Hard Red Spring by Kelly Kerney Page A

one’s sleeping, no one’s eating, no one’s taking a goddamned piss until these nets are finished, the wood is stocked, and you are all on your way down
my
mountain and on your way to the Piedmont. I am going to get two years’ worth of work out of you in two days. I paid you, and you are going to earn it! And Judas, if you don’t translate that, I’m going to break your goddamned back!”
    Evie held her breath. She felt it, was sure she felt the snake stirring beneath them, angry. But no, it was Mother, stepping across the rickety floor.
    â€œRobert.” She entered, wiping her hands on a towel, putting them all to shame. Everyone looked down, including Father. But her attention shifted to Evie. “Evie, how did you manage to get your nice dress dirty already? Ixna just washed it!”
    Evie stared down at herself, unable to come up with an answer.
    â€œHow did your meeting with Ubico go?” Mother had put words to Evie’s own question. In the beginning, the meeting seemed normal enough, just tense. Like Mother’s teas with Mrs. Fasbinder. But then she was sure the end had gone terribly wrong. But now Father seemed to have other worries, like the nets. Maybe she didn’t need to fear Ubico, yet another worry added to their life on the mountain. So she awaited the answer with as much hope as her mother.
    â€œHe said he’ll talk to some people. He really wants to help.”
    The matter-of-factness, the ease with which her father lied shocked Evie.She knew Mr. Ubico had never said those words and she now felt more than ever the ground beneath her slipping, as surely as she’d felt the volcano moving beneath them just ten days ago.
    â€œWell, that’s good news, I guess. You didn’t mention Boston, did you?”
    â€œOf course not, Mattie. I’m not an idiot.”
    ~~~~~
    By the time Mrs. Fasbinder arrived for her weekly tea with Mother the next afternoon, Father and the workers were uncovering the prickly pear fields for the harvest. All their clothes and hats and sheets lay in a sooty pile on the porch, a pile that their guest had to step over to get into the house. Usually well dressed for these teas, Evie and Mother wore their everyday clothes. They made up for it, however, by putting on their best white shoes. Evie was always grateful for an opportunity to wear hers.
    The wife of a German American coffee planter, Mrs. Fasbinder lived on the other side of the volcano. She was generously proportioned with a pug face, sweaty but sweet-smelling, as if the perpetual gloss on her sallow skin wasn’t perspiration at all, but perfume. In Mother’s letters home, she always spoke of her dear friend Mrs. Fasbinder, which baffled Evie, since Mother didn’t seem to like Mrs. Fasbinder at all. But she was their only visitor. The only reason to use the tea set and to wear nice clothes.
    The Fasbinders had no children, but that day Mrs. Fasbinder arrived with a little Indian boy of five, wearing button breeches and a white blouse from one of the nice shops in town. His name was Tomás Raúl Mancha Egardo, Mrs. Fasbinder said, but they were thinking of changing it.
    â€œI doubt that’s even his real name. The nuns just make up these ridiculously long names for these orphans, to make them sound convincingly Hispanic. But they’re almost all Indian. And this one is definitely, at least, half.”
    The two women and Evie examined the boy standing in their front room, looking for the Indian in him. His eyes were not Indian, but his nose gave him away.
    â€œThey say his parents couldn’t afford to keep him, but you know how it goes with Mestizos. More likely, the
father
was Indian. Tomás,” Mrs. Fasbinder said, pointing to the floor at her feet. “He doesn’t speak English,” she explained needlessly.
    The boy sat at Mrs. Fasbinder’s feet while everyone else remained standing. Mother stepped back, as if from a