The Gift of Women by George McWhirter Page A

the highway.
    Fausto wants to know why Don Mateo doesn’t use his mangy horse. Except Fausto would have to be there to shove him into the saddle. His uncle doesn’t let him add-on because he knows Fausto would have no call to be here at his beck and call any more, ready to heave him over his shoulder.
    â€œUncle, please, let me add-on.”
    The fifth mug gavels the table as Don Mateo lands it with relish. “Quetzalcoatl will be pleased. Add-on as much as you please in his praise.”
    â€œJesus,” says Fausto, “you don’t hear, do you, Tío Mateo!”
    â€œWhat don’t I hear?”
    Fausto stomps over to the hatch and buys himself the biggest mug of pulque he can get and doesn’t bring a matching one for Don Mateo.
    â€œTo the god whoever,” says Fausto and drinks it, then goes for another, which goes down just as brazenly in front of his uncle. Then, Fausto stands and declares, “The apantle goes into a river that ends up in a lake. Didn’t you ever hear that in school?”
    â€œI never went to school, as you know, and I hear what the apantle tells me. The apantle tells me it goes all the way to the sea with its friends.
    â€œNo, it does not.”
    Don Mateo stands, reaches across the table and slaps Fausto across the face.
    Fausto jumps up and before he knows what he has done, he has picked up his machete and swept the ear from the side of Don Mateo’s head.
    â€œSee what you hear now!”
    He has just come out with a bitter oxymoron, but Fausto is much to blame for the long, long wait and his wrath because, a while ago, Fausto had a scheme for paying Don Mateo for his add-on.
    Fausto’s brother-in-law, Fidel, nearly drowned in the apantle when he was baptized by the pastor from the Baptist church. Fidel has land. The near-drowning to save his soul didn’t stop Fidel from signing up for Bible College, so he could do unto others as the pastor had done to him.
    Fidel owned one big field in particular, which Fausto could rent for a song or a hymn, which he practises with his brother-in-law, for when he fulfilled a promise to be the first soul Fidel will dunk in the apantle and save for Jesus. These watery conversions take place close by the Baptist church, shortly after the water gushes out of the aqueduct, hence the perilous footing for the baptizer and the about-to-be baptized.
    Don Mateo liked the story of Fidel very, very much.
    â€œI’d die to be born again as a boy in the apantle .”
    â€œYou’d be born again as a Baptist, Tío Mateo, but I have a better way for us to follow Fidel, by planting onions and tomatoes in his big field. That’s where Fidel made his money.”
    â€œTell me more, and tell me why your brother-in-law, Fidel, doesn’t want to make that money anymore.”
    â€œHe will collect it by the bucketful when he is a pastor. I have seen it with my own eyes, big plastic buckets full of pesos every Sunday.”
    â€œSo, how do we find the time to work Fidel’s field?”
    â€œWe don’t cut cane for one planting and plant onions in Fidel’s field instead. The money we make will pay you for the use of your land and cover the cost of the add-on for my tiny wee house. The older kids can’t bear listening to us at night, eating, arguing, and you know what in the same room.”
    â€œVery well,” said Don Mateo, but he should have known better.
    The rain baptized that field continually in the season when there was supposed to be no rain. Fidel had regular irrigation from the apantle that ran on his side of town, all the water he needed and all the sunshine through the dry season. But that accursed apantle ran past the Barrio Rojo , then under the Pan American, to Fidel’s field. It slunk between the dingy whore-huts, where the harlots of Cuautla set up business after pious President Miguel de la Madrid tossed them out of their lovely, well-lit, lively, old street