of bowling pins under it.”
“What lies would Miss Anton be telling about you, Jack?”
“Eat up and don’t worry about it.”
A caravan of cars and pickup trucks pulled into the yard, and Mexican working people filed around the sides of the house and through the front door without knocking and out the back door and sat at the tables and began filling their plates, talking incessantly, paying no attention to either Jack or Noie. Through the window of the chapel, Noie could see several of them placing their hands on the base of a wooden statue. “Why do they do that?” he asked.
“They’re ignorant pagans is why. Didn’t you ever read Ernest Hemingway?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so? What do you people read in college? Hemingway said Spain was a Catholic country but not a Christian one. Same with this bunch.”
Noie hoped the people sitting near them did not know too much English.
Several children began battering a piñata with a broom handle, tearing apart the papier-mâché and colored crepe paper and stringing pieces of wrapped candy over the dirt apron under the tree. Several girls and young women sat down across from Noie and Jack, their backs turned, watching the children, sometimes reaching behind them to pick up a jar of Kool-Aid or a rolled tortilla. Jack was eating frijoles with a spoon, watching the women and girls, a smear