The Pastures of Heaven (16 page)

“I wish you wouldn't,” she said helplessly. “I really wish you wouldn't do it.”

“Miss Morgan, don't you think you're making too much of this? Mrs. Munroe has been kind enough to buy the things for him. Please call him in so she can give them to him.”

A moment later Robbie stood before them. His unkempt hair fell over his face, and his eyes still glittered with the fierceness of the play in the yard. The group gathered at the front of the room regarded him kindly, trying not to look too pointedly at his ragged clothes. Robbie gazed uneasily about.

“Mrs. Munroe has something to give you, Robert,” Miss Morgan said.

Then Mrs. Munroe came forward and put the bundle in his arms. “What a nice little boy!”

Robbie placed the package carefully on the floor and put his hands behind him.

“Open it, Robert,” T. B. Allen said sternly. “Where are your manners?”

Robbie gazed resentfully at him. “Yes, sir,” he said, and untied the string. The shirts and the new overalls lay open before him, and he stared at them uncomprehendingly. Suddenly he seemed to realize what they were. His face flushed warmly. For a moment he looked about nervously like a trapped animal, and then he bolted through the door, leaving the little heap of clothing behind him. The school board heard two steps on the porch, and Robbie was gone.

Mrs. Munroe turned helplessly to the teacher. “What's wrong with him anyway?”

“I think he was embarrassed,” said Miss Morgan.

“But why should he be? We were nice to him.”

The teacher tried to explain, and became a little angry with them in trying. “I think, you see—why, I don't think he ever knew he was poor until a moment ago.”

“It was my mistake,” John Whiteside apologized. “I'm sorry, Miss Morgan.”

“What can we do about him?” Bert Munroe asked.

“I don't know. I really don't know.”

Mrs. Munroe turned to her husband. “Bert, I think if you went out and had a talk with Mr. Maltby it might help. I don't mean you to be anything but kind. Just tell him little boys shouldn't walk around in bare feet in the frost. Maybe just a word like that'll help. Mr. Maltby could tell little Robert he must take the clothes. What do you think, Mr. Whiteside?”

“I don't like it. You'll have to vote to overrule my objection. I've done enough harm.”

“I think his health is more important than his feelings,” Mrs. Munroe insisted.

School closed for Christmas week on the twentieth of December. Miss Morgan planned to spend her vacation in Los Angeles. While she waited at the crossroads for a bus to Salinas, she saw a man and a little boy walking down the Pastures of Heaven road toward her. They were dressed in cheap new clothes, and both of them walked as though their feet were sore. As they neared her, Miss Morgan looked closely at the little boy, and saw that it was Robbie. His face was sullen and unhappy.

“Why, Robert,” she cried. “What's the matter? Where are you going?”

The man spoke. “We're going to San Francisco, Miss Morgan.”

She looked up quickly. It was Junius shorn of his beard. She hadn't realized that he was so old. Even his eyes, which had been young, looked old. But of course he was pale because the beard had protected his skin from sunburn. On his face there was a look of deep puzzlement.

“Are you going up for the holidays?” Miss Morgan asked. “I love the stores in the city around Christmas. I could look in them for days.”

“No,” Junius replied slowly. “I guess we're going to be up there for good. I am an accountant, Miss Morgan. At least I was an accountant twenty years ago. I'm going to try to get a job.” There was pain in his voice.

“But why do you do that?” she demanded.

“You see,” he explained simply. “I didn't know I was doing an injury to the boy, here. I hadn't thought about it. I suppose I should have thought about it. You can see that he shouldn't be brought up in poverty. You can see that, can't you? I didn't know what people were saying about us.”

“Why don't you stay on the ranch? It's a good ranch, isn't it?”

“But I couldn't make a living on it, Miss Morgan. I don't know anything about farming. Jakob is going to try to run the ranch, but you know, Jakob is very lazy. Later, when I can, I'll sell the ranch so Robbie can have a few things he never had.”

Miss Morgan was angry, but at the same time she felt she was going to cry. “You don't believe everything silly people tell you, do you?”

