Lindsay slung her satchel over her shoulder. She had stocked it with medicine, supplies, and hard candy for the children. She would make her morning rounds before the summer heat set in. It would top 115 degrees that day outside and even hotter inside if Jesse was unable to repair the generator. Early September, but it was still summer on the border. Inez had not yet arrived, so Jesse came to her and kissed her, like a husband kissing his wife goodbye for the day. She felt like a married woman and she was; she was just married to another man.
"You look beautiful," Jesse said.
She wore a white lab coat over a bright yellow peasant dress and pink Crocs. She draped a stethoscope around her neck. She tucked her red hair under a green scarf then pushed the wide-brimmed straw hat down on her head, to conceal her identity and her light complexion from the sun's rays.
"I will be out back working on the generator," Jesse said. "Inez should be here soon."
Inez Quintanilla woke at seven. She had dreamed vividly of life beyond the wall. It was a colorful and wonderful life with pretty things and nice people. She had so enjoyed the dream that she closed her eyes and lay there a few minutes longer trying to recapture the moment. But she could not. The moment was gone. So she climbed out of bed. It was a work day.
She and her brother lived in a converted travel trailer. The wheels had been removed, so the trailer sat flat on the ground. Well, almost flat. Anything dropped on the floor would roll to one corner, but at least she knew where to find things. She had the small bedroom to herself; Roberto slept on the couch since he always came home late. She washed her face in the bathroom with the bottled water and applied her make-up carefully in case the television cameras came that day for the doctor. Two work outfits hung in the closet. She decided on the one she had not worn the day before. Once dressed, she would have Cheerios without milk for breakfast and then walk to the clinic.
She opened the thin metal door quietly so as not to wake her brother. She stepped out and froze. Her brother was not sound asleep on the couch as he usually was at that time. He was sitting and staring up at three men standing over him. Two held big guns. The man in the middle held a machete. The door behind them was open to the outside. The morning breeze blew hot and dusty.
"What is happening here?"
"Ah," the man in the middle with the machete said. "You must be Inez, the sister?"
Inez nodded.
"Well, Inez, your brother violated the code. I am here to dispense justice."
"Who are you?"
"I am Enrique de la Garza."
"I do not know you."
"Ah. Perhaps you know me as the world knows me-El Diablo."
Inez recoiled and sucked in air. She turned to her brother. He was crying.
"You work for him? You are a narcotraficante? "
"Yes, Inez," El Diablo said. "He works for me. Or he did. I have come to terminate his employment."
"You have come to kill my brother? Personally?"
"Yes. I always terminate employees personally. It is company policy."
"Why? What crime did Roberto commit?"
El Diablo turned to her brother. "Tell her, Roberto. Tell your sister how you disgraced God and your family."
"I did nothing!"
"But you did." To Inez: "Your brother gave heroin to a woman, a Mexicana."
"So?"
"So our code does not allow that. We do not push the filthy drug habit on our own people."
"That is a deed punishable by death?"
"She is a married woman. He gave her the heroin, and while she was under the influence, he raped her."
"No!"
"Yes."
"Roberto, is that true? Did you rape a woman?"
"No! She wanted sex with me."
"Her husband demands justice," El Diablo said. "So Roberto must give him justice." He turned to her brother. "Roberto Quintanilla, you have not lived a life with honor. Will you now die with honor?"
"No!"
The two men grabbed Roberto and held his arms back and pushed his head down. El Diablo raised the machete above her brother's head. Without conscious thought, Inez jumped between the blade and her brother.
"No! Please! He is my only brother!"
El Diablo paused in midair.
"I am sorry, Inez. But I must dispense justice. It is my duty. Please, stand aside."
Inez Quintanilla's mind raced, trying to find hope for her brother. Where she found her only hope- and it was her only hope — made her sad. But she had no choice.
"I can give you what you want most in life."
El Diablo lowered the blade, and Inez breathed a momentary sigh of relief. He looked her up and down and smiled as her father had once smiled at her when she was just a small child. When her parents were still alive.
"I can have pretty girls like you anytime I want. I can have you if I want. But I do not want you. And you should not offer yourself to a man, Inez, before marriage, in the church."
"I do not mean me."
"Then what do you propose to give to me?"
"What you want more than anything in this world."
