Rain of Gold

by Victor Villaseñor

  The people applauded and the music began, and I remember stealing a pan of camitas and going out back in the orchard and sharing them with my brother’s big coyote-dog named Shep. Also, I remember my father and Archie uncovering the pit full of beef and presenting the mayor and his wife with the head of the big steer, scooping out the brains with a tortilla for the mayor’s wife as a special treat. The woman shrieked and passed out, and my mother told my father off and took the poor woman into their master bedroom to lie down. The mayor got drunk on tequila and so did the chief of police. Fred Noon had to drive them both home. My father and Archie and Fred stayed up that whole first night, laughing and drinking and raising hell, remembering the good old days.

  Ten days later, I was helping my older brother José and a couple of workers clean the place up when a short, little, sleepy-eyed Anglo cowboy came out of the orchard saying, “Where is everybody? Ain’t the party still going?” My brother and I burst out laughing, telling him that the party had ended four days ago. He cursed and served himself another mug of whiskey from one of the fifty-gallon drums that was still half full and went back into the orchard to sleep some more.

  Of course, I could go on with story after story, but, basically, what I have to say is that my parents had a big adventurous life after they married. And, yes, it was hard, no doubt about that, it was very difficult at times, and yet it was real and good, full of ups and downs, but always a challenge, always a rain of gold with the spirit of God breathing down their necks, giving their hearts wings, hope of a better day. And as my mother recently told me—my father passed away last year—some of the things she hated and resented the most about my dad when he was alive were the very same things that now brought a special joy to her heart. “Unfortunately,” she tells me, “this is the way life seems to be. Sometimes we have to lose the person we love before we realize how much we truly loved them. Your father was a wonderful man and I only wish I’d told him that more often.”

  “But you did, Mama,” I told her.

  “Not often enough, mi hijito. You and your wife remember that. Being loving isn’t enough, you must say it, too.”

  For myself, my biggest personal regret is that I never met my grandmother, Doña Margarita. She died two years before I was born. My father told me that he saw her only days before her death, shuffling down a dirt road in Corona, California, with the sunlight coming down on her through the tree branches. She was almost ninety years old, and he saw her walking along, doing a little quick-footed dance, singing about how happy she was because she’d tricked a little dog and he hadn’t been able to bite her again.

  My father said that tears came to his eyes, seeing how his mother, a little bundle of dried-out Indian bones, could bring such joy, such happiness, to her life over any little thing. “She was the richest human on earth, I tell you,” said my father to me. “She knew the secret to living, and that secret is to be happy . . . happy no matter what, happy as the birds that sing in the treetops, happy as she came shuffling down that lonely dirt road, stopping now and then to do a little dance.”

  But . . . I did get to meet my mother’s mother, Doña Guadalupe, and I was able to sit on her lap and have her rock me back and forth and tell me about the early days of La Lluvia when the gold had rained down the mountainsides and the wild lilies had filled the canyon with “heavenly fragrance.” And I was able to speak to my Uncle Victoriano, my aunts María, Sophia and Carlota, and interview them off and on for over a decade, verifying the stories that my mother and grandmother had told me. Also, I was able to interview my godmother, Doña Manuelita, my mother’s childhood friend, and, being well-read, she was able to help me tremendously, giving me an added perspective on how life had really been for them in the box canyon. And on my father’s side, I was able to interview my Aunt Luisa, who was in her late eighties, but her voice was still strong and her mind lucid.

  And I’m proud to say that I was able to finish the book before my father died. He was able to read it and see how I’d portrayed his loved ones, especially his mother. And on the last night of my father’s life, I stayed with him, and his last words to me were, “I’m going to go see mi mamá, and I’m so proud of you, mi hijito, that you got her right in our book.” He took my right hand in both of his, squeezing it, stroking it. “For she was a great woman,” he said to me, “the greatest, just like your own mother!” And he hugged and kissed me goodbye.

  I put him to bed, and he died in his sleep at the age of 86 or 84, depending on which relative I ask. All his life he’d been so strong and sure and confident and he died the same way. It wasn’t that he had lost the will to live; no, he’d gained the will to die. For, I’d asked him, “Papa, aren’t you afraid?”

  “Of what?” he’d said in his deep, powerful voice. “Of death? Of course not. To fear death is to insult life!”

  My God, I’d never heard that. Not from the Greeks or the Jews or the Chinese. No, I’d heard it from my own father, un puro mejicano de las Américas! And so after the funeral, we had a big celebration with mariachis and barbacoa a la Archie Freeman and we sang my father’s favorite songs and we cried and danced long into the night. My father had won. He’d completed his life. He’d lived until he’d died, and went to rest in peace, like his mother, Doña Margarita, and his grandfather, Don Pío.

  Con gusto,

  Victor E. Villaseñor

  Rancho Villaseñor

  Oceanside, California

  The Spring of 1990

  P.S. Also, I’d like you to know that my father’s sister Luisa died a good death five years earlier outside of Fresno, surrounded by her children and twenty-five grandchildren, most of whom have graduated from college.

  Sophia is also gone, and she left a wonderful family, including one of the most highly decorated soldiers of all of World War II.

