Thirteen Senses (6 page)

“I think maybe all three,
mama
,” said Lupe, blushing all red, then laughing. “But I don't know. It almost felt like all my female parts just burst open! And I didn't really want to take a good look at it before I flushed.”

“Did it feel good, or did it burn when it burst?” asked her mother.

Lupe blushed. “A little of both,
mama
,” she said, recalling how it had felt so wonderful when Salvador had pressed his body up against her backside and put his tongue in her ear. Oh, she'd almost died!

“Then I don't think we have anything to worry about; you're okay.”

Lupe then went to her mother's arms, hugging her and feeling so good to have such a wonderful, wise woman as her mother.

GOING BACK OUTSIDE,
Doña Guadalupe approached Salvador and his mother, explaining to both of them that everything was fine, but that Lupe wouldn't be able to go on her honeymoon.

“She's going to have to stay home for a few days,” she added, glancing at Salvador's mother, Doña Margarita.

“It is as it is,” said Doña Margarita, raising up her cup of whiskey. “I might have had a better marriage too if my own mother had kept me home for a few days after our wedding. He was drinking. We were dancing. Even the livestock got wild our celebration was so noisy.

“
Mi hijito,
” added the short old Indian woman, turning to her son, “you have a fine, smart, wise mother-in-law,
gracias a Dios!
”

“Thank you, señora,” said Salvador to Lupe's mother, and he tried to smile and see how all this was for the best, but he was too upset. My God, he'd been looking forward to their wedding night for months. This, he'd thought, was to be the highlight of their lives.

Salvador decided to get stinking drunk, and so he did and everything was going well, until a few of his male friends started to tease him. Salvador viciously knocked one down and silenced the rest by telling them that in the mountainous area of Mexico where he was from, it wasn't uncommon for an inexperienced bride to stay home for instructions before joining her husband.

The teasing stopped.

After all, among
los Mejicanos
the purity of an inexperienced virgin was the highest honor that any man could ever hope to bring to his bridal bed.

Also, if anyone had continued to tease Salvador, there would have been guns drawn.

NOW, IT WAS
the following morning and Salvador was waking up in Corona—some sixty miles east of their wedding in Santa Ana, California. His mouth tasted awful. He had a terrible hangover, and he just couldn't wake up.

He could feel someone kissing him and tickling his ear, ever so softly. At first, he thought it was Lupe, his truelove, kissing him in their little cottage in Carlsbad—along the coast south of Santa Ana. But, then, he remembered that she hadn't come on their honeymoon. He opened his eyes and here was his old mother before him, tickling him in the face with a long rooster's tail-feather. And to his shock, it wasn't his truelove in bed with him. No, it was his sister Luisa's mangy old dog who was with him, licking his neck and ears.

Salvador leaped out of bed! The dog smelled foul! “
Mama,
stop it!” he yelled. “Oh, my God! My head hurts!” he added, almost losing his balance and falling.

“Good, you deserve it,” she said, laughing
con carcajadas.
“It's way past noon! You've been kissing that dirty dog all morning.”

Hearing this, Salvador rushed out of the little shack, spitting in pure revulsion. Outside, he massaged his forehead as he leaned against the avocado tree by his mother's outhouse and started peeing. The pain in his head would not subside.

After relieving himself, Salvador went back inside his old mother's shack. He was still shaking. His mother had a cup of coffee ready for him.

“I put some hair of dog in your coffee for you,” she said, handing him a steaming mug.

He made a face. “Hair of Luisa's dog,
mama
?''

The old woman laughed. “No, not Luisa's dog. This is what our priest, Father Ryan, says in English, ‘hair of the dog,' when he puts a little whiskey in his coffee to help him get over his hangover. English, I swear, the more I learn, the more I have to laugh. Did you know that in English they call liquor, ‘spirits'? I love it! Anyway,” she added, “how are you feeling,
mi hijito?
Pretty bad, eh?”

“Yes,
mama
” he said, “awful! I'd like to loan my head to my worst enemy!”

