Carmen Boullosa: Texas: The Great Theft

“I was at Doña Estefanía’s once. The women didn’t sit at the table, they just served the men.”

“Shameful.”

“Absolutely.”

“Know if she had any lovers?”

“Doña Estefanía, lovers? A few might have tried, if they did they fell wide of the mark.”

“Why would we women go looking for that kind of trouble?”

“Because, some of us like men.”

“I just use them for sex.”

“Get outta here, you’re gonna spend your life begging for something you’ll never get. Look what happened to Peladita, you should go sit and sew with her.”

“I wouldn’t do it even if they tied me up, you can’t tame me! I don’t have hands, I have hooves! Plus I know how to run and to hunt.”

“Has anyone here ever seen that guy Nepomuceno?”

“Some folks call him the Red Menace, because he’s a redhead, and he’s dangerous.”

“He’s really a redhead?”

“Depends on how the sun hits his head.”

IN BRUNEVILLE FRANK RETURNS to the Stealman mansion with the oxtail for the stew wrapped in dried corn husks — finely chopped, like Señora Luz likes it. The women who work for Mrs. Lazy have already heard what happened in the Market Square, they know even more than Frank because, while he was spreading the news and haggling with Sharp over the ingredients for Señora Luz’s soup, he missed out on quite a bit. A detailed report was delivered to the Stealman home by a longshoreman called Steve.

Steve is a tameme, he always has a basket of goods on his back. Today it was full of long-stemmed flowers to fill the Chinese and English vases that will decorate the salon where the best — or worst, depending on your perspective — of Bruneville society will gather.

Steve has added a flourish to the story, to get a better tip: “Nepomuceno, the cattle thief, Doña Estefanía’s black sheep, got what he deserved from the sheriff!” Here he paused to laugh. “He called him a ‘greaser!’” Then he told them how, after a few seconds of silence during which the sheriff stopped beating the drunkard and no one on the scene, not even Shears or Nepomuceno, blinked or drew a breath, Nepomuceno emptied his pistol into the Sheriff, “He shot him … I think he mighta killed him. Then he picked up the drunk guy, fired once more into the air, and took off with his men.”

Let’s dot the i’s and cross the t’s. Sheriff Shears had wanted to arrest Lázaro Rueda for being drunk, disturbing the peace, and urinating in the Market Square. “Since when do they arrest folks in these parts for drinking themselves stupid and taking a piss?” Lázaro resisted with what little dignity he had, which wasn’t much (old and worn-out, he was falling-down drunk), but it was enough resistance for Shears to give him a thrashing. He was beating him with the butt of his pistol when Nepomuceno stepped out of the Café Ronsard.

Inside the café, Nepomuceno avoided discussing what had happened in court that morning, but didn’t hesitate to talk up a deal he made with a Galician from Puerto Bagdad called Nemesio — they say he has bags under his eyes from eating so much chorizo. “Yeah, I signed a contract for 3,500 head of livestock with him; I hand them over and he takes them to Cuba. Business is good … My ranches are overflowing with cattle and horses: roan, bay, chestnut, piebald, dappled (and, I won’t deny it, there are mavericks, too, though I don’t go looking for them. Why would I, when my corrals are already full of animals, happy as clams? It’s not my style to go looking for wild ones. If I have mavericks it’s because they came to my ranch of their own free will, they like it on my land, we treat the animals well, they never lack for water, grass, or feed, or protection from the wolves).”

“So what do ya need Nemesio for? You can take care of things yourself …” the barkeep said.

More than a few customers nodded. Nepomuceno didn’t deny it.

Charlie, a recent arrival, asked him if the boats that would be transporting the livestock were his.

“They’re all Stealman’s,” answered a guy called David. His family makes a big deal out of their ancestry but they’re poor as fleas; he thinks he’s Nepomuceno’s rival, and likes to talk trash about him. “I said ‘all,’ and I mean everything that floats, except the tugboat, but as of today that’s his too. He paid almost nothing for it because he was calling in unpaid debts. That’s how he does business …”

David speaks like he’s working up to go in for the kill: “Bagdad, Nepomuceno? Ha! Bagdad ain’t nothing! If you’d made your contracts in Galveston back when things were going well for you, you’d be singin’ a different song today! Now you’re just a hungry gull peckin’ at some crumbs!”

The news of Stealman’s latest business acquisition turns Nepomuceno’s coffee bitter. If you smelled his breath you’d back away, he’s so full of bile.

Two weeks earlier old Arnoldo had asked Nepomuceno for help. “These wily gringos want my tugboat. They say I have a debt and I gotta pay it off with my boat. Listen, Nepomuceno, they invented this so-called debt, they say I owe them rent for the dock, can you believe it? And they calculated it from the date the law was passed. What kind of plague has befallen us? And how are we going to get rid of them? They want everything, you see, and I don’t need to tell you, just look what they did with your mother’s land, they wanna take over the whole damn world, these freeloading gringos …”

You can imagine how, for Nepomuceno, this was like rubbing salt into a wound.

He doesn’t say another word. He motions for the bill. Teresa approaches the bar and for a moment he is drawn out of his own problems.

Ah, lovely Teresa.

Teresa thinks in all of Bruneville and Matasánchez, in the entire Valley, there’s no one as dreamy as Nepomuceno; when she sees him she smiles in such a way that, some other time, it would have made his whole week; and though right now there’s no smile in the world could achieve that, it distracts him from his fury. “Teresa, pretty, Teresa,” he’s not defeated yet, after all, turnabout is fair play. He recalls how, ten months ago, he stole the election from under Stealman’s nose when he was certain of victory …

The gringos who are invading the Rio “Grande” Valley are fortune-hunters who fall into two camps: the Blues and the Reds.

The Reds are the big business owners and ranchers, wealthy and powerful. Stealman is their leader, along with a select few: King, Mifflin, Kenedy (it would be interesting to know the details of how they agreed to divvy up south Texas, but that’s not our business).

The Blues are small businessmen who struggle day-to-day to make a living, including Mr. Chaste, the mayor and pharmacist; Mr. Seed, who owns the corner coffee shop; Sharp, the butcher who owns the stalls on the east side of the market; Herr Werbenski, owner of the busy pawn shop who sells firearms and ammo on the side; and Peter Hat.

Nepomuceno supported the Blues in the mayoral election; he gathered Mexicans from across the Río Bravo and offered them a good meal (which he paid for) and a few coins (from his own pocket), then he transported them across the Río Bravo (he’d made a deal with old Arnoldo), plying them with quantities of sotol (which he had bought in bulk), and delivered them half-drunk to the polling booths to vote for his candidate, Mr. Chaste.

And that’s how the Blues won the mayoral election.

Nepomuceno recalls all this in the Café Ronsard, once again savoring his victory and the joy of crushing Stealman, which boosts his spirits, but a second later they plummet; it makes no difference whether Mr. Chaste is a Blue or a Red, he’s a wretched gringo (a pale-faced Anglo who pretended to be a Mexican’s best friend before the elections, no sooner had he won than he called them “worthless greasers”).