“When I was twelve I learned to keep a secret.”

-- Izzie

We should have stayed away from the Camileño, but it drew us like the moon draws the tide. The caballeros a hundred years past had camped there, while they dipped cattle for ticks and castrated bull calves. And even though the Mexicans grinned over our heads, we believed their stories that ghost vaqueros still whispered tall tales in that deserted bunkhouse. So on that long ago January morning, my best friend Burt Charles Jamison and I rode out to listen.

 In South Texas , the fog collects sounds the way water in a cave does. It holds memories of javelinas, their curved tusks carved into their jaws and the flash of white tail deer. But that morning, it gathered us up in its silence. In the mist, the outpost appeared opalescent, but as we moved closer, it looked like a giant had spit chewing tobacco down its walls. Screeching and grinding, the windmill drifted in a slow spin that coaxed up precious little water. Despite the hurricane, the sun had blistered the fields again. Only the pond scum retained its green. Where the mesquites hung, now having barely lost their leaves, the hoof-pitted mud gave off a rich and fetid smell. A flash of red fluttered in and out of the low chaparral.

We slid off our horses and tied them to the fence that zigzagged from the wind mill to the edge of the little house. Hunched together against the cold, we collected sticks for a fire, carefully knocking them against each other to dislodge black widows. Muffled sounds permeated the haze: the padded echoes of wood thudding on wood, the shuffle of our boots, and the soft crunching of our horses as they cropped the weeds at their feet.

In the roofless remains of the house, we stacked our firewood teepee style and Burt Charles fed the first flames with loose trash and dried cow patties.

I gawked at his choice of kindling. “What in the world are you doing?”

“It burns good, Izzie. The Mexicans said.”

 “Did they smile when they said it?”

Cow dung littered the concrete floor. Mud daubers’ clumps and swallows’ nests caked the eaves of the windows. The lack of amenities did not discourage our appetites. We had prepared a picnic of wieners, marshmallows, chocolate and handfuls of Diamond matches. After arranging the feast on a bandana, I leaned back and settled into the warmest folds of my jacket. I gazed about at the peeling walls, the ragged screens of the windows. “I could probably hide out here for days before anybody would find me.”

 “Yeah, sure, Izzie. You’d be sending up smoke signals for help in two hours!”

 “You’d be surprised at what I’d do.” I sighed and stabbed three marshmallows on a stick.  “Burt Charles? What do you think will happen?”

“Tell you what.” Burt Charles jumped to his feet, paced a square around the burning wood while he fired broken matches into the flames. “Frank is going to jail forever after he pays back all the money he shafted from your Uncle Cyrus. Oh, oh, and after that, an oil well is gonna come in and Uncle Tío is gonna trade in old Canela here for…uh…. Oh let’s see…a white Arabian stallion that you can handle because you’re such a red hot rider and—"

“Oh, shut up!” I chunked the last half of wiener at Burt Charles. He caught it.

 I jerked down my hat to shadow my eyes from his accusations. “Tío is the only uncle I have. I don’t really even have a—”   The word caught in my throat. “Father.”

 “Well, whadda ya expect me to say? Why do you just have to keep picking at a wasp’s nest?”

“Okay. Okay. I promise. No more questions.” I couldn’t think of a thing else to say and so for a good while, there was silence broken only by cellophane snapping in the flames.

A draft circled in through the broken glass and snaked around the room, lifting and twirling a yellowed Camel’s package. A gust of wind rushed down the chimney of crumbling adobe and murmured as though searching for old amigos.

Burt Charles sat down cross-legged by me and gave my knee a shake. “So call us up a spirit, medicine woman.”

 I peered up at him through the strands of hair that had fallen in my face. His smile could always tease me out of self-pity. I took the bait. “You just want to hear me screw up the Spanish language.” He knew my Spanish could barely handle basic pleasantries, but it was requirement in calling forth vaquero ghosts.

Music was the universal language I’d been advised by a eighth-grade choir teacher. Knee-walking my way closer to the fire, I closed my eyes and mentally searched for the right key. It took a few false starts, but I lifted my chin toward the ruined hearth and hummed one of the few Mexican melodies I knew. The tune always made Mama cry and she didn’t know a word of Spanish. Burt Charles, who had grown up in South Texas, would know the lyrics even though I couldn’t say them. And the words were unnerving because they talked about a dove that refused sleep and cried all night for his lover who had died. The only part I knew was “Cucurrucucú, paloma.” 

I had Burt Charles’ attention. That was for sure. His hazel eyes widened so that the green flecks in them sparked like lightning in a faraway storm. He shut up for a change. After a while though, I hoped he would laugh at my inability to roll my r’s. Something to break up this tedious appeal to the spirits. Anything.

My last “cucurrucucú” sounded too much like the moan of a dead lover coming back from the grave. It undid our resolve. Giving each other a wide-eyed grimace, Burt Charles and I bolted from the casita.  We spooked the horses, but grabbed on to the saddle horns and bounced on one leg till we could swing up. Squealing and laughing, we galloped toward home.