Rain of Gold

by Victor Villaseñor

  “Small technicality,” said Harry. “Essentially we’re all lost tribes.”

  They both laughed.

  The next morning Salvador was back at Harry’s store at seven sharp. Harry’s beautiful, young wife Bernice saw them to Salvador’s Moon, and they were off.

  “You got the money?” asked Harry, once they were on their way.

  “Yes,” said Salvador.

  “Well, give it to me,” said Harry. “Because this is going to have to go fast or it isn’t going to work.”

  Salvador didn’t like it, but still, he reached into his pocket and brought out the money, handing all four hundred to Harry. Harry counted it and put it in his pocket.

  “Don’t worry, Salvador,” said Harry. “This man we’re seeing is the best wholesaler on the West Coast. I’ve known him since New York. He deals in only the very best of jewels.”

  “Yeah,” said Salvador. But to himself he thought, “I just hope this whole thing doesn’t backfire and they find out in the barrios that I handed all my money over to a Christ-killer. Jesus, I’d be the laughing stock of every Catholic!”

  “You drive very good,” said Harry to Salvador as they were getting into Los Angeles. “Myself, I can’t drive. But my wife, she’s ambitious, so she’s learned.”

  “I bet she did,” said Salvador.

  Salvador was so anxious that he was just ready to ask for his money back so he could get away from this race of people that he knew so very little about, when they arrived at the store.

  “Park right in front,” said Harry. “You see, we beat him. He hasn’t opened his doors yet. And when he opens, you just follow me quickly, and I’ll do all the talking. You just agree with whatever I say. Understood?”

  “Okay,” said Salvador.

  They waited twenty minutes for the store to open its doors at nine sharp, and then they got out of the car.

  “You see, Salvador,” whispered Harry, going to the door, “we’re the first customers. Very, very important.”

  “Hello, Harry!” said an old man from behind the counter as they walked in. “What brings you out of the woodwork?”

  “Diamonds!” said Harry.

  “Good, you came to the right place. Just come this way and see what we have,” said the older man.

  “No,” said Harry. “I want your best, Sam. The ones you keep in back.”

  Sam stopped cold. “You got thousands, Harry?” he shouted angrily.

  “Of course,” said Harry, winking at Salvador.

  “All right,” said Sam, turning to his young assistant, “you heard the man! Open the vault!”

  Quickly, the young man hurried to the back. Harry and the older man, Sam, made small talk. Salvador glanced around at the fine, highly-polished store. Never in a thousand years would he have dreamed of coming into a store like this. It was a place beyond any poor mejicano’s wildest dreams.

  Finally, the young man came back in with a chest of the finest polished wood that Salvador had ever seen. Salvador remembered the treasure chest in the book, El conde de Monte Cristo. The fat cook in Arizona, who’d tried to teach him how to read, had read that book to him in prison. Oh, his heart was soaring to the heavens. Then, Sam opened the small chest, and it was full of diamonds.

  “Let me see that tray of rings,” said Harry.

  With great care, Sam pulled out the tray and placed it on the counter.

  Harry looked the rings over carefully and chose two, showing them to Salvador. Then he brought out his eye-glass, put the rings to his eye, and started studying the diamonds themselves.

  “How much for one of these?” asked Harry.

  “You still got a good eye, Harry,” smiled Sam. “We could have got rich if we’d stayed together.” He put back the tray and closed the chest, just leaving out the two diamond rings. “One thousand for this one, two thousand for this other one.”

  “Fine,” said Harry, glancing at the larger of the two rings again, then he handed it to Salvador.

  Salvador took it with even more care than he’d used in handling dynamite. Why, he couldn’t believe it; here he was, handling a diamond ring five times as large as any he’d ever seen, even in the movies. And he was nothing but a little backward, ignorant mejicano from Los Altos de Jalisco.

  “You like it?” asked Harry.

  “Well, yes, of course, but the price . . . ”

  “No buts,” said Harry, cutting Salvador off sharply.

