The Maldonado Miracle Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Book I

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  Book II

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  About the Author

  Copyright © 1973 by Theodore Taylor

  All rights reserved No part of this publication may be

  reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,

  electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording,

  or any information storage and retrieval system,

  without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Requests for permission to make copies of any part

  of the work should be mailed to the following address:

  Permissions Department, Harcourt, Inc.,

  6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.

  www.HarcourtBookscom

  Portions of this novel have appeared in Redbook magazine

  under the title "A Test of Faith,"

  copyright © 1962 by McCall Corporation.

  First published by Doubleday & Company, Inc in 1973

  First paperback edition published by Avon Books, Inc. in 1986

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Taylor, Theodore, 1921–

  The Maldonado miracle/Theodore Taylor,

  p. cm.

  Reprint. Originally published: New York: Doubleday, 1973;

  first pbk. ed.. New York: Avon Books, 1986.

  Summary: A twelve-year-old Mexican crosses

  the border illegally to join his father in California.

  [1. Illegal aliens—Fiction. 2. Mexicans—United States—Fiction.

  3. Migrant labor—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.T2186Mal 2003

  [Fic]—dc21 2003045283

  ISBN 0-15-205037-X

  ISBN 0-15-205036-1 (pb)

  Text set in Dante

  Designed by Lydia D'moch

  A C E G H F D B

  E G H F D. (pb)

  Printed in the United States of America

  To Gwen, with Love

  Book I

  The New Life

  1

  GUTIERREZ was pointing to a much-used Pemex road map spread over an up-ended wooden crate. He said, "Now, pay attention. You will cross here late tonight. I will already have gone through customs and immigration. Look closely. Right here."

  The heavy finger was at a place in California opposite the Mexican border town of Tecate.

  Jose glanced over at the stranger from San Diego. He was a stocky man about forty. A pocho, an American of Mexican descent. He was speaking in Spanish because Jose understood very little English.

  Jose nodded, but his legs suddenly felt weak. It was the same old problem. He knew he should be excited, but all he felt was fear.

  Gutierrez went on as if he did this several times a week. "You'll ride in the trunk of my car until we are far away from the border. Many people make the mistake of traveling the big highway, and they are caught here at the checkpoint near Oceanside." The thick finger tapped again.

  Jose thought about men in uniform holding a flashlight to his face; a ride to jail in a patrol car.

  "We won't do that," Gutierrez said. "We'll go on the back roads. East to Jacumba, then north again up through Pine Valley, here by Escondido, taking a dirt road to skirt another roadblock, then on to Elsinore, and finally back on the main road here at San Juan Capistrano."

  With the exception of that last place, where there was a famous mission, Jose had never heard of any of them. He studied the map and tried to make his voice deeper, more manly. "Is this the best way?"

  Gutierrez nodded and removed his glasses, tucking them into his shirt pocket. He smelled of hair tonic. "Yes, Jose. Your father agreed. We'll pick him up in Oxnard tomorrow. All the arrangements have been made."

  Jose wondered what the arrangements were; where Oxnard was. He wished he'd been able to talk to his father, though not much would have resulted.

  "Except that you are skinny, you don't look like your father. You don't have his height," Gutierrez commented.

  That was true.

  Over six feet tall, Hector Maldonado Alvarez had very little meat on him. When he had his shirt off and was lifting something heavy, his ribs projected like steel rims. His face was sharp and bony, like his wrists. It was a mellow red-brown. He had told Jose that their blood was Spanish and Indian.

  Jose was short, wiry, black-haired. His large, soft eyes were unlike those of his father. They were his mother's eyes. Long lashed.

  Slightly embarrassed, and not knowing what else to say, Jose answered simply, "No, I do not." He reached down to scrub Sanchez's thick neck.

  The big mongrel had been watching Gutierrez from the moment the old car had driven up. He was splotched black and brown and had one discolored eye. It was greenish. His coat was like a matted, worn shag rug. His head seemed oversized for his body, the nose flat like a cow's. His tail had been accidentally mashed off midway, so that it was neither long nor short. It looked strange, especially because hair refused to grow on the last inch of it. There was nothing there but gray skin.

  Gutierrez shifted on his sandals. "The money," he said. "Half now."

  For a moment, Jose thought about what to do. Then he said, "Go outside, please, señor."

  Gutierrez laughed. "I am doing your father a favor. Don't be suspicious of me, boy." But he shrugged and waddled out into the sunlight.

  Jose dragged the empty box to the rear of the room and stood up on it, feeling along the top of the beam beneath the tile roof for the stack of bills. He had counted them a dozen times. The other half of the smuggling fee, payable after Gutierrez delivered Jose to his father and then took them on somewhere else, was buried outside in a coffee can.

  Dropping down off the box, he counted it once again and then joined Gutierrez in the yard.

  The pocho was smiling, and Jose felt silly. After all, the money was for Gutierrez; his father had placed confidence in him. "Seventy-five dollars, American. Count it."

  Gutierrez chuckled. "I don't need to. I'm sure you've done it fifty times."

