The Weight of Feathers

“For Nicole. She’ll only eat one and nobody else likes them.”


So Lace went and bought coral peaches, that single nectarine, a Moon-and-Stars watermelon from the woman who knew she didn’t like rain.

Lace watched for the brown-black of her mother’s or aunts’ hair.

The first face she recognized wasn’t a Paloma, but a Corbeau. Dax stood on the edge of the market, jaw held tight, ready to throw his fists.

Her hat blocked her view of who he was facing. She turned her head, lifting the brim.

Matías. Dax stood across from her cousin.

Matías held one foot a little in front of the other, set for a fight. He’d never beat on anyone, three against one, like Justin and his brothers. But if another man set down an insult, and if the other man was his size, he’d take the fight. Once he didn’t like the way some gabacho was looking at Martha at a gas station, saying things about how she should wear a tighter dress so everyone could see her. Matías left the man a bloody nose, and came away with a black eye. His aunts called him their little Quixote, all caballero, no brains.

Dax was bigger than Matías, broader by a little and taller by a lot. Matías always fought fair, never kicking shins or holding shirt collars. But Dax had been a few minutes from bringing a bloody tail to her family’s motel. There was nothing Lace could count on him not doing. Matías would get out no better than that shredded, stained cola de sirena.

Dax said something Lace couldn’t hear.

“We got as much right to be here as you, puto,” Matías said.

Dax moved toward him, making him back up. “You stayed because we stayed. You can’t even think for yourselves.” He shoved Matías.

Matías shoved him back, so hard Dax almost fell into a farmer’s stand. “You want to say that again?”

Lace dropped the bag of fruit and ran. She slipped between them and pushed on her cousin’s chest. “Stop it,” she yelled. El caballero would get himself killed.

Before Matías could check under the hat, Dax grabbed her. He dug his hands into her upper arms, fingers pressing her sleeves into her skin, and pulled her out of the way. He moved her, quick and clean as lifting one of his cousins during a show. Then he jammed a fist into Matías’ jaw.

Matías returned it, hitting the side of Dax’s face. His punch fell easily as a stone skipped on the lake.

“Stop it,” Lace screamed, loud enough that even Dax and Matías felt faces turn like the heads of sunflowers. “Just stop it.”

Now half the market watched them.

Dax dropped his raised fist. He and Matías both lowered their stares. Matías bent his neck to see under the hat brim, looking for the interrupter’s face.

The start of a smile tensed the corner of his mouth, like her being there was so strange he had to try not to laugh about it.

Leave it to Matías to find all this funny. She couldn’t have laughed if Justin had shown up and done his mermaid impression, batting his eyes like he was preening on a rock. She could still feel where Dax had grabbed her and pressed his thumbs into her, that sense that she might leak blood like sugar-water off bruised fruit.

She waited for the rage in her cousin’s face. It didn’t come. Confusion made his eyes and mouth look lopsided, a hitch unevenly weighted.

“You do this, one or both of you ends up in jail,” Lace said. “My guess is you both have people at home who don’t want to see that happen. So look at each other and ask yourself, is he worth it?”

They exchanged glares, scorn-sharpened. But they each took a step back, and Lace dropped her hands. They knew she was right. Matías thought of his aunts; Dax, his mother.

“Good,” she said. “Then go home.”