"Eat, brother," Marta urged. "You must be starved. It's almost eleven o'clock."
"Is that all? I thought it was nearly morning!"
Tony had not been conscious of hunger but with the odor of the hot soup, he realized he was ravenous. When he had finished all they had brought, he felt restored in body and soul, despite his cuts and bruises.
He looked up to find his aunt studying him with her button-black eyes.
"We saw Lencho, too," she said abruptly. "His nose is broken. It was a mistake, Tony—that fight."
"I know," he muttered. "But he asked for it."
"We've heard all about it. Nevertheless, it was a mistake, my boy. Lencho won't forget."
"I'm not as worried about that as I am about the job," Tony said grimly. "Now I'll have to find something else—and something that pays more."
"Well, don't think about it now." His aunt's voice was
more gentle. "Sleep if you can. You'll be called before the judge in the morning."
"We brought a sarape," Marta added. "This place is cold and damp. Julio told us."
"Gracias, both of you." Tony was sincerely grateful. He felt he didn't deserve so much consideration.
"One of us will be here in the morning," Aunt Raquel said. "Good luck, mi hijito. I'm glad we find you in one piece, at least!"
They had barely gone when the surly guard was back again, this time with Peter's father.
"Well, Tony," the American said, peering down at him, "you look a little banged up!"
"Mr. Carson, I am sorry," Tony said contritely, in English. "About Peter, I mean."
"It wasn't your fault he mixed in." Mr. Carson looked very tall and white-skinned in the dim light. And very out of place. Tony wondered if the Norteamericano had ever been in a jail before. Certainly not in one like this!
"Pete told me about it," Mr. Carson went on. "He says you warned him to keep away."
"I'm glad he got into it," Mr. Carson said in a tone of calm satisfaction.
"You are what?" Tony was dumfounded.
"Why not? I wouldn't want Peter to be a coward, or disloyal to his friends. You are his friend, Tony."
"Maybe I shouldn't be," Tony muttered. "I only get him in trouble."
"We'll risk it." Mr. Carson smiled a little. "Is there anything I can do for you, my boy?"
"No, sir. You already have, getting my aunt and sister in here."
"It was nothing. I'll be going, then. They are letting Pete come home with me. I convinced the police that he was more or less a bystander in your argument."
"Good. I'm glad he can go," Tony said earnestly.
"Good night, then, muchacho. Rest now. Hasta manana."
"Good night, Mr. Carson—and many thanks."
What a nice person Peter's father is! Tony thought. If all gringos were Uke that. . . .
Left alone again, Tony wrapped himself in the wool sarape, warmed and comforted. It was amazing how much less hopeless things looked, given a full stomach and a few kind words.
But he slept fitfully, with vivid dreams that were almost nightmares. And he wakened early, watching the brightening sky beyond his barred window and worrying about his problems again.
It was the middle of the afternoon when the two boys were finally called before the judge. Lencho, already in the office, glowered when Tony was escorted in. But Tony forgot his enemy when he saw the auburn-haired girl, neatly attired in a blue cotton dress sitting at one side of the room with Peter Carson. Peter grinned at Tony and surreptitiously made a circle of his thumb and forefinger as a sign of encouragement.
The informal hearing was brief. Both boys pleaded guilty to fighting on the beach and disturbing the peace.
Lencho's attempt to justify himself was cut short by the judge, who asked the girl, through an interpreter, for her version.
She answered quietly that Lencho had stopped her as she was leaving the beach, saying that he had an unusual shell he wanted to give her for a souvenir. Then, within the circle of the rocks, he had tried forcibly to kiss her. She had slapped him and screamed, and Tony had appeared and fought with Lencho.
She added in a straightforward manner that she felt responsible for the whole matter and hoped that the judge would be lenient with both boys, under the circumstances.
The judge sighed. "There are often misunderstandings here because American girls are brought up differently from Mexican girls," he said. "They mix more with the opposite sex and have more freedom. But these boys should understand this, because they have been around tourists long enough." He looked at Lencho sternly.
