Chapter 20
The next morning, the Southern Pacific for San Antonio stood down the platform taking on passengers, and Will had the tickets in his pocket.
Isum had found coffee somewhere and stood drinking it in the shade of the awning with his first idle look in a month.
Elena and Lupita sat together on the bench, each with her own thoughts.
Del sat next to Elena, his arm along the bench back behind her shoulders, and she leaned into it.
Carlos stood at the platform's edge, at a respectful and lawful distance, looking up the line to where the engine sat breathing.
"Papa," he said. "Can we see the engine?"
"Sure, let's do it," Del said as he got up, grabbed his son's hand, and they walked up the platform together into the steam.
When they boarded, Carlos had a window seat and kept it for the first fifty miles by virtue of being six and not yet having learned the social convention that makes a person offer their window seat to anyone else.
Nobody asked him to. The landscape going east was new to him in both directions since he had been asleep against Elena on the westbound ride to El Paso, and he was making up for it now.
At a water stop Del bought biscuits and bacon from a vendor and distributed them without asking.
Elena ate hers without comment. Isum ate his while reading a newspaper he had found at the El Paso depot.
Will sat with Isum in the back of the car with the "colored folk.
" Segregation was the law in the state of Texas.
Will had tried in his early years to make hotels and restaurants accept Isum, but the law was so strictly enforced now that he couldn't do anything but observe it, and, according to the railroad, the law started at El Paso going east.
So he sat with Isum, his hat over his eyes for a while and thought about nothing in particular.
There was a black family and three buffalo soldiers sitting nearby.
Will dropped off to sleep for a few minutes, then he awoke as he felt the train slowing.
He looked out the window and could see that the train had slowed and was blowing its steam whistle to get cattle off the track.
"Pa," Carlos said.
Del looked down. "What?"
"What am I allowed to say about the trip?"
Del thought about that. Elena smiled and raised her eyebrows, waiting for Del's answer. "What do you mean?" Del asked.
"When we get home. When my friends ask where I went and what happened, what should I say?"
Del looked at Elena, who was still smiling.
"Tell them about the pigs on the Mexican Central," Del said. "And the cathedral at Jiménez. And the antelope on the Texas side going south, and the frog you found at the water tank. Tell them about meeting your abuela and the funeral of your abuelo. And tell them all about the cousins you met."
"Can I tell them about the soldiers and the marshals and the men on the road?"
Del was quiet for a moment. "Not yet," he said. "When you're older."
Carlos nodded and said, "Will I still remember it when I'm older?"
"Yes," Del said. "I expect you will."
San Antonio came up in the mid-afternoon, and they just managed to catch the last train north.
Virginia was holding Josephine's hand tight because the little girl was fascinated by the train and wanted to wander all over. Annabelle was standing next to her mother, and the twins were standing next to the station.
Jacob was at the far end with the buckboard and the team, standing with his hands in his pockets, watching the train slow, and next to him stood James Wood with his father's two horses on a loose line, holding them easy.
The train shuddered and stopped. Steam vented from beneath the car in a long rush and the smell of coal and hot iron came through the open window.
Will stepped off first, as was his habit.
When he was leading his deputies on a hunt, he always got off first to assess the situation.
Isum followed, then Del stepped down and turned to help Elena and Lupita down the steps, and then he grabbed Carlos off the top step and set him down on the platform.
Virginia came across at a pace that was not quite running and put her arm around Will and held on. He hugged her back. Josephine, caught between them, made a sound of mild protest and was ignored for a moment.
Virginia pulled back and looked at her husband's face with all the love she could give. "I knew you'd bring them home," she whispered with tears in her eyes. He nodded and then she saw Del and Elena. "I have to welcome Elena home."
"Elena," she said as she walked toward her.
Elena came to her and they held each other the way old friends do when one of them has been in danger.
Virginia had Josephine in one arm and Elena in the other and she whispered.
"I prayed every night they'd bring you home.
" Elena nodded, "It's so good to be back, so good to see everybody.
Oh, and this is my sister, Lupita, who is going to live with us. "
Virginia turned to Lupita and said, "Oh, it's good to know you. You'll be very welcome here."
And then Virginia saw Del. She reached across and hugged him. "I hardly recognize you with a clean face. Jacob and James have kept your place in top shape."
"I'm sure they have," Del said.
Will smiled at Annabelle. She came to him and they hugged each other, neither saying anything for a moment. Then Will said, "How's my little angel eyes doing?" He had called her that from almost the first moment they'd met back on the Concho.
"I'm doing fine, Pa," she said. "I was hoping you'd make it back for my birthday."
"Me too," he said. He put his arm around her and looked around. He saw the twins next to the station. He held Annabelle's hand and walked toward them. He let go and reached for Jess. He hugged his son to him, then held him at arms length.
"Is that a black eye I see?" he asked with a smile.
"It is," Jess said. "I earned it too."
Will laughed. He turned and hugged Josh. "I see you both earned it."
