My discharge papers in my back pocket, I toured the state on my motorcycle, stopping off in Dallas, Houston and San Antonio. The bigger cities seemed like less sincere, though, almost as if they were playing at being Texan. They gobbled up the smaller towns nearby with that attitude like some giant, gaseous planet pulled at its moons.
Eventually, I circled back to West Texas and El Paso, unsure if I would stay or not. The day I rolled into La Sombra and stopped off at Tres Estrellas changed my mind for good.
I told myself it the friendly people that I’d been looking for all over Texas and found in La Sombra that made me decide to settle here. That I loved the mix of America, Texas and old Mexico that seemed to find a way to live together. That La Sombra put me at peace.
But it was her.
Isabella.
I knew she was the fantasy of every man in town. The way her hair hung in full curls around her brown face. Round, sultry eyes full of mystery. And every curve screamed woman.
It was more than that, though. I sensed it immediately, though I’d spent the last four years trying to define it. I don’t know if I can yet or if I’ll ever be able to. But there was an enigmatic quality to her, one that makes a man feel that if he can just be chosen by her, he will be complete. That if he can make things right with her, everything else in the world will follow suit. I wanted so much to be that man.
I took another long drink of water and wished the aspirin would kick in.
“Carl?”
I turned to see John Calhoun standing at the corner of my house. His immaculate jeans and white shirt were the same he always wore on duty, but he was without his hat, gunbelt or badge.
He pointed toward the front of my house. “I knocked, but…”
“It’s all right.” I waved him over to the wide steps where I sat.
John strolled over, his steps even and measured. I didn’t expect him to sit, but he lowered himself slowly onto the same step I sat on with the barest trace of a sigh.
“Get you something, John?”
He shook his head. “Reckon not.”
We sat in silence for a little while, staring out at my dusty back yard.
Finally, John gestured toward the sandy lot. “Ain’t had a chance to do much with it since you moved in, I see.”
I shrugged. “Always seemed that something more important needed doing.”
“Yup,” John said. He removed a small pouch of tobacco from his pocket and slipped a pinch of leaf into his lip. “Things work that way sometimes. If that’s the reason, that is.” He held the pouch toward me.
I shook my head and said nothing.
John leaned away from me and spat into the dirt. “’Course, a man might figure you left it like this ‘cause you didn’t figure on staying around long enough.”
“Long enough for what?”
John spit again and wiped his lip. “Long enough to sink roots.”
I clenched my jaw. My head throbbed at the temples. “Jack send you? Or the Chief?”
Genuine hurt seemed to register in his deep gray eyes. He gave his head a small shake. “No one sent me, son.”
“Then why are you here?”
He regarded me for a moment with the air of a father who knew any advice he gave his teenage son would go unheeded. Some mistakes a man just has to make on his own, his eyes seemed to say.
“I figure you might need someone to talk at,” he finally said. “What with all that’s happened recently.”
I looked away and took a long drink of water.
“See,” John paused to spit and continued, “I reckon that you’re thinking on what your next move oughta be.”
“Next move?” I asked, but I knew what he meant.
“Yup. Whether you should stay and fight or just cut loose and move on.”
“And you’re figuring to give me some advice.” I couldn’t keep the bite out of my tone, but John didn’t seem to notice or he chose to ignore it.
“Maybe not advice,” he said. “But some information, yeah.”
I didn’t answer. The clacking sound of a grasshopper’s wings briefly filled the silence.
“You’re thinking it ain’t right for Jack to get away with the things he does,” John said. “You’re thinking someone ought to do something and that if no one else will, well then maybe it ought to be you.”
“What makes you think you know what I’m thinking?”
“’Cause you ain’t the first person to go up against Jack Talbott.”
I turned to face him, searching out the craggy lines of his face for the truth behind that statement. His iron eyes held my stare without blinking.
“You?”
John shrugged. “It don’t matter none. What matters is this — you can’t win, Carl. It don’t mean it’s right, but it’s the way it is. He’ll find a way to destroy you. That’s what the sonofabitch lives for. All that money of his is just what makes it possible.”
“What’s he got on you, John? What did he — ”
“It don’t goddamn matter!” John snapped.
I raised my eyebrows in surprise. The motion sent jolts of pain through my head.
John rubbed his eyes with both thumbs in frustration. Then he turned his gaze back to me. “You’re not listening,” he said. “You can’t win. You should just go. There’s nothing left for you here in La Sombra.”
I didn’t answer. John held my eye for a long minute, then dipped his chin in a nod. Without another word, he rose and strolled away. I listened to his footsteps disappear, then the truck door open and close and finally the engine rumble to life. When that sound faded in the distance, I looked out at my desolate backyard.
He was wrong.
There was one thing left for me in La Sombra.
The next morning, I drove over to her small house. I knew it well. I’d given her a ride home from Tres Estrellas a few times. Once, we even shared a cup of coffee at her kitchen table. She told me her dream was to buy the Tres.
“So do it,” I’d told her. “If it’s your dream, do it.”
“Oh, Carlos,” she said with a sad, knowing smile. “No banker is going to give this senorita a loan.”
“Maybe they would.”
She’d only shaken her head and said, “No, it’s all about numeros y dinero. I have no collateral.” She sighed and smiled tiredly at me. “Working there is as close as I’ll get to my dream.”
“You should never give up.”
“Who said I gave up?” Her tired smile perked up a bit. “What about you, Carlos? What’s your dream?”
I never told her. Not that night. Not ever.
Maybe the looks she cast my way were true and maybe they weren’t, but I needed to know. I knew I wasn’t going to find out inside the Tres, so it had to be at her house.
I stopped half a block away and stared.
I rubbed my eyes and stared some more.
Jack Talbott’s oversized red truck sat prominently in her driveway.
I stared and stared, a hole of fire burning in my chest. I stared until it had burned out everything that mattered. Then I left before I had to see that son of a bitch saunter out her door and to his truck.
The badge clattered onto the Chief’s desk. He looked up at me from his newspaper.
“What’s this?” he growled.
I dropped my issued gun belt next to the badge. “You got your way,” I told him.
He folded the newspaper and regarded the gun and badge in front of him. Then he looked up at me. “I didn’t figure no Yankee’d last round here.”
“You crooked bastard,” I whispered.
The Chief laughed and returned to his paper. “Crooked? Oh, that’s good. That’s good.”
I turned away and headed toward the door.
Behind me, the Chief continued to chuckle into his newspaper.
I tucked the two manila envelopes into my backpack and zipped it shut. The sound held a sort of finality to it, but I didn’t mind.
There was a knock at the door. I shouldered the bag and strode across the room.
Wes stood on my porch. He gave me an embarrassed grin when I opened the door.