The Hummingbird's Daughter_ A Novel - Luis Alberto Urrea [101]
Certainly, if we can make some familial arrangement between the Cantúas and the Urreas, the hacienda will be at your disposal, and all its riches will also be yours.
I await your speedy response with my breath held and my knees bent: one hand on my heart, and the other raised to God Himself in supplication!
Very Sincerely and Faithfully Yours, I
Remain, Awaiting Your Kind Understanding
And Merciful Judgment,
Your Future Son,
Don Tomás Urrea,
La Hacienda de Cabora, Sonora
He’d have Segundo deliver it in the morning.
The girls gawked at trolley cars. They walked through the shadows of the great cathedral on the main square. Late in the night, they sat on a bank in Xochimilco and soaked their feet in the ancient waterways of the Aztecs.
Twenty years later, though neither Gabriela Cantúa nor Josefina Félix had ever been to Mexico City, they’d have no trouble pointing out their various wanderings on a map.
Thirty-two
SEÑOR CANTÚA WAS, like many restaurateurs, a philosopher. He was well aware of the fact that one could not stand in the way of destiny. Who knew the secrets of the heart, or the secrets of history, or the secrets of God’s will? The truth was that Cantúa was tired of the Alamos road, tired of the stinking wanderers and the dreaded Rurales who ate his goat-meat tacos. He was tired of worrying about Gabriela. He had several other children back home, near the coast, and a wife he never saw because that seaside city was safer than these terrible haunted places where he had sought his fortune. And now Tomás Urrea was offering a kind of liberation. Gabriela was, after all, nearly an old maid!
Certainly, Cantúa figured, Señor Urrea would offer a fair bride price. Enough, perhaps, to open the restaurant in Guaymas that he really wanted to run. Open windows letting in a fresh sea breeze. Tuna, shrimp, oysters, and beer. One daughter happy on a hacienda—a Cantúa running a hacienda! And five or six children and a wife, happy on the beach. Everybody rich!
Who was he to stand in the way of miracles when they came unbidden out of the sky?
He took up a pencil and sharpened it with a steak knife.
My Dear and Esteemed, Many Times Blessed by Our Merciful Lord, Noble and Courageous Leader and Shining Example to Our People, Don Tomás,
You at once honor and alarm me with your heartfelt testament of love.
We must meet like real men and discuss the fate of my daughter, Gabriela. No riches can ever equal her value to me! No price could ever meet her true worth!
However, we could speak of arrangements that, although never even reaching one small percentage of her eternal grace and Godly golden value, would have to be generous. Of course you agree! Anything less than a small fortune would be an insult to my Dear Angel! I only think of her suffering mother and her own peace of mind. Knowing of your kindness toward myself and my beloved bride and my dear, dear children, how can Gabriela feel anything less than truly loved? Loved and valued! By you, my dear Don Tomás! Gracias a Dios y Viva México!
Your humble servant and
Fellow Father,
Señor Cantúa (of the restaurant)
(Father of Gabriela)
P.S. One look in her luminescent eyes, my friend, and you will swoon as if you had tasted the ambrosial liquors of Heaven. You will forsake all other loves for my Gaby, Don Tomás. Of this I can assure you.
When Tomás finished reading this letter, he called Huila in and read it to her.
“What is he doing,” Huila asked, “selling a horse?”
As a token of his respect, Tomás sent Segundo and the Parangarícutirimícuaro beekeeper in a wagon with a fresh side of beef, a barrel of soap, a crate of candles, tequila in clay jugs, and a bag of gold coins to cover any expenses Cantúa might meet in the celebratory weeks to follow.
“Ah cabrón!” Cantúa laughed, clapping his hands. “Ah cabrón!”
Gaby mounted the wagon to Cabora, never thinking she would stay. But one night with Teresita