The Barbarian Nurseries A Novel - By Hector Tobar Page 0,103
the idea that the Lujáns were descended from a place of nobility and history, where men stood tall on horses and looked proudly over the dry, yellow hills of their patrimony. Don Quixote shared the living room with assorted horseshoes, mounted vintage revolvers, and a sofa-bench and love seat with fragile, wood-carved legs and cream velvet cushions embroidered with gold swirls, both pieces shipped in from “the best kitschy furniture maker in Durango,” as his daughter put it. Scattered among these symbols of his romantic outlook were family pictures, including one portrait of the aforementioned daughter in cap and gown, and another of the family patriarch raising a clasped hand on election night with the mayor of Huntington Park. Brandon and Keenan looked at that picture a second or two without knowing what its precise meaning might be, though Brandon surmised from both the image and the air of steadiness and authority of Mr. Luján that he had recently been named president of Huntington Park.
They moved to the backyard, where six rented white tables had been arranged under the mustard-colored light that seeped through the tarpaulin skin of the tent. Salomón led Araceli and the boys past a cluster of half-awake young people gathered at the tables, to the edge of the backyard, where two men with shovels were standing and conversing around a mound of beige dirt that seemed to have bubbled up from the lawn.
“We’re having carnitas, the way they do it in the ranchos,” Salomón told the boys. “There’s a pig buried in there.”
“Underground?” Brandon asked.
“Yeah, we got hot rocks down there. And the pig, wrapped in foil, cooking. We let it cook for some hours. When it finish, you have very juicy meat. Sabrosísima.”
Brandon gave the mound a look of innocent puzzlement, causing Mr. Luján and the two sweaty, stubbly-faced men with the shovels to grin: he was, in fact, deeply troubled by the idea that combustion was taking place in the unseen hollows beneath his feet. “I thought fire needed oxygen to burn,” he said, but Mr. Luján had turned his attention elsewhere and did not answer, and his two cousins with the shovels didn’t speak English well enough to explain the simple physics of their carnitas barbecue. After thinking about it for a few seconds, Brandon came to the disturbing conclusion that he was standing over a pit of buried flames, as in the underworlds often depicted in the books he read: souls trapped in subterranean passages, evildoers building infernal machines in caves. He considered, for a moment, running away, until Mr. Luján returned and put his arm on his shoulder.
“Let me introduce you to the people here,” he said to the boys. And then he turned to Araceli and said in collegial Spanish, “Y tú también.”
For the moment, the only guests were the four young adults sitting half asleep at the table, seemingly hypnotized by the piano resonating from two transistor-radio-sized speakers. A single piano note repeated inside the swirl of a flute, and then a tenor began to sing, pushing into falsetto, and Araceli found it odd that these people with their obvious Mesoamerican features were listening to a rather effete voice singing words in English.
History involved itself,
mysterious shade that took its form.
Or what it was, incarnation,
three stars,
delivering signs and dusting from their eyes.
“¡Buenos días!” Councilman Luján said, causing his daughter, Lucía, to startle and sit up straight, and her three friends to emit wake-up groans and coughs.
“This is Araceli,” he said to Lucía. “She’s a friend of your cousin Marisela. And she’s visiting us for Fourth of July with the two boys she takes care of. ¿Cómo se llaman?”
“Brandon.”
“Keenan.”
“Look, they just finished with the trampoline,” Councilman Luján said. “Vayan a jugar. Go play.”
The boys ran off, while Araceli joined the four young adults. Lucía Luján was nineteen, and Araceli recognized her immediately as the girl in the cap and gown in the living room, even though the thick braids into which she had woven her hair for summer had the curious effect of making her look younger than in the photograph. Her friends wore jewels and studs in the crooks of their noses, and loops inside their earlobes, and presented Araceli with the realization that she was losing touch with urban fashions. Probably they were already wearing these things in Mexico City, or would soon be, Araceli thought. “Hola, ¿qué tal?” Lucía said, after rubbing the sleepiness out of her eyes. “I think my cousin told me about you once.”