After the daring rescue earlier, the "little women" just vanished. Now, they're back to tell their story. A story "ripped from the headlines," so to speak, as we battle with immigration laws. Laws that Wyatt understands with heart and soul from sad experiences past...and that makes Colt's movie seem, as he says, like a "trivial pursuit" by comparison...

The first one we saw with a little bowl of it, Hugh and I, was Joie, strolling out of the little house licking a spoon.

She held up the bowl and said, “Magic!”

And when I said, “Magic what?” she strutted up and shoved a spoonful of dark purple goo at me and said, “Taste!”

“But what is—“

She shoved the spoon almost in my mouth, and I licked the little bit that stuck to my lips. I didn’t know what it was. Some sort of really rich, really delicious pudding or something. I knew I wanted more, though.

So I grabbed the bowl and spoon from her and said, “Well, it’s mine now.”

She slapped me on the shoulder, looked up at Hugh and said, “His woman’s in there killin’ it.”

I held up the bowl to Hugh and said, “Stick your finger in there, dude. It’s insane.”

Hugh sampled it and a brow went up.

“Pudding?”

“For the kids,” Joie said. “The other ones were running around with all this crap she knew you wouldn’t want them to eat. So she raided the big kitchen out of all this fruit and whatnot, and came over here and got crazy busy.”

Aisha must’ve heard us, because she came out nibbling on a fruit roll up thing—fruit leather, I think they call it.

She tore a piece off and said, “Check this out. Tia in there watchin’, too. She talkin’ about sellin’ this stuff—better’n’ candy.”

The leather was sticky and sweet and melted in my mouth. And there were bowls and pots full of goopy stuff all over the island in the middle of the kitchen when Hugh and I got there.

Tia was tasting what I assumed was the latest batch with a big wooden spoon. Bonnie and Kelli were gobbling something down, too, over by the stove. Kelli opened the stove to check on some pans of that leather that they were drying in there, I gathered.

“Wyatt gone wild,” I said. “What’s goin’ on here?”

Wyatt was peeling an apple on one of those old timey things fastened to a counter across the kitchen from us. Ty and Taylor both let out a squeal as the peel snaked its way down onto the counter top where they were sitting, really watching the apple turn around and around.

Mike and Cat were all into it, too. Mike dangled the apple peel snake in front of Taylor and both babies started laughing and trying to catch it every time she snatched it away.

And as I went over to the island by Tia, she looked up from chopping up something on a board and said, “It’s good! Did you taste that?”

“I did.”

“Most women don’t have time to do this themselves,” she said. “Those city folks who come down here for the farmers market at church, those ones who are so picky about their food, they would buy it like crazy. Father will be here today. I’m going to talk to him about that. We could make this and raise a lot of money, if I learn how from her.”

“Have you asked Wyatt about that?”

Wyatt said, “I’m happy to help,” as a “back off” to me.

So I went over and put a kid on each hip.

“Where’d you learn all this?” I asked. She was chopping up the apple like a chef or something.

“It’s just purees,” she said.

“Yeah, but their baby food before doesn’t taste like this.”

“She puts dates and raisins and stuff in it instead of sugar,” Mike said. “No Splenda or anything. Just fruit or fruit juice—”

“No salt, neither,” Aisha said. “In the ones that aren’t sweet. She jus’ put all kinda spices in it. Or she mix a bunch o’ things together. Peppers and--I don’t understan’ it. But it taste good, though.”

“Where did you learn it?” Hugh asked, going from bowl to bowl all businesslike now. Smelling the money in it already.

“I started making it for the elders at a nursing home up in South Dakota,” Wyatt said. “The ones who couldn’t chew anymore or had dietary restrictions. The cooks were just putting the regular food in a processor or a big blender and nobody wants that. Liquified meat loaf. Ugh.”

“How do you do it?” I asked her.

“I just played around with flavors,” she said. “Mixing things together. Trying to find fruits and veggies and spices that would taste sweet or salty or add a little depth. For the meat mixes, I’d put mashed sweet or white potatoes on top in little dollops to make them look like dessert almost. And pretty soon, even the ones who could eat solid food were fighting over it. They called it beef pudding, the elders.”

“Well, you’ll have to find a better name for it than that,” Hugh said. “Prime Puree or something.”

“You know he’s gonna come up with something perfect,” Mike said. “You got the whole ad campaign in your head already, don’t you?”

Hugh went over to a bowl of red stuff and said, “Strawberry?”

“Strawberry rhubarb,” Kelli said. “Tastes like a Twizzler.”

Hugh tasted it and went, “It’s witchcraft, I tell you.” Just teasing, though.

But Tia gave him a frown and said, “You better watch how you use that word around here.  These women are already jealous of her. You might give them ideas.”

