Chapter 5

The Semilla Besada

I'd agreed to move into the guesthouse on the condition that I wasn't going to impose on Emelina's family life, but apparently her life was beyond imposition. She sent John Tucker over in the morning to fetch me for breakfast.

He stood tentatively outside my screen door, unsure of what to do with all his limbs. "Mom says she'll break your face if you don't come over for breakfast."

"Okay, sure," I said, following him back to the house. John Tucker was the most appealing kind of adolescent. I couldn't begin to picture the man he would soon become-armpits and arrogance, scratching the back of his neck, throwing a baseball. Out of the question. He was wearing a cap to cover what looked like an overly enthusiastic summer haircut.

"I know you don't have anything to eat over there yet," Emelina said. "Everything was closed, yesterday was Sunday. Today you can get on your feet. J.T. called from El Paso and said to be sure and give you a kiss." Emelina buttered a piece of toast and handed it to Mason, who was four going on five. "Glen, don't put jam on your brother. If you want to wear plum preserves today that's your nickel, but not Curtis's. Curty, honey, don't hit. John Tucker, help him with that, will you?"

"He called from El Paso?" I prompted. Conversations with a mother of five are an education in patience.

"Yeah, he's in Texas. He's got to stay for an investigation. So are you going to be able to stand living in that shack?"

"It's not a shack, Em. It's nice out there. I like it."

"Codi, honey, there was goats living in there at one time. And Grammy lived there too, before the goats. But she said she got the ague in her bones and she decided she had to move in upstairs." Grammy was J.T.'s mother, Viola Domingos.

"Mom, make Glen stop," Curtis said.

"Glen, for heaven's sakes, just eat that toast and put it out of its misery. The bus is going to be here in a minute and you don't even have your shoes on."

"No, but I know where they are," Glen declared.

"Well, go get them."

"School doesn't start till next week," I said, alarmed that I might be wrong. I was always having dreams like that.

"No, but they've got this summer thing for kids. They go up there to the river park and shoot each other with bows and arrows or something. Tomorrow's the last day. So you think you'll like it out there? We make enough noise over here to raise up the quick and the dead."

"It's fine. I used to live three blocks from a hospital ambulance entrance." I didn't add: with a man who reattached severed body parts for a living. I buttered my toast, holding my elbows in close and keeping an eye out for wayward jam knives. "So what kind of an investigation?"

"Oh, J.T.? He put sixteen cars on the ground outside El Paso. A derailment. Nobody got hurt. Oh shoot-John Tucker, honey, will you take the baby in the living room and watch him a minute? I can't hear myself think."

John Tucker took the baby from Emelina's lap and carried him under one arm into the next room. The baby waggled his arms and legs like a swimmer in green stretch pajamas.

"Okay. Mason, sweetie, put your feet up here on my lap and I'll tie your sneakers for you." Emelina took a gulp of coffee. "So they all had to give a urine sample-J.T., the fireman, the brakeman, and some other person, I can't remember who. Maybe another engineer. It all had to happen within a half hour of the accident; the company made a very big deal out of that. J.T. says, here they were out in some cow pasture with sixteen boxcars of frozen mixed vegetables scattered from hell to breakfast, and all the damn supervisor cared about was making sure which person pissed in what jar."

The boys seemed unmoved by this off-color narrative. Having Emelina for a mother would neutralize the thrill of swear words.

"You know what, though," she said, looking startled. "Damn. We were just joking about drug tests, the day before yesterday. Grammy made a poppyseed cake for Curty's and Glen's birthday and J.T. said..."

"Mo-om."

"I'm sorry, Curtis, I forgot. He doesn't want us to call him Curty. Their actual birthday was yesterday."

I wanted to hear the rest of the derailment story, but this conversational flow was akin to freeway driving in L.A.; you don't back up. "Well, happy birthday," I said. "You boys get handsomer every time I see you, you know that?"

Curtis's ears turned red.

"You can say 'Thank you, ma'am,' can't you? Codi, they've all been asking me when you were going to get here till I thought they'd turn blue in the face, and now they're acting like they were raised outside in a pen with the dogs."