Rhizomania, Part 5

Shorty waited impatiently near the left-hand entrance to the Spanish Store as Doran took the gun case from his pocket and moved it to the other side, then buttoned the flap of the left pocket securely. When Doran looked up, Shorty was examining him.  “You done?” asked the older man.

“Yes,” said Doran. He looked down at his new boots.

Shorty entered The Spanish Store, and Doran followed. At the back of the cool, shadowed room was the substantial figure of Hortensia Lujan, who held a bit of torn brown paper and looked up at her middle son, Teo. Teo stood on a makeshift platform made from stacked wooden packing crates. Hortencia looked down at what Doran thought must be a list on the scrap paper. Then, looking up again, she used her hands to signal her wishes, and Teo shifted items on the uppermost shelf. Next, he carefully removed a few things, setting them down on the wooden crate near his feet.

When Shorty and Doran entered, Teo didn’t turn but Hortencia smiled and said, “Cecil!  Doran! It’s good to see you. I have coffee and churros, fresh-made just this morning. Sit down and I get it.” Teo, noting the change in his mother’s face, or perhaps the change in the light as the men stood in the doorway, turned and gave a small wave before climbing down the tower of crates.  His mother made a quick motion with her left hand, and Teo went to the Franklin stove and fetched the enameled coffeepot which sat on the warm stove top.

Mrs. Lujan had told her visitors to sit down, and Doran looked around. Against the wall, there was a row of seats: two spindly chairs with ladder backs, another without its back, and a packing crate lined up against the back wall of the store.  Shorty took the backless chair and Doran seated himself on the crate. 

Hortensia brought a pink china plate, chipped at one edge, which held thin strips of fried pastry piled in the middle. A mixture of cinnamon and sugar was sprinkled over the churros and around the rim of the plate, thin wedges of lime lay on their sides, adding a pleasant citrus bite to the warm sweet air rising from the pastries. At least Doran was pretty sure these were pieces of lime. He'd never seen a lime but these looked like slices of a small green lemon, so they must be cut from limes. 

Teo filled four pink china cups– all with broken or missing handles — with strong coffee, and handed the first two to the visitors, and the third to his mother.  He took the fourth cup and two of the churros with him as he drifted away. He moved toward the crude doorway which ran between the grocery and hardware departments of the Spanish Store.

“Excuse Teo,” said Hortencia, lowering herself into one of the ladderback chairs and sighing as she arranged her full skirt. “He can see what people say when we talk Spanish, but English –“ Hortencia indicated her lips with a plump forefinger “--it doesn’t look the same. He don’t understand what we say.”

“Teo’s a good boy,” said Shorty. “It’s good for you to have him here with you.” He sipped his coffee, then picked up a churro and dipped it into his cup, which had a half-circle of handle, which curving over his forefinger as he cradled the warm drink. “It’s not safe for a lady to be alone in these times. It’s got dangerous in this world.”

“Oh, the people are good that come in here,” said Hortencia, picking up a lime and gently squeezing the juice over a pastry. “They don’t want to make no trouble.  Where else can they go? Mr. Morrison don’t want no Mexicans or the people with black skin either.” She lifted the churro and took a delicate bite, surveying the dingy walls of the store, where coils of rope and wire hung from nails, next to rakes and hoes, dishpans and washtubs.  

The rough-plank wall shelves were crammed full: five-gallon jacket cans of dark molasses, drums of sweet burley fine-cut tobacco, jars of Norrkoping snuff, packets of baking yeast, tiny containers of quince jelly, boxes of household matches, and a pink china cup-and-saucer set, displayed on a yellowed lace doily. Barrels, mostly of Shorty’s making, held soda crackers, cornmeal, and flour. A large stone crock of sauerkraut sat on the floor, flanked by narrow-necked vinegar jugs. In the coolest, darkest corner of the shop, waxy wheels of cheese were stacked on a low shelf. A display shelf behind the board counter held special items for those experiencing a financial windfall:  commercial laundry soap in thick brown bars covered by waxed-paper wrappers, a parlor lamp with a rose-tinted shade, small boxes of Ambrosia Chocolate Creams, each tied with a bit of blue ribbon. Unlike Morrison’s wide and varied inventory, the Spanish Store carried no clothing, rugs, bedspreads, or prepared foods. The only exceptions to this last category were large white flour tortillas. Hortencia prepared these on a huge griddle and then sold them in stacks of five, wrapped in a sheet of the county newspaper. Unmarried ranch workers filled the flat bread with beans or fried meat and called it supper.

