Up in Alabama (1844, short story)

((Summer 1844)(story from the book “Old Josh, in: Poor Black”))

Enrique Tapia arrived in the Ozark, Alabama in 1844 from Lima, Peru; he bought a restaurant from old Ritt, the town banker; Enrique was a guy of medium height, with a big belly, clean shaven, and big hands. He was a good cook, but he didn’t look much like a cook even with his apron on. He lived upstairs from the restaurant and ate in the back, while his sixteen-year-old daughter, Ximena, took care of the customers; his wife had died early during Ximena’s formative years.

The younger Ritt, John, came to the restaurant often that first year they were in business, he liked Ximena’s appearance, thought she was the neatest girl he had ever seen, and always had a bright and clean tie. When I went. he came to visit the restaurant. he even commented on her legs. He liked her face because he always had a smile, but he never thought of her otherwise.

Enrique, paid Mr. Hightower for his slave Granny Mae to help him out occasionally at his restaurant, and Josh Jefferson’s son Jordon, who worked at the local grocery store, also came by that year to help clean up the place, Jordon was in his late teens.

Ximena liked John a little. She liked the way he approached from the bench and often went to the kitchen behind the counter, by the half doors, to watch her prepare food. She even commented on her neckties. And she liked how white her teeth were, how clean they always looked, and smiled, almost as much as she did; he seemed well educated and maintained.

One day, he had come in early and found that he liked her dark black hair, small arms, and tanned skin, and watched her wash up in the sink outside the restaurant, at the back of the building. But this made her feel weird; but she paid little attention to her feelings on the matter and just watched.

From the back of the restaurant, in the alley, he could see the post office and the grocery store, where Jordon worked part-time. And sometimes he would tie up a car in front of any of the buildings, or near where the Bank was. Across the street was a small park, elms along the path, the alley was sandy. This was an agricultural country, a plantation country. A church was a little further down. The restaurant was painted green, called “Mamma Mea’s”, and the back of the building faced a school.

All the time now, Ximena was thinking about John. However, he didn’t seem to notice her as much as he did at first, and she did, too, and perhaps, just by chance, it drew her even more. And when they saw each other they talked about the bank or the restaurant. In the evenings, John, if he worked late, would stop by the closed restaurant, talk to Ximena’s father, Enrique, who would be reading some old books, and his poetry and so on, or the Ozark Paper, next to a kerosene lamp. that he had sat on a stool next to her, on her porch, along the wooden sidewalk. Ximena would go down the stairs, next to the building, join them, from time to time she would have to leave and go to the roof where they had two dogs and feed them and run back to her room, feed the puppy Rocco, then go down another flight of stairs. stairs to see John and his father, and many times he was gone.

It was John’s birthday on July 28, and Ximena wanted to make him a cake, for when he entered the restaurant, she would surprise him with it, but she was afraid to ask her father if he didn’t mind, eggs and flour. they were expensive, and Peruvians were quite conservative, and he really didn’t like the idea that she was apparently going after him, not him, her: otherwise it might have been okay.

And so the day came, her birthday, the day, and she didn’t make the cake, her father said no, and John had breakfast, and then he went to Hightower Plantation, to talk to Charles Hightower, to make him a proposal. buying some of the back fields from him, what he called loose acres, he had over twelve hundred acres. All the time, all that day, Ximena thought of him. It really was horrible, while he was gone, unaware that he was at the bank or coming for lunch (while helping his father with the Peruvian dishes, which seemed to have become favorites with the city’s clientele, such as : lomo a lo pobre (rice, fine fried potatoes and beef strips, mixed), carapulcra, pachamanca, a soup called mondongo); in fact, he didn’t show up for three days, and she couldn’t sleep well thinking about him. If she would just drop the subject of John, it would be better, and that third night she had a dream.

On the morning of the fourth day, he, John, was gone, she saw John, coming down the road, on his horse, outside the restaurant window, she got sick, felt weak, began to cry, said :

“Dad, there’s John, he’s alright!” it seemed to him that now everything would be fine, ok.

Enrique knew that it was not a normal reaction, that she had liked him much more than he had imagined. He studied the situation carefully, saying nothing for the moment, just evaluating it, observing and deliberating in the vaults of his mind; watching the expression on his daughter’s face, then John’s.

Now John rode to the bank, stopped and tied his horse to a post, crossed the road to the restaurant, the elms behind him, dragged a sack through the door of the restaurant. There were several men in the room, with long beards and mustaches, and hunting clothes. Outside was a cart full of boxes. Enrique, kissed his daughter on the cheek, told her to go to the back to take inventory of what was needed for breakfast and lunch tomorrow (kissing was a norm for Peruvians, and people Ozark was getting used to seeing this affection). within this new coffee environment, although at first it was a strange habit).

