Free The Prince of los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood by Richard Blanco

weathered, its paint chipping, its windows slightly askew, as if the house were grimacing. We pulled into the gravel driveway to the sight of Ignacio waving at us from the front porch. “¡Blanco! ¡Qué pasa!” he shouted to Abuelo. “ Aquí, Navarro,” Abuelo responded. Ignacio and Abuelo called each other by their last names—it was a macho thing between them I noticed, like the hard pats they gave each other on their backs to offset the warm hugs they gave each other in greeting. We stood in the driveway as Abuelo introduced us:“These are my nietos, Caco and Riqui.” I was quietly stunned by the house, the land, and the three-foot-long machete hanging from Ignacio’s belt. He wore the same type of straw hat that Abuelo and Pedrito often did, and was about the same age, but Ignacio didn’t have a gut like Abuelo; I could still make out the sinews of his biceps underneath the flaccid veneer of his old skin.
    “You muchachos never been to a real finca, ¿verdad? Come,” Ignacio said, winking at us. We followed him through a makeshift gate made of splintered wood and wire mesh into the acres of land beyond the house. It was the land he was proud of, not his house. On the other side of the gate, we stood in a large, dusty clearing with a few tufts of grassy weeds sprouting from the bare ground and several roosters roaming freely. The clearing was surrounded by chicken coops, each one ten times the size of ours, holding hundreds of hens like a single mass of white feathers clucking and scratching the ground. We trailed behind Ignacio as he led us through his rows of plátano trees fanning themselves with their leaves as big as windmill blades. He picked a couple tiny bananas from a tree and offered them to Caco and me; we both looked strangely at the fruit. “Taste these. They’re plátanos burros, like bananas, pero more smaller and more sweet,” he reassured us. Following Caco’s lead, I peeled mine and took a cautious bite. “Qué rico, delicioso,” I said to be polite, trying not to make a face over the strange Play-Doh–like taste.
    We reached a field that seemed to consist of nothing more than rows of neatly planted weeds. But then Ignacio stopped, pulled back one of the plants, and said proudly, “Mira qué lindas,” revealing a bunch of strawberries dangling like heart-shaped charms at the ends of the stems. I didn’t wait for Ignacio to offer me any; I plucked one right away and ate the whole thing in one bite. Falling a few steps behind on purpose, I secretly filled my pockets with a dozen more strawberries for Bonny and Bernie. In my excitement, I forgot why we were there, until Caco whispered to me anxiously, “Hey, where the hell are the puppies?” I shrugged.
    After the strawberry patch, we entered a field of sugarcane. I could hear wind like something alive was pushing through the stalks, setting them aflutter before moving over my face. Suddenly, in a single move, Ignacio slid his machete from its sheath, slashed a stalk of cane clean, and then began slicing off the bark as easily as if he were peeling an orange. “Taste this,” he said, handing us each a piece. “It is as good as the caña from Cuba.” Whether or not that was true I had no way of knowing. But it did feel like Cuba, at least the way I had imagined it, walking through the maze of stalks mysteriously converting the sun into sugar. Gnawing on the cane as hard, sweet, and sticky as rock candy, I lost all sense of direction, trusting that Ignacio knew the way, until we emerged back at the clearing. But still no puppies in sight.
    “ Bueno, Navarro, what about los perritos ?” Abuelo finally asked Ignacio. “Oh, sí-sí-sí,” he said, breaking out of the sugarcane field and walking toward the house, “ Vengan —come.” He opened the back door, then clapped and whistled, summoning four puppies that romped unsteadily down the steps into the clearing. They must’ve been a few months old, no taller than my knee and