The Maldonado Miracle Read Free Page A

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.
    Â 
    L ICK, 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 watched 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