Hard Row

“Muy hermosa,” he murmured.

Later, lying beside him in her bed, brown legs next

to white, she was almost on the brink of sleep when she

remembered. “McLamb said he saw you at the court-

house today?”

Miguel Diaz nodded, one hand lazily moving across

her body. “One of the men from the village next to my

village back home. He took a tractor and I was there to

speak for him.”

“Tractor? Was he the guy who plowed up a stretch of

yards out toward Cotton Grove?”

“Ummm,” he murmured, kissing her shoulder.

“He works for you?”

“For now. The other place, they fired him when he

took the tractor.”

Mayleen Richards laughed, remembering the jokes

107

MARGARET MARON

the uniformed deputies had made. “What was he think-

ing? Where was he trying to go?”

She felt him shrug. “Who knows? It was the te-

quila driving. Maybe he thought he could get to his

woman.”

“She’s in Dobbs?”

“No. Their baby died and she went back to

Mexico.”

“Oh, Mike, that’s so sad.”

“Yes. But our babies will be strong and healthy.”

“Our babies?” This was only their third time together

and he was already talking babies?

“Our red-haired, brown-skinned babies,” he said as

he gently stroked her stomach.

The image delighted her, but then she thought of her

parents, of her family’s attitude toward Latinos, and she

sighed.

Intuitively, he seemed to understand. “Don’t worry,

querida. Once the babies come, your family will grow

to like me.”

108

C H A P T E R

13

A man can’t throw off his habits as he does his coat; if con-

tracted in youth they will stick in manhood and old age,

whether they be good or bad.

—Profitable Farming in the Southern States, 1890

Deborah Knott

Saturday Morning, March 4

% Dwight got home so late Friday night that I

slipped out of bed next morning without waking

him, and Cal and I tiptoed around until it was nine