Page 34 of The Promise of Jenny Jones
“Do you really think I’m going to fall for that? The minute I relaxed my guard, you’d take Graciela and leave me behind faster than a fly can flap its wings.” Once she had him trussed up like a hog, she woke Graciela. Ty couldn’t see them, but he heard them shouting at each other. Eventually, Jenny dragged Graciela over to him and pointed.
“Take a good look at your uncle Ty,” she said, leaning next to Graciela’s face. “He’s not taking you anywhere. I am. So get your butt dressed. We’re going.”
Graciela stared down at him with disappointment and contempt. “I trusted you.” Having plunged this verbal blade into his heart, she spun in a billow of ruffled nightgown and flounced out of his line of sight.
Jenny leaned over him, her eyes narrowed into slits. “I made the promise. You didn’t. Remember what I said. If I see you again, I’ll kill you if for no other reason than the trouble you’ve caused me.”
He lay on his side, tangled in his bedroll, as furious and mortified as it was possible for a man to be, listening to the sound of a horse receding in the distance.
One horse. Jenny Jones had solved the Graciela/horse problem in two minutes flat.
He stared at a tiny flowering cactus three inches from his nose and passed the time by imagining himself strangling a certain woman with milk white skin who was brushed with flame down there.
Chapter Eight
Jenny set a northern course midway between the Sierra Madres and the railroad tracks that rolled down the Central Plateau. If she could hold to a hard pace of twenty miles a day, she figured to make Chihuahua in about two weeks.
But two weeks was beginning to look like a wildly optimistic estimate. Three days out of Durango, the terrain gave way to rocky desert soil and deep arroyos that slowed her pace. Noonday heat blistered the ground, and they had to stop, seeking shelter where they could find it until later in the day.
As night approached, Jenny sought out the low shacks of the campesinos who labored to scratch a life from the poor soil. She knew she’d find a trickle of water near their pitiful patches and maybe a chance to buy fresh meat and milk for the kid.
“My face hurts,” Graciela mentioned sullenly, staring with distaste at the chunk of goat meat roasting over the fire.
“Did you rub aloe on your skin like I told you?” The smell of roasting meat made Jenny’s mouth water in anticipation. The campesino’s woman had sold her fresh tortillas, too, and a ripe squash. They would feast tonight. “Drink that milk,” she reminded Graciela. “It cost the earth.”
Graciela turned her sunburned face toward the campesino’s shack, a dark smudge against the night. No light showed through the walls of mud and branch. Either the residents had gone to bed, or they sat around a flame too small to penetrate the chinks.
“Why can’t we sleep in the house with them?” Graciela asked in a whiny singsong that had begun to grate against Jenny’s nerves two days ago. “I don’t like to sleep on the ground. I’m afraid bugs or snakes will crawl in my bedroll.”
“Kid,” Jenny said, striving mightily for patience, “That’s no hacienda up there. Believe it or not, most people don’t live like you did. Most people aren’t rich and don’t have servants, they don’t have extra food or beds. Eight people live in that shack already. They don’t have a square inch for you. Plus, no one up there is sleeping in a bed. They’re either in hammocks or sleeping on the ground just like we are.”
Graciela flung her the I-hate-you look. “You said you wouldn’t call me kid.”
After an interior struggle Jenny conceded that she deserved the accusing tone. “You’re right,” she snapped, leaning to inspect the chunk of roasting meat. “I’m sorry. If you find a bug in your blankets, squash it. If a snake gets in there, you get out.” She stared at Graciela across the fire pit. “Complaining isn’t going to change a damned thing. So just make up your mind that it’s going to be a tough couple of weeks and keep your mouth shut about the inconveniences, all right? You aren’t the only one who’d rather be sleeping in a bed, but you don’t hear me complaining all the time.”
The kid already looked a bit worse for the wear. Her fashionable maroon riding outfit was grey with dust and soiled by sweat. Part of the hem had torn loose. Since they had no water to spare for washing, their faces were dirty above fresh sunburns. Perspiration had blended with the dust near their scalps, creating a film of mud that eventually dried and began to itch and torment.
When a charred crust had formed on the meat, Jenny cut slices onto their plates and scooped mounds of hot squash on the side. “I know you’re tired,” she said to Graciela, “but you have to eat to keep up your strength. So clean your plate.”
Graciela glared at her. “Uncle Ty didn’t order me around.”
“Huh! From what you’ve told me, you ordered him around.” The goat meat was dry and on the tough side, but not bad, not bad at all. She’d eaten worse in her time. The tortillas, on the other hand, were thick and chewy and went down the throat the way she imagined ambrosia probably would.
According to her dictionary, ambrosia, a word she liked the sound of, was the imaginary food of the gods. Now that was something to think about. Before she ran across ambrosia, Jenny had never imagined God sitting down to supper. All day she’d been wondering who cooked the ambrosia. Surely God didn’t prepare it Himself. Or maybe imaginary food didn’t need to be cooked.
Graciela forked up a piece of goat meat, tasted it, and made a face. “Ack.”
“It’s not ambrosia, but it’s all we’ve got, so eat it,” Jenny said, pleased to have worked a new word into conversation.
“Uncle Ty wouldn’t make me eat something I don’t like.”
Jenny narrowed her eyes. “I’m getting sick and tired of hearing what a swell fellow your Uncle Ty is.”
“He’s nicer than you are.”
“Why? Because you wrapped him around your little finger? Because he waited on you and let you sit there like a useless bump on a rock?” She snorted. “Let me tell you something, kid. Sorry… Graciela. Since you and me hitched up, you’ve learned to make a halfway decent pot of coffee, you’ve learned how to lay a fire, you’re dressing and undressing yourself, and you’ve learned to pin up your own hair. You can water the horses and fold up a bedroll. You can scrub out the supper dishes, and tomorrow, like it or not, you’re going to cook most of our supper. You still don’t know squat about most things, but you aren’t as dumb as you used to be. Now you tell me… doesn’t it feel good to know how to do something more than sit on your behind and watch other people take care of you?”
Graciela chewed another bite of goat meat and didn’t say anything.
