Rio Grande Wedding by Ruth Wind Page B

others. He took pride in his ability to manage his life and his world, whatever that entailed, but this went beyond his experiences. He did not fall to illness or weakness. He’d once worked an entire day with a broken wrist and never minded it.
    Gritting his teeth, he raised his head. This would not defeat him, either. His gaze caught on the machine that had made coffee this morning. Coffee might clear his head. Would the woman mind? He thought of her solicitousness and thought she would not. He moved, plodding but sure, to examine it. There was a button to turn it on, but he did not see where to put the water. Or the coffee. He glared at it.
    But he could make coffee another way. He remembered seeing her put the can in the cupboard by the stove. He put it on the counter, and then, biting his lip as he reached, moved things around. Brown sugar. Cinnamon. At first he was disappointed, only finding the ground kind, but he moved a box of cornstarch and spied a glass bottle of stick cinnamon.
    Excellent.
    It had taken him a solid five minutes to do that much, but the act made him feel stronger. From beneath the counter, he took a saucepan and limped to the sink to measure water into it. The next step was more difficult—carrying the water to the stove without spilling it. He splashed a few drops over the edge of the pan, but managed to get it to the stove and turn it on.
    Then he settled on a stool close by the stove and waited for the boiling, for the steps that would make coffee the way he needed it this morning. He gazed out the window and hoped his saint would come back in time to share a little with him. He hoped she would bring news of Josefina.
    Staring out at the blue and dun landscape, he imagined he could see her, his bright, smart niece. He chose to imagine her in a sunny place, calm and thoughtful. A little lonely, but not afraid. He willed her to remember all the things they had practiced for just such an emergency, and he suddenly realized what a foolish, foolish chance he had taken.
    It had to end. It was becoming too dangerous, and would grow worse as she took on the contours of a woman’s body—and not only when there were raids. The camps were full of young men, away from their homes and the people who knew them. They were lonely. Josefina would tempt them—and then there would be real trouble.
    With a breathy exclamation, he shook his head. This was no life for a child. No life for him. He ached with homesickness, ached to go back to the simple farmer’s life he’d known before his sister’s death. And yet, when he spoke to his uncle rarely, it was plain that life in Mexico was no better. The big farms were eating up the little ones, making it harder and harder to make a living from the land. And there were so many people displaced from that land now that the cities were overcrowded, wages were poor, the neighborhoods where a man could afford to house a family too dangerous. Though everyone said it was different in America, he saw some of the same things here. It was just easier to be poor with three dollars an hour, rather than the three dollars a day he could get for the same work at home.
    He did not know what the answer was. It weighed on him every day, thinking of it
    His head ached with the questions, and he put them aside for today. Today, he had to let himself heal. Today, he hoped to find Josefina. When she was found, then he could decide what to do.

Chapter 4
    M olly made a few more stops before she returned home, avoiding her usual haunts in hopes of sidestepping anyone who’d ask about her “sore throat.” She was lucky. The market was not busy, and she nabbed a few items to tide them over till morning, then got to her car without having to speak to hardly anyone.
    When she unlocked the door at her house, an aroma of freshly brewed coffee filled her nose, so rich it made her nearly light-headed. Carrying the bag of groceries into the kitchen, she made a