my father who was drinking coffee at the big chair he kept by the stove.
“Antonio, mind your manners,” my mother urged me. I had not greeted Ultima properly.
“Ay, María Luna,” Ultima interrupted, “you leave Antonio alone, please. Last night was hard for many men,” she said mysteriously and went to the stove where my father poured her some coffee. My father and Ultima were the only people I ever knew that did not mind breaking their fast before communion.
“The men, yes,” my mother acknowledged, “but my Tony is only a boy, a baby yet.” She placed her hands on my shoulders and held me.
“Ah, but boys grow to be men,” Ultima said as she sipped the black, scalding coffee.
“Ay, how true,” my mother said and clutched me tightly, “and what a sin it is for a boy to grow into a man—”
It was a sin to grow up and be a man.
“It is no sin,” my father spoke up, “only a fact of life.”
“Ay, but life destroys the pureness God gives—”
“It does not destroy,” my father was becoming irritated at having to go to church and listen to a sermon too, “it builds up. Everything he sees and does makes him a man—”
I saw Lupito murdered. I saw the men—
“Ay,” my mother cried, “if only he could become a priest. That would save him! He would be always with God. Oh, Gabriel,” she beamed with joy, “just think the honor it would bring our family to have a priest—Perhaps today we should talk to Father Byrnes about it—”
“Be sensible!” my father stood up. “The boy has not even been through his catechism. And it is not the priest who will decide when the time comes, but Tony himself!” He stalked past me. The smell of gunpowder was on his clothes.
They say the devil smells of sulfur.
“It is true,” Ultima added. My mother looked at them and then at me. Her eyes were sad.
“Go feed the animals, my Toñito,” she pushed me away, “it is almost time for mass—”
I ran out and felt the first cool touch of early autumn in the air. Soon it would be time to go to my uncles’ farms for the harvest. Soon it would be time to go to school. I looked across the river. The town seemed still asleep. A thin mist rose from the river. It blurred the trees and buildings of the town, it hid the church tower and the schoolhouse top.
Ya las campanas de la iglesia están doblando…
I wanted not to think anymore of what I had seen last night. I threw fresh alfalfa into the rabbits’ pen and changed their water. I opened the door and the cow bounded out, hungry for fresh grass. Today she would not be milked until the evening, and she would be very heavy. I saw her run towards the highway, and I was glad that she did not wander towards the river where the grass was stained—
Por la sangre de Lupito, todos debemos de rogar,
Que Dios la saque de pena y la lleve a descansar…
I was afraid to think anymore. I saw the glistening of the railroad tracks and my eyes fastened on them. If I followed the tracks I would arrive in Las Pasturas, the land of my birth. Someday I would return and see the little village where the train stopped for water, where the grass was as high and green as the waves of the ocean, where the men rode horses and they laughed and cried at births, weddings, dances, and wakes.
“Anthony! ¡Antoniooooooo!” I thought it was the voice of my dreams and jumped, but it was my mother calling. Everyone was ready for mass. My mother and Ultima dressed in black because so many women of the town had lost sons or husbands in the war and they were in mourning. Those years it seemed that the whole town was in mourning, and it was very sad on Sundays to see the rows of black-dressed women walking in procession to church.
“Ay, what a night,” my father groaned. Today two more families would be in mourning in the town of Guadalupe, and indirectly the far-off war of the Japanese and the Germans had come to claim two victims in New Mexico.
“Ven acá, Antonio,” my mother scolded. She wet my dark hair and brushed it down. In spite of her dark clothing she smelled sweet and it made me feel better to be near her. I wished that I could always be