Here Today, Gone Tamale by Rebecca Adler Page A

o’clock. Imagine standing in an oven until you’re broiling and your skin flakes off like the skin of a pan-seared tilapia.
    Only cowboys and ranchers venture into the full afternoon sun in Broken Boot, Texas. They pick their battles out here in the Chihuahuan Desert by taking long breaks in the hottest part of the day, which comes in handy if they’ve stayed up too late the night before tipping longnecks at Two Boots.
    A week ago, the AC at Milagro petered out during the late rush, and nine people had to sweat it out. With any luck, they convinced themselves the chile diablo was to blame.
    â€œJosie!”
    I could picture Aunt Linda now, standing at the bottom of the stairs, her image indelibly in my brain just as her energetic voice was scratched into my eardrums. She would be wearing her chestnut hair smoothed into a sleek and serviceable bun at the back of her head with a red flower pinned above her ear. Her hands would be on the hips of her Wranglers, tapping the toe of her Tony Llama boots, a wet, red bandana at her neck. Beautiful, and not to be tangled with.
    â€œComing!”
    â€œI’ll believe it when I see it.” Moments later the garage door rose with a squealing groan. No biscuits and bacon for me.
    Today the sheriff would ask me more questions, and I would be strong with my family behind me. During my shower, I’d wracked my brain. What else could I tell them?
    Hungry and nervous, I slid into the passenger seat of Aunt Linda’s white F150, lowered the visor, and began to apply my mascara in the mirror.
    â€œDid you write your article for the
Bugle
?” my aunt asked in an overly optimistic tone.
    She knew I’d submitted a couple of articles to the
Broken Boot Bugle
, and that they’d rejected both, saying they weren’t
folksy
enough. Then last week, the editor made me an offer I longed to refuse. He wanted me to write an article about Hillary Sloan Rawlings and her new position at the university to prove I could give his readers what they wanted.
    Folksy I could do, but Hillary was an unsavory morsel. At my aunt’s urging, I told him I’d get right on it, as soon as we recovered from the festival.
    Now if I were to cover something interesting like the Texas music scene, I’d be happier than a tornado in a trailer park. Even though Two Boots was located in a small town, it attracted the best musicians in Texas. And Texas music was no longer just for kickers and cowboys. Lots of hot guys played new country, alternative country, country western, countryrock . . . you get the idea. Uncle Eddie had been playing guitar in a country rock band when he met Aunt Linda, so I came by my love of Texas music and hot musicians honestly.
    I slammed the visor shut.
    Most musicians were also no good, unreliable narcissists, who put their careers before their nuptials. Brooks was a slime bucket full of putrid flesh.
    â€œJosie, don’t worry about that weak, silly boy. You’re strong.”
    I jumped in surprise and banged my knee on the dash. “Ow!” Of course, Senora Mari would be in the backseat. Where else would she be? And did I mention she’s a mind reader?
    â€œYou’re a Callahan,” Aunt Linda proclaimed, and I laughed in spite of myself. “Callahans are sturdy stock,” we said in unison. The paternal side of my family had settled in neighboring Cogburn County back in the 1800s, long before running any type of drinking and dancing establishment was considered an honorable profession.
    â€œDid you have a good night’s sleep,
abuelita
?” When she didn’t correct me, I turned around in my seat and found her clutching her rosary beads, her lips moving soundlessly.
    With a shudder, she opened her eyes and pierced me with a bone-snapping stare. “No. I had a visitor in my dreams.”
    As if someone had walked on my grave, I shuddered as well. When Marisol Ramos Martinez said she had a visitor in her