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Nena came back in and she had a tray of peppers, each kind in little piles. Only cayennes, the burning Capsicums. There are about thirty species of his delicacy, and she had six. There were green infernos and green terrors, yellow jackets and yellow furies, red torrids and red frenzies.
Hilario selected one of the red frenzies and held it up for all to see. It was wrinkled near the stem; then fat and tapering to a point. He put the whole pepper in his mouth and chewed slowly. The Indian nodded solemnly, and as he chewed we both watched the clock, and when a minute had passed he reached for his beer and took a sip.
I pulled the tray close to me and fingered through the frenzies until I found two that suited me, both wrinkling their ripeness and then swelling fat into juice and skin and seeds. I held them up for Tio to approve and put both of them into my mouth. My lips stung and the lining of my mouth was hot with quick and then prickling stings. I watched the clock through my minute of grace and took my nibble of tortilla.
The Ladinos crowded around Tio and patted him on the back; not me at all, but my sponsor. Then the hotel owner went among them and they gave him money and he receipted it and laid it out on the table. The Indians matched it, digging deep this time because they did not have so much money as the Ladinos.
There was a quizzical look in Hilario’s eyes. Maybe it was doubt. But, then, maybe it was admiration because I had taken two red frenzies, and without sweat, without the hard blowing of the breath.
We both took torrids, and this time I took only one. [My lips had hardened to the sting, but my mouth was ridging inside. I puckered fast to draw saliva.] Then the tingle was in my throat and deep down, but not yet to the belly. The tortilla helped some.
The bets were anted again and the hotel owner called out that he was offering odd on me. “Seven to five,” he called out. “On Mr. Hoyle. He is the friend of Tio, and Tio is my employee, and as all of you know” — he waved his arm in a broad gesture — “my employee went to the school, to the college, in the United States. And Mr. Hoyle, who is my guest, knows the place. This is a truth, and I say seven to five.”
There were no takers from among the Indians. They were shamefaced because they had no more money, and the Ladinos snickered. One of the Indians took off his jacket, a hand-woven garment of blue, embroidered with sacred pagan symbols. It was his most valued possession, and he walked to the table and put it there, but Hilario held out his hand and stopped him and shook his head.
Then Hilario spoke to me, ignoring the hotel owner and all the other Ladinos. “You have made your bets, Mr. Hoyle?”
“I have made my bets, Mr. Villareal.”
He called his daughter, and she raised her eyes as she walked to him and seemed to be looking at him, but she was looking at Tio. The father spoke low to her, and I did not hear his words, but she nodded understanding and ran across the patio and returns with a little hide-covered box. Hilario counted five hundred pesos — about a hundred dollars. A lot of money anywhere, a fortune in Feliz. “I take no odds,” he said. “Cover the wager, gentlemen.”
The Ladinos hesitated and Tio was embarrassed for them and jerked off his ring and threw it on the table. It was a gold band and worn and obviously old. Hilario picked it up and felt it and looked at it a long time, and handed it back to Tio. “I will not take a man’s ring. It has memories. So have I. And now I have a new memory, the honor of knowing a man who has faith in a stranger.”
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