The Weight of Feathers (4 page)

The girl pulled the scarf off her hair. Her messy bun came undone, her hair falling down her back. She plunged her hand into the ice and wrapped a fistful in the sheer fabric. The water darkened the flower pattern, turning the white space between the roses gray.

She held it to his temple. “That’s gonna be blue by tomorrow morning.”

Cold water dripped down his cheek. “Don’t worry. They look good on me.”

She switched hands and shook out her fingers. “This happens a lot?”

“Must be my sparkling personality.”

She put his hand on the scarf. “Could be the way you’re dressed.”

“Eye-catching, isn’t it?” Cluck had the same thing on he wore most days. Collared shirt, sleeves rolled up from working on the wings. Vest and trousers. “Fetching, you might say?”

The girl filled her arms on the way to the counter. Soda bottles, caramel corn, praline cashews from a farm one county over.

The man at the counter jerked his newspaper to straighten it. “More popcorn, eh?”

The girl flicked him off. The man chuckled, an almost-friend laugh. Almendro was so small nobody bothered to renumber the town sign after the census a few years ago. The man probably knew the girl’s mother and all her sisters if she had any. She’d probably been coming in to buy sour worms and neon sodas since she was in grade school.

They probably did this every week, the man’s teasing, her middle finger, his laugh.

“You want anything?” the girl asked Cluck.

Cluck wondered how someone her size ate all that. “You don’t mess around, do you?”

Her hand paused halfway to a bag of peach rings. “Excuse me?”

He braced to talk himself out. He forgot girls didn’t need to be heavy to feel heavy. Last summer, half his cousins lived on honey and chili powder, a diet they read about in a magazine. Eugenie planned on doing it again this year before they got to Stanislaus County, where she had a park ranger who thought he was her boyfriend.

“I didn’t mean it that way,” he said. “Here.” He tried to take the bags and bottles. “Let me buy. Least I can do.”

She dropped everything on the counter, bag of ice and all, and walked out. The bell on the door jingled and knocked the glass.

Cluck followed her out. “I can do this all night.”

She stopped and turned around, arms crossed tight. The wind fluffed up her skirt, like the bottom half of her was underwater. “Do what?”

“You say something and feel bad about it,” Cluck said. “I say something and feel bad about it. Just warning you though, I say a lot of stupid things, and I’m good at feeling bad. You’ll get tired before I do.”

She walked off, the thin film of her dress lapping at the backs of her knees.

He still had to get the milk. The man at the counter grunted to his newspaper, huffed at the mess of packages Cluck had made the girl leave on the counter.

“Sorry.” Cluck paid for a quart of milk, and put everything else back. Soda bottles in the refrigerator case, dried mango and a whole jicama with the other fruit.

The man looked over at him like he might shoplift. He should’ve combed his hair. His grandfather said wearing it as long as he did, down over the collar, wasn’t doing him any favors. But his grandfather knew why he never cut it shorter. He knew what it was hiding, why Cluck never pulled it back in public. It would’ve been as bad as turning his head over, showing strangers the red.

Cold water dripped off the sides of Cluck’s palm. He still had the girl’s scarf, full of ice.

He ran outside after her, but she was already gone.

A mal nudo, mal cuño.

Meet roughness with roughness.

Oscar and Rey saw Lace holding the bucket of motel ice and knew they were in for a show. But she hitched her thumb toward the door to order them out. They grumbled and took their soda bottles and
chicharrones
down the hall to Matías’ room.

Justin lay sprawled on the other bed, the motel’s patterned spread crumpled under him. He snored the low drone of june bugs, one hand shielding his eyes from the TV.

He and Matías could get away with anything. They were
Abuela
’s perfect little
soldados
. Matías was ready for a fight whenever a Corbeau looked at one of them. Justin always had some plan to sabotage the Corbeaus’ generator or spread vegetable oil on the tree branches.

They were
Abuela
’s good boys,
sus ninõs buenos,
and
las sirenas
were clumsy fish.
Abuela
always pointed out when one mermaid was looking a little soft, another too bony. One of them had put on too much cream blush, another hadn’t speckled enough paillettes over her body, so the ones covering her
escamas
were too obvious.