He looked at her in surprise. “Of course not. But you can see for yourself that a growing boy shouldn't be brought up like a little animal, can't you?”

The bus came into sight on the highway and bore down on them. Junius pointed to Robbie. “He didn't want to come. He ran away into the hills. Jakob and I caught him last night. He's lived like a little animal too long, you see. Besides, Miss Morgan, he doesn't know how nice it will be in San Francisco.”

The bus squealed to a stop. Junius and Robbie climbed into the back seat. Miss Morgan was about to get in beside them. Suddenly she turned and took her seat beside the driver. “Of course,” she said to herself. “Of course, they want to be alone.”

Old Guiermo Lopez died when his daughters were fairly well grown, leaving them forty acres of rocky hillside and no money at all. They lived in a whitewashed, clapboard shack with an outhouse, a well and a shed beside it. Practically nothing would grow on the starved soil except tumble-weed and flowering sage, and, although the sisters toiled mightily over a little garden, they succeeded in producing very few vegetables. For a time, with grim martyrdom, they went hungry, but in the end the flesh conquered. They were too fat and too jolly to make martyrs of themselves over an unreligious matter like eating.

One day Rosa had an idea. “Are we not the best makers of tortillas in the valley?” she asked of her sister.

“We had that art from our mother,” Maria responded piously.

“Then we are saved. We will make enchiladas, tortillas, tamales. We will sell them to the people of Las Pasturas del Cielo.”

“Will those people buy, do you think?” Maria asked skeptically.

“Listen to this from me, Maria. In Monterey there are several places where tortillas, only one finger as good as ours, are sold. And those people who sell them are very rich. They have a new dress thrice a year. And do their tortillas compare with ours? I ask that of you, remembering our mother.”

Maria's eyes brimmed with tears of emotion. “They do not,” she declared passionately. “In the whole world there are none like those tortillas beaten by the sainted hands of our mother.”

“Well, then, adelante!” said Rosa with finality. “If they are so good, the people will buy.”

There followed a week of frenzied preparation in which the perspiring sisters scrubbed and decorated. When they had finished, their little house wore a new coat of whitewash inside and out. Geranium cuttings were planted by the door-step, and the trash of years had been collected and burned. The front room of the house was transformed into a restaurant containing two tables which were covered with yellow oilcloth. A pine board on the fence next to the county road proclaimed: TORTILLAS, ENCHILADAS, TAMALES AND SOME OTHER SPANISH COOKINGS, R. & M. LOPEZ.

Business did not come with a rush. Indeed very little came at all. The sisters sat at their own yellow tables and waited. They were childlike and jovial and not very clean. Sitting in the chairs they waited on fortune. But let a customer enter the shop, and they leaped instantly to attention. They laughed delightedly at everything their client said; they boasted of their tortillas. They rolled their sleeves to the elbows to show the whiteness of their skin in passionate denial of Indian blood. But very few customers came. The sisters began to find difficulties in their business. They could not make a quantity of their product, for it would spoil if kept for long. Tamales require fresh meat. So it was that they began to set traps for birds and rabbits; sparrows, blackbirds and larks were kept in cages until they were needed for tamales. And still the business languished.

One morning Rosa confronted her sister. “You must harness old Lindo, Maria. There are no more corn husks.” She placed a piece of silver in Maria's hand. “Buy only a few in Monterey,” she said. “When the business is better we will buy very many.” Maria obediently kissed her and started out toward the shed.

“And Maria—if there is any money over, a sweet for you and for me—a big one.”

When Maria drove back to the house that afternoon, she found her sister strangely quiet. The shrieks, the little squeals, the demands for every detail of the journey, which usually followed a reunion, were missing. Rosa sat in a chair at one of the tables, and on her face there was a scowl of concentration.

Maria approached timidly. “I bought the husks very cheaply,” she said. “And here, Rosa, here is the sweet. The biggest kind, and only four cents!”