“Well, all right,” she said, “sit down and sip your coffee and feel awful if you want for an hour or two, but then no more, because I've figured out that this is the perfect opportunity—when everyone thinks you're on your honeymoon—for you to do some very interesting work. Remember, there is no bad from which good doesn't come in life, if we just open our eyes and see past our limited vision. Who knows, maybe this situation has actually saved your marriage in the long run, eh?”

“Oh, please,
mama,
I don't want to hear any of your old wisdom kind of stuff! Besides, I've heard all you have to say a thousand times!”

“Oh, only a thousand,” she said, refusing to be intimidated, “then I guess I need to tell you a few more times. The two greatest sayings of our whole entire Mexican culture are
con el favor de Dios,
with the favor of God, and
no hay mal que por bien no viene,
there is no bad from which—”

“All right, all right, I heard you,
mama
! But please, no more! I'm in pain!”

“Okay, then not another word. But I want you to know that I'm only giving you another couple of hours to feel bad, then that's it. No more. You get out and start scratching the dirt, looking for seed like any other hungry, healthy chicken.

“Remember, one hour a day of feeling bad or sorry for yourself is good and healthy. Two hours is okay, but three fists of Sun and you need your food and water taken away, so thirst and hunger can then become your teachers. Life was never meant to be easy here on earth, but a lesson learned either by love or
chingasos!
” she added, laughing
con carcajadas!

“Mama;
please, no more!” said Salvador, going back outside. His head was pulsating with pain. He didn't want to hear any more of his mother's old stuff. My God, sometimes he just wished that she'd shut the hell up!

Going back outside, Salvador sat down on an old orange crate under the huge avocado tree between his mother's shack and his sister Luisa's house. The Sun was high overhead, and sipping his coffee with the whiskey and plenty of sugar, little by little, he began to feel better.

“Hair of the dog,” he said quietly to himself. He'd never heard this American expression before. “Hair of a dirty, mangy dog,” he now said, remembering how he'd awoken with Luisa's dog in his bed, kissing him.

Finishing his coffee, Salvador began to see that maybe his crazy old mother was, indeed, correct. There really were no accidents in life,
la vida,
so maybe this was, in fact, the perfect opportunity ... for him to take care of some very important unfinished business before he began his life as a married man. After all, none of his bootlegging competitors would ever expect a lightning-fast attack from a man on his honeymoon.

FOR SEVERAL MONTHS NOW, two guys had been coming down from Los Angeles to Carlsbad, trying to cut into Salvador's bootlegging territory. Everyone knew that Salvador's territory included all of North County San Diego, then the areas of Lake Elsinore and Temecula. The areas of Riverside and San Bernardino he shared with two other medium-size bootleggers, and San Clemente, San Juan Capistrano, Tustin, and Orange he also shared. In Los Angeles, Salvador was completely out of the picture. That huge area of the City of the Angels, with its thick density of population, was an area strictly taken care of by the big boys, the Italians, who were out of Fresno. They were in a whole other league than Salvador.

This big organization from Fresno—in the San Joaquin Valley in central California—had connections from the East Coast, and the power to bring in the finest liquor makers from Italy. They had the exclusive rights to all of Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Sacramento.

With these big boys, Salvador wanted no
problemas.
In fact, he was in their debt, because, after all, it had been one of their finest liquor makers from the old country, Al Cappola, who'd originally taught Salvador how to make “bootleg” liquor when they'd been spending time together in jail in Tulare, just outside of Fresno.

There in the jail of Tulare, everyone had been fighting each other like cats and dogs, when Salvador had been put into the tank. In no uncertain terms, with a lightning-fast attack, Salvador had demolished the biggest troublemaker, a big bully redneck farmboy, and then he'd had an election taken among all the prisoners, including the Chinaman, electing a judge and three enforcers, and all the bullying and sexual abuses had instantly been brought to a stop.

