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José barreled out of James’ office almost running over Claude, who had been trying to listen at the door. He looked around until he spotted his wife in another room and headed toward her. Ricardo cut him off. “What happened? Are you all right?”
José shouted to Sara, “Bring Maria, we’re going home.”
Ricardo asked, “You mean back to the Pullman car for the night?”
“No! Back to catch the midnight train to Chicago. We’re going to be on it.”
Sara came with Maria and kissed her mama and papi good-bye. “We’re ready to go.”
Ricardo reached out and touched José’s arm. “Stay over a day. I would like to talk to you about the future.”
José pulled away. “If the future has anything to do with Texas or that man in there, then I want nothing to do with it.”
José headed toward the door but Ricardo tried once more. “Please, José, stay and visit with papi and mama. They may never see you again.”
“I have lots of room in my house, and anyone who wishes to visit with me is welcome any time.”
Ricardo watched them ride off in one of the carriages Claude had hired to ferry guests back and forth. Ricardo’s last hope for revenge was going off in a cloud of dust.
Ricardo walked over and hugged Rafael. He patted Juan Martinez on the head. “You have to come visit me in Houston one day. Make your grandfather and grandmother bring you up on the train.”
Rafael looked sad. “Do you have to go now too, son? It would be nice to spend some time with you before we have to go home ourselves.”
Ricardo patted his father’s shoulder. “We’re catching the same train as José, which stops in Houston. You’re welcome to come on the train with us now and stay with us.”
Rafael lowered his head. “James is a friend of mine. This thing between the two of you is none of my business. Both James and I have both buried a son today. He needs me here, and your sister and nephew need us here. In a few days I’ll take what is left of my family and go home. There I’ll pray that this is the last child I have to watch placed in the ground.”
Ricardo nodded and started toward the room where his mother and the other women were with Carmen. He kissed his sister on the forehead. “May God watch over you, my dear sister. We have to go home now, but you know where I am. Let me know if you need anything, and I mean anything.” He wasn’t sure she even heard him.
After saying good-bye to everybody, Ricardo and his family caught a carriage and followed José and Sara to San Antonio.
They were in their apartment on the Pullman car. Sara never raised her voice in public but in private José would hear about any misstep he had made.
“It wasn’t my idea to have a drink with him. But it’s hard to say no to your own father. At least, that was what I was thinking at the time. Now I see how foolish I was. Jésus was right about him – he doesn’t love people, he controls people. He offered to build a hospital if I would move to Texas and run it.”
Sara shook her head. “That seems like a very generous offer to me.”
He looked at his wife with surprise. “I have a year left on my internship. I can’t even call myself a surgeon until then. I know nothing about running a hospital, and James Jaudon knows that. He was looking for a weak spot he could use to control me. We’ll never move down here.”
There came a knock and José walked over and asked who it was before unlocking the door. “It’s me: Ricardo. We’ll be pulled onto the mainline and hooked to the northbound train at 11:30 p.m. I would like to have a word with you before that happens.”
José looked at Sara, who waved her hand at him. “Go on, I’m finished being mad.”
José stepped out and joined his brother-in-law. He heard Sara lock the door behind him. The two men walked to the end of the car and stepped off onto the ground. Ricardo handed José a cigar. Neither of them smoked; the cigar was to keep the mosquitoes away.
Ricardo produced a red glow on the tip of his cigar and waved it around. “I know you must hate J.F. right now. I have no idea what he said to you, and it is of no matter. What I need to know is, how mad are you?”
“Mad enough that I’ll never set foot in his house again.”
“J.F. has bullied his way through life. It has always been his way or no way. My own father stood by him all these years, but you know J.F. has never gone to visit him and never asked about you or Jésus. I doubt he knew Jésus had gone to war until it hit the papers that he’d been killed. If it doesn’t affect him, he doesn’t give a shit about it.”
“I don’t understand why you’re telling me this. I don’t give two cents about the man.”
“One day he will die. Then there will be an opportunity for payback.”
“He has nothing that I want. Jésus might have been interested in your scheme, but I have a life, and it is much better than here.”
Ricardo puffed on his cigar to keep it from going out. “My father and I drank too much one night and he told me a story that had been eating at his heart for years. It was about your mother.”
“It eats at my heart, too, knowing my birth caused her death.”
“She was forced into the marriage with J.F. Did you know that?”
“What do you mean, ‘forced’?”
“There was a powerful rancher by the name of Alejandro Cortez who lived near Brownsville. J.F. wanted to do business with him. However, he knew the rancher didn’t like doing business with gringos. So J.F. came up with a plan to marry your mother. Juan worked for J.F., so for Juana to refuse the marriage would have meant Juan being fired and his family put out on the street with nothing.”
Ricardo puffed the cigar back to life again and continued. “J.F. pushed my father to set up the marriage, which he did. Your mother was a child still, and her little body couldn’t carry the strain of childbirth. I guess you could make a case that J.F. killed her.”
Tears were streaming down José’s face. “Why has no one told me this before?”
“My father was ashamed of the part he played in it. But the Cortez connection was why J.F. sent you and Jésus away after he no longer needed a Mexican family. He had the contract for the cattle from Cortez, so why keep a couple of screaming Mexican brats around?”
José tossed his cigar away and put a foot on the first step up the train. “Whatever you have planned for this bastard, you can count me in.”
The door on the Pullman closed behind José, and Ricardo smiled. He hadn’t lost after all.
“I believe he’s bitter about the deal he had with you – the one you broke.”
“Rafael, have you ever known me to go into a business deal and not come out on top. That’s the way the game is played. Your son thought he could become king by double-crossing his first partner, so you might say I returned the favor. However, I didn’t leave him high and dry the way he did the other guy. Ricardo is a very rich man today, and that’s thanks to me. He should be thankful I think of him as a son, for otherwise he’d be a broken man living on a handout from you.”
Rafael said nothing. He poured another drink and thought about Jésus dying alone without his family, and about how all James thought about was himself.
| Copyright © 2019 by Ed Rogers |
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