Chapter 1
Even inside one of the huts and away from the fierce anvil of the afternoon sun, the air was like a furnace.
To distract herself from the sweat forming on her brow and under her arms, Pepper hummed a little tune as she swept the coarse dirt floor. With no money for glass in the windows, it was a never-ending task to keep the dust from getting absolutely everywhere.
Wearing just a simple homespun dress, Pepper did her best to get the laborer’s hut as clean and tidy as she could. It took effort to pull the narrow cots away from the walls and sweep up the dust, but they worked hard on the dueño’s lands and deserved a modicum of comfort when they arrived home at the end of another long day in the agave fields.
Pepper poured a tiny bit of water from the clay pitcher to wash the roughhewn wooden dishes and aluminum cups that the men used for their simple meals, all the while wishing she could step outside and pour the water over her head just to feel it trickle down her body and between her breasts to get some relief from the omnipresent heat.
Once the pillows stuffed with corn husks were fluffed and the hunk of wood that they used as a table was polished with her rag, Pepper pronounced the hut done and then moved onto the next one. There were currently 16 in use, each one housing four men who came from all parts of Mexico to earn a few coins tending to the spiky agave plants that somehow managed to grow in the dry, cracked soil.
Cleaning the laborers’ huts was difficult work, but there weren’t many other options for a girl like Pepper, born the seventh child to a woman who worked as a cook in the big house and one of his foremen, who regularly drank up his week’s wages before remembering that he had a family to feed.
As such, Pepper and all her siblings had been turned out to beg or do whatever menial tasks they could find so they could have a mouthful of beans and rice to eat in the evening.
Using her handmade broom to try and tease out the piles of dust that had built up in the corner of the hut, Pepper was so focused on her work that she never noticed the laborer until she was right up on him. Startled, her hand flew to her throat.
In the six months since she had been cleaning the workers’ huts, she had never seen one of the men return home in the middle of the day. Those who got injured or fell ill were sent to the crude infirmary or else dismissed. Anyone who was merely shirking his duties would be lucky to get off with a beating by one of the foremen, so the laborer’s presence in the hut was truly shocking.
He certainly didn’t look ill, although he was stretched out on one of the cots. There was a mischievous glint in his eyes as he looked over at her as if he was at the circus and watching acrobats swing through the air while riders leapt on and off their gaily decorated horses.
The one and only time Pepper had seen something that wasn’t endless fields of crops and heavy red dust was when that circus had come through the area a few years ago, and her Papa, ebullient with drink, had taken her to go see the elephant as it marched through the streets of town.
It wasn’t Pepper’s job to ask the man why he wasn’t at work, so she returned to her job, pulling away the furniture from the walls and sweeping up the dust into neat little piles so she could carry them outside and tip them into the arroyo. The laborer said nothing, instead just lying there on his cot and watching her as she worked.
Whether it was his unexpected presence or the sun having another apocalyptic afternoon fit, Pepper felt even more overheated than usual to the point that she was now sweating copiously, so much so that her dress began sticking to her body, especially the front of her chest. When she bent over to sweep the dust into the pan, she felt the laborer’s eyes on her, and when she glanced over, she saw a lecherous grin on his face.
Pepper had always been a pretty girl, or at least that’s what her mother had told her. But the shy glances of the boys in the village or the occasional brat who would dart out from behind a tree to yank her braid were nothing like the intense scrutiny of the laborer as he continued to lay there on his cot. The only way she could think to describe it was hungry, as if she were a tamale full of savory meats and cheeses that had just come off the grill.
It felt strange to be regarded that way, but there was also something exciting about it that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Certainly, other than the dueño himself when she sat on his lap during the annual Three Kings festival, no other man had ever looked at her in quite such a way, and it intrigued her.
Was the laborer perhaps suffering a fever? That might explain his strange behavior. Her cousin Rosa had once gotten gravely ill, burning with an internal fire that made her skin hot to the touch and her eyes sparkle even in the middle of the night.
The look on the laborer's face was similar to that but not exactly the same. Furthermore, he did not seem to be sweating even though Pepper herself was drenched. No, it really did seem like he was merely enjoying watching her as she worked, although she had no idea why that would be so.
Ignoring his provocative stare, she continued with her duties, wiping off the table with her rag and straightening everything as best as she could.
Just as she finished putting away the dishes, she happened to glance over at him, and that’s when she saw something even more unusual. There was a huge bulge in the crotch of his simple homespun trousers, almost as if he had picked up a stick and put it down his pants for some reason.