“Hi Ximena,” John said, before reaching the arched entrance to the back pantry.

He turned around, smiled, “What happened to you, I haven’t seen you in four days?” Ximena commented.

“Nothing happened, I was at Hightower Plantation looking at their back lots, their fields, and I want to buy fifty acres of it. You know what I’m talking about, it’s where Jordon’s dad is, where Jordon lives when he’s not working here or in the grocery his dad is a big black named Josh he’s a little headstrong if you know what I mean he and my dad don’t get along too much too bold for a nigger in these parts of the country he says but Charles puts up with it, not knowing why. And I stayed with Charles Hightower and his family for those three nights, and we did a little bit of hunting, snake hunting,” John said.

She thought about what he said, about Jordon’s father, then said, refraining from any further questions on the matter, “Did you shoot them?” Ximena asked.

“No, isn’t she a beauty?” she commented as she pulled a four foot dead rattlesnake out of a potato sack she had dragged into the cafe.

Ximena jumped back, somewhat scared, her father watching,

“You have an inventory to take, don’t you…?” he yelled, reminding her, if not asking her.

That night John came to visit Enrique, he brought a two gallon jug of homemade corn whiskey, he bought it from Granny Mae, it was awkward to even pick it up and drink it, and as such, they drank that night. on the porch of the cafe, Ximena, next to her father, John ended up spilling whiskey down his shirt trying to hold on to that heavy mug, while Enrique smiled, and his daughter smiled, while Enrique drank his from a glass – casually as if to be a good host, Juan drank it straight from the jug, clumsy as he was.

“Well, Mr. Tapia, here’s looking at you,” and he took another big swallow of corn whiskey, then he pulled out another potato, he had it sitting on the edge of the wooden sidewalk, he pulled out a six foot snake,

“Damn big haha?” he asked rhetorically, looking at Enrique, who just stood there in dismay, confused as to what his intentions were, thinking they were originally for his daughter, but maybe they were just to have a drinking friend get drunk, but he was not so accommodating. friend.

“They taste good for a man to eat raw,” said John, trying to right the long-dead slippery snake, and began to bite it, after cutting into its flesh, saying at the same time “It’s good for what ails you, especially for the power!” (He Then he laughed like a hyena.)

Then he looked at Ximena, she wasn’t laughing, nor was her father, so he said: “How about another drink?” and he took one.

It was obvious, John was feeling great.

Then John stepped back to talk to Ximena, thinking that his father couldn’t see what his intentions were, what he was about to do, try to do, and his little white hands wrapped around Ximena’s shoulders, she said in a voice low: “You mustn’t,” and he moved a little to her right, behind her father’s rocking chair.

But John paid him no mind, and his hand came back over her shoulders and an inch or two down her spine. It became clear that he wanted to do something and she was freaking out.

“Let’s go,” John told her, a statement, not a question, because he stared at her to push her toward him.

“No, John,” said Enrique, “she’s not going anywhere…

“Oh, it’s not right, I really like it,” said John.

“Oh, John, go home, go home,” Ximena said, knowing that her father was getting angry, and so was she (John was in his early twenties and Ximena was only sixteen, but that wasn’t unusual in a marriage that grew apart). had carried out). place at that age, in those days, but it was a heavy scene for Ximena to see this drunk man, playing with snakes, and making her feel uncomfortable and tight on her back next to her father’s chair; it was, if anything, showing another side of John, one that she didn’t know, that she hardly expected, and that she really didn’t want to tolerate now, or later in life.

She, Ximena, tried to push her way, around him, and he, John, didn’t move, tried to do something to the hair, then Enrique pulled himself out of the flesh, pushing her back, lifted and held her head, pushing her against the wooden wall of the restaurant, and he shook it, and shook his head from side to side, and began to cry, and she saw all this, and everything she saw in him before, was now that everything was gone, a mist had lifted and revealed the true person he was.

He walked to the side of the building, he went back up the stairs to his room, where his puppy, Rocco, was sleeping, he wanted to cry, but he couldn’t, everything was so funny, and here a few hours before, it was all so serious

“Rocco,” he said, “please stay just the way you are!” Rocco moved and snuggled at her feet as she sat on her bed. She kicked off her shoes and bent to cover him with a blanket, and he did so, as well as tucking it under her belly, neatly and carefully. A cool breeze was blowing in through the half-open window, off Main Street, and John was dragging his sack of snakes down the street to the bank, and then she closed the curtain.

Written on 7-28-2008
Dedicated to EH and XH