Daniel Macias
Short Story #1
ENG 312--Ami Regier
2/25/97


Child of El Valle


     The scent of mint leaves lifted the soul of Jimmy Garcia and
repulsed the senses of his mother.  For that reason she
disallowed him to enter the house of la Abuela Garcia, and every
three Fridays Jimmy would leave school through the back door and
walk to the old house four blocks away.  On these days la Abuela
prepared a bowl of menudo and set it on the kitchen table with a
either a glass of cerveza or a bottle of mineral water.  Jimmy
did not like such a meal the first time he tried it; it took him
at least four servings to acquire its taste, but after that he
was always anxious to eat the meal another time.  Before the meal
la Abuela would pray to bless the food and her nieto.  On his
first visit Jimmy watched her kneel in front of the alter, gently
put her hands together, eyes facing the ground and speaking for
almost five minutes completely in Spanish.  La Abuela's slightly
round figure reminded Jimmy of a penguin, and although he felt
guilt for having such a thought, he kept it in his head and
laughed about it every so often.  He believed the idea came to
him because she often wore black (she had been a widow for more
than twenty years).  Even her hair was jet black despite her age,
which was unknown to everyone except her.  After they had their
meal, Jimmy would tell la Abuela about his friends at school, his
activities, his house and his mother.  At every visit, usually
after one of Jimmy's stories, la Abuela would say, "Ay, Dios mio,
bless mi nieto."  Jimmy ask what that word meant.  "That's you,"
answered la Abuela.  When the sky darkened she would tell Jimmy
that it is time to go home.  He then would walk to his house,
about six blocks away, only to see his mother waiting for him
with a belt in her left hand.
     
     Every Saturday Jimmy's mother went to St. Patrick's to pry
for seven hours.  She would begin by reading the prayers on the
back of the misalette.  After that she told God the list of
things she wanted to pray for on that day.  Then she prayed the
Rosary three times, once for every set of mysteries.  At five o'
clock she entered the confessional and told the priest all of her
sins.  She would leave the confessional after the priest let her
go, return to the pews, kneel again and recite her penance.  She
hid her face in her arms and began to cry.  No one saw her tears
when she cried.  Most people who saw her thought she was dead
asleep because they tapped her on the shoulder and there was no
reaction.  She remained in the same position; the only movement
was the rising and descending of her back that showed the person
who tapped her how heavily she breathed.  When she stopped crying
she dried her eyes in her sleeve and walked to her station wagon,
which she always parked near the cross that stood in front of the
parish hall.  When she entered the wagon, she would say a prayer
asking God to start the car.  Only once did it not start, which
was during the coldest winter in El Valle.  After she heard the
engine turn and idle she thanked God and drove to the grocery
store.
     At the store Jimmy's mother would always buy at least three
things: a carton of milk, a two pounds of either beef or pork,
and a pack of flour tortillas.  Whenever someone told her that
her mother use to make tortillas all the time, she sneered.  She
knew what the person meant by the comment.  Usually she said she
had little time to do anything aside from working at the cable
company, helping out with church functions and taking care of her
family.  Many times Papa offered to make them, but he always
wanted her to help.  "It's only flour, salt and water.  How hard
can that be?" he would ask.  Jimmy's mother always responded that
if he wanted to make them he could.
      One day, when he did not have to work, he bought fifty
pounds of flour and made 400 tortillas.  The mother's eyes burned
at the sight of them.  She screamed at the top of her lungs,
furious because her husband had just spent a bundle of money to
prove a point to her.
     "We're not poor," said Papa.  "And besides, flour's cheap."
     "And where the hell are you going to put all these goddamn
things, you big smartass!" yelled Jimmy's mother.  She could not
hide a satisfying grin from her face.
     In the calmest and most joyful voice, Papa answered, "I'll
sell most of them.  You ought to like that idea.  You're the one
who's worried about money."  He then stepped on the chair that he
had been using to stack the tortillas on the big kitchen table
and counted ten of them.  After that he realized he needed
something to package the tortillas, and at this time Jimmy walked
into kitchen.  His mouth dropped wide open and he started
fidgeting.  His sleepy eyes opened wide also, and he let out a
"Wow!" when he finally regained his senses.
     "Who made those?"
     "Your father did!" bantered his mother.
     Jimmy was still in awe.  "Can I have one?"
     Papa was putting on his jacket when he stepped onto the
chair and grabbed two from the stack.  "Take one with you, Jimmy! 
We're going to sell these.  Get your jacket, we're going to the
store!"
     Jimmy ran to his room and back, then out the front door,
fighting with one sleeve to get his arm through.  He and Papa ran
to the truck and drove off to the store.  They bought wax paper,
cellophane and paper bags.  Papa picked up a couple candy bars
and told the people at the store that he was selling his
tortillas the next day.  "I'm lucky to have tomorrow off too," he
said.
     Papa and Jimmy sold all but fifty of the tortillas the next
day.  They charged two dollars for a package of ten, grossing
seventy dollars.  Papa gave his son fifty and gave him to
instructions.  "You must promise me, Jimmy, that you will only
spend this money on special occasions, and you hide it from your
mother, because she'll take away ten percent."
     Jimmy nodded his head.  "I know just where to put it," he
said.

