Status Updates From Texas: The Great Theft

Interesting: Nepomuceno is literally romancing and infatuated with La Desconocida (the unknown).

His name says it all: Fear. Fear of oranges, the sun, ants, the sea breeze, open windows, the joy of breathing. Dying.Living.Waking.Sleeping. The only pleasure he knows is demonstrated in monstrous acts. But what do Fear and his problems matter - we were talking about Eleonor. In comparison, he simply fades like a handful of sand thrown in your face that’s blown away in the wind’s laughter. Eleonor is radiant.

Before we know it they’ll pass a law preventing us from working on the other side of the Rio Bravo, not just poor folks, but all Mexicans. As for property, you see how they respect it, gringos have silver tongues. They’ll put up a fence or build a wall so we can’t cross into “their” Texas, as if it was theirs! They’ll take the water from our river, you’ll see, they’ll take everything we have…

His pinky toe always hurts, it’s always peeling, blistered, with ingrown hair and warts. All his ailments seem to manifest in his toe. It’s as though this part of his body is the voice of his soul.

"The Anglos' violence is a strategy to intimidate us, its obvious goal to take away our rights and our property. What they call laws and dress up like laws are nothing more than an ongoing battle for our property, our privileges, our basic rights. No matter what a Mexican does to get our property back, even if its as honest as growing apples, they call larceny, robbery, or theft."

Down toward the coast, where the heat is even more unbearable and the humidity is inconceivable, where bugs and vermin cohabit with ghosts and specters, live the Lieders, poor German immigrants from Bavaria. They learned from their ancestors how to deal with cold, but the heat is killing them. They built their house from sticks, stones, blood, sweat, and tears, where land is cheap because no one wants it.

For the moment, in his fevered delirium he is not with us. Eleanor, the minister's wife, attends him. At first sight it's a scene of neutral devotion, a wife fully engaged in her husband's vocation. But there's more. Eleanor cares for the patient with a secret hope: she wants to catch the sickness of the man whose name she doesn't know. Elanor doesn't want to live.

Having been kidnapped isn’t the only reason Nepomuceno is a living legend. It’s the stories about his riding, cattle-rustling, skirt-chasing, and fighting, along with his unparalleled roping skills and having been born into money, that make him a living legend. Cowards fear him, women dream of him. There’s no one like Nepomuceno - who’s also a redhead according to some.

Peter Hat cuts two white roses and takes them to the alter of the Virgin. He kneels and begins to pray aloud. Michaela and the children join him; she takes the roses from his hand, puts one in a delicate blue vase, and the other in his buttonhole. Mother & children begin drowning their worries in hail marys. But Peter, the more he prays the more worried he gets. His soul a poorly woven hat, full of imperfections.