THREE MEXICAN STORIES
23
VISIOn passes. Meanwhile; his wife remembers sadly the foreign
city where they lived; her friends there; their hours of strug–
gle; now their sorry return, and this final defeat. Her mouth
utters a curse and on her thin cheek there trembles a helpless
tear.
Then the darkness covers their defeated bodies. In the
dead of night the red vision passes again in front of Juan's eyes,
and he closes them tightly in anguish. His wife adds the last
touch of desperation,
"If
only there was a little hope...."
He does not answer for, in his mind worn by weariness, the
red vision has taken possession.
Back in the States, as usual one night, Tony was reading
aloud from the local Mexican paper. The men listened intently.
In his mouth the official measures taken by the
patria
to help
those who had come back home took on great importance. Mov–
ing and familiar scenes began to live again in every mind. For–
gotten childhoods galloped through their heads. Contentment
shone in their faces with a persuasive force. But suddenly
Tony's throat vibrated with a profane word.
An indefinable fear came into the eyes of his listeners.
Tony's voice broke. His tongue could not utter the brutal news.
But there the paragraph was, clear and complete, and of a
starkness that broke the heart.
Strangely enough, on the same page with the news of
parties and fiestas, the paper said that Juan Ramirez, crazed
with hunger arrd despair, had assassinated his "old woman" and
their boys.
Nothing more. No comment. No poetry. A simple notice,
without adornment, sent for its meager news value from the
frontiers of the
patria.
Tony was struck dumb, overcome by the fact. In his ears
he
could still hear their friendly voices of farewell, and before
his staring eyes affectionate hands reached toward his in a last
goodbye.
Then, with hatred, his eyes saw the sky that curved in over
their country. And he seemed to see beneath this same sky,
stuck in the freshly turned earth, a group of rickety, miserable
crosses.
