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Lucinda and Delgado’s eyes met and she immediately looked away, thinking of Stevie singing to her in the Wagoneer, warning her that going back to a love gone wrong may be a bad idea.  Her gaze fell on an old tractor parked underneath a carport off south the Airstream.

“What the hell is that?” she asked.

Delgado glanced back in the direction of the tractor, just to be sure he knew what she was asking about.  “The tractor?  Oh, that was just a gift from my mother and Mr. Braxton.”

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“You mean your mom and dad?” Lucinda said.  She couldn’t believe Delgado still called his father ‘Mr. Braxton’.  But then the whole thing with his family lineage and the relationship between his mother and the man she’d worked for and lived with for the last three decades was as complicated as any in Fort Stockton.  And that was saying something.  Delgado ignored the question and focused on the tractor.

“It’s a 1947 Cockshutt 30.  It was designed by architect Charles Brooks; this variant featured a two-tone paint scheme. It’s finished in red with a beige engine cover. Further details include a red intake stack, a silver exhaust stack, headlights, a rear work light, and rear half fenders.”  Delgado explained everything about the tractor matter-of-factly, except how it came to be parked out at his place.  “I built the carport for it.  Didn’t want it completely exposed to the elements.”

“Who would?” Lucinda responded.  She took the appearance of a classic old tractor as routine as anything else that might happen in Delgado’s life.  The Cadillac Delgado was restoring that had been his grandfather’s was parked under the carport as well and looked considerably better than the last time Lucinda had seen it.  “You’re amassing quite the collection of unique vehicles out here, aren’t you?”

“Mr. Braxton likes to come out in the evenings and work on the Cadillac with me.  He brings my mother with him.  She makes Guatemalan recipes on the grill while we work on the car.  It makes for some lovely evenings.  She puts a Ricardo Arjona album on the Crosley turntable and we eat the feast she prepares. Almost like a family.”  Delgado had a sweet smile on his face Lucinda wasn’t used to seeing very often.  Certainly not when talking about his parents.  “Mr. Braxton pays for all the parts, and any of the work done on the Cadillac that we can’t do out here.”

“When he brings his album Acompañame A Estar Solo, the two of them dance in the moonlight on the patio as I do the dishes inside the Airstream,” Delgado said.  It was sweet the way he said it.  It made Lucinda think that however Delgado rationalized the relationship between his mother and father was up to him.  Who was she to judge?

“Let me show you the Weasel,” he said as he walked over to her.  He smelled of sweat and LAVA soap and jalapeños and as he brushed up against her her knees went weak and the thought of the sight of his weasel after these many months.  He grabbed his shirt from the picnic table as he made his way towards her.  She was a tad bit disappointed by that.

He grabbed her hand and they set off behind the Airstream to the all terrain vehicle she had come out to see.  Or at least that was the reason they both used.  He explained as they walked up on the Studebaker Weasel, “The replacement Chevrolet 250 cubic inch inline-six was installed under prior ownership, back before Earl got it, and is centrally positioned up front. Power is sent to the tracks via a replacement three-speed manual transmission and a dual-range transfer case. The fuel tank has been bypassed, and a temporary fuel reservoir is located in the rear compartment. The engine cover is missing.”  Lucinda did her best to seem interested.

Crawling up first into the rusty cabin of the old World War II vintage project, Delgado then turned around to extend his hand to Lucinda to help her in.  The instrument panel was on her right.  She noticed that it housed a 60-mph speedometer along with gauges for oil pressure, coolant temperature, and amperage. The five-digit odometer showed 4k miles, but she was pretty sure that was just a sliver of the history this thing actually contained.  She couldn’t help but notice the styrofoam Piggly Wiggly ice chest over in the corner.  She suspected Delgado had filled it with Guatemalan peach-mango margaritas, her favorite.  Indeed, he had.

As Delgado turned the key, the Chevrolet 250 cubic inch inline-six coughed and belched and blew almost as much smoke out of its ass end as Mayor Goodman at a press conference.  Seeing Delgado firmly grab the gearshift and engage the three-speed manual transmission made Lucinda’s heart quiver just a bit.  The way the Studebaker lurched as he put it into gear thrust her right into Delgado’s lap.  She quickly got up and returned to the passenger seat and off they headed off towards the far reaches of the fifty acres, down near where the brush opened up revealing the creek that ran through the north corner of the ranch.

