Rain of Gold

by Victor Villaseñor

  Going over the assortment carefully, Sophia took a green one and passed the box to María. Licking her lips excitedly, Lupe watched Sophia unwrap the fantastic jewel. She wondered why Sophia had taken green; she, herself, was going to take a blue one. María took a golden one. Victoriano handed the box to Socorro before taking one for himself. Socorro chose a red one. Victoriano took a red one, too.

  Then it was Lupe’s turn but she just couldn’t make up her mind. They all looked so wonderful. But she finally took the blue one that she’d wanted originally and passed the box to her mother, who also took a blue one.

  When Lupe unwrapped the candy and bit into the hard chocolate with the cream filling, she thought that she’d died and gone to heaven. She was so mystified with all the incredible tastes that filled her mouth. And the smell! The fragrance! She took tiny nibbles with her two front teeth, savoring each morsel before swallowing.

  The ramada was filled with quiet moans of ecstasy as they all ate their carefully chosen chocolates. Each of them had two pieces the first night before their mother put her foot down. “No more,” she said. “And I’ll be sleeping with the box by my pillow, so I don’t want to hear any little footsteps in the night searching about.”

  They laughed. The thought had crossed their minds.

  Don Tiburcio said good night and left, but then, miracle of miracles, he was back the very next evening with more flowers and another box of sweets. This box was wrapped in white paper and white ribbon as fine as a wedding dress.

  It wasn’t just Carlota who squealed in delight this night when it took her mother too long to undo the present. María and Sophia and Lupe were also beside themselves with anticipation. They’d tasted the legendary candy of love and they couldn’t say “no” any more than Adam had said “no” to the forbidden fruit.

  This night Lupe selected green. And she knew that she would take a silver one next, if she had the chance.

  “Well,” said Don Tiburcio after they all had their piece of chocolate, “I fully realize that I’m not the most handsome man in all the world, but, well, I’ve known your family all my life, Señora, and I greatly respect how you’ve raised your family.” He blew out, trying to calm down, he was so nervous. “So what I’m saying, Señora, is that I’ve spoken to my mother, who is a great woman, and I have her permission to ask for your daughter Sophia’s hand in marriage,” he said, squeezing his hands together.

  Smoothing out the apron on her lap, Doña Guadalupe glanced down at the hardwood coals in the shovel, giving herself time to gather her thoughts. “And you’d take Sophia to live under your mother’s roof, no doubt.”

  He was taken aback. He hadn’t expected this. “Well, yes,” he said. “I hadn’t thought that far ahead, but I guess I would,” he admitted.

  “Well,” said their mother, glancing at Sophia, “my daughter and I greatly appreciate the respect that you’ve shown to our house, but,” she added, “we will have to speak privately and consider the matter most carefully before we give you our answers.”

  “By all means,” he said, picking up his hat and getting to his feet. “But I might add that with the situation being what it is with these soldiers we have in town, we just don’t have the luxury of time that we once had, Señora.” And he bowed, saying good night. “I’ll be back in a few days for your answer,” he added.

  For the next two days, Lupe heard her mother and Sophia talking the situation over and over, but they just couldn’t seem to come up with an answer. Sophia liked Don Tiburcio very much, but she didn’t know if she loved him.

  “Your love for the man is the least of our problems,” said their mother. “For a woman can always learn to love the man she marries if he’s good to her and he is a good provider. But,” she added, “the problem we have here is that Don Tiburcio has never been a man to show much interest in women or drink or cards, and he’s been living with his mother all these years without ever marrying, so I’m just suspicious that he might be looking for a servant instead of a wife, now that his mother is getting up in years.”

  “Oh, Mama,” said Sophia, “you don’t have to worry about that. He does love me!”

  Lupe watched their mother turn and look at her older sister. “Oh, and how do you happen to know this?”

  Sophia blushed. “A woman can tell about such things,” she giggled. “Why, every time he comes near me, I swear I think he’s going to die.”

  Everyone under the ramada burst out giggling. Lupe saw Sophia turn a dozen shades of red.

