Firefly Summer Read Free Page A

of the road. It was nice to sit there with them, eating and looking far down the hill at the thatched houses on stilts.
    Filimón came out of the store drinking a bottle of tamarind juice and smacking his lips at its tartness.He leaned against the door, gurgling and making faces with each swallow. When he finished, he took his seat on the coach again. That was his signal for them to follow. The children jumped out of the way.
    â€œGoodbye!” they called as the coach rode away.
    Refreshed now, Teresa settled in her seat comfortably. It felt good to have left the coach for a while. Filimón was driving faster now, and Teresa thought he deserved to be called the best driver in the land. He knew every turn and curve of the road.
    As the coach turned, they came within view of a white house on a hill. It was the largest one she had seen since leaving Caguas. The sloping ground and the cluster of shrubs surrounding it reminded her of her own home. She wondered if that house had a long passageway connecting the front and rear of the house, like her home. She had begun to call the passageway a “neck” when she was a child, and since then no one in the house called it by any other name. She looked back at the house as the coach went by and noticed that the house was square on the back and had an open balcony with potted plants everywhere. She was glad it did not have a “neck.”
    The brown and white house she lived in was an old house, where two generations of Rodrigos had lived and tilled the soil they owned. For Teresa, the nicest and most livable part of it was the “neck.” Itwas there where her grandmother kept her rare plants, her mother her sewing basket, and her father his desk full of catalogs from which he and Ramón made their orders. It had two windows from which one could see the entire countryside. There were two rocking chairs, from where her grandmother’s cat, Filo, and Ramón’s old dog, Leal, were constantly being pushed off. The oldest possession in the neck was a rose-colored conch shell that stood on a table made of empty spools of thread, painted the colors of the rainbow. The conch shell was used as a horn to signal the time of day for the
finca
workers. At noon, it heralded the arrival of the wives and daughters with their frugal meal, and at six o’clock it told them the working day was over. Sometimes, when there were unusual events at the
finca
, the conch shell sent out a special blast over the hills. Every year Teresa had tried unsuccessfully to blow sound out of the shell, but had to be content instead to listen to the sound of the sea by putting it close to her ears. Her lungs were not strong enough to make the shell vibrate its mournful call.
    Teresa wondered if any of the workers had left the
finca
while she was away at school. She was always meeting new additions upon her return home. Would José still be there? José, the dreamer, who thought nothing of spending all his pay when friends came to see him from Cayey. José, whodreamed of the day when all the workers would own enough land to be their own masters.
    Then there was Gregorio. He was a laborer with political ideas, always eager to know the latest news, although he did not know how to read. How many times during the summer months had she helped his three daughters read aloud to him, and how she had admired the way he interpreted the news to the other workers at the
finca
. He had even promised to marry his daughters to politicians. She wondered if he had found any suitors available for his Lola, Ernestina and Panchita? Teresa would have to ask her grandmother about that.
    Whatever changes she might find at the
finca
, she was glad they would not include Felipe, the overseer, and his wife Pilar. Nor Lucía, who came daily to help her mother. Nor Antonio, Lucía’s eightyear-old son who ran in and out of the house all day long. It was good to come home and know that Sixta’s