Just under the parlor lamp with the rose-tinted shade on the display shelf over the counter, the best spot in the entire Spanish Store was given to a Kellogg crank telephone in a wooden box with two bells, a black-painted bell receiver, and a matching black china earpiece on a side hook. The box’s slanted front had a black marble tile top for writing down phone messages.  Next to the phone, a dip pen and a cone-shaped bottle of Carter’s ink sat on top of a neat stack of pages from the previous year’s Sears Roebuck mail-order catalog, on which phone messages were written along the page margins. The page on top of the stack featured three models of pea and bean shellers, including the Engelberg Huller, which would also process coffee and rice.

“Hector out on the Scottsbluff Run?” said Shorty.

“Yes,” said Hortencia. “He took Cesario with him, to learn the route.”

“I thought Cesario didn’t want to haul freight,” said Shorty.  Doran said nothing, but squeezed lime over another long strip of pastry, then turned the churro to coat it with more of the cinnamon sugar.

“You like those?” asked Hortencia, watching Doran.

“It’s real good,” said Doran. “The lime is good with the sugar.”

“That’s the way my mother served,” said Hortencia.  “Hector brings me limes when he takes the wagon to Lincoln. They got a big fancy store there, like –”

Doran knew she didn’t want to say “Morrison’s” aloud inside her own place  He smiled and nodded, to show he understood, and finished his last cookie.

Hortencia. looked around for Teo, spotted him on the hardware side, and tried to get his attention, but Teo was facing away from her. She rose, with some effort, and went to the stove for the coffeepot. She refilled the cups. She let the nearly-empty pot rest on the packing crate near the plate of cinnamon-speckled churros.

Hortencia turned to Shorty. “Cesario don’t want to haul the shipments but Hector needs a son to help because we are getting to be old people and we are tired.” She sighed and sipped at her coffee. “When the railroad got going good, I thought there was no more freight for Hector. I thought, “Now he will run the store.’”

“But then he got the courier work,” said Shorty.

“The people out in the far places, the little towns –” Hortencia waved a gentle hand at the front wall of the store  “–can’t leave the farm and come to the depot.” She finished her coffee. “Or they have no wagon. So when Hector seen he could take the things around, he told me ‘I have the freight wagon, I have good ox, I have good harness.’ But I think my husband likes to be out, out and going to this place and another one. He don’t want to sit in the store and measure out cornmeal.” She smiled.

Doran was wondering why Jorge, the youngest Lujan boy, didn’t help Hector on the freight route. Jorge did have the brickyard and quicklime business, but that work always stopped for the winter, once the heavy Nebraska snows started. Jorge was the best candidate to help with the courier route. Teo couldn’t talk with the customers, and Cesario and his father seemed to be an uneasy alliance. But Jorge was the biggest and the strongest, and yet Doran had never known Jorge to haul freight with his father, not once.

The answer to the mystery came staggering in the doorway, knocking a dishpan from its wall nail and sending it rolling on its rim across the gritty plank floor.  Jorge, bleary-eyed and blue-chinned, was home after a wild night which had run into the next day. The young man didn’t seem able to stand up properly.  Doran assumed it was whiskey alone, but then he saw that Jorge’s right shoulder stuck up higher than the left, with an odd bony projection that his heavy cotton shirt couldn’t disguise. Jorge struggled upright and tried to focus on the figures in the dark recess of the store. He saw his mother and then Shorty and Doran.

“Leave her be,” he said in a thick voice, staggering forward. He lunged drunkenly over the packing crate at Doran, knocking the plate of churros to the floor.  “No call to be in here! Go to your own store! Leave her be!”

