Lone Stars Read online

“Can I come see you after? You’re not moving, are you?”

  “No. Your dad’s buyer, they buy the men and equipment, everything, so we stay. Your dad needs all the men now. He hires a one-leg man if he can hop here.” Xavier stopped and smiled at her. “And you can come visit.”

  “Is that why you left Mexico? You couldn’t live where you were born?”

  “I come to work. So I send money back and Xiomara can go to school like you.”

  Xiomara was Xavier’s daughter, a year older than Lacy. She had long black hair and was good with horses. Her name meant “warrior,” Xavier told her once—“a tough girl like you.”

  Lacy was still thinking about papers as she lay in bed that night, watching the moon cast wavy shadows of cottonwood branches on her wall. The details were murky, but she figured her dad was a hero for getting papers for his workers, and she drifted to sleep. In the morning when she went down to breakfast, the table was set but Junior ate alone. “Where’s Mom?” she asked.

  “Attic,” he said, his mouth full of toast. “Packing. He works her like an ox.”

  “Who does?” Lacy asked, pouring a bowl of corn flakes.

  “Daddy. It’s not right. That’s what Mommy said. Don’t tell Daddy.”

  Lacy contemplated this as she ate her cereal. Their mom complained sometimes about not having a maid. Lacy asked her once why they didn’t, if they were rich, and she gave Lacy a surprised look and said their dad was thrifty and everyone had a job to do. The words stuck in Lacy’s mind, connected vaguely to how her parents never gave each other love kisses like the pastor and his wife did, and how their dad was hard on their mom. He never hit her. But he put his fork down when he didn’t like dinner, and said a bad job was no job at all, and waited until she scuffled like a whipped horse back to the kitchen to cook him something new.

  Lacy heard her dad coming downstairs as she slurped the milk from her bowl. He wore his Sunday suit and snakeskins on a Monday. He sat at the head of the table, poured coffee, and sipped. “Where’s your mother?” he asked Lacy.

  A crash from above startled Lacy and Junior in their chairs. Their dad looked at the ceiling. She heard her mom’s footsteps on the half flight, then the second floor, and as she descended to the foyer Lacy could make out her words. “Too cheap for hired help,” she grumbled, “like a slave, the blood from my—” She caught herself when she turned into the dining room, meeting their dad’s gaze, and looked down. “I thought you were gone.”

  “Heading out,” he said and stood up. “How’s the packing?”

  “Dusty. I think I’m getting sick.”

  “I heard a crash,” he said sternly. “The house goes with the sale.”

  “I know that, James. That’s why I’m packing. Lacy, put on your uniform. We’re leaving for Scouts in ten minutes.”

  “I’ll drop her,” he said, putting on his hat. “Get back to packing. Pork chops tonight. And when you’re done in the attic, iron my blue shirt for the closing tomorrow.” He walked into the foyer and stopped with his back to them. “I give orders once,” he said. “You hear?”

  Lacy and Junior locked eyes as the silence thickened and grew unbearable, until their mom wiped her hands on her apron and said quietly, “I heard you.”

  * * *

  Lacy could count on one hand the times she’d been in her dad’s giant black truck. The smell of corn feed wafted from the flatbed as they bounced down the dirt road to the highway connection. Tools jangled on the floor. The seats weren’t soft like her mom’s Buick, and Lacy felt a mixture of nausea and awe at the whole situation.

  “Where’s y’all’s practice at?” her dad asked.

  “McAllen High. Where the pageant is tomorrow. Are you coming?”

  “I got a meeting in the morning, and then we’re all coming. Free lunch, right?”

  “It’s a lunch pageant,” Lacy said. “Where are you going now?”

  “To meet with our congressman. You know what Congress is?”

  “The Senate and House of Representatives.” Lacy considered his errand. “Does our congressman give papers?”

  “Do what?”

  “For our workers. Does he give the papers to protect them from the patrol?”

  Her dad gripped the steering wheel. “He helps out. He wants me to be happy and keep all the men I want to keep here. Do what’s best for the area. When I sell the business tomorrow, the buyer’s building a plant outside town so we don’t have to ship the cattle away for slaughter. That’s more money for the county and more jobs for everybody. Texans, Mexicans, whoever.”

