Penny turned to him with a question in her eyes, but he didn’t have the answer.
The rest of it went like that. The plow going for seventy-five cents to Gus. The wagon he pulled behind the tractor to bring in the corn went for sixty cents to the schoolteacher with some encouraging clapping. The auctioneer even caught the jovial mood. “Don’t you people know I’m working on commission?” he jested, and the men laughed.
The Guernseys went for two bits each, and the mare for a dime.
The auctioneer shook his head as the last item—the cultivator—went to a pleased Irma, who hadn’t set foot on a farm since she was a girl.
The auctioneer’s gavel fell for the last time. “Pay the man,” he said, and those who had bid brought their change to Robert Thomas, who took each coin with a grave nod and wrote out a receipt. The buyers, in turn, passed the receipts to Ephraim, got in their autos with good-natured shouts and laughter, and drove away. The auctioneer took his meager percentage from Robert Thomasand, wishing Ephraim a good day, tipped his hat to Penny and puttered down the driveway in his flatbed.
Robert Thomas was hiding a grin when he turned to Penny. “A penny auction for Penny.”
Ephraim had read about penny auctions in the paper—where neighbors stood up to the banks by bidding ridiculously low. He figured they must have blocked the road to the farm early this morning to keep out strangers. Even the auctioneer was in on the scheme, from what he saw. He was grateful to his neighbors, but he had a worry. “What will happen at the bank?” he asked. He didn’t want the young man to get into trouble on his account. And he still did owe the bank a debt, even if it wasn’t on the books.
Robert Thomas regarded him seriously. “Mr. Zimmerman, you didn’t hear it from me, but by this time next week, Farmers and Merchants will be closed for good.”
Ephraim opened his mouth to speak, but Robert Thomas held up his hand. “And not because of you, so don’t hold yourself responsible.” He spoke now to both of them. “I’m just a loan officer, but I have ears and eyes. The bank managers have been keeping their heads above water just long enough to save themselves before we close the doors.”
“So why aren’t you doing the same?” Penny broke in, her distrust evident in her voice. “Why help us?”
Robert Thomas shook his head. “I’ll be out of a job come next week, but maybe I’ll have something else.”
“What?” Penny asked suspiciously.
Robert Thomas just smiled. Then he tipped his hat to Penny and wished them both a good day before he hopped into his cherry-red Pontiac coupe and drove away.
CHAPTER 10
Los Angeles
OSCAR
Oscar pushed the Ford as hard and fast as it would go back to thecolonia.
Maria Carmen and Dusty Clark. He didn’t want to believe it, but Max was too broken up to be lying. And all these years he’d blamed Max for deserting them, when it had been Mamá who’d made him go. And Maria Carmen... Max wasn’t the father of her child. His hands tightened on the wheel. She wouldn’t have been the first girl from thecoloniato have a child out of wedlock; Max was proof of that. If only he could have talked to her, asked her to come home.
If only.Were they not the two most sorrowful words in any language?
Somehow, he found himself standing on the cinder-block steps of the Garcias’ home, the rain making a racket like machine-gun fire on the tin roof. Was he right to come here? Maybe Padre Ramirez meant something else. Maybe he’d got it wrong.
Francesca opened the door. “Oscar, it’s raining pitchers. What are you doing here?” She pulled Oscar into the house and rushed away, coming back with a scrap of towel, mopping the drips as they fell to the floor. “Lupita, she is with your mother. I am praying for your brothers. May God bring them back to you.”
Oscar nodded and hung his cap on the hook beside the door. “I came to talk to you. About Señor Lester.”
Francesca’s face closed like a slammed door and she turned on her heel. She hurried to the kitchen, pulling a bucket from under the cupboard, avoiding his gaze.
Alonso appeared in the kitchen doorway. “What about him?”
Francesca looked fearful, Alonso hostile. Or was it just his imagination?
Oscar took a seat at the kitchen table, where he’d sat thousands of times over the years with Max and Maria Carmen, eating beans and tortillas, drinking coffee.
A tin can caught drips from the ceiling in a staccato beat. He’d have to tell them—Francesca and Lupita and Alonso. They deserved to know how Maria Carmen had really died and who was the father of her unborn child. But not tonight. There was something else he had to know. “I think you have something to tell me, Alonso.” He prayed it wouldn’t be what he thought.
Alonso’s face was blank. Too blank.
Francesca twisted her apron. “He owed us.” She said it like it was a reason, glancing nervously at Alonso.
“Mamá!” Alonso said sharply.
