The Land Of Little Rain - Mary Hunter Austin
At Las Uvas they keep up all the good customs brought out of Old Mexico
or bred in a lotus-eating land; drink, and are merry and look out for
something to eat afterward; have children, nine or ten to a family, have
cock-fights, keep the siesta, smoke cigarettes and wait for the sun to
go down. And always they dance; at dusk on the smooth adobe floors,
afternoons under the trellises where the earth is damp and has a fruity
smell. A betrothal, a wedding, or a christening, or the mere proximity
of a guitar is sufficient occasion; and if the occasion lacks, send for
the guitar and dance anyway.
All this requires explanation. Antonio Sevadra, drifting this way from
Old Mexico with the flood that poured into the Tappan district after the
first notable strike, discovered La Golondrina. It was a generous lode
and Tony a good fellow; to work it he brought in all the Sevadras, even
to the twice-removed; all the Castros who were his wife's family, all
the Saises, Romeros, and Eschobars,--the relations of his relations-in-
law. There you have the beginning of a pretty considerable town. To
these accrued much of the Spanish California float swept out of the
southwest by eastern enterprise. They slacked away again when the price
of silver went down, and the ore dwindled in La Golondrina. All the hot
eddy of mining life swept away from that corner of the hills, but there
were always those too idle, too poor to move, or too easily content with
El Pueblo de Las Uvas.
Nobody comes nowadays to the town of the grape vines except, as we say,
"with the breath of crying," but of these enough. All the low sills run
over with small heads. Ah, ah! There is a kind of pride in that if you
did but know it, to have your baby every year or so as the time sets,
and keep a full breast. So great a blessing as marriage is easily come
by. It is told of Ruy Garcia that when he went for his marriage license
he lacked a dollar of the clerk's fee, but borrowed it of the sheriff,
who expected reelection and exhibited thereby a commendable thrift.
Of what account is it to lack meal or meat when you may have it of any
neighbor?
Besides, there is sometimes a point of honor in these things. Jesus
Romero, father of ten, had a job sacking ore in the Marionette which he
gave up of his own accord. "Eh, why?" said Jesus, "for my fam'ly."
"It is so, senora," he said solemnly, "I go to the Marionette, I work, I
eat meat--pie--frijoles--good, ver' good. I come home sad'day nigh' I
see my fam'ly. I play lil' game poker with the boys, have lil' drink
wine, my money all gone. My family have no money, nothing eat. All time
I work at mine I eat, good, ver' good grub. I think sorry for my fam'ly.
No, no, senora, I no work no more that Marionette, I stay with my
fam'ly." The wonder of it is, I think, that the family had the same
point of view.
Every house in the town of the vines has its garden plot, corn and brown
beans and a row of peppers reddening in the sun; and in damp borders of
the irrigating ditches clumps of _yerba santa_, horehound, catnip, and
spikenard, wholesome herbs and curative, but if no peppers then nothing
at all. You will have for a holiday dinner, in Las Uvas, soup with meat
balls and chile in it, chicken with chile, rice with chile, fried beans
with more chile, enchilada, which is corn cake with a sauce of chile and
tomatoes, onion, grated cheese, and olives, and for a relish chile
_tepines_ passed about in a dish, all of which is comfortable and
corrective to the stomach. You will have wine which every man makes for
himself, of good body and inimitable bouquet, and sweets that are not
nearly so nice as they look.
There are two occasions when you may count on that kind of a meal;
always on the Sixteenth of September, and on the two-yearly visits of
Father Shannon. It is absurd, of course, that El Pueblo de Las Uvas
should have an Irish priest, but Black Rock, Minton, Jimville, and all
that country round do not find it so. Father Shannon visits them all,
waits by the Red Butte to confess the shepherds who go through with
their flocks, carries blessing to small and isolated mines, and so in
the course of a year or so works around to Las Uvas to bury and marry
and christen. Then all the little graves in the _Campo Santo_ are brave
with tapers, the brown pine headboards blossom like Aaron's rod with
paper roses and bright cheap prints of Our Lady of Sorrows. Then the
Senora Sevadra, who thinks herself elect of heaven for that office,
gathers up the original sinners, the little Elijias, Lolas, Manuelitas,
Jose, and Felipes, by dint of adjurations and sweets smuggled into small
perspiring palms, to fit them for the Sacrament.
I used to peek in at them, never so softly, in Dona Ina's living-room;
Raphael-eyed little imps, going sidewise on their knees to rest them
from the bare floor, candles lit on the mantel to give a religious air,
and a great sheaf of wild bloom before the Holy Family. Come Sunday they
set out the altar in the schoolhouse, with the fine-drawn altar cloths,
the beaten silver candlesticks, and the wax images, chief glory of Las
Uvas, brought up mule-back from Old Mexico forty years ago. All in white
the communicants go up two and two in a hushed, sweet awe to take the
body of their Lord, and Tomaso, who is priest's boy, tries not to look
unduly puffed up by his office. After that you have dinner and a bottle
of wine that ripened on the sunny slope of Escondito. All the week
Father Shannon has shriven his people, who bring clean conscience to the
betterment of appetite, and the Father sets them an example. Father
Shannon is rather big about the middle to accommodate the large laugh
that lives in him, but a most shrewd searcher of hearts. It is reported
that one derives comfort from his confessional, and I for my part
believe it.
