Brother William leaned in through the window beneath the ragtop. “Let’s put the top down.” He unlatched it and swung it back with ease.
Fulgencio scrutinized his every move.
“Let’s open the gate,” Brother William said mischievously.
Fulgencio frowned, his eyebrows knitting together in disapproval.
“Brother William, didn’t you hear a word I said? This car is dead. It only looks good on the outside . . . because it’s been covered up all these years, hidden away from the elements. But it’s dead nonetheless.”
Brother William’s eyes danced mischievously, “Dead like me? Dead like your grandfather, Don Fernando Cisneros? Dead . . . like you have been for so many years?”
Fulgencio’s right eyebrow ascended in unison with Brother William’s. “What are you saying, Brother?”
“I’m saying try again.” He put his hands on the cool metal of the hood.
As Fulgencio turned the key once more, the engine roared to life, filling the warehouse with the power of its growling. The din resonated through the aluminum walls of the makeshift stables. The horses whinnied and reared, startled by the thundering noise.
The smile on Fulgencio’s face hurt. Something deep inside his chest hurt too. He wondered if it was his heart. His heart, breaking for the child he had never known. The daughter he would now seek out upon this mighty steed. He shifted the stick into first gear, and the car rolled into the clearing in front of the hut.
He ducked inside to pack his old leather suitcase and say his goodbyes to his grandfather and La Virgencita. “Wish me well, both of you. I’ll need both your luck,” he glanced at Fernando Cisneros sitting at the table with his cards spread before him, “. . . and your blessing,” he nodded in deference to La Virgen.
“Don’t take my luck, m’ijo. Por el favor de Dios, make your own,” Fernando Cisneros whispered as the Virgen’s golden aura pulsated in harmony.
Fulgencio genuflected before her image on the wall, making the sign of the cross. He kissed his grandfather’s stone cold cheek lightly, feeling his prickly age-old stubble like sandpaper upon his cheek. And he grabbed his khaki Stetson from the hook next to the door as he walked into the rosy morning light. The car purred as he got in, throwing his grandfather’s faded leather bag in the back seat. He wore cozy clothes, for there was a chill in the air: his khaki overcoat lined with fleece, a brown sweater vest. A plaid shirt and khaki pants. He straightened his thick mustache as he surveyed himself in the rearview mirror, the steam from his breath enveloping him.
“God bless you!” Brother William called out, waving his hand high in the air as the Fulgencio roared away, clamoring over the bumpy caliche road, through the open gates and onto the highway to Nueva Frontera. Fulgencio waved again from the highway as he rode past the ranch. And he honked as he passed El Refugio, a graying Cipriano smiling his chipped-tooth grin from his roadside porch.
He sped through the deserted morning streets of Nueva Frontera, over the bridge, and into downtown. He made a quick stop by the drugstore, where he scribbled a note and pasted it on the front door: “Closed for vacation.” Vacation. He’d heard of the concept, but never taken one. No, no señor. Work was all he’d known. From a drawer in his desk, he pulled out the tiny onionskin sack containing the fragile gold chain and medallion he had once given to Carolina Mendelssohn. Stuffing it in his coat pocket, he pulled out the leather pistol bag he would carry beneath the front seat just in case. Who knew when one of the surviving Guerrero brothers might seek to reassert their manhood via the grand illusion of revenge?
The light was on in Carolina’s kitchen as he pulled up to the curb. As he strode up the walkway, she emerged from the door, still in her bathrobe.
“I didn’t think you’d have the guts to come back here again,” she said. “And definitely not so soon.”
“Then clearly you don’t know me that well, Carolina.”
Her eyes fell to the doorstep. “I’m sorry about the other night,” she whispered. “So many years of keeping that secret. So many years of pain. All alone, Fulgencio. I wish our lives could’ve been different. That we could have been married and raised our little girl.”
“I know,” he said. “It’s all my fault. And you’ll never know how sorry I truly am. But now I am going. Going to find our child, wherever she may be.”
She looked up at him in astonishment, her eyes widening. “But Fulgencio,” she stammered in shock, “that’s impossible. Those adoption records are sealed. We’ll never know her unless she seeks us out.”
“We’ll see about that,” Fulgencio said, putting his hat back on, his eyes ablaze with ambition.
“I’m coming with you,” she said in a matter-of-fact way.
He waited over a cup of coffee in the kitchen as she packed her bag, arranged for a substitute teacher to fill in for her, and bid farewell to her mother.
Carolina’s heels clicked with urgency on the walkway to the red convertible waiting out front. He placed her suitcase in the trunk and opened her door. She looked so young, he thought, nearly as young as she had looked before she even became a mother. She wore black jeans, black boots, and a black leather coat that reached down to her thighs. Her hair was pulled back, cascading over her collar. The fervor of their search invigorated them both.
“What’s with the car, Fully?” she asked, crossing her legs over one another and turning her body toward him.
His heart jumped at hearing her call him by his old nickname. “The truck wouldn’t make it on this trip,” he said. “Besides, the steering on that old junker isn’t safe anymore.” Internally, he relayed his heartfelt apologies to El Papabote La Marque with all due respect for his sincere efforts.
“I remember seeing you in this car after you returned to La Frontera. I don’t think you noticed me, but it made me feel so sad to watch you in it. Anybody else would’ve looked happy in this car, but you looked so hollow. And I was hollow, too, without you.”
“I found no joy in driving it after a while,” Fulgencio said. “I had no need for such beautiful things without you to share them with. It made me miss you. Miss Buzzy. Miss life.”
As they thundered north on the only highway to enter or leave La Frontera, Carolina’s hair flew back in the wind. Fulgencio’s antique tortoiseshell wayfarers shielded his eyes. The day felt young. And so did they. For the first time since their moments stolen in the storage room of Buzzy’s Diner, they felt liberated, reborn. Free of the secret that had served as a silent tomb for Carolina’s soul. Liberated from the walls that had kept them apart over the past months of frustrated reconciliation. Alive with the excitement of new life. Of not knowing what the open road held ahead. Of yearning, of searching, of living yet again. Enveloped in the heated, vibrant roar of the Corvette as they sped away from La Frontera, their hearts were beginning to thaw, even in the chill of dawn.