"What I want most in this world." He thought a moment, and his eyes seemed to grow dark with his thoughts. "Well, Inez, can you give me the governor of Texas?"
Everyone in the colonias knew that the governor of Texas had killed El Diablo's son and that El Diablo had attempted several times to kill the governor. Such news did not come from the newspapers or the television, but from word of mouth.
"No."
"Then you have nothing I want. Stand aside. Please."
He again raised the machete, and her heart grabbed at her chest.
"But I can give you something almost as good."
He stopped.
"And what is that?"
" La esposa del gobernador. I can give you the governor's wife."
He again lowered the blade, and she felt the relief again.
"Can you now?"
"Yes. I can."
"How? How can you, little Inez Quintanilla living in this broken-down trailer in this colonia on the banks of the Rio Bravo give to me the wife of the governor of Texas? Tell me, please, how can you do that?"
"I can tell you where to find her."
El Diablo laughed in a way that made her afraid, as if she had taken something away from him. His voice became louder.
"Hector here can tell me where to find her. I do not want her. I want the governor."
"But if you have her, he will come for her. He will come to you."
El Diablo nodded. "That is true, Inez. But it would be difficult to kidnap her in Austin and smuggle her across the river. Guns and cash we smuggle south every day, quite easily, but the governor's wife, that would be very difficult. The border is locked down."
"She is not in Austin."
"Then where is she?"
"She is here."
"Where?"
"I will tell you where, if you will spare my brother's life."
El Diablo's jaws clenched. His patience was running out.
"Inez, my child, it is not wise to toy with me, not about the governor of Texas. He murdered my son, and I intend to kill him. Between me and the governor is a dangerous place to stand. Now tell me what you know."
"No. Not so you can then cut off my brother's head."
For a moment, she thought El Diablo might slap her. Inez trembled like a leaf in the wind. But he blew out a breath and calmed.
"All right, Inez. I will not cut off your brother's head if you will tell me where the governor's wife is."
"You promise?"
"Yes. I promise."
Inez knew she had pushed him as far as she dared.
"She is here… in the colonia. "
" Here? In Colonia Angeles? "
" Si. "
"But that is not possible. I would have known. There is only one Anglo in this colonia, the-"
His eyes got wide with the knowledge.
"The Anglo nurse. Of course. I knew that she seemed familiar. She has the red hair, like the governor's wife."
"She is the governor's wife."
"But they said she was Irish."
"She pretends. Sometimes she forgets, and her voice is different."
"Thank you, Inez. You have made me a very happy man." He turned to the man named Hector and said, "Shoot him."
"Wait! You promised not to kill him!"
"No. I promised not to cut his head off."
The man named Hector raised a gun and shot her brother in his head. The bullet blew blood and brains out the back of his head. Hector shot him again in his heart. Her ears burned with the noise and her nostrils with the stench of the gunpowder, and her brother lay on the couch, his eyes staring blankly at the ceiling, the teardrops still resting on his brown cheeks. Her only brother was dead. Inez Quintanilla was now alone in this harsh world.
"Now, where is the governor's wife? At the clinic?"
Inez stared at her brother's bloody face a moment longer, then she bolted out the open door and ran down the dirt road toward the clinic. She must warn the senora. She must save the senora's life as she had failed to save her brother's. She heard the men yelling behind her and the loud engines of their trucks come to life. Coming after her. She cut between houses and under clothes hanging on lines and around morning cook fires until she finally arrived at the clinic. She burst through the door only to find the clinic vacant. The doctor's truck sat outside, but neither he nor the senora were there. She must be on rounds. Her body teemed with adrenaline. She had never before felt so alive, perhaps because she was certain she would soon be dead. She ran down the dirt road and screamed, "?Senora!?Senora! "
But there was no answer.
Of every woman and child she encountered, she asked, "Have you seen the nurse?"
One woman pointed down the road. Inez ran faster, calling out, "?Senora!?Senora! "
Finally she heard the senora's voice.
"In here."
Inez pulled the blanket door aside and stepped into the home. The senora was kneeling on the dirt floor tending to a child.
" Senora, you must run away! You must hide!"
Inez tried to catch her breath. She felt the panic on her face.
"Why?"
"They come for you!"
"Who?"
"El Diablo! And his hombres."