“And were the men in the fields the next morning before seven, Mr. Estivar?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I didn’t get a chance to ask,” Estivar said. “I never saw any of them again.”
Chapter Five
At eleven o’clock Judge Gallagher called for the morning recess. His bailiff opened the massive wooden doors and people began moving out into the corridor, the elderly men on cane and crutches, the students hugging their notebooks across their chests like shields, the lady shopper, the trio of ranchers, the German woman with her bag of knitting, the ex-cop, Valenzuela, the teen-aged girl holding her baby now half-awake and fussing quietly.
Estivar, self-conscious and perspiring, rejoined his family in the last row of seats. Ysobel spoke to her husband in staccato Spanish, telling him he was a fool to admit more than he had to and answer questions that hadn’t even been asked.
“I think Estivar did real good,” Dulzura said. “Talking up so clear, not even nervous.”
“You keep out of this,” Ysobel said. “Don’t interfere.”
“I’m obliged to interfere. I’m his first cousin.”
“Second. Second cousin.”
“My mother was his mother’s—”
“Mr. Estivar, kindly tell your second cousin, Dulzura Gonzales, not to express her opinions until they’re asked for.”
“I think he did real good,” Dulzura repeated stubbornly. “Don’t you think so, Jaime?”
Jaime looked blank, pretending not to hear, not even to be a part of this loud peculiar foreign family.
On the opposite side of the room Agnes Osborne and Devon sat silent and bewildered, like two strangers who were being tried together for a mysterious crime not described in an indictment or mentioned by a judge. No jury had been summoned to decide guilt. Guilt was assumed. It hung heavy over both the women, keeping them motionless in their seats. Devon was thirsty, she wanted to go into the corridor for a drink of water, but she had the feeling that the bailiff would follow her and that the unnamed crime she was accused of committing had canceled even so basic a right as quenching her thirst.
Mrs. Osborne was the first to speak. “I told you Estivar couldn’t be trusted when the chips were down. You see what he’s trying to do, don’t you?”
“Not exactly.”
“He’s blackening our name. He’s making it appear that Robert deserved whatever fate he met. All the business about prejudice, it wasn’t true. Mr. Ford shouldn’t have allowed him to speak lies.”
“Let’s go outside and take a walk in the fresh air.”
“No. I must stay here and talk to Mr. Ford. He’s got to straighten things out.”
“What Estivar said is a matter of record. Mr. Ford or anyone else can’t change it now.”
“He can do something.”
“All right, I’ll stay with you if you want me to.”
“No, go take your walk.”
To reach the main door Devon had to pass near the row of seats where Estivar still sat with his family. They seemed uncertain about what a recess was and how they were expected to act during it. As Devon approached, all of them, even Dulzura, looked up as though they’d forgotten about her and were surprised to see her in such a place. Then Estivar rose, and after a nudge from his father, so did Jaime.
Devon stared at the boy, thinking how much he’d grown in just the short time since she’d seen him last. Jaime must be fourteen now. When Robert was fourteen he used to follow Estivar around everywhere, he called him Tío and pestered him with questions and ate at his table. Or did he? Why had it never been mentioned to her by anyone, Robert himself, or Estivar or Agnes Osborne or Dulzura? Perhaps the man, Tío, and the boy, Robbie, and their relationship had never existed except in Estivar’s mind.
She said, “Hello, Jaime.”
“Hello, ma’am.”
“You’ve been growing so fast I hardly knew you.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I haven’t seen you since school started. Are you liking it better this year?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
It was a polite lie, just as every answer she’d get from him would be a polite lie. The ten years’ difference in their ages could have been a hundred, though it seemed only yesterday that people were telling her how much she’d grown and asking her how she liked school.
In the corridor men and women were standing in small clusters at each window, like prisoners seeking a view of the world outside. Here and there cigarette smoke rose toward the ceiling. The teen-ager in the blond wig came out of the ladies’ room. The baby was fully awake now, kicking and squirming and pulling at the girl’s wig until it slipped down over her forehead and knocked off her sunglasses. Before the baby’s hand was slapped away and the sunglasses and wig were put back in place, Devon had a glimpse of black hair, clipped very short, and of dark troubled eyes squinting even in the subdued light of the corridor.
“Hello, Mrs. Osborne.”
“Hello.”
“I guess you don’t remember me, huh?”
“No.”
“It’s my weight, I lost fifteen pounds. Also the wig and sunglasses. Oh yeah, and the kid.” She glanced down at the baby with a kind of detached interest as though she still wasn’t quite sure where he’d come from. “I’m Carla, I helped Mrs. Estivar with the twins summer before last.”
“Carla,” Devon said. “Carla Lopez.”
“Yeah, that’s me. I got married for a while but it was a drag — you know? So we split and I took my real name back again. Why should I be stuck for the rest of my life with the name of a guy I hate?”
Carla Lopez, you’ve grown so much I hardly know you. Devon remembered a plump smiling schoolgirl hardly older than Jaime, walking down the road to meet the mailman, her thigh-high skirt emphasizing the shortness of her legs. “Buenos días, Carla.” “Good morning, Mrs. Osborne...”
Carla ironing the kinks out of her long black hair in the ranch-house kitchen, with Dulzura helping her — half admiring because she’d heard this was the latest style, half reluctant because she knew Devon would eventually come to investigate the smell of scorched hair that was pervading the house. “What on earth are you doing, you two?” Dulzura explaining that curls and waves were no longer fashionable, while the girl knelt with her hair spread across the ironing board like a bolt of black silk...
Carla sitting at dusk under a tamarisk tree beside the reservoir.
“Why are you out here by yourself, Carla?”
“It’s so noisy in the Estivars’ house, everyone talking at once and the TV on. Last summer when I worked for the Bishops, everything was real quiet. Mr. Bishop used to read a lot and Mrs. Bishop took long walks for her headaches. She had very bad headaches.”
“You’d better go inside before the mosquitoes start biting. Buenas noches.”
“Good night, Mrs. Osborne.”
Devon said, “Why are you here today, Carla?”
“I think it was Valenzuela’s idea, he’s got it in for me.”
“You mean you were subpoenaed.”
“Yes, I was.”
“For what reason?”
“I told you, Valenzuela’s got it in for me, for my whole family.”
“Valenzuela has no control over subpoenas,” Devon said. “He’s not even a policeman any more.”
“Some of the muscle stayed with him. Ask anyone in Boca de Rio — he still swaggers around like he’s wearing a cop suit.” She switched the baby from her right arm to her left, patting him between the shoulder blades to soothe him. “The Estivars don’t like me either. Well, it’s mutual, one hundred percent mutual... I hear Rufo got married and Cruz is in the army.”