Born Under The Lone Star

Memories of her started to flow through him as soon as he’d caught sight of a windmill on the highway. Some sweet, some disturbing.

Like the sound of her mother’s voice when she answered the phone the first time he called their farmhouse.

“It’s some boy,” he’d overheard the woman say in a hateful tone. It was the first indicator he had that Markie’s childhood had been far from gentle.

He’d heard Markie say it was probably something to do with the campaign. When she’d picked up the phone, she’d offered a careful “Yes?” and Justin got the impression the mother was listening. He could hear dishes clanking in the background.

Man! Markie’s voice on the phone! Clear and sweet and sending tightening sensations through his core. Right then, he’d suspected he was falling in love with her.

He’d asked her if he could come out to the farm and pick her up and take her into town for a Coke. Later she’d told him her parents would chain her to the bed before they’d let her date a college guy. And they’d make her stop volunteering in campaigns if they knew she was meeting older guys doing it. She told him that wasn’t the reason she volunteered—to meet cute guys—but it sure didn’t hurt! Then she’d gone on to say the boys that do stuff like that are head and shoulders above the stupid jocks at Five Points High, but she never dreamed one would actually call her. How unsophisticated she’d been back then. How innocent.

He’d watched her that first night when they were stuffing envelopes, being so nice to the old ladies in tennis shoes. He got up and moved his stack of fliers and envelopes to her card table. The old ladies smiled to themselves, but he hadn’t cared.

Some lady named Fran did all the talking, so they didn’t get a chance to say much. But her eyes. Oh, my, her eyes! Every time he looked up, he felt like he was looking into them for the very first time. In all these years he hadn’t forgotten how they’d thrilled him. Blue as the Hill Country sky. Sparkling with intelligence. He’d give anything to look into those eyes again.

“I’m not allowed to go out on school nights,” she’d said. “And besides, I have choir practice tonight.” It was a code to avert the shrill mother, one that he caught onto immediately.

“Where?” he’d said.

“Old St. Michael’s.”

“That tall old brick church that’s set back off Dumas Street?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Can I come and listen in?” He’d sit in the back of a church on a handful of thumbtacks if he had to.

“Uh, yeah.” She hadn’t sounded too sure.

“What time?”

“Uh, seven.”

“I’ll stay in the back. I don’t want to disrupt your choir practice. I just want to look at you,” he’d said, bold as you please.

He’d looked at her, all right. And he remembered, to this very day, how beautiful she was. So many memories. All of them revolving around Markie McBride.

The divided highway narrowed as it became Main Street. The town looked about the same to Justin, spruced up a bit, maybe, because of a recent holiday or parade or whatever. The old diner, the Hungry Aggie, was still tucked in between the bank and the optician’s office on Main Street.

He could see the steeple of the church where Markie had sung in the choir off in the distance. He turned the car down a side street, headed there. The priest had called him on his cell phone while Justin was out riding the fence line. Lorn Hix, the foreman out on the Kilgore, had given the priest the number. A girl, the priest said. All alone. Being held in the municipal jail. At least she had known to make her one phone call to the local Catholic church. Could Justin help? the padre asked. The truth was, Justin was buzzing with excitement at having his first case, his first real rescue.

Justin parked and went inside the small limestone jailhouse that crouched beside the small limestone fire station.

“She’s another one of those illegals, probably dumped by coyotes,” the guard tossed the words over his shoulder with no small amount of contempt as he led Justin to a back room. “I’m glad the priest called you. I don’t have the space or the time for these people.”

“We call them undocumented immigrants.” Justin laid some emphasis on the word undocumented, but he doubted this man would appreciate the distinction. “And she won’t be that way for long.” That was the reason he had started the Light at Five Points, known among Mexican crossers simply as La Luz, the Light. As he and his very bare-bones staff often told the desperate crossers, You’re an undocumented alien now, but not for long. We will help you get your citizenship. We will help you learn English. We will help you find a job. We will help. It had become Justin’s mantra.

“Stinkin’ coyotes,” the guard said. “Getting a girl this far into Texas and dumping her. Bet they took all her money and, you know, probably did some other things to her. But I have no choice but to pick up these illegals when the store managers call. I did get her name out of her. Aurelia Garcia. Stinkin’ coyotes.”