  Jose finally laughed. "A dozen, at least."

  "How old are you?" Gutierrez asked, cramming the bills into his wallet.

  "Twelve." He'd rather have been eight or six or five again.

  Gutierrez nodded. "You've been here alone? How long?"

  "Four months."

  "Any trouble?"

  Jose shook his head unconcernedly. "I have Sanchez. I've been quite safe. I haven't even thought about it." That was a lie. He'd spent many nights on the straw matting, his throat tight, listening to every sound. Finally falling asleep, one hand dug into Sanchez's fur.

  Gutierrez smiled, glancing at the mammoth dog. Then his face became serious. "Don't panic tonight. Maldonado said to tell you to keep your guts. Immigration would lock me up and throw away the key if they caught me with a child."

  Momentarily resenting being called a child, Jose said, "I will try not to panic." There was that word again. Try. His stomach ticked at the thoughts of immigration, la migra.

  "Good." Gutierrez turned and went over to the dusty Chevrolet. The starter ground as if it had a bellyache; then the engine caug
ht and revved. "This time tomorrow, we'll be far past Los Angeles," he called out cheerfully.

  Keep his guts! It sounded so easy.

  Gutierrez waved and headed back up the bumpy dirt road toward Baja No. 1, the rolling blacktop that stretched from Tijuana south to Colonia Guerrero, a few miles below Cabo Colnett, the great blunt-headed cape. The pavement ended there. Beyond that there was little but wilderness all the way to Cabo San Lucas, at the tip of the peninsula.

  Jose watched the car with U.S. plates bounce and rock around the bend, disappearing in a rattling plume of dust. He stood a moment longer and let the quietness of the land descend on him. Finally, shivering involuntarily, he went back into the house.

  The neat adobe showed only traces of people having once lived in it. A calendar. Hooks where his mother had hung pots. Several oblongs where she'd hung photographs of her family. Pegs that once held clothes. Smoke stains on beams from lanterns. Lifetime scars of three people.

  Jose had sold off practically everything to get the money for Gutierrez: the chickens, the goat, the cow, a pig, the old horse, several hand plows and some tools; the heavy rowboat, and a few pieces of furniture. It had been a responsibility that had caused him to vomit one morning. Was he getting enough for them? Would his father be pleased?

  Their friend Enrique had borrowed a pickup and they'd taken the few things Maldonado said he wanted to keep, mostly things that had belonged to Jose's mother, over to the cousin at Camalu down the road. Someday, Jose hoped, they'd return for them.

  Now, with all the animals except Sanchez gone, the place seemed abandoned already. There had often been laughter here, especially while his mother was alive, and smells of pork and beef and chicken and fish cooked with lime and salt. Only Sunday past, neighbors and relatives had brought food and tequila and beer to wish him safety and good luck Everyone was in good spirits. Some of the men got drunk; the women talked; the children played. Jose had felt very important, though he knew it was really a tribute to his father.

  Maldonado was much admired around Colnett. If there was trouble out by the cape, everyone ran for Maldonado. Truck stuck in the winter mud; cow sick; two neighbors feuding; outboard motor busted. Call for Maldonado. They missed him, Jose knew.

  ***

  THE LAST NINE MONTHS had been hard ones. In January, Jose's mother had died in Del Carmen hospital in Ensenada. She'd been ill with cancer for a long time. The doctor said there was no cure.

  They'd buried her up by Baja 1 with Maldonado standing stiffly, straw hat in his horny hands, not weeping. Saying nothing. Dark eyes a thousand kilometers away in some endless cave.

  Jose was glad that neighbors and relatives had been there because they had talked about her while Maldonado went for a long walk.

  After that their luck had continued bad. In March, the land on which the Maldonados lived and cropped, with a share going to the Tijuana businessman who owned it, was sold to Mexico City developers. Soon, a representative from the company had visited the adobe.

  "Señor Maldonado, you must understand. I beg you to understand. Simply, we have never been in the business of tenant farming. We do not intend to start now. I'm certain you can find other land..."

  Maldonado kept staring.

  "We are developers, Maldonado. I'm surprised the owner did not notify you when we bought these acres."

  The young man looked around uncomfortably. "This will be a deluxe mobile home estate like the one at Estero. For American tourists. You know the place at Estero?"

  Maldonado did not answer. Not even nod.

  "Jobs will be created here. Now, if you know anything about construction, why..."

  "I am a farmer. How long do we have?"

  "Oh, some months."

  "How long?"

  "September."

  Jose's father had looked at the expensively dressed young man from the Distrito Federal and had slowly shaken his head. Then he'd said, so quietly it seemed dangerous, "Get out."

  But it was more his mother's death, Jose thought, than the Mexico City company, that had caused his father to cross the border for work.

  The adobe was filled with memories.

  2

  "HE CAME AT NOON," Jose told Fernando Garcia, who lived out by the blacktop and was also twelve. Fernando had a round face, like a brown pumpkin, and deep dimples.

  "Your father finally sent him? I did not think he would ever come."

  "Neither did I."

  "How will he do it?"

