led to his still impeccable physique, a source of pride and shame to Julie. She had always been big. On the arm of her Mexican Adonis, her Adanis, she figured all anyone could see was the disparity between the two of them. She couldn’t see, like Andres did, like her sons did, like everyone did, that she wore every ounce of her weight perfectly—her face was exactly symmetrical save for a beauty mark above her lip on the right side, her hips and thighs would have broken the charcoal pencils of a thousand would-be artists trying to master curves, even her belly with its uniform softness which made Andres crazy when he wrapped his biceps and forearms around it—all of it transcended the oppression of Barbie, drove men who were into bigger women wild, and made men who weren’t see how they might be.
When Andres and Julie were done, sweaty bodies glowing in the strange glow of daylight filtering in through the shades, they lay in bed thinking that life would be like this from now on. After a day at work—him at the shop, her at the library—it would be making love—fucking, if that was the case—at any time, volume, or place in the house they so chose. They were both thinking, though they didn’t say so to each other, that they hadn’t felt like this since they’d played hooky back in school—lied to mom about a stomachache or to dad about menstrual cramps. But now they had no one to lie to. There was no shame in being in bed in the morning like this, only pride. Pride in their boys and pride in themselves for having made them.
Julie got out of bed to shower. Then Andres did. Then they made love again, remembering their resolution to not stifle the moans and grunts and climactic screams that had been building up in them for twenty-three years. After this they took to the shower together, during which she scrubbed his chest and back and he massaged shampoo gently on her scalp. They stood dressing at their respective ends of the bed where their bureaus were. Andres made a playful lunge at her, and she laughed.
“No,” she said. “We’ll be late.”
They took his truck, which he never took anywhere but to the shop or out on a call. He was not only Greenton’s most trustworthy mechanic, he was its one-man roadside assistance. Goyo helped. Every now and then, John did too, as the case demanded it.
They hadn’t even made it to the end of Sigrid when they were greeted by their neighbor Pedro Guerra who gave a shout to the couple and picked up his right hand, ring and middle fingers held down by his thumb.
“Hook ’em,” he shouted, and flashed a two-tooth smile.
Andres managed to wait until he pulled onto Viggie before he burst into laughter. Julie couldn’t hold it that long. Three other cars honked at the Mejias, extending the same greeting. They even saw other people salute friends and neighbors with their index fingers and pinkies. It seemed that the whole of Greenton was going to do this for the next four years, bathed in a sea of burnt orange until the boys graduated and went pro, as was their plan, and a new color was adopted. But pro ball teams didn’t have hand signs like the Longhorns did. Hook ’em just might turn into Greenton’s new hello.
Arn Robison had the fire going, coals nice and grey, grill warmed and ready for whatever flesh needed cooking. Andres and Julie walked straight to the Robison backyard to hug Arn and Angie. She was still as beautiful as she was when she met Arn. That made the couple a funny sight because Arn had lost most of his hair and gained quite a bit of weight in the interceding years.
The Mejias were always told not to bring anything but appetites to the Robison house. After so many dinners with them, they were finally comfortable in complying with the familiar directive. A fruit tray had been set out. When the Mejias arrived, Angie ran inside and returned with a tray holding four big New York strips.
“This is too much,” Julie said, as she often did at the Robison’s get-togethers.
“Who can begrudge us an indulgence on such a great day?” Arn looked up. But he was not talking about the weather, which was prefect by Greenton standards, the dry heat not so bad under the shade of a tree or, as in the Robison’s case, a deck covering. Andres looked at Julie and they smiled their secret at each other. No one could.
“And in that spirit,” Arn said, “a toast.”
He held out a glass of bourbon to Andres while Angie poured a couple of margaritas in stemware waiting on the table. They raised their glasses, the four of them, and looked at each other as though they’d all just rolled out of bed after an afternoon of intimacy.
“To our boys,” Angie said.
“To our Johns,” Julie added.
“To our Johns,” they all said.
They had always gotten on this well, despite their difference in age. The Robisons had their John late in life, after having been told they never would. Though the Mejias were in their early forties and the Robisons were well into their sixties, they were friends because their boys were friends, best friends. Well before Araceli sat down to dinner with the Mejias, they’d had John Robison over as a guest at countless dinners. They were not special dinners. The Mejias rarely strayed from their standard foods—fideo and meat, tacos and chalupas, easy ricotta-free lasagna, beef and, more rarely, chicken enchiladas. But they didn’t have to be special. They were not about anything more than two friends hanging together outside of school, the diamond and the huddle.
The Robisons, on their part, seemed to regard the Mejias—as some people do with their friends who are more than two decades their junior—as younger siblings and as children of their own. The Mejias had felt a sting of embarrassment when they went to the first of their dinners with the Robisons. They knew the Robisons were well off—Arn was the youngest grandchild and sole remaining Greentonite of Samuel and Wilhelmina Robison, who’d made a small fortune on a ranch outside of town. Arn had inherited money from them. He’d worked hard all his life as a horse doctor and hit big on some investments. But the Mejias weren’t prepared for the kind of food the Robisons were used to.
That first meal together, the Robisons served blackened catfish, which Julie thought was too fancy for her taste. Over a decade of dinners, though, the Mejias accepted that there would be the occasional lobster tail or swordfish or prime rib or hundred-dollar bottle of bourbon.
On that night—the night after the Johns headed to Austin—Arn grilled the steaks and served twice-baked potatoes he’d made earlier and left warming in the oven. The men switched to beers, the women to margaritas, with an occasional shot of the hard stuff in between. Angie brought out a stereo and CDs and looked for whatever stations could be caught from Corpus and Laredo playing the country and conjunto music that they all knew and loved, even Arn. The sun was flirting with the horizon, day with night, when the phone rang.
“They’re probably already there,” Angie said before she got up from the table. She didn’t want John’s first call home to go unanswered so she made to run to get it but slowed her pace when the tequila and bourbon hit her. She left Arn and the Mejias waiting at the table, their talk quieted in the hope that they could soon talk to their sons who were on the other end of the line.
Then they heard Angie scream.
On the stereo, George Strait sang that he would be in Amarillo by morning.
Chon’s first thought—right after Henry brought him the news, picked up the car keys and ran around the side of The Pachanga to get in the Dodge-nasty—was that the Johns death was an act of God, given to him as a personal blessing because he was a good Catholic boy who had completed all of his sacraments and said grace before every meal. He was too ashamed to ever share that thought with anyone though, not with Henry or his mother or even Araceli if she ever asked. He would never tell a soul.
The thought died quickly anyway, almost as soon as it had come to him. It was replaced with the
