Mañana

By Lynnette Horn

Paco was a good man. Badness required too much energy. We lived side-by-side along the river in a lean-to of salvaged driftwood and junk. He would sit on the bank, worrying the current with a bottle of cheap whiskey, and anoint my head with mañana blessings.

"Mi"querida, no te preocupes," he'd flash a smile as broad as Texas. "I work and make money mañana. Soon I will give you all the fine things you deserve." But the next day mañana was still another sunrise away.

Friends and family along with an occasional drifter, showed up on our threshold daily. Song and laughter were constants fueled by humble food and a little whiskey. The men would congregate on the riverbank to pass a bottle with their mañana dreams of money making schemes, while the sad-eyed women would smash pintos in the camp fire kettle or flatten tortillas between their weathered hands. Like the other women, I held no illusion to the blessings of mañana. Our anointing had long turned to ashes, dulling our spirits and our faces.

"I'm going to leave him," I'd say to myself. "I'm going to leave him mañana." I had no more power over mañana than Paco. We spent forty-five years together waiting...waiting...waiting for mañana.

Now Paco está muerto. He died, as he would've wanted, sitting propped up against a Sycamore tree, under a canopy of stars, a whiskey bottle by his side. His brothers buried him at the edge of our campsite on a bluff overlooking the river. I crafted a cross out of driftwood, in place of a headstone, and carved on it an epitaph. It reads:

Here lies my husband, Paco Peréz. I will mourn for him mañana.

(First published in Poetry Midwest)