Thirteen Senses (53 page)

After delivering the barrel of whiskey to Archie and his sheriff buddies, Salvador told Archie that no, he wouldn't be able to stay for the barbecue, that he'd see him later, and he took off for Escondido. Salvador had to attend to his distillery and then to go on his deliveries. It was tough working alone, but also, he didn't know anyone that he could trust that wouldn't start stealing whiskey from him.

IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON
the following day when Salvador finally got back to the Oceanside-Carlsbad area. He'd worked all day and night and was dead tired when he got home. Coming inside, he found Lupe washing a big stack of dishes. Carlota and two of her girlfriends were dancing and laughing in the front room. Salvador almost went through the ceiling. Carlota was here to help Lupe, not to be creating more work for her!

But then, when he took Lupe aside to talk to her about this, instead of her seeing that he was on her side and trying to help her, Lupe said, “Oh, Salvador, why do you always have to get your way? Don't you see that they're only having fun and enjoying themselves?”

Salvador was stunned. “But Lupe, I'm not trying to get my way! I'm thinking of you and that she came here to help you . . . not to be making more work for you. Look at all these dishes that you're washing for them!”

Lupe gripped the small of her back, cringing with pain. “Oh, please, Salvador!” Quickly, he quit his words and took her by the arm, helping her to the bedroom to lie down.

“Carlota!” he shouted into the next room. “Lupe isn't feeling well. Come in here and help!”

“Salvador,” said Lupe, “please, calm down! I'm all right!”

Carlota and the two young women came into the room. Their faces were all flushed from dancing and their breasts were going up and down. They looked at Salvador and Lupe like they were people from another
planeta
—that place called married people.

“Carlota,” said Salvador, “you were brought down here to help your sister, not to be dancing and piling up dishes for her to wash!”

“Salvador, please!” said Lupe.

“I'll go and get our mother,” said one of the other girls, and the two girls took off.

“See what you did, you just chased away my girlfriends!” shouted Carlota. “I'm leaving, too!”

“Damnit, Carlota!” yelled Salvador. “Stop thinking of yourself for once in your life, and come and help your sister!”

“You don't want help!” said Carlota. “You just want to be yelling at me!”

And Carlota turned and ran out the door, too, and there was Salvador left alone with Lupe and he didn't know what to do.

“Should I go get Helen?” asked Salvador, feeling completely useless.

“No, you've done enough,” said Lupe. “You've chased everyone away!”

“Oh, now you're blaming me, Lupe, for their behavior and I'm just trying to help! Good God, what's wrong here! It's like the Devil is here in this house with us, twisting our every word!”

“Please, Salvador, stop shouting. Just sit with me, and be quiet. I'm okay.”

But she wasn't. And she was throwing up by the time Carlota's two friends came back with their mother. Their mother was a woman from the
barrio
in her forties and she immediately put the back of her hand to Lupe's forehead, then told one of her daughters to put the herbs that she'd brought to boil on the stove, then she told Lupe to not have anything to eat for a couple of days, except tea and soup—
menudo
would be best.

Salvador had fallen asleep, mouth open, on the floor alongside Lupe's bed. He'd been dead tired and barely able to keep his eyes open as he'd come up the long, driveway to their home in his truck.

After the woman left, Lupe struggled to get out of bed, and she put a pillow under Salvador's head, loosened his belt, and covered him with a blanket. Salvador slept for sixteen hours, and when he awoke, he couldn't remember where he was. Then, when he realized that he wasn't at his distillery in Escondido but here at home in Carlsbad with Lupe, he leaped up but tripped over his own clothing, falling back down to the floor.

“What is it?” asked Lupe.

“The time, the time?” yelled Salvador.

“It's about nine in the morning,” said she.

“But how can it be morning? Didn't I come home in this afternoon?” he asked.

“Well, yes, but you fell asleep, so I covered you with a blanket and you slept the whole night through.”

“Oh, my God!” he said. “I got to get to Escondido quick, Lupe! The stove could've blown up!”

“What stove?”

“In my distillery.”

“You cook liquor?”

