The Hummingbird's Daughter_ A Novel - Luis Alberto Urrea [71]
Tomás said, “Might I buy out this man’s contract?”
“You want to save him?”
“I have money. I can pay.”
The foreman shook his head.
“No,” he said. “No. I don’t think so.”
“Besides,” said the digger, looking into the hole. “He’s stopped kicking. I think he’s dead.”
“You see?” said the foreman. “Too late, señor.”
Tomás turned his back on them and rode slowly toward the gate.
“True love!” called the digger. “They’re together forever now!”
The shovels made their silvery sounds as they let slip their pounds of gravel into the lonesome grave.
Tomás put his hands on his rifle, then thought better of it and took the reins in his fists and spurred his stallion and rode as fast as he could down the pale road and toward the wicked Yaqui hills.
Twenty-two
A FEW DAYS LATER, when Segundo rattled back onto the ranch with wagons of lumber and a dozen new men on horses and mules, no one had yet heard word of Tomás. The bottom edges of the walls of the new house were already delineated by strings, and a few sun-hardened bricks were laid in. Aguirre had drawn up plans for a grand adobe house of two floors, with its porch transformed into a veranda. It was near an arroyo, where the wily Engineer was, as Segundo arrived, plotting spillways and sewage lines with a pencil and a sketchbook. Copper tubing, he was certain, was the answer!
Segundo set the new men to work—there were fences to repair, cows to attend to, holes to be dug. Tomás had requested a new stock pond be dug, and although there was no way in hell that Segundo was going to pick up a shovel, these boys from Alamos were ready to dig. Many of them were miners anyway. They were used to it.
Aguirre was summoned, and together they paced out beyond El Potrero, until they found a declivity that could handily be deepened and expanded—its natural walls would form the shores of a triangular pond. They agreed to create a berm at the south end of the dig to transform their little vale into a dam, a spillway linking it to the old stock pond. Aguirre immediately set to calculating the potential flow from the windmill. In the margins of his notebook, he spun out columns of numbers—what if he put bass, or the colorful truchas, in this pond? Would they not all delight in fresh fish every Friday?
“His head,” Segundo said to Teresita, who now followed Aguirre like one of his dogs, “is very busy.”
“D-o-n,” said Teresita, “spells ‘Don.’”
“Fíjate nomás,” he said, which was his way of saying You don’t say. He wandered off toward the barn. Even though the heat was already heavy, Segundo was planning to kick off his boots and fall into a mound of hay. He stopped. “Hey niña,” he said.
“Yes?”
“Find out how to spell ‘Segundo.’”
“I’ll ask.”
“Bueno,” he said. He walked away.
Teresita ran back to Aguirre.
“Engineer,” she called. “Teach me a new word.”
“What new word do you desire to know?” he said, not looking up from his interminable calculations.
“My name.”
He looked at her. Persistent little brat. Still, this seemed a reasonable enough request.
He waved her over to him. He took up a stick and squatted. “Look here,” he said. He scratched a large T in the soil. “T,” he said. She repeated it. “E.” They went on through the letters of her name.
“Te-re-sa,” she said. “It’s like a song.”
“I suppose it is.”
“Don Teresita.”
“No no no. Doña Teresita. Do you see?” He scratched the word into the dirt. “You are female. Not male. Doña.”
This made them both laugh, for they both knew she was anything but a fine lady of high standing.
“Don Lauro,” she said, extending her hand.
“Doña Teresita,” he replied, taking her fingers in his and bowing.
Huila was standing behind them.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
Aguirre didn’t know why, but this panicked him, and he jumped back a foot.
“I —!” he said.
“He’s teaching me to read,” Teresita said. “I wrote my name.”
Huila stepped over to the scratches and looked.
“Looks like chickens came through here,” she