Body and Bread (15 page)

When we walk in, Terezie rises from a wing-back. My brothers and I crouch like interlopers on a sofa between her and Cyril. The office is opulent. Between us stands an antique mahogany display case filled with Texas Indian artifacts, their flint bodies like incubating infants.

“Nice collection,” I say, spotting a tanged Crescent blade. “Where’d you get them?”

“This Pandale,” he says, pointing, “came from our midden on the farm.”

I wonder if it was the one Terezie found. Where was the Marcos dart point I gave my father? I picture him standing over the evidence of our search, his arms raised, accusing Sam.

“Most of the others I found in a burnt-rock spring mound near the Gault site.” He looks at me. “I’ve followed your work there. The midden helped people research the area’s water history.”

“I know that spring. I’d be interested in reading the report.”

“I’ll send you a copy.”

My brothers are embarrassingly disinterested.

“You married?” I ask, nodding toward a photograph on his desk.

“Mariana. Sam introduced us.”

“Cardona?” Kurt asks, the jolt of his voice a warm compress.

“Her brother’s Jaime. You remember, right?”

“Yeah, sort of.” Kurt slides his eyeglasses on.

I glance at the picture again but can’t find the girl I knew. I’ve always wondered whether she and Sam were more than friends. She’s Terezie’s sister-in-law now. Imagine: the three of them together, talking about my brother.

“I don’t mean to be rude,” Terezie says, her purple eyes still luminous, “but you understand why I need this money.”

Hugh sits forward. “We heard about the transplant, and we want you to know that Cornelia’s been in our prayers.”

“I appreciate that, really I do. But right now, prayers won’t do diddly squat. Both of you’ve got kids. Think about it. My baby’s dying.” Tears drip from her chin onto her percale lap.

“Of course, we sympathize,” says Hugh while a buzzer beeps in the next room. A door slams. “But Cornelia’s doctors are convinced they can stabilize her condition so she’ll be optimal for surgery.”

I don’t ask about the ethics of him getting details about Cornelia’s case.

“No, let’s get to the real issue, here,” Kurt says, pulling a piece of paper from his inside pocket. “We’ve got a buyer for the farm, and Terezie can have Sam’s share. All she has to do is sign this waiver saying she won’t come after anything else.”

“That’s it? How soon could I have the money?” Terezie’s husband has already sold his used bookstore and taken a job as manager of a Barnes & Noble in Rochester, where he finally gets health insurance. Ironically, he’ll lose it again when he donates his kidney. With the state of public education, Terezie’s part-time job as a music teacher is tenuous, at best, and Cornelia’s shortness of breath, aches in her side and back, urinary tract infections, and headaches are forcing her to drop out of college.

After reading the single-page document, Cyril says, “There’s no way she’s going to sign this.”

Arching an eyebrow, Kurt grins at Hugh.

“And why not?” Hugh asks. “The sale could go through tomorrow. Everything’s ready. That’s what you want, right Terezie?”

She swallows, her chin tight.

“Tell him, Terezie,” Hugh says. “Explain it to Cyril. Go ahead.”

“I know exactly what my sister wants,” Cyril says “and she’s not signing this piss-ant agreement.”

“Please, Cyril,” Terezie says, “it’s okay, really. All I want is Sam’s share of the farm. What’s that, eighty thousand? That’s right, isn’t it, eighty thousand?” She glares at Kurt, who nods. “Then that would do it. I couldn’t afford to pay you back yet, Cyril, and I hate that, but we could pay the bank’s fee to keep the house and, please God, not have to file bankruptcy. We’d have just enough for surgery. Hand me the paper. Let’s get this over with.” When she reaches forward, her handbag topples to the floor.

Cyril grabs the document. “You’re not going to sign this,” he says. “It’s an insult. Don’t you see what they’re doing? Sam’s will is legal. I can prove it.”

“But I don’t want to have to—” She covers her face with her hands.

“That prostitute’s signature makes it ironclad. No way a judge’ll throw it out, especially if I can get her to testify.” A shaft from the window creeps onto our feet.

