Chapter 6: Sunday Table

Eloy's mother set a place for me at her right hand, and I knew what that meant before I sat down.

The hacienda had walls three feet thick and a ceiling of black beams.

I had watched the road behind us the whole way up, and the white SUV had not followed.

It also had a table that could seat twenty and tonight seated three.

Beatriz Armijo sat at the head in a black cardigan with her silver hair pinned up.

Eloy sat two chairs down from me.

He had chosen that chair on purpose.

Two chairs down was the one place where nobody would think anything of it.

I thought about nothing else.

"My son tells me you fly my husband's balloon," Beatriz said.

She spoke slowly, in an English with Spanish under it.

"Yes, ma'am," I said. "Mr. Armijo bought it for my father."

"Epifanio loved your father."

"My father used to say Mr. Armijo told him a red chile would make people look up and smile."

"He said that?" Beatriz's mouth moved. "To me he said a chile was a chile."

Eloy laughed, and his mother looked at him, and for a moment she looked ten years younger.

The posole was good.

The red chile in it was Armijo chile, and I said so, and she nodded once.

"And your husband's people?" Beatriz asked. "Where is he from?"

"Los Ranchos, ma'am. Right here," I said.

"I didn't know him," Beatriz said.

"His mother cleaned houses in the valley. For a good family, she told him. She never said which."

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