The young girl tiptoed along the exposed wild-reed peak of a house. She maintained her balance with arms outstretched as if she were about to fly. She held two clay roof tiles in one hand and a near empty-pail of cement in the other. She was seeking a broom.
Three days earlier May had delivered an unexpected nightlong rainy-season overture to the southern Jalisco mountains. At that time, the early 1960s, older people said the rainy season always arrived on or around San Antonio de Padua day, June 13. Thus a heavy storm so early was then seen to defy the law of nature, perhaps of God. No matter, now the Chema and Guadalupe Rosales family, and many others, were preparing for more early storms. From a wavery home-made ladder I lifted up another stack of 18-inch long tile, took the pail from Concha and handed her a broom to sweep away scampering alacranes, (scorpions), viudas negras (black widows) and wind-sifted dry season debris.
Houses in the campo, the countryside, had roofs of carrizo, wild reed, covered with home-fired clay tile, often with a layer of rainproof tar-paper lamina in between. Among the much extended Rosales family, Concha was the only 16-year-old girl who regularly helped her father and brothers with roofing tasks. She had done that since she climbed a ladder at thirteen, carrying a pair of pliers so old the teeth were smooth. She used the pliers still to lift roof tile without getting hit by alacranes. From the beginning, unlike her brothers and cousins, Concha didn’t get lost in gossip while working. She learned to concentrate on the job given her and on her balance. Besides, Concha said secretly, she liked to beat her older, rough-teasing siblings at getting jobs assigned to her finished quickly. “Be quick, but don’t rush.”
That was a product from a conjunction of circumstances. Her father and I, fairly early in our acquaintance, began an on-again, off-again discussion about gringo ideas of efficiency. During World War II, the United States initiated a (bracero) program bringing Mexican workers north of the border to do many things. One of them was cultivating and picking sugar beets raised in any accessible fertile Great Plains land all the way to the Rockies. Though he’d been young, out of that experience he’d come up with what I dubbed “Chema’s mantra.” Through its repetition which many found maddening, he had taught his children, some resistant, a new work ethic. It was like a family secret because Mexico didn’t think that way at that time, and neighbors thought Chema was loco. Rapido vs. prisa represented not just a discomforting puzzle, but an abominably irritating one. Chema’s maxim boiled down to: be swift (rapido), but not hasty (prisa). By working hastily one tended to became clumsy. Chema’s mantra appealed to Concha, who was not irritated by its incessant repetition. Instead, she often repeated it aloud when facing stuff that made her wonder if she could do it swift and well.Some of the family erroneously attributed a bit of Concha’s “difference” to that training, which began about as soon as she could talk.
From a fairly early age Concha would get up early to do her house chores quickly. Then she’d head for the corral and a day of working livestock. She loved horses, riding out to bring in run-off cattle. Just as she liked being up on the very top of her family’s house. She said the view downhill excited her, and the view uphill sorted out the mountains whose upper peaks were all that could be seen from ground level. The world of all the various Rosales family groups seemed both larger and grander, making her grin each time she stood on the roof. The ranch of the Rosales family (their corrals, barns, animal pens, the grazing livestock) all seemed both smaller and larger, she would say, wondering how that could be.
Chema’s lesson helped anyone who would listen and act on them, though he offered them to only to his relatives. Strangers who heard of it thought rapido/prisa was mere brujo (jabber). Just those two words paired in opposition were a clear bombshell, particularly in the campo. Concha’s immediate grasp of them at a young age, seemed to reinforce the surmise that it was an echo from the bus wreck that killed everyone on board but the infant Concha Rosales. She seemed a odd child prodigy of some kind, with a clearly spotty, terribly costly, intent gift.
She and I talked about some of this – not the wreck, etc. – but her forwardness, her ready ability to take on tough circumstances with no complaint. We figured out an organized way to apply these traits to her continuing, troubling duel with math. But sometime in the future.
We sat on the roof pulling up tiles, cleaning them and the elderly 123x70 centimeter sheets of tarpaper that lay beneath them. That was where the alacranes and black widows, lived. She’d been stung once by an alacran when younger, and that was lesson enough. She understood that she shared the world with alacranes, viudas negras, and other lethal creatures. That fact did not astonish or frighten her. She had learned their habits and how to avoid becoming a victim when they were disturbed.
May, even without the appearance of early storms, was the time campesinos burned off their fields, getting rid of brush that had taken over last season’s milpas or those that had been left fallow last year. But the Rosaleses were working on roofing in case of more crazy weather. Concha raised her head, sniffing the air. “Someone near by is burning off.” It was bright clear morning with a slight low breeze. There was the a thin odor of smoke, but no sight of it. Then there was a slight pale sign.
It was coming up from a gully to the north. We knew the fields there, left fallow last year, would be chest-high in underbrush, all of it very dry now. “I’ll get water into back pumps,” I said. “You go tell your dad. We should use the pick up. Horses go crazy with fire.” Concha slid down the roof on her backside, and disappeared over the side. I grabbed our machetes; we’d need them.
I loaded the filled back pumps into the the pickup with two axes, three long-handed, broad-bladed shovels. With Chema driving fast we found the fire, which Angel, Chema’s godson, was awkwardly fighting with nothing more than a machete. “You were trying to burn off alone, weren’t you?” The young man, in his twenties, nodded, gasping in the smoke. Chema handed him a shovel, and we all began chopping down the brush in front of the blaze coming at us. Chema beat at it and Concha and I threw dirt on it. The fire wasn’t huge yet, but that small breeze kept it moving. I broke into a run and brought the back pumps, working the lever of the one already on my back, sending a wide spray across the front of the blaze. Chema had a way of holding the aimed nozzle and pumping with his right hand. With his left he bashed the shovel blade into the closest edge of flames. We were backing away from the advancing blaze. Then as we reached a curve in the gully the slight breeze shifted, dropping a bit. Chema and I took quick advantage, moving forward. I prayed that the water in the pumps would last.
Concha ran forward from the pickup dragging a milk can. She began throwing milk on the fire with a small pail. With the four of us beating, soaking, stomping, slashing at the underbrush blaze, we drove it to a standstill. Then we walked over the still-smoking earth pushing it back, stomping out still living small flames and sparks. “Next time don’t try to burn off by yourself,” Chema told Angel. You’ll get fried.” He grinned at Concha. “Using that milk was a good idea, mija.” He stroked her hair. “But your mother’s going to be mad that we wasted that much milk.” He grinned. Lupe was the household’s exacting accountant.
A catastrophe foiled, Concha stuck her tongue out smoldering remains of the fire. The four of us laughed and hugged each other.