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    In the Shadow of El Paso: River City Short Stories
    In the Shadow of El Paso: River City Short Stories
    In the Shadow of El Paso: River City Short Stories
    Ebook83 pages1 hour

    In the Shadow of El Paso: River City Short Stories

    By Frank Zafiro

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    About this ebook

    Carl is a Yankee cop in a small Texas border town. Isabella is a beautiful Mexican woman that everyone in town loves, including the hapless Pete and the wealthy, powerful Jack Talbott...but most of all, Carl. He runs in trouble in two separate stories, first with Pete and then with Jack. The final story comes from a different perspective - lifelong La Sombra resident John Calhoun, who also runs afoul of the power structure in this small town.

     

    Part romance, part police procedural, part social commentary, IN THE SHADOW OF EL PASO contains three short stories by Frank Zafiro. All three stories explore love, race, class and the ambiguity that exists on the southern border of the United States.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCode 4 Press
    Release dateMay 12, 2012
    ISBN9781502295088
    In the Shadow of El Paso: River City Short Stories
    Author

    Frank Zafiro

    Frank Zafiro was a police officer from 1993 to 2013. He is the author of more than two dozen crime novels. In addition to writing, Frank is an avid hockey fan and a tortured guitarist. He lives in Redmond, Oregon.  

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    • 5/5
      These stories are gripping and moving explorations of love and loss.

    Book preview

    In the Shadow of El Paso - Frank Zafiro

    In the Shadow of El Paso

    Three Stories

    By

    Frank Zafiro

    In the Shadow of El Paso: Three Stories

    Frank Zafiro

    © 2020 by Frank Scalise

    First Edition © 2012 by Frank Scalise

    All contained stories Copyright ©Frank Scalise

    ©2007 In the Shadow of El Paso

    ©2010 Jack’s Town

    ©2020 Long Burdens

    All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced or used in any form without the prior written permission of the copyright owner(s), except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

    Code 4 Press, an imprint of Frank Zafiro, LLC

    Redmond, Oregon USA

    This is a work of fiction. While real locations may be used to add authenticity to the story, all characters appearing in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

    Cover Design by M.J. Rose

    In the Shadow of El Paso: Three Stories is an excerpt from the short story collections No Good Deed and Sugar Got Low.

    Author’s Note

    This is a collection of three short stories, all set in La Sombra, a fictional small town outside of El Paso, Texas.

    The inspiration for these tales was a mish-mash of original thoughts and outside influences. I wanted to write something with a Texas flavor, as the Lone Star State has always been my second favorite state after my native Washington. I also felt the influence of the Marty Robbins song El Paso and Springsteen’s The Line. In fact, the name of the narrator is an homage to the latter.

    This was also around the time where the border was in the news for a variety of reasons. All of this got me to thinking about human nature, the nature of politics and the nature of love. I got to wondering what it was really like along the border, at least on our side, where I at least had a frame of reference. I wondered how different people were and more to the point, how different they weren’t. I started wondering what would happen if a Yankee rolled into a small Texas town and joined the police force. What would he find out about the place? About the people? About himself?

    The first two stories were written rather close to each other, while the final story is more recent, written almost a decade after its mates. Unlike the others, it features a different narrator, one who has lived in La Sombra his entire life. How would those same elements that affected the newcomer sit with this longtime resident, especially now, at the end of his career?

    These are my answers.

    In The Shadow Of El Paso

    We all lived together, but separate, white and brown, in the strange border land north of the Rio Grande. It wasn’t Mexico and it wasn’t the United States, but rather pieces of both and some of neither. We lived in La Sombra, in the shadow of El Paso.

    I never got too involved in the politics of it, anyway. I wasn’t supposed to ask whether a person was legal or not, unless I really had to know. I learned that shortly after coming to La Sombra. If they were legal, asking was an insult. If they weren’t, the question was met with distrust. So most times, I just didn’t ask. There was work here and people wanted to do it. They worked hard, they drank hard and they loved hard. I liked their food, their music and their rapid language.

    But I loved her.

    Living here was tough enough. Being a lawman was almost impossible. How could I enforce something as abstract as laws written by some rich, white men who lived two thousand miles away? How do those laws apply in a town that only recognizes the most basic and the most extreme of human laws?

    Things can get a little blurred along the border.

    Isabella served drinks at Tres Estrellas most nights. I made a point of doing a walkthrough there at least once a shift, sometimes twice. Part of it was professional. A little police presence went a long way towards deterring trouble. But I would have gone anyway, just to see her. I think dozens of men in town felt the same way.

    Tres Estrellas was the only place in town where white and brown mixed with little trouble. Music played on the jukebox. The songs on the juke were an eclectic mix of classic rock, old and new country, Tex-Mex and full-on Mexican. The polished wood floor creaked a little when I walked across it in the dim light. A few customers were scattered in small groups throughout the main room. An old Mexican ballad twanged from the speakers.

    "Morena de mi corazon," the man’s voice sang sadly. And that was Isabella. Dark-haired woman of my heart.

    She smiled at me from the corner of the bar, where she’d been chatting quietly with Pete Trower. When she flashed that smile, the world stopped and sound diminished. The light in her eyes sent an electricity through my chest and out to my limbs. It was that way every time. A twinge of regret fluttered in my chest along with the other emotions banging around in there. I wished, not for the first time, that I could sit at the bar for the next few hours and drink her in along with my tequila.

    Carlos, she said playfully, using the Spanish equivalent of my name.

    I touched the brim of my hat and grinned stupidly. Everything okay tonight?

    She shrugged. "Oh, sí, everything is fine. Just slow, sabes?"

    I did know. Tuesday was usually dead.

    You mind if I walk around? I asked. I didn’t need permission. I had the authority to walk anywhere I wanted to in a drinking establishment. But it didn’t hurt to have manners.

    "Por favor," she said, and moved down the bar a bit. From there, she leaned

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