“Oh, they’re already talkin’ a lotta bullcrap about her,” Mike said. “Especially the young ones.”

“Like what?” I asked. Of course.

“Oh, that stupid shit about you wanting kids someday. And how come she doesn’t already have any, too, they keep asking.”

“As if it’s their business,” Bonnie said.

“Tell them to worry ‘bout all these lil’ babies havin’ babies left’n’ right up here,” Aisha said. “Least she waited ‘til she was old enough to be a mother.”

“Well, to be fair, I really didn’t have any choice,” Wyatt said. I winced, but I knew it was her way of just coming clean, once and for all.

And Tia’s antenna went up immediately. She turned all the way around to ask, “What do you mean?”

Wyatt stirred something into one of her purees very calmly and said, “I have some...problems in that area.”

“What kind of problems?”

I said, “Let ‘er alone, okay? You can have a life without children.”

“You don’t want children?” Tia asked, fixated on Wyatt like I wasn’t even there.

“I love children,” Wyatt said with a little smile. “But I can’t have children.”

Tia put her hands on her hips—one hand holding a long knife--and said, “Who told you that?”

“Oh, a whole slew of specialists,” Wyatt said. “I had every test they could think of—for other problems, I mean. But that’s how they found out.”

“You don’t have to explain anything,” I told her.

But Tia was all wound up. She pointed the knife at Wyatt and said, “They hexed you, talking like that! These doctors, they make people sick when they say these things.”

I went, “Tia,” but she wasn’t about to let this go.

“There’s nothing wrong with her! I can feel these things! Women come to me about these things!”

“Yeah, but—“

“And you don’t say those things, either! You talk about a thing, it happens. Or something you want, it doesn’t happen, because you keep telling yourself it will never happen. That’s how much power words have!”

“Look, I hear you, okay? Just...calmate.”

Tia flung a hand skyward bustled past me to grab a bowl full of chopped up dates.

“Give her these and stop talking about it,” she said.

“I think that father guy you were talking about just drove up,” Mike said, nodding toward the windows.

Tia wiped her hands right quick and went rushing out of the kitchen door to greet him. I don’t really know how Mike figured out he was a priest, because he wasn’t wearing his collar or anything. Just a sweater and some slouchy looking cords.

He was real tall and had a headful of curly red hair that he didn’t even try to tame all that much. It made him look younger than he probably was. I mean, he had crinkle lines at the edges of his eyes and some other things that put him past Wyatt’s age, maybe. But he “felt” younger.

And he came in behind Tia with a little smile on his face.

“Santa’s workshop,” he said, looking around at all the women.

“Taste,” Tia said, sliding one of the bowls his way. “Just stick your finger in.”

He chuckled and did what he was told. And those crinkly eyes lit up.

“Remarkable!”

“See?” Tia said, all proud. “She knows how to put things together like that.”

The Father looked over at Wyatt and said, “Extraordinary.”

“Oh, not really. But if you think it would help, I’d be honored.”

“We could sell it in town, too. At those stores that have all the organic things,” Tia told him.

“Well, we’ll discuss it,” the Father said, very patiently. “But can she and the young man take a break for a moment?”

I wasn’t expecting that. But he smiled at me and said, “They want to thank you, before we go. The ladies.”

“So you have talked to everybody?” Tia asked.

“Whole route’s mapped out,” he assured her. “You’ll be in the loop.”

Wyatt and I followed him outside. And there were the tiny ladies and kids, sitting on the concrete benches in the big garden on that side of the house.

They were all clean and dressed in clothes they must have gotten from the church people. And the little boy was eating something from one of the grocery bags on their laps—a Christmas cookie as big as his head almost. There was probably a whole dinner in the van nearby.

The mother of the baby Wyatt had rescued leaned forward and held cupped hands up to Wyatt when we got to them.

And when she said, “Please,” in English, Wyatt held out her own hands and the little woman dropped this incredible necklace into them.

We were stunned. The necklace was made of silver coins and turquoise and sterling silver, too. Lots of coins, strung together tight, the way you put them into those paper rolls. It had to have taken a real long time to save up all those coins. And to turn them into something so beautiful.

So Wyatt said, in Spanish, “It’s absolutely exquisite. But this is something that your daughter should have someday.”

And the little mother said, also in Spanish now, “I would not have a daughter if you had not gone down in the mountain after her. Give it to your own daughter someday. And tell her the story, so that she will know what a brave mother she has.”

Wyatt looked at me, but I shook my head “No,” because it would have been sort of insulting to tell her what she’d just told Tia. I mean, even if she couldn’t have a daughter, she could accept the gift.

So Wyatt said, “I will treasure it.”

And then the other woman said—this is almost all in Spanish from here on, “May we know your names? To add them to our prayers?”