  “Why does the president want them out?”

  “There’s no one mind on the Mexicans.” He shook his head. “Senator Johnson sees it like I do. If folks want to work for my price, do what I say, no backtalk, what do I care if they’re from Mexico or Timbuktu?”

  Lacy’s chest tightened. She hadn’t finished her family tree. She yanked it from her knapsack and spread it out on the dashboard. “What year and place were you born?” she fired off. “And your parents. It’s for my badge.”

  “Nineteen oh one, Galveston. Clarence and Eugenia Adams, Angleton, 1874 and ’75.”

  “Are they alive?”

  “I expect not. They gave me to a home. Dirt farmers. Couldn’t feed us all.” He turned to see a furry corpse on the side of the highway, one of the cougars that had been popping up lately. “Solitary beast,” he muttered. “Roadkill now. The dead feed the living,” he explained. “We feed cattle, cattle feed people. A cycle. I worked my way from an orphanage to A&M.” He stole a look at Lacy. “They didn’t let girls into the ag school in those days.”

  “And Mom?” she asked. “She was born in Laredo?”

  He yanked the stick shift. The truck shot forward. “That’s where we met. Write that in for her, and 1928.”

  “And her parents?”

  “Write ‘dead.’ Or ‘deceased.’”

  “You never met them, right?” she asked. Lacy sighed and shook her head. “She didn’t even know their names.”

  “Don’t bad-mouth your mother. She’s a hard worker. Knows how to make a deal.” He drove. “A man and woman come together,” he said. “A man needs a family too. One with no wife and kids draws attention. But a man with them—goes to church, kids in Scouts—folks do business with that man.”

  “So you never met—”

  “No, never met her parents.”

  Lacy looked out the window at the landscape of Chilitown, where the workers lived. Tin-roofed shacks patched with cardboard, smoke drifting up from the cook pits, a row of wooden outhouses at the far end. Bones and bread wrappers and trash scattered around. She passed it every day on her way to school, but that day each object jumped out sharp in her eyes. She thought for the first time that one of those shacks was Xavier’s, where he slept at night.

  “Do they like living here?” she asked. “The workers?”

  “I expect so.” He worked a toothpick around his mouth. “Down here together, living their own way. They got it good. The company I’m selling to is giving money for a wing on the hospital just for Mexicans, so they can go there when they’re sick and be with their kind, and get better and come back to work.”

  “Mexicans have souls, don’t they?” she asked.

  “Sure.”

  “But they don’t have flush toilets in Chilitown like we do at home,” Lacy noted. “They have outhouses.”

  “Flush toilets are expensive.”

  “But yesterday didn’t pastor say thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself?”

  Her dad cocked his head. “Smart girl.” He looked her up and down. “Not sure what the return is on you yet, but I doubt it’s marrying some boy in town.” He turned back to the road. “Your mom wants one of the new TVs with the color picture. They’re televising Miss America. She says you need to see. I said you’re going to college. Studying science would be my bet.”

  Lacy flushed with pleasure. Always her mom talked of Junior’s future—he’d be an Aggie like
his dad someday—and not a word about Lacy. Except that she’d be a mom. Her life would start when she got married and had a baby, a boy if she was lucky, and she’d pour herself into her boy and her love would feed his dreams. It made Lacy’s skin crawl every time her mom said it. But her dad thought she was smart.

  “Till then,” he said, frowning, “keep wearing the dresses like your mom says.”

  Her dad didn’t walk her into the Scouts meeting. He left the car running when he pulled up to the high school, until Lacy got the hint and hopped out of the truck. “Hey,” he called. “I’ll be late. Have Mrs. Melton give you a ride home.”

  “Dad,” she whined.

  “Tell her it’s coming from me.” He yanked the door shut and drove off.

  Lacy was anxious the whole meeting and kept to herself. First they went around the circle and showed family trees, and in front of twenty girls the scoutmaster asked Lacy why hers was missing information. She shrank to nothing in the spotlight, praying she wouldn’t lose a badge over this and fall behind the other girls. Then she fumbled through practicing their song for the pageant. By the time Lacy approached Jenny Melton and her mom for a ride, she felt low. Politely she said her dad was hoping they could bring her home, at which Mrs. Melton nodded and walked away.

