the store and bought a candy bar. When he unwrapped it, he found a fat, white worm curled up in the chocolate. He took the candy bar to school and showed it to all the other kids. We stayed away from that dirty store.
If kids wouldn’t even go into the store, you can bet adults didn’t go there, so that’s how we knew Cole Cash didn’t make money from the store. We knew he made it by renting houses. He would buy up any old, tumbled-down house that was offered for sale. He’d rent those houses to families that were poor and couldn’t afford anything nicer. Cole Cash’s houses were all across the tracks.
COLE CASH was a sharp operator. He made a lot of money renting houses across the tracks. But he made a big mistake on one house he bought. No one had lived in that old house for a long time—and for a reason. You could ask anyone in that part of town about the house and they would tell you, “Es una casa embrujada. Hay un ánima que anda penando en esa casa.” They would tell you it was haunted, that there was a soul suffering in that house.
But Cole Cash didn’t ask why the house had been empty for so long and so no one told him. Or maybe they did and he just didn’t believe in such things.
Whatever the case, he bought that old house. All he did was hire old Louie Samaniego to slap a coat of white paint on the outside of the house, and then he tried to rent it out to some family.
No one would take the house. He started lowering and lowering the rent he was asking, but still no one wanted it. When the neighbors saw the FOR RENT sign in the front yard, they just shook their heads and said to one another, “Ni dada querría vivir en esa casa. I wouldn’t want to live in that house even if it was given to me for free.”
And free rent is exactly the offer Cole Cash made. He tacked a little card to the stick that held up the FOR RENT sign. It said: Seis meses gratis…Llama a 4948. Six Months for Free…Call 4948. And he hung up notices at a few other strategic places around town, like the pool hall and the barber shop.
The notices said that if a family would sign a lease for one year and move into the old house, he would give them the first six months rent free. He probably figured that as soon as a family started to live in the house, all the talk in the neighborhood about souls and spirits and ghosts—ánimas, espíritus, fantasmas—would just sort of dry up and disappear.
But still no one would take the house. When they said they didn’t even want it for free, they meant it.
IT BEGAN to look like Cole Cash was never going to find a renter for that old house, but then a man named Frank Padilla moved to town. Frank was the uncle of my friend Chino Gutiérrez. Chino’s real name was Refugio, but when your name’s that long, you’re bound to end up with a nickname.
Refugio’s head was covered with black curls and even his own family called him Chino, because chino was what everyone called curly hair—pelo chino.
Chino told me his Uncle Frank had had a lot of bad luck in his life. He had a wife and two daughters and a good job in the mines up north, but then one day he came home from work and his wife was gone—not just gone from the house, but really gone, gone from town, gone from his life. She left him to raise his two daughters all by himself. And then he came down with some strange sickness and couldn’t work for a long time. He lost his job in the mine in the town up north, so he moved to our little town because he wanted to start life all over again.
When Frank and his two daughters first moved to town they lived with my friend Chino and his family. But Frank got busy right away, looking for a job and for a house he could afford to rent. Chino’s dad told him sort of half jokingly about the offer Cole Cash was making, and Frank was interested. “Six months for free!” he said. “Now, that’s rent I can afford to pay.”
Chino’s Uncle Frank went and talked to Cole Cash at the store and he came back saying he was going to move into the old house. Everyone tried to talk him out of it.
Chino’s mom, who was Frank’s sister, told him, “Don’t take your daughters to live in that house. Everyone knows that something terrible must have happened there—a murder, or even worse. Nobody’s been able to stay there in that house for as long as anyone can remember. People have tried, and after one night, two at the most, they get out of there! They say one lady even went crazy after she spent a night there. And the neighbors talk about screams in the night and strange lights glowing in the house. You can’t make the girls live in a house like that.”
Chino’s grandma lived there with his family and she was on her daughter’s side. “Hay casas así en México. He conocido muchas,” she said, shaking her head. “I’ve known a lot of houses like that in Mexico. They’re dangerous. No lleves a mis nietas a vivir en esa casa.”
Frank just smiled at his sister and his mother. “That’s all superstition,” he told them. “Next you’ll be saying that la mano peluda will reach in through the window and get the girls, or that the Devil’s going to want to dance with them at the Candilejas Club on Saturday night. I love my daughters and I wouldn’t put them in a dangerous situation. You’ll see. All the talk about the house is nonsense. I’m going to rent it.”
FRANK PADILLA’S DAUGHTERS hadn’t said anything during the discussion about the house. They probably didn’t want to cause their dad any more trouble than he had on his hands already. But they were pretty upset about the idea of moving into a house like that.
Finally, the evening after Frank signed the year’s lease on the house, his younger daughter, Beatriz, broke down and told him, “Dad, I’m scared. I’m scared by what people say about that house. I don’t want to move in there.” Beatriz was only 10 years old.
Frank hugged her. “Oh,” he said, “your auntie and your abuelita have got you all upset.” He turned to his older daughter. “What about you, Elena?” he asked.
Elena was 14 and she tried to appear in control. She shrugged. “I guess I’m a little nervous,” she said.
“Let me think about it,” their dad told them, and Frank thought about it all evening.
“Listen,” he told the girls when he woke them up the next morning, “I know your tía and your abuelita have got you all scared about the house we’re going to move into. There’s no reason for it, but I don’t
