CHAPTER FIVE

I awoke a few minutes before noon, and when I went down to the kitchen I found Helena setting the table. In its center sat a platter of beefsteaks. Around this were ranged dishes of fried potatoes and frijoles and squash, and I could smell corn bread cooking in the oven.

“I have made a cake for your return, Señor Virgil,” she said.

“Thanks, Helena,” I said and gave her another hug. She knew how much I loved her old-fashioned pound cake.

I poured myself a cup of coffee from the ever-present pot that heated on the back of the great stove. Madeline soon drifted into the kitchen and gave me a sleepy hello. A couple of minutes later my aunt came through the door removing her gloves and her hat. She washed her hands quickly at the sink and we sat down and began to eat without fanfare. When we’d finished, Aunt Carmen said, “Why don’t you take Madeline into town in the pickup? I’ve got a list of supplies we need.”

Coldwell, the county seat of Matador County, was bleak and small, with a few fine homes that were set far back from the street among groves of palms that provided what little shade there was. The remaining residential areas ran the gamut from those struggling to maintain lower-middle-class respectability on down to what were little better than shanty towns. The courthouse was of brown brick, built in the Classical Revival style of the last century, but now it seemed tired and listless, like an old man with nothing left to do but wait for death. As we rounded the corner onto the square, two stake-bed trucks passed going in the opposite direction. Each held a dozen or more Mexicans. Most were middle-aged men, but a few women could also be seen as well.

“I guess the younger guys were all drafted,” Madeline said.

“No,” I said. “Practically all of them volunteered.”

“Really?”

“Yep. They’re very patriotic people. Damned if I know why, when you consider what a small slice of the pie they get.”

She gazed out the window. On the sidewalks dark faces peered from beneath ratty, wide-brimmed hats.

“Gosh, they’re everywhere,” she said.

I laughed. “What do you expect? We’re fifteen miles from Mexico. Anglos only make up ten percent of the population in this county.”

“But how do they make a living?” she asked. “There’s no industry. I mean, back home we’ve got the chemical plants and the refineries and—”

“Ranch work, farm work. And they pick fruit in season down in the lower valley. Anything they can find. Most of them own a little plot of ground and a few goats. They grow plenty of corn and frijoles, so they don’t really need a lot of money, at least not to survive. Since the war started there’s been some talk of Dow Chemical building a munitions plant here, and that would mean lots of good jobs. But I don’t think it will ever happen.”

“Why not?” she asked.

“Our politics are too corrupt.”

I waved at several people I knew, then pulled up in front of the City Café. The menu, posted on a big piece of signboard just inside the front window, advertised the standard mixing of Southern and border cuisines unique to South Texas—tamales, enchiladas, and chili, along with hamburgers and steaks and country breakfasts. “Let’s go get a Coke,” I told her.

Inside, the café was narrow and dark with an old-fashioned ornamental ceiling of stamped metal. Over our heads a half dozen ceiling fans turned languidly in the warm air. We took a small table near the rear, and when the waitress came over we each ordered a Coca-Cola.

“You were telling me why the munitions plant won’t come,” Madeline said once our drinks were served.

“Ahh, yes. The munitions plant,” I replied and gave her a cryptic smile. I lighted us each a cigarette, then asked, “What would you say if I informed you that you aren’t really in the United States of America right now? Except in a technical sense, I mean.”

She gave me a puzzled stare and shrugged.

“Oh, I’m well aware that we’re sitting inside the U.S. border. But the truth of the matter is that you’ve returned to the past for a few days, and Matador County is a sort of medieval barony.”

“Virgil, I haven’t got the least idea what you’re talking about,” she said, a little annoyance creeping into her voice.

“Then let me explain how things work down here. Remember all those Mexicans we saw coming into town? Well, they don’t make much money. So when they’re sick and the family needs a little help with medical treatments at the hospital in Laredo, or when there’s a wedding coming up and there’s no money for a fiesta, or when a son or daughter has an opportunity for a good job in San Antonio or Corpus Christi but the money for bus fare can’t be found—when problems like those arise, they come out to the ranch and they talk to Tía Carmen. If their cause is deserving, and it almost always is, she writes out a little note for them to give to the county treasurer. They take him the note, and he gives them some money.”

“But where does he get it?”

“From the county treasury,” I said with an indulgent smile. “Where else would you expect a county treasurer to get money?”

“But isn’t that—”

“Illegal? Of course it’s illegal. Then when election time rolls around, all those same peons turn out and vote for Tía Carmen’s favored candidates.”

“And?”

I took a long pull of my Coke and regarded her thoughtfully for a few moments before I decided to go ahead and tell her the whole story. “Are you familiar with a thing called a poll tax receipt?” I finally asked.

“Of course.”

“Aunt Carmen pays their poll taxes herself, and we keep the receipts in a safe out at the ranch.”

