Rain of Gold

by Victor Villaseñor

  Pulling into the barrio of Corona, Lupe looked out at the rutted, dirt road and the tiny, run-down houses as they drove up the street. They were hoping to find a place with chickens and goats so they could buy some milk and eggs. María’s children couldn’t drink cow’s milk, so they were constantly looking for fresh goat’s milk.

  At the far end of the street, Lupe spotted a bunch of chickens and a nice big milk goat tied in back of a house under a large avocado tree.

  She knocked on the back window of the truck. “Over there!” she said.

  Victoriano, who was riding up front in the cab, got out of the vehicle before the driver had even brought the truck to a stop. Victoriano was six feet tall now and going on nineteen, but he looked much older. He went up to the larger house in front and knocked on the door.

  Inside, Juan Salvador was lying on a bed in the front room of Luisa’s house. His face was all bandaged up. He was still recovering from his wound. Hearing the knocking, he started to get up, but thought better of it and laid back down, making sure that his .38 was by his side. It had only been two weeks since he’d almost had his throat cut, and he was still very wary.

  “I’ll get it,” said Luisa, coming out of the kitchen. She went to the door and opened it. “Yes?” she said, seeing a tall, handsome young man.

  Victoriano took off his hat. “We saw your chickens and the milk goat in back,” he said, “and we wondered if you couldn’t please sell us some eggs and milk for the children.”

  “All right,” she said, looking at the caravan of worn-out old trucks behind him, “how much?”

  “Well, we don’t have any money, but we do have string beans and squash from the last place we worked,” he said.

  “All right,” she said, “give me a box of them and you can look around for the eggs in the henhouse, but you’ll have to milk the goat yourself.”

  Victoriano looked at her and he suspected that this crafty-looking woman had already collected the eggs that morning and milked the goat, too. But they needed whatever they could get so they could keep going.

  “All right,” said Victoriano, “a box it is.”

  He hurried back to the truck to get the box of produce and told Lupe to milk the goat and the kids to search for eggs.

  “Eh, Luisa,” said Juan, still lying down, “why are you so hard on those poor people? You know you already collected the eggs today.”

  “Don’t you tell me nothing!” snapped Luisa. “For days you’ve been saying how you’re going to kill those two bastards for your money. And these eggs and goat’s milk are my money!”

  “All right, all right,” said Juan. “Don’t bite me.”

  He laid back down, being very careful not to touch the side of his face that had been cut open like a watermelon. Oh, it was true. He really was going to get that damned Filipino and his friend. He’d been playing honest poker and those two cheating bastards had tried to kill him.

  Outside, Lupe was walking across the yard with María’s child in her arms. The big she-goat had horns, and she was eyeing Lupe as she approached with the child and a clay pot.

  Doña Margarita was at the back door of Luisa’s house, watching Lupe through the window as she approached their goat. Luisa had been the devil to tell the poor, unsuspecting people to milk the goat themselves. No one could milk that goat except for Luisa. She was a big, mean she-goat. She knocked down everything, including grown men.

  “Oh, Luisa,” said Doña Margarita to herself as she watched Lupe go near the goat, “you should have been born a man, you’re so heartless sometimes.”

  But then, to the old lady’s surprise, Lupe did something that she hadn’t expected. She simply quit advancing on the animal and she squatted down, took some string beans out of her pants pocket, and reached out with her hand, offering the beans to the big goat.

  The big she-goat lowered her horns, looking as if she might charge, but the young woman held her ground, squatting there, and the big goat finally came over, little by little, and started eating out of her hand.

  Doña Margarita smiled. “Luisa, you better come and see. It didn’t work this time,” she said, laughing.

  “What didn’t work?” asked Luisa. “Hasn’t the goat run them off already?”

  “No,” laughed the old lady. “Whoever this girl is, she’s smart.”

  “What do you mean, ‘smart’?” said Luisa, coming to the window.

  And seeing that the big she-goat was allowing herself to be milked, Luisa let out a scream. “Hell, if I’d known they’d get any milk, I’d have charged them two boxes!”

