Tessie D

I could tell from the first day that I met Angel — before anyone told me anything about him and his educated family — that he had money. His jeans, his boots. They were worn but not worn out, like the rest of us at dairy. They didn’t have patches where they’d been snagged on barbed wire, and the bottoms of his boots hadn’t been resewn when the seams eventually gave out. He didn’t wear the same straw hat to church that he wore in the dairy barn. He had different hats — one for work and one for church. He grew up in a house that sat on a concrete slab, not a house with metal skirting to hide the wheels.

He was here because he wanted to be, not because he didn’t have any other options. He had nothing but options — and opportunities. He would be successful; the universe would not allow anything else. It would open up for him when he was ready to receive its blessings.

Even in his twenties, the men are already calling him “Jefe.” As if it was already predetermined. One day, he’ll plant his flag into the ground and hit an oil guiser — a Rockefeller in ostrich-skin boots.