Lucy Fitch Perkins

“ I’ve seen enough of it to know that: but peace isn’t very pleasant either, when your life is without hope and you must live like the animals—if you live at all.”
“Now that I have you at home again, I, for one, am quite content,” said Doña Teresa; and then she went to unroll the mats and put the children to bed.
They were so tired that they went to sleep in their corner in no time at all, and when she had snuffed the candles before the Virgin, Doña Teresa came back to Pancho and sat with him beside the embers still glowing in the brasero. ”

“ Tita began to rub her eyes, and Tonio was sitting up with both of his wide open the moment Doña Teresa said the word “boat.” They bounced out in a minute, and they even washed without being told, and they used soap, too!
Pancho was roused by the noise they made. He got up at once and went to attend to the donkey and to Pinto. When he opened the door the gleam of Doña Teresa’s candle woke the red rooster. He began to crow, and then all the other roosters crowed, and almost right away candles were glimmering in every hut in the village and every one was up and getting ready to start to town. ”

“ The Tall Man talked then with him and Pedro and some others, and asked them to join the Revolution. I begged him on my knees not to go, but he said: ‘If I go it is only to make things better for us all. I’m tired of this life. Peons might just as well be slaves.’”
“What is the Revolution?” asked Tonio.
“Oh, I don’t know,” sobbed Doña Teresa. “Your father says it is rising up to fight against wrongs and oppression. He says the Government is in league with the rich and powerful and even with the Church”—here Doña Teresa crossed herself—“to keep the poor people down, and to take away their land. ”

“ When they had all washed, Doña Teresa called Pancho and the Twins to her side, and all four knelt in a row before the picture, crossed themselves, and murmured a little prayer.
“If you want the day to go right,” said Doña Teresa as she rose from her knees, “always begin with saying your prayers and washing your face. And now, Tonio, run and catch Pinto for your father while I get his breakfast, for the cows must be rounded up [p 13] for milking even if it is San Ramon’s Day; and Tita, you take the little red olla and go for water!” ”

“ When Tita had finished putting things in order, her mother said to her, “Now, my pigeon, see if you can’t catch the little white hen, and the red rooster, and the turkey. The red rooster crows so sweetly I shall miss him when he is put in the pot, but he is not long for this world! He is so greedy [p 24] there’s no satisfying him with food. He has no usefulness at all, except to wake us in the morning.
“But the little white hen now! There is the useful one! She has already begun to lay. She must surely go to the priest. And as for the turkey, he needs to go for the sake of his temper! ”

“ A Republic of cattle! A Republic where men like you work for a few pence a day, barely enough to keep your body and soul together—and even that pittance you must spend in stores owned by the men for whom you work! ”

“ And then they told him all about the night they were lost, and the secret meeting, and he was so astonished that he could hardly believe they had not dreamed it until Tita told him just what the Tall Man had said, and what Pedro had said, and about the pebble that rolled down.
Then he said, “Have you told any one about this?”
And Doña Teresa answered proudly, “Not a soul. Not even the priest.”
“You’ve done well, then,” Pancho said. “The Tall Man punishes those who spoil his plans by talking of them. He has raised an army of two thousand men in such ways. ”

“ The houses in Mexican towns are close to the street-line and stand very near together. They are built around a tiny open space in the center called a patio. The living-rooms open on the patio, so all that can be seen of a house from the street is a blank wall with a doorway, and perhaps a window or two with little balconies. Sometimes, if the door is open, there are glimpses of plants, flowers, and bird-cages in the little patio.
Pablo and Tonio and Tita had their hands full, but they kept their eyes open, and their mouths too. ”

“ You must never, never, NEVER tell any one where your father has gone. Señor Fernandez would be angry. It might injure your father very much. We must be silent, and work hard to make up for his absence. I shall tell Pedro’s wife. She knows about the Tall Man, and it was the first thing we both thought of when your father and Pedro did not come home last night. But Pablo doesn’t know a thing about it, and he must not know. I’m afraid Pablo couldn’t keep a secret!”
This made the Twins feel very grown up and important. ”

“ Pedro’s wife was so busy with her cooking that she did not look up to see who his three friends were until she had taken the pennies and handed out the sweet potatoes. Then she saw Pablo and Tonio and Tita all three standing in a row looking very foolish.
She was quite overcome at the honor the Maestro had done her in buying sweet potatoes to give to her son, and Doña Teresa thought to herself, “They really must be very good and clean children to have the Maestro think so much of them as that.” ”

“ The red rooster, the turkey, and the hens were all asleep in the fig tree. Tita could see [p 46] their bunchy shadows among the shadows of the leaves. The cat was away hunting for field-mice. Jasmin sat beside Tonio, with his tongue hanging out, and everything was very quiet and peaceful. ”