  “Well, this being the case, then maybe we should consider his offer, Sophia,” said her mother. “But you’re so skinny, mi hijita. I think we should postpone this for a few months and put a few pounds on you, so you’ll be able to go to your marriage bed without fear.”

  Lupe looked straight down at the floor, thinking of the cattle and burros and goats she’d seen mate. She was shocked that her mother had made such a direct reference to what a man and woman did in the privacy of their bed.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  And so the descendants of the great Espirito looked down into their beloved canyon, watching the people leave by the hundreds. And step by step, the basin returned quickly, quietly, to the jungle.

  Señor Jones blew out the main part of the mine and laid off a hundred workmen, telling them that he would be closing down the whole mine in a few more months. Two days later, the family who lived directly below Lupe’s house packed their belongings and told everyone goodbye. The family’s name was Espinoza. They’d come up to La Lluvia the very same year that Doña Guadalupe and her husband had come. Señor Espinoza had been a close friend of Don Victor and worked side by side with him.

  “We have relatives in Los Angeles, California,” said the proud, hard-working man to Doña Guadalupe, “and we’re going to join them while we can. This situation is only going to grow like the steer’s tail, down toward the ground until it reaches hell!”

  He had a huge moustache and dark, blazing Indian eyes. He’d had a very well-paying job at the crushing plant for over ten years, working his way up the ladder from a laborer by putting in long hours with all his power.

  The same day that the Espinoza family left, Lupe saw some Tarahumara Indians come down the pathway and tear out the picket fence behind the Espinoza’s lean-to. They carted it off to build pens for their herds of goats.

  In the following weeks, Lupe and her family watched more than thirty other families leave the canyon, going where, they didn’t know, but thinking that it could only be better than this canyon, which was falling to ruin. It seemed to everyone that Señor Jones and La Liebre were set on destroying the town.

  Within a month, Lupe’s family lost half the number of men coming in to eat under their ramada. Their mother wasn’t making enough money to pay for the groceries that she’d taken on credit from Don Tiburcio’s store. And now that Don Tiburcio was courting her daughter, Doña Guadalupe couldn’t very well ask for an extension on her credit and put her daughter’s relationship in jeopardy, especially not after Sophia and her mother had told Don Tiburcio that Sophia was still too small and they’d have to put a few pounds on her before she would be prepared to marry.

  That night, Lupe heard her mother crying in the quiet of the night. Lupe was sleeping with her pet deer on a straw mat alongside her mother’s bed. At first Lupe thought she was only dreaming; her mother couldn’t possibly be crying. But then she remembered that her mother had cried often when their father had first left.

  “Mama, what is it?” she asked, crawling into bed with her mother.

  “Nothing, just go back to sleep,” said Doña Guadalupe, quickly drying her eyes.

  “Mama,” said Lupe, “please talk to me. Is it about the food we give to Señora Muñoz?”

  “Oh, no, mi hijita, that only comes to a few mouthfuls,” she said. “It’s the miners. We don’t have enough of them coming anymore for me to pay the bills.”

  Lupe had never realized that they had bills to pay. But she could now see tha
t she’d been naïve, for every day their mother went down the hillside to get groceries from Don Tiburcio’s and Don Manuel’s stores.

  “Mama, I’ll help,” said Lupe. “I’m fat, so I won’t eat so much anymore.”

  Her mother laughed. “You skinny mouse, how can you call yourself fat, mi hijita? I can feel all your bones. My God, you’re big. Why, soon you’ll be taller than me.”

  “I’m almost as tall as Carlota now,” said Lupe.

  “Yes, I know. You and your brother have your father’s long bones.”

  “That’s it,” said Lupe excitedly. “We could write to Papa and get him to come back to help us.”

  “You must be reading my mind,” said her mother, lying in the silver spears of light coming in through the cracks of the lean-to.

  In the morning when Lupe went out to do her chores, Victoriano stopped her, quickly taking her aside. “Mama was crying last night, wasn’t she?” he asked.

