Firefly Summer Read online

  Pilar was pleased. “Come and see your presents, Felipe,” she called.

  “It’s nothing much,” said their friends, “but we wanted to help you celebrate. A trulla is a trulla.”

  As they stood sorting the gifts, a sharp whistle ran through the air. They listened.

  Only one person whistles like that, thought Felipe.

  The whistle came again…long…sharper than before. Yes, there was no doubt now: It must be Martín. He ran to the door.

  Martín was making his way up the hill. He was so fat that he had to walk slowly. Over his shoulder he carried a string of chickens tied together by their legs.

  “What is a trulla without arroz con pollo?” he said as he reached the house. “I could not wait for the oxcart, so I came ahead.”

  He walked to the kitchen, threw his load on the table and dropped on a bench, puffing out his breath. “This hill and I are enemies, Pilar,” he said, laughing.

  “Is anybody around?” said a voice at the door.

  It was Ramón, and he, too, had brought a present for Felipe. “From Doña Anita,” he said, putting a kettle on the table.

  Before Pilar had removed the cover, a savory smell rose from it.

  “Ground beef!” said Pilar, sniffing.

  “Of course,” said Martín. “Ground beef cooked with olives and capers, tomatoes and peppers—just the thing for pasteles. Whoever heard of a trulla without pasteles, Pilar?”

  Never had Pilar seen so many gifts in her house before. If trullas brought such things, why didn’t they come more often?

  “Why, we have everything for the trulla now, Felipe,” she said. Her mind was on the eight dollar bills. She was positive they did not have to spend it. There were other things in the house that she could add to the gifts.

  Her husband must have read her thoughts, for he dug into his pocket, brought out Grandmother’s gift and handed it to her. The trulla had even worked its magic spell over her husband. Eight dollar bills now safe in her pocket!

  “Clear the kitchen,” she said gladly. “We have work to do.”

  Felipe took his friends outside to help build the dancing floor, while Pilar and her friends settled down to work. Soon they had the green plantains peeled and grated for the pasteles—the Puerto Rican tamales. The papayas were sliced and boiling with sugar and bars of cinnamon, the coconuts grated for manpostiales. Only the arroz con pollo remained to be cooked and that was never done beforehand.

  Ramón cut banana leaves to wrap the pasteles in before they were set to boil, and even helped Pilar hold them over the fire to make them supple.

  When the men finished their work, Pilar brewed some coffee and gave each a cup. They sat in the kitchen talking about the trulla until they were ready to go. Only Martín remained to spend the evening with Pilar and Felipe.

  Saturday morning, the day of the trulla, the rules and regulations at Don Rodrigo’s home were forgotten. The girls even took a holiday from the stockroom. Their minds were on the trulla, and nothing else mattered to them.

  “A whole day at a trulla,” said Teresa, her eyes sparkling in anticipation of all she was going to see. “Mother said Don Goyo was coming. Wait until you see him! What songs he sings! What stories he tells!”

  “Why can’t we leave now?” asked Mercedes, who had never seen a birthday trulla and was tired of waiting.

  “Because no one ever arrives before the trulla. A birthday trulla is different from a Christmas one.” Mercedes knew about those. They came from Christmas Eve right on until Three Kings Day, on January the 6th. They went from house to house singing carols, dancing and eating all the sweets they were served.

  Ramón and Antonio had gone down the road to watch for the trulla.

  Almost as Teresa finished talking, Antonio came running into the room shouting, “It’s coming, it’s coming!”

  “Come along, Mercedes,” said Teresa, running out of the house. “The trulla is here at last.”

  A large oxcart trimmed with branches and full of people was coming along the road. They could see it clearly as they ran down hill. There were five children: three girls about Mercedes’ age and two boys as young as Antonio. In their midst sat Don Goyo. The cart came to a stop as the girls reached the road.

  “Everybody out,” shouted the driver. “I’ll meet you back here after the fiesta.”