  “We’ll take it, Sam,” said Harry, “right now, at this very moment of seven minutes past nine, for four hundred dollars.”

  And saying this, Harry put the roll of money on the tabletop, spreading out the twenties and fifties. The smile that had been on Sam’s face left; he stared at Harry with utter hate.

  Suddenly, Salvador knew that they were going to be killed.

  “HARRY, YOU SON-OF-A-BITCH!” roared Sam. “I brought out these diamonds in good faith!”

  “And here are four hundred dollars in good faith,” said Harry.

  “This is a two thousand-dollar ring, wholesale!” screamed the man.

  “I know, and it’s seven and a half minutes past nine right now,” said Harry, showing Sam his watch. “Customers are going to be lining up to come in here all day long because of this!”

  Sam heard Harry’s words, and he glanced at the money, then he screamed, “All right, you cheating bastard! But don’t you ever come back! Now get out of here! Before I kill you!”

  Harry picked up the diamond, and they went out the door. Salvador jumped in the Moon and started the motor, expecting to see a shotgun coming at them any moment.

  “Slow down, slow down; don’t worry,” said Harry, once they were pulling away from the curb, “he’s not going to really kill us. He’s my brother.”

  “Your brother?” gasped Salvador.

  “Sure,” laughed Harry, slapping Salvador on the leg as they sped away. “Oh, we got us a deal, I tell you! You’re going to have to buy a lot of clothes from me, Salvador!”

  “You got it,” said Salvador.

  But Salvador still didn’t know what to think. Either these two brothers were crazy and this whole thing was all on the up and up and he’d gotten a diamond ring worth five times his money, or these two old Jews were the greatest actors in all the world and he’d been robbed. But one thing was for sure; he could never tell this story to anyone in the barrios for a thousand years! It was too incredible!

  Driving back to Santa Ana, Salvador opened a bottle of his best, and they passed it back and forth. Harry told Salvador the story of his life. He and his brother had come to America from Russia with their parents and settled in New York. And the more Harry spoke, the more Salvador began to realize just how similar their stories were full of war and bloodshed, but lots of love and respect for family.

  “But then how could you do that to your own brother?” asked Salvador.

  “You mean the ring?” he asked. Salvador nodded. “Hell, he’s brought lots of his friends to my place and gotten clothes off me below cost, the bastard!”

  “Then there’s no real hate between you?” asked Salvador.

  “No, not at all,” said Harry. “Money isn’t important.”

  “No, not if you got it,” said Salvador.

  “True, and business is just a game. Money comes and money goes. But my brother is my brother, no matter how we might disagree.”

  Salvador thought of his situation with Domingo and he saw a lot of wisdom in these words.

  They were both pretty drunk by the time they got back to the shop in Santa Ana. They were hugging in big abrazo when Bernice came out of the store to take her husband inside.

  Salvador thanked Harry a dozen times, then took off to Corona to show his mother and Luisa the fabulous diamond ring.

  “No!” screamed Luisa, taking the ring in her hand, showing it to her two boys. “A diamond! ¡Un diamante! This big! And it’s real! Oh, Dios mío! Lupe and family are going to be so proud of you, Salvador! But, wait, who will ask fo
r her hand for you?” she added.

  “Why, Domingo, of course,” said Salvador.

  Their mother shook her head. “No,” she said. “He won’t be able to do it.”

  “Why not?” asked Salvador.

  Domingo was visiting up the street with Nellie at a neighbor’s house.

  “Because, well, I didn’t want to have to tell you this,” said the old woman, tears coming to her wrinkled-up eyes, “but, well, when I took Nellie to church to pray with me the other day, I found out that . . . that . . .

  She couldn’t go on. Luisa and Salvador glanced at each other. Pedro and José couldn’t figure out what was going on, either. Nothing ever upset their grandmother. She was their anchor in life.

  “Go on, Mama,” said Salvador, taking her hand.

  “Mi hijito, your brother is living in mortal sin!” she said with power.

  “You mean because he and Nellie aren’t married?” asked Salvador. “But, Mama, ever since the Revolution, people have been forced together by circumstances and then they get married later when they have the chance.”

