The Hummingbird's Daughter_ A Novel - Luis Alberto Urrea [119]
“Get to work!” Tomás barked.
Segundo, Teófano, three boys from Culiacán, and the limping Buenaventura (who had begun a cautious reconnoitering of his old homestead) pulled down the rails of the new burro and mule corral, the site where Lauro Aguirre had once slept. As soon as the People saw them whitewashing the trunks of the old trees, and setting out whitewashed rocks in a vast wobbly trapezoid, they knew immediately what was happening. “Una plazuela!” they cried. Tired men and women rushed to the corrals and swept, pulled weeds, shoveled sand over the ancient piss bogs in the ground. They raised planters using broken wheels from wagons and filled them with coffee grounds and eggshells and dirt and cow shit and they planted roses and geraniums there. It was soon clear that a gazebo of some sort was needed. Tomás pulled men off cow duty, pulled dormant woodworkers who had finished framing all the rooms and additions of the house. They immediately staked out a gazebo foundation, using strings the way Aguirre had taught them.
The Engineer could not enjoy their work. As the gazebo came together, two Rurales stopped at the gate of the courtyard in front of the main house and called for Don Tomás. Aguirre, in the middle of a delectable chorizo-egg-cheese burrito, rose and followed Tomás to see what they wanted. For a reason he would never determine, he paused just as Tomás threw open the door. He hid in the hallway, sensing something dire in the air.
The Rural in charge said, “Do you know a Lauro Aguirre, sir?”
Tomás stood in the morning sun and lied: “Lauro Aguirre? Let me think. I entertain so many guests!”
Aguirre flattened himself against the wall.
The rider cleared his throat and said, “We were simply curious if the engineer Aguirre might be here now.”
Tomás cried, “Here? Now? This Aguirre? I don’t think so, my dear officer!”
Aguirre peered out the small crack behind the door.
“Where might he be?” the Rural asked.
“I’m sure I don’t know, sir,” said Tomás. “I believe there is an Aguirre who frequents Alamos. An engineer. Hmm. I am sure you would find men of his ilk in a city, not here on a humble cattle ranch! If you need steaks, I have steaks! One thousand head of cattle, but not a single engineer.”
They had sat on their mounts looking down at Tomás. They didn’t believe him. But they couldn’t merely raid his house, either.
“All right,” the rider finally said. “Bueno. If you see him, please send out someone to inform the Rurales. We would like to . . . speak . . . with him.”
The Rurales saluted loosely. They turned their horses.
“Good day.”
Tomás exulted, “Good day! Y Viva México!”
Inside the house, he gripped Aguirre’s arms in his fists and said, “Ya te chingaron, paisano!”
They packed Aguirre’s bags and dressed him in an absurd buckaroo outfit with a great spangled sombrero, and Tomás gave him a clutch of outriders to cover him, and they set out after dark for the Arizona border. Once there, Don Lauro Aguirre changed into human clothes and boarded a stagecoach for the unfortunate journey to El Paso, perhaps the most uncomfortable three days of his life.
He immediately began a newspaper.
The gazebo was only a box with a sad little roof on it held up by four posts, but once it, too, was painted white, it was enough. Appearing like migrating flamingos in a tidewater slough, one afternoon the girls arrived, floating out of their huts at dusk. Girls from the Félix ranch a mile down the Alamos highway somehow joined them. The old men on the benches were delighted to see the end of their day enlivened by young ladies dressed in their finest clothes. Segundo’s boys lit torches all around the plaza. The girls giggled and held hands and fanned themselves. They