Chapter 1
MaryAnn Callahan, neé Gonzalez, sat on the wooden bench of the buckboard, her ramrod-straight spine keeping her from swaying into her new husband no matter how much the prairie dog holes of Eastern Kansas tried to send her his way.
They’d spoken little since the simple ceremony at Our Lady of Mount Carmel, the Mexican church in Kansas City that her father had paid for with two dollars a month extracted from his paycheck.
When some of the Mexican railroad workers had complained of this high-handed tithe by their boss, a devout Catholic, he’d said it was better spent on the Lord than whatever foolishness they would have wasted it on.
Marrying at Our Lady of Mount Carmel, getting her father’s money’s worth, was the only demand she’d made of her new husband.
Brody Callahan said he didn’t care where they were married.
Having lost his last two young wives in childbirth, his only demands were for “an old wife with some life in her.” It’d been a year since MaryAnn had to change the cloths in her drawers; Mr. Callahan wouldn’t have to worry about getting ninos on her.
After the service, MaryAnn had kissed her father’s grizzled cheek, rubbed her mother’s curved back, and stepped up onto the buckboard.
The money she could send them from her allowance—another arrangement she’d made with Mr. Callahan when he’d seen her tending the back window of the Smokehouse Café, off limits to the Mexicans except for takeout—would be more valuable than the help she could provide them as their only never-married daughter.
As the horses clip-clopped into the yard in front of a simple one-story farmhouse and a large barn, MaryAnn’s stiff spine hid her quaking nerves.
The house was well maintained with newly painted green shutters closed against the heat.
She wondered which shutters hid her new bedroom.
In an hour, the sun would slip below the endless horizon, and then it would be night.
Two young men sauntered out onto the porch.
“That’s Adam,” said Mr. Callahan, the name he told her to call him.
Mr. Callahan talked more to his horses than he did to her on the long dusty ride.
Adam, a handsome boy of about sixteen, leaned against the rail, smiled, and nodded without removing his hat.
MaryAnn was conscious of what her straight spine did to her small breasts.
“That one there’s Carl.” Carl, older, with shoulders like a bull, used a pick on his teeth and stared through her with dark eyes.
More adult sons and daughters, all children of Mr. Callahan and his first, long-gone wife, were scattered through the area.
“And there yonder is the other one,” Mr. Callahan said, pointing toward the setting sun.
MaryAnn had to squint against the ball of light at the horizon.
A silhouette came into view: cowboy hat, broad shoulders, broad hips, quick moving legs.
Huge breasts. MaryAnn was startled when the silhouette resolved into the shape of a women in overalls; the corn stalks towering over her made her look shorter than she already was.
Trotting behind her in the dust cloud sent up by those ground-chewing legs was a good-sized dog and, of all things, a cat, its tail tall and perky.
The woman hesitated when she noticed the wagon, then slowed as she came into the yard, out of the sun.
The woman wore a man’s big shirt over her magnificent breasts, overalls stretched over her thick thighs, and cowboy boots.
She took off her hat as she walked toward the buckboard and a long braid of thick and fuzzy auburn hair held by a leather tie came tumbling out.
She had freckles over her pert nose and decades of laugh lines next to the greenest green eyes MaryAnn had ever seen.
The woman stopped next to the wagon. “Ma’am,” she said with a nod, husky and cautious like a whisper in the dark. Her thin lips, rosy and as soft as the narrow petal of a daisy, gave away nothing as she looked up at MaryAnn.
MaryAnn still had dazzles in her eyes.
“This here’s my sister,” Mr. Callahan said. “Roslynn, meet the new wife, MaryAnn.”
Roslynn said her name—“MaryAnn”—and it had never sounded so sweet.
The next morning, in the light of a candle, MaryAnn rushed to make the bed of the only bedroom she’d ever slept in alone. To her surprise and delight, it was to be her own bedroom.
“Pretty it up as you like,” her husband had said last night as he’d left it, five minutes after he’d come in.
She could kick herself for the lifetime of fuss she’d made—at least in her heart and head—over an act that had taken no more than five minutes.
It’d been uncomfortable, a little painful even.
Mr. Callahan’s thick head of hair might be all white, but he was a burly man.
And “La Flaca” is what they called MaryAnn in la colonia.