“Wow, we didn’t even think of that,” I said. “I mean, to ask about names, you know? That’s how freaked out we were.” I didn’t say “freaked out,” but something similar.

“I am Wyatt and this is Colton,” Wyatt said, touching her own chest and then mine, before asking, “May we know your names?”

They told us the mother was “Ixchel,” which meant “wise and gentle,” and was the name of a goddess who knew medicine and things like that, too. The other was named “Eme,” which just meant “Joy.” 

But then the baby’s name was Socorro, which is a Spanish name that means you’re like...a source of hope or something, to people. Or maybe for them it was like her being born made her family feel relieved and happy or something.

The boy was Josue, which is pretty common, but they say that men with that name are sort of sexy. I mean, real playas, the kind that women swarm over. But these ladies were going to whup his ass later, when they got over the shock.

In fact, when they told us his name, they also told us what he had done.

“This one, he’s the one who did it,” Ixchel told me. Like I was a cop come to haul his little butt away or something. I mean suddenly all that shyness just melted away.

He dropped his head down all ashamed—it made me feel bad for him. He didn’t look like a bad kid. Kids do dumb ass things all the time.

“He told her there was diamonds in the rocks,” Ixchel said. “You know those little red things? That you find in the sand?”

“We used to dig for them when I was little,” I said. “Me and my brothers and sisters.”

She said, “He told her they could make us rich. And she went looking for them, but there was no sand up there. And when she started to cry, he got mad at her and threw them at her. So I think she was trying to find them when she fell in there.”

I gave him a look, but he still had his head down. Which made me feel for him even more. He seemed to be really ashamed of himself. And also, he seemed to be a really sweet kid, because of how bad he felt.

But even so, just to drive the point home in a deeper way, I said, “I used to get mad at my little brothers and sisters, too. But now, I miss them.”

“Where are they, your brothers and sisters?” Eme asked me.

I hesitated because I hadn’t wanted to scare him that much. But I went on and said, “They’re all gone. They died. In a fire.”

Boy, that did it. Everybody froze. And the little boy looked up at me like he couldn’t believe what he’d heard.

“All?” Ixchel asked me.

“Yep. But I wasn’t home. So I’m the one who lived.”

“So you were still here to save us,” Ixchel said. Her eyes said a lot more. She was a mother. So she knew there was a sore spot in me. Like she knew her son was sorry, too. Only she wasn’t ready to let him off the hook yet.

“She did the tough stuff,” I said.

But Wyatt cut in with, “How did you come to be here? I mean, how did you get to where we found you?”

She really didn’t like being celebrated. I think that was something she learned from Indians, too. The way it was told to me is that you don’t brag. You don’t single yourself out. Whatever you do is for the people—the world. It’s your duty as a human being, not something brave.

“We can work,” Eme said to me in English. Real sincere. It made my heart ache. “We will work for you, if they let us stay.”

So in Spanish I said, “We would be glad to have you. For now just...could you tell us about the trip up here? What happened to you? If you’re willing, I mean.”

Ixchel started peeling a tamale for Josue and drew him close to her, to show that she still loved him, before she began to tell us the story. It spilled out of her in a rush. And tears with it sometimes, too.

“That man who brought us across, he was a bad man. He tricks people,” she said. “He comes around at this one train stop that you get to the first morning. On the train. So by them you’re real scared and you’ll listen to anybody.”

“You rode one of those trains?” I said. Because I knew some kids who had come up on trains from down there. Street kids I’d run with. They’re freight trains, packed with people trying to get North. If they can’t get into the cars, they’ll just hang on the sides or sit on top of them.

And all the people I knew who’d done it were a little crazy. One of the girls had been raped by a whole bunch of men in one of the places where they stopped. There are hordes of them, I guess, just sitting there, by the tracks.

They’re almost like little villages. People selling things, people offering them a few feet of ground to rest on for a price. And lots of scary dudes, who’ll cut you for pocket change, or snatch your daughter or anything they think they can use or sell.

One of the boys lost an eye fighting some guy up on top of the train who was just showing off how tough he was by trying to throw my friend off the thing as they were going over a bridge ‘way high up above a river somewhere. It’s a place where the bad guys like to do that to people—I don’t understand why, but everyone knows about it. You watch out for it and don’t sleep at night until you make it over alive.

“We had to go,” Ixchel told me, pulling Josue close to her. Maybe realizing how lucky she was that he had made it all the way up there without being messed with or beat up or anything.

And Eme said, “They burnt the whole village, those gang boys. Because the men had decided to stand up to them. To tell them to leave our children alone. They will take a boy that small and teach him things no child should know. To carry drugs. To kill people. My brothers, all of them, they’re gone. One, we found dead. The other two, we have never seen again.”

