The Maldonado Miracle Read Free

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.
    Â 
    H E 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
    J OSE 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