Justin would never say it to a guy in local law enforcement like this one, but in Justin’s mind the young men who devolved into coyotes were victims of sorts, as well. They were bad hombres, to be sure. Living a subterranean life that fed off of the human bondage and desperation of their own people. But in the beginning most of them had been lured away from all that was wholesome or sacred in their culture by something that only those crushed under the weight of poverty could fully understand.

Money. Lots of money, and all that it represented. A coyote could get as much as two thousand dollars a head for moving crossers north under cover of darkness. A smart one could make nine or ten thousand dollars a day, easily. Justin knew how it happened. He just didn’t know how to stop it. He didn’t know how to save girls like this one or boys like the Morales brothers who had shown up out on the Kilgore last week, looking for ranch jobs, looking for food. But he was determined to try.

The deputy brought a tiny girl up out of the holding cell. She had straight black hair, nearly to her waist, huge eyes, nearly as black, frozen wide in terror. Despite a filthy face and clothes, her beauty still shone. In the few pictures Justin had seen of his mother, she looked like this. Fragile and beautiful.

When she hesitated at the sight of Justin, the guard pulled her forward by the wrist as if she were a child. And she could have easily passed for one, in the States. She couldn’t have been more than five feet, not an ounce over a hundred pounds. She eyed the men with the kind of wary silence that spoke of mistrust from past abuses.

In English, Justin convinced the guard to let him speak to her in private. In Spanish, he told her not to worry and guided her over to a bench. After they sat down, he took off his Stetson. “Aurelia, I’m Justin Kilgore,” he said in Spanish, “and I’m from a place called the Light at Five Points—”

“Ay, La Luz!” the girl cried, clasping her tiny hands together. “I find you! Take me with you! Padre Gusto, he told me about you! It’s a miracle how I find you!” She made the sign of the cross on herself. “A miracle!”

Justin gave her the quiet sign. He didn’t want the local cops to think he was running some kind of underground network. “Father Augustus?” he said quietly. This was the name of his aging friend in Jalisco. A renegade Roman Catholic priest who encouraged the natives in Jalisco and the surrounding areas to blend their native culture with Christian spirituality. Father Gus’s favorite hobby was roaring around on his motorcycle and dispensing condoms to those who needed better sense.

“Sí. He said if I can make it to the Light at Five Points, I would be safe. Please.” Her eyes pleaded. “I think Julio is already there.”

“Julio?” That was the name of the youngest of the Morales brothers. A strong, quiet young man, about eighteen or nineteen, Justin would guess.

“Sí. My man. We are getting married.”

Which might further explain why the Morales brothers had urged him to hurry into town for her. Well, he’d do his best. “We have to be careful here. You were caught shoplifting at the 7-Eleven.”

“Sí. Please.” Aurelia continued to beg. “I’ll cook for you. I am a fine, fine cook. My whole village says so.”

“Wait here. Do not—” he pointed a warning finger at the girl “—run.”

Justin went back to the guard.

“She was hungry. It was only a candy bar. Do you honestly think sending these poor people to jail helps?”

“Nah,” the guard scoffed. “But you and I know about ninety percent of them are out to beat the system. They keep going around in the same old ruts, generation after generation. We can’t let them overrun us, either.”

Justin knew about the ruts, the patterns, the traps. Border crossers knew one another, ran in groups. Whole families, extended families, came to the States in stages. A father or a grandfather would go north and make his way, then call for the others. This process took years, sometimes spanning several generations.

“Then will this help pay this girl’s expenses or her fines or whatever so I can get her out of here?” Justin had carefully folded the hundred-dollar bill so that the numerals showed.

Bribes. Common as the Texas limestone beneath their feet.

The guard peered off into the cells beyond, past Justin’s shoulder, obviously looking at Aurelia, who sat hunched on the bench. He took the money.

“You’re wasting your money, Mr. Kilgore,” he said as he stuffed it in his pocket. “You know this kind of shit always ends badly. These people would be better off never leaving their villages. We should just press charges and send her back.”