“You’re not actually planning to have that woman talk about Sam, are you?” Hugh says. Footsteps click in the hall. “I mean, that wouldn’t be good, you know what I mean? I mean, Kurt?”

Terezie says to Cyril, “I don’t have any choice.”

“Stop and think. What about the credit cards? How’re you paying them off? And you think Cornelia’s not going to need medical care after surgery? Where’s that coming from? You don’t even have a job yet. A share of that Rockport house is legally yours. These guys know that; they’re just greedy. Their own brother wanted you to have it, but they don’t care. Typical. Remember how they treated Ma and Pa? Sam was the only one who was decent. You’re not going to sign anything.”

I picture Sam feeding his cottontail with an eyedropper, then sitting in his car pretending to be Johnny Cash.

“But we can’t wait for a trial,” Terezie says. “How long would something like that take?”

“About a year,” Kurt says. “Because we’ll contest that will. People do it all the time. Your brother knows that. We have a good chance of winning, too.”

“Debbie and I talked about the surgery,” Hugh says, “and we’re willing—”

“Either you sign this agreement now,” interrupts Kurt, “or we’ll see you in court. Nothing else is on the table. We’re willing to give you what you’ve asked for, and then you’d have what you need for the surgery. I think that’s fair. What do you say?”

Hugh leans back, his top lip folding under. He hums “Amazing Grace,” rolling his head side-to-side.

“Cyril’s right. You don’t care about us. You know we need help, and you’re doctors. How do you live with yourselves? I’m glad Sam’s not here to see this.”

Or Dad, I think. “Hugh,” I say, “you made a promise. Wouldn’t you like to share your offer with Terezie?”

Hugh’s fingers play imaginary keys on his legs. “That saved a wretch like me,” he whispers, tapping.

I want to shake him, bully him into saying he’ll help her.

“Kurt knows something about Sam,” I blurt, “something that could have a bearing.” My chest fills with incense someone’s burning.

Our heads swivel toward Kurt. “You son of a bitch,” he says. Then he smirks, chuckling.

“If you have any pertinent information,” Cyril begins.

“I’d tell you,” Kurt answers, “believe me. Look, contrary to my sister’s opinion, I’m not a crook. Her accusation says more about her than me or Sam. Her so-called secret is actually a personal matter, the kind that really yanks her chain.”

“What about your fistfight with Sam right before his accident,” I say. “Go ahead; tell Terezie what you said.”

The trickster snaps his switch, and
Xīpe Totec
’s patio forms in the window’s glare like a developing photograph. A conch trumpet wails.
Please. No
.

Kurt stares at Hugh. “Okay, so I’m an asshole,” he says, and, thankfully, the image wavers, shimmers, faded, leaving what feels like an arrow lodged in my right eye socket. “But I’m not hiding anything,” he says.

Cyril raises the document, and before passing it to Terezie, he tears it in half. Then he tears it again. “I’ll pay for the surgery. But I expect to be paid back, and that means you have to agree to fight this. We’re taking these bastards to court.”

C
HAPTER 11

1964

T
HIS ISN’T THE ONLY TIME
my family has had a legal problem. We had two during my junior year in high school: the first was Sam’s; the second, mine.

A month after my parents tried to give me advice about college, Sam was thrown into a Mexican jail. He’d gone back to Laredo with Mariana and Jaime Cardona for the weekend, and all I knew was what I’d overheard my mother whisper to my father a few days later in the downstairs hallway. “Thank God Mariana had enough foresight to call,” she said. “Otherwise, Sam would still be in jail. I knew those children were trouble, especially her. What else would make Sam shove a policeman?” I didn’t care about the Cardonas, only Sam’s unexplained push. I was sure the guy had deserved it.

