smell of fried masa means you're only blocks or feet from where you sleep. Raul imagines that he's already in bed, the smells swirling in through the open windows, and he's holding on to Monica, trying to tell her lies about the night and what he's done. But his bloodâoh, man, it's still thrumming something ugly inside, and he can't do it, so he sits up in bed and comes clean with it, tells her about the six dollars they got from the gringa's purse, shares a cigarette he bought with her Texaco card, whispers what it looked like in the rearview mirror. The woman, deflated and out cold on her back and so still, everything still but the steam coming up from the asphalt.
"You ain't gonna tell her nothing," Jesus says, still gripping his leg. "You gonna keep it all to yourself."
Â
There is half a week's worth of her milk in the refrigerator. Three or four times each night, and a half dozen times each day, Tim Tilden will pour it from the canning jars, warm the bottle in a hot water bath on the stove, and rock the kid in the living room while he feeds him. On the last night, when there's one jar left, he'll buy formula at the corner store and drop his son at his parents' house for a few hours. He'll shake off their questions, say he's fine, just needs to be alone for a while. He'll drive to the Gypsum and down a few beers, and later, when he's sitting at the stoplight on Canal, he'll notice how quiet it is, and he'll turn the radio upâKIKK, country and western and loud. He'll sit there imagining Natalie beside him, will see her leaning out the window and flipping the bird at the light, screaming,
Turn me loose.
He'll remember the night she died, because he can't not remember it, because it clings to him the way the smell of her jasmine perfume clings to the sheets of their bed, but what he'll recall is not the way she damn near ripped the pocket off his Wranglers, or the way it took fifteen minutes for the cops to arriveânot even the way those bastards smoked their tires getting onto the feeder road. No, what Tim will see that night, sitting alone in his truck at a long red light, is his boy latched onto his pinkie finger, sucking until it turns numb and pruned and Tim has to pluck it from his mouth, sending the kid into a fit of wailing.
Greedy,
Tim will think, remembering Natalie's voice. He'll pull the last jar of her milk from beneath the seat and unscrew the cap and tilt it back.
He gets so greedy when he's hungry.
Something for the Poker Table
Y OU'RE IMPATIENT, SOMETIMES thoughtlessâa little cheap, tooâso when you snag your worn and weather-checked water hose on the jagged bumper of your fifteen-year-old truck, you don't think a thing about it. You pull. You throw yourself into it, two hundred some odd pounds of man versus a single-braid hoseâSBR cover, SBR tube, cheap rubber atop cheap fabric atop cheap rubber, the whole thing made by mandrels and little Korean men whose older brothers your older brother chased through jungles wet and green and alive enough to outlive them all. You curse and pull, but the sharp steel of the bent bumper digs in, won't let go. Your bum knee is giving you hell these days, you'd rather not walk the fifty paces back to the truck to free the damn thing, so you plant your good leg and lean into it. You heave and the hose squeaks and pops, tears clean in two, and when you look up again you're square on your ass between squat rows of July cotton.
Be
got-damned,
you think, if I'm buying a new hose, so you don't drive into town and call Jerry Curlee, the balding Bohemian salesman who puts forty percent into hose and baler belting and roller chain before he sells it to you. No, you go into the truck bed toolbox and fish out just what you needâa hose mender. A quick fix, by damn, so you can run this hose tonight, so you can get the creek water from the pump house to the irrigation lines, so the plants will come up green and thick despite this south Texas
"You ain't gonna tell her nothing," Jesus says, still gripping his leg. "You gonna keep it all to yourself."
Â
There is half a week's worth of her milk in the refrigerator. Three or four times each night, and a half dozen times each day, Tim Tilden will pour it from the canning jars, warm the bottle in a hot water bath on the stove, and rock the kid in the living room while he feeds him. On the last night, when there's one jar left, he'll buy formula at the corner store and drop his son at his parents' house for a few hours. He'll shake off their questions, say he's fine, just needs to be alone for a while. He'll drive to the Gypsum and down a few beers, and later, when he's sitting at the stoplight on Canal, he'll notice how quiet it is, and he'll turn the radio upâKIKK, country and western and loud. He'll sit there imagining Natalie beside him, will see her leaning out the window and flipping the bird at the light, screaming,
Turn me loose.
He'll remember the night she died, because he can't not remember it, because it clings to him the way the smell of her jasmine perfume clings to the sheets of their bed, but what he'll recall is not the way she damn near ripped the pocket off his Wranglers, or the way it took fifteen minutes for the cops to arriveânot even the way those bastards smoked their tires getting onto the feeder road. No, what Tim will see that night, sitting alone in his truck at a long red light, is his boy latched onto his pinkie finger, sucking until it turns numb and pruned and Tim has to pluck it from his mouth, sending the kid into a fit of wailing.
Greedy,
Tim will think, remembering Natalie's voice. He'll pull the last jar of her milk from beneath the seat and unscrew the cap and tilt it back.
He gets so greedy when he's hungry.
Something for the Poker Table
Y OU'RE IMPATIENT, SOMETIMES thoughtlessâa little cheap, tooâso when you snag your worn and weather-checked water hose on the jagged bumper of your fifteen-year-old truck, you don't think a thing about it. You pull. You throw yourself into it, two hundred some odd pounds of man versus a single-braid hoseâSBR cover, SBR tube, cheap rubber atop cheap fabric atop cheap rubber, the whole thing made by mandrels and little Korean men whose older brothers your older brother chased through jungles wet and green and alive enough to outlive them all. You curse and pull, but the sharp steel of the bent bumper digs in, won't let go. Your bum knee is giving you hell these days, you'd rather not walk the fifty paces back to the truck to free the damn thing, so you plant your good leg and lean into it. You heave and the hose squeaks and pops, tears clean in two, and when you look up again you're square on your ass between squat rows of July cotton.
Be
got-damned,
you think, if I'm buying a new hose, so you don't drive into town and call Jerry Curlee, the balding Bohemian salesman who puts forty percent into hose and baler belting and roller chain before he sells it to you. No, you go into the truck bed toolbox and fish out just what you needâa hose mender. A quick fix, by damn, so you can run this hose tonight, so you can get the creek water from the pump house to the irrigation lines, so the plants will come up green and thick despite this south Texas
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