“But that must amount to a couple of thousand dollars or more. Where does she get the money?”

“From the same county treasurer.”

“Oh…”

“Then on election day, the sheriff and all the other county officials go out and round up voters and haul them to the polls. Using county cars and trucks, of course. And county gasoline, too. Then we hand out the poll tax receipts outside the various poling places. They go in and vote, and when they come back out they give us back the receipts to keep for them until the next election. We check them off a master list, and anybody that doesn’t show up better have a good reason. For their trouble each one gets a half pint of tequila and the unspoken assurance that the next time trouble strikes, they’ll be able to get help from the same source.”

“You’ve actually participated in this kind of thing yourself?” she asked, staring at me with a shocked expression on her face.

“Certainly. I’ve helped out in practically every election since I was a kid.”

She was aghast and I was amused.

“It’s called the patrón system,” I said. “The Spanish word translates to ‘patron’ in English, but it means a lot more than that. If you were around here long enough you’d hear Aunt Carmen called La Patróna. Or more grandly, La Patróna de La Rosa.”

“Do all the other counties down here operate the same way?”

I nodded. “Yes. And we’re all loosely allied with one another. That way we can present a united front and have more clout. With all the South Texas bosses and the various county machines acting together, we control over a hundred thousand reliable votes. When a statewide election is obviously going to be close, then we’re in a powerful bargaining position. Beyond that, we all give a certain amount of fealty to a man over in Duval County named George Parr because he has influence in national matters. Not a great deal of influence, but some.”

“But that’s awful,” she exclaimed. “I mean, it’s contrary to the Constitution and everything we’ve always been taught in school about how—”

“Yes, it is, isn’t it? But let me tell you what the alternative is. Back right after the turn of the century, the fruit and vegetable industry started up strong in the Rio Grande Valley, and real estate developers began attracting a lot of people from up north, people who wanted to escape the winters they have up there, and maybe put their retirement into a little orange grove or a few acres of grapefruit trees. For some reason most of these newcomers were from the upper Midwest. Now as it happens, the upper Midwest was settled largely by people from New England. Not New York or Pennsylvania or the other middle states, but New England. Old Puritan stock. White, English, and Protestant. They came down here and took a good look at the local political situation, and as you might expect, they were appalled. In their view something had to be done, so they began scurrying around, noisily trying to organize things, and before long reform movements began popping up all over the place. There was one in every South Texas county. They were going to clean it all up. Put an end to all the graft and corruption and make everything operate by the book.

“And I’ll admit that some things might have been better if they’d won. Probably we would have had better and cheaper roads, because they would have been built by a quarter of the number of laborers we use. We might have better schools and better public buildings, too, because more of the money would have actually gone into the projects themselves instead of make-work patronage jobs for the peons to buy their votes to perpetuate the system. There was only one thing wrong with their approach. Know what it was?”

Madeline shook her head.

“They were completely unwilling to permit Mexicans to participate in the political process, either as officeholders or even as voters. And I mean even well-to-do and educated Mexicans. As you’d expect from the descendants of a bunch of prim New England schoolmarms, they were uplifters who saw Latin culture as inherently inferior to their own. If they’d gotten in the saddle they would have completely excluded the Mexican population for about three generations until they could have educated them and brought them up to their own exalted standards of civic behavior. And probably they would have preferred to make good Protestants out of them as well, if the truth was known.

“So you can see why they weren’t able to change the system. The average Mexican peon down here is illiterate, but don’t ever think he’s stupid. He knows when somebody is trying to sell him a load of chickenshit by passing it off as chicken salad. Now finish your Coke and let’s go. I’ve got a pretty big load of stuff to pick up at the hardware store.”

*   *   *

That evening about eight o’clock Madeline asked for another sleeping pill and then went to bed. Aunt Carmen and I stayed up for another hour. The night was chilly, and I’d built a small fire in the living room fireplace. I was immersed in the latest Time magazine while my aunt sat beside the fire in a deep leather wing chair, mending some shirts. At last she said softly, “She wouldn’t make a good rancher’s wife, Virgil. She’s too delicate a flower. Besides, she’d get bored and lonely so easily out here, and we both know the consequences of that.”

She was alluding to my own mother, a sweet but weak and neurotic woman from an old Austin family who never adapted to the solitude of La Rosa. A more sensible person would have simply insisted on an amiable divorce, or would have at least spent a part of each year in the city. But the era in which she lived and her intense Catholicism made such a course unthinkable to her. Instead, her life became a long series of imaginary ailments, all of which required increasing doses of painkillers. My father finally gave up and let her drift off into a dream world, where she was relatively content. In my aunt’s estimation, Madeline was cut from the same cloth. That she was probably right didn’t make her meddling any less irritating.

“In the first place,” I said, my mild annoyance clear in the tone of my voice, “I have no intention of getting that deeply involved with this girl. And in the second place, I don’t need you to choreograph my life for me.”

