Across the Border

by Arleta Richardson

  Ethan opened his mouth to reply, then closed it again. He couldn’t tell her that he had already played too much, and it had gotten him into trouble. Wearily he went to get ready for bed. He would spend another night trying to figure a way out of the mess he was in.

  As he passed the cupboard, Ethan looked at the shelf where Ma had put the jar of coins. Today’s total against him had been seven centavos. The jar was big, Ethan thought, and no one would notice if he took that money out and paid Carlos. After all, he had earned the money himself. It wasn’t as though he were stealing it. He pushed away the thought that he was being deceitful and ought never have gotten into this fix in the first place.

  Ethan wasn’t able to sleep. To begin with, when he had taken off his clothes, the key that Bert had given him fell from his pocket. As he picked it up, he thought how long it had been since he’d remembered to pray. First he’d been so eager to make extra money that he could think of nothing else. Then he was so worried about the money he owed that he forgot to do anything but figure out how to pay it back. He lay on his cot and stared out the window beside him.

  What should I do, God? he prayed. If I get this straightened out, I’ll never play that game as long as I live. Please help me know what to do.

  Finally, when all the family was asleep, Ethan arose quietly and took seven coins from the jar. Tomorrow he would give them to Carlos and tell the boys that he was through playing the game. Then he would work harder to sell more papers and bring home more money. He would replace the seven centavos even if he had to get extra jobs to earn them. If he kept borrowing money to play the game, he might not get out of debt for the rest of his life!

  Ethan left early the next morning. He hoped to pick up his papers before the others arrived so that he wouldn’t have to talk to them until siesta time. This was the hour when they played the game in the alley. He wasn’t early enough to get ahead of Carlos.

  “This is your lucky day, gringo,” Carlos said. “I think you will win all the money today.” He grinned, then took off toward the inn and his regular customers. Ethan turned the other way toward the market. His mind wasn’t on his work, and several people had to ask him for a paper. He dreaded for noon to come, yet he wanted the problem to end. For some reason, he felt that the boys weren’t going to like getting the money back without a chance to play for it.

  He was right.

  “Are you ready?” Carlos and the others were waiting when Ethan finally appeared. Ethan didn’t sit down as usual. Instead, he took the coins from his pocket and held them out to Carlos.

  “Here. This is the money I owe you. I won’t be playing anymore, so you can take my name out of your book.”

  Carlos looked at the centavos and frowned. “You can’t quit now. You’re just ready to earn it all back. Don’t you want to make more than just paper money every day? You know you don’t always lose. You could win real big today.”

  Ethan shook his head. “I can’t do it anymore. If my family found out that I borrowed money, I’d be in real trouble.”

  The other boys looked puzzled, and Carlos spoke to them in rapid Spanish. They glared at Ethan and shouted at him. He couldn’t understand what they said, but he knew they were angry. Carlos no longer looked friendly either.

  When Ethan realized that the boy wasn’t going to take the centavos, he threw them in the circle and turned to walk away. A threatening voice followed him out of the alley. “You can’t just quit the game. You’ll be sorry, gringo!”

  Chapter Eleven

  Mexican Christmas

  Soon after the family’s arrival in Galeana, Manda had been pleased to find a small, friendly church outside the village, beyond where they lived. They began attending the services at once and found that the little mission was pastored by a young couple from America.

  “We’re so pleased to have you,” the pastor had told them. “You’ll learn Spanish quickly as you worship with us. Isabel and I feel very much at home here, and I’m sure you will too.”

  And they had. The church members had welcomed the new family warmly and included them in all their activities. Several times Ethan had asked Carlos and the other boys to join him there on Sunday, but they shook their heads.

  “We attend the big church in the village—whenever the priest catches us, that is.” Carlos grinned. “He wouldn’t like it if we went to the little mission.”

