The Hummingbird's Daughter_ A Novel - Luis Alberto Urrea [89]
“How dumb are you, girl? Everybody knows who your father is!”
He put his hat over his eyes.
“Just look in a mirror.”
It didn’t take long for him to start snoring.
Teresita decided it was a good time to walk down to Teófano’s shed.
He was waiting outside.
“Is there something about Cabora I don’t know?” she asked.
“Like what?” he replied.
“Some secret nobody told me, perhaps.”
Then he opened his mouth.
Then he closed it.
“Do you mean what I think you mean?” he asked.
Teresita crossed her arms.
“Ay Dios,” he said.
Twenty-eight
A SNOT-NOSED BOY of about ten rode into Cabora from the big road, yelling: “The bees! The bees!”
Tomás was standing in the road, conversing with his neighbor, Segundo, when the boy reined to a snorting halt and shouted, “The bees!”
“What bees?”
“At Cantúa’s!” the boy shouted. His horse, white-eyed and frantic, jittered in the road. “Muchas abejas!”
“What do they look like?” Tomás asked.
“Big black piles of bees! In a corner of the roof! He asks for you to come, please! Soon!”
Tomás clapped his hands.
“A swarm!” he cried. He grabbed Segundo’s arms and said, “A wild swarm at Cantúa’s!”
“Such miracles,” Segundo intoned.
“Go!” Tomás yelled to the boy. “Tell them I am coming! Oh —” He fished in his pocket, came up with a gold coin. He tossed it to the boy. “There you go.”
“Gracias!” the boy shouted as he spun his horse and tore away.
“Look at that little bastard go!” Tomás said.
He trotted into the house and changed his trousers, strapped on his double gunbelt (Gabriela might be impressed by this) and his smart Texan hat. A giant Mexican sombrero might lend a bit too much of a comic-opera aspect to the adventure.
“Aguirre!” he called. “Aguirre!”
“Eh?”
“Are you up?”
“Qué?”
“Bees!”
“What?”
“Bees! A wild swarm!”
He was out the door before Aguirre could answer. Nearby was only a burro that the gardener had loaded with trimmed branches from the plum tree and the vines. Tomás removed the load from the donkey’s back and leapt aboard. He prodded the little beast to a slow canter, and he aimed it at the far beekeeper’s hut. His long legs bounced madly in the air, held up near the donkey’s chest to keep his feet from dragging in the dirt.
The Parangarícutirimícuaro beekeeper was still asleep, having finished off a sack of marijuana buds the night before. Without disturbing him, Tomás threw an empty hive box and a smoker into his bee wagon. He added gloves and a veil, just in case. He whistled for a couple of vaqueros at the corrals to bring a nag to hitch. They put a white draft horse in the traces, and Tomás stood in the box and flogged the horse until it started to trot. Aguirre was in front of the house, rubbing his eyes, and he had to jump back as Tomás sped by.
“Bees,” Tomás called over his shoulder. “Bees!”
He rattled down the road and never slowed down until he got to Cantúa’s. There, he was delighted to discover Gabriela standing well away from the restaurant, with white towels in her hands and her wild hair tied back. She spun the towels madly around her head every time a bee came near. She was in such a frenzy that she terrorized butterflies and dragonflies as well. Her hair was a great roiling cascade that reached the top of her round bottom.
Like a fresh peach, Tomás told himself.
Señor Cantúa was standing near the corner of his building, looking up at the roof, which was only about ten feet high. A nimbus of bees circled his head, and Tomás could hear the buzz even from the road. Cantúa was bent at a sharp angle, as if his worry had cracked him in half. He wrung his hands.
“Many bees,” Gabriela said.
Tomás hopped down and, checking to see if Señor Cantúa was looking his way, quickly bowed and reached for her hand. She transferred the towel to her other hand. Elegance! he thought. He took her fingers and kissed them.
Caramel!
Cinnamon!
Dulce de leche!
“This lovely day,” he said, “has suddenly become all the more lovely now that I have seen you.”
This was what was known as a piropo. It was a specialty of the Sinaloans. Many affairs had been launched