  Jenny and her mom chatted the whole drive in the front seat, ignoring Lacy in the back. She looked out the window, recalling a time when the farmers’ wives were nice to her but unable to pinpoint when it changed. Mrs. Melton took her as far as the highway connection, stopping the car at the foot of the road to the Adamses’ house. She turned and looked at Lacy with unkind eyes. “I wish your mom and dad a fond farewell,” she said, like she didn’t mean a word of it.

  Lacy walked the mile home in the blazing sun. The sharp, familiar smells of cows and manure swirled in the breeze. Red dust coated her saddle shoes. The armpits of her Scouts uniform were soaked, and she was sure, walking in the front door, that her mom would say what a burden Lacy was making her run a new load of wash. But inside it was empty, and she called out to no answer. She didn’t like surprising her mom. Lacy had peeked in the parlor once, unannounced, and saw her sitting on the couch staring off at nothing, her face unforgettably sad. Or another time Lacy heard the radio on and thought her mom was talking to Junior, only to discover her alone in the wing chair repeating the words from the news program in a turned-up twang, like she was practicing how to talk.

  She heard her mom’s steps above her, leaving the attic, and then a knock came at the front door. No one ever came to the front. They never had guests, and if Xavier needed her dad for something urgent he used the back door. Her mom hurried downstairs. Lacy retreated to the dining room and watched, shadowed by the buffet. “Last trial of my life,” her mom muttered. “Hold your horses!” She opened the door. A man in a frayed shirt stood there. He had a dirty beard and looked like he hadn’t washed in weeks. It was nothing new. Mexicans showed up looking for work on the lots pretty often, yet her mom froze like she saw a ghost.

  “Maria?” the man said hoarsely. His chapped face opened in a joyous grin. He reached out as though to touch her golden hair. “Maria Elena—”

  “No work,” her mom said, stepping back.

  The man erupted in Spanish while her mom tried to shut the door. “No trabajo,” she repeated, “go away.” But before she could close it the man reached forward and stuck a letter in her hand. He turned his head as he was reaching and saw Lacy. He laughed in surprise and waved sweetly at her. Her mom followed the man’s gaze. “Out!” she shouted, slamming the door. She locked the bolt, closed her eyes, and leaned her head against the door.

  The grandfather clock ticked in the parlor.

  Her mom stood up straight. She clenched her jaw and raised a cautionary finger at Lacy. “Not a word,” she said.

  “Doesn’t Dad need workers now?”

  “I said not a word.”

  “Who is he?” Lacy asked.

  “He’s a man with muddy boots!” she exploded. “Disrespectful girl! To your room. Now.” Her mom grabbed her by the shoulder and escorted her up to her bedroom. Lacy went in but stuck her head out into the hallway as her mom hustled, letter in hand, to her bedroom. “Shut the door,” she called back to Lacy. “You’re grounded.”

  Lacy shut it. She turned and caught her reflection in the mirror she tried to avoid. She saw her wild dark hair and potbelly, all the things a husband would never love, her mom said, so how about trying to look nicer and talk less? Lacy didn’t understand anything, why she was disrespectful, or why the man kept repeating a word Xavier had taught her: madre.

  She slid her window open, crawled onto the roof, and shimmied along a branch of the cottonwood until she reached the trunk. She scanned the road for the man with the muddy boots, but he had disappeared. She spent the rest of the afternoon watching for him, as her mind wandered in miserable confusion. There was no method to her mom, scientific or otherwise, no clear way to please her that Lacy had ever found. As the sun began to drop, a memory floated back to her from when she was little and walking was still sort of new. She sat at the bottom of the stairs while her mom knelt before her, sliding on her socks and tying her shoes. She looked at Lacy with love in her eyes when she finished. “Go on,” she said, “stand up on your feet.” A nice memory before all the corrections began, the disappointments she brought her mom for not being ladylike or as delicate as her name.

