From This Wicked Patch of Dust

A Chance to Prove Himself

15 A Chance to Prove Himself August 1967 One year later, as Cuauhtémoc drove to work, he thought about where he could get the best prices for two-by-fours and plywood for a cuartito in the backyard. Pilar didn’t want the handsaws, hammers, electric saw, paint buckets, or paintbrushes inside the house anymore. With a cuartito, he could also buy and store extra sacks of cement for the rock wall in the front, whenever prices were cheap, and yeso to finish the inside Sheetrock walls. Maybe in a few years, he could buy a used truck. The old railroad ties he and Pilar had hauled from Mendoza’s Yonke had slightly bent the bottom half of the Impala’s trunk. Now Cuauhtémoc needed a chain, discretely hidden, to keep the trunk from flapping open whenever he hit a bump in the asphalt. But those thick, oily, and unbelievably heavy ties had done the job: even after a few summer downpours, their cesspool had ceased collapsing into itself. Even early in the morning, the air was thick and hot as he drove on Alameda. After Western Playland, empty lots and junkyards were supplanted by brick houses and convenience stores. The cool breezes of the Lower Valley yielded to the hot exhaust from eighteen-wheelers, construction dump trucks, jalopies, motorcycles, and city buses on their way toward downtown El Paso. The city had been inexorably expanding east toward Ysleta. New immigrants or retirees from LA or young married couples had nowhere else to go. To the west was the noman ’s-land of New Mexico, to the south was Juárez, where many had escaped from, and to the north was Fort Bliss, bigger than the state of Rhode Island. 16 Cuauhtémoc turned onto Texas Avenue, the edge of doña Pepita’s neighborhood of food warehouses, red-brick tenements, ornate yet nearly abandoned churches, auto shops, Mexican tile stores, and usedcar lots. Today he would have lunch at his suegra’s apartment, just as he had every day since he began working at Morgan Smith. His motherin -law cooked the best frijoles he had ever tasted, better than Pilar’s, with slices of Muenster cheese melted atop the mashed pinto beans. As he ate, she would entertain him with stories of how she survived the Mexican Revolution when Villa rode triumphantly into Chihuahua’s El Charco and electrified the countryside with his spectacular victories and charisma. Cuauhtémoc believed his mother, had she lived, would have been much like doña Pepita: the pride of Mexico undiminished, the gumption and wit of the street personified, and la gente humilde embodied in one feisty, yet kindhearted señora. Cuauhtémoc had never forgotten the last day he had seen his mother. In front of the kitchen sink, she had waved to him with her flowered yellow apron tight around her waist. But when he returned from school, his house was surrounded by neighbors. His sisters had stopped him from entering the house. Like a wild animal, he had screamed at them to release him and pounded them with his fists. His mother lay in the living room, bleeding from her brain. Cuauhtémoc eased the Impala into the side lot of the Mills Building in front of the Plaza de los Lagartos, the heart of downtown El Paso, and found an empty spot in the back row. As he marched into the Mills Building, he said “Buenos dias” to Jeannie Apodaca, the receptionist, who didn’t know much Spanish but always claimed to want to take a class to learn the language of her ancestors. Dylan Smith, Mr. Smith’s youngest son, a construction manager who wasn’t very reliable, lingered at Jeannie’s desk, even though both were married. Cuauhtémoc zigzagged through the labyrinth of front offices, cubicles for engineers, small offices for project managers, and toward the wide open space in the back. There the draftsmen worked at huge, elevated drafting tables, with long fluorescent lamps, on clamps, angled 17 above the tables like impressionistic pterodactyls. Chuy Gomez sat at his table, somber as always. Rogelio Gandaria stirred his cup of coffee, waiting for their boss Manny Ramirez to walk in before he started to look busy. Most of the other draftsmen had not yet arrived. Nobody wore a tie or jacket in the drafting room, including Cuauhtémoc. That had been...