  “We are going to Felipe’s home, too,” said Ramón, “and have been waiting for you to arrive so that we could all go together.”

  “Just the thing,” said Don Goyo. “You can lead the way. The cart will have to stay down here until we return.”

  Don Goyo shook hands with Teresa and, after inquiring about her father, introduced the group of children who stood around him.

  Ramón took a shortcut to the house and soon brought them to Felipe’s house.

  “What would fincas be without shortcuts?” Don Goyo said as the group stood facing the house.

  The door was closed. It was difficult to believe that inside Felipe and Pilar were eagerly waiting, with tables and pots and pans full of good things to eat.

  Don Goyo assembled his group. One of the girls came forward with a bouquet of flowers. Then the musicians, with their native instruments, surrounded her. The rest of the group stood behind them.

  “Now,” said Don Goyo, waving his hand like a conductor. The musicians struck a chord and the group began to sing. When they finished, Don Goyo knocked at the door. Immediately, the door opened and Felipe and Pilar came out smiling to greet them. A young girl presented a bouquet of flowers to Pilar, who, joining hands with her husband, raised them forming an arch.

  “The arch is made. Welcome all to my birthday party,” said Felipe.

  Only after such simple formalities did the guests go into the house one after the other. Pilar led the children to the table, where small gourds filled with coconut and papaya candy had been set aside for them.

  Then Martín offered a toast to Felipe’s health and the success of the trulla.

  They all sat on benches and chairs borrowed from their friends while Pilar passed them some of the candy she had reserved for them. The children stood around the table eating until Ramón signaled them to follow him outside.

  The musicians came out, too, and laid their instruments on the floor.

  “What, no music?” said Gregorio, who had followed them. “Play, amigos, play. Let us start this trulla in the proper fashion.”

  The musicians picked up their instruments and struck a series of chords. At the sound of them the rest of the guests came out.

  “Partners get ready,” called Don Goyo, “the seis is about to begin.”

  This was the most popular peasant dance, and the favorite at all trullas.

  “Come, Mercedes,” said Teresa. She made her way through the group of adults. “It’s no fun to see the dance from a distance when we can stand in front of the dancing floor.”

  Don Goyo took his special seat and clapped his hands. Six couples took their places on the floor, forming two straight lines, so that the men came to be facing the women. The music began, and the dancers started tapping their feet. They intersected each other, swaying to the rhythm of the music. At the next call from Don Goyo, the partners came together and waltzed around the floor. On and on they waltzed until his call came again. The couples now turned back to back and danced away. Every now and then the men looked over their shoulders at their retreating partners, who disdainfully tossed their heads and danced away from them.

  The group of spectators clapped their hands and shouted to the couples, encouraging them with their remarks.

  Twice around the dancing floor the couples went, the women tossing their heads to the rhythm of the seis, followed by their partners, who were trying to regain their graces. Don Goyo called once more, and the couples came together again. The music changed to a faster tempo, and the couples whirled furiously about the room.

  “Bomba,” called Don Goyo. The music ceased and the couples stopped dancing.

/>   “Is it over?” asked Mercedes.

  “No, no,” said Gregorio. “This is only a short rest period. Then the bombas will begin.”

  “What are bombas?” she whispered to Teresa.

  “A four-line poem each couple has to improvise when they are called upon,” Teresa explained.

  Now the couples were getting into a ring. They had scarcely finished when Don Goyo called, “Bomba, Valentín and Eusebia.”

  The couple stood in the center of the ring and began to sing until the bomba was finished.

  A loud burst of applause rose from the group.

  The music began again and the couples resumed their dancing until Don Goyo called another couple for their bomba.

  “How can they think so fast,” said Ramón, watching the couples swing into the dance, then stop, sing their improvised bomba and continue to dance.

  Almost every couple had been called, when Pilar came to the kitchen door and called, “Arroz con pollo.” That put an end to the seis. The musicians put their instruments down and the couples left the floor. They followed Felipe to the kitchen, where platters of steaming pasteles and arroz con pollo awaited all.