  The sound of Xavier’s truck snapped Lacy from her daydream. She watched him park by the barn and go inside. She crawled back into her room and opened the door a sliver. She heard her mom rustling in the attic and Junior downstairs playing with his Roy Rogers figures. Quietly Lacy crept down the hall to her parents’ room, where kids weren’t allowed but Junior slept every night when their dad was away. She shut the door behind her. She knew what she was looking for but not where to look. Under the brass bed? In the hope chest? She paused in front of her mom’s vanity. Its legs bowed elegantly, its lacquered front glowing in the early evening light.

  She opened it on instinct and turned over its contents. Creams, tiny scissors, colored powders. But no letter. In the last drawer Lacy found a box of Miss Clairol Golden Apricot dye. She pulled out two more. Her mom’s hair. It never occurred to Lacy that she wasn’t blond. Then, below the dyes, at the bottom of the drawer, Lacy spotted it—a grimy envelope. She opened it and a bead necklace with a cross fell out. Lacy unfolded the letter. Maria Elena, it began, continuing in scratches that Lacy was sure were Spanish. She had a sudden rush of feeling like she might be sick, a hunger to know and a sinking fear that it couldn’t be good if her mom hid it. She closed the drawer, scooped up the envelope and beads, and ran downstairs.

  “Where you going?” Junior asked, but she ignored him and took off to the barn.

  “Xavier?” she called, running past his truck and into the dim doorway.

  “Hey, muchacha.” He walked by her with a grain sack on his shoulder and heaved it onto the truck. “Now is not good. I have to get back to the men and drive them home before dinner.”

  “I found this,” she said when he returned to the barn. She held up the necklace. Xavier stopped, watching it twist in the golden sun passing through the barn boards. Dusk approached. He laid his hand gently under the cross. “Is it for church?” she asked.

  “El rosario,” he said. “To pray. Protect. Where do you get it?”

  “With this.” Lacy handed the letter to him. She studied Xavier’s face while he read, her heart nearly bursting as his eyes widened. “What’s it say?”

  “How does it—” Xavier stopped reading and took the envelope from Lacy’s hand. “There’s no stamp, where it comes from, how does—”

  “A man came to the house and gave it to her. She sent him away.”

  “Away?” he said louder.

  “She shut the door. I don’t know. I climbed the tree but I can’t find him.”

  “Pocho puta,” he said, shaking his head.

  “What does it say? Mad
re, I could read that, but what else?”

  “Your mother’s mother,” Xavier said angrily. “Your grandmother. She is very sick in Mexico and needs money. Doctors.”

  “No,” Lacy corrected, “she’s dead.”

  “You ask me and I tell you what it says.”

  “Lacy?” Her mom’s voice pierced the air, outside the barn. Her feet crunched swiftly down the gravel path.

  “Take it, take it!” Xavier hissed, thrusting the letter and rosary at Lacy. But she had already taken off across the barn, toward the secret loose board she and Junior had found behind the grain sacks. She shoved the board and wriggled out of the barn. When she turned around and peered back in, she saw Xavier stuffing the letter and necklace in his pockets—a length of beads still hanging visibly down his thigh. And just before she ran away, Lacy saw her mother’s silhouette in the middle of the barn door, dark against the fiery sunset, blocking his way out.

  * * *

  Lacy’s mom barely spoke at dinner that night, as the three of them ate. Lacy breathed a sigh of relief when she asked to be excused early, promising to run her own bath, and her mom nodded. For hours after she got in bed, Lacy could hear the creak of her mom’s footsteps, pacing the floor of her bedroom. Around ten she heard her dad come in and go upstairs, and then the muffled sounds of their talking—hers high and nervous, his cool and brief.

  In the morning Lacy woke up late and came down to a feast. Junior and her mom sat before piles of bacon and pancakes drenched in syrup. A stack waited by Lacy’s place at the table, with a glass of chocolate milk. “Come on, sleepyhead.” Her mom smiled. “Better eat a big breakfast before your pageant. Get your energy to sing.”

  Lacy sat down and ate fast, shooting looks at her mom in case she changed her mind.

  “Good news!” her mom said. “Your daddy telephoned from his meeting. All the papers signed. Done.” Her chest heaved as she breathed. She smiled like she might cry and touched her eyes with her napkin. “Ten years.” She laughed. “We did it!”

  “Daddy sold his business?” Junior asked.