The Hummingbird's Daughter_ A Novel - Luis Alberto Urrea [118]
Tomás muttered to Segundo, “See? She’s all right.”
Teresita had never tasted pancakes, blueberries, ice cream, chewing gum. She could not imagine root beer or spaghetti. She had never seen a hot-air balloon. She had never looked through a telescope. She had never heard of such things as zoos, museums, the North Pole. She had never seen a major bridge. She had never been in the mountains, though she had looked at them her whole life.
She had never seen a ship, except in her night flights that now seemed years ago and nearly forgotten. She had never met a doctor. Had never been cold. Had never seen a building taller than two stories.
If she knew so little, had seen next to nothing, then why, in her dreams, were the People calling her Queen of the World?
On Friday nights, no matter how sore or bent from work they were, the People and the vaqueros began to drink and fuss. Segundo set up a small cantina on the porch of the bunkhouse. Men bought bottles from Cantúa’s old roadside inn (long forgotten as a beanery, it was now under the management of El Güero Astengo, and it was a cantina, La Pulquería Alma de Mi Gente) and the occasional hogshead barrel of beer. Segundo resold the beer at a small profit. The idea was the fiesta, not the money. But money didn’t hurt, and it was better to lose an extra ten centavos on a drink than to lose your scalp to the head-hunting gringo demon mercenary on his blooded horse, or to be bushwhacked by bandits, or the Rurales. Who knew what could happen in the world? Cabora was big enough for them all, and even a dull workplace could look new by firelight, fresh when painted by tequila and beer.
Dances broke out on Friday nights behind the corrals. Tomás often took Gabriela’s arm and strolled down to watch the People raise clouds of dust. When he was in a good mood, he paid for musicians to play. On many Fridays, he sent for a calf to be barbecued. Tortilla makers formed lines in the shadows, their incessantly patting hands seeming to keep the beat of the music.
These transplanted Sinaloans missed their green homeland. They missed tobacco fields and marijuana fields, tomato farms and hectares of vibrant red and yellow chiles on their fluttering green bushes. They missed rain. They missed romance—in Sonora there was nothing compared to the indelible dance of love one found in Sinaloa.
And Millán, the former miner from Rosario, perhaps the most romantic village in all of Mexico, missed these things most of all. Millán found that the women of Sonora smelled different. He often stole their clothes from shacks to smell, and they smelled bad, like cattle. Perhaps it was the food or the water that made them stink. Certainly, there was nothing as pure as the tides of the Baluarte River, river of his boyhood, green as it sped by the foot of the mighty mountain, El Yauco. Millán grew nostalgic when he drank. He filled a bag with round stones and hung it from his waist. When the others were dancing, he went out in the dark to kill dogs and cats with a rawhide sling. After he had cracked six or seven skulls, he felt calmer, more relaxed. If he drank enough after that, he could sleep.
It was Segundo who first approached Tomás with a proposition.
“Boss, we need a plazuela.”
“You need a what?”
“We need a plazuela!”
“For what!”
“Love!”
He had to say no more to Tomás. In Sinaloa, each small town had a plazuela with a gazebo and some whitewashed trees. Each town square had a walkway around its perimeter, and along this were white benches. Old men often took