My parents’ reaction fit a pattern that had begun to bother me—proof of my new maturity, I assured myself. My mother spent most of her time at the stove and the grocery. She drove to the beauty shop twice a week, same ten o’clock appointment, same back-combed chignon. Her neighborhood friends arrived for wine and gossip each afternoon at three then left each evening when my father walked in and gave her a kiss. He, on the other hand, went to work, played Saturday golf, taught his Bible class, and watched whatever sport event was on TV. Sundays, we ate at my grandparents’ even though we didn’t picnic at the farm anymore. Hugh and I could’ve checked our watches at any hour and named the location and activity of each parent, a phenomenon that was suddenly appalling to me.

They instructed us to adhere to prescribed routines, too. Deviation predicated disaster. No wonder a “service-oriented” profession was what they’d recommended; conventional opinion was their plumb line. I’d have to find my own way out of their prefabricated life.

Sam came home two weeks after his Laredo trip for a meal and the use of the washing machine. That afternoon, he brought me a mask. “What you think?” he asked, standing in the doorway.

A hanging bulb blazed over the closet shelves I’d been straightening, and when I turned, shadowy spots made me blink.

Wearing a checked shirt Albina had made, Sam leaned against the doorframe. Head tilted, one eye shut, he anticipated my reaction to his present. His standing there was gift enough. I hoped he’d tell me what happened at the jail and then describe Mexico, a place I wasn’t allowed to visit. Were there really tequila bottles with worms in the bottoms and nightclubs where women danced naked, trumpets blaring? Did people eat barbecued goat and grow roses and carnations, the patches of red or yellow next to dirt and cactus, brown, then football fields of color? Would he please please take me?

“What we have us here,” he said, pulling something toward his face, muffling his voice, “is an Aztec warrior mask.” A tooth appeared at one of the holes; an eyelash fluttered. The image was a reversal: outside, Sam’s spirit; inside, his body.

I bumped the clothes rack.

“Thought you might wear this to church.”

I smiled, picturing myself in our second-row pew, sharing a hymnal with our grandmother, surrounded by neighbors pretending not to look.

He leaned the mask close. “Too bad they can’t see the magic.” His lips barely parted. “This is for somebody who’s not afraid to look.” He blew a gray bubble, chomped. “It must be for you.”

Painted rosettes spread like a rash from low on the mask’s forehead, getting larger and more detailed, finally circling the neck. Folded leather flaps formed the nose and ears, innocuous as a kitten’s. The eyes were indentations with pinhole centers, the mouth a jagged slice, leather tongue hanging.

“Had a chance to read that Aztec book?”

Since I’d only been interested in Texas Indians, I’d stuck it on a bookshelf in the study. “Sure,” I lied.

“They had a kind of club called Order of the Eagle and Jaguar Knights,” he said. “The battlefield was a sacred place,” he tapped the light bulb, sent it swinging “and if you died fighting,” his eyes moved left then right, “you rode the sun across the sky then turned into a hummingbird.”

The jaguar’s nose and cheek felt curved, bony. I held the mask up; with my other hand, I caught the bulb. Light shone at the eyeholes, the mouth.

“Anyway,” Sam said, shifting away from the door, turning, “I thought it was a good story.”

Was he leaving? Already? “And what about you getting thrown in jail?”

“Who told you?”

“Mom said you pushed a policeman.”

He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket. “What a shithole,” he sang, laughing. He unfolded a newspaper clipping then pointed. “Look at this.” The article was in Spanish, its headline
, “El Gringo Golpeo al Guardia
.” A photo showed Sam in a cell, his left eye swollen, his mouth open, his arm reaching through the bars. “I almost killed that S.O.B. before his buddies jumped me.”

Now I noticed the remnant of a bruise at his cheekbone. A Band-Aid at his hairline hid stitches. “What
really
happened?” I checked his cut, imagining sadists taking turns beating him. Maybe he’d insulted them, or defended somebody else. I’d heard Mexican police were crooked; now I understood what that meant.

“You should’ve heard the guy next to me. Screaming—it was that cold.” He folded his arms, bent over, laughing. “So I started howling. He’d scream, I’d howl.” He wiped his eyes. “I was a goddamn coyote. One of the best nights of my life.”

Was he howling because he was mad or happy or scared, or what? And how was that funny? “You still haven’t said
why
you got thrown in jail.”