The people of Tebanca were poor but lived in grace because they could net fish from the waves and the lake freed water into the air that fell on the mountains, nourishing the vanilla vines the men harvested with their machetes for the few pesos they needed. The days were hot but the sky exhaled rain each late afternoon allowing for a cool dinner and a couple of beers, as the men gathered around card tables on the beach and watched the sunset. They would raise their bottles in ritual wisdom and laugh that men were so lazy and women so fat!
There was a rickety bus which looped around the lake each morning and evening. It carried Concha and Ricito to and from school in a nearby village. They could not hold hands on the bus or at school for fear of being ridiculed, but were free to in private and sometimes before their families when the mood was right. Their favorite private place was the cabin built by that crazy North American, David, some weeks before and then abandoned by him on his way to South America. David had been drunk most of the time. After he left, Ricito and Concha would sit on the front step and Ricito would long for the day when this would be their house. All it needed was a roof.
The house had two rooms on stilts in the swamp below the town. Ricito would row Concha there in the little boat David had also left behind. Ricito could row farther to the lagoon by the carbonated river where they lay on their backs on lily fronds that were just stiff enough to support their brown little bodies. They would watch the blue and pink herons overhead and whisper to each other that they were in paradise.
They were.
Late one afternoon the bus brought two more loco North Americans, a young man and his wife. The man, Edgar, was pensive and thin, and the woman, Brenda, appeared as a goddess to the eyes of the men of Tebanca. She had flaming red hair, china white skin and eyes as pale blue as the herons in paradise. Ricito watched as they approached Rico, his father, the mayor of Tebanca, and asked for David. Their tired eyes dropped when told that David had departed. Yes, he was gone, but had left the cabin for them.
"First," Mayor Rico had said, "You must come to my home for for dinner. You are tired and hungry after long travel."
Made bold with pride at his father's generous power and with the thrill he felt before these two amazing strangers, Ricito stepped forth. Holding Concha's hand he offered to row them to the cabin after dinner. Edgar and Brenda reached forth and the four momentarily joined hands. The entire village had gathered, and reveled.
The dinner was modest -- fish soup with hot sauce, rice and beans wrapped in little tortillas and sliced cucumbers. Ricito always marveled that the cerniche, a school of tiny fish, managed to swim in the boiling water of his mother's pot as though still alive. After dinner Ricito noticed that Lucia, the wife of his older brother, Manolo, nursed her child Linda in full view of Edgar. Ricito swallowed his breath at the thought that Concha needed time to grow into her own fullness.
It was a memorable night for Ricito. For the first time his father allowed him to join the men at the main table on the beach for the ceremonial beers. He sat next to Edgar. His father handed him a bottle and he swallowed with gusto, despite the bitter taste, during the first silent toast. How could they bring Edgar into the heart of their circle if they could not speak to him? Ricito searched for an answer, which was to shout with an upraised arm, "Juan Wayne!"
On Saturday nights the men of Tebanca took the bus into Catemaco and watched North American movie westerns. Something in common. Juan Wayne.
The sun went down in peace as usual.
Then Ricito left the other men and led Edgar to the little boat where Concha and Brenda were waiting for them. Was Concha now suddenly a woman as he was a man?
It was hard rowing the quarter-mile to the cabin. In the effort Ricito's heart burst toward Concha, who was enmeshed in the splendor of Brenda. It was growing dark too fast! Edgar trailed one arm in the water as Ricito rounded the curve into the cove.
"They seem stranger to each other than to us," Concha said to Ricito as the couple entered their new home in the jungle with their threadbare luggage. In exhaustion, Ricito crawled to the back of the boat, and let Concha row him back to the village while he lit one of his precious cigarettes with the bottom of one of his bare feet pressed against the bottom of one of hers.
The next day, after awkward conversation, Edgar paid Ricito to build the roof. Ricito, growing daily in manliness, hired three men from the vanilla fields at double their wages to do the construction.
He took the bus one morning during Navidad, the Christmas holiday from school, and arranged for tar paper to be delivered from Catemaco, and then, upon his return, bellowed orders to the men on the roof as, nailing crossbeams, they grumbled to themselves about being told what to do by a mere boy. Meanwhile Edgar lay in a hammock strung over the water in the shade between two Jaquerey trees reading French poetry.
At the same time Concha was teaching Brenda how to grind corn into meal and form it gently between her palms with a little water and salt into the tortillas that were the color of skin. She also taught her to fish with the nets. Both stripped down to their sheer undergarments to bathe in the lake just within sight of the men on the beach. They shared the power of their femininity as they washed each other in the sun.
In the dark it was a different matter. Brenda spent the evenings on the cabin front step with Ricito teaching him English by the light of a kerosene lantern. It was then he learned that she and Edgar had left college in California and worked a year for this "viaje romantico." Their friend, David, had preceded them and written back that he had found paradise.
Ricito was stormed with confusion by all this, by the oddness of the new language, but most of all by his desire to touch this golden woman by lamp glow. Here he was with her on the step, and not with Concha. This was his house for Concha, but it was Edgar and Brenda's house. He saw Concha hardly at all now and his passion for her was remote. Edgar and Brenda were always fighting, but why?
One night he boldly placed his hand between Brenda's knees and she squeezed it.
Edgar, who was drunk, snarled from the inner darkness of the cabin, "Playing with little boys now, are we?"
"Shut up, you perverted creep!"
It was fortunate that Ricito did not comprehend the nuances of this new language.
As Navidad approached, the people in the village made presents for each other. Ricito carved a gavel from the knot of a Jaquerey root for his father, the mayor. For his mother he wove a small blanket that would serve to replace her worn-out front door mat. He wove it into patterns that he remembered from his infancy. With his earnings from the construction he found just the right simple jade ring in Catemaco for Concha.
As the native songs of Navidad wafted through the evenings, Ricito wondered what Concha would give him. What would be proper to give to Brenda and Edgar? And what would he get from them?
The answer was not long in coming.
The roof was finished. Ricito was in Catemaco on his way to the bank when he noticed Brenda across the town square getting on the bus to Vera Cruz with her travel bag. He ran to her but was too late. The bus left him in the dust. Her bronze body was gone. He would never forget the sight of her yellow dress.
He charged to the boat, fetched Concha, who was netting fish and rowed straight for the cabin.
"She is gone. Did you know? Did you know?"
The curve into the cove to the cabin did not come soon enough.
Edgar was drunk in his hammock.
"She is gone!"
"I am gone," replied Edgar.
"Where?"
"Nuevo York."
"Brenda?"
"No. She went home. I'm going too, soon."
"But your house!"
"It is your house."
In his hammock in paradise Edgar groped through his pockets and handed Ricito a twenty dollar bill, then returned to his lizard dreams.
Ricito turned to see Concha beckoning from the cabin door.
She was in bed before him, the bed that was a gift from her Aunt Maria. "None of our children will die!" she prophesized.
The men were on their way home from the vanilla fields.
Ricito and Concha, in their proper home, held onto each other with more than arms and were united by the conception of their first son, Enrique.