“Don’t let him work,” Nena said, pointing at Néstor. “He’s wounded and exhausted.”
Ignacio nodded to the women in farewell. “Of course, se?orita.”
He retreated with the horses, resuming his invisibility to the do?a of la casa mayor, just as every good peón and vaquero should.
It cast Néstor’s own behavior in sharp relief.
Do?a Mercedes gave Néstor a final stony look that he couldn’t perfectly parse and took Nena by the elbow. As the three Serrano women went back to the house, Javiera’s yellow dog following at their heels, Nena cast a look over her shoulder at him.
Vespers, she mouthed.
Then she jerked her head in the direction of the anacahuita grove.
Though the women left him standing in their wake, unmoored and exhausted and wounded from that first encounter with Do?a Mercedes, this lifted his heart. After evening prayers, they would meet at the grove where they had retreated so many times as children.
In the meantime, he could rest at last.
He turned away from la casa mayor toward his family’s jacal.
He was embraced fiercely by Abuela and fussed over, then his belly was stuffed with food.
Later, he lay on his stomach in the quiet darkness of the jacal, surrounded by Abuela’s smells of rosemary and lavender and incense, as she applied a poultice to his left shoulder to ease its irritated swelling. The poultice was cool against his skin and brought immense relief.
Abuela was the one who first put salt in his saddlebags before they left. He felt no qualms in spilling the whole tale of the last week to her. From the vampires on the battlefield to that first night, when his arm was ripped out of its socket, and every day since.
“She did well in acting quickly,” Abuela said thoughtfully, applying more poultice to his shoulder.
“I know,” Néstor said dreamily. His exhausted mind drifted to that night and the way that Nena distracted him as she prepared to thrust his arm back into place. I like being alone with you. It gives me ideas. “She’s perfect.”
Though his eyes were closed, he could practically hear Abuela’s skeptical look.
“I take it she hasn’t slammed any doors in your face recently,” she said dryly.
Néstor laughed. “No,” he said. “No, quite the opposite. Abuela, I’m going to marry her.”
Abuela did not speak for a long moment. “Mijo,” she said, a gentleness in her voice that made him open his eyes and look up at her. “I’m happy to see you healing. To see you hopeful like this. But what of Don Feliciano?”
What of Don Feliciano indeed.
Facing Do?a Mercedes was merely the first fence to clear. He would rather face a dozen angry bulls than the patrón.
But for Nena?
For Nena he could. With Nena he could. Couldn’t he?
“Together, Nena and I can face anything,” he said. “Didn’t we fight off El Cuco? Don Feliciano is child’s play in comparison.”
Abuela patted his shoulder. Perhaps a shade of pity flickered behind her eyes; perhaps it was a trick of his imagination. “I hope you’re right, mijito. Now rest.”
Néstor closed his eyes. Lulled by the sounds of his grandmother singing to herself as she moved about the jacal, he soon fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
26
NENA
RANCHO LOS OJUELOS
WHEN NENA, MAM?, and Javiera entered the house, Nena’s cousins Didi and Alejandra descended with heated buckets of water from the kitchen in which to bathe. Javiera followed a half step behind, whatever chores she had for the afternoon forgotten, the gentle click of Pollo’s claws on the floors announcing her and the dog’s presence.
Didi and Alejandra helped Nena wash the sweat and dust from her hair and combed out tangles, bickering gaily over which of them would inform their mother, Nena’s aunt, that Nena had appeared wearing a man’s clothes. Neither of them mentioned Néstor. There was no doubt that they knew with whom Nena had traveled; the rancho held secrets like a cracked cup held water. Everyone who saw them ride through the gates and dismount together would tell everyone they knew, and soon the whole rancho would know that they had returned from Matamoros together, just the two of them.
The prospect of becoming the subject of gossip made her want to cringe with her whole body. Néstor was a private thing, suddenly exposed. She felt naked and vulnerable.
But even her chismosa cousins carved looping paths around the subject of Néstor. They avoided asking her about Matamoros as well, choosing instead to fill the room with all that had happened on the rancho in Nena’s absence. Perhaps they had taken one look at Mamá ushering Nena into the house with a storm cloud on her brow and decided, out of a sense of self-preservation, that the topic was too dangerous to approach. Javiera had certainly concluded the same.
When Nena retreated to their bedroom to sleep for the rest of the siesta, Javiera followed in silence. Instead of climbing onto her own bed, she followed onto Nena’s and curled up against her like she had when she was a baby. Guilt seeped through her tired body when she thought of how tightly Javiera had tackled her when they arrived and the teary sheen in Mamá’s eyes. But she was back, and now that she was, she could keep Javiera and the rest of the rancho safe.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
NENA DID NOT wake for merienda; she slept until her cousins woke her for dinner and ushered her to the patio, depositing her in front of a steaming plate of rice, tortillas, peppers, and fragrant cabrito. Nena nodded or shook her head to different questions that her tías peppered her with as she ate.
“And which vaquero was it who brought you back?” one asked delicately, as if the subject were an insect or a bat trampled by a horse in the training corral. Something to be stepped around. Something unsavory.
Shame flushed Nena’s cheeks with warmth.
When she saw Nena’s mouth was full, Didi supplied the answer eagerly, eyes agleam. “Néstor Duarte.”
Evidently, she did not have a sense of self-preservation after all.
Mamá gave Didi an arch look. She said nothing, but the shift in her shoulders was a clear indication that Didi should stop talking. Nena swallowed and jumped in to speak before Didi could further irritate Mamá.
“It was good I was not alone,” Nena said. “We were pursued for much of the journey.”
“By Yanquis? Rinches?” another aunt asked.
“No,” Nena began slowly, choosing her words carefully. “By strange beasts.”
“What do you mean?” Didi asked.
Javiera stared at her with eyes like an owl’s, tense and watchful as she waited for Nena’s answer.
Nena tore a tortilla into smaller and smaller pieces, praying for the right words to come to her lips.
“Predators of some kind,” she said at last. “Not wolves, nor pumas, but . . . hairless beasts, with many teeth.”
Silence fell over the table like a shroud.
“As I said, it was good I was not alone,” Nena offered, voice falsely bright, hoping to close the topic and cast a positive light on the company she had returned to the rancho with.
But Didi could always smell a good story.
“Oh?” Her round face was instantly alight. “What happened? Did he save your life from Rinches? He did, didn’t he?” she asked, leaning over the table toward Nena.
Mamá stood abruptly. “There will be no more talk of how Magdalena returned to the rancho,” she announced, her crisp tone effectively shuttering the subject. “It’s time for vespers, and time for us to offer prayers in gratitude that she has come back to us.”