“Yes, that's how it's made,” he said, putting on his clothes.

“I'm coming with you, Salvador,” she said.

“No, you're sick! You need to stay home!”

“Salvador, I'm not sick, except for a little while each day, then I'm fine. And I'm your wife, and if this is what we do for a living, then I'm going to help you. I will not let you work yourself to death!” she added. “My God, I thought you'd died the way you passed out asleep!”

“Okay,” he said, “but hurry! We got to go right now. And what about Carlota?”

“She can wait here for us.”

“I can wait for who?” asked Carlota, walking in the front door.

“We're going to Escondido,” said Lupe. “You can wait here for us until we come back.”

“Will you be back tonight?”

“Maybe not,” said Salvador. “It all depends on a few things.”

“Then I'm going, too,” said Carlota. “I'm not going to be left here all alone in this house in the middle of nowhere. We weren't brought up to be ranch people, you know.”

Salvador cringed. He was sick and tired of this reference to “ranch people” that Carlota always seemed to make, but he said nothing. They got a few things together and were out the door in a matter of minutes.

Getting to
el Valle de Escondido,
meaning the Hidden Valley, a town just twenty-some miles inland from Oceanside, Salvador drove up to a large, two-story house on the south side of town.

“Who lives here?” asked Carlota.

“I do,” said Salvador.

“Oh, so you have a whole other hidden family, eh?” she said, her eyes suddenly lighting up with joy.

Salvador didn't even bother answering her, and got out of the car and went into the house.

“Carlota,” said Lupe, “when will you ever learn to hold your tongue and think before you speak?”

“Well, he's the one who said this was his house. I didn't.”

“Yes, but he never said anything about another family.”

“No, because he's hiding it,” she said excitedly.

“Carlota, if he was hiding it, then why would he bring us here?”

“Because he's scared that we'd find out,” she said. “I told you that he was a no-good, cheating coward ever since the beginning!”

“Carlota, please, just shut up!” said Lupe. She'd had enough. And she was just too tired to argue with her sister.

“There you go again, siding with him against your very own blood!” snapped Carlota.

Lupe didn't bother to answer her sister anymore.

Salvador came back, after going in to check the stove. “We're all right,” he said. “By some miracle of God, the fire went out or—boom, the whole house would've gone!”

“What are you talking about?” asked Carlota.

“Just please keep quiet and watch,” said Lupe. “And you can learn a great many things, Carlota, by just watching. Please, I'm tired, I don't want to hear you talking or asking any questions for a while.”

Carlota made a face at Lupe, then pursed her lips together. She was sick and tired of her sister always acting so superior.

Going inside, Carlota and Lupe immediately saw that the house had no furniture. The whole place was completely empty. They also saw that there were a dozen big barrels in one room, but they were up against the walls; there were no barrels in the center of the room.

“It stinks in here worse than a pig pen!” snapped Carlota.

Lupe turned and gave her such an eye.

“I know! I know!” said Carlota. “I'm supposed to shut up! To think before I talk. But who needs to think when you can smell? It does stink. It stinks awful! Okay, I'll shut up. Not another word,” she said, and put her hand over her mouth.

“Why are the barrels all against the wall?” asked Lupe.

“Good question,” said Salvador. “You see, they're really heavy, so if I put all those barrels in the middle, the floor might give out.”

“Has that ever happened?”

“Yes, once in an old house up in Watts; the floor caved in on me.”

“I'll be,” said Lupe. “And what is that smell?”

“That's the fermentation process. You see, those barrels are full of water and sugar and yeast, so the yeast—”

“Oh, like when yeast makes the bread rise and gets that little sour smell?”

“Yes, exactly.”

They walked down the hallway to another room and, in this room there was a big tank on a stove in the middle of the room, and the tank had a pipe coming out of the top, spiraling in large curls to a small barrel.

“You see,” said Salvador, “once the barrels have fermented in that other room, which takes about two or three weeks, then I pour that fermentation into this tank and bring it to a boil. And the steam that comes out through that coiled tube on top is straight alcohol; and as it cools off, it drips into that smaller barrel.