Rosa took the proffered candy bar and put one huge end of it in her mouth. She still scowled with thought. Maria settled herself nearby, smiling gently, quizzically, silently pleading for a share of her sister's burden. Rosa sat like a rock and sucked her candy bar. Suddenly she glared into Maria's eyes. “Today,” she said solemnly, “today I gave myself to a customer.”

Maria sobbed with excitement and interest.

“Do not make a mistake,” Rosa continued. “I did not take money. The man had eaten three enchiladas—three!”

Maria broke into a thin, childish wail of nervousness.

“Be still,” said Rosa. “What do you think I should do now? It is necessary to encourage our customers if we are to succeed. And he had three, Maria, three enchiladas! And he paid for them. Well? What do you think?”

Maria sniffled and clutched at a moral bravery in the face of her sister's argument. “I think, Rosa, I think our mother would be glad, and I think your own soul would be glad if you should ask forgiveness of the Mother Virgin and of Santa Rosa.”

Rosa smiled broadly and took Maria in her arms. “That is what I did. Just as soon as he went away. He was hardly out of the house before I did that.”

Maria tore herself away, and with streaming eyes went into her bedroom. Ten minutes she kneeled before the little Virgin on the wall. Then she arose and flung herself into Rosa's arms. “Rosa, my sister,” she cried happily. “I think —I think I shall encourage the customers, too.”

The Lopez sisters smothered each other in a huge embrace and mingled their tears of joy.

That day marked the turning point of the affairs of the Lopez sisters. It is true that business did not flourish, but from then on, they sold enough of their “Spanish Cookings” to keep food in the kitchen and bright print dresses on their broad, round backs. They remained persistently religious. When either of them had sinned she went directly to the little porcelain Virgin, now conveniently placed in the hall to be accessible from both bedrooms, and prayed for forgiveness. Sins were not allowed to pile up. They confessed each one as it was committed. Under the Virgin there was a polished place on the floor where they had knelt in their nightdresses.

Life became very pleasant to the Lopez sisters. There was not even a taint of rivalry, for although Rosa was older and braver, they looked almost exactly alike. Maria was a little fatter, but Rosa was a little taller, and there you had it.

Now the house was filled with laughter and with squeals of enthusiasm. They sang over the flat stones while they patted out the tortillas with their fat, strong hands. Let a customer say something funny, let Tom Breman say to them, as he ate his third tamale, “Rosa, you're living too high. This rich living is going to bust your gut wide open if you don't cut it out,” and both of the sisters would be racked with giggles for half an hour afterwards. A whole day later, while they patted out the tortillas on the stone, they would remember this funny thing and laugh all over again. For these sisters knew how to preserve laughter, how to pet and coax it along until their spirits drank the last dregs of its potentiality. Don Tom was a fine man, they said. A funny man—and a rich man. Once he ate five plates of chile con came. But also, something you did not often find in a rich man, he was an
hombre fuerte,
oh, very strong! Over the tortilla stones they nodded their heads wisely and reminiscently at this observation, like two connoisseurs remembering a good wine.

It must not be supposed that the sisters were prodigal of their encouragement. They accepted no money for anything except their cooking. However, if a man ate three or more of their dishes, the soft hearts of the sisters broke with gratitude, and that man became a candidate for encouragement.

On an unfortunate night, a man whose appetite was not equal to three enchiladas offered to Rosa the money of shame. There were several other customers in the house at the time. The offer was cast into a crackle of conversation. Instantly the noise ceased, leaving a horrified silence. Maria hid her face in her hands. Rosa grew pale and then flushed brilliant with furious blood. She panted with emotion and her eyes sparkled. Her fat, strong hands rose like eagles and settled on her hips. But when she spoke, it was with a curious emotional restraint. “It is an insult to me,” she said huskily. “You do not know, perhaps, that General Vallejo is nearly our ancestor, so close as that we are related. In our veins the pure blood is. What would General Vallejo say if he heard? Do you think his hand could stay from his sword to hear you insult two ladies so nearly in his family? Do you think it? You say to us, ‘You are shameful women!' We, who make the finest, the thinnest tortillas in all California.” She panted with the effort to restrain herself.