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By Root 1132 0

She swung her cane at Tomás when he was rude to Gabriela. She knew that the deeper secrets were ready for Teresita, even if Teresita was not entirely ready for them. On some mornings, she was certain that the world was burning, until she had sipped her cup of coffee and eaten her bread and smelled her flowers. She dreamed her dead lover from those many years before. He came to her bearing six white flowers. The hummingbird hovered before her face, fanning her with its wings, and the smell the wings gave off was burning sage, the smoke of cedar. She watched her mother pass before her, walking on the far side of a river. Huila’s time was coming. Her prayers changed in that season, and she asked to be forgiven her mistakes, to be made worthy of death.

“I never see Teresita anymore,” Tomás complained.

He was most happy at breakfast. On certain days, he had an entire family gathered at the table. He sat at the head of the table, and Gaby sat on his right hand. At the far end, the engineer Aguirre often sat. Teresita and Huila sat on one side of the table, and Cantúa and Segundo sat on the other. Fina Félix was often in attendance, jammed into a corner and crinkling her nose at Teresita. Buenaventura was never invited.

Tomás was now, finally, the Great Hacendado—and he regaled his new family with boasts and tales, gesturing wildly with his coffee mugs and folded tortillas dripping beans and eggs. The ranch was a grand success, the mines were profitable. In spite of her rage and her disgrace, back in Alamos, Loreto was not ready to fully part from him. The good fathers had assured Loreto that the damnation was his, not hers. Gaby quietly plucked food off his plate and murmured “Ay Tomás” and “Ay mi amor” while making little faces, like Fina, at Teresita.

“We are busy,” Huila said, soaking rolls in her coffee.

“Busy! Doing what!”

“Women things,” Huila said.

The great house of the ranch reflected the good times—it was built and rebuilt in sections. The main room, Aguirre’s first project after the Yaqui raid, was now a stone-walled fortress. Rising from the western corner was the new stone tower with Teresita’s room high atop it and shooting slits in the shutters and battlements on the way up for sharpshooters to take aim. Aguirre had convinced him that a government attack could come at any time. Díaz had a long memory and a longer reach.

And now the second wing of the house was almost complete, and the third wing well begun.

Even in his joy, even while he smelled his beloved on his fingers and found himself delighted by his daughter’s strange humors and graceful guitar strumming (they enjoyed duets on the veranda that set the cows lowing and the dogs howling), Tomás suffocated every day within its walls. It was inconceivable to him that Teresita should go anywhere without him, much less out into the savage landscape around them to oversee anything as grotesque as childbirth. But the old one was tireless: she raged, cajoled, begged, suggested, demanded, explained until Tomás could no longer stand her voice. She refused any guards or riders—her only concession to safety was old Teófano.

“We rarely go off the ranch,” she insisted. “And if we do, Teófano will guard us.”

“If anything happens to her . . .”

“Nothing will happen to her.”

Teresita stood beside her chair, looking at the floor. Segundo and Aguirre both thought: She certainly is getting attractive.

“And you?” Tomás said. “What do you wish?”

“I wish to go, Father,” she replied.

“And you, mi amor?” he asked Gabriela. “What is your opinion?”

“Ay, Gordo,” she said. She had taken to calling him Fat Boy, and he often called her Flaca—the skinny woman. “Let her go. It is her destiny.”

“Destiny,” he said.

He did not believe in such things as destiny. Superstition. Still, what had happened between Gabriela and him . . . it could be described as destiny. He rubbed his head. He sighed. He gestured for Teresita to step up to his chair. He kissed her on top of her head.

“Do your work.”

“Bueno.” Huila nodded. “It is done.”

They went, and as they worked, Huila taught