  Now Ethan was glad that the boys had refused. It was enough to see them daily in the market square and to wonder what would happen to him because he no longer played their game. Ethan avoided the alleys and backstreets as much as possible.

  December was cold and rainy, and occasionally there was a sprinkling of snow in the air. It was nothing at all like the high drifts they were used to in South Dakota. Alice, Simon, and Will happily sloshed to school in bright-yellow ponchos and returned every day with tales of the day’s activities and new Spanish words to introduce to the family at home.

  One evening during supper, Simon tipped over his glass, and water flowed over the table to the floor. “¡Caramba!” he shouted.

  There was silence around the table as everyone stared at Simon in surprise. Simon looked flustered and bent over his plate.

  “I don’t rightly know what he said, but it didn’t sound like ‘Oh dear!’ to me,” Polly said.

  “What did you say, Simon?” Manda asked.

  Ethan answered for him. “It means something like ‘confound it.’ We hear it a lot on the street.”

  “That’s not something we would say in English,” Manda said primly, “so we won’t say it in Spanish either. Be careful that you know what a word means before you use it.”

  Alice had a bit of news to share. “It’s going to be Christmas pretty soon. We talked about it at school. We have to have a nacimiento in our house.”

  “What’s a nacimiento?” Frances asked.

  “I don’t know. But I know you bring in straw and sheep and cows.”

  “I ain’t about to have no sheep or cows in this house, missy,” Polly said as she got up to clear the table. “I think we should’ve let Frances take care of lessons here. She never suggested that we fetch the livestock into the living room.”

  “Perhaps you misunderstood, Alice,” Manda said. “We’ll ask Carlotta about it.”

  Carlotta soon straightened it out.

  “Nacimiento is a manger scene. Each family makes its own with whatever they have on hand. Cardboard animals are painted or covered with cotton. You can make a manger and crib from little scraps of wood. The Niño Dios is a little doll wrapped in swaddling clothes. Even the poorest family can have a nacimiento beside the front door.”

  Ethan began at once to draw the figures for Simon and Alice to cut out and color. Will fashioned a wobbly crib and collected hay to line it. When the scene was finished, everyone was pleased with the result.

  “Now our house will look like the others in the village,” Alice said. “Maybe they won’t call us gringos anymore.”

  “Gringo isn’t a bad name, Alice,” Frances told her. “It just means non-Spanish speaking.”

  “We speak Spanish,” Simon protested. “We know lots of words.”

  “It takes more than words to make some of them folks understand,” Polly put in. “Some of ’em don’t know their own language when they hear it.”

  “That’s because we still talk like gringos.” Manda laughed.

  “The teacher taught me bueno today,” Will boasted. “And I counted to ten in Spanish.”

  “You’re all doing well,” Manda said. “We’ll be ready for Christmas when Papa and Luke come home.”

  Ethan tried to appear interested in the preparations for the cele­bration, but his heart wasn’t in it. He so wanted his father to be proud of him, but Ethan knew that if he found out about the game and the money Ethan had wasted, he would be disappointed and angry. Ethan found it more
difficult to leave home each morning, not only because the weather was wet and cold, but because he knew the other boys hadn’t forgotten the threats they had made against him. So far there had been no actual harm done, although they did their best to annoy him.

  Late one afternoon as he left the paper office, Carlos followed him. “Hey, gringo!”

  Ethan turned and looked at him. Carlos didn’t sound unfriendly, but there was no smile on his face.

  “You getting ready for the Christmas celebration? Did someone tell you what we do every year?”

  “My sister and brothers heard at school. They said there’s a parade called a posadas, and they’ll be in it.”

  Carlos scowled at Ethan. “You tell them that they’d better not be in it if they want to stay healthy. We don’t need any more Cristianos like you in this village. We don’t like people who can’t keep a bargain. You and your family stay out of our celebrations.”