Ixchel kissed Josue’s head and said, “My husband, they put him in a pile out there. In the middle of the village, they made a pile of people. Parts of people. Like meat in the market—the children saw this.”

Wyatt winced when she said that. It really brought home how sick those bastards were. But I’d seen them. Those piles. Photographers take pictures for the tabloids down there. And TV. It’s so common it’s almost like...entertainment now. I won’t watch the news from down that way because they’re always showing you heads and body parts lying in the streets.

I don’t understand hatred like that. Or...it’s not even hatred. They’re past hating, those people. They’ve gone past everything decent into...I don’t even know what state of mind allows you to chop up another human being.

“So, we rolled up a few things in our blankets, and ran during the night,” Ixchel said. “The necklaces, they are something the old women used to do, to give to their children someday. We don’t have a lot to give our children, down there. So a mother will tell her daughter to hang onto it, so if her husband doesn’t treat her right, she will have money to come back home. Or for a son, she will tell him to keep it in case he needs to run away sometime. Because we know that day will come.”

“I’m surprised you were able to keep it,” the father said. “They usually make you shuck down.”

“At first he was nice,” Eme said. “So we went with him to this hotel, he put us in this room with a lot of other women. Indians like us. But he said nobody would take any of us, because none of us had enough money. And he said it was sad how we came up there all the time and wound up begging on the streets or giving ourselves to men because we didn’t know any better.”

“But then he said he would put up the money for us to get a ride to the border,” Ixchel said. They were all into it, now. Like they needed to spit out all the poison they’d swallowed on the trip up.

“He said there was this man who would pay him and the driver real good and give us work,” Ixchel said. “We got nervous when he said that. Because you hear what they do to women. That’s why two of the younger ones ran off, when we stopped to pee. Because someone had got after them already once.”

“So there were two of them on the trip up,” I said.

Ixchel snorted and said, “Yes. The one who told us all this and that one, the one who drove us once we got across that hated Indians so much.”

“‘Why do you bring me these fucking Indians?!’ he said,” Eme told us. “’They have fleas on them! They have lice in their hair! They stink up my truck!’”

“But the one other, the one we went with, he said the rich white people, they liked the ones dressed like us,” Ixchel said. “He said they would pay more for us because they feel guilty for being so rich and also to show off to their friends that they had saved some poor Indian from starving to death in the jungle somewhere.”

I looked at Wyatt and she smirked. It was sort of true. And also very sad, what it said about the country we lived in.

So I said, “How did you get away from those jerks?”

“There was supposed to be some little town not far from where we crossed over,” Eme said. “But they didn’t even know where they were going. So then, they kept driving around, driving around—the driver started getting mad and telling the other one that he had better get some more money from us because he wasn’t going to keep driving around all day for nothing. He only had one more can of gas and the man that he knew, the one who would pay him, he would probably be gone already.”

“After it got dark, those two real young ones ran away from them,” Eme said—she was smiling like she liked that. “That one I told you about, she didn’t care if she died, she said, because she was ruined.”

“And then there was no gas, so we just got out and started running, trying not to be out in the open and get caught,” Ixchel said. “Only we really got lost then. And it was dark and we were scared. But in the morning, these men were coming through and they told us we could follow them—they were mules, you know? The ones who carry those drugs on their backs. Only we couldn’t keep up with them and they got mad and just left us.”

“How long ago was this? When you ran?” I asked.

“I think a week. But I’m not sure,” Ixchel told me. She was starting to tear up.

“There were bones,” she said. “People have died out there.”

This wasn’t news, either. All the ranch hands had found bones. And bodies. One so dried up from the heat and all that they didn’t even recognize it as a person at first.

“If we didn’t learn how to hide some food away in our clothes or something, we would have died, too,” Ixchel said. “The necklace was in the band of my skirt in back, wrapped up so it wouldn’t rattle. And we had those cereal bars sewed into things, too. If we had not known to do this, it would have been our bones they found out there one day.”

Wyatt reached over and put her hand on top of Ixchel’s hand. Two tiny hands, on the table. One white, one brown. And Ixchel seemed uneasy with it, but she finally smiled a little bit.

“But you are here now,” Wyatt told her.

She started to shiver and cry then, Ixchel. And she said, “Thanks be to God,” through her tears. “For sending such brave people our way.”

The father came over and put his hand on my shoulder.

“We should get going,” he said.

“Where to?” I asked.

And he smiled that crinkly smile and said, “Better not to know. But they’ll be taken care of. And the legalities will be worked out a lot faster now. You may see them back here soon.”

And then he looked at Wyatt and said, “This is where the money would go. Food, shelter, medical and legal assistance...”

And just like that, my little movie deal turned into a totally trivial pursuit.

But I was okay with that. And really proud of Wyatt. Again.