Then he heard the coughing and wheezing, the slow shuffling clop of the horses’ hooves, and the men heard them too. They were poised for a moment, the water’s surface still, then John pushed away from Frank, sending out ripples, and Gino was lifted on the wake, and Carlos saw Frank’s hand reach for his floating foot before he turned back to see the riders as they emerged around the last turning, their horses climbing the few remaining feet of stony ground, until they were standing before him, stomping and blowing on the mossy carpet between the pool and the tree-lined pathway and the arroyo’s lip. He looked up at the rider, the one sneezing and shaking, gasping in stertorous gulps of air, face hidden in the red bandanna held at the mouth, then saw the figure begin to list and fall again, the arm of the other reach across, inadvertently hitting the hat brim. The Stetson tipped away, tumbling over the horse’s rump, and the hair followed it, black and grey-streaked, falling to the rider’s shoulders. Then the hand holding the red cloth sunk to her saddle horn, he saw the blue mascara running down her cheeks from rheumy eyes. Still gasping and falling, fringe shaking frantically at arms and legs, she looked around wildly, up at Alma in the tree, then down at Carlos, then over his head toward the pool. He heard a splashing and another gasping. It was Gino, his voice crooked and his tracheotomy tube whistling in it as he called out, “Ramona!” and when Carlos saw the stricken gringo face of the other rider, the set of those horsey teeth, he knew he’d found his father too, though he’d not been searching for him.
Gino passed him, naked on the mossy carpet, the others splashing out of the pool and following, and Carlos was heading for his father, who had tipped the pink cosmetics case and spilled its contents on the ground, when he heard the voice call from the tree, “pollen,” and then their hands were brushing against each other as their fingers slipped through lipsticks, eyeliners, various rouges and compacts, and his father lifted his head once and looked at him without recognition. Then Carlos heard the woman crying out, through congestion and wheeze, “the fucking inhaler!” and when his eyes moved to her, he saw her face through white and knotty legs, her frantic painted brows and the start of a scar there, below wrinkled scrotums.
Gino was a naked child, leaning over her; “Ramona” again, this time plaintively. His mouth moved down to hers for artificial respiration, and Carlos saw her head turn desperately. Then his father was on his feet and stumbling toward the cluster of old men, the tube in his hand, and was pushing among their bony bodies, his arm extended and reaching down to her, and he saw her hand brush ruby scar tissue on Gino’s inner thigh as she struggled through the thicket of their legs, reaching for momentary salvation.
There were eight of them in their saddles when the sun came up. Ramona rode to the side of Gino, and Carlos could see the various accoutrements set to bouncing on her horse’s rump between the figures of the men ahead when they separated, pulling their mounts away for better footing as they descended the escarpment, heading for the valley floor. He rode beside his father, the donkeys on the rope line behind them, and at times they looked at one another, still trying to find a way to be together. John’s hat was tilted forward on his brow to fight the rising sun, and Frank and Larry were nodding, high on their folded blankets, sleepy after the long night of talking.
They’d set up camp in a clearing behind the rock pool, and smoke had risen from their fire, then filtered through the high branches of the pines surrounding them, until the fire was proper and the smoke was gone and they could see each other’s faces across the red embers in which the cook pot rested, steam and the scent of rich stew at its mouth. They ate, and drank Alma’s brew, and only when they were settled among blankets and sleeping bags in the coolness of the deeper night did they attempt explanation and the necessary reordering of their places among each other, and it was only when John had spoken Carlos’s name and Ramona had named his father, calling out Manuel and asking him to fetch something, that the two of them could look steadily at one another in acceptance of their relationship. Ramona sat at Gino’s side, and he was watching her, and on occasion they could hear the huff of her inhaler, not unlike those familiar sounds that issued from their tracheotomy tubes.
They’d been at the house before Carlos had arrived, and that wasn’t coincidence, since they had been there even earlier, scavenging. And Manuel had been there, too, many years before, when he was a child and his own father had taken him there and they had sat on horses and looked the place over. It was empty then and starting to run down, and his father had told him it might have been his, still could be, but he had been a child, anxious for other places, and the words had meant little to him, though he had not forgotten them. And then he was there again, with Ramona, to see about the cauldrons, if there was any possibility of moving them. They’d found the oil too, under the tree, but there was nothing in that for them, not until Carlos came with the surveyors, and they had hid themselves up in the foothills and seen the men arrive. Then they had begun to think there might be something, because Manuel remembered his father’s words and they were desperate now.
They had come to Tampico from the States a year ago, Manuel thinking they could make a new start there. It’s a long story, Ramona said, but in the States it was always difficult, because Manuel was a Mexican. Then in Tampico, with his gringo look, he was mistrusted. Gino huffed at the explanation, not buying it, but when she looked hard at him in a certain sadness he had bowed his head for her forgiveness, and she continued.
In Tampico there was nothing for them and they were growing old. She was fifty-nine, Manuel sixty-seven, and the money they had brought with them, a good deal of it in fact, was running out, and they were living carefully, though at a decent place still, not far from Chepa’s house, going out to find odd jobs and whatever else they could find that they could sell and thus replenish their money. They’d found deserted houses they could break into. They knew how to do that, and in some of the houses they’d found things of value. They’d found little at the house in question, but there were some things, and they had plans to return for the brass bed, and they were considering the cauldrons once again when they heard the sound of the Range Rover. “So many years,” Ramona said. “There were times we hoped for the future. But that was long ago, and now we’re old.” “Not really old,” Frank said. “Enough,” Ramona replied.
So they had watched the men, vague ideas blinking in their minds, and when Alma had come and the men had bathed in the cauldrons and then set off, they had returned to their own house and quickly loaded up their horses, then had followed their trail, and in a while there had seemed no way in which they could stop doing that. They had entered places that were infected with pollen, and they realized there was no turning back, not alone, and that those they followed might now become their saviors if Ramona’s asthma and allergies continued to affect her. When Carlos watched them through the glasses they were attempting a desperate assault. They had lost them, then had found them again, spied through their own glasses. But in the arroyo the pollen was thick, and halfway up Ramona had her attack, and their assault had turned away from aggression and into a search for help. “We were about halfway up,” Manuel mumbled, and Carlos looked over at him, vaguely remembering his passivity. “I’m too fucking old for this kind of thing,” Ramona said, and Manuel dropped his head to his chest, nodding deeply in agreement. “What about the fire?” Gino said, and Ramona looked at him in desperation once again. “Lord, father. I must have been someone else back then. Remember the jewel in my tongue? Someone else entirely.” “Are you married?” Gino asked, gently now. “Yes,” she said. “And he has been my savior.” “Coincidence,” John said. “There’s no accounting for it.”