“Heard about Narciso—” León said through a mouthful, “too bad—”
“How’s Tony?” Gene asked.
“Fine,” my mother answered for me, “but you still haven’t told us why Vigil brought you. Deborah, take Theresa upstairs and play—” Deborah and Theresa only moved to a corner of the kitchen and stayed to listen.
“Tell ’em, Gene,” León said.
“Hell, you tell ’em!” Gene snarled, “It’s your fault this happened! You’re the one who wanted to come home—” He drank the shot of whiskey my father had poured for him and went off by the stove to brood.
“¡Eugenio! Do not speak that way in front of Grande!” My mother was stern now. Not even the joy of having her sons back could break this rule of respect for the elders.
“What happened?” Andrew pleaded.
“I apologize to Grande,” Gene pouted.
“Gene, it’s nobody’s fault,” León said in his slow way, “and what’s done is done—”
“But what?” my father implored.
“We wrecked the car—”
“You had a car!” Andrew exclaimed approvingly.
“Had is right!” Gene cut in.
“Yeah, we saved our money, bought a really nice Chevy—last night, on the spur of the moment we decided to take off—”
“You decided!” Gene corrected him.
“Wrecked it, where?” “How?” “Shhhhh! Let him go on!”
“Just this side of Antón Chico,” León said unperturbed, “we hit a slick spot, solid ice, and we went down the ditch—”
“But the road was closed last night,” my father said, “that stretch of road has been closed every night for a week—”
“But would he listen to that!” Gene exploded.
“I wanted to come home,” León said patiently, he understood his brother’s mood.
“¡Ay mi hijito!” My mother went to him and hugged him and León just sat there, smiling, his blue eyes watering. “As long as you are safe, who cares about a car. He wanted to come home to see his mother!” she beamed.
“But the car’s not too badly damaged?” Andrew asked.
“Burned!” Gene shouted.
“Burned?” Andrew gasped. There was silence.
“We waited a long time in the cold,” León was barely audible, “there was no traffic. We burned the blankets, then the seats, the gas, the tires—sometime this morning we fell asleep, huddled against the car, and all of a sudden everything was on fire, burning.”
“That’s when Vigil found you,” my father said.
León nodded. “At least we hadn’t frozen to death—”
“Thank God you are home safe,” my mother said. She crossed her forehead. “I must give thanks to the Virgin—” She went to the sala to pray before her altar.
“We shouldn’t have come,” Eugene groaned.
León and Eugene spent the rest of the morning in Andrew’s room. I could hear them laughing. They were talking about the great times they had in Vegas. In the afternoon they dressed and went to town, to play pool they said. My father drank the rest of the day so that by suppertime he was quite drunk. But he did not rant and rave; he was quiet and brooding, and we knew that was the worst kind of drunk. He had been happy to see his boys, but the happiness had been short-lived. He too had heard them planning new adventures together, and he knew that come spring when his yearning to move west filled him that there would be no one to go with him.
In the morning my father’s disquietude was proven. We were eating a late breakfast when my father came in from feeding the animals. He stamped his feet and went to the stove to drink a cup of coffee. He stared at my brothers while he drank, and his gaze made them uneasy.
“It is colder than hell outside,” he said.
“Gabriel! The children—” my mother reprimanded him. “And take off your jacket, it is wet—” The melting snow was dropping on the hot stove. The little water droplets did a crazy, sizzling dance on the hot iron then disappeared.
“I have to go out again,” my father answered without taking his eyes off my brothers, “the wind has cut the tie-wire of the windmill. If I don’t tie it down the wind will tear down the crazy thing before noon—”
“Ay, if it’s not one thing, it’s another,” my mother moaned. I went to the window and through a small, round hole in the frosted windowpane I could see the whirling blades of the windmill. The cold wind spun them so fast that the whole housing shook and seemed ready to come crashing down. If the windmill broke it would mean many days without water because the cistern was already dry of summer water, and melting snow would be a hard job. Melting snow meant frozen hands and feet, and the worst part was that it seemed a ton of melted snow only produced a quart of water.