"I thought she wanted to be kissed," Lencho muttered sullenly.
"Well, perhaps after a few days' leisure in jail you'll remember, next time, to ask whether a girl wants to be kissed," the judge said curtly. "In addition to three days of confinement, you are prohibited from work with toinrists for the rest of the season."
Lencho's face was black with anger. "Tony doesn't try half as hard to please the tourists as I do!" he blurted out. "He hates them! I've done nine tenths of the work on our boat, for the last five weeks."
Tony's ears turned red and he avoided looking at the girl. "I don't hate them," he said gruffly. "It's just—I don't know what to say to them. I'd rather work by myself."
"Then perhaps you'd better find some other job where you'll be able to work by yourself," the judge said in a cool voice. "You also are forbidden tourist work for the remainder of the season. Case dismissed."
Tony knew from the look Lencho gave him, as he went oflF with the guard, that the matter was not ended. Once Lencho was out of jail, he'd get even. But Tony couldn't worry about that right now. He was relieved that there had been no fine or imprisonment for him, to make the whole matter worse. It was bad enough to be forbidden to work on the beach!
"They wouldn't let me testify because I was involved in it," Peter whispered to Tony as they left the judge's office. "But I found the girl and got her to come. I thought that would be better."
"It was." Tony clapped a hand on his friend's shoulder. "You have just been promoted, Pedro. You are now my twin! You know what that means in Mexico? Even closer than brother."
Peter's grin was pleased.
As they emerged from the courthouse, they saw the girl walking slowly down the shady side of the street.
"She was sorry about this," Peter said. "She really is very nice, Tony."
"No doubt." Tony's voice was grim. "But I hope I never see her again!"
When he got home, late in the afternoon, it seemed to
him that he had been away a long, long time. In the city jail only one night—but the work on the glass-bottomed boat had kept him so busy that for over a month he had been at home only to eat and sleep.
Marta and their young cousins, Juanita and Lourdes, were taking care of the store, after the three-hour dinner and siesta lull. Uncle Juan was nowhere to be seen. Aunt Raquel came out of the kitchen wing as Tony stood hesitating in the middle of the patio.
"Clean yourself up," she said. "I heated a pail of water and I am warming your dinner. We've all eaten, long ago."
It was pleasant to be coddled, Tony thought. After he had given himself a thorough scrubbing to get rid of the jail dirt and smells and had eaten a strangely lonely meal at the corridor table, he stretched out in the hammock under the mango tree and slept for two solid hours.
When he wakened, refreshed, it was dusk. The sky was changing to colors of opal as the sun dropped behind the western mountains. Voices echoed from the store in front, but out here it was very peaceful. Bats circled in their crazy, aimless-looking twilight flight above the trees. Pancho Villa, the parrot, complained softly to himself in an almond tree.
Tony lay for a few minutes, unthinking, letting the peace and beauty of the evening sink into him. Then he locked his fingers under his head and began considering the possibilities. What now? What was he going to do next—tomorrow—to earn money?
After a while, he heard a door open behind him and a sna
pped-on hght half illuminated the patio.
Tony!
The boy got up quickly and went to the veranda, where his uncle sat stiflBy at the table. He never relaxes, Tony thought. Even when he's lying in a hammock, his body is stiff and controlled.
His uncle's amber eyes studied the partly closed eye and the swollen jaw. Tony waited for the tongue-lashing he fully expected.
But when Uncle Juan spoke, his voice was surprisingly quiet.
"You see, my boy, that you're not going to be able to do this—make a decent living alone in Acapulco? Are you ready now to give up this foolish idea and go to the city with us, as I want you to? Soon we won't be around, to get you out of scrapes like this one!"
Tony flushed, remembering how good it had been to see Aunt Raquel and Marta, bringing food and comfort to the jail. He would miss them, of course—all of them— and he felt as though he were being pulled in two by the conflict that waged in him. Yet underneath was the deep, clear certainty that he was right. He could not go to the city.
