Free Parts Unknown by Rex Burns Page B

her eyes when we spoke of Nestor and Serafina and Felix, her face had the plumpness and color of good health. Bunch and I towered over the woman so much that we both had to be careful not to step on her. When she offered us a seat on the overstuffed couch facing the large television screen, we sat with relief.
    “I wrote to his mother in case he went home, but she thought he was still up here.” From an end table, she lifted a flimsy air letter bright with foreign stamps. “They’ve heard nothing from him. They’re very worried.”
    “Is it possible he and Serafina Frentanes went away together, Mrs. Gutierrez?”
    She gave that some thought, half listening to the sounds of children that filtered through the thin walls of the tiny house. Then the tight coil shook no. “I don’t think he even knew her. He never mentioned anyone who lived there except Senor Medina—the man who lives across the hall. They talked a lot about El Salvador. They played cards sometimes.” She added, “Besides, Nestor has a sweetheart in Ibarutu. Maria Cristina. He was always talking about her—how long it would be before he had enough money to return and buy a farm and marry her, how long the war would last, whether he should bring her to the States.” The head shook again. “He would not go with another woman, I’m sure.”
    “We didn’t think so, Mrs. Gutierrez,” said Bunch. “It’s just something we have to ask.”
    “I understand, but it’s impossible.” She went into a long amplification of what she’d said, describing the relationship between Nestor’s family and that of his intended. Maria Cristina Quiroga, whose line was related to Nestor’s by the marriage of his great-great-aunt to her great-great-uncle. “And besides, Nestor was very much worried about finding another job if he was fired from this one for not having the papers. He was working very hard to earn enough money so when things get better in El Salvador, he can go back and buy a farm. He just wouldn’t up and leave a good job.”
    Bunch broke in. “What can you tell us about Mrs. Chiquichano?”
    “Ah, that woman!” Mrs. Gutierrez settled back in the armchair with its patches of crocheted doilies. “She’s not from Ibarutu, I can tell you that. Her family lived on a ranch somewhere up in the mountains, and the only time they ever saw civilization was once or twice a year when they made the trip down for a saint’s day. They were poor—even for El Salvador, they were poor. But look at her now!”
    She went on to describe Mrs. Chiquichano—born Hernandes—as a girl, growing up in feed sack dresses and shoeless as a chicken until she was in her teens. If the woman had any schooling at all up in those godforsaken mountains, it was only what little someone in the family could provide or what she could learn herself. There were rumors about her chastity or lack of it too, but then, those country girls were often treated like animals, so if they acted that way it was only to be expected, and Mrs. Gutierrez didn’t even want to think of what might have gone on. But when she was sixteen, she was given in marriage to Senor Chiquichano, a friend of her father’s and even older by a handful of years. His death during one of those quick, violent raids by either the army or the guerrillas left the young widow on her own. She quickly sold the property left by her husband and, wearing straw sandals and carrying her only pair of shoes in a plastic bag, boarded a bus headed north. Somehow she got her immigration papers and ended up in Denver, writing once a year to her family and sending occasional photographs of her car, her house, herself in the finest clothes. It was her success, in fact, that led many from Ibarutu and the surrounding province to come to Denver, including the younger Mr. and Mrs. Gutierrez.
    “She rents rooms only to people from El Salvador?”
    “I think so. You understand how it is—people when they first come north are very, very