“ All the rich and powerful people seem to have it. Perhaps that is what makes them rich and powerful.”
But the priest shook his head and said, “Tonio needs only to know how to be good, and obey the Church, and to read and write and count a little. More knowledge than that would make him unhappy and discontented with his lot. You do not wish to make him unhappy. Contentment with godliness is great gain. Is it not so, my son?”
The priest called everybody, even Señor Fernandez himself, “my son,” unless he was speaking to a girl or a woman, and then he said, “my daughter.” ”

“ For the privilege of being robbed and beaten in the name of laws we never heard of and which we had no part in making, though this country is called a Republic! A Republic!—Bah!—A Republic where more than half the people cannot read! ”

“ Pancho and Pedro went back to their wives, who were watching the interview anxiously from the other side of the patio, and the wives knew the moment they saw the men’s faces that everything was all right and they could be happy once more.
The rest of the people had already gone into the dining-room of the Big House and were eagerly watching a great earthenware boat that hung from the middle of the ceiling. They knew that the boat was full of good things to eat. Beside the boat stood pretty Carmen with a long stick in one hand and a white cloth in the other. ”

“ Then perhaps you would clap your hands on your ears and think the whole school had gone crazy, but it would only mean that in Mexico the children all study aloud. The sixth grade is as high as any one ever goes, and most of them stop at the fourth.
Señor Fernandez thinks that is learning enough for any peon, and as it is his school, and his teacher, and his land, of course things have to be as he says.
[p 61]
Pancho asked the priest about it one day. He said: “I should like to have Tonio get as much learning as he can. Learning must be a great thing. ”

“ Pancho and Pedro had reason to dread what Señor Fernandez and the priest might say to them. They thought the priest might say, “Is this obedience, my sons?” and they thought very possibly Señor Fernandez might say something like this: “Well, my men, do you think you can play fast and loose with your job like that? You’ll have to learn a hacienda can’t be run that way. There’s plenty of other help, so you may see if you can find work elsewhere.” ”

“ Somehow children must know more than their parents if things are ever to be better for the poor people of Mexico.”
And Doña Teresa answered, “Well, anyway, we have each other and the Twins, so let’s take comfort in that, right now, even if there are many things in the world that can’t be set right yet awhile.”
Just then the first streak of dawn showed red over the eastern hills. Out in the fig tree the red rooster shook himself and crowed, and to Pancho, as he stretched himself on his own hard bed in his own poor little home once more, it sounded exactly as if he said,
“Cock-a-doodle-do-oo. ”

“ Doña Teresa walked along with Doña Josefa, and talked with her about her rheumatism and about how badly the animals behaved, and how handsome Doña Josefa’s purple geese were, until she turned in at their own gate.
When she was in their own yard once more, she set the turkey down and untied his head. Tonio let the rooster go, and Tita set the little white hen free, and they all three ran under Tonto’s shed as if they were afraid [p 39] they might get blessed again if they stayed where they could easily be caught. ”

“ Kneeling in front of Tonio was a boy named Pablo, and the bare soles of his feet were turned up in such a way that Tonio just couldn’t help dropping the lizard on to them.
The lizard ran right up Pablo’s leg, inside his cotton trousers, and Pablo let out a yell like a wild Indian on the warpath, and began to act as if he had gone crazy.
He jumped up and danced about clutching [p 67] his clothes, and screaming! The Señor Maestro and the children were perfectly amazed. ”

“ But nobody ever thinks of calling the Twins by all these names. They are called just Tonio and Tita, to save time.
Even their father isn’t called by his long name! Everybody calls him Pancho4—that is, everybody but the Twins, of course.
Their mother isn’t called anything at all for short. She is always called Doña Teresa5. I do not know why this is, unless perhaps it is because she [p 2] can make better tortillas, and chicken mole, and candied sweet potatoes than any one else on the whole hacienda.
Pancho is a vaquero, or cowboy. ”

“ When the service was over, Doña Teresa hurried home to set the house in order and to prepare the Christmas dinner for the Twins. She had made up her mind that the red rooster must surely be caught and cooked, because she wanted to keep the [p 165] turkey until Pancho should be at home to share in the feast.
She had planned it all carefully. “It will be quite easy to creep up under the fig tree while the red rooster is asleep and seize him by the legs,” she said to the Twins as they walked home from the chapel. “Only you must be very quiet indeed or he will wake up and crow. ”

“ Beside the hut is a fig tree, which bears the most [p 3] delicious figs. Every night the red rooster, the five hens, and the turkey go to roost in its branches, and every day its green boughs make a pleasant shade across the dooryard.
Back of the hut there is a tiny garden with bee-hives, and beyond that there is a path through the woods that leads down to a little river. It was in this very path, just where the stepping-stones cross the river, that Tonio met—But there! ”