Firefly Summer Read Free Page B

family was across the road down the hill. Teresa would again spend days sitting under the trees, watching Sixta do her drawn work for the stores in the town and listening to her tales about the university.
    There was one neighbor whom she would rather not see: Don Gumersindo Vázquez. Teresa hoped he was gone. He was the miser of all the
fincas
in the district. No one liked how he used his three daughters in the fields. They did twice thework of any laborer. No one ever saw them outside the fields. Teresa often wondered if they had ever gone back to Cayey since the burial of their mother. No, she did not like Don Gumersindo Vázquez.
    â€œLook out back there,” cried Filimón.
    The coach rocked, sending all the packages to the floor. Teresa held fast to the sides of the coach. The road was filled with prisoners cutting stones, leaving very little clear space to ride on. Filimón broke into one of his long harangues of Patois and Spanish which was impossible to understand. The coach swerved, and he kept a tight hold on the reins. The pile of cut stones extended as far as the eye could see. Teresa wished Filimón would let them walk rather than stay in the coach, jolting as it was. Finally, after much rattling of wheels and clattering of hooves, they were again on the clear side of the road. Teresa picked up the packages and arranged them on the seat beside her. The box of color paints she was bringing for Ramón was torn, and she had to hold it on her lap for fear the small bottles would roll on the floor again and break. She knew how much Ramón had wanted a real box of paints, and at last she had been able to get it for him.
    Besides the
finca
and the horses, there was nothing Ramón liked better than paints, which he used for decorating most of the simple carvings he did about the
finca
. He decorated wooden spoons and forks with pictures of palms and butterflies fordisplay on the little tables in the parlor. He also painted scenes on
güiros
made out of gourds, to be played by peasants in their native orchestras. She called them scratchers, for they were grooved and the noise they made came out by scratching a wire fork across them. There were güiros of all shapes and sizes all over the house.
    Teresa often wondered what would have become of Ramón if he had not come to live at the
finca
. She remembered how surprised Mercedes had been when Teresa first told her his story. It all had happened when she had asked if Ramón was her brother, and she had said yes and no. She could still remember the look that came over Mercedes’ face. Then Teresa told her the story from the very beginning. How her father, Don Rodrigo, had gone to a
finca
near Guayama to buy some shares in a sugar refinery and had seen Ramón among a group of children who had come to beg to mind his horse. While the rest of the children jumped and shouted, Ramón stood quietly, hands stretched towards the horse, but not daring to touch it. He kept saying “caballo mío, caballo mío—my horse, my horse.”
    Ramón had followed Teresa’s father around the plant and even waited outside the office for him. Every time Don Rodrigo went to the plant, the same thing had happened, until her father finally made inquiries and found out that Ramón was an orphan who lived with a laborer who had six other childrenof his own. He learned that Ramón’s parents had been victims of a hurricane. So, on the last visit to the refinery, her father had asked the laborer for Ramón. So earnest was his plea that he was able to adopt Ramón. Ramón arrived at the
finca
holding a carton box with his few clothes and a small sandalwood box wrapped in layers of old newspapers. When it was opened, they found a coral necklace and a pair of earrings that matched it.
    â€œAnd he has been at the
finca
ever since?” Mercedes had asked.
    It was a silly question to ask, but she was always asking silly questions, like a