“I’m not trying to. I’m just stating the obvious. What’s she running from, anyway?”

I filled her in on the details of the evening before, leaving out only the tryst the girl and I had enjoyed after Marne left.

“What do you plan to do with her?” she asked.

“We’ll stay here another day or so until she calms down a little more, then I’m going to insist she talk to one of the Rangers.”

“I feel sorry for the poor girl,” Tía Carmen said. “She’s gotten herself into a mess that she may not get out of alive.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked with a grin. “Do you see Santa Muerte hovering over her head?”

In those days many rural Mexicans and even some Anglos in South Texas believed that certain people could see Santa Muerte, the Angel of Death, near those who were fated to die soon. Some said that Saint Death was a white-robed skeleton. Others maintained that she appeared as a mischievous old woman, a sort of puckish jester, full of mockery and malice. Indeed, Tía Carmen claimed to be one of those rare individuals to whom she was visible. It was also a common belief that Santa Muerte ate the souls of the wicked when they died and then took them down into hell, where she delivered them to Satan by vomiting them up at his feet. Of course, I put absolutely no stock in such notions, but my aunt believed strongly in her occasional visions.

“You shouldn’t joke about things you don’t understand,” she replied coldly.

“I suppose you’re right,” I conceded. “At any rate, I certainly didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

“I know that, but you’d do well to remember what Hamlet said: ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio—’”

“Point taken,” I said. “I’m willing to admit that science doesn’t know it all. And I know you’re an intelligent and well-read woman. It’s just that…” I groped for the right words, not wanting to say something that would offend her.

She held up her hand to silence me. “Tell me something, Virgil. Do you trust your own eyes?”

“Usually, yes.”

“Then why should you expect me to doubt mine? I first saw Santa Muerte two days before Grandmother Rosa died. It was out by the barn, just before sundown. She appeared as the skeleton that time, but I’ve also seen her as the Old Woman.”

“How far away from her were you?” I asked.

She smiled grimly. “No more than ten feet. She turned and looked at me with those great, hollow eyes of hers, and made her teeth chatter like a monkey’s teeth. She was laughing at me, Santa Muerte was, and it was a laugh that came straight from the pit of hell itself.”

I felt a chill crawl up my spine despite myself. “And you’ve seen her at other times, too, you say?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Recently?”

“No,” she admitted.

“Then see? That doesn’t mean Madeline—”

“Virgil, you must be careful until this is all over. The inescapable truth is that you are the sole future of this ranch and this family. If anything happened to you, all our years of struggle would be for nothing.”

I nodded. “I will, dear. I promise. I’m well aware that these are dangerous people she’s involved with. In fact, I’m beginning to wish that I hadn’t brought her here. It may have been poor judgment on my part.”

“No, you did the right thing,” she said firmly. “La Rosa is your home. We’re safe here.”

“Maybe so, but I’m not taking things for granted. I told Alonzo to keep watch tonight in the kitchen.”

“Alonzo? In the kitchen?”

I nodded. “Yeah. I heard him come in a few minutes ago.”

She shook her head in annoyance at herself. “I’m getting old,” she said, “and I didn’t hear a thing. I’d better go make him a pot of coffee.”

I knew that Alonzo would tilt one of the kitchen chairs back against the wall and doze lightly all night, stirring only to roll another cigarette or refill his coffee cup from the back of the stove. His sense of hearing was still phenomenal and his mind was like an alarm set to awake at even the faintest noise.

“I think I’ll turn in,” I said.

I rose, stretched, and kissed my aunt good night as she headed toward the kitchen, then climbed the stairs and went into my bedroom. Like the kitchen, it was unchanged since the days of my youth. Both my Parker 16-gauge shotgun and the Winchester lever-action .30-30 rifle with which I’d killed my first deer still hung on the gun rack; the bookcase bulged with my collection of Tom Swift and Rover Boys books; and the two cigar boxes full of Indian arrowheads I’d found at various places around the ranch sat atop the chest of drawers. I pulled one of the books from the bookcase and looked at it for a moment. Tom Swift and His Motorcycle. I remembered my father buying it for me in San Antonio amid the armistice celebration that marked the end of the First World War. I’d been ten years old at the time, and motorcycles were still rare enough to be considered the pinnacle of adventure. What was the pinnacle of adventure for me now? I wondered. Bourbon and blondes? No, redheads, I corrected myself.

“I’d probably be better off with a motorcycle,” I muttered. I pulled off my boots, then opened the door between the two rooms. Madeline lay sprawled atop the covers in a thin nightgown, her tender, milky white body enticing in the moonlight. I tiptoed quietly into the room and carefully covered her against the cool night air. She barely stirred.

Back in my own room I quickly undressed and slipped between the covers, first carefully placing my .38 Super on the bedside stand.