     The house of la Abuela sat beyond the edge of El Valle,
resting between the highest mountains that surround the town.  A
long trail connected it to Taylor Street, the road many consider
to be the end of the town.  The path lay in a conglomeration of
pinon trees.  It was too narrow to let cars through.  Whenever
Papa visited la Abuela he would park his truck on Taylor and walk
through the trail.  His short, stout figure filled most of the
space between the rows of trees, and in winter, when the snow
would melt into the ground, his cowboy boots would sink into the
clay.  He considered paving the trail, but decided to smother it
with thousands of tiny rocks.  The next time he walked in winter
his feet remained on the ground.  The little stones sunk into the
clay and in the following spring, after the ground dried, it
hardened and cracked into tiny plates that stood firm in the
earth.  From then on the trail lay hard, and never again captured
the feet of Papa.
     The house itself was very small.  It held only two bedrooms,
la sala y la cocina.  In la cocina la Abuela kept her mint
leaves, oregano and pinon seeds.  She placed them all on one
shelf which sat above and to the side of  the gas stove in the
corner.  In la sala stood an alter.  La Virgen stood in a box,
and beside it were vases filled with bright red roses.  Two small
votive candles sat outside the vases, always glowing.  A rosary
lay in front of the box, and all was set on a platform, which,
along with the box, was built from the pinon trees outside the
house.  Every time la Abuela prayed she took a pinch of oregano,
placed it into a tiny bowl of clay and lit the herb to create and
incense.  She then opened the window and began to meditate.  The
scent of burning oregano carried itself to the packs of lobos
hiding in the mountains.  Once the smell reached them, the
animals walked toward the house and rested near it.
     A few hundred yards away stood a gigantic red house.  It had
a two car garage and a drive way big enough for four more cars. 
A chain-link fence surrounded the driveway to the beginning of
the private drive that connected the house to Taylor street. 
Behind the driveway was a large kennel that housed two
rottweilers.
      The owners name was Harry Carson.  He owned three
businesses in town and some say he was related to John Taylor,
founder of Willow Springs, the town that was later named El
Valle.  On days when he would go hunting on the mountain where
his home stood (since he owned a great part of it) he would let
the rottweilers out to help him hunt and to guard his property. 
The dogs ate everything that they could fit into their mouths,
except Carson and his family.
     One day in winter, after the snow melted, Papa visited his
mama, thinking the ground would be able to hold him.  He smelled
the oregano when he entered the trail, so he decided that he
should wait to enter the house until she closes the window.  His
feet were heavier after each step, but he made to the ground that
surrounds the house.  After that, however, he sunk into the clay. 
Then the rottweilers came.  One ran toward Papa and leaped on him
from several yards away.  Papa guarded himself with his big arm,
but the dog grabbed it in his mouth and pulled on it.  The dog
was sinking into the ground along with Papa.  The other
rottweiler began charging Papa, but before he could jump a mass
of gray fur leaped toward the dog and began tearing away pieces
of its flesh.      Another mass of gray tackled the dog that held a
part of Papa in its mouth.  The poor man looked around to see
four lobos slaughtering the rottweilers.  One of the lobos had
the neck of the dog that bit Papa firmly in its teeth.  The other
lobos had already killed the second dog.  Then the loud sound of
the slamming window echoed in the pinon trees and the lobos let
go the dogs and walked back to the mountains.

