“You don’t have the authority to do this,” Mother said.
“I’m head constable,” Mr. Watts said. “These men are contract law officers working for the government. Now you stand aside or I’ll arrest you myself.”
“Like hell you will,” she said.
Mr. Watts looked at the windmill spinning and the dust blowing out of the fields. His eyes were bright and small under the brim of his hat. He bit the corner of his lip. “Cuff her and keep her here till we’re gone,” he said.
And that’s what they did, with her arms pulled behind her, her throat corded with veins. The child began crying in the orange crate, his little chest and fists shaking with the effort. Minutes later Maria looked back at us from under the canvas top on the truck, her body rocking with the movement of the bed, her face small and frightened inside the scarf tied on her head.
Mr. Watts started toward his Model T, then returned to the porch. “Stop yelling,” he said to my mother. “Don’t you tell lies to your father about me, either. Goddamnit, shut up! They’re just deportees.”
That night Mother sat in her room upstairs by herself while in the kitchen I told Grandfather what had happened. He was quiet a long time. The wind was up, the sky black, and through the window I could see sparks twisting from the ventilation pipe on the smokehouse.
“Did she strike Mr. Watts?” he said.
“No, sir.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did they put their hands on Miss Maria?”
“One man held her while another man carried the crate to the truck.”
“The man with the mustache from the train, the one who was talking about the Sundance Kid, what was his part in all this?”
“He told me he was sorry. He said to tell you that. He acted afraid.”
“Ask your mother to come down here, please.”
“What for, Grandfather?” I rarely questioned what Grandfather said. But this time I was truly scared. For all of us.
“I need her to drive me to town. You’ll have to come with us. I don’t want you here by yourself.”
“What are we doing, Grandfather?”
“That’s up to other people.”
I got my mother from upstairs. Grandfather had already put on his canvas coat. His revolver and gun belt and holster were on the table, the belt wrapped around the holster, the leather loops stuffed with brass cartridges.
“Don’t do this, Daddy,” Mother said.
“He’s the man who caused you all that pain, Wynona,” Grandfather said. “Now he’s doing it again.”
“I do not think about him anymore,” she said. “He has nothing to do with my life.”
“Will you drive me to town? I can saddle Blue. But it’s fixing to rain.”
“It might rain in your prayers, but that’s the only place you’re going to see it,” she said.
“Either h’ep me or I’ll get my slicker.”
We climbed into the car and drove to town. I could see flickers of light on the horizon, like a string of firecrackers popping on the rim of the earth.
The saloon was a leftover from the nineteenth century, the ceiling plated with stamped tin, the bar outfitted with a brass foot rail and cuspidors. Not far away some of the pens that marked the exact inception spot of the Chisholm Trail were still standing. Mother parked at an angle to the elevated concrete sidewalk and cut the engine. The window of the saloon was gray with dust, a solitary bulb burning inside. Through the windshield I could see men tipping tin cups in a bucket of beer and playing poker dice at the bar.
“We’ll wait here,” Mother said.
Grandfather got out on the passenger side, his gun belt looped on his shoulder, the revolver hanging under his armpit. “I want Aaron to see this,” he said.
“See what?” my mother asked.
“That our family doesn’t tolerate abuse.”
She half opened the driver’s door and stood partially in the street and looked across the car roof at him. She wasn’t wearing a coat, and her flesh was prickled with cold, her amber hair wild and beautiful. “I made my choices. Now, leave well enough alone, Daddy.”
Grandfather looked down at me. “We do it our way, don’t we, Buster Brown? Come along now and don’t pay your mother no mind. She knows I’m right.”
I put my hand in his and walked with him into the saloon. I thought I smelled rain. I was sure I did. The way it smells in the spring. Like a great gold-green world full of pure oxygen and mist and sunshine and new beginnings. The bell rang above the door. A half-dozen men turned and stared at us. Mr. Watts shook the dice in a leather cup and slung the dice along the bar. “Wrong address, Mr. Holland,” he said.
“What’d y’all do with Maria and her baby and the rest of my Mexicans?” Grandfather said.
“They’re your property, are they?” Mr. Watts said.
Mother came inside and closed the door behind her, the bell tinkling again. The smell of rain went away and the air became close and laced with a masculine odor and a burned stench from the woodstove. A man in a mackinaw bent over and spat a stream of tobacco juice in a cuspidor. Grandfather let go of my hand and approached Mr. Watts. “Say you’re sorry.”
“To who?” Mr. Watts said.
“My daughter.”
“For what?”
“What you did.”
“I have nothing to apologize for.” Mr. Watts reached around for his tin cup and accidentally knocked it over. “Give me a towel over here,” he said to the bartender.
“Forget the towel,” Grandfather said. “Look at me.”
“I will not do anything you say.” Mr. Watts pointed his chin in the air, like a prideful child.
The man with the drooping jet-black mustache was three feet from Mr. Watts. “We ain’t part of this, Captain Holland.”
“Then stand aside,” Grandfather said.
“You’re not really gonna do this, are you?” said the man with the mustache. “You’re a smarter man than that, right?”
Grandfather picked me up and put me in Mother’s arms. “Go sit by the stove, Wynona.”
“Please, Daddy,” she said.
“Do as I ask.”
She walked with me to the rear of the saloon and sat down in a rocking chair. She kept me on her lap, her arms folded across my chest. I could feel her heart beating against my back, her breath on my neck.
Mr. Watts was staring at Grandfather, his hands by his side, as though he didn’t know where to put them. “This needs to stop. We’re all white men here. We’re all on the same side. There’s a war on.”
“Apologize and we’ll be gone.”
Mr. Watts looked sick. The contract lawmen around him moved slowly away from the bar.
“You cain’t walk in here and shoot a constable,” Mr. Watts said.
“Give me your word you’ll bring Maria and her baby back to our house.”
“They’re already on their way to a processing station in Laredo,” Mr. Watts said.
“Then you’d better go get them,” Grandfather said.
Mr. Watts’s bottom lip was trembling, as though he were about to cry. With time I would learn that his desperation was even greater than I thought. He had reached that moment of fear and humiliation when a man is willing to take whatever measure is necessary to avoid the shame and self-loathing that follows a public display of cowardice.
“You were a drunkard back then, Mr. Holland,” he said. “Half the time you were in a blackout. That’s why they took your badge. It wasn’t me caused the problem with your daughter.”
“What?”
“Ask her. I brought her home from the movies. A week later she told me what you did. You were drunk and you put the blocks to her.”
He could hardly get the last sentence out. Grandfather shook his gun belt from his arm and curled his hand around the handle of the revolver as the belt and cartridges struck the floor. He cocked the hammer.