The Short Sweet Dream of Eduardo Gutierrez Read Free Page B

Sokilski, mw56. No further construction was permitted until arrival of Department of Buildings. Inspector Migone, Dept. of Buildings, arrived on the scene later. Richard Ostreicher of Industrial Enterprises which is constructing the buildings was on scene.
John M. Dillon, time arrived 9:01.

CHAPTER FOUR
    I n San Matías, Silvia Tecpoyotti and other young women, like Teresa Hernández, knew that you can get $4 an hour for scrubbing floors in Texas, and even more, as much as $5, for making up beds in a motel. How were they going to stay in San Matías? They were not. They believed in the Job. The young of San Matías lived their lives with pictures of American money in their heads.
    One night in San Matías, Eduardo came to the corner by the store. He had his black baseball cap pulled down, but the corners of his eyes had the look of a hungry bird as they seized on Silvia’s face. Inside the store, she looked out.
    He walked on with his face showing nothing. For his next visit, he came into the store with three or four of his cousins. He went right to one of the video game machines as if she were not in the place, and began manipulating the knobs.
    It gave Silvia a chance to inspect his broad back, which came down in a V, and the arms shaped by carrying all those stacks of bricks for so long now.
    He finished playing, and as he left with his cousins, she remembers,he glanced at her, his eyes licking like a camera shutter, maybe committing the sight to memory forever.
    And then immediately his expression turned blank with shyness.
    The following night, Eduardo’s cousin Rafael came into the store.
    “Eduardo thinks you are pretty,” he said.
    Silvia’s expression was impassive.
    “He told us that last night when we left here,” Rafael said.
    “Why doesn’t he tell me himself?”
    “He is afraid,” Rafael said.
    Silvia didn’t answer, and Rafael left.
    Anything Eduardo earned in the brickyard was turned over to his family. He did an adult’s work and brought the money home like a kid bringing change back from going to the store. To get money for the dances, he went through the farms on the outskirts of the dusty streets and ripped up tomatoes, apples, corn, and other plants and sold them to housewives for a few pesos. Others began calling him Chato, meaning “pug nose.” Afterward, virtually everybody drank fat beers and tequilas. Eduardo drank only a little. Then on the way home he unscrewed all the streetlight bulbs.
    On another night, Eduardo was back in the store with two cousins, the brothers Moisés and Rafael. Now and then he would turn and look at Silvia and she would meet his eyes with a steady pleasant gaze but show him nothing more. He finished the game and left with his cousins.
    Moisés had a girlfriend and was busy thinking of her. Rafael had nobody and thus became the excited messenger.
    When Silvia came home from school the next day, she stopped in the store. In from the dusty street came Rafael.
    “Why did you hurt Eduardo last night?”
    “What?”
    “You didn’t talk to him. He went home saying how much he loved you and that it is sad you wouldn’t speak to him.”
    “Why didn’t he speak to me?”
    “It is very hard for him. He didn’t think it would be hard for you. He wants you to be his girlfriend.”
    By telling this to Rafael, whose brother confirmed the conversations, Eduardo was trying so clumsily to conform to the San Matías custom in which the boy must announce to all he knows that a particular girl is his girlfriend. This is an outgrowth of the old Spanish customs, Mayan suspicions, and the Catholic Church’s banns of marriage. Before the boy in San Matías makes such an announcement, he cannot take the girl out alone and most certainly cannot kiss her.
    Silvia thought of Eduardo’s painfully shy mother walking past the store.
    “Tell him to try,” she said in a prayer. “Tell him for me that I like him.”
    Eduardo came back with three or four cousins, and they