     When Jimmy was nine years old his mother told him that he
would be an alter boy throughout the summer.  This was meant to
be a punishment for visiting la Abuela every three Fridays. 
Jimmy had no objection, but he told his mother that he was
interested in going to Albuquerque to attend a basketball camp. 
"God comes before basketball!  And besides, you're too young." 
That was the end of the conversation.
     So every Sunday in June and July, Jimmy served in the eleven
o' clock mass.  He did as well as he could, but by the third week
he was tired of standing at the alter.  Father saw this and
suggested to Jimmy's mother, after mass was over, to let him take
a couple Sundays off.  She refused.  The priest was mad, but let
Jimmy serve anyway.  At the end of the July he gave the boy a
handsome medal of Saint Sebastian, an old unused chalice, and a
small Bible.
     Each Sunday that summer Jimmy's mother cooked one of his
favorite dishes.  The boy loved tostadas and enchiladas stuffed
with chicken and chile verde.  When his mother offered to cook
any dish for him, Jimmy chose between those two dishes.  His
mother enjoyed cooking for him.  "This is better than that damn
soup you grandmother makes, isn't it?"  Jimmy agreed but gave no
answer.  He wished the tortillas were homemade and the chile
verde were hotter.  His favorite meal came a year later when his
mother prepared enchiladas with the tortillas that Papa made.
     Jimmy's mother was enthralled when she saw the boy eat his
favorite food.  On those days her voice was calmer, softer.  The
fire one could see in her eyes slowed down to an ember.  She even
smiled every so often.  But Jimmy's mother thought that a summer
of making him an alter boy and cooking his favorite dishes would
cause him to stop walking to the house of la Abuela.  That did
not happen.  Jimmy knew the secret of the mint leaves and of the
peace between la Abuela and the lobos.  After deciding he could
not visit la Abuela during the summer, because he wanted it to be
a peaceful time, he couldn't wait for the third Friday of the new
school year.
     The last Sunday in July Jimmy began to feel sick while
kneeling on the alter.  He felt the sweat pouring out of him all
over his body and face.  The deacon saw him and asked if he was
okay.  Jimmy said he was fine and went on with the mass.  Then,
just before the people kneeled to pray before communion, Jimmy
fainted into the arms of the deacon.  He woke up to the scent of
mint leaves and he was resting on the sofa in la sala.  La Abuela
offered him a glass of tea, made from the leaves, to ease his
panza.  "Your papa told me you did not eat this morning.  Very
bad, nieto.  Recureda que la comida es para tu alma."
     "Where's my mom?" asked Jimmy.  La Abuela told him that she
was still at church praying for him.  Jimmy was mad.  He wanted
her there.
     "That's not possible, nieto.  She doesn't like mint.  It
makes her nerves run wild."
     After that day, Jimmy's mother quit making his favorite
dishes.  Then on the third Friday of the school year Jimmy
returned smelling like mint leaves.  The mother could not handle
her anger.  The smell on him, combined with his arriving home
late and making her wait for an hour that afternoon before she
began looking all around the school and realizing he had left to
see la Abuela again, made her so mad that the fire in her eyes
made them pure white.  She ran to her room and found one of
Papa's belts.  Then she walked into Jimmy's room, grabbed him by
the arm, lifted him up with her right hand and started lashing at
him with the belt in her left.  That evening Papa came home late,
holding a railroad spike in his hand to give to Jimmy as a
souvenir.  He saw the belt in the mother's left hand and gave her
a frozen stare.  His sad brown eyes did not blink, his moustache
did not twitch.  
     "Do you want you're belt back?" the mother said.
     "No.  I don't ever want to see it again."
     The next day and every three Saturdays after that, she asked
Jimmy if she could make one of his favorite dishes.  He always
accepted and sat down at the table and waited for the food.  As
he grew older her appreciation for this ritual grew to become the
only thing that made her happy.

