The Hummingbird's Daughter_ A Novel - Luis Alberto Urrea [94]
He raised his hand.
Aguirre rose.
Huila, watching, clenched her hands—this was even better than she’d hoped!
Tomás dropped his hand.
Aguirre sat.
Loreto took up a coffee cup and hurled it.
Tomás snarled as the saucer sailed into the wall.
He took both her arms in his fists and shook her once.
Aguirre rose.
Huila sat down.
Loreto wrenched her arms out of his grasp, reached for a clay pitcher full of lemonade, and threw it in great swirling arcs of pink fluid into the glass-fronted hutch, where Urrea antique chinas exploded.
She laughed.
Aguirre sat.
Huila stood.
“I laugh!” Loreto taunted. “I laugh!”
“You think you laugh? I am the one who laughs!” Tomás roared. “Ha! Ha! Ha!” He put his hands on his belly. “Do you hear that? I laugh! Ha! Ha! Ha!”
“You beast!”
She sobbed.
Aguirre rose again.
Huila went to Loreto.
Aguirre chided Tomás.
“Really,” he said.
“El amor,” Tomás proclaimed, “es una guerra!”
“Animal!” Loreto sobbed into Huila’s shoulder.
Huila cast dirty looks at Tomás.
“You too?” he said.
Great huzzahs erupted outside the house. Shrieks and thumps. Segundo appeared from somewhere and bellowed, “Hurry, boss!”
“Now what!” Tomás yelled.
He ran outside, and there found Juan Francisco and Buenaventura clutched in a fierce wrestling embrace, rolling up and down the road. They would free a hand and deliver a punch, then clench and roll again. Vaqueros and boys were lining the road, hooting and clapping. Dust everywhere. Somehow, Juan had managed to tear off Buenaventura’s left pant leg. Buenaventura had tattered Juan’s little jacket. Tomás didn’t know which one he was prouder of, or which he was madder at. He waded into the fray and grabbed the boys by their collars and pulled them apart. They parted kicking and spitting and cursing, and the first time Tomás let them go, they flew at each other again and clawed themselves back to the dirt like fighting cats.
Tomás took a punch to the nose when he jumped back in. He noticed, out of the corner of his eye, that those good-for-nothing buckaroos were betting on the fight.
“Ya, pues, cabrones!” he snarled, yanking them apart. His nose bled all over his mustache.
“Don’t curse at my son!” Loreto proclaimed.
“Stop fighting!”
“Don’t you hurt my boy!” Loreto yelled. She rushed out to pummel Tomás’s back.
“Segundo!” Tomás cried.
Segundo stepped up and grabbed Loreto, quite aware that he would never get the chance to touch the lady of the hacienda again, and he managed to get his hands on her breasts so he could tell the boys about it later. He pulled her back, cooing, “Miss, miss. Come now, miss.”
The boys were gasping raggedly. They bent over, rested their bloody hands on their knees. Buenaventura spit a long pink load in the dirt. They were both crying from sheer rage.
Juan pointed at Buenaventura.
“He started it.”
“Fuck you.”
“Hey!” Tomás shouted.
Buenaventura spit again. “Fuck you, fucker!”
Tomás shook him by the neck.
“No más!” he warned.
Buenaventura jerked away.
Loreto got out of Segundo’s grasp and rushed to her boy. Juan Francisco pulled free of his mother’s smothering grip and pointed at Buenaventura again.
“He said he was your son!” he cried.
Stunned silence.
Loreto’s eyes grew more slitted than they had been inside the house.
“Now everyone knows,” she proclaimed. “My shame is complete!”
Tomás thought: Oh no.
Everybody from the hacienda seemed to have gathered. Huila stood to the side, and Tomás was even more worried when he saw her mouth hanging open.
Tomás offered the scoundrel’s base response: he guffawed.
Aguirre hove into view with a look of deep mourning on his face.
“Father,” said Juan Francisco, “how could you?”
Young Juan suddenly leapt to the nearest of the two buggies and charged away. Aguirre, gallant to the end, mounted his horse and pursued.
Buenaventura pointed at Teresita.
“I’m not the only one!” he cried. “Look at her!”
Loreto turned to Teresita.
If she could have, Teresita would have crawled into a hole.
Buenaventura was taunting them all: “That’s his daughter! His daughter!