The food was similar to the stew Alma had served on the trail, but thicker and fresher, and they could smell sweet spices in the steam that rose above their full plates. The drink was water only, laced with mint, but spring water and delicious, and they lifted their mugs to toast each other and dipped tortillas and hunks of bread in the juices. The napkins were made from pieces of old clothing, large squares that had been cut and stitched by hand, and they used them sparingly to dab the brown juice away from their lips and chins, and their utensils clicked against their plates with dull sounds, wood against ceramic, and there was little talk, but only light laughter and a few whispered comments as they ate.
When they were finished and their plates had been cleared away, the two men produced tobacco in a small wooden bowl and clay pipes and the women arrived again with a plate of candy balls with colorful veins running through them, some pasty substance, sweet, but with a tang that bit lightly at the tips of their tongues.
Carlos could see beyond the other table now to where the legs of a row of straight-back chairs poked out of the darkness and into candlelight. There were five of them, and in four he could see the shadow figures of those who had served them. They must have sat there, attentively, all the while the company had eaten, then brought the tobacco and the pipes and candy and then retired there again. They sat there now, as pipes were lit and the rich scent of smoke drifted away over the tables, and he could see the crossed legs of the men, the women’s dark hands in their laps.
The talk was quiet and subdued among them. Frank was at his side. He’d leaned back in his chair, moving out of elements of conversation, but for the whispered wonder talk of the here and now, he had no real part in. Ramona leaned against Manuel, and both were turned slightly, their heads in profile, looking down at Gino, his elbows on the table, who was telling them something Carlos couldn’t quite hear. Just a few words drifted across the table, borne on some insistence: smoke, hydrotherapy, skin. Frank’s hands were on his ample stomach, the pipe in his teeth. He was looking up to where the stars might be, but when Carlos glanced above he could see nothing in the darkness, and he wondered, just briefly, where his mind might be. He could hear Larry’s voice from the other table, something about flowers and air, and when he looked there he saw that John had pushed his wheelchair back a little from the table’s edge and had turned it. He’d given up on the pipe and had lit a cigarette, and he was watching Larry’s hands as they moved in tight, delicate gestures, forming things he was speaking of.
The cigarette stood in John’s throat, a glow at its tip expanding as he puffed and smoke rose to his face, then drifted away behind him. Even Alma was watching, intent on Larry’s hands also, some possibility of understanding there, and beyond the three of them and the larger, ragged circle of the torch and candlelight were only the chairs and shadow figures of their hosts, though a faint glow was seeping down over them now, and when Carlos looked above them and toward the place of the glass house in the distant darkness, he saw the full moon had risen and was clear of any earthly structures, though low at night’s horizon, an unnatural glow in the sky behind it, almost artificial. Clouds drifted across its face, or maybe it was ground mist, expelled in the earth’s cooling in sun’s absence. But it wasn’t cool, just a mild cleansing breeze flickering the candles in soft warm air, carrying pine scent and the sweetness of roses.
He looked down again and saw his father, older now, but the same gringo face, though absent of that desperation he remembered. It had gotten lost in age lines and a sagging of skin at his neck, been replaced with something Carlos thought might well be character, though he couldn’t be sure yet of that. Then he was thinking of his mother, really no more than a shadow presence, possibly constructed only from imagined images and through a filter of dead rage he had put aside long ago. He tried to find a way to hate his father once again, but he couldn’t accomplish that, and he could find no proper posture either that could bring him to forgiveness. There seemed nothing much to forgive. It seemed only a story.
And he was thinking these things, then was looking at Frank, his white shirt like a broad sail over his chest, who was thinking his own private thoughts, and when he turned slightly, he could see the cigarette glowing in John’s throat and the way the bones of his face came back into hard distinction under his straw derby and bushy brows, his scar a routed groove, as the smoky veil drifted away after each puff, then clouded that skull again with the next. Then he looked beyond him toward the edge of darkness where the chairs sat in the square’s hard earth. All four were still there, the women and the two men, and beside them, in the chair that had been empty, was now a figure, slightly smaller than the others, but not much different in clothing and stolid demeanor, another woman he thought, then was sure of it when she leaned forward a little and her face came into the candlelight. Gino had pulled his chair up closer and was intent on something, and Ramona and Manuel had leaned toward him and were listening. Carlos thought to reach out and touch Frank on the arm, but he couldn’t bring himself to interrupt his reverie. He looked over at the other table and saw Larry’s hands, both John and Alma watching them, and beyond them he saw the woman rise from her chair.
She was an old woman, and she wore a woven dress composed of those small rectangles of color he’d seen in Alma’s shirt the day they’d started their journey. The dress hung from her shoulders, unbelted like a poncho, its hem above her knees, and her legs below the dress were thick, ropes of smooth muscle ending at thin ankles, her feet in leather sandals. Her hair was grey and oiled and pulled back tight at her temples and tied behind in a kind of braided bun that showed itself, a silver knot where her spine started, as she turned her head slightly and glanced at the company at Carlos’s table. He could see her face clearly, the broad brow and small hooked nose, those slabs of flesh that were her cheeks, stonelike and expressionless, and above them her black eyes. They were bright in the candlelight, though he could see no pupils.
“Chepa.” Just the one word, softly, coming from Gino, so softly that Ramona looked back at him quizzically as if he’d cleared his throat or tracheotomy tube oddly, only that, but Carlos heard it, something rising from a story, among those shards that were still in him, buried deeply in remembered delirium, that bed in the solarium at the Manor and someone touching him, and his father too in the stories, in a dream. He heard a creak and knew it was the wheelchair turning and that John had heard the spoken name as well.
Then she was moving. She said something. She was not feeble, but she moved carefully, slightly hesitant, but not pausing. She was crossing the space between the edge of darkness and John’s chair, and Carlos looked to the chair and saw a spark fly up and tumble in the air as he flicked his cigarette away. Then his hands rose and reached out, palms open, and she was moving without thought for moving, a faint smile on her lips, her eyes still bright and enigmatic above it, and when she reached John’s legs she touched them, searching for his bony knees below the blanket that covered them, leaning over his lap, her face only inches from his. Then she was climbing into the chair with him, careful not to hurt him, sliding her legs over his legs, her knees moving up toward her stomach, and Carlos saw her fingers touch the nape of his neck, pulling his head down to her face, and saw John’s fingers as he raised them to his brim and took his hat off and threw it into the darkness. Then her cheek was against his, her mouth at his ear, and she was whispering words meant only for him, and Carlos saw John’s head move as he answered her, his thin silver hair, saw moments of hesitation and stiffening in the arms that held her, and in a while he saw her hand working at the buttons of his rough, woven shirt, her fingers slipping in between the folds of multicolored fabric to touch the flesh at his stomach.