by Daniel Wetta
their laughs and cheers. When the sparklers were spent, Javier provided the older boys some firecrackers to ignite in the street when there were no cars coming. While they placed those, he busied himself finding rockets to launch. When the firecrackers were ready, one of the boys gave a signal. They lit them on the road and then quickly ran back to the sidewalk.
By the worst of coincidences, it was precisely at that moment when a truck with units of the Mexican Army Ninth Reserve happened to round the corner, and, to the horror of the onlookers, the truck passed over the firecrackers as they ignited.
Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! At least twenty went off. They sounded exactly like gun fire.
The guests and family heard the clicking of the soldiers’ weapons as they jumped off the back of the truck and leapt from its cabin. They pointed their weapons at the people. They looked desperately in all directions for the source of what they took to be gunfire. Everyone dove to the ground, including Ana, and she was among them screaming, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”
The soldiers began yelling for everyone to lie on the ground. Javier dove next to his boxes. With his booming voice, he called to the soldiers that they were only hearing fireworks, not gun shots. Tense moments passed as the soldiers whirled around, seeking to verify what Javier had told them. Once the firecrackers stopped, their smoke wafted through the air. Everyone was absolutely silent.
Everyone, that is, except for Ana. She was crying and continued to yell, “Please don’t shoot!” She lay face down on the ground with her arms over her head.
Finally, one of the soldiers close to Ana knelt beside her. He helped her up tenderly and told her not to worry, that they understood now that the sounds had just been fireworks.
“Thank you for helping us, little girl! Everything is fine. The soldiers are just here to help protect people,” he told her.
He kept his arm around her until Javier came and gathered Ana against his chest and hugged her tightly.
Those were the first stories and incidents introducing Ana to the world of adult life in Mexico. The unpredictable ricochets of violence that later rained on people everywhere caught Ana from time to time as she got older. Ana had enjoyed a privileged and loving childhood, but she later discovered that no economic class separated anyone from the bullets flying through the city streets of her beloved country. What sustained her always were the memories of her father’s kind and patient love.
On that night, as her father hugged her and consoled her, Ana Valdez determined always to know the stories of everyone she encountered and to memorize the sounds particular to every street. She remembered the pops of the firecrackers as she huddled in her father’s arms and the soldiers stood around her with guns. She had a strange thought: that the cracks of the small explosions on the street were echoes of the future.