The Maldonado Miracle

  "Someday you'll be in a museum, in a gold frame behind a velvet rope."

  She'd laughed. "Jose, you're such a dreamer. No wonder your father gets upset with you."

  It was a bad habit, he knew. That dreaming. But often, after all the work was finished, there wasn't much to do except dream. Go up to Fernando's or out to the ocean to see Enrique or make the long walk into Colnett village or the even longer one to the Camalu cousin.

  Yet it had not been bad, especially during the school months, and there was always the future to think about. Perhaps a job in Tijuana or Mexicali. Once, he'd seen a man in Ensenada finishing furniture. He was rubbing wax on it, making the grain deep and glistening. Perhaps a man like that would need an apprentice.

  "Don't set your goal on Tijuana, Jose. Think of Ciudad de Méjico."

  The mere thought of Mexico City took his breath away. It was across the world. "Have you ever been there?"

  "No," his mother said. "You know I haven't. But I know people who have. It is a great city. Millions of people."

  It was hard to believe that there were a million people anywhere. "What would I do?"

  "Go to art school. Use the talent God gave you."

  Somehow she'd found the money to buy him an expensive book on the life of Orozco, the famous Mexican painter. He'd read it over and over again, keeping it wrapped in heavy paper.

  So the dreams would go on.

  HE KEPT looking around.

  The well.

  It had awakened him on countless dawns. The whirring of the spool, the faint splash, and then the creak as his mother had drawn up the first full bucket of the day. She had told him, when he was very small, an incredible thing—there were towns in the Estados Unidos where every house had running water. She'd never traveled farther north than Tijuana or Mexicali, but she knew many things.

  The outdoor oven.

  Its blackened mouth, set in the mound of clay that was like a high turtle's back had breathed out overpowering smells while she was still alive. He could see her waving the smoke away from her face, bending down, careful not to step on spilled embers with her bare feet. No matter what, they'd always eaten well. And he'd never lacked for clothes or shoes.

  The animal shelter.

  It was hardly a barn. Just some tin on posts with board sides to keep the horse and cow out of the rain and provide a place for the hens to nest. Beyond that, the barbed wire enclosure for the pigs. They roamed anyway, squealing and scattering when a truck slugged down the road. He'd drawn that, too, but it hadn't seemed important to keep it.

  He looked at the flower bed that was to the left of the adobe, shielded from the almost constant wind. Most of them were dried up now. Only the tough geraniums still lived. He hadn't watered it in more than a month. His mother had always taken good care of it, cutting flowers to brighten up inside. She'd said it hurt her when they withered away.

  One of the last things she'd said to him was "Don't get old before your time, Jose."

  Yet he had the feeling this afternoon that his boyhood was over, even though he was not prepared for more. That was another thing he did not wish to dwell on.

  He took a final look, fixing the place in his mind, thinking that someday he might try to draw it as it appeared now, with the wind rippling the trees and the dust already beginning to collect on the doorstep.

  He jumped down off the wall.

  4

  JOSE HAD ONE FINAL CHORE—take Sanchez to Enrique's for safekeeping and say good-bye to the fisherman, though they'd done that a good five times on Sunday.

  Enrique's place was two kilometers on down the sandy road which jogged in and out past Maldonado's small field of corn, splitting into two roads where a winter wash cut it. Cars or trucks going to Meling Fishing Camp, and sometimes americano campers or jeeps, bucked and ground over its ruts. But there weren't more than twenty vehicles of any kind each day, even in summer. Jose often thought it was the loneliest place on earth.

  Enrique's shack stood at the point where the Maldonados' road converged on the trail that led north and south along the beach bluff. He'd simply come and erected the driftwood and tin shack on the low cliff over the ocean without asking anyone. He'd been squatting there for years, fishing and digging clams; taking abalone off the rocks at low tide or trapping langosta, the clawless lobsters.

  Trudging along the road, crisscrossed here and there with the light tracks of rattlesnakes on the fine sand, Sanchez padding by his knees, Jose thought of the conversation he'd had with his father that night in April when Maldonado had decided to go to California.