Abuela
saw only their screwups, while Matías riled up the Corbeaus, and Justin beat up locals when no Corbeau showed.

But even Matías wouldn’t have pulled what Justin did tonight. The only locals Matías ever beat up were a couple of guys throwing corn nuts and M&Ms at Emilia and Martha, trying to feed the mermaids like animals. Matías might have been one made-for-TV movie away from slapping a Corbeau in the face with a glove and challenging him to a duel, but he took pride in a fair fight, even with the Corbeaus. When Justin stole the Corbeaus’ extension cords, he did it behind Matías’ back. Matías never would’ve let him do something that pulled in the Corbeau women. His
caballerosidad
was as firm as his fists.

Lace upended the ice bucket. The flat cubes spilled onto Justin’s chest and scattered out, hitting his chin and arms.

He startled awake and jumped up. “What the…” He shook off his body.

“What is wrong with you?” Lace asked. “Do you want your mother getting the call to bail your ass out of the county lockup?”

“You think I’m stupid?” He ripped the spread off the bed and shook it out. “We were never gonna get caught.”

“You don’t know that.” She tore the bedspread out of his hands. “What was that?”

He snatched it back, forehead creasing. He and his brothers looked so much like his father, with that hard brow bone and lips as full as any woman’s. The girls liked him as much as the women liked his father. But now his father was gone, taking his mother’s Chevy and leaving nothing but three sons who had his last name instead of Paloma.

“Why’d you do it?” Lace asked.

“What are you, my mother?”

“Worse. Your mother’s too nice to do this.” She smacked the side of his head.

He flopped down on the plain sheet and bunched both pillows under his neck. “Get out of the way, will you?” he said to Lace’s body cutting through the TV’s light.

She put her hands on her hips, blocking it worse. He was gonna listen. He was gonna know that if he broke his mother’s heart, she’d break him.

Justin stared at Lace’s rib cage, trying to see through her.

“That guy was what?” she asked. “Fun?”

“I didn’t like how he looked at me.”

“Bullshit.” She slammed her hand into the side of the TV. It went dark. She’d stayed in this room last season, and knew the right spot to turn it off.

Justin still stared at her stomach. “Oscar and Rey, if nobody teaches ’em how to fight, they won’t know.”

“That wasn’t a fight,” Lace said. “That was the three of you beating on a local. You know what happens when you beat on the locals? They don’t come. If they don’t come, we don’t get paid. Word spreads that we’re the kind of people who beat up anyone we feel like. Then guess what? We’re not welcome in this town anymore. Then we’re not welcome in the next town, or the next county. My father goes back to a job the school district cut. Your grandfather goes back to selling
champurrado
where, Echo Park? You want that?”

He sat up. “I had it handled.” His yelling turned her face hot.

“Oh, like you had it handled with the horse?” Lace asked.

Justin’s cheek grew sunken, back teeth biting the inside. “Low, Lace,” he said. “Low.”

The guilt hit her, small, but sharp. He was right. Her bringing it up was low. Justin was only eleven when he, Alexia, and Alexia’s older brother “borrowed” a Camargue colt from a family that ran a traveling horse show. They’d planned to bring it back before dawn, but it had spooked and gotten away from them, and in the moonless night they couldn’t spot its pale coat.

The three of them thought they could get away with it if they kept their mouths shut. But then Alexia, a new mermaid, could not get near water. She shied away from it like a foal that had never seen a river. Her brother and Justin startled as easily as fillies, jumping at the sound of every closed door or chittering squirrel. They realized the horse family knew about the Camargue, and had cursed them.

Justin, Alexia, and Alexia’s brother stayed up three days and nights, searching for that horse. The Palomas, including Lace, all stayed up too, praying, fearing that the lost colt would make the horse family hate the Palomas as much as the Palomas hated the Corbeaus. But they could not help them look, because to lift the curse the three would have to get the horse back themselves.

They finally found it grazing in a salt marsh. They returned it, their eyes never leaving the grass as they apologized. The next day, Alexia loved water again, and her brother and Justin were bold as hawks. The family who owned the Camargue figured they had learned their lesson, and lifted the curse that made them like skittish horses.