  Luisa went back to the stove, and Doña Margarita laughed and laughed, truly enjoying herself, until she saw Lupe finish the milking and stand up, taking off her big straw hat and tossing back her long, dark hair. Doña Margarita’s old toothless mouth dropped open.

  “Why, she’s an angel,” she said to herself. “An absolute angel!” Immediately, she thought of her son. She rushed across the house to get him. “Juan!” she called. “Juan! You have to see this girl! She isn’t just smart, she’s an . . .

  But coming into the front room, Doña Margarita saw the empty bed and, glancing about, she saw that Juan was out in front, watching the men work on their overheated truck.

  And there was the young woman that she’d just seen do the milking, coming up behind Juan with the pot of milk and the child at her side, but Juan didn’t see her because that side of his face was bandaged up.

  Doña Margarita noticed that Lupe did see Juan. And she saw that the young woman stared at the handle of Juan’s shiny black pistol sticking out of his back pocket. She saw the young woman’s face wince with revulsion, put on her hat, pick up her niece, and hurry to the back of the truck.

  Doña Margarita quit smiling. It saddened her, but she could see that the girl had done the right thing to get away from him. Her son wasn’t ready for marriage. No, his stance, the gun, everything about him radiated a brutish toughness, not an image of a young man ready to open his heart and settle down.

  The weeks passed and Doña Margarita prayed to God, asking him to heal her son’s wounds. God heard her prayers and the bandages came off. Juan could see in the broken bathroom mirror that he had a long, swollen scar, thick as a worm, across his chin and all the way to his left ear. Turning his head side to side, he discovered that if he lowered his chin and kept his head slightly turned to the left, the scar wasn’t quite as noticeable.

  He decided to grow a beard and keep it until the red ridge of swollen flesh went down. In some ways he’d been very lucky. It had been such a clean, razor-sharp knife, the wound would eventually disappear.

  A couple of days later, Juan went to town to look for work. He was broke. The two bastards had stolen all of his money. He had to get some tortillas on the table before he went searching for those two sons-of-bitches to kill them.

  In town, Juan found out that they were hiring at a local rock quarry, so he walked out to the quarry while the sun was still low. Getting there, Juan could see that there were at least fifty other Mexicans waiting to be hired ahead of him. The tall, lanky Anglo who was doing the hiring dropped the clipboard to his side. “Well, that’s it for today,” he said. “But you guys just all come on out tomorrow and maybe you’ll get lucky.”

  Hearing the word, “lucky,” Juan became suspicious. As a professional gambler, he never liked to leave anything to chance. He glanced around at his fellow countrymen, wondering what they were going to do about this. He could see that they weren’t going to do anything.

  Juan took up ground. “Excuse me,” he said. “But I’m new in town, so I’d like to know how you do your hiring. Should I give you my name for tomorrow, or do you only hire the same men every day?”

  The tall Anglo smiled at him as if he’d said something ridiculous. “What’s your name?” asked the Anglo.

  “Juan Villaseñor,” said Juan, pronouncing the double “l’s” of his name like a “y” and giving his name a dignified, natural sound.

>   “Well, Juan Vilee-senoreee,” said the foreman, twisting his name into something ugly, “you just come on out here tomorrow if you want a job. That’s all you gotta do. You ain’t got to know no more. Catch my lingo, amigo?” And saying this, the man rocked back and forth on his feet and spit on the ground. Juan could see that the man was so mad that his jaw was twitching. But Juan said nothing. He simply lowered his eyes and turned to go. His heart was pounding. Why, this bastard had twisted his name into a piece of dog shit.

  The other workmen moved aside, letting Juan pass by. Juan could feel the foreman’s eyes burning into his back. But he already knew that he was never going to return. This bastard could take his job and stick it up his ass, as far as Juan was concerned.

  Juan had gone no more than a few yards when another Anglo came out of the office. “Doug!” he yelled at the man with the clipboard. “We need another powder man! Ask them if any of ’em has a license!”

  “Hell, Jim, they ain’t nothing but Mexicans,” he said.

  “Ask ’em,” repeated the big, beefy man named Jim.

  “¡Oye! ¡Espérense!” called Doug in perfectly good Spanish. “Do any of you have a powder license?”