“It’s us, Jorge. It’s Shorty and Doran,” said Shorty calmly, as he put his palms on Jorge’s shoulders and held him away from Doran. “Just visitin’ with your ma, fella. No harm.”

“Go to your own store!” said Jorge, swinging at the older man, missing, and knocking over the enamel coffeepot. A pool of brown liquid dribbled onto the top of the packing crate.  “No call to be here! Don’t belong in here!”

Hortencia had moved silently around the packing crate and she now wrapped her strong arms around those of her son, and held him to her round body.  “Stop, son,” she said softly. “You got to stop now and settle down. Stop now.”

Jorge struggled for a moment, then recognized the familiar softness of his mother’s body, and relaxed.  He began to sob, rubbing at his eyes with a huge dirty hand capped with black-tipped nails. “No call to be in here,” Jorge said. “Come in and bother us. No call.”

Teo, aware of the struggle, came into the grocery room and took his brother’s arm and led him away to the hardware side, where the odors of machine oil and kerosene seemed to soothe the drunk man’ss unhappy spirit. Jorge’s crooked frame, much larger than the slender Teo’s, drooped over his brother. He shuffled his feet as the two men moved toward the area filled with harness, saws, wagon parts, and farm equipment. Then Jorge’s mood changed dramatically, and he began to laugh and give his brother bear hugs.

Doran stooped and gathered the crumbled churros and a few of the pieces of the broken pink china. He found one of the lime wedges, but the other must have slid behind a crock, jug, or barrel.

Hortencia glanced at the broken china. “Don’t worry “bout that.  I got lots. Hector brought home a whole crate of china that got –“ Hortencia moved her hands back and forth — “shook." She smiled. "Hector brought me the box and I looked inside for the dishes that was still good. Just the handle off, or a little bite out of it.” She went to the back of the store, brought back two large rags torn from some brown garment, and formed one rag into a little pocket. She filled this with the last bits of spilled food and chips of broken cups and plates.  Walking slowly, she carried the rag bundle filled with trash out the back door, then returned.

“Hector’s a good provider,” said Shorty. “And you got three big healthy sons. Now, Missus Lujan, don’t Cesario help bring calves across the river for the Sayre outfit?”

“He took some a few days ago,” said Hortencia. “I was worried because it was so windy and stormy. I didn’t want him to go.” She looked through the middle doorway into the hardware area, where Jorge sat unsteadily on a nail keg, watching Teo using a gray pumice stone to put a sharp edge on a skinning knife. “You can’t tell a Lujan what to do.”

“I don’t suppose Cesario said anything about the cows or calves down at Sayre’s south ranch?”

“Their cows got some kind of bellyache,” said Hortencia. “I think two died. One was the little small black cow, you know which kind?”

“Them little Dexters,” said Shorty.

“I don’t know the name, but it’s the little black cows,” said Hortencia. “Real short, like a pony.”

“And they had troubles down in their gut?” said Shorty, rubbing his shirt front with his hard square palm.

“That’s what Cesario said,” said Hortencia. She folded the second brown cloth rag into fourths and used it to blot up the coffee which had spilled onto the wood of the packing crate.

“So the cattle were sick down at the south ranch before Cesario brought ’em up?” said Shorty.

“He never brought those ones up,” said Hortencia.  “Doctor Morton’s a good vet. My husband says Doctor Morton would not let John Sayre bring diseased animals over the river. But maybe some of the others were sick and it didn’t show.”

“So people in town are talking about Sayre’s herd having a sickness,” said Shorty. “I wonder why we haven’t heard nothing about it.”

“I don’t tell a thing about what John Sayre does,” said Hortencia, anxiously. She looked back through the doorway at Teo and Jorge, who were laughing.  Teo was making faces, and Doran suspected the deaf man was imitating various customers. Each new impression seemed to make Jorge laugh harder.

Hortencia looked at her sons lovingly, then turned to look at Shorty. “Cesario says this and that to me but I don’t carry the tales about John Sayre’s ranches.”

“I wouldn’t get you in dutch with the money man, Missus. Lujan,” said Shorty.

“I wonder what made those cows sick,” Doran said to Shorty. “Something wrong with the feed?”

