“On a dirt road in the dark?”
Jack began stripping off his soiled white shirt and unbuckling his trousers and slipping his feet from his battered cowboy boots, not replying, intent upon the project at hand, whatever it was. His chest and shoulders and arms and legs were white in the moonlight, and scars were crosshatched on his back from his ribs to his shoulder blades. He buttoned on a soft white shirt and pulled on a pair of tan slacks and slipped a pair of two-tone shoes on his feet, then unfolded a western-cut sport coat from the suitcase and pushed his arms into the sleeves. He sailed his wilted panama hat up an arroyo and knotted on a tie with a rearing horse painted on it and fitted a blocked short-brim Stetson on his head. He turned toward Noie for approval. “You know the mark of a man? It’s his hat and his shoes,” he said.
“You look like the best-dressed man of 1945,” Noie said. “But what in God’s name is on your mind, Jack?”
“Options.”
“Can you translate that?”
“An intelligent man creates choices. A stupid man lets others deal the hand for him.”
“You’re not going to hurt that woman, are you?”
“You must think pretty low of me.”
“Not true. But I got to have your word.”
“That’s what my mother used to say, right before she made me cut my own switch and skinned me into next week,” Jack said.
The front porch light was on when they parked in the yard of the gingerbread house and knocked on the screen door. “Just an advanced warning, Noie,” Jack said. “I think some lies are being told about me. So don’t necessarily believe everything this lady says.”
“What lies?”
“If people faced the truth about how governments work, there would be revolutions all over the earth. So they blame the misdeeds of the government on individuals. I happen to be one of those individuals. You never read Machiavelli up there at MIT?”
“?Venga!” someone called from the kitchen.
“You heard her,” Jack said.
They went inside and sat on the couch. A heavyset Mexican woman with a wooden spoon in her hand and her hair tressed up in braids came into the living room. Jack’s Stetson was propped on his knee. He rose from the couch, his hat hooked on one finger. “Where’s Ms. Ling?” he said.
“She went to the store. She’ll be right back. I’m Isabel,” the woman said.
“Mind if we wait?” Jack asked.
“The people are coming. If you don’t mind them, they won’t mind you,” Isabel said.
“What people?”
“ La gente. The people.”
“Yeah, I got that. But what people?”
“The people who always come. You can sit at the tables in back if you want. I already put Kool-Aid out there. You can help me carry out the food,” Isabel said.
“We don’t mind in the least,” Noie said. “Do we, Jack?”
Jack’s expression made Noie think of a large yellow squash someone had just twisted out of shape.
They carried out lidded pots of beans and fried hamburger meat and plates of hot tortillas smeared with margarine. They set them on the plank tables under the trees and helped light the candles affixed to the bottoms of jelly jars. In the distance, they could see the headlights of several vehicles headed up the dirt road toward them.
“You have a bunch of wets coming through here?” Jack said.
“No, no wets,” Isabel said, wagging a finger. “These are not wets, and ‘wets’ is not a term we use. You understand that, hombre?”
“When is the lady of the house due back?” he asked.
“Any time now. Sit down. We have plenty of food for everyone.”
“We’re not here to eat,” Jack said.
“You should. You look like a scarecrow,” Isabel said.
Jack stared at her back as she walked away.
“What are you thinking?” Noie asked.
“That woman has a figure like a garbage can with a pair of bowling pins under it.”
“What lies would Miss Anton be telling about you, Jack?”
“Eat up and don’t worry about it.”
A caravan of cars and pickup trucks pulled into the yard, and Mexican working people filed around the sides of the house and through the front door without knocking and out the back door and sat at the tables and began filling their plates, talking incessantly, paying no attention to either Jack or Noie. Through the window of the chapel, Noie could see several of them placing their hands on the base of a wooden statue. “Why do they do that?” he asked.
“They’re ignorant pagans is why. Didn’t you ever read Ernest Hemingway?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so? What do you people read in college? Hemingway said Spain was a Catholic country but not a Christian one. Same with this bunch.”
Noie hoped the people sitting near them did not know too much English.
Several children began battering a pinata with a broom handle, tearing apart the papier-mache and colored crepe paper and stringing pieces of wrapped candy over the dirt apron under the tree. Several girls and young women sat down across from Noie and Jack, their backs turned, watching the children, sometimes reaching behind them to pick up a jar of Kool-Aid or a rolled tortilla. Jack was eating frijoles with a spoon, watching the women and girls, a smear of tomato sauce on his chin, the lumps in his face as swollen and hard-looking as cysts. The hair of the women and girls was so black it had a purple tint in it, like satin under a black light. Their skin was sun- browned, their teeth tiny, their eyes elongated, more Indian than Mexican. Their faces and throats were fine-boned, their features free of cosmetics; they looked like girls and young women from the Asian rim who might have just arrived in a new land where they would bear children and be cared for and loved by husbands who considered them a treasure and not simply a helpmate or a commodity.
Jack tore a section of paper towel off a roll on the table and wiped his mouth with it and balled it up in his hand. His eyes seemed to go in and out of focus; he pressed a thumb into his temple as though someone had shot an iron bolt into it.
“You have a migraine?” Noie said.
Jack didn’t answer. He seemed to be counting the number of girls and women sitting on the other side of the plank table. There were nine of them. The wind had come up, fluttering the candles inside the jelly jars, blowing the hair of the women and girls into strands, like brushstrokes in an Oriental painting. The pinata finally exploded from the blows of the broom handle, showering candy on the ground, filling the air with the excited screams of the children. Jack’s eyes were hollow, his mouth gray, his hands like talons on the tabletop.
“You don’t look too good,” Noie said.
“Are you saying something is wrong with me?” Jack said, glaring into Noie’s face. “You saying I got a problem?”
“No, I was wondering if you were sick. Your eyes are shiny, like you’ve got a fever, like you’re coming down with something.” Noie tried to touch Jack’s forehead.
“Mind your damn business, boy.”
“That’s what I’m doing. If you live with someone who’s sick, you ask about him.”
“It’s the dust and the insect repellent and the stink coming out of that pot of tripe. I told you to eat up.”
Jack kept huffing air out his nose, then leaned over and spat into the dust. But he didn’t raise his eyes again and kept his gaze focused on his plate. “Where’s that Amerasian or Chinese woman or whatever she is?”
“Don’t speak rudely of Miss Anton. She’s a fine woman. What’s gotten into you?” Noie said.
“We have to go.”
“It was your idea to come here. It’s a grand night. Look at the stars. Look at the children playing. You should
