The restaurant was outdoors, in a walled courtyard that was a larger, more baroque version of Emelina’s. Flowers bloomed everywhere out of pots shaped like pigs and squatty roosters, some of which had lost body parts, and two enormous old olive trees sparkled with tiny Christmas lights that evidently knew no season. Carved out here and there in the thick adobe wall were rounded niches that were home to weather-worn saints the size of a G.I. Joe; some, in fact, looked suspiciously like dolls in saints’ clothing. In a corner, near where the band was setting up, stood a four-foot-tall, almost comically thin St. Francis of Assisi. He looked venerable and tired (also hungry), and was surrounded by a postmodern assortment of glazed ceramic and plastic birds.
The tables and chairs were of every imaginable type, following the same theme, and the flatware too-like snowflakes, no two alike. The effect was completely festive, in spite of Doña Althea’s daughters. All four of them (who each had Althea lodged somewhere in her name) were over sixty, as thin as St. Francis but without his animal magnetism. They moved through the crowd with efficient scowls, taking orders and bringing out heavenly food from the little kitchen, all the while acting as though they couldn’t quite understand why they’d agreed to go to all this trouble. You would think they’d have figured it out by now. It had been the most popular restaurant in town for half a century.
With tender, paternal attention the Alvaro Brothers unwrapped their musical instruments, which traveled in comfort, nestled in bright-blocked quilts. The men appeared to be three generations, rather than actual brothers. The elder Alvaro, dressed in cowboy boots and a formal Western shirt, cradled a gunmetal saxophone that reminded me of World War II planes. A middle-aged Alvaro with shoulder-length hair played accordion, and two boys in T-shirts played bass guitar and drums. The old sax player stepped up to the microphone. “We are the Alvaro Brothers,” he said. “If we make too much noise, let us know.”
It was the last time any of them smiled. From the instant they began to play, they stood motionless with their mouths turned down in concentration. Everybody else was dancing in their seats. Chicken Scratch music is Mexican-spiced Native American polka. It sounds like a wild, very happy, and slightly drunken wedding party, and it moves you up and down; you can’t keep still. A line of older women in dark skirts and blouses, possibly Alvaro Sisters or Alvaro Wives, stood near the kitchen, swaying a little and tapping their feet. Several couples began to dance, and I could tell Emelina was itching to join them, but she held herself back. Mason showed no such restraint. He was out of his seat in no time, front and center, jumping in circles and running into people’s legs. The younger people moved aside when the Papago women moved out from the wall and began to do the traditional six-step dance. They moved in a loose line, slightly bent over, shuffling over the gravel and sounding-if not looking-exactly like the scratching hens that give the music its name.
The place was packed. It took forever to get served and there were some mixed-up orders, and nobody cared. The music was so buoyant. One of the Althea sisters actually cracked a smile. After forty-five minutes the bass player plucked his lit cigarette from the bridge of his guitar and the Alvaros took a break.
Emelina told me she and J.T. had come here on their first date. They were fourteen. Viola had come too, but fortunately she spent the whole time in the kitchen advising Doña Althea on the menudo, Viola’s specialty. J.T. was thus able to eat his whole meal with one hand on Emelina’s knee, under the table.
“Just think,” I said. “If you’d come on another night, the soup of the day would have been something else and you and J.T. might never have gotten married.”
She smiled an odd little smile. “I don’t think there’s anybody else in this town I could have married but J.T. It was like we had each other’s names printed on us when we were born.”
“Seems like there’s a lot of that in this town.”
“Oh, yeah. And people do what their parents did. The father’s a hoghead, the son’s a hoghead.”
I smiled. “What’s a hoghead?”
“Locomotive engineer. I don’t know why they call them that.” She pecked her fingertips on the tabletop, watching the Papago women talking to the musicians.
For a while I’d believed that Emelina and J.T., with their congenial partnership and all those miles between them, were like Carlo and me, parallel lines that never quite touched. I was wrong. Two nights before when J.T. came home at 3 A.M. they made love in the moonlit courtyard, urgently, with some of their clothes on. My house was dark but I was awake, invisible in my kitchen. I felt abandoned. Emelina was nothing like me.
“It’s dangerous,” she said suddenly. “Shit, you can’t think about it but it’s hell, the railroad. Did you know Fenton Lee, in high school?”
“Sure.”
“He was in a head-on wreck two years ago. Bringing his train out of the yard in El Paso, at night, and somebody else was coming in, lined for the same track. Nobody knows why. Maybe a signal failed. Southern Pacific says no. But J.T. says it happens.”
“So Fenton was killed?” I remembered him plainly, in horn-rim glasses. He had blond bangs and a loud laugh.
“Yeah, it was real bad. They heard the crash all over the yard. The one engine climbed up the other one and sheared off the top. There wasn’t a whole lot left.”
I felt numb. A train wreck and Fenton dead in it were beyond what I was willing to imagine.
“You can jump off, when you see that coming,” Emelina told me. “Fenton’s brakeman and conductor jumped off, and the other crew did, but Fenton stayed on. I guess he didn’t really believe it. I told J.T., ‘If you ever see a headlight coming at you, don’t you dare save the train. You get your butt out of there.’”
The band started up again and Emelina’s mood quickly lifted. Our food arrived and Mason snapped back to the table. Emelina resettled the baby in the rickety high chair. “So you’re going up to the rez with Loyd tomorrow,” she said, her eyes twinkling. “This is getting serious. If I was your mother I’d tell you to wear garlic around your neck.” She dipped the tip of her spoon into her refried beans and fed it to the baby. He took the spicy brown mush like manna from heaven. “But since I’m not your mother,” she said soberly, “I’d advise you to wear nice-looking underwear.”
She embarrassed me. “It’s nothing serious,” I said. “We’re not exactly couple material, are we? Me and Loyd-with-one-L.”
She looked up, surprised. “He can’t help how his name’s spelled.” She paused a minute, studying me. “What, you think Loyd’s dumb?”
Now I had embarrassed myself. “No, I don’t think that. I just can’t see myself with a guy that’s into cockfighting.”
I’m sure Emelina suspected this was nowhere near the whole truth. She was thinking I did hold Loyd’s misspelled name against him, and a lot of other things. That I couldn’t see myself with a roughneck Apache hoghead who was her husband’s best friend. I felt myself blush. I was just like Doc Homer, raising himself and Hallie and me up to be untouched by Grace.
“I’ll tell you something, honey,” Emelina said, pausing her spoon midway enroute to the baby’s open mouth. “Half the women in this town, and not just the single ones, would give up Sunday breakfast to go to Whiteriver in that little red truck.”