Silver Basilisk (Silver Shifters 4)

Godiva plopped down on the end of her bed, which undulated gently under her. “I should probably begin at the beginning. I was born in a shack in the desert just south of the Rio Grande. My pa loved his moonshine more’n us, which was why my ma walked out on him after one bad night too many.”

Godiva shut her eyes, thrown back to when she was barely twelve, and her mother had woken her in the middle of the night. You’re strong, mijita. Much stronger than I am. You’ll survive. I won’t unless I get away, Ma had whispered in Spanish, and then was gone with barely a rustle.

“Life was okay when Pa vanished on his benders. To this day I have no idea how he and my Ma ended up together. She was a dreamer. She saw exactly one movie, something with Shirley Temple in it, and she was so jazzed she named me after the child actress. We lived so far out there were no neighbors, much less any schooling. While we chopped cactus and pounded corn meal to make tortillas, she taught me the alphabet, and the basics of reading and writing. But not long after she left, Pa went on a bender. When he got back he burned our shack down and came at me, roaring that it was all my fault she was gone. I hid up, and once he stumbled off looking for his jug, I beat feet for the big city. ‘Big city’ being Hidalgo, which had one major street, but that looked huge to me.”

“You were twelve?” Bird asked, her eyes huge.

“Yup.”

Doris shook her head slowly, and looked down at her hands, then up. “What happened next?”

“In those days there was no child welfare, at least in those parts. I got a job washing dishes at the Main Street diner. The owner let me live behind the kitchen in trade for doing all the laundry by hand, as well. Just me, a scrub bucket with lye, a wringer, and a clothes line. Every Sunday, when the diner closed, I spent ironing. I learned English by listening to the customers. One of the waitresses started teaching me English reading and writing at night so I could take over chalking the menu each morning.”

Godiva cackled, looking back. “Everything I’d been through was nothing to tackling English, with its miles of verb tenses and spelling rules shiftier than snake-oil salesmen. What do you even do with tough, through, though, plough, and cough? The Spanish alphabet is honest. What you see is what you get.”

Godiva knew she was taking a sidetrack, and checked on her audience.

Sure enough, Doris and Bird weren’t laughing.

So she forced her way back to the point, though this was a whole lot harder than it had any right to be. “Anyway, life was a grind in those days. This was during World War II. Then the war ended, and things picked up a little when the men came back. A rodeo hit town. The town came alive at night, or at least the establishments catering to the cowboys, who spent their earnings as fast as they made them. I liked visiting the animals. I might have been young, but I was savvy. Or thought I was. Then one day out at the corral I met Rigo.”

She closed her eyes. “Short version: one look, and I thought it was Forever. Go right ahead and laugh.”

She opened her eyes. Still no laughter.

“Yeah, okay, then I’ll laugh. I was eighteen and he didn’t look much older’n me, though sometimes he talked like he’d been around during the days of the silver mines. You know, horse and buggy days—though a lot of towns didn’t get electricity for many years. Hidalgo only had one phone in the entire town.”

She was letting herself get sidetracked again, sighed, and forced herself back to the painful past. “He was the fastest rider in that rodeo. Never tossed. I went to watch him as often as I could. The way that man looked riding . . . It wasn’t just his looks, which could set an ice cube on fire. It wasn’t the daring, or trick riding, which they all did. It was the way he and the animals seemed to understand each other, to become one. It was the hottest thing I’d ever seen before a stitch of clothing ever came off.”

“Then he went after you?”

“Nah. Paid no attention to anyone. He was as wild a rider as the rest of them. He also drank like a fish, but he wasn’t mean, like my Pa. Like some of the other boys in that rodeo. He was nice to the other girls waiting tables, and to the shoeblack boy, Eddie, who polished their boots. In those days everyone said Eddie wasn’t quite right in the head, but now I think he’d just be on the spectrum. Rigo was nice to Eddie. Talked slow and easy, and Eddie trusted him. Though he didn’t trust easily.”

Godiva sighed. “Sometimes I snuck out to the corral in the early mornings, while my wash water was on the boil, and most of the rough riders were sleeping off their night’s guzzling. I liked to go pet the noses of the horses, and take them our withered carrots and bits of apple. Sometimes I’d see Rigo there, grooming the animals—no one else seemed to bother looking after them that way—and he smiled at me. Smiles turned to talk. Talk turned to . . . what it usually does.”

“You said he was drinking, too?” Bird asked, wrinkling her nose.

“At first, he drank as much as the rest of ‘em. But like I said, he was never a mean drunk. Still. Between the talking and the kissing, we had ourselves a conversation. I told him right off I liked him fine, but I wouldn’t walk out with any man who was splashing up to the back molars with the diner’s hooch. So he started drying up. At least when I saw him. After a time, that was pretty much every day.”

Godiva paused, and saw sympathy in Bird’s face, and a slight frown on Doris’s forehead.

Godiva took a deep breath. How to shorten this up? “That rodeo wintered over in town, as lodgings were cheap. Sometimes he vanished for a day or two. I couldn’t figure out what was dogg

ing him. But when I saw him again he was sober, so I didn’t hassle him.”

She shrugged a shoulder. “Come spring they took off, and it was like the sun had gone out. I spent my hard-earned nickels taking myself to movies and watching them all the way through three times, even the newsreels. But the rodeo was back the next winter, and the moment he walked into the diner, the sun shone again.”

Godiva snorted. “Something was wrong. I could see it. Not just him. In retrospect, that rodeo was probably a shlock outfit. He came to me one day after being gone a week. He had a bruise on his chin, and another on his temple. His knuckles were split. I could see he’d been in a fight. I asked what happened, he said horse trouble. I thought, as you do at that age, if I loved him harder we’d be all right. The inevitable happened—I missed a period. Then two. By the third missed period I’d figured out what was what. He disappeared again for a few days, but then came back really beat up. He walked right into my arms, holding me tight. I told him the news, expecting we’d marry and I would take care of him and our kid, and life would be daisies and butterflies. But he let go of me like I’d grown cactus spines and looked away like I’d whacked him between the eyes with a two-by-four. He wouldn’t even meet my eyes.”

The room was absolutely silent.

Godiva sighed. It felt like swallowing glass to dredge all this crap up—as if anything could be done about it after all this time.

“He said his head was still ringing from the fight and he had to go, though by then there was a full-on thunderstorm outside, hail and all. I, idiot that I was, kissed him and promised him I’d bake him a cheese and tomato pie on the morrow—the only thing I knew how to make at the time. I made that pie, but there was nobody but me and Eddie to eat it. Rigo didn’t show up, didn’t show up. Late the next day I heard that half the rodeo had vanished, leaving the remainder with all the owner’s unpaid bills. Rigo was one of those who’d hightailed off. That morning I took a long walk and faced facts. I’d been stupid. I’d never be stupid again. Or waste a tear on him.”

“What. A. Jerk,” gentle Bird said fiercely.

“Oh, you think that was bad? Just wait. It only gets worse. Which is pretty much why I’ve never yapped about it. What good does it do? But I said I’d get it out, so I will get it out. You know what things were like back then for girls who turned up pregnant with no ring. Especially brown girls with no money and no family.”