That was when the dignified, old Italian had seen Salvador's worth and so he'd immediately befriended him. And when Salvador learned what it was that the old man did for his livelihood, Salvador had offered to pay him a few dollars per day—a huge sum—if this great magician from Italy would teach him the art of making fine liquor.

At first old man Al Cappola had stared at Salvador with his huge, lioned face, saying absolutely
nada, nada,
nothing. But then he'd finally spoken. “If any other man would ask me this, I'd spit in his face, but . . . seeing how you are a man of high intelligence, who immediately brought peace and respect to this tank of fools, then I say, yes, I will teach you,” the old man had added with a power. “But with the understanding that you will never do any business in a territory that belongs to our organization of the
amigos Italianos!
”

Salvador had agreed and after that, he and Al Cappola had become very good friends,
paisanos
as they say, and so the big organization out of Fresno respected Salvador and he respected them. This was why he, Salvador, couldn't figure out who were these two guys who were coming down from Los Angeles and trying to move into his territory.

But who knew? Management changed hands in every organization, and a bootlegger's territories were as vital to a bootlegger's survival as hunting territories were to a tribe of hunter-gatherers.

Sipping his second cup of coffee, a large part of Salvador just felt like hunting down these two guys, killing them both, and that would be that, bringing an end to the whole thing. What really made him mad was that these sneaky bastards had only started moving into his territory once he'd started making plans for his wedding.

The world of men truly didn't respect a man in love.

To marry, that was okay, but to really fall in love with the woman you planned to marry, this was a sure sign—among men—that you'd lost your marbles and joined the world of women and children.

And then began the jokes, “Hey,
mano,
has she put the ring in your nose, yet? Who wears the pants, eh? Have you been told to squat when you pee so you don't mess the hole of the outhouse?”

The list of these remarks was endless, and none of them were innocent, his mother had explained to him. These remarks were well-thought and were all aimed at you, a newlywed, to make you feel stupid and weak because you were in love.

“And so,
mi hijito,
above all else,” his mother had told him, “this is why each new married couple must be very careful of their friends who are single or embittered in their own marriage. These vultures will try to drag you down into their own world of discontent, because—to see you happy—threatens their entire world!”

Breathing deeply, Salvador glanced up at his old mother who'd come outside to water her plants. Oh, how he loved this old bag of Indian bones. He smiled. Sunlight was coming down all about her as she went from plant to plant, humming and giving love to each.

Watching his mother, it truly angered Salvador how these two snakes from Los Angeles had no respect for love or family, and they'd come in, trying to take away his livelihood once they'd seen that he was getting married.

But, still, if he killed them both, then it turned out that they were, indeed, part of that big outfit out of Fresno, he'd be in big trouble. His heart began pounding. He'd have to be very careful.

After all, he was now really a married man, and so he couldn't just take the chances that he'd taken as a single man.

He breathed. Either way, his mother was right, this was the perfect opportunity to catch those two guys by surprise, because nobody but nobody figured that a man on his honeymoon would have murder in his heart.

STRETCHING
, waking up the day after her wedding in her parents' house in Santa Ana, California, Lupe realized that she felt a lot better than she'd felt the night before when she'd run away from Salvador. But she now wondered if she'd really done the right thing to let her mother talk her out of going on her honeymoon.

Because, yesterday when he'd been holding her in his arms—it had felt like heaven with all those little hot-flashes shooting through her body. Lupe continued stretching as she awoke. Oh, she'd slept so well. All night long she'd dreamed of holding Salvador in her arms, hugging him and kissing him and smelling of him so warm and close.

She wondered how Salvador had spent his night. Had he also dreamed of making love to her all night long? She hoped so. And she wondered if her truelove was right now, at this very moment, thinking of her, too.

AND, INDEED
, at that very instant, Salvador was thinking of Lupe, too. He was thinking of how he'd awoken in bed this morning with a mangy old dog instead of his bride. But he now put all his thoughts of Lupe and the dog out of his mind and he started to figure a plan of how to get these two guys from the City of the Angels who thought that he'd become easy pickings because he'd gotten married.