  Juan had a license to handle dynamite from the Copper Queen in Montana, but he glanced around to see if anyone had priority over him. No one raised his hand.

  “I got one,” said Juan.

  “Where’d you get your license?” asked Doug.

  “From the Copper Queen Mining Company,” said Juan.

  “Oh, in Arizona,” said Jim.

  “No, from Montana,” said Juan.

  The two Anglos glanced at each other. They were a long way from Montana.

  “Let’s see your license,” said Doug.

  Calmly, deliberately, Juan walked back to the two Anglos. They both towered over him. But Juan’s mammoth neck and thick shoulders were wider than either of theirs.

  He brought out his wallet and carefully took the paper out of his billfold that said he was licensed to do dynamite work. He handed it to Doug, who unfolded it, glanced it over, then handed it to Jim.

  Reading it, Jim said, “Looks good to me,” and he handed the paper back to Doug. “Hire him.”

  “All right, Juan Villaseñor-eee,” said Doug, pronouncing Juan’s last name with less of a mean twist this time, “you got a job for the day. But just one little screw-up and you’re out! Now go over to that shed and ask for Kenny. Show him your license and he’ll fix you up.”

  “Sure,” said Juan, taking back his license and going across the yard.

  Everywhere were Mexicans bent over shovels and picks. It was a huge rock quarry. They looked like ants crawling about the great slab of rock that had been cut away from the mountain. Teams of horses and mules were moving the loads of rock, and the Mexicans drove these teams, too.

  At the toolshed, Juan asked for Kenny. An old Anglo came up. He was chewing tobacco. He was short and thick and his eyes sparkled with humor. Juan liked him immediately. He didn’t have that dried-out, sour-mean look of Doug’s. He handed him his license.

  “So how long you been a powder man, eh?” asked Kenny, looking over the license.

  “Oh, three or four years,” said Juan.

  “All in Montana?” asked Kenny, walking over to the sledge hammers and bars.

  Juan froze, but only for a moment. He’d originally learned his trade in prison at Turkey Flat, but he saw no reason for this man to know that. So he lied. “Yes,” he said, “all in Montana.”

  “I see,” said Kenny, coming forward with a sledge and a fistful of bars. He looked into Juan’s eyes, but Juan didn’t shy away. “Well,” said the old man, handing Juan the tools, “where or how a man learned his trade ain’t my concern.” He spat a long stream of brown juice. “What interests me is the result,” he added.

  Walking around the shed, they headed for the cliff of cut rock in the distance. Climbing halfway up the face of the cliff, Kenny showed Juan where he wanted him to drill his holes to set the charges. Juan set his tools down and slipped off his jacket. The other dynamite men were already hard at work, drilling their holes. They were all Anglos.

  Juan glanced up at the sun and saw that it was already beginning to get hot. He slipped his shirt out of his pants so it would hang loose and the sweat could drop off him freely. He’d learned this trick from an old Greek when he’d worked in Montana. A big, loose shirt could work like an air conditioner. Once the sweat started coming fast, the garment would hold it and let the sun evaporate the sweat like a cooling unit.

  Juan could feel the other powder men watching him. A couple of them had already stripped down to their waists and they were bare-chested to the sun. They were all huge, well-muscled men and towered over Juan, but Juan felt no need to hurry or show off. He’d worked with the best of them up in Montana before he’d gone to work for Duel. He knew his trade.

  Spitting into the palms of his thick hands, Juan set his feet and picked up his short bar with his left hand and his sledge hammer with his right. He centered the point of the bar on the rock in front of him and he raised the sledge over his head, coming down real soft and easy on the head of the bar. He did this again and again, turning the bar each time with his left hand. He knew that Kenny and the other powder men were watching him, but he never let on. He just kept up a soft, steady, easy pace. He wasn’t about to push the sledge. He would let the weight of the big hammer do the work for him all day long. Only a stupid, young fool pushed the iron. An experienced man let the iron do the work for him.