  Lupe could see that her brother was very upset. “Yes,” she said.

  “I thought so,” he said, taking a big breath. “And it’s about money, isn’t it?” Lupe nodded.

  “Damn it,” he said, “I should have taken out more gold while I had the chance.” Saying this, he turned and ran down the hillside with a basket before he’d even eaten breakfast.

  The sun was high overhead and Victoriano was several hundred feet below the crushing plant of the mine. He was going through the mountain of waste that the Americans had dumped down the barranca. He was bent over, going through the rock, stone by stone, looking like a tiny ant among the huge pile of waste that had accumulated over the last decade. He was working, sweating fast, looking for the richest rock he could find so they’d have something worthwhile when he took it home to break it down with his hammer.

  Suddenly, Señor Jones appeared above him. La Liebre and two of his gunmen were at his side, smoking cigars, looking well-fed.

  “Hey, you down there! What are you doing?” shouted Señor Jones.

  Victoriano glanced up and saw all four men. His heart took off. “Nothing,” he said, “just looking through the rock you threw away, hoping to find a little color!”

  “Get his basket and bring it to me,” said Señor Jones to one of the men.

  A gunman quickly went down the hillside through the broken sharp rock. La Liebre raised his bullwhip, signaling the other gunman to go down, too. Victoriano didn’t know what to do. A part of him felt like running, but another part of him knew that he had done nothing wrong. People had been searching among the waste ever since he could remember.

  “Bring him up!” yelled La Liebre to his men. “I think I’ve seen this one before.”

  The chubby red-headed soldier grabbed Victoriano and shoved him up the hillside through the broken rock. This was the same red-headed soldier who’d abused a twelve-year-old girl the week before. He was second in command, after his captain, La Liebre.

  “Well, well,” said Señor Jones, looking through Victoriano’s basket as the two soldiers stood by him. “What do we have here? This is pretty good ore. Tell me, boy,” he said with his Texas drawl, “you got some deal with someone in the mine to throw you out first-class rock?”

  “No, of course not,” said Victoriano.

  But then, glancing about and seeing their faces, Victoriano saw it coming. Nothing he could say would stop these vicious men. Why, they were sneering at him like huge, hungry cats ready to pounce on a mouse.

  “But it’s true!” cried out Victoriano. “I worked hard to find these rocks. Please, come down and I’ll show you!” He saw Señor Jones nod to them and he knew it was no use. They’d made up their minds before they’d ever come down to get him. Suddenly, smiling happily, La Liebre stepped in, hitting him in the stomach with the hard handle of his whip.

  “All right,” he said to Señor Jones as Victoriano doubled over in pain, “we’ll take it from here.”

  Catching his breath, Victoriano turned and ran, leaping over the broken rock to go down the steep hillside. But he’d gone only three strides when La Liebre leisurely caught him by the ankles with the crack of his bullwhip. Victoriano went face-first into the rock, cutting up his face and hands. The red blood began to run down his face and white cotton shirt.

  “Get him to his feet!” ordered La Liebre, grinning.

  The two armed men ran down and jerked Victoriano to his feet, pinning his arms behind his back.

  Smoking lazily, La Liebre came up and looked into Victoriano’s young, handsome face. “We’re going to make an example of you, boy,” he said. “Brand you and then hang you.” And saying this, he took the big cigar out of his mouth and rammed it into the boy’s face.

  Screaming, Victoriano tried to jerk his face away, but the two armed men held him fast.

  “And now to hang you, muchacho,” laughed La Liebre, realizing that he’d been just about this boy’s age when they killed his mother and sisters and disfigured him. “We got to show the people what happens to a thief.”

  They took Victoriano down through the waste and dragged him across the creek to the plaza. Señor Jones went back to the crushing plant and took the main road around the canyon so he could watch without seeming to be involved.

  Lupe was in the back of Doña Manza’s bakery, doing her studies with the rest of the children when she heard the bell tower down in the plaza. The ringing of the bell was normally a sign of celebration. So Lupe and the other children hurried around the stone building with their teacher to see what was going on, when she suddenly saw some men throwing a rope into the tree above her brother’s head, preparing to hang him.

