than my dad—at least 40 years old—with a corduroy coat and aged black beret, who smoked terrible smelling Spanish cigarettes. Once I saw him pick up my father's burning Camel butt, pinch out the ember, and put the butt in his jacket pocket.
Galan taught me how to transplant seedlings: cabbages and broccoli, and some kind of leafy stuff no one wanted to try. He carried a box full of tiny pots, and as he passed me on his way to the field, he said, "Vamos niño." I remembered one word: "Donde?" He jerked his head towards the path, "Sígueme."
He walked the path to a freshly-dug rectangle and dropped to his knees. "Mίrame" I knelt beside him. "Esta manera." He dug a hole about the size of a juice glass, then poured some water from his clay drinking jug into the hole. It drained out quickly. He picked up a tiny flower pot, turned it upside-down, and tapped the rim slightly on the handle of his drinking jug. The cone of soil dropped into his hand. He brushed some dirt into the hole to fill it higher, placed the seedling, and swept more dirt into the hole to seat the sprig firmly. He placed a hand on either side of the plant, and closed his eyes for the briefest moment. Galan glanced over at me and said, "Suplica a San Isadore," then poured more water over the seedling.
He turned to me and said, "Dime."
I thought for a moment and said, "Dig a small hole, water it, tap the pot upside-down, make sure it's high enough in the hole, fill the hole around the plant, pat it down, pray to—I don't remember who—water the plant again." Galan listened carefully, though he couldn't have known what I said, then nodded.
He took six more of the clay pots and placed them in a line about a foot and a half apart: "Aqui, aqui, aqui, aqui, aqui, aqui." He picked up the rest of the pots and went down the path, leaving me his water jug. Since I didn't know how to say, "I think mom's going to call me for lunch in a minute," in Spanish, I started planting what turned out to be cabbages. No one ever told me I could pray for plants.
Galan was never confused, never tried to speak English, and never took orders. He did what he had to do, talked to everyone in Spanish, and mimed as he talked. He tried to make me a slightly less useless person; I loved him.
It was winter, after Christmas, which the Americans celebrated, and before Three Kings Day, January sixth, which was the Spanish holiday. The American holiday was better, with presents, decorations and songs, while the Spaniards only put out shoes and had the kings fill them with candy on their holiday.
The sun shone brightly, though it had rained fitfully for the last week and the streets and pathways were puddled and muddy. I had nothing to do. There was nothing to do in the garden either; the weeds weren’t even big enough to pull. I prowled the yard in my clunky rubber boots, looking for sucking, boggy places to wade through.
I was bored and the sun glare hurt my eyes. I was about to go into the house to read comic books when I heard yelling. I looked up and saw Pablo standing 50 feet away at the broken notch of the wall. He yelled again.
“What’s the matter with you, are you crazy?” I yelled at him.
More yelling and arm waving from Pablo.
“Why don’t you just leave me alone? I never did anything to you.”
Pablo dipped down and picked up a rock, then threw it. It was a piece of brick the size of a baseball, not one of the pebbles he usually tossed, and he threw it from farther away than usual. It arced up high, and was an impossible throw.
I watched it curve up and it seemed to slow down as it flew. I tried to back away; the boggy grass sucked at my boots, but I managed to squish backwards to the dirt garden path, watching the rock the whole time. The rock always seemed to be coming right at me. I tried to shuffle right, then back where I had been, then off to the left. Finally, just as the rock was coming down, the I jumped back. The rock hit my ankle through the rubber boot.
I fell to my knees, then sat down on the path, rocking, holding my foot, and crying. The Spanish boy’s face was white and he looked horrified for a moment at what he’d done, then he disappeared from the notch in the wall and ran away.
My ankle throbbed and it was a while before I could do anything but sit and cry. I wasn’t sure I could walk on that foot. At first I couldn’t, but then I could limp.
I couldn’t go in the house, not crying, or even looking like I had been crying. Instead I went into the garden shed. The shed may have been a garage once, it had a big door, but no American car would ever fit into it. Now it was filled with Galan’s hoes, shovels, rakes, scythe, flower pots, and can after can of old paint. The only light came through two dusty, cobwebbed, windows. I knelt down at first, thinking it would spare my ankle, but kneeling put pressure on my ankle, so I just sat on the two inch thick fluff of dust, fine as pastry flour, on the dirt floor.
“Hurt him, God. Hurt him as much as he hurt me. You know I never did anything to him, I never threw rocks at him. Make him know what it feels like. Make him leave me alone. Amen.”
I made it into the house without meeting my mother and without limping too much, and I washed my face. The ankle and the top of my foot were black and red, I had to wear socks for a week to hide it.
The prayer seemed to work. I watched for Pablo, but didn’t see him for several weeks. Even on Tuesday mornings when the garbage men came around shouting “La basudaaaa! La basudaaaa!” for the people to bring out their trash (though the garbage men came in and got the American trash,) Pablo wasn’t around. He always walked twenty feet behind the garbage men on their rounds, stopping when they stopped, as if he were in a parade, following the garbage truck float.
Three weeks after getting hit by the rock, mom and I got cornered by a neighbor—another Air Force wife—outside our gate. She liked to talk and talk. The I just turned it off and waited until my mother could get away from her.
“Really?” my mother said, and turned to me. “Did you hear that? Your little friend Diego is dead.”
“What? Diego? Who’s—?” (Pablo? Pablo’s name was Diego?) “Dead? What happened?” I felt cold.
“There was smallpox in the village. Most of the people just got scars from it, but a couple of people died. Your friend Diego died.” Then my mother turned back to the other woman. “I always thought all those shots were a bother, especially making the kids go through it, but now I’m so glad . . . .”
I left the two women and went through the gate, leaving it open for my mother. Disease had been one of the seven plagues of Egypt; it was how God killed people. I went straight back into the garden shed.
I knelt in the shed dust. “You bastard,” It was the worst word I knew, I’d heard it in a movie. It thrilled me in my anger to use it on God. “I didn’t tell You to kill him. I just wanted You to teach him a lesson.” My eyes were blurry and my face was wet. “He just hit me with a rock, what—how—where did You get the idea to kill him? You can’t blame this on me.” But, of course I knew it was my fault. “From now on I want nothing from You. You leave me alone, and I’ll leave You alone. Bastard.”
I quit praying from then on. I couldn’t stop going to Mass, I didn’t want to hurt my mother, but I wouldn’t pray, not even for plants. A year later my family moved on base and I became an altar boy, reasoning (correctly) that if I didn’t understand the Latin prayers, they were just sounds and didn’t mean anything. It was 14 years before I prayed again for something for myself. At that time, I prayed to die.
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*The story's title is the altar boy's first response in the old Latin Mass. The English translation is, "To God the joy of my youth."
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