Free Harriet Doerr by The Tiger in the Grass Page A

later came to know that he couldn’t talk.
    “Then I gave birth to more children, a year and a half apart, and we continued to farm our small plot of land in Libertad. Lencho was very intelligent. He watched our mouths and learned to understand some of the things we said. Of course, he could not go to school with the others. Instead, he helped his father plant corn and chiles in the spring, and every morning he took the cow to graze.
    “And so nine years passed in that part of Michoacán, which is my tierra, my true home. One day my husband’s cousin came, who had not been in Libertad since he left to study at preparatory school and college, and then the university, where he was trained to be a doctor. He looked at Lencho and made him open his mouth.
    “Then he told me I must take the boy to a specialist in San Luis Potosi, which is five hundred kilometers north of Libertad. The cousin said to waste no time. So I borrowed the money for the bus fare, promising young chickens and fresh cow’s milk in return. Two days after we arrived in San Luis the specialist operated on Lencho’s throat. The surgery lasted three hours, and afterwards, when Lencho was in his bed again, as white and quiet as a corpse, I thought: They have brought him back to this room to die.
    “But when he woke up an hour later he turned his head toward a step or a voice. He started making sounds, and in the next weeks and months the sounds became words.”
    Trinidad looked at the American woman. “Now I have told you how the Virgin protected Lencho,” she said.
    Sara nodded. She said, “Yes.”
    Trinidad, standing to leave in the gathering dusk, told Sara how soon after Lencho’s cure the whole family traveled across two states of Mexico to thank the Virgin of San Juan de los Lagos, who is responsible for miracles of this sort. From the bus station they crossed to the church, where they waited for two hours in the courtyard, on their knees among the kneeling crowd, until it was their turn to enter. When they finally reached the altar, Trinidad lit a candle for Lencho to place among the hundreds already lighted there, and each child had a flower to add to the others that lay in heaps and sheaves at the Virgin’s feet.
    “She might have walked away on flowers, señora,” said Trinidad.
    By the time she went off with the empty egg basket, the shadow of the ash tree had climbed the eastern wall. Its branches scarcely stirred. The birds that inhabited it might already have settled in for the night.
    Sara lingered there, staring across the darkening valley to the hills lying in full sun beyond. She closed her eyes and listened. For a few seconds no door slammed, no dog barked, no child called. It was so still she could hear the turn of a leaf, the fold of a wing.

4
    Way Stations

    The train from the border was two hours late, and when it finally rolled into the station, no one left the sleeping car.
    “They missed it in Juárez,” said Richard Everton.
    “Or were left behind after one of the stops,” said his wife, Sara. “In Palacios, or El Alamo, or Santa Luz. Maybe Steve wanted to take pictures.” But her concern began to sound in her voice. “As for Kate,” she went on, “Kate’s lived in so many time zones that she’s stopped needing clocks. She’s like the people here,” Sara said. “She tells time by the sun and the stars.”
    And once more the Evertons walked the length of the train, from the locomotive to the rear car, making their way through crowds of laden passengers, boarding and unboarding the day coaches.
    Richard was questioning the conductor when Sara called, “There’s Kate,” and waved to her friend, a reluctant, red-haired woman who clung to a furled umbrella and hesitated at the top of the train’s rear steps as if the platform were thirty feet below and in flames.
    Sara had time to say to Richard, “Something’s wrong,” before she lifted her face to Kate and asked, “Where’s Steve?” For Kate had