Lace sat on the edge of the bed, back to Justin. All the arguing seeped out of her. It wasn’t fair of her to bring it up. Justin had been the youngest of the three of them, and he and his cousins had made it right.

If only the feud with the Corbeaus came down to a single lost colt.

“Somebody’s gotta look out for us,” Justin said.

“We look out for each other,” she said.

“
Abuela
puts us in the same town with them.”

Them
. The word twisted his lips. He couldn’t even speak the name Corbeau.

He was saying what nobody else would.
Abuela
chose wrong. Every year, she chose wrong. And every year, the Corbeaus got one of them. Last year Matías spent half the show season with a cast on his right arm, though he swore it was worth it and he’d do it again. The year before that a
sirena
came home with her dress strap ripped by a Corbeau. Her mother had thanked God she could run faster than any of her cousins.

Every year, they wondered what the Corbeaus might do next. Send crows to bring sickness on the Palomas. Use
gitano
magic to curse a Paloma child, stopping her from growing the birthmarks that showed up on all other Paloma girls. Leti was sure they’d murdered
Tío
Armando years ago, slaughtered him in the woods. The story about the coyote was just that, she said, a story.

Lace put nothing past the Corbeaus. Twenty years ago, they’d caused the flood at the lake, killing
Tía
Lora’s husband. Eight years ago, they’d almost drowned Magdalena with that net. There was nothing they would not do.

Justin punched his pillows, fluffing them up.

“I’m not gonna go looking for a fight,” he said. “All I’m saying is, they come here, they’re gonna get one. And I’m gonna make sure my brothers are ready.”

“And whose show do you think that guy’s gonna go see now?” Lace asked. “Ours or theirs?”

Justin grabbed the remote and clicked the TV on.

“If you want to look out for us, good,” she said. “Look out for us. Keep Oscar and Rey out of fights.”

He flipped the channel. “If you don’t want me beating on the locals, don’t go out so late.”

He knew why she went out late. She starved all day so when she slid into her tail, her stomach wouldn’t look soft with baby fat,
Abuela
poking it with the corner of her Bible and saying, “You’re still not a woman,
mija
.” But after the cleanup and the costume mending, hunger drove Lace to the snack aisle at the liquor store. So she stayed as she was, not soft enough for her grandmother to pull her from the show, not thin enough to be one of the finned beauties who draped their tails on wide rocks, posing for pictures.

Justin threw the remote in the air and caught it. It smacked against his palm. “Guys around here gotta know they can’t look at my cousins.”

“He wasn’t looking at me.”

“He could’ve been.”

Thank God Justin didn’t have sisters. “But he wasn’t.”

She almost felt bad for the guy. He’d either been too scared to fight her cousins or thought it was no use. He wasn’t built like Justin, but he was just as tall, and he had enough muscle on him that he could’ve tried if he’d wanted to.

Maybe Justin didn’t like his hair, how it was almost long enough to touch his shoulders. According to Lace’s uncles, no man worth anything wore his hair past his ears. She didn’t know if it was that wavy and messy on its own or if that was from her cousins kicking him around. And she couldn’t quite tell what he was, his features strong but not sharp.

Lace’s cousins didn’t like not knowing what someone was, not knowing what to do with them. Poor guy didn’t stand a chance.

“Sorry, Lace,” Justin said, as quickly as if he’d stepped on the fin of her tail.

“Don’t tell me. Tell the local guy. Tell your mother.”

“I thought you didn’t want my mother to know.”

“Then don’t do it again.” She pulled the door shut behind her.

Her feet brushed the hallway carpet, picking up static. Her fingers sparked on the knob of her room. Today had been the first day dry enough for it. The rain was coming again, her father said. They were waiting on a wet summer, one that would dull tourists’ taste for outdoor shows. The Palomas would fight the Corbeaus for an even smaller audience.

Martha had fallen asleep before Lace went out. So bony her upper arms were as thin as her forearms, Martha couldn’t keep weight on, even with her mother always pushing stone pine nuts at her, swearing they would help her grow hips.

Poor, good-hearted Martha. She’d once made the mistake of saying they shouldn’t call the Corbeaus gypsies. She’d read somewhere that the right word was Romani. The glare
Abuela
and Lace’s mother gave her could have singed the green off an ancho chile.