Sandy fixes her hair in front of the mirror in her room at Mrs. Big’s Hotel. She says what she always says, that she doesn’t like living here, despite the fact it’s a strategic location, “You can put up with it, Sandy, for the cause.” Her duties as an Eagle, one of Nepomuceno’s spies, take precedence over her own desires.
She checks her face in the mirror. She sees it as if it were new, as if she’s never seen it before. She doesn’t understand.
“I look like a fish,” she says, looking at herself.
But Sandy doesn’t look at all like a fish. She’s pretty, her hair done up gracefully. Eagle Zero is a beautiful woman.
She smiles.
“Maybe not so much like a fish … because fish don’t laugh, do they.”
In what seems like the blink of an eye, Úrsulo arrives at the New Dock in Matasánchez. He meets the Port Chief, López de Aguada, who has just arrived, his hat still in hand, the scent of coffee still on his breath — the Chief doesn’t drink chocolate, atole, or herbal tea in the morning. Úrsulo gives his report: “Nothing,” he says, “nothing happening:
“There weren’t even bumblebees last night.”
“Úrsulo, bees don’t fly at night.”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
Úrsulo jiggles the whip nervously in his hand. The Chief notices. He pays more attention to the gesture, and the strange sight of this object in the sailor’s hands (the whip is not an oar, a fishing rod, or a net), than he does to his informant’s words: trouble’s brewing on the river, and soon it’ll spill over onto land. Just as he’s thinking this he sees Sombra trotting alone, pulling the empty cart. Do the whip in Úrsulo’s hand and Fidencio’s unaccompanied donkey have something to do with each other? “Yes, yes,” he says to himself. “I do believe Úrsulo is up to something.”
He leaves Úrsulo before his sentence is finished. He puts his hat on and goes to the Town Hall.
Before going to rest — he has until the afternoon to catch up on his sleep—Úrsulo stops at Doctor Velafuente’s house. He finds him in his nightclothes, he’s come straight from the bedroom. Doctor Velafuente directs him to his office, where they speak behind closed doors. Aunt Cuca orders water for the chocolate. The Doctor and Úrsulo are finished in no more than three minutes. Cuca herself cuts a generous slice of (delicious) bread pudding and serves it on the new plate — only one survived the trip this time, her sister’s packages are more and more carelessly wrapped. And then: scandal in the kitchen (it happens every time he visits). She sits down at the table with Úrsulo while he drinks the chocolate in silence and eats the pudding in small bites. Cuca doesn’t speak either.
In the kitchen, Lucha and Amalia are more agitated than the water boiling in the pot, leeching the flavor from a bone for broth:
“All he needs is a feather in his hair, that Apache.”
“He looks to me like the kind who’d scalp you if you weren’t careful …”
“You took the words right out of my mouth! And the Señora is sitting with him … Úrsulo! What a name!”
“Incredible!”
The bone in the pot moves as the water bubbles, as if in agreement.
The mayor of Matasánchez, Don José María de la Cerva y Tana, gives specific instructions to Gómez, his personal assistant: “Don’t let anyone bother me, especially not those people from yesterday,” and shuts himself in his office.
He’s been wretched ever since Nepomuceno installed himself up in Laguna del Diablo. In the beginning he let himself believe the problem would go away, or head north along the Río Bravo. (He knows Nepomuceno — he’s a bundle of energy, a lightning bolt — he can change his disposition that fast.) That delusion didn’t last long. Don José is not the sharpest tool in the box, but he’s sharp enough to realize that Nepomuceno’s cause—“That stupid crap about La Raza that he pulled out of his hat along with a bunch of other bullshit”—appeals to many locals, especially the ones on the other side of the river, though even “the great unwashed from these parts will follow that red-beard.”
So he shuts himself in his office. His heart is full of fear on account of the news that López de Aguada, the Port Chief, delivered. “He didn’t even explain it clearly!”—it served only to fill him with pointless worries, which are bucking about like angry goats. He’s in a worse mood than the geranium-less flowerpots on Aunt Cuca’s porch.
During the morning, the folks he has summoned come to his office. First, Doctor Velafuente — inscrutable, he doesn’t say a word, but listens to the mayor carry on for nearly an hour, ranting and shaken. He prescribes: 1. valerian to help him sleep; 2. tea for his indigestion (which the mayor hasn’t complained of, but the doctor can smell it on his breath); 3. walking, to ease his ill humor, at which the mayor bursts out furiously, “Don’t tell me to go take a walk, don’t give me that country doctor crap, don’t you realize we’re going to hell in a handbasket? Walking! What the hell are you thinking?!” Then Mr. Domingo arrives, the guy who works the window at the post office (the mayor has given him specific instructions to set aside “any package or envelope that looks suspicious”), and Pepe, the bootblack, who shines the mayor’s shoes as he listens.
De la Cerva y Tana, shut in his office at the Town Hall, even eats lunch. They bring him some excellent food: fried quesadillas, chile poblano and onion, beef jerky seasoned with brown sugar, and fish, all of which Doña Tere, the woman with the grill on the corner, makes specially for him. Her homemade food is always delicious: her salsa is better than anyone’s. She usually works the streets in Bruneville but “it’s better to work over here for now, the gringos have become too ornery.”
Fidencio ties the lead of his mule, Sombra, to the bars on the little window that awkwardly faces the street as if it’s winking among the vines at the back of lawyer Gutierrez’s house. Fidencio whistles to his grandmother, Josefina, the old lady who runs the kitchen (no one remembers her name, everyone just calls her “señora,” except Fidencio, who calls her “granny”).
Old Josefina is a little deaf, but she hears the whistle of her favorite grandson. She rises and gestures to him to slip through the gate (the chain is on, but it’s loose) and into the kitchen. In the half-light of the kitchen she hugs him and sits him down at the table, then starts bustling around to fix him some (delicious) chilaquiles while she tells him things of no consequence, to which he listens respectfully until she passes him the fragrant, brimming plate.
“Mmmm, granny!”
“Eat it fast.”
“Granny, I have lots to tell you … Nepomuceno …”
“You can tell me later. Eat.”
Fidencio eats and talks quickly — his words are as flavorful as the food that perfumes them — all about the Shears-Nepomuceno business (whether or not Bruneville has a new sheriff; all about Nepomuceno’s camp; if this or that guy has joined forces with him; who knows how many Mexican gringos have arrived from the north; whether thieves are among them, fleeing the gallows) — when Magdalena enters to ask “the señora” for something.
“Señora,” she says softly in her sweet voice.
Josefina doesn’t hear, but she takes advantage of her grandson’s pause to say:
“Hurry, Fidencio. The master will be down soon, and I don’t want him to find you here in the kitchen.”
Fidencio doesn’t eat or speak: he is mesmerized by the girl. Seeing him like that, his grandmother realizes that Magdalena has entered the room.
“Shoot! What are you doing in here, girl?!”
“I wanted to ask you to sew the hook on my dress because …”
“Sew! Magdalena! If the master finds you in my nephew’s presence, I’ll be the one he’d send to the gallows, not Don Nepomuceno! Psht, Psht!” She shoos her away like an animal. “Get outta here, Magdalena! And you, hurry up, Fidencio!”