“Bad hay, maybe,” said Shorty. “If the hay wasn’t put up dry, it might have got nasty and rotten in the middle of the bales. That’ll give stock a lot of gas in the belly. Or if there’s larkspur or some such that gets put up with the hay.” Shorty turned to Hortencia, who had finished cleaning up and now stood, rag in hand, looking through the middle doorway at her sons, who were working together.   Or rather, drunken, unsteady Jorge was getting in the way as Teo took apart an old cultivator. “Well, Missus. Lujan, me and Doran ought to get back and see about our own animals and chores.” He felt his pockets, found a scrap of brown paper, covered with handwriting in a lady’s delicate hand, wrapped around a small stack of worn currency.

“Now this here is a list Evie Harden give me when I took her some work out to her place. She said she would appreciate it if you could pack her order up and then Soldier will come by and get it.”

Hortencia accepted the small bundle and nodded. 

Doran followed Shorty out the front door, and Hortencia came out with them into the front yard.  “Jorge don’t mean what he says,” she said, pressing a packet of newspaper-wrapped tortillas into Shorty’s hands. “You are welcome to our store, all times.  Jorge is scared of the men that work with Cesario on the cattle drive, you know, the white men that is paid by John Sayre.” She glanced back at the store, but Jorge was out of earshot. “The worst white men come sometime, and they walk around inside our place, and touch this and touch that, and they spill –“ Hortencia stopped speaking and adjusted the muslin apron which protected her full, embroidered skirt.  “And we can’t say nothing to them, they are close to John Sayre, and Cesario must have this work.” She sighed.

“That’s not right,” said Shorty. “They ought not bother you.”

The two men took their leave of the Lujan family. They moved toward the horses, tied up near the small cloud of spindly cottonwoods which Jorge had planted for his mother.

“Jorge must carry a bucket down to Winters Creek and bring water to keep these trees alive,” said Shorty, pulling the looped reins free from the thicket of cottonwood saplings.

From the moment Doran mounted and urged Redboy to follow Ben back along the road which led home, the chestnut was uneasy and skittish. Doran looked along the brush along the roadside for a rabbit or squirrel, or maybe a loose piece of cloth or rope flapping in the light southeasterly breeze which had picked up while he and Shorty had been inside the Spanish Store. All Doran could see was a light puff of dust or smoke, off to his left, at the far edge of an untilled field.  Redboy settled down a bit, then began to shake his head and dance a little. Doran brought the reins back, and reached down to rub Redboy’s neck.  Shorty, noticing that Doran had fallen behind, slowed Ben’s pace down till the two men were riding side by side.

The small cloud of dust grew larger and darker as Doran watched. Doran felt the cavalry gun, which he had put into his coat pocket before entering the Spanish Store. thumping against his left side. It was useless, but at least Shorty had his rifle tucked into the scabbard on Ben’s saddle.

The cloud of dust grew even darker and much more defined with every moment, and might well represent the two men who’d attacked Doran on the moonlit path the night before. If so, a single rifle wasn’t going to be enough.  One of the men could ride to the left and one to the right, and that would be that.

Dotan frowned again at the dark cloud of dust, which had become a clear, if moving, shape. He recognized it as one horse and one rider.

Shorty was also watching the approaching figure. “I believe it’s Jorge, on that bay horse that Cesario bought off Bo Nemecek.”

Doran felt no relief that they knew who it was. Drunk, angry Jorge riding hard after them was nearly as bad as the two men of the axe-handle attack in the night. Next to him, Shorty rode easily, and didn’t even glance at his rifle in the scabbard. But Doran, panicked,  fumbled with the buttonless flap of his right coat pocket. The sag of the weight in his other pocket reminded him that he had moved the Colt to the left side. He quickly moved the slim leather reins into his right hand, and pulled out the cavalry gun in its oiled-canvas case.  He pinned the case under his right arm, unsnapped the flap, and slid out the Colt. He stuffed the empty case into the pocket, then tucked the broken gun behind his belt in back. The pull of the reins, as Redboy spooked for a moment just as Doran was securing the cavalry gun, hurt Doran’s sore shoulder but he gritted his teeth and rode on.

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