  Carlos turned and ran, leaving Ethan staring open-mouthed at him. He had thought that the boys might try to hurt him, but he never suspected that they would threaten his family. Did Carlos mean it? There was no point in trying to chase him. The village boy knew the old streets and buildings better than he did. Carlos had boasted that he could disappear and not be found by his own mother if he wanted to.

  Ethan trudged home with heavy feet and an even heavier heart. What should he do? If he told Alice, Simon, and Will that they couldn’t take part in the posadas, then the others would have to know why. And if Pa and Luke were home before the nine-day festivities began, there would be no way Ethan could keep them all from finding out what he had done.

  The rain fell steadily, and Ethan was getting wetter by the moment, but he couldn’t walk any faster. In fact, he was tempted to turn around, walk the other way, and not stop until he reached Texas. He would have given anything to be on the train north and forget that he had ever seen Mexico.

  His mind whirled as he remembered the children’s excitement yesterday evening as they reported on the upcoming events.

  “The celebration begins nine days before Christmas,” Alice had told them. “Every night there is a posadas. It’s like a procession.”

  “Yes,” Simon broke in. “We all gather at the church and act out the story of Joseph and Mary and how they looked for a place in Bethlehem.”

  “Posada means ‘inn,’” Will informed them. “You remember there was no room for them in the inn?”

  Alice took up the story again. “Each night a boy and girl are chosen to be Joseph and Mary. Mary rides on a burro, and Joseph leads it. Then everyone else follows along and carries a candle.”

  “And sings,” Simon had added.

  “And Simon gets to be Joseph one night because he sings good,” Will put in. “He can bang hard on the door, too.”

  Polly had looked startled. “You go bangin’ on doors? Whatever for?”

  “They’re looking for a place to stay,” Simon explained. “If I knock on this door, you’re supposed to say, ‘Go away! We don’t have any room here!’”

  “Oh my. I couldn’t say that to anyone at my door.” Manda had looked distressed.

  “It’s just playacting, Mama,” Simon told her. “You say that, and then I say, ‘I’m Joseph. Take me in. I need a place for Mary to rest.’”

  Will had jumped up and down with excitement. “Then you open the door, and everybody comes in, and they have a party and play games, and there’s lots and lots of food!”

  Alice pulled on Manda’s sleeve. “And you know what else? There’s a piñata to break with a stick, only you can’t see it!”

  “I’m afraid to even ask what that is,” Polly had said. “How you gonna break somethin’ with a stick that you can’t see?”

  “Let me tell them,” Simon said. “You’re getting it all mixed up. A piñata is a big clay jar filled with candy and toys. They hang it from the ceiling, and then all the children take turns being blindfolded and trying to hit it with a stick. When it’s broken, everyone picks up toys and candy to keep.”

  “I’m tired already, and we ain’t even had a posadas yet,” Polly had declared. “That’ll be somethin’ to see, all right.”

  Now Ethan was coming closer to home and feeling worse with every step. How could he tell the children that they couldn’t take part in the festivities? They wouldn’t understand, and neither would the rest of the family. It would probably be better for everyone if he just didn’t go home. But what would happen to the others if he weren’t there to watch out for them?

  Well, he wouldn’t tell them tonight. There were still five days left until the posadas. He would try to find Carlos and make it up to him some way. Right now he was too wet and tired to think about how he could do that.

  Chapter Twelve

  The Posadas

  The next morning Ethan couldn’t get out of bed. He could faintly hear Manda and Polly as they talked.

  “High fever … We’d better get a doctor.”

  Ethan had no idea that they were talking about him. He was so tired that his eyes wouldn’t stay open. He did know that someone was spooning broth into his mouth.

  What was it that he needed to be thinking about? He couldn’t remember …

  When Ethan awoke and tried to sit up, Frances was sitting beside him.

  “Lie down, Ethan,” she soothed. “You’re too sick to get up. Mama! He’s awake!”

  Manda and Polly rushed to his bed, and Polly felt his forehead. “The fever’s gone. I’ll get him somethin’ to eat.”

