Tampico

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Chepa colored the dogs by dipping them in iron cauldrons out back. Estrella was a struggler and almost as large as she was, and Chepa’s arms would be flooding pink fans from the elbows when she lifted her out. Then it was Don Lupe, the spaniel dyed grassy green, and yellow for the Chihuahua, Rata, the only true Mexican of the three.

There was a time when the cauldrons had been used for the scalding of chickens that were fed to the troops, but that was when General Corzo had owned the house, one of many, and before he lost it to Chepa in a game of cards at the Louisian. Chepa had wagered servitude, and it was a good thing for General Corzo that she had won.

The cauldrons rested in a row on the ground below the crude porch, beyond them and Chepa’s small vegetable garden and the oak sapling she’d planted at the garden’s edge the foothills rising above the dusty plains of the state of Tamaulipas, becoming those lush and mysterious mountains from which she had descended, that even from the sky were lost to sight under cloud cover and perpetual mist.

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