The Hummingbird's Daughter_ A Novel - Luis Alberto Urrea [120]
“Adios!” the men called to women they had seen fifteen minutes before, as if they had not seen each other in a week.
“Good evening.” The aunties nodded. “Don Porfirio. Don Chentito. Don Teófano.”
“Is that your niece?” the old-timers would squawk.
“It is, it is. My Alma!”
“She is my little Emilita!”
“Es mi sobrina, la bella Iris Violeta!”
“Wonders will never cease!” the old-timers bellowed.
It was so civilized!
“Adios!”
“Adios!
“And to you, adios, Iris Violeta!”
“And adios to you in return, Don Fulgencio Martinez!”
Everything was right in the world.
The girls and their escorts rotated in a counterclockwise flow until the boys appeared, cowboys and gangly ranch hands and tiny Indio chile pickers strolling forth in huaraches and boots and church shoes. All hair was slicked back: their heads glistened like coal beds. “Allí vienen los pendejos!” cried an old man, and they all laughed and hooted and stamped their feet and pounded their canes.
Upon first sight of the boys, the aunties turned stern and didn’t smile again for the entire evening. This was deep pleasure for them—watching the hands and eyes of these young dogs lest they step beyond the bounds of proper behavior and visit an outrage upon the persons of their charges. The boys went to the outside, as if by some genetic programming, and they started to stroll in a clockwise direction, constantly facing their blushing sweethearts. Always walking toward, always walking away; in passing glimpses, whole love affairs flared up, faded, and died.
Yaquis, come from no one knew where, took up positions on the outside of the circle and began fiddling away on their little violins. Doña María and Tía Cristina, two hardworking women with no time for foolishness, set up a taco stand at one end of the stroll and a torta stand at the other. Segundo moved his stash of beer to the plazuela.
Teresita would not have joined in except that several of the young girls—too young for the stroll—asked her to help them make limonada. She made it in Tomás’s kitchen with her squadron of giggling kids. They set up a stand between two benchloads of old-timers. After an hour or so, Fina Félix convinced her to step out and walk, and as soon as she did, she began to smile and fan herself with Fina’s paper fan. She flirted. She knew what to do as soon as she started walking.
Teresita was delighted and startled to hear her first romantic compliments on the stroll.
Carlos R. Hubbard, of El Real de las Minas, said: “I did not know that God allowed lilies to bloom at night!”
On the far side of the square, Antonio de la Cueva of Piedra Castillo said: “Muchachos, did you see if that angel had wings?”
César González, though he was a young Jesuit and bound for his matriculation, declaimed the following: “If I work my fingers to the bone, Teresita, I might one day write a poem as lovely as your walk.”
Fina nudged her. On her other side, pretty Emilia Zazueta laughed out loud.
“Ay qué muchachos,” she said.
“Tienes pegue,” said Fina, which of course meant: you have struck them hard.
This was an astonishment to Teresita.
For a time, every Friday and Saturday night at Cabora became a small fiesta. Huila thought it was ridiculous, or so she said. Still, she was the first to get a seat on the benches when the sun started to move west in the afternoon.
Teresita looked forward to these Friday and Saturday nights. Sometimes, she walked with Gaby, but the piropos never flew in Gaby’s direction—it would be suicide to be caught sailing a ripe piropo at the patrón’s woman! So walks with La Fina were more fun.
The Arroyo boy, who sold shoes to the women of the ranch when he wasn’t writing incendiary novels about farm boys startled by romantic feelings for each other, walked along, though he was watching the cowboys. Even he launched a semipiropo at Teresita: “If I liked girls, I would be yours!”
A young rustler visiting from Chihuahua (actually, he was hiding from the Rurales)