"Uncle Juan," he said unhappily, "as I've told you many times, I thank you for all you have done for me and Marta. But I have to stay here. Acapulco is my home—"
The amber eyes hardened. "Then I was mistaken. I thought this house was your home. I thought we were your family."
Tony had not cried since his father had died, six years before, but now he felt the sting of tears behind his
eyelids. His shoulders slumped. How could he explain?
After a moment's silence, his uncle threw out his hands and dropped them to his sides in a gesture of hopelessness.
"Very well." The voice was cold and noncommittal again. "We will return to our original arrangement. If you have earned, by honest means, two thousand pesos by the end of January, you may stay here. If not, you go to the city with us."
Tony felt lonely and wretched as the shop door closed behind his uncle. But he was getting what he wanted— another chance.
For the next ten days, Tony worked harder than he had ever worked in his life. On two afternoons he was able to borrow a compressed-air tank from a friend and he spent the precious air time in hunting and raising an anchor which had been lost from one of the cruise boats.
But most of the time he had to skin dive from the surface, using only his diving mask, rubber flippers and his own lungs. He haunted the lesser-known coves and inlets around Acapulco in a frenzied search for seafood dehcacies such as scallops, oysters and percebes—the iodine-loaded, fingerlike goose barnacles—taking them afterward to the restaurants on the coast boulevard, hagghng to get the last possible centavo for them.
He advertised his availability and did every odd job that he could find to do, around the docks and the neighborhood, no matter how distasteful it was.
One long, backbreaking day, he worked at unloading cargo from a visiting Japanese boat, and he would have
worked a second day, but the dock foreman shook his head.
"You're strong, Tony, for your age. But this is a man's job. I should never have let you keep at it all day yesterday."
Peter helped as much as he could, after school. On Saturday the two boys rented a paddle board and paddled around behind the island, on the sea side, to a cave where Tony knew there were oysters. Peter maneuvered the flat board skillfully in the waves, as Tony had taught him, keeping it in position off the rocks while Tony dived in water twenty feet deep, breaking the oysters away from the coral rock with an iron bar and coming up every couple of minutes for more air. It was strenuous work. He got five dozen that day, but at night he was so exhausted that he slept like a dead man for ten hours.
Hard work or not, he would have loved it all, if so much hadn't depended on the financial results. By the end of ten days, he knew that he was never going to be able to save the money he needed by that method of skin diving.
"I'm not getting enough, fast enough," he said to Peter as the two boys walked along the dock one afternoon. "To make money, you have to have a boat with a motor, or an aqualung, or better still—both."
Peter nodded in reluctant agreement. After a moment's pause, he said, "You know, Tony, what you need right now is a little diversion. You're going around in circles."
"Julio told me the same thing, the last day I worked on the glass-bottomed boat." Tony's voice was moody.
"I was wondering," Peter suggested tentatively, "if you'd come to the posada they're going to have at our boardinghouse tonight. This is the first night of the posadas, isn't it? I've never seen one, and you could explain it to me."
Tony stared at him. Pedro seemed so well adapted to Acapulco that sometimes Tony forgot what a relatively short time the American boy had lived in Mexico. "You mean you've never been to a posada, not even when you were in Guadalajara last winter?"
Peter shook his head. "We didn't know many people there," he said. "I've heard about the posada parties, of course, and I've read a little about them. But I'd sure hke to see one, with somebody who knows. Dad would, too."
Peter was trying to sound casual, but Tony heard the wistful note in his voice, and suddenly he felt ashamed of himself. Peter had certainly been doing his best to help, and Mr. Carson had been more than kind in the jail. Maybe it was time he did something for them, for a change!
"Listen, Pedro," he said, trying to forget that he was tired and discouraged and in no mood for a party. "That boardinghouse posada may be all right, but then again it may be something just put on for tourists. Why don't you and your father come to our neighborhood fiesta, instead? It may not be elegant, but at least it will be genuine."
