Carmen Boullosa - Texas - The Great Theft

“El Seco!”

Children say he floats, that the soles of his feet are soft and clean like a baby’s. But they’re rough because he goes around barefoot, they’re full of corns and calluses from walking long distances; his feet are forever sore. He is misery and severity incarnate. He preaches the evils of liquor fanatically. His chosen pulpits are cafés, cantinas, and bars, as well as distilleries.

Despite the fact he’d like to turn everyone teetotal, the man always looks like he’s drunk. He’s crazed in his fanaticism.

Franklin Evans was born in a Long Island village. He left the country life and moved to New York, where he got a good job, drank like a fish, got married, lost his job and got a worse one; then his wife died so he got remarried to a freed slave, had a daughter with her, started sleeping with a white woman whom his second wife murdered before she took her own life; then he lost his job and couldn’t get a new one, kept drinking, began begging, fell into abject poverty; and then when his daughter died he finally gave up drinking and became a teetotaler, preaching sobriety. Anyone who’d lived this life — like a bad sensationalist novel written in three days powered by gin to earn a few dollars by promoting temperance — couldn’t help but turn into a Mr. Dry.

He has nightmares night after night. Terrifying, colorless dreams in which he cannot scream, burdened with grief; they make no sense but they’re powerful because he wakes up paralyzed with fear. They have no beginning or end. One example: Dry goes to the barber, who is a drunk greaser; he complains about something, it’s not clear to whom, there’s only the one barber there. He hears laughter. The barber picks up his razor, and Dry sits down in his chair.

He doesn’t run. Nothing happens. Dry thinks he has woken up. He goes to the bathroom. His pants fall down. Once again he thinks he’s awoken. Again his pants fall down, but they can’t because he’s still lying asleep on a board, wrapped up in his dream. Distressed, he stiffens, he can’t move, he awakens, this time for real, he’s so stiff, his arms crossed on his chest, immobile. Now he’s fully awake. He tries to move, he can’t, he tries again, and finally he can move.

What was the dream about? Why doesn’t it have an arc or some specific source of grief? All his dreams are like that. Like the crazy things Dry eats: boiled fish without salt … and that’s the least disgusting. He cooks flavorless scraps on the fire. He eats just to fill his stomach. Whatever’s around.

His pinky toe always hurts, it’s always peeling, blistered, with ingrown hairs and warts. All his ailments seem to manifest in his toe. It’s as though this part of his body is the voice of his soul.

He despises alcohol because it gives pleasure, but his arguments don’t make sense. Sarah looks at Dry with curiosity. Forgetting about her disguise — and her story and her card game — she moves to arrange her skirts; Carlos the Cuban notices.

Since she’s not wearing her skirts, she smoothes her palms along her riding pants in a rather absurd gesture.

Carlos gets up from his chair and moves toward Sarah, who asks him, “And this guy?” She asks in perfect Spanish, pointing to Dry.

“A lunatic who goes around saying alcohol is the devil incarnate. Nice to meet you, I’m Carlos, Cuban … and,” he lowers his voice, “I like your style.” He extends his hand and Sarah-Soro takes it with more tenderness than elegance. Carlos lowers his voice further and moves closer to Soro-Sarah, he can smell her orange-blossom scent. “Dry hates Mexicans. They say he belongs to the Secret Circle.”

“Sounds like a lunatic to me,” Sarah mumbles in English as she backs away from her interlocutor (it’s not because of the way he looks, Carlos is blond and light-skinned; it’s his bad breath); then she looks him straight in the eye (to keep her distance). “What’s the Secret Circle?”

“Shh!” Carlos says very softly, trying not to lose his composure; he’s got no doubt now she’s a woman, but it’s not her orange-blossom scent that renders him helpless, it’s her response to his comment about hating Mexicans. What if she’s a member of the Secret Circle? But she doesn’t seem like one, so he says, “Circle, it’s a circle.” He immediately regrets opening his mouth. “It’s not safe to talk about it.”

The prohibition proselytizer stares down anyone who dares speak in his presence. He’s like the Grim Reaper. Wherever he goes, he brings silence, immobility, tears, and terror, and if folks wear black (like he does, in this heat!), so much the better.

Sarah walks over to her table and Carlos returns to the Eagles’ where he asks, as he usually does, “What’s wrong with that guy? Why’s he so mad about sotol ? What devil possessed him?”

“T’warnt no demon, buddy; it was an angel, and she was black.” Hector shouts over to the musicians, “Play ‘The Little Drunk Girl’!”

The musicians have been sitting in silence. All three are dejected. They know Nepomuceno and his mother well, and they know the disputed territory by heart — but then, who doesn’t, Bruneville is built on it … They have played at weddings, baptisms, birthdays, funerals, and even bullfights. Juliberto’s father was a vaquero who learned to play the violin by watching and listening to Lázaro for many years before Lázaro himself taught him the art with his hands like wrinkled wads of paper, deformed by decades of wielding the lasso and the whip. The musicians have already decided not to play: “No singing in here.” “Not unless someone with a lotta dough shows up.” “Not even then!” “Depends how much money they have, Sila asked me for money this morning and I told her I’d bring some home.” “That’s what you get for getting hitched.” “For getting hitched to a poor woman!” “Women are supposed to support you, otherwise they’re useless.” The musicians don’t forget for one second the grief that has stopped them playing, but they can’t resist the temptation to rile up El Seco (that’s what they call Mr. Dry). They strike up a tune, breaking into song with the second beat:

Take a swig of the strong stuff

if you’re feeling sick at heart.

They turn to face Dry; he hasn’t caught on. They stop short and begin a different tune;

Sunday I drank

’cause you gave me your love.

That’s why I got drunk

with Mr. Sotol.

Monday morning I went

to Café Ronsard.

I needed the hair of the dog

and replaced your love with Mr. Sotol’s.

Out on the prairie at Rancho del Carmen, Nepomuceno’s stepbrothers, José Esteban and José Eusebio, are trying hard to keep their cool. They’re absorbing the news about what has happened to Nepomuceno. They must protect Doña Estefanía, her land, her livestock, her men … They’ll form a band, that’s what they need to do.

In the kitchen at Rancho del Carmen things are same as ever, no matter what happens there are perfectly balanced sauces, meat and vegetables wrapped in scented leaves, cooked in beautiful pots, and extraordinary dishes are served in the dining room. Everything here is prepared with care, attention to detail, and skill. If we were to judge by our noses, it would appear that Doña Estefanía (she’s the one who gives all the instructions on how to prepare the food, and she tastes it all before it’s served) has not noticed war is about to break out, and that her son is the one who has started it.

Snippets of conversation overheard at the Stealmans’ home:

“A group of settlers decided to rid Texas of what’s left of the Indian tribes. Three hundred Caddos escaped to Oklahoma. They killed the traitor who tipped them off.”