Justin thought Father Augustus might surely agree. The priest felt the contaminating influence of El Norte was ruining the simple life of the villages. But how did you convince the young people of that? Once they had seen the big TVs and the big cars and the fancy clothes? How could you send a girl back south who had journeyed more than a hundred miles inside the border through God-knows-what to meet up with the love of her life?

Back out on the highway, Justin didn’t stop in town. There was no need. He had plenty of gas and the girl was skittish, being in the cab alone with him. She hugged the passenger door like a frightened kitten. Justin was relaxed in the seat but tried to keep his six-foot frame squarely on his side. No need to spook her. In Spanish he said, “You’ll be all right now.”

“Sí,” she said, but he could tell she didn’t quite believe him. Though it was another fifteen miles out to the ranch, he was anxious to get her to Julio. So when the highway opened up outside of town, he set his old pickup’s engine to thrumming. They might not encounter another car for miles now. One could put the pedal to the metal on these Texas highways with some impunity.

As the truck gained speed, the girl looked more and more frightened, yet more and more excited, as well. No doubt she was anticipating seeing her true love. Justin tried to remember how that felt. Somewhere deep inside him there was a spark of the love he’d once cherished for Markie McBride. But out of sheer emotional survival he had quelled those feelings long ago.

He glanced at Aurelia. How had she made it? he wanted to ask her. She had mentioned the sign of the Five Points.

“Did Julio send you a star?” Justin asked her in Spanish. He wanted to know if word of his organization had begun to spread yet among the crossers. He hoped so.

“Sí.” The girl slashed a quick star in the air with an index finger.

The Five Points of the Lone Star. The signal that a crosser had made it as far as the Texas town where five highways converged in a radiating pattern. Crossers sometimes sent a Lone Star home to their relatives in Mexico in one form or another—a trinket, a postcard, a pattern stitched on cloth.

Justin had chosen Five Points as his location partly for that reason. Once they got that far, crossers felt safe enough to rest before fleeing in five directions to hide in the caves and canyons and remote ranches of the Hill Country. If he could get to them at that stopping place, he felt he had a chance to make a difference, a chance to interrupt the cycle.

Five Points.

Outside the truck window, the country Justin had loved since he was a boy rolled by. Evening was coming on and the dark hills undulated endlessly against the purple sky.

When they pulled into the ranch drive, Aurelia spotted Julio. He was high up on a two-story scaffolding, repairing some crumbling limestone on a corner of the immense Kilgore ranch house. Justin had been pleased to learn that the Morales brothers were local Maya stonemasons in their home village, as skilled as their ancient counterparts. The renovations they had accomplished on the aging ranch house were nothing short of art. Even in its current state of decay, the house was an architectural monument of symmetry and well-crafted stonework. Constructed more than a hundred years ago by one of Justin’s Kilgore forebears, the place had a Romanesque simplicity that Justin loved. Rows of limestone pillars defined the first-story veranda. It would take plenty of fresh limestone to restore it, and Justin knew just where he could get it on—the Tellchick farm.

Justin’s father no longer made a pretense of keeping a residence in Texas, and the place had been virtually abandoned until Justin returned to it a couple of months ago. The inside was caked with dust, its timeless beauty only enjoyed by the occasional stray cow or shelter-seeking snake. But Justin had come to the house often as a youth, dreaming of restoring life to it.

And of course, he’d brought Markie McBride here often to share that dream.

Aurelia had rolled down the truck window and was hanging out of it, waving her arms and screaming, “Julio! Julio!”

Julio scrambled down off the scaffolding like an ant off a mound. He ran, his boots kicking up dust, until he came up alongside the pickup. He grabbed the door handle before Justin had even come to a stop.

When the door opened, Aurelia flung herself out into Julio’s strong arms. He swung her light body high off her feet and spun her in a circle with her skirt flying, then clutched her to him, his pelvis jutting into hers, his muscular shoulders hunched around her, his mouth claiming hers in a reunion kiss.

Justin had to look away. Now he did remember. Watching the lovers kiss, he remembered, all too clearly, what it felt like to be so young, so in love.

There was a small celebration in the old house that night. The kitchen was hardly up to sanitation standards, but Aurelia was used to far humbler conditions. She cooked a delicious Mexican feast for the men and Lorn’s wife.