  "Isn't it illegal?" Jose had asked.

  Maldonado's eyes had been grave. "Yes, but the other way it might take years. So many papers. A lawyer. I cannot wait. There is nothing here for me to do."

  "Suppose you are caught?"

  "They will simply send me back. I know other men who have been sent back. It is no lasting disgrace." He had been up there and knew about such things.

  A long time before, after two severe droughts on the west coast of Baja, Maldonado had worked as a bracero, a contract field laborer, in the United States. For several summers he would leave Colnett and go to Mexicali in late spring. There was a government employment center there, and the men would cross to El Centro, California, in a bus. They would be gone for a few months and then return, the bus roof stacked high with rope-tied cartons which had once held lettuce or celery but now held clothes and gifts.

  Jose had met the bus with his mother, driving up with relatives. It was a happy occasion, and they'd had a fine meal in a Mexicali cafe each time.

  "If everything is all right, I'll send for you," Maldonado had said.

  "And I will have to cross the border without papers?"

  His father had been reluctant to answer but finally said, "It is nothing."

  Nothing?

  There'd been so many questions Jose had wanted to ask. About where they'd live, and what they'd do; about school. He'd been going to the three-room school near Colnett, just to the north. But his father had waved all the questions aside. Instead, he'd talked about the wonderful things he'd seen in California: the huge highways, the great buildings and stores, the fine homes. Once, coming in a bus from the San Joaquin Valley he had seen the lights of Los Angeles from the top of a mountain range. They were without end, he said.

  He'd never been so talkative. He'd talked on about having running water, an indoor toilet, electricity, a TV set, a motorbike; maybe even a car. Jose couldn't sleep after Maldonado had turned off their white gas lantern.

  LICK, THE MANGY yellow hound that guarded Enrique's while he was out on the boat or clam digging, began making a fuss as they approached but quieted down when he recognized them. He growled at Sanchez and stiffened his back hairs, but they had long ago fought it out. Now, they'd have to learn to live with each other.

  Jose went on around the shack and looked out across the kelp beds. He spotted Enrique about a mile offshore. Usually, there were big sugar bass under the tangled beds.

  He "hallo-ed" across the smooth, glistening sea until Enrique finally turned and waved. The words "A few more minutes" carried back faintly on the light wind.

  Jose went over and sat down by the shack, Sanchez following him to slump by his feet. He looked over to the northwest. Great Colnett always seemed to be sleeping, even when the sun glared down on it. When the weather was foggy or hazy, it was like a huge gray bear in hibernation. From its high brow, there was nothing to be seen along the shore until the Meling camp; then really nothing more for thirty or forty kilometers below. At night, in clear weather, you could not see more than three lights—gas lanterns—for thirty kilometers in either direction.

  There was just kelp-littered beach, with round polished rocks grinding in the wash of the surf up near the low cliff shoulders. Thousands of gulls and the constant wide vees of flapping pelicans.

  Jose listened to the clink and swish as the waves tumbled the rocks against each other. For a moment, he watche
d the gulls, staying in the wind and then wheeling down to make a noisy pass at the water for sardines. He studied the undulating wings of the pelicans. On shore, they were funny, awkward birds, but in the Colnett sky, they seemed dignified and graceful.

  Then he heard the backfire of an outboard and a steady hum. Enrique was skimming toward shore.

  He turned back in the direction of their house. His father had been wise to choose it. In the harsh land around them there was a narrow strip of sweet-water earth, cupped down between low hills, cactus-dotted and home to rattlesnakes and coyote. This strip of land, set by a small willow grove, was like an oasis. His father had found the abandoned adobe and made a deal to crop the land before Jose was born.

  To the northeast, the Sierra de Juárez towered. Directly opposite Colnett was a smaller range, the Sierra San Pedro Mártir. To the south and east, above San Quintín, was the snow-topped Cerro de la Encantada range—the enchanted mountains. His mother had once said, "This is the good land of the sleeping giants. You must paint it someday."

  Jose noticed again how very beautiful it all was. Harsh, rugged and silent, but very beautiful.