  The children bounced into the room and took the chairs closest to the table.

  After Pilar served them, Ramón took them outside again.

  “Let’s sit on the dance floor,” said one of the children.

  Pilar brought them a pitcher of lemonade and some glasses. When they finished eating, some of the children began to run over the floor, imitating the dance they had seen. Ramón and Teresa urged the children on, who now outdid themselves to please their audience. They hummed whatever they remembered of the music, skipping over the floor in their effort to make their steps as similar as possible to the ones they had watched the couples do.

  “How would you like to see some of the finca?” asked Teresa.

  Ramón stood up ready to lead them. The children jumped off the floor eager to follow him.

  “All plates and glasses back to the kitchen first,” said Ramón.

  When they returned, he led them past the cistern and down the hill.

  “Almond trees! Almonds,” cried the children, scattering to pick up the dried nuts that covered the ground. They looked for sharp stones to crack them open.

  “The public plaza at home is lined with almond trees,” said one of the boys.

  “If you eat nuts with bread, they taste like coconuts,” said one of the girls to Mercedes. “Have you ever eaten them?”

  “No, but I know something else that tastes like coconut when you eat it with bread.”

  “What?” she asked.

  “Avocados. I have tried that.”

  “I think the nuts in Arroyo taste different,” said Teresa. “Grandmother says that it is the sea that makes them salty. I ate some there once.”

  “You have eaten enough,” said Ramón. “Let’s go now.”

  The children stuffed their pockets and shirts with nuts, and then followed him.

  When they came to the river and the children spotted the flat stones, they took off their shoes and waded in. They stood upon the stones, splashing water on each other until their clothes were soaked.

  “Come off those stones,” cried Teresa, afraid the children might slip off. But the children’s shouts drowned out her voice.

  Ramón and Mercedes ran along the edge, trying to call Antonio, who had also joined the rest of the children.

  At last, they jumped off and sat on the grass, laughing, water dripping from their clothes.

  “Don’t take them to the pool,” whispered Teresa to Ramón. “They will all want to go swimming. Let’s show them the tobacco sheds instead.”

  They turned off the river path and crossed the field out to the tobacco plots. By the time they reached the first shed, the sun had dried their clothes. Most of the children knew about sugar cane plantations, but they had never been on a tobacco plantation. So Ramón and Teresa took turns telling them about it.

  “Where is the tobacco?” asked one of the boys.

  “There’s none here now, but this is the place where the bunches of leaves are dried when they come from the fields.”

  “Where do they make the cigars?” asked one of the girls.

  “Cigars?” asked Antonio, surprised at her question.

  “This is a tobacco finca, isn’t it?” she asked, tossing her head at Antonio.

  “Of course,” he answered, “but it is not a tobacco store like the ones in Cayey, where the men sit all day making cigars.”

  They left the tobacco shed and went by the end of a cow path, up the hill and back to the house.

  The group was sitting under the trees and Pilar was singing. When she finished, Felipe said, “Now, Don Goyo, on with your yarn, and make it as good as you’ve ever told.”

  The children surrounded him.

  Don Goyo buried the stub of his cigar in the ground and cleared his throat.

  “Have you ever heard the story of ‘The Pirate’s Ghost’?” he asked.

  “No,” said the crowd. “That sounds good. Tell it, please.”

  “Once upon a time,” said Don Goyo, “there was a village by the sea whose inhabitants were the most superstitious people in the entire world. They were fishermen by trade and worked diligently all days during the week, except Fridays. They had a firm belief that on Fridays evil forces were at work. And if you allowed yourself to be caught by them, nothing but evil was in store for you. So they stayed in their homes, and the entire place looked like a deserted village.