But as in the lives of all crossers, the peace didn’t last long. “Someone comes,” Juan Morales, who seemed to have a sixth sense about these things, announced the very next night.

Sure enough, Justin spotted moving shadows back in a thicket of live oaks.

Lorn went for his shotgun, but Justin restrained him. They would have to get used to the illegals approaching La Luz in all kinds of ways; from the jail in town to hiding in the woods to approaching the ranch in stealth.

“Come with me,” he told Juan, and they went out to investigate.

The Ramos family consisted of a father, mother and two frightened little boys. The priest in town had directed them here. Hasty arrangements were made to feed and bed down the tired travelers.

Later that night, Justin walked out on the upstairs veranda to contemplate the starry sky and think about his mission. Below him the ranch land spread like a peaceful kingdom. Getting the Light at Five Points going was sure to be hard work, but already he had his first real family tucked in for the night.

His reverie was broken when he heard frantic arguing whispers on the porch below and then the sound of Aurelia hysterically crying, “Don’t go!”

Justin hurried back inside and down the wide stone staircase.

“What’s wrong?” he said as he emerged on the porch.

The Morales brothers stood there, with their shabby backpacks slung over their shoulders.

“We didn’t have nothing to do with no fire,” Juan said defensively. “The man paid us to go there for one night and make noise.”

“What are you talking about?” Justin demanded. Were they talking about the barn fire that killed Danny Tellchick?

“The sheriff is asking a lot of questions. These bad hombres.” Juan’s Spanish was so rushed, Justin had trouble keeping up. “They will lay the blame on us.”

“Shut up,” Julio snapped. “We’re leaving,” he declared to Justin.

“No!” Aurelia wailed, clinging to him. She was wearing a simple shift nightgown, probably something Lorn’s wife had given her.

“But why?” Justin asked. “Why now?” It was practically the middle of the night. What had happened to make them want to run?

“We are sorry, my friend,” Julio said a little more calmly. “We thank you for your kindnesses, but you cannot help us. We have been tricked.”

“Let’s go now.” Juan looked frightened as he tugged on his brother’s arm.

“But what about the stonework?” Justin argued as he followed them down the porch steps. “You’re just getting started.” He didn’t care about the renovations so much as showing Julio and Juan that they could be of genuine value in their new country.

“Sorry, amigo,” Julio called. “Someday I will try to finish it!” And then the two young men disappeared into the night.

CHAPTER FOUR

Tonight I figured out that when Justin’s brows draw together in that frowny way of his, it doesn’t mean he’s mad or anything. He’s just intense, sorta like his dad, only in a good way. I met the congressman finally. Yikes. He’s even bigger than he looks in his pictures, a bull of a man with a tiny little pair of wire-rimmed glasses perched on his nose. I took a hard look at him. Then I took a look at Justin. Can they even be related? I wondered. Then I realized people could say the same thing about me and my mother. Nothing alike.

Anyway, I think that look just means Justin cares.

Actually, now that I think about it, it’s the look he gets right before he’s going to kiss me. His brows draw together that tiny bit, like he’s in pain or concentrating or something. His eyes squint up a bit, like he’s studying me real hard. Oh, I can’t describe it. All I know is, I love it when he looks at me that way.

Except tonight I think he was frowning because he really was kind of upset. We took a couple of horses for a moonlight ride out on his ranch, way out to the place where that big flat outcropping of limestone looks so pretty. Justin told me there are caves under there, which I kind of knew, but I’ve never actually been in them. He had a flashlight and was going to take me down into one, but right then we saw headlights and this big Cadillac came rolling up. It just drove right up on the limestone.

Justin stopped the horses back in the trees and said that was weird, for his father to be out here so late at night. And then we saw a shadow get out and carry something into the cave.

It was really kind of creepy.

Justin was in a hurry to split, so we turned the horses around and got out of there.

Later I told him about how my mom is weird like that, too, sometimes, and later he really opened up and told me all about his dad. We’re getting that close. When you love someone, you tell them everything, even about your crazy parents.