“Then, over in that other room, I have the finished alcohol which I then age with a big special needle that was made in France, and this way, I can have twelve-year-old whiskey in about, oh, I'd say six hours, and very smooth-tasting.”

“I see,” said Lupe. “Then it must take hours and hours to just make one barrel of whiskey?”

“Yes,” said Salvador, loving how Lupe's mind worked. She was really quick and smart and knew how to get to the point.

“Whiskey?” said Carlota. “You mean you make whiskey here?” she yelled. “Oh, my God! Let me out of here before we all go to jail!” And saying this, she ran out of the room. “Why did you bring me? Why didn't you just leave me in Carlsbad?”

“We tried to leave you,” said Lupe, going into the next room also, “but you insisted on coming.”

“I wouldn't have if you'd told me that you were bootleggers!” said Carlota.

“And if we'd told you that, you would've told everyone in all the
barrio
by the time we got home,” said Lupe.

“Oh, you're just DIRTY!” yelled Carlota. “Ever since you met Salvador, you've become dirty, Lupe! Why can't you be like other law-abiding, decent people, like Archie! No, you had to go and marry a bootlegger, when I told you he was no good from the start!

“Do you realize that, Lupe? Your husband is a—oh, my God!” She couldn't even talk anymore, she was so upset! Quickly, she now headed for the front door. “I'm getting out of here right now! I don't want to die and go to jail!”

Lupe almost laughed on hearing this, but she didn't. Salvador watched his young wife now cross the room in quick, well-measured steps and grab hold of Carlota before she got to the front door, saying, “The expression isn't ‘to die and go to jail,' but ‘to die and go to hell!' And you will not go out that door, screaming like a fool! Do you hear me, Carlota, you will stay put and get hold of yourself. You will not endanger us!”

“Yes, but Lupe—he's an outlaw,” she whispered.

“Stop it, Carlota,” said Lupe. “Salvador and I went to a priest, and the priest told us that liquor making is against the law of this country, but not against the law of God. That Jesus, Himself, turned water into wine. And who do you think sells most of his liquor, Carlota? It's Archie, that's who!”

“Archie?” said Carlota, her eyes getting huge.

“Yes, Archie, and let's not play the fool. You knew it. At every dance he puts on, there's always liquor being sold in the back.”

“Well, then,” said Carlota, eyes wide with disbelief, “Salvador tricked Archie, too?”

Hearing this, Salvador had had enough and so he stepped forward, blocking the front door with his body. “Do you still want that red dress?” he simply asked.

Suddenly, Carlota's eyes stopped jumping all about. “Well, yes, of course,” she said.

“Well, then, you keep still like Lupe said, so I can finish my work here and then I can buy you that dress.”

“And the shoes, too,” said Carlota. “Remember, you promised me red shoes, too.”

“Red shoes, too,” said Salvador. “Now help me move a couple of barrels, Carlota, so I can get the stove going again, then we'll go out for dinner.”

“To a restaurant?” said Carlota.

“Yes, to a restaurant,” said Salvador.

“Oh, good. But no fish this time.”

“But you loved that lobster,” said Lupe.

“Well, yes, but lobster isn't fish,” said Carlota.

“Well, maybe it isn't, but it does come from the sea.”

“Don't talk to me like that, Lupe, you're just trying to trick me.”

Lupe started laughing, there was just nothing else to do. Then Salvador started laughing, too.

“You two are crazy!” snapped Carlota. “Here we are, in hell itself, and you two think it's funny! Come, let's move these barrels, so we can get out of here!”

IT WAS MIDMORNING,
and Lupe and Carlota were alone at the house in Escondido. Salvador was out on a delivery. The three of them had been working around the clock for weeks now. And this morning, Lupe was sweeping the kitchen floor and humming to herself. Carlota was doing the morning dishes and singing happily. They'd become like a little factory of dedicated, hard workers.

But then, Carlota suddenly looked up, and through the kitchen window, she saw that the sheriff's car had turned into their driveway. Her eyes exploded with terror! And she tried to talk, to warn Lupe, but she couldn't speak.