  “Oh, I only wish it was that,” she said. “I’m speaking of Nellie; she is already married.”

  “You mean to another man?”

  “Yes,” said their mother, “and she left her three small children, one not even a year old, to come with your brother!”

  “No!” said Luisa. “She, a mother, left her children? What is this world coming to?” she added, making the sign of the cross over herself.

  “Luisa,” said her mother, “it’s not her that I’m worried about. But what kind of man is he, my son, I ask you, to encourage a woman to abandon her child while she’s still nursing from her breasts?”

  Salvador was stunned. He hadn’t thought of it that way. He’d been ready to put all the blame on Nellie, too. But his mother was absolutely right. What kind of man would do that?

  “Oh, I didn’t want to have to tell you,” continued their mother. “I was hoping, praying that Nellie and Domingo would straighten out this awful mess somehow. But the more I see of them touching each other in front of us, with no regard for us or Luisa’s children whatsoever, I realize that they’re unconcerned with this monstrosity that they’ve created.

  “So, no, mi hijito, one thousand times no; Domingo can’t represent our household to ask for Lupe’s hand in marriage.”

  Their mother took a big breath and tears began streaming down her face. Salvador and Luisa glanced at each other. It felt as if a death had just occurred within their family. After all these years of praying and hoping and agonizing for Domingo to return, it wasn’t turning out to be the wonderful situation that they’d envisioned.

  “I just don’t know what became of this boy who came from my loins,” said their mother. “Or, was he always like this and I was just the blind mother, seeing only what I wished? Or was his captivity in Chee-a-caca so long and so terrible that he lost all memory of what is moral? These are the questions that have been haunting me ever since Nellie and I prayed together before the Blessed Mother of God.”

  She stopped and wiped the tears from her eyes. She looked old and beaten, older and more tired than Salvador had ever seen her before. His hands became fists. He could kill his brother for what he was doing to their mother. All through their hunger and hardships, he’d never seen his mother looking destroyed like this before.

  “Oh, Mama,” said Luisa, “you should’ve told us immediately. I’ll tell Domingo that he has to get out. They have to get a place of their own so they don’t continue being so disrespectful with each other in front of you and the children!”

  “But, Luisa, we can’t do that,” said the old lady. “How can I possibly allow you to tell one of my children that they aren’t welcome in our home? We are a family, for better or worse. A family!”

  “Mama,” said Salvador, cutting in, “it’s not that he won’t be welcome to come by any time he wants, it’s just that Luisa is right and these two houses are too little.”

  “Yes, that’s what I meant, Mama,” said Luisa. “Of course Domingo will always be part of our family.”

  Doña Margarita wiped her eyes and turned to see her two grandchildren. Neither boy had said a single word.

  “Well, what do you two boys think of what’s happened, eh?” asked the old woman. “What do you think of your fine Uncle Domingo, sucking the milk from the breasts of this woman, milk that belongs to the children that she abandoned?”

  “Mama,” said Luisa, “you don’t have to be so . . .

  “Quiet!” said the old woman. “How else do you expect them to learn, if not now with strong words before their balls swell up and they think they’re too big to listen anymore!”

  Luisa didn’t like it, but still, she shut up. Doña Margarita turned to her grandchildren.

  “You’re good boys, the two of you,” she said, “so I want you to listen closely and remember this for as long as you live. A man doesn’t have the choice of how or where he is born, nor does he have the complete choice of how he must die. But, to bring the miracle of life into this world, he has the absolute complete choice every time!

  “DO YOU HEAR ME?” she screamed, leaping forward and grabbing José between the legs by his balls. “These tanates of yours,” she said, yanking the startled boy by his balls, “are your responsibility!”

  She twisted them, and José cringed in pain, rolling to the floor. Then she went after Pedro. But he dodged to get away. “Don’t you dare run!” she yelled, tripping him. “You hold still!”

  She grabbed hold of him, too, like a rangy, old she-cat in mortal battle. The boy screamed out. But she didn’t let go of his balls.