  And the way María, my mother’s sister, died is a whole story in itself. She’d been bedridden for nearly three years, but four years ago when she heard that my father was giving a fiesta at the big house for my mother and all of the girls from La Lluvia, she bought herself a new pink dress, had her hair fixed and came in her wheelchair. She ate and drank and laughed all evening, looking so pink and beautiful, and then went home and died in her sleep that night, dreaming to awake on the other side of life, a miracle of God’s. Amen.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  First, I wish to thank my grandmother Doña Guadalupe, who was the first one to speak to me about our past. Then, I wish to thank all of the people I knew in the barrios of Carlsbad, our neighbors, my cousins, aunts, uncles and Don Viviano with the one arm. I wish to thank my uncle Archie Freeman and all of our relatives on the Pala Reservations. I want my niña Manuelita to realize how much she truly helped me. And, of course, her brother José who showed me which trail to take when I climbed up into La Barranca del Cobre.

  I’d like my Uncle Don Victoriano, a fine story-teller with an incredible memory for dates and names, to also realize what a great help he was to me. Without his memory I could never have unraveled the story about Aunt Carlota and my mother, Lupe.

  Carlota, I’d like to thank her especially for her perspective of the past, for it was so different than so many other people’s, that she caused me to have to check and double-check with other people more times than I want to remember. I wish to say thanks to my Aunt Sophia and her family, the Salazars up in northern California, and tell them all how much I appreciate their help. I want José León and all of his tribe in Fresno to know that I couldn’t have done whole sections of this book without José’s and Pedro’s help. Thank you, José, you were great.

  Also, I’d like to thank my sisters, Hortensia, Linda and Teresita, and my brother Joseph who died so young. And special thanks to Linda, who typed for me off and on for over ten years, and many times without pay. I wish to thank Dorothy Denny and Myra Westphall, two wonderful women who’ve helped me with this book for well over ten years. And Gail Grant and Jeannie Obermayer, who’ve worked long hours into the night
year after year. I’d like to say gracias to my two old friends Dennis Avery and Bill Cartwright, who have participated in my life and writing for well over twenty-five years. I’d like to take my hat off to Moctezuma Esparza, a good cabrón, who went with me to New York City and helped me buy this book back when I was so crazy with rage that I didn’t know what I might do if I went alone. My thanks to Alex Haley and his office staff who helped and advised me after my run-in with New York. My thanks to Marc Jaffe, my former editor, who first commissioned Rain of Gold and helped keep me sane while I roamed the streets of New York, learning to love the city’s energy.

  My many thanks to Helen Nelson and my local Oceanside library, and also the library in El Paso, Texas. Library people are a breed apart, always willing to help and so full of information.

  Also, my heartfelt appreciation to my in-laws, Zita and Charles Bloch, and for all their years of keeping the fires of faith burning. They never gave up on Barbara and me, no matter how dark times became. They were always there, like my second parents, in the best sense of the word.

  And talking about being there, I’d like to give my best to Gary Cosay, my agent, and Chuck Scott, my lawyer, who’ve been with me through thin and thinner for over seventeen years. Thanks, guys!

  And I’d like to thank Juan Gomez, Alejandro Morales, Galal Kernahan, Ray Paredes, Jesus Chavarria, David Ochoa, Esperanza Esparza, Stan Margulies, Annette Welles, David Wallechinsky and Flora Chavez, Steve Bloch, Russell Avery, Joaquin Aganza, Joe Colombo, Clare Rorick and Greg Athens, Saram Khalsa, Cynthia Leeder, Bonnie Marsh and Chef Jeff, May and Craig, Barbi B., my nephew Javier Perez, and Victor Vidales, Margaret Bemis, Carl Mueller, Ed Victor, Nat Sobel, Phyllis Grann, Stacy Creamer, Duncan Robertson and Fernando Flores, my personal philosopher . . . all these people who’ve helped me and believed in me over the years.

  I’d like to thank and salute Marina, Jorge, My Bao, Cecilia, Victor, John Hager, all the people at Arte Público Press—especially Nicolás Kanellos—for helping me to get this first volume of the big book into print after so many setbacks in the Big Mango, New York, New York—another Latino settlement!

  Mil gracias, all of you, we did it; we survived!

  And last but not least, of course, I’d like to give tribute to my wife and best friend Barbara, who has given me unconditional love and support all through these years. And to our sons David and Joseph, two fine boys, who were lucky enough to be raised next door to their grandparents and learned how to plant corn and greet the morning sun with open arms. Thanks. Con Dios. It’s a good life, no matter what!

  CONTACT INFORMATION FOR PRESENTATIONS

  760-722-1463

  760-720-1728 (Fax)

  www.victorvilllasenor.com

  victor@victorvillasenor.com

  BOOKS BY VICTOR VILLASEÑOR

  Crazy Loco Love

  Lluvia de oro

  Thirteen Senses

  Trece sentidos

  Wild Steps of Heaven

  Burrio Genius: A Memoir

  Burro genio

  Jury: The People vs. Juan Corona

  Macho!

  ¡Macho!

  ~

  FOR YOUNG ADULTS

  Walking Stars: Stories of Magic and Power

  Estrellas peregrinas: Cuentos de magia y poder

  ~

  FOR CHILDREN

  The Frog and His Friends Save Humanity /

  La rana y sus amigos salvan a la humanidad

  Goodnight, Papito Dios / Buenas noches, Papito Dios

  Little Crow to the Rescue / El Cuervito al rescate

  Mother Fox and Mr. Coyote / Mamá Zorra y Don Coyote

  The Stranger and the Red Rooster /

  El forastero y el gallo rojo