“There must be thousands of folks listening,” Bella said.
Pedro nodded. “My friends say that when they walk down the street, every radio in the city is tuned to your show.”
After Grandfather had gone home, Pedro smiled at Bella.
“What are you thinking?” Bella asked.
“Nothing,” Pedro said, though his eyes glinted.
“Don’t get into trouble,” Bella said.
“Not anymore,” Pedro said.
Bella didn’t find out what Pedro had on his mind until the following week. The family had just finished Sunday dinner. Grandfather stood up and said, “Bella and I must be getting to the studio,” and Pedro said, “I have a surprise for you first.”
Pedro ran to the bedroom.
Grandfather looked at Bella for an explanation, but she could only shake her head.
Pedro returned with a sheet of paper and a cigar box. “What is this?” Grandfather asked as Pedro handed him a list of numbers and names. “Did you get a perfect score on a test?”
“Look closer.” Pedro leaned over Grandfather’s shoulder.
Bella glanced down. The names on the paper were all residents of Ybor City and Tampa. Behind each name was the number 25. “There must be a hundred names on this paper,” Grandfather said.
“A hundred and twenty-seven,” Pedro said. “And see the last name?” he pointed to the bottom of the list.
“That’s you.” Grandfather looked confused.
“Which is why I’m giving you this.” Pedro handed Grandfather a quarter. “And there are many more people waiting to sign up.”
“I don’t understand.” Grandfather stared at the quarter Pedro had given him.
“The twenty-five behind each person’s name means that they liked your radio show so much that they’ve paid you a quarter.” Pedro flipped open the cigar box. “This is what I’ve collected in just one week.” The box was heaped with coins.
“But why would people pay? The radio is free.”
“Everyone wants it to be like the old days when you were their lector,” Pedro said. “And they’d like a chance to vote on the authors you read.” He showed Grandfather a second sheet of paper. “These are the names they’ve asked for so far.”
“Pérez Galdós, Shakespeare, Molière, Valdés, Dickens,” Grandfather read slowly. “All fine writers. But—”
“The people of Ybor would be honored if you would keep reading the classics for them,” Pedro said.
Bella smiled at Pedro’s cleverness in bringing up honor.
Grandfather sat down in a chair. “I’m overwhelmed.” Julio climbed up into his lap and hugged him.
Bella patted Grandfather’s arm. “Don’t you always say ‘What good is bread to a man if he cannot satisfy his hunger for the truth?’ ”
“You both use my own words against me,” Grandfather said. “But if it’s the will of the people I have no choice.” He turned to Mama. “What do you think?”
“There’s no one more qualified for the job,” Mama said.
“Think of all the books you could buy with your money,” Isabel said.
“That’s true,” Grandfather said. “And if Pedro’s accounting can be trusted, there might be money left over for Bella’s schooling.”
“That’s what I was hoping.” Pedro stood proudly.
“I’ve also been considering a small present for your mother,” Grandfather said.
“I have everything I need,” Mama said.
“I saw an ad in the paper the other day for a contraption called an Easy Washer,” Grandfather said.
“A washing machine!” Mama said.
“Complete with a porcelain tub and a rust-resistant wringer.” Grandfather smiled.
“After all the years you’ve rubbed your knuckles bare on a scrub board, you deserve it,” Bella said.
“And”—Lola looked at Grandfather—“your program might be able to contribute to the cigar workers’ defense fund.”
“The Spanish Story Hour will also show the cigar companies that tearing out lecterns in the dark of the night will not silence Roberto García!” Bella said.
Pedro said, “And I can pass out flyers advertising you as El Lector of the Air.”
“Let’s remember our dignity,” Grandfather said.
“Yes. We have our professional reputations to consider.” Bella laughed and hugged Grandfather’s arm.
CHAPTER 31
El Paraíso Revisited
The Spanish Story Hour soon had more than three hundred subscribers. While Pedro picked up the money, Bella and Mary kept track of the contributions and the reading requests. Most people didn’t ask Grandfather to read a certain story but said, “Tell El Lector to read whatever he chooses.”
One woman sent a letter along with her quarter: “It is not so much what Señor García reads as how he reads it. That man could turn the weather report into a symphony if he set his mind to it. Such music!” Mary’s father even heard about The Spanish Story Hour out in Colorado, and he sent a postcard to congratulate Grandfather and Bella. He also told Bella that he planned to surprise Mary with a visit that spring.
As the program’s popularity grew, Grandfather insisted on paying Bella and Mary a salary for answering letters and doing the bookkeeping. One day as Bella was opening an envelope, she told Mary, “If we keep saving our money there’ll be no reason why we can’t start high school in the fall. And I can stay on the radio, since we broadcast on Sunday.”
“I suppose,” Mary said.
“You don’t sound very excited.”
“I’ve been thinking I might want to go to beauty school.”
“And be a hairdresser?”
“I know we’ve always planned on going to high school together,” Mary said, “but I think it would be fun to make women beautiful.”