  “Now one day, there came to the village a man called Pablo. He was short and stocky, but what he lacked in height he made up in strength and courage—not to mention his wits, which had saved him from many a scrape. He had not been there long before the villagers tried to intimidate him with the superstitious tales they loved to tell. To their surprise, Pablo only laughed and refused to believe them. His behavior angered the villagers, who began to eye him with distrust. They did everything to show him what an intruder they considered him to be.

  “To prove how wrong they were, Pablo bought a fishing boat and a pair of fish nets one Friday afternoon. While the villagers were safe in their homes behind locked doors, he pushed off to sea. He sailed on and on until, looking back, the village seemed to be a speck in the distance. After hours of sailing, he reached an inlet surrounded by high coral reefs. Beyond them was the shore outlined by palm trees growing so close that they resembled a dense forest.

  “Pablo cast his first net. Immediately, it filled to the brim with silvery fish. He pulled it in and cast out the second. No sooner had it touched the water, when it, too, filled up. He was about to pull it up when a strong gust of wind almost threw him off balance. The sky darkened and a thin rain began to fall. Pablo tried to steer his boat and turn it towards home, but the force of the wind turned it in the opposite direction. It now raced over the waves as if steered by a strange power. Nearer and nearer to the reefs it came. Pablo took one look at the sharp pointed edges and, summoning all his courage, jumped overboard. The empty boat continued to race straight ahead and crashed between the reefs, sending the fish back to the bottom of the sea.

  “Struggling to keep above water, Pablo managed to swim away. How long he swam and how he finally found himself nearing the shore, he never knew, but that mattered little to him when he finally felt his feet touch bottom. He dragged himself to the beach and, making his way between the palm trees, arrived at a small clearing. He sat down to rest. He had scarcely closed his eyes when he felt the weight of a hand upon his shoulders.

  “‘¡Caracoles! What was that?’ he shouted, jumping to his feet.

  “Lo and behold, there in front of him stood the strangest-looking specimen of a man, or his ghost, that he had ever come in contact with. The man was tall, and his thin body was covered by a tattered pirate suit. His shaggy hair reached his shoulders, and a pair of gold loops dangled from his ears. In one hand he carried a spade; in the other a lighted torch.
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  “Pablo’s courage left him, and his legs began to shake. ‘This is the pirate’s ghost, the sentry of the Devil’s Hole!’ he muttered.

  “The very ghost the villagers fear so much…and now here it was right in front of him.

  “Before another thought crossed his mind, he heard the pirate say, ‘Take this torch in your right hand, cross the left over your shoulder and follow me.”

  “Like one under a magic spell, Pablo obeyed.

  “Then a strange thing happened. The minute his hand touched the torch, a sense of adventure seized him and he felt his courage coming back. He followed the pirate on and on, across the clearing and still further beyond. When they reached another clearing, the pirate ordered him to stop. He drew a circle around Pablo and began to jump and stamp his feet, muttering strange words. Three times he went around him and then dropped to his knees and began to dig. He dug until a high pile of earth rose at his side. A rusty chain appeared. He tugged and tugged at it until the pile of chain equaled the height of the pile of earth. Finally, a small square chest appeared dangling at the end of the last bit of chain. With an eerie shout of triumph, the pirate pounced upon it and pried the lid open.

  “The brightness that came from it dazzled Pablo’s eyes. Never had he seen such splendor. Rubies, emeralds, diamonds and other precious stones difficult for him to identify lay alongside gold doubloons.

  “The pirate looked frantically through the precious stones, lifting one handful after another and examining them carefully.

  “‘What could he be looking for?’ thought Pablo.

  “Then he saw what it was. Out of the last handful of gems, the pirate had taken a miniature dagger encased in a scabbard studded with tiny diamonds, sapphires and pearls. As soon as he laid eyes on it, Pablo felt a strange desire. He must have that dagger, even if he had to fight the pirate for possession.

  “Pablo took one step forward. The pirate was examining the dagger closely, and his eyes gleamed. Pablo took another step and leaped, but his feet tangled on the pile of chain and he fell. The light of the torch went out.