“ROBBIE AND THE BOYS WON’T be staying here,” Markie announced without preamble as she bounded down the last few steps of the stairway leading from the attic.

She marched through her mother’s gleaming green-and-white kitchen to the dinette table where her laptop and papers were spread out. The southwest sun was high in the sky now, creating a glaring backdrop at the bay window that cupped around the small table. How deceptively comfortable and serene her mother’s fastidious decorating made the spot feel. The room was already filling with the savory aroma of roasting meat.

Marynell turned from the sink with a half-peeled potato in one hand and a potato peeler in the other. “What fool nonsense are you talking now?” She turned back to the sink and resumed her task. “Of course they’re staying.” Her mouth was pinched tighter than the clasp of a change purse as she proceeded to whack at the potato.

“The boys and Robbie are ready to go home.” Markie proceeded to stack her papers. “I’ll be going out to the farm with them.”

Marynell’s jaw dropped, then she quickly snapped it shut again. “I have already put a roast in the Crock-Pot and peeled a dozen potatoes for the boys’ supper. They’ve been instructed to get off the bus down here at the road after school, just like always.”

“Just like always?” Markie frowned. “It’s only been a week since the funeral, mother. The boys only went back to school the day before yesterday. There is no like always in Robbie’s boys’ lives right now, nothing routine, unless it’s the Tellchick farm, their home. That’s where they belong. I’ll be going out there to stay and help Robbie.”

Marynell carefully placed the potato into a large pot at her elbow. She rinsed the slicer and propped the blade over the edge of the sink, just so. As she wiped her hands on a towel, she slowly crossed the room toward Markie. “You always do this,” she started in a low, threatening tone. “You can’t stand to be in this town two seconds without thinking you have to tear everything up. For once, Margaret, think of someone besides yourself. You can’t seriously be considering taking those children back out there to that place, not after…not after seeing their father killed that way.”

“Robbie has decided that’s what she wants.”

“Robbie decided? Robbie is not herself these days, and you know it.” Marynell grabbed Markie’s arm, gripping it somewhat viciously, but Markie was used to her mother acting this way. She stared, unblinking, while her mother demanded, “This is about that damned diary, isn’t it?”

“You had no right to take it, Mother.” Markie jerked her arm away. “And where the hell is my picture?”

“What picture? I have no idea what you are talking about.”

“When did you take it?” Markie persisted. “How? Back when you and Daddy were moving me the last time? From Dallas?”

Marynell wrung the dish towel for an instant before she folded her arms across her chest and steadied herself. “I simply didn’t want you to be reminded of that painful period of your life. I wanted you to have a fresh start in Austin.”

Her gut wrenched as Markie realized that of course her mother had read the entire diary, every last word of it, the parts written after Markie had left Five Points and gone to live with Frankie in Austin—the parts after she moved to the Edith Phillips Home.

Which meant Marynell knew about Brandon. Well, she didn’t know that was his name or where he lived or who his parents were. None of that was in the diary, thank goodness. And Markie would make sure this woman never did know those things.

“Does anyone else know?” she said, fully aware that her mother knew exactly what she was asking.

“No. And they’re never going to, Margaret.” Her mother seemed suddenly sincere. “As far as I’m concerned, the whole incident is in the past. I would think you would be glad to have all that in the past, too. Why do you want to stir up trouble now, when your sister’s life has been practically destroyed? You should never have taken that diary out of the box.”

Markie sensed a subterfuge behind Marynell’s persistent blaming. Turning things on the other person was the same old trick her mother always used to defend her actions, no matter how indefensible. What had she done now? Perhaps she had, in fact, told someone else about the baby. Or perhaps for some reason the incident was not really in the past as Marynell claimed.

“If it’s all in the past, why didn’t you simply destroy that diary?”

Marynell’s face grew slightly flushed, the same way it had when she was up on the ladder. “You always insist on twisting the most innocent things,” she hissed. “You do it in order to cast me in a bad light. If you must know the truth,” she sniffed, “I simply forgot all about the silly thing. I didn’t even know it was in that box with that other stuff. P.J. keeps so much old junk up there, anyway.” Her eyes shifted sideways. “I intend to give him a good talking to about that room. That’s nothing but a firetrap up there.”