  He reached down, dug his fingers into Sanchez's coarse hairs and said softly, "I want to go very badly, but I will miss this and you."

  He rose when he heard Enrique kill the outboard and went down to the beach.

  In silence Enrique and Jose climbed the short but steep, loose-dirt bank. Jose always marveled that Enrique could climb it so easily with the outboard motor on his back. His legs were powerful, the calves bulging with muscle. His shoulders were wide.

  As he was lowering the oily old two-cylinder engine to the steps, Enrique said, "If I didn't hate cities so much, I'd go with you. But I would not last up there a week My nose would rot or I would get into mischief." He laughed, taking the sopping burlap bag of gutted fish from Jose.

  "I wish you were coming along," Jose said.

  Enrique held up a hand in protest. "I'll get a beer, Jose, and we'll talk. All day, I've tried to think of things to have you tell Maldonado, but there's nothing to tell him except that the fishing is good, the clams are fat, and the game warden is still stupid."

  Enrique stalked into the dark hut, which smelled of sweat and gas and fried fish.

  "Gutierrez came," Jose said.

  "Ah," Enrique said disgustedly, tossing the bag into a corner. "All those men are thieves. The ones who make the arrangements are called 'coyotes.' That's true. Gutierrez will be your coyote. He is also called a 'mule' because he is a driver, too. Down here, we call them 'chicken men.'"

  A pollero, Jose thought. But he said, "He is a nice man."

  "You hope." Enrique reached over to his battered table for a beer. "But I suppose Maldonado has talked to him. You tell him for me that if anything goes wrong, I'll cut his ears off."

  Jose laughed, thinking it was good to have a friend like Enrique.

  The fisherman popped the cap on the table edge, took a foaming drink of the warm beer and strode out the door. "I mean it," he said.

  Outside, they stood in the coolness on the south side of the shack, shielded from the wind. Enrique asked, "Is there anything else I can do?"

  Jose shook his head. "Just take good care of Sanchez, as you promised." He looked over at the drowsing dog. His father had said Sanchez was probably the ugliest dog on earth. He was surely the smelliest. He was a mixture of twenty breeds.

  "I'll do that," said Enrique seriously. "But he better learn to like fish more than he does now. Else he'll get skinny here."

  Enrique's face was weathered from the blinding summer's sun and the winter winds that managed to dodge around Colnett. Jose had noticed that he seldom frowned. The wrinkles were put there by salt and sun. Keeping his eyes on the dog, Enrique said, "I won't even look when I go past the adobe now."

  Jose knew he couldn't stay here much longer. It was too difficult. He stuck his hand out, but Enrique enclosed him in a fish-scaled bear hug and pounded his back.

  "Go away," he said gruffly.

  Jose went over to Sanchez. The dog came erect, eyes tense. He'd been nervous the past two weeks while the adobe was stripped and the animals sold off.

  "You stay with Enrique and Lick until I come back, Sanchez. All right?"

  The dog whimpered.

  "Stay," Jose said.

  Enrique, his head down, stepped over to grab the dog's scruff.

  "Stay, I said," Jose repeated.

  "You go on, Jose," Enrique snapped.

  Jose whirled around and began walking up the road toward the adobe, setting his teeth tight now, swearing he would not look back He heard low moans behind him; then a curse.

  Jose stopped, knowing what had happened. Enrique was sprawled in the sand, beer splattered over his shirt.

  Sanchez was three feet away, barking, demanding to go.

  "Take that insane dog with you," Enrique shouted.

  "I can't. My father would rage."

  "Let him rage," Enrique shouted, and then Jose could hear him laughing.

  "Gutierrez would not take him. Don't you see?"

  "Tell Gutierrez not to art like an old lady. Tell Gutierrez I'll turn him in to the authorities unless he takes Sanchez—after I punch him in the mouth."

  Jose grabbed Sanchez by the loose skin, and began walking back toward the hut, tugging the balking dog.

  5

  JOSE WAS SITTING in the front seat with Gutierrez, not saying much. As they turned onto Baja No. 1, across from the cemetery on the hillside where his mother was buried, near Bradey's, he crossed himself, acknowledging her, and then looked into the back seat, where Sanchez was perched triumphantly.