  Kenny brought out his chew, cut off a piece, put it in his mouth and continued watching, but Juan still felt no nervousness. He’d worked at his trade for three months at Turkey Flat, and in Montana he’d done it for nearly three years, so he knew that he was good at his job. He wasn’t one of these men who rushed in the morning to show off to the boss and then had nothing left to give in the afternoon. No, he could work all day long, from sunup until sundown, without ever slowing down. In fact, he was so steady and sure at his job that he’d won many a bet in Montana by placing a dime on the head of the bar and hitting it so smoothly that the dime wouldn’t fall off, even after a hundred hits. An old Greek had also taught him this trick. Why, he could make the sledge and the bar sing, once he got going.

  It was noon, and the sunlight was blinding hot on the great slab of rock. Juan had gone past all the Anglo powder men except one. This Anglo was huge. His name was Jack, and he wasn’t just big, he was extremely well-muscled, but Juan wasn’t impressed by this. He’d seen many big, strong men collapse under the hot, noon sun. And Jack had been one of the first to strip to the waist to show off his muscles, so he was now sweating fast and Juan knew that he wouldn’t be able to keep up his pace all afternoon.

  Juan decided to slow down and not push the man. He’d already proven himself. All he had to do now was give an honest day’s work.

  Then the horn blew, and it was time to eat lunch. The powder men all took their tools and put them in the shade so they wouldn’t get too hot to handle when they came back to work.

  Jack, the big man, came walking up close to Juan. It looked like he was going to say hello to him and shake his hand, but he didn’t. He just laughed and turned away, joking with the other powder men. Juan didn’t take offense, figuring that he was just having fun. He walked alongside Jack, hoping that maybe he and the big man could quit the competition that had started up between them and they could become friends. After all, he’d become friends with many Greeks and Anglos in Montana. But walking across the yard, the powder men acted as if Juan didn’t exist.

  Then, when they got in line to wash up before they ate, and it was Juan’s turn to wash, the man in front of Juan didn’t hand him the tin cup. No, he dropped it, instead. At first, Juan thought it was an accident, but then, when he bent over to pick up the cup, the man kicked it away.

  Juan stood up and saw that all the powder men were sneering at him, especially Jack, who was grinning ear-to-ear. Quickly, Juan l
owered his eyes so none of them would see what he was thinking. And he turned and walked away, tall and slow and with all the dignity he could muster. These smart-ass gringos had just made up his mind for him. This afternoon they were going to see a Greek-trained drilling machine.

  He never once turned to glance back at them. No, he just kept going across the yard as slowly and proudly as he could. Getting to the Mexicans under the shade of a tree, he was given a cup when it was his turn to drink and wash up. But he had no lunch to eat, so he just sat down to rest.

  Oh, it was a good thing that he hadn’t brought his gun to work, or he would have been tempted to kill Jack and the seven other powder men. No one ridiculed him. Not even in prison when he’d been a child and they’d tried to rape him. He was his father’s son when it came to having a terrible temper. He was truly of the crazy Villaseñors. Why, he’s once seen his father grab a mule’s leg that had kicked him and yank it up to bite it, dislocating the mule’s hip. Then his father had beaten the mule to death with his bare fists.

  Juan was sitting there, seething with rage, when a thick-necked Mexican named Julio called him over.

  “Amigo,” he said, “come and eat with us.”

  Julio and several other Mexican men were sitting under a tree, heating their tacos on a shovel that they’d washed.

  “No, gracias,” said Juan, “you go ahead and eat . . . to your health, my blessings.” And saying this, Juan moved his hand, palm up, welcoming the man to fulfill himself. It was a very Mexican gesture, one especially common in the mountainous area of Jalisco.

  “So you’re from Jalisco, eh?” said Julio, turning over the bean tacos with a stick on the shovel.

  “Why, yes, how did you know?” asked Juan.

  Julio laughed. “Oh, I’m just a visionary from Guanajuato,” he said, “who’s seen that gesture of the hand too many times not to know a tapatío.” A tapatío was what the people from Jalisco were called.

  “Come on, don’t be so proud,” said another Mexican named Rodolfo. “You got nothing to eat and you got to be strong for this afternoon.” Rodolfo was tall and slender and had pockmarks all over his face, but he wasn’t hard to look at. His eyes had a twinkle of mischief, and he had that confident air of a man who’d seen many battles. “We all saw that little movement of the cup across the yard. Those powder men, they’re all cabrones!”