The celebration of the Sixteenth, though it comes every year, takes as
long to prepare for as Holy Communion. The senoritas have each a new
dress apiece, the senoras a new _rebosa_. The young gentlemen have new
silver trimmings to their sombreros, unspeakable ties, silk
handkerchiefs, and new leathers to their spurs. At this time when the
peppers glow in the gardens and the young quail cry "_cuidado_," "have a
care!" you can hear the _plump, plump_ of the _metate_ from the alcoves
of the vines where comfortable old dames, whose experience gives them
the touch of art, are pounding out corn for tamales.
School-teachers from abroad have tried before now at Las Uvas to have
school begin on the first of September, but got nothing else to stir in
the heads of the little Castros, Garcias, and Romeros but feasts and
cock-fights until after the Sixteenth. Perhaps you need to be told that
this is the anniversary of the Republic, when liberty awoke and cried in
the provinces of Old Mexico. You are aroused at midnight to hear them
shouting in the streets, "_Vive la Libertad_!" answered from the houses
and the recesses of the vines, "_Vive la Mexico_!" At sunrise shots are
fired commemorating the tragedy of unhappy Maximilian, and then music,
the noblest of national hymns, as the great flag of Old Mexico floats up
the flag-pole in the bare little plaza of shabby Las Uvas. The sun over
Pine Mountain greets the eagle of Montezuma before it touches the
vineyards and the town, and the day begins with a great shout. By and by
there will be a reading of the Declaration of Independence and an
address punctured by _vives_; all the town in its best dress, and some
exhibits of horsemanship that make lathered bits and bloodly spurs; also
a cock-fight.
By night there will be dancing, and such music! old Santos to play the
flute, a little lean man with a saintly countenance, young Garcia whose
guitar has a soul, and Carrasco with the violin. They sit on a high
platform above the dancers in the candle flare, backed by the red,
white, and green of Old Mexico, and play fervently such music as you
will not hear otherwhere.
At midnight the flag comes down. Count yourself at a loss if you are not
moved by that performance. Pine Mountain watches whitely overhead,
shepherd fires glow strongly on the glooming hills. The plaza, the bare
glistening pole, the dark folk, the bright dresses, are lit ruddily by a
bonfire. It leaps up to the eagle flag, dies down, the music begins
softly and aside. They play airs of old longing and exile; slowly out of
the dark the flag drops down, bellying and falling with the midnight
draught. Sometimes a hymn is sung, always there are tears. The flag is
down; Tony Sevadra has received it in his arms. The music strikes a
barbaric swelling tune, another flag begins a slow ascent,--it takes a
breath or two to realize that they are both, flag and tune, the Star
Spangled Banner,--a volley is fired, we are back, if you please, in
California of America. Every youth who has the blood of patriots in him
lays ahold on Tony Sevadra's flag, happiest if he can get a corner of
it. The music goes before, the folk fall in two and two, singing. They
sing everything, America, the Marseillaise, for the sake of the French
shepherds hereabout, the hymn of Cuba, and the Chilian national air to
comfort two families of that land. The flag goes to Do+-a Ina's, with the
candlesticks and the altar cloths, then Las Uvas eats tamales and dances
the sun up the slope of Pine Mountain.
You are not to suppose that they do not keep the Fourth, Washington's
Birthday, and Thanksgiving at the town of the grape vines. These make
excellent occasions for quitting work and dancing, but the Sixteenth is
the holiday of the heart. On Memorial Day the graves have garlands and
new pictures of the saints tacked to the headboards. There is great
virtue in an _Ave_ said in the Camp of the Saints. I like that name
which the Spanish speaking people give to the garden of the dead, _Campo
Santo_, as if it might be some bed of healing from which blind souls and
sinners rise up whole and praising God. Sometimes the speech of simple
folk hints at truth the understanding does not reach. I am persuaded
only a complex soul can get any good of a plain religion. Your
earth-born is a poet and a symbolist. We breed in an environment of
asphalt pavements a body of people whose creeds are chiefly restrictions
against other people's way of life, and have kitchens and latrines under
the same roof that houses their God. Such as these go to church to be
edified, but at Las Uvas they go for pure worship and to entreat their
God. The logical conclusion of the faith that every good gift cometh
from God is the open hand and the finer courtesy. The meal done without
buys a candle for the neighbor's dead child. You do foolishly to suppose
that the candle does no good.
At Las Uvas every house is a piece of earth--thick walled, whitewashed
adobe that keeps the even temperature of a cave; every man is an
accomplished horseman and consequently bow-legged; every family keeps
dogs, flea-bitten mongrels that loll on the earthen floors. They speak a
purer Castilian than obtains in like villages of Mexico, and the way
they count relationship everybody is more or less akin. There is not
much villainy among them. What incentive to thieving or killing can
there be when there is little wealth and that to be had for the
borrowing! If they love too hotly, as we say "take their meat before
grace," so do their betters. Eh, what! shall a man be a saint before he
is dead? And besides, Holy Church takes it out of you one way or another
before all is done. Come away, you who are obsessed with your own
importance in the scheme of things, and have got nothing you did not
sweat for, come away by the brown valleys and full-bosomed hills to the
even-breathing days, to the kindliness, earthiness, ease of El Pueblo de
Las Uvas.