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By Root 981 0

two shuttered openings they did have kept shut to lock out biting flies and mosquitoes, they awoke and swung their legs onto the floor or into the air and pulled on their cracked old boots and clomped to the wood floor and staggered into each other and slapped each other on the back or shoved each other away with a muttered deprecation. Matches scratched, sounding like the fingernails that dragged through their chin whiskers, and they tumbled out into the dawn, ready to eat, many of them pissing in the dirt at each side of the door, half of them already looping ropes in their fists or tying on chaps. The cookhouse was a fifty-yard stagger away from their bunk room, and they wrestled through its off-kilter doorway and swarmed the long rugged tables, heads drooping over blue tin mugs of fried coffee, blue plates of beans, eggs, pork, chilaquiles, cheese, fruit. After about three tortillas each, they were awake enough to begin boasting and lying.

Millán was out of bed earlier than the rest. He prided himself on a certain element of cleanliness. He was one of the few men who dabbed cologne on himself, and it was his habit to buy a bath at one of the shacks where the old woman filled her great tin laundry tub with warm water. He didn’t mind showing his sex to the old one. He stood before her and smiled at her, watching her keep her eyes averted, but unable, finally, to avoid his dangling. It made him happy to watch her fumble. He would peel off his trousers before she had escaped the room, and he’d mildly ask her if she would launder them, holding them out to her while his member was half-hidden with one hand, though he knew and she knew he was showing her. She’d take his pants and hurry outside. On some days, her granddaughters peered at him from behind the blanket she’d hung in her shack, and he fingered himself in the water and pretended not to see them. It thrilled him to put on a show for the little ones. One of them looked to be about eleven. He had plans for her.

That morning, he had snuck out of the bunkhouse to kill cats, and he had crept near the main house to look at Gabriela Cantúa’s underthings on the clothesline. The maids had hung her unmentionables near the house, behind a fluttering wall of bedsheets, but Millán just needed a short peek to fuel his desire. He smiled, pinched himself through his trousers.

He liked the patrón’s bitch, all right. But the one he couldn’t get out of his mind was Teresita. They all called her a blonde—she wasn’t any pinche blonde. Her hair was almost as dark as his. Cabrona. Daughter of Urrea. Thought she was better than everyone. Daughter of a whore, he’d heard. His mother had always said, De tal mata tal flor.

From such a plant comes such a flower.

He tracked Teresita to the grove.

Out among the dirt and scrub and rattlers, Teresita decided to pray again. Huila had taught her many medicines. She lit her sage and smudged herself, and she lit her sweetgrass and offered the smoke to the sky, and she crumbled tobacco and other herbs and offered them as well. She prayed for Gabriela, her beloved friend who yearned for children with Tomás. She prayed for Loreto, who carried the family name alone in the city. She prayed for Tomás, that he might be cured of this terrible fever that drove him to try to cool himself with the bodies of strange women. She prayed for Huila, who was fast approaching her hour of rest. She prayed for the People, who fought for their lives and their land. She prayed for the land. She prayed for Buenaventura. She did not pray for herself. Huila had taught her: “Blessed are you when you pray for others. Shame on you when you pray out of selfishness and greed.”

Besides, what could she ask for herself? She had already asked for forgiveness once, and Huila taught her that asking for forgiveness twice was an insult to the Creator. She did not know if praying to receive a boyfriend was bad or not, and she was afraid to ask Huila. Was loneliness merely selfishness? She feared Huila might say so. She decided to pray for any lonely boy who wished someone would love