     Papa suppressed his anger toward Jimmy's mother whenever he
was around.  He wanted his son to see peace between his parents. 
When he was alone with the mother, he would say, "You gonna use
one of those cables next time?"  He would receive no answer. 
"Look," he said, "you keep doing this he and I will leave and
never come back."
     When she left the house each Saturday afternoon the boy
pulled his shirt off to show Papa the nearly black marks covering
his ribs.  The giant bruise would sometimes look to Papa like a
hole that he could stick his hand through and feel nothing. 
Papa's treatment, after giving Jimmy a cerveza to numb all
feeling, was to grab an ice block out of the big freezer
downstairs, throw it into the sink, then stab through the block
with an ice pick and crush the chunks with a wooden mallet.  Papa
then scooped the broken ice with his bare hands and wrapped it in
one of his T-shirts ad placed it gently on the wounds.  The first
few times the ice touched Jimmy's bruised side he screamed loudly
enough to awaken the lobos resting in the mountains outside El
Valle.  One day a treatment of ice caused Jimmy to scream and cry
so loudly he fell asleep until the following Tuesday.  That night
the lobos left the mountains and entered El Valle.  They trotted
onto the parkways and rested there.  The people called for the
police to handle the problem because it was on public property. 
Many of the townspeople gathered around the lobos and waited for
the cops to come by and take the animals away.
     When the police arrived, they immediately realized that not
enough officers were on duty that night, and the off-duty cops
did not volunteer to help those who were working.  So the police
had to move from one place to another and force the lobos to run
away one pack at a time.  But none of the lobos wanted to leave. 
The cops used loud noises and drove their cars around the lobos
to scare them away.  The lobos did not budge when they heard the
sirens and gunshots, and when the cars approached them, the
animals simply stood up, walked out of the way of the cars and
sat down in another place.  The police and the townspeople grew
throughly impatient.  The cops loaded their guns with rubber
bullets and began firing at the lobos.  The animals could not
withstand the pain from the bullets and ran back to the
mountains.
     On Sunday morning Papa found a lobo lying dead in his
backyard.  He wrapped it in an old bed sheet and carried it to
the alley behind the house.  Beside this road was the foot of a
mountain.  Here Papa dug a hole and tucked the dead lobo inside
it.  On Tuesday, when Jimmy woke up, he told him about the
animal.
     "Does la Abuela have to die too?" asked Jimmy.
     Papa answered, "She will go to heaven when she knows she's
ready."
     Neither spoke of the dead lobo until Jimmy's next visit to
la Abuela's house.  When he told her about the dead lobo, she
shed enough tears to fill the empty bowl sitting on the table in
front of her.

     On the Saturday the lobos came, the priest asked Jimmy's
mother why she beat her son every three Fridays.
     "He insists on visiting the house of that pagan woman," she
answered.
     "Senora Garcia believes in the Trinity just as we do."
     "But she also believes in those stupid plants.  Those are
for witches you know."
     "She's not a bruja, my lady," retorted the priest.  "Did you
not ever think that she is using the gifts of God to heal people? 
After all that's what she does."
     "And then she convinces them to follow those pagan rituals. 
Well, she's not getting my son."
     At that moment she stormed out of the confessional and drove
to the next town to pray in another church.
     She returned late that night, since she decided to shop for
groceries in the other town.  Both Papa and Jimmy were asleep. 
Jimmy was on the sofa in the living room.  Papa slept at the
boy's feet, sitting up at the other end of the sofa, his head
against the back and his mouth slightly open.  Jimmy's mother
carried the groceries in the house and put them all away.  Then
she went to bed alone and did not leave for church the next
morning.

     The day after his tenth birthday Jimmy went out for a walk
while his mother visited a friend from the parish.  He strolled
to the alley at the foot of the mountain and looked up into the
sky.  It was grayish-blue and the clouds took the shape and the
texture of strands of cotton stacked on top of one another.  Then
he looked down and saw the marker of the dead lobo's grave.  It
still stood after three years.  Jimmy knelt to the ground beside
the marker and saw sprinkles of oregano on the ground.  Then he
walked closer to the mountain and saw a grand cluster of pinon
trees standing at the edge of the alley, and in the grassland
behind the trees hid bundles of mint leaves hanging on little
stems.  The smell of pinon and mint reminded him of the past
year: the visits to la Abuela, the food he ate there and the cure
of his aching panza in July.  The smell of pinon and mint lifted
his head, arms and feet, and began a little dance.
     "This is where la alma de la Abuela shall rest.  This is
where I shall remember her."