Simon took out the fiddle and stood it on his knee the way a mother holds a toddling child. He tuned one string against another and did not bother with the tuning fork; G as the hold note and then D, A, E. He lifted it to his shoulder carefully, as if in fear of breaking some delicate web being spun in Solomon Bradford’s mind. Then he stood and began to play “Shenandoah.”

He made the Markneukirche sing. After the first phrase he double-stopped and the melody seemed to cry out of its own accord in several voices. It was a song that came to people as sadness, as memory, as longing. It was a kind of spirit unto itself, reflections of a mountain river that carried with it the souls of the ancient people who had lived there long before the white man came; the blue Shenandoah River, fifty-five miles long and clear as air. I love your daughter. A remote place of memory and recall now far away from this arid land.

The old man turned and watched him play and stood as still as the sun seemed to stand without moving in the sky. Beyond the window the girls’ chatter stopped, the laughing and talking of the men came to an end, and along with the phrases of the short-haul shanty known as “Shenandoah” the wind in the leafless wires of the mesquite slowed to a hush. Beside the Nueces River all the horses watering lifted their heads and drops fell from their mouths into the dark green water; another river, another time, another century.

At last Simon stopped and lowered the fiddle and the bow.

“Well,” said Solomon Bradford. A long silence. Then, “You was wanting to buy land from me, up there in Grayson County. Did you know that’s part of the old Peters Colony?”

Later that evening, with Doroteo and Damon as witnesses, Simon signed an agreement to buy four hundred and fifteen acres. The old man wrote out the agreement by copying another of the same kind, drawn out from a sheaf of papers tied up in agave-fiber string. Sold, to Simon Boudlin, the following described tracts of land belonging to Solomon Bradford the same being parts of land originally titled to the Peters Colony as their headright situated on Mineral Creek in the northern portion of Grayson County, State of Texas, to wit: Block Number 5 (Five) lying in the northeast corner of the league lying north of and adjoining Block Number Six (6) the total containing 415 acres. Terms of sale five years on credit on notes with one hundred dollars paid outright and mortgage on the land . . .

His hand was that of another age, with every noun capitalized and all his s’s were f’s. The paper stipulated fifty cents an acre with a hundred dollars down. Simon emptied his fiddle case onto the floor where the money so hard-earned rang on the boards. They counted it out, including the twenty-five-dollar gold eagle. This left him four dollars and seventy cents. He watched the old man sign as well and sat in a poised and fearful silence wondering what he had done. What he had just bought. If he had bought it.

“And may you hold it,” said the old man. “And may you stay alive holding it.”

“How am I to pay you the rest?”

“Put it in Twohig’s bank in San Antonio. He’ll handle it for me. He handles my business. Twohig. Irishman.”

“You’re trusting me to pay it?”

“Son, I know a lot of people in San Antonio. They would come to pay you their respects if you did not pay up.” He stood up and laid his hand on the paper as if to swear by it. “Well, we better find you a place to unload.”

They were led to the loafing sheds inside the horse pens and there they slung their gear and baggage. They cleaned it up and made camp. It was near the river, and Doroteo was watchful and unsettled all night with the shotgun laid near him on a cotton sack to keep the dust and litter out of the works. It was loaded. On the clear skin of his face the moon shone like a bright celestial polish. He got up once to take a piss and said vete to a horse that had come to mumble around in their baggage. Vete pendejo.

Simon woke up in the dark and saw Doroteo standing in the moonlight. Then it occurred to him that Doroteo was watching for the girl they had seen earlier, the one that did not return his greeting. Doro leaned over the rails with his face toward a fire by the river. After a while the occasional lights died down and Doro came back fully dressed and finally slept.

The next day, after cleaning up in the river and changing into white shirts, they went to the main house with their instruments to say good morning to the old man. Solomon Bradford patted Damon on the shoulder and said, “Well, let’s get that girl married.”

So Simon played his fiddle there in a land without law, without notaries public or agents of justice or jails or judges or justices of the peace to record either marriages or land titles. Like everybody else, he took his chances. He was now a landowner and it made him feel strangely heavy and also committed in a way he was not sure he liked. He spun the screw on his bow between his fingers so that the horsehair was taut and then drew the rosin down the stream of white hair, this device for calling up both grief and joy from naught, from the vacuum that surrounds life and celebration. A breezy morning, his hair wet.

Lisia, short for Felicia, was led to the tiny chapel as if it were a long journey, and perhaps it was. Her mother, Estela, on one side, a thin woman with thick black hair in intricate braids, her father on the other side, tears running down his cheeks unregarded. Behind them came girl cousins in their best skirts and blouses. Young men trailed along in buttoned leggings and silvered spur straps, their wide-brimmed hats turned up behind. It was a long voyage from girlhood to young matron, from her father’s house to that of her groom.

Inside the chapel the groom and a priest stood with clasped and sweating hands. It was ten in the morning on a Saturday and the heat of September in the Nueces country was already building into the high eighties. In the shade of the small chapel the bride’s white tunic gleamed. It started at the neck and ended mid-thigh, embroidered and looped with lace. Under it she wore several skirts in madder and yellow. She had ten strands of beads around her neck. She wore small slippers that slapped as she walked. Somebody nudged Simon.

“Wagons ho,” said Damon.

They began to play; it was to be waltzes at the ceremony and varsovianas at the feast afterward. So they launched into “Mockingbird Waltz” and then “Ma Petite Marie” and then “La Savane” which was not a waltz but at least they knew it. When it came time to say the vows, Rosillo patted the air and they stopped.

Volo, said the groom, and volo said the bride.

The girl who had passed them by with her basket of corn was stiff and unmoved by any of it. When Simon dropped his fiddle to his side and could take surreptitious glances at her, he recognized her by her round face and the tilt of her eyes. She also wore a long white tunic, edged by lace and embroidered in very fine purple and red thread. Her skirt beneath was full, probably several skirts, and in colors of dark blue and vermilion. Then he realized her clothing was nearly the same as the bride’s: a wedding costume.

He saw she was resolutely not looking at Doro. Doro, with equal resolution, was not looking at her. Weddings are dangerous times, thought Simon. It was the first time this had occurred to him. He saw people fall into memories of their own weddings and both jealousy and undiluted joy flowered like the Spanish Dagger. Doro bent over his guitar until the final words were said by the priest. Votives flickered beneath the faces of saints, a whitewing sat on the mesquite outside and called out long melodic moon sounds, and a little girl clutched the bell rope in a state of round-eyed anxiety, waiting to be told to ring it.

Suscipe, quaesimus, Domine, pro sacra conubii, lege munus oblatum . . . per omnia saecula . . .

Everybody straightened up at the amen, threw their arms in the air, and began shouting. It was over. Gunfire from just outside the chapel as long guns and pistols were fired into the air; the penetrating small crack of revolvers and the bigger deep thuds of Sharps and smoothbores. The little girl pulled the rope with all her might and was lifted onto her toes as the headstock tipped and the chapel bell rang out. The young woman in the tunic with purple and red embroidery turned and hurried from the chapel with two girlfriends behind her.

The shouting crowd carried them out into the hot air, where cabrito roasted slowly and tecomates with tamarind water were set out. Doroteo hurried to sit at an outdoor table and began to work his way through the dishes on offer: pulled pork, tamales, carne guisada and arrachera, salsa verde, a cake of tres leches.