  Lupe let out a scream, putting her hands over her face in horror.

  “Run!” said Señora Muñoz to Lupe, recognizing Victoriano, too. “Get your mother! Doña Manza and I will see what we can do!”

  Lupe was off like a shot, racing past Señor Jones, who was lighting a fresh cigar in the shade of a tree as she went flying up the pathway to her home.

  “Mama! Mama!” screamed Lupe, rushing into the kitchen. “They’re hanging Victoriano in the plaza!”

  Doña Guadalupe was at the stove. She’d been putting together what little bits and pieces she had, trying to assemble a meal for the miners tonight. “Who? What are you talking about?” said her mother, seeing Lupe’s terror-filled face.

  “Victoriano!” wailed Lupe in terror. “La Liebre is going to hang him!”

  Doña Guadalupe dropped the huge kettle, staring at her daughter in disbelief. Then she was moving, doing, not asking another question. And she rushed into the lean-to, all her blood pounding through her body and exploding in her head.

  “Quick,” she said, ravaging through her wooden chest, “run down to the plaza and get Don Manuel to stall them; tell him that I’m coming to give my son his final blessing!”

  “Yes!” yelled Lupe, running back out of the lean-to, through the ramada, and flying down the steep hillside in great leaps.

  Finding her father’s gun at the bottom of the chest, Doña Guadalupe took a deep breath. The man who’d raised her and whom she’d called “father” for over thirty years had been the greatest, bravest man that she’d ever known. She’d never forget, as long as she lived, the morning that their destinies had crossed. She’d been nothing but a child, just starting to talk, and at daybreak the soldiers had hit their encampment, setting fire to their homes and shooting her people, who were Yaqui Indians, as they’d come screaming out of their huts.

  Her parents were shot and left to bleed to death. Their home was leaping in flames. Her hair had caught fire and she’d come out of hiding behind her mother’s dead body. She’d run out of the door, straight toward her enemy with open arms.

  The-Man-God-Had-Sent-To-Her turned and saw her. He was just going to lower his rifle but, instead, he whirled about and shot the soldier right next to him who had taken aim at her. Then, The-Man-God-Had-Sent-To-Her got a blanket and smothered the fire in her hair and, while the slaughter continued, he mounted a horse and took
off with her. They rode night and day and when one horse dropped, he stole another. Getting to his house, he packed up his wife and children and they fled into the night. They set up residence in a new town high in the foothills. He named the child Guadalupe and raised her as his own.

  Remembering all this in exploding flashes inside her mind’s eye, Doña Guadalupe now checked her father’s pistol to make sure that it was loaded. Then she calmly got her black shawl, placed the pistol underneath it, up inside the armpit of her dress. She took a big breath, picked up her Bible and rosary, and got a small knife from the kitchen, which she put under her Bible before leaving the lean-to.

  People had already begun to gather outside the ramada to give her their condolences, but she didn’t see them as she passed by. She was of one heart, one mind; she was a mother, a woman, concentrated down to the marrow of her bones on doing one thing, and nothing, absolutely nothing, could distract her, not even death itself.

  And there she came, short and plump, walking quickly down the rocky trail that zigzagged between the houses, and the village people saw her coming and they moved aside.

  In the plaza, Doña Guadalupe saw that they had her skinny little son under the tree with a noose about his neck. She could also see that they’d abused him, he had so much blood running from his face and the front of his shirt. It took all her power to not cry out in pain and rush up to her baby boy. But remembering her father, Doña Guadalupe held herself strong and continued with all the dignity she could, going down the steep steps into the plaza itself.

  Her daughters were being held back by a dozen soldiers, and Don Manuel was arguing with the monstrous faced man as she came through the crowd.

  Soldiers were everywhere. Señor Jones was over to the side, smoking a cigar. This was going to be much more difficult than she’d expected.

  “Here she comes now, for God’s sake!” shouted Don Manuel, seeing Victoriano’s mother coming through the crowd.