The skinny one. At one point, she’d thought there was no way that fit there; everything her primas and sisters and tías giggled about had to be a lie.
But then she’d thought of Roslynn. After MaryAnn had washed her face and hands and beat the dust out of her second-best dress, they’d all sat for a cold dinner of fried chicken, sliced tomatoes, and biscuits.
The church ladies had been sending over food since the death of Mr. Callahan’s third wife and too-soon child a month ago.
The meal was notable for its silence. MaryAnn was used to saying little at her family’s lively table—unmarried and childless, nobody ever thought she had anything worth adding—but this time she was glad to be at a table that didn’t require her to talk.
All of her attention was sucked away by the woman who sat across from her.
When Roslynn gave her nephew Adam an audible kick under the table, and he'd finally dropped his gaze from the front of MaryAnn’s dress, MaryAnn had met Roslynn’s green eyes—the color of Coke bottles, the color of the grass Jesus dragged his cross through in the church window—and bobbed a grateful nod as Roslynn bit into a chicken leg.
Last night, in the dark, she thought of Roslynn’s pink lips and neat white teeth and Mr. Callahan slipped right in.
“That’s done,” Mr. Callahan said when he stood and refastened his pants. “This here room is yours. Pretty it up as you like.”
She planned to unpack her few things after she’d done her morning chores and gotten breakfast on the table and seen how Roslynn’s auburn hair looked in the sunrise.
Hustling out to the kitchen, she lit the lanterns and stove, then nibbled her lower lip as she stared at the wrapped bread in the larder.
She could do better than day-old bread. But would Mr. Callahan and his sons like it?
Would Roslynn? Thinking she had this one chance to see if that pert nose wrinkled up in distaste or pleasure, MaryAnn pulled out the tin of flour.
Making tortillas was MaryAnn’s morning prayers.
She knew the right amounts of flour, lard, and water by eye and feel, and fell into a meditative contemplation as she worked the masa into a satin-like dough, wrist deep in warmth and good will toward all of God’s children.
Pinching off a handful of dough to roll into a ball, MaryAnn turned when she heard the screen door squeal open.
The dog and cat come trotting in as Roslynn stood in the doorway with a wire basket.
“Uh…pardon,” Roslynn said, staying put by the door. “I didn’t think to ask last night how you feel about them in the house. I can leave ‘em outside.”
MaryAnn gave a small smile, her heart beating like she was running. “It’s your home. You should continue on as you like.”
Roslynn slowly closed the screen door. “My brother’s last two wives weren’t of that opinion.”
MaryAnn’s eyes dropped to the dough she was rolling in her hand. “Well, this is my first morning as a wife, so I’m probably doing it wrong.”
She could hear the creak of Roslynn moving across the floorboards towards her. She was near to overworking the dough.
“Looks like you’re doing just fine to me,” Roslynn murmured, just steps away. The dog, medium-sized, with gold-and-black hair, a lolling tongue, and fine, meat-ripping teeth, sniffed at MaryAnn’s feet. “I wipe the animals down real good before I let them inside.”
MaryAnn put the dough ball in a growing collection of them under a towel in a bowl. “Thank you for the consideration,” she all but whispered.
She pinched off more masa, grateful her hands were steady when her nerves were not.
“Those look pretty,” Roslynn said, close.
MaryAnn looked up. Roslynn was a step away. Her freckled face was clean; peaches and cream dotted with cinnamon. Her collar and cuffs were wet. Her hair was newly scraped back into a long ponytail that looked like a flicker of flame in the stove.
Her eyes were on MaryAnn’s hands. MaryAnn was suddenly aware of the sensitivity of her palms, the dexterity of her fingers, the contrast of her skin against the soft, pale dough.
She felt like she’d eaten a tortilla whole, hot, and dripping with butter.
“I just thought…” She mumbled. “I thought perhaps…”
“What a treat,” Roslynn said, still low, in a mesmerized voice. Then she looked up and met MaryAnn’s eyes. She pulled her ponytail over her shoulder and her beautiful hair fanned over her breast. “We’re very lucky you’re here.”
MaryAnn stared helplessly back, the only sound the crackle of the wood in the stove and the sniffing of the dog as he hunted for a dropped morsel.
A neigh in the yard startled her. The others were close.
Roslynn set the basket of eggs on the counter then walked away without a word, the floorboards trembling beneath her boots.