Free Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya

sad thing, a tragedy,” my grandfather nodded. “This war of the Germans and the Japanese is reaching into all of us. Even into the refuge of the Valle de los Lunas it reaches. We have just finished burying one of the boys of Santos Estevan. There is much evil running loose in the world—” They had turned towards the kitchen where they would drink coffee and eat sweet breads until it was time to go to my uncle Juan’s.
    We always enjoyed our stay at El Puerto. It was a world where people were happy, working, helping each other. The ripeness of the harvest piled around the mud houses and lent life and color to the songs of the women. Green chile was roasted and dried, and red chile was tied into colorful ristras. Apples piled high, some lent their aroma to the air from where they dried in the sun on the lean-to roofs and others as they bubbled into jellies and jams. At night we sat around the fireplace and ate baked apples spiced with sugar and cinnamon and listened to the cuentos, the old stories of the people.
    Late at night sleep dragged us away from the stories to a cozy bed.
    “In that one there is hope,” I heard my uncle Juan say to my mother. I knew he talked about me.
    “Ay, Juan,” my mother whispered, “I pray that he will take the vows, that a priest will return to guide the Lunas—”
    “We will see,” my uncle said. “After his first communion you must send him to us. He must stay with us a summer, he must learn our ways—before he is lost, like the others—”
    I knew he meant my three brothers.
    Across the river in the grove of trees the witches danced. In the form of balls of fire they danced with the Devil.
    The chilled wind blew around the corners of the houses nestled in the dark valley, brooding, singing of the old blood which was mine.
    Then the owl cried; it sang to the million stars that dotted the dark-blue sky, the Virgin’s gown. All was watched over, all was cared for. I slept.

Seis
    O n the first day of school I awoke with a sick feeling in my stomach. It did not hurt, it just made me feel weak. The sun did not sing as it came over the hill. Today I would take the goat path and trek into town for years and years of schooling. For the first time I would be away from the protection of my mother. I was excited and sad about it.
    I heard my mother enter her kitchen, her realm in the castle the giants had built. I heard her make the fire grow and sing with the kindling she fed it.
    Then I heard my father groan: “¡Ay Dios, otro día! Another day and more miles of that cursed highway to patch! And for whom? For me that I might travel west! Ay no, that highway is not for the poor man, it is for the tourist—ay, María, we should have gone to California when we were young, when my sons were boys—”
    He was sad. The breakfast dishes rattled.
    “Today is Antonio’s first day at school,” she said.
    “Huh! Another expense. In California, they say, the land flows with milk and honey—”
    “Any land will flow with milk and honey if it is worked with honest hands!” my mother retorted. “Look at what my brothers have done with the bottomland of El Puerto—”
    “Ay, mujer, always your brothers! On this hill only rocks grow!”
    “Ay! And whose fault is it that we bought a worthless hill! No, you couldn’t buy fertile land along the river, you had to buy this piece of, of—”
    “Of the llano,” my father finished.
    “Yes!”
    “It is beautiful,” he said with satisfaction.
    “It is worthless! Look how hard we worked on the garden all summer, and for what? Two baskets of chile and one of corn! Bah!”
    “There is freedom here.”
    “Try putting that in the lunch pails of your children!”
    “Tony goes to school today, huh?” he said.
    “Yes. And you must talk to him.”
    “He will be all right.”
    “He must know the value of his education,” she insisted. “He must know what he can become.”
    “A priest.”
    “Yes.”
    “For your brothers.” His voice was