Josh said, "Yeah, well, we had to teach those Bristow boys a lesson, and trust me, they look a whole lot worse than we do."
Will chuckled and asked, "You can tell me about it when we get home, I guess."
Jacob stood at the buckboard with his hands still in his pockets. He looked at all the goings on, the hugs, kisses and handshakes. "Musta been tough," Jacob said. "They all look thinner."
"Yeah, I noticed it too," James said. "Del walkin' a little different, and his eyes look a bit sunken. Dark circles under 'em."
In time, Del headed toward them with the two valises. Jacob and James stepped forward and each grabbed one. Del thanked them both. Once the luggage was stowed in the buckboard, Del said, "You're looking good, Jacob."
"Thanks, Del, we're glad you're all home," Jacob said.
Del laughed. It was the first real laugh that had come out of him without effort, not the polite laughs of the road but something that started lower and came out with no restraint.
"Your filly is quite a horse," Jacob said.
"I'll bet she is," Del said, "She had the best horse trainer in Texas."
"I don't know 'bout that." Jacob chuckled as color showed in his face. "But your filly, she'll take you for a nice, easy ride all the way home."
When Will came to the buckboard, Jacob said, "Welcome home, Pa. It's good to have you back."
"It's good to be back," Will said. He shook Jacob's hand and pulled his son in close for a hug. "And it's especially nice to see you. You've kept the place?"
"Best I could, Pa."
"Then I'm sure everything will be perfect. I see that the twins got into another scrape."
"Ah, just a little one," Jacob said. "But I guess some things were said and Jess waded right in.
You know how he is, and Josh had no choice but to back him up, but you know what, Pa?
They take good care of those Appaloosas.
I've been keeping an eye on them, and they curry them and feed and water them just like they're supposed to, and they keep the barns clean too. They never leave work for me or Alfa."
"That's good to hear," Will said. He knew Jacob loved the twins like he did, and so he'd found something good to say about them.
Isum came off the train and headed straight for his son.
James was holding both animals, and gave his father the reins to his own gelding.
Isum took the reins and threw his arm around his son, then he held him out at arm's length.
"I swear you've filled out just since I been gone.
You're already taller'm I am. Soon you'll be bigger. Won't be long till you can outwork me."
"You'll have to slow down a lot for that to happen," he said.
James couldn't wipe the smile off his face. "Mama's good," he said. "She's at the house, and when I was leaving, it smelled like she was cookin' a blackberry pie with one of those sugar crusts you favor."
Isum laughed. "Bless her heart, bless her heart."
Isum mounted his horse, and he and James headed off home. "Let's go see if that blackberry pie is ready for eatin'. If it is, I'm gon' have a big slice the minute I walk in the door, and you've invited to do the same." They put heels to their horses and left the station.
Lupita stood at the edge of the platform. She had her bundle under her arm and was taking in the depot and the town visible beyond it and the surrounding Hill Country with close attention. She was locating herself in a new place, which took some time.
Virginia noticed. She came over to Lupita with Josephine still on her hip and held out her hand. "Come on. Let's get in the buckboard."
"Thank you," she said.
Will took the buckboard lines. Del rode the roan filly, who had the balanced walk of a horse that has been trained correctly, and Del felt the horse under him and let the feeling of riding his own valley's roads come back into his hands.
The Comal River was on their left for a mile and a half.
The water was clear and low over the limestone, a pair of herons in the shallows, the cedar smell of the hills in the warm afternoon.
Carlos rode in front of his father and Del let him take the reins for a while knowing the filly would stick to the road.
When the Coles arrived home, Elena had shown Lupita to the room where she'd stay.
Lupita carried her own bundle to the bedroom and had closed the door, and Elena had taken Carlos through to his room, and Del stood in the kitchen with his hat in his hand, and he looked at the room the way a man looks at a room his own craftsmanship has fashioned, and he'd wondered at times whether he'd ever see it again.
The floorboards were the ones he had laid himself.
He had cut them out of cypress he had bought from a mill on the Guadalupe in the fall of '77, six months after he and Elena had been married, and he had planed them on weekends through the winter and had laid them over three long days in February with Isum and Jacob Fain, who had been ten that winter and who had held nails for the two men and had learned the purpose of all the tools.
The table in the middle of the kitchen was the one Del had built the following spring, of the same cypress, with oak legs salvaged from an old barn that had come down in a storm out past the German settlement. Elena had sanded the top of the table herself over a week of evenings.
Del had said, "I can do that."
"No, no," she'd said. "This is going to be my table, and I enjoy doing the work to make it mine." Then she'd looked up and she and Del had both laughed.
The stove was the one Will had helped him hoist in on a Saturday morning in the summer of '78 when Elena had been pregnant with Carlos and had been unable to do anything but sit on the porch and give instructions.
Del put his hat on the peg by the door.
If it hadn't been dark outside, he would have ridden over his entire acreage, assuring himself that everything was as it should be. Instead, he looked forward to the morning when he'd be up with the chickens and riding the fence line.