At first, Bella was disappointed, but after she had thought for a while, she said, “Well, you’re much better at fixing hair than anyone I know—even Lola. So I guess our dreams don’t have to be the same. As long as I know you’ll always be my best friend.”
Fan letters for The Spanish Story Hour kept arriving from all over Florida and South Carolina and Georgia. “How can these people have heard my program?” Grandfather asked.
“Once the sun goes down,” Pedro said, “radio waves can travel hundreds of miles.”
Bella held out the letters. “Two came from New York and one each from Chicago and Cleveland.”
“Amazing,” Grandfather said.
“Who knows?” Bella said. “When conditions are right your voice may travel all the way to Spain.”
“Spain?” Grandfather shook his head.
“Radio waves fly that far in seconds,” Pedro said.
“And to think of the many days it took my family to steam across the ocean when I was a boy.”
“The presidente of the new Spanish republic may hear you on the radio some evening!” Pedro said.
On her way to Cannella’s market the next day, Bella walked past a place she had long been avoiding. She stopped in front of El Paraíso. Now that the paradise tree was gone, the weathered wooden building looked shabby in the unshaded light. Radio music blared from the second-story window. Bella could hear the clank of cigar-rolling machines inside. The only thing that hadn’t changed was the blue haze of cigar smoke that drifted out the windows.
She walked across the lawn to the place where the yellow-flowered tree had stood. She took a deep breath. The smell of moist tobacco mingled with the scent of broken seashells and earth that rose from foundation trenches workmen had been digging in the lawn. Bella missed the delicate scent of paradise tree blossoms. By summer a new addition to the factory would house more cigar-rolling machines. Perhaps Grandfather’s prediction would soon come true and El Paraíso would be one long row of machines empty of people.
Bella turned to the north and saw only empty sky where the broad crown of the tree had been. A crooked stump, its top puddled with sap, burned under the spring sun. And a fat bee
buzzed over the clumps of dried purple berries that had been trampled into the grass.
Just then the shadow of a bird flicked across the lawn. Bella looked up and saw the white wing patch and tail of a mockingbird as it flapped over the factory roof. Where would the birds nest now that the tree had been cut down?
Before Bella started back toward the sidewalk, she glanced down and saw that a spindly seedling had sprouted in the shadow of the stump. She touched the pink-veined leaf of a tiny paradise tree.
Bella smiled. Like Don Quixote, the paradise tree refused to surrender. As Bella started toward home, the trolley bell clanged downtown, and the faint scent of mudflats and mangroves blew in from Hillsborough Bay. The freshening wind meant that children’s voices would soon be chasing kite tails across the sky.
AFTERWORD
Fifteen cigar workers were arrested in front of Ybor City’s Labor Temple on November 7, 1931, and charged with “unlawful assembly, rioting, and assault to commit murder.” The thirteen men and two women were convicted in January 1932, and on February 1 they were sentenced to a total of fifty-three years in prison. When the union attempted to raise money for a defense fund, the court charged it with racketeering.
The Florida Supreme Court overturned the convictions in May 1933, ruling that the police had violated the law by not ordering the crowd to disperse before they arrested the workers. All the defendants were freed.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A number of former residents of Ybor City and scholars of Florida history were generous in helping me with this novel. Primary among them were Willie Garcia, attorney-at-law; Robert Ingalls, PhD; Robert Arsenau, PhD; Gary Mormino, PhD; Sonia Cruz; Sam Ficarrotta; Yael Greenburg; Arsineo Sanchez; Ferdie Pacheco, MD; Patrick Manteiga, Editor of La Gaceta; Paul Camp, University of South Florida Library, Special Collections; Jeneice Sorrentino and the staff of the Ybor City Campus Library; Kathleen Winter, Tampa Tribune archivist; Kathleen Barber of the Florida State University Film School; and the staff and volunteers of the Ybor City Museum, including Javier Puig, Maureen Patrick, Helen Ficari, and Pam Bushman. And special thanks to Erik Read for sharing his Tornado Soup idea.
This book would not have been possible without the expertise of my editor, Wendy Lamb; and the support of my agent, Barbara Markowitz; and my family, Barbara, Jessica, and Reid.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
William Durbin was born in Minneapolis and lives on Lake Vermilion, at the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northeastern Minnesota. He formerly taught English at a small rural high school and composition at a community college and has supervised writing research projects for the National Council of Teachers of English, the Bingham Trust for Charity, and Middlebury College. His wife, Barbara, is also a teacher, and they have two grown children.
William Durbin has published biographies of Tiger Woods and Arnold Palmer, as well as several books for young readers, among them The Broken Blade, Wintering, Song of Sampo Lake, and Blackwater Ben. The Broken Blade won the Great Lakes Book Award for Children’s Books and the Minnesota Book Award for Young Adult Fiction.
Visit the author’s Web site at williamdurbin.com.
ALSO BY WILLIAM DURBIN
Blackwater Ben
Song of Sampo Lake
Wintering
The Broken Blade
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Copyright © 2006 by William Durbin
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February 2006
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eISBN: 978-0-307-43332-9
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