  Gutierrez was still a little angry. He said, "I think that man Enrique is crazy. I don't like people threatening me."

  Jose tried to keep from smiling. "He is not crazy."

  A few minutes later, Gutierrez said, "Well, maybe it is best. If anyone sees you with a dog around the border they'll think you live in Tecate."

  Jose nodded. He had been worrying about what his father might say when he saw Sanchez. It was like a thousand wild boar attacking, sudden as hail, when his father got angry.

  The car moved past San Vicente and the narrow, lazy San Ysidro River, on toward Santo Tomás and Maneadero. It was less than two hours to Ensenada, and the road was very good.

  Jose looked out the window as the barren countryside swept by, wondering when he would see it again. It was almost six o'clock, and the sun was dull gold against the Juárez peaks. Beyond them, the sky was already darkening.

  As near as he could remember, he had been to Ensenada six times, four of them just this winter when his mother was in the hospital. It had always seemed a large place. In comparison to the gas station, store, and cafe at San Vicente, it was as big as Mexico City.

  He'd seen television for the first time in Ensenada when he was ten. Maldonado had gone there on business, taking Jose with him. A TV set had been in the window of a Calle Primera furniture store, and they had stood outside for more than two hours that Saturday morning to watch cartoons. Jose had wondered how it worked. Then this winter, he'd watched again, thinking that some day it might come to Colnett. Ensenada was a remarkable place.

  As they passed the airport the traffic became heavy. He saw the new fried chicken shop, with the picture of the white-bearded americano on the big metal barrel. They'd stopped there after his mother died, to buy some chicken to eat while waiting for the bus south. He'd always remember that barrel turning round and round, just after they'd come from the hospital.

  He looked over at Gutierrez. "Señor, I want to stop at the church before we go on to Tecate."

  The pocho frowned.

  "I'll only stay a moment."

  "You believe in God?" Gutierrez asked.

  "Yes, and the Virgin Mary. They are good to us, my father said. They look over us."

  Gutierrez cleared his throat noisily but took the lane to Avenida Benito Juárez.

  That day last winter they had
gone to the church before walking on to the fried chicken shop. It was on a side street, by the market, several blocks past the traffic circle and the General Juárez monument.

  Gutierrez waited in the car as Jose went in. He removed his hat, lit a candle, and prayed. He prayed for his mother, his father, himself, Sanchez, Enrique, and even Gutierrez. The routine was familiar. The Maldonados seldom missed Sunday mass in the small church near San Vicente. They always walked the blacktop and then caught a ride with the Camalu cousin.

  As he was getting back into the car, Jose told Gutierrez, "I said a prayer for you. You, too, Sanchez."

  The pocho cleared his throat again and backed out. Benito Juárez was jammed, and all the lights were on. Music came from loudspeakers at the stores that sold records. All the pushcart vendors were out, and the men who sold leather goods and scrapes and silver jewelry from Taxco approached strolling turistas.

  Gutierrez turned at Gastelum, and they left the city, picking up speed as they got to the freeway north. He turned once more at El Sauzal, by the ocean, a place Jose had never seen. Then they were on the road to Tecate. The Chevy hummed.

  It was dark now, and Gutierrez began to talk. He took a drawing out of his shirt pocket.

  Jose unfolded it and held it beneath the pale yellow light of the dash.

  "There is a hole under the fence where I have put the red mark. It is covered with reeds. From the road, the fence looks solid. Just push the reeds aside and go under the fence."

  "Is there water?" Jose asked.

  "No water except when it rains, and that's not likely tonight. It's a drain. That's why the reeds are there. I'm surprised the border patrol hasn't found it."

  Jose's heart began to thud in his ears.

  "Just wait on the opposite side of the road until you are certain no cars are approaching. Then cross it quickly and keep low."

  Jose nodded.

  "You understand?"

  "Yes, señor."

  "I'll let you out in Hidalgo Park in Tecate. Then I'll drive on up and clear immigration and customs. You go to the border. I'll take your suitcase as if it was mine. I brought a few things of mine to put on top of yours."