The Weasel made its own path through the Cenizo and Texas lantana that were just beginning to bloom out.  The Edwards plateau is under-appreciated for the wide range of native flora and fauna it hosts.  It seemed to Lucinda that most every different kind could be seen from the rusty cabin of the World War II Weasel.  The odd raccoon, jackrabbit, or road runner running across the trail would startle the couple as they made their way towards the creek.  The conversation between the two of them was as sparse as the cottonwoods, though the sexual tension was not.

There was little doubt they both felt it.  Neither wanted to be the one to act on it, in case the situation was being misread.  Forty five minutes and two tall Guatemalan margaritas into the journey, Lucinda had to make an announcement.  “I have to piss like a racehorse,” she said.  Delgado slowed the Weasel down and found a little shade and privacy offered by a cottonwood not too far off the path.  He’d seen Lucinda pee a hundred times before, but those were in different circumstances.  He pointed her in the direction of a large rock and looked the other way, bowing to gentlemanly discretion.

Lucinda thought it was as odd as Delgado did that any level of solitude was needed.  Nonetheless, she set out towards the shaded boulder about 30 yards from the Studebaker and squatted like a pioneer woman giving birth in the middle of a wagon train heading west.

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It may have been the scent of the female urine.  It could have been the wrestling noises made as Lucinda walked to the boulder and slid her skimpy undergarment down around her ankles and released a strong stream onto the parched earth between her feet.  Most likely, it was the sexual pheromones she’d likely been emitting since she initially got out of the Jeep Wagoneer next to Delgado’s Airstream.  The reason was irrelevant, but the results were potentially deadly.  The largest male feral hog Delgado had ever seen appeared 60 yards off, in the direction of the creek.

As the beast got closer, the incitement, whatever it was, apparently grew stronger.  The hog’s attention seemed to turn to arousal and his approach turned into a trot. Delgado called to Lucinda to make her way back to the Weasel post haste.  Already having caught sight of the monster, Lucinda grabbed the thong from around her ankles and attempted to slide it up into place.  Though minimal in size, the garment was knotted in the panic to raise it up.  The attempt to run before they were back in place caused her to trip and roll through the brush.  The hog was advancing at a pace that indicated his elevated attraction.

Knowing there was no way Lucinda would make it back to the Weasel in time, Delgado grabbed the 308 Winchester wedged in behind the Piggly Wiggly ice chest.  Based on the distance between Lucinda and the Feral hog, now running at full speed right towards her, Delgado knew he only had one shot.  Lucinda, rolled up in a ball under a red berry juniper, was starting to see her life flash before her eyes as the stained gnarly tusks of the beast grew closer.  She almost had to laugh at the irony of meeting her maker with her undies around her ankles, her dress hiked high above her waist, and her bare nether regions pointed towards the endless West Texas blue sky.

The shot that rang out hit the hog dead center between his black eyes and dropped him instantly.  Momentum from the full run he’d been in landed him only inches from Lucinda.  She smelled his last breath.  It gagged her.

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The hog weighed nearly 900 pounds.  They knew the exact weight because they took the Weasel back to the Airstream and picked up the tractor.  After hanging the hog from the strongest limb he could find nearby, Delgado gutted it, leaving the entrails for the coyotes.  He used Cockshutt 20 to drag the carcass to the road and called Earl to come pick it up.  Earl knew a guy who processed it into 400 pounds of some of the best sausage in all of Southwest Texas.  Feeling a little bad for nearly stealing the Weasel from him, Delgado split the jalapeno cheddar sausage with Earl as a token of Texas friendship.

Watching Delgado handle his Cockshutt as he disposed of the feral predator that had threatened her and the near death experience she’d experienced under the cottonwood tree changed Lucinda in ways she wasn’t able to even describe.  She stopped short of calling it a religious experience out of deference to Sister Thelma. But the Southwest Texas open lands she’d taken for granted, the Guatemalan margaritas, and seeing Delgado take careful aim and shoot his shot with not a single second to spare all combined to fill a void in Lucinda’s soul she didn’t even know existed.  She spends a lot of time outside of town in the Airstream now, and doesn’t miss an opportunity to ride that Cockshutt.

Anyway, Lucinda and Delgado are back together again.

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