  “I need to go to work,” Ethan insisted. “I’ll be late.”

  Manda shook her head. “No work. You’ve been sick for three days. You aren’t strong enough to be up yet.”

  Three days! Everything rushed back into Ethan’s memory. That meant only two days remained until the posadas. Ethan closed his eyes and moaned.

  “Don’t worry,” Manda said. “The manager knows you can’t come for your papers. I asked your friend who stopped by to tell him.”

  Ethan’s eyes flew open. “My friend?”

  “Yes. Carlos, I think he said his name was. He spoke English very well. I’m sure he’s taken care of everything.”

  Ethan sank down on his pillow and tried hard to hold back the tears. Things were getting worse by the minute. Could the Lord get him out of this trouble?

  I need to be punished, he prayed, but the little ones don’t. Can You keep them safe? How will I stop them from being in the posadas?

  When Ethan woke again, the house was quiet, and the sky outside his window was dark. It wasn’t raining, though he could hear the drip-drip from the roof. It must be very late, he thought, since no one seems to be awake.

  Suddenly he heard a soft voice calling him. “Psst! Ethan! It’s me, Carlos. Can you hear me?”

  Ethan knelt on his cot and looked out the window toward the voice. Someone stepped closer to the house, and Ethan could see that it was indeed Carlos. Ethan’s heart pounded, and he hung on tightly to the windowsill. “I can hear you.”

  “I thought maybe you were going to die,” Carlos whispered. “Are you getting better?”

  Ethan nodded. He didn’t seem to be able to speak. What was Carlos planning now?

  “Remember what I said about your family being in the posadas?”

  Ethan nodded again.

  “Well, forget about that. You played fair and paid back what you borrowed. I’ve been covering your papers while you’re gone. You’ll be back in a few days, won’t you?”

  “Yes, but … why?”

  Carlos was silent for a moment. “You never told the manager what we were doing with our money. We figured that you were a real amigo, even if you are a gringo. Go back to sleep now. ¡Hasta la vista!”

  Carlos disappeared, and Ethan crawled back under the covers. He fell asleep while he was thanking the Lord for helping him.
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br />   The nine days of the posadas passed happily, and Ethan was able to join the procession on the last few nights. The best evening of all was Nochebuena. On that day Chad, Luke, and Reymundo arrived home.

  “We will stay until Twelfth Night,” Reymundo told them. “Then we must go back. It is not good to leave the land without supervision in these days.”

  “Twelfth night of what?” Polly wanted to know.

  “Twelve nights after Christmas, we celebrate the coming of the wise men to bring gifts to the Christ child,” Reymundo explained.

  “And they bring gifts for boys and girls and put them in their shoes!” Will added.

  “You mean that you hang up your stockings tonight, and then twelve days after Christmas, you get gifts in your shoes? They sure do celebrate in this country. What will they think of next?” Polly looked amazed.

  “Firecrackers!” Simon grinned. “There are firecrackers on Christmas Day. I told the boys at school that we only have those on the Fourth of July, but they said they don’t have any Fourth of July here.”

  “Well, they have one,” Alice corrected. “They just don’t shoot any fireworks that day.”

  Chad looked pleased when Manda showed him the jar of centavos that Ethan had earned. “That was good work, boy. We’ll save the money for your school expenses next year. In fact,” he said to Manda and Polly, “we may be leaving here before our year of homesteading is over.”

  “Haven’t you found any oil on the land?” Manda asked.

  “Yes, there’s lots of oil. We’re negotiating with the oil companies to buy soon. The problem is the political trouble here in Mexico.”

  “We hear a lot of news from folks travelin’ through the area,” Luke added. “Most of it ain’t good for Americans. Seems that a Mexican leader was murdered by one of his generals, and the United States president cut off relations with the country because the general wouldn’t allow free elections. Folks here don’t want America interferin’ in Mexican affairs.”