"But—but—we haven't been invited!" Peter stuttered, his eyes shining with sudden excitement.
"Well, I'm inviting you now. Anybody in the barrio
can invite his friends. They'd be glad to have you and your father. The more people, the more interesting it is."
"Gosh, Tony, I'd sure like that! Can we bring something?"
"You don't have to. But if it would make yoxu* father feel any better, you can bring some candy for the pinatas."
"The pinatas" Peter said uncertainly. "Are those the decorated things they dangle for kids to hit at?"
Tony looked at him in amazement. "You really don't know much about the Christmas fiestas, do you?"
It seemed incredible to him until he remembered how differently they celebrated Christmas in the United States. He hesitated for only a second before he spoke again. If he was going to introduce Peter and his father to their first Mexican Christmas party, he might as well do it right.
"Look, Pedro, if you don't even know much about pinatas, maybe you and your father would like to go with me to the market this evening and see the displays of the Christmas stuff. That way you'll get a better idea of what it's all about, before the party begins."
"Gee!" Peter breathed. "What time should we go? I'll run and tell Dad now."
"Let's leave around seven. The market's open late, and you can see all there is to see in an hour. Then we can go right from there to the fiesta."
"That would be perfect! You're sure you want to do this, Tony? I know you're pretty tired from the hard work you've been doing."
"Sure I want to do it." Tony's voice was hearty. He
was even beginning to get a little excited about it himself. He had seen many posadas in his sixteen years but it would be sort of fun to explain them to people who had never seen one. "I'm not really physically tired-just tired of thinking—and anyway, there's plenty of time for a siesta before we have to get ready. I'll pick you up at your boardinghouse around six-thirty. Okay?" "Okay!" Peter echoed happily. "See you later!"
The Posada
When Tony presented himself at the Carsons' board-inghouse, late that afternoon, he was scrubbed and dressed in blue trousers and a bright blue shirt which set off his ruddy-brown skin to good advantage.
"Hombre, I hardly recognize you!" Peter grinned.
"Brother, I could say the same." Tony grinned back, admiring Peter's white shirt and creased white sl
acks. "I guess we've never seen each other so dressed up!"
"Tony, it's nice of you to do this," Mr. Carson said as he appeared in the doorway. "It will be much more interesting to see a posada in your neighborhood than the one they've arranged for the boardinghouse guests."
"I'm glad you can come," Tony said, meaning it. "I don't know why I didn't think of inviting you until Pedro mentioned it."
While they walked to the market Tony explained in his best English that posada meant lodging, and that the first part of the fiesta was a ceremony in which the guests act out the Bible story of how the Holy Family wandered for nine nights, trying to find room in an inn.
"That's why the posadas are held for nine nights
88
before Christmas," he said. "Every night there's a fiesta in a different house, with everybody in the neighborhood cooperating."
"I've read about that," Mr. Carson nodded.
"But where do the pinatas fit into it?" Peter asked, puzzled.
"They don't fit into the first part," Tony told him. "There are two parts to a posada, Pedro. The first half is the ceremony—kind of solemn, and the second half is fun—the breaking of the pinatas. They're really thin clay jars decorated into all kinds of shapes with tissue paper and tinsel. You'll see some in a minute."
The labyrinthian Acapulco market, which covered several blocks, was full of color and excitement on this first night of the Christmas parties. The first section they came to was given over entirely to booths brimming with mountains of hard candy, nuts, dried fruits, and small but durable toys.
"These are the things they fill the pinatas with," Tony explained. "And there are the empty pinatas." He pointed to an array of large and beautifully made paper figures which swung on ropes above the street stands: ships, clowns, animals, airplanes and many other objects.
"Let's get one!" Mr. Carson said with sudden enthusiasm. "We'll take it to the party with us, along with the things to fill it. They can use an extra one, can't they, Tony?"
Treasure of Acapulco Page 6