  “These little things you carry between your legs can impregnate a whole nation! So you got to be responsible or you’ll leave children scattered to the winds like a dog in heat, and that’s not right! Do you hear me?”

  “Yes, yes, yes!” screamed Pedro, crying in pain.

  “Good,” she said, “because you’re both good boys and you will grow into good men, too, or else!”

  “I will!” yelped the boy. “I promise! I will!”

  “Good,” laughed the old lady, letting go of Pedro and smiling. “I should have put more fear into Domingo when he was little, too,” she laughed, truly enjoying herself.

  Pedro lay on the floor alongside José, rubbing himself in pain. José was as white as a sheet. The old lady had truly put the fear of God into him, too.

  Salvador found himself readjusting his pants. He could still remember getting this same treatment from his mother when he’d been small. His mother was a terror. It was really strange that Domingo had turned out to be like this. But, then, on the other hand, he’d always been closer to their father than to their mother.

  Salvador took a deep breath. He was sure glad that Lupe was strong. A good, strong woman made all the difference in making a home and raising the children, especially the boys.

  Returning to Santa Ana from Hemet, Lupe was surprised to find Mark sitting on the porch waiting for them.

  “Buenos días,” said Mark respectfully to Lupe’s family as they got down from their truck.

  “Buenos días, Marcos,” they said to him.

  Then Mark looked at Lupe, and she could see it in his eyes; he’d been crying. Lupe excused herself, and she and Mark went down the street together under the tall, dark green trees. Her heart was pounding. She felt very nervous. Something was very wrong with Mark. High overhead, a huge flock of red-shouldered blackbirds came swooping in unison through the sky. The great flocks of birds were making their way back from the fields to the tall tules in the irrigation ditches to roost for the night. Lupe and Mark walked to the corner without a single word.

  Turning the corner, Mark suddenly took Lupe in his arms and drew her close to kiss her as Salvador had also done, but she pushed him away. He grabbed her harder.

  “No!” she yelled.

  “But, my God, Lupe!” he said in frustration, “what is it? I thought you liked
me!”

  “I do!” she said.

  “Well, then, what is it?” he asked. “Am I just being too respectful? Is that it? All my friends keep telling me that I’ve been a fool and you people don’t understand anything unless the man’s aggressive!”

  He started to grab her again, to force her to kiss him. Lupe was filled with such anger, with such rage at hearing the words, “You people,” that she grabbed him by the hair and yanked him away from herself. And she would have hit him if she hadn’t seen the hurt look in his eyes.

  “Your friends are wrong!” she said, chest heaving. “I loved it that you were gentle, Mark,” she added, tears coming to her eyes.

  “Then what went wrong?” he asked, wiping his own eyes.

  She shook her head. She wanted to tell him about the American engineers back home marrying local girls and then leaving them. She wanted to tell him about Salvador, about how he’d looked so ridiculous when he’d come strutting toward her in Hemet and then he’d flashed out those flowers that he’d been hiding behind his back. She wanted to tell him so many things, about how she’d already been kissed by someone, and so she wasn’t free to kiss anyone else anymore. But she just didn’t know how to say any of this and have it come out right.

  “Oh, Mark,” she finally said, “it’s just so complicated.”

  “Is it someone else?”

  She thought of María, of her two husbands. She wanted to say no, that she loved him, too. But she couldn’t. Life was difficult enough. She nodded. “Yes,” she said.

  He stared at her, and he was angry. It looked like he might hit her, but then he turned and started down the street away from her.

  She began to cry. She loved him, she really did love him. But simply, Salvador had kissed her first. Her mother was right. When the time came, she’d know what to do. There was no question in her mind.

  She turned and started for home alone. No one had ever asked her about her dreams. Salvador had, and so she was ready to follow him to the world’s end.

  Suddenly, she heard footsteps behind her. She turned and Mark raced up to her, grabbed her in his arms and gave her a big kiss.

  “I’ll be back,” he said. “Believe me, I’ll be back.”