  "In the trunk of his car."

  "And you aren't afraid?"

  Jose shook his head. He was glad Fernando could not see the sweat in the palm of his hands or look through his pant legs at his knees.

  "You will not believe it up there, I promise," Fernando said. He'd been to the Estados Unidos twice with his parents. They ran the store at Colnett.

  "I'm very excited, Fernando. I am."

  "You don't act like it. Did your father have a message?"

  "Oh, yes."

  "What did he say?"

  "He said he was fine and was waiting for me at a place called Oxnard. He already has a job as a foreman."

  "He's a wetback, Jose," Fernando said. "You know that's not true."

  "It is true, Fernando. He's a foreman. He's been up there four months. You know how good my father is at everything he does."

  Fernando shrugged and sent the swing rope high into the air. The rubber tire was a looping black doughnut.

  They were out by the great oak, in the sun-filtered dell that banked the dried creek bed, across the road from the Garcia house. The same road wound on down to the sea, passing the Maldonados' at one point. They'd played here for years.

  "What will you do?"

  "Fernando, I've told you. I'll go to school, like everyone else."

  Fernando sighed. "And I've told you that wetbacks cannot go to school up there. I know."

  "My father will arrange it."

  "Jose, it is not a field that he can plant or a motor he can fix. There are authorities up there. You will be like a criminal."

  Jose wished that he had not come up the road. He had come to say good-bye, not to hear these words or argue with Fernando.

  Though there was doubt in his eyes, Fernando finally smiled. "Yes." They had been friends for a long time. "Write me, will you?"

  "When I can. Adios."

  They shook hands, and Jose called for Sanchez, who was rooting around in the creek bed, looking for lizards that sought the scant moisture beneath the rocks.

  The boy and dog went west along the road.

  WHY WAS IT he could not tell Fernando that he was so frightened his stomach had turned into dough? And why did he have to lie about Maldonado being a foreman? And about Maldonado sending word that he was fine? Keep your guts! Well, he didn't want to admit that message.

  He walked along, scuffing the dust.

  There were many things about his father he did not understand. Sometimes it seemed that Maldonado thought he was twenty years old. That he had always been twenty.

  "Jose, can't you lift that?"

  "Papa, I'm trying."

  "The bolt goes this way, Jose. Not that way. Use your eyes. You're not a child."

  "Yes, Papa."

  "You tell the horse what to do. The horse doesn't tell you."

  "Yes, Papa."

  "You have all the confidence of a rabbit, Jose."

  A rabbit. A sheep. A goat. Confidence. It was hard to get, especially around Colnett.

  Maldonado had so much of it. He did not seem to be afraid of anything. No man. No animal. Not even the dangerous creatures. Jose had seen him flick a poised scorpion with his fingernail. Another time, when he didn't have his hoe, he'd stomped a snake's head with his boot heel. And he did it without even thinking about it.

  Yet there was one thing. The church. The Virgin Mary. God. Even priests. Maldonado prayed every morning. In the fields, he'd sometimes stop and look up to heaven.

  "PAPA, LOOK at my drawings."

&nbsp
; "They're okay. Tomorrow we plant beans."

  "Hector, look at his drawings. They're beautiful. He has talent. You should be proud."

  "I am. I'll look at them tonight. Jose, how much did the cow give this morning?"

  "Three litres."

  "You still haven't learned how to do it."

  "I'm trying, Papa."

  He could hear his mother's voice. "They are beautiful drawings, Jose." Then a whisper. "I will try to get you some regular paper so you won't have to draw on bags."

  When she was around, it was different. Maldonado was still Maldonado. But she was a. bridge. Sometimes a fort.

  "I'll teach you to be the best farmer in Baja."

  "I don't think he wants to be a farmer, Hector."

  "What do you want to be, Jose?"

  "I don't know." He was afraid to say.

  "He wants to be an artist. Like Orozco."

  "I've never heard of him."

  Maldonado had not had an easy life as a boy, Jose knew. He had never really been a boy. Perhaps that was why he didn't understand.

  "1 was behind a plow when I was five, Jose. It didn't hurt me."

  "But, Hector, isn't it lucky that Jose can go to school?"

  "I suppose."

  TTHE DRAWINGS.

  "I did this of you, Papa."

  "Well, I guess it looks like me. But my ears aren't that big."

  "I will do another one and make the ears smaller."

  Another one and another one and another one. He could draw his mother easily—the large eyes and high cheekbones, the full lips, shining hair pulled back. But he always had difficulty with his father.

  3

  AT THE ADOBE, Jose sat on the low rock wall for a while, looking around, then got up to go inside and open his fiber suitcase again. There was nothing more to pack. Everything he owned was in it. Breeze poured through the open windows into the two bare rooms.

  He returned to the wall and sat down again. He was glad he would not be there when the bulldozer bit into the weathered clay. One crunching sweep and the house would be a pile of rubble.

  The laundry line was still up, stretched between a tree and a post. Once, he had done a drawing of his mother hanging shirts. It had not seemed important to keep it then. Now, he wished he had it.