Chapter 8: A Hundred and Twelve

By two on Sunday afternoon the thermometer outside my aunt's kitchen read one hundred and twelve, and the swamp cooler in the window was losing.

Ramiro sat at our table with sweat running into his collar, eating his fourth tamale.

He was a wolf from the Rim, used to cold springs and pine shade, and he looked miserable.

"You may take your jacket off," my aunt told him.

She was sixty, tall and thin and quick, and she had decided in the first five minutes that she liked him.

"It is a hundred and twelve."

"Thank you, señora," he said.

He took off the jacket and folded it carefully on his knee.

"Is it always this hot?"

"Eight months of the year," my cousin said, helping himself to another tamal.

"The Rim thinks the desert is a punishment," he said.

"We think the Rim is a rumor."

My father laughed from the head of the table, a short real laugh that I had not heard since the branding.

He had been quiet for two weeks.

He had stood on his own porch at night looking at the wells.

He had not said a word to me about the notice on the lodge door.

My cousin told the story of the javelina for the fourth time, with new details.

By now the elder had struck Tammy with her cane, the line had cheered, and the animal had winked.

"It did not wink," I said.

"It winked," my cousin said, "in my heart."

Ramiro put his hand over his mouth, and his shoulders shook.

I watched the sunlight lie across his forearm, the long muscle and the tape on his palm.

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