Chapter 12: Under the Table

On the Thursday before the Fourth, the lodge hall smelled of floor wax and charcoal, and I spent the morning setting tables.

Two hundred guests were coming.

Ramiro had asked me to help, and I had said yes before he finished the sentence.

The hall was a single long room with a raftered ceiling and a stone fireplace at one end.

At the other end stood the oldest table in the Rim pack, a slab of black walnut forty feet long.

It sat on trestle legs, with benches on both sides.

The Count book sat on it at every gathering.

The horn would sit beside it tomorrow.

Tammy Kimbrough came in at ten with a box of place cards.

She wore a white sundress, and she smiled at me as if I were a friend.

"Ximena," she said, warmly.

"What a shame about Ardith," she said.

"She'd served us so long."

"She had," I said.

"I'm sure you'll be at the cookout."

"I wouldn't miss it," Tammy said.

Her eyes went to Ramiro, who stood at the far end with a stack of chairs, and then back to me.

"Daddy has a surprise planned for the Fourth," Tammy said.

"There'll be fireworks."

She laid a place card in front of the chair beside Lyle's, and it read SALCIDO.

Then she left.

I stood very still until the door closed.

"She was happy," I said.

"She is afraid," Ramiro said.

"It looks the same on her."

He went back to his chairs, and I went back to the long table, and we worked for another hour without speaking.

One of the benches wobbled.

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