Not until three days after my return to Ajoya from Verano at the end of the rainy season did I manage to tear myself away from the storm of people coming for medicines and make my way toward Las Chicuras. I was nervous about attempting to cross the flooded river, but was eager to see the Reyes family, as my friends in Ajoya had neither seen nor heard from them in some time. No rain had fallen for the last two days, however, and the water level had dropped noticeably. To play safe, I removed my boots before guiding my mule into the river. The swirling water rose all the way to the saddle, but Hormiga kept her footing, and without mishap we emerged high and wet on the other side. Half an hour later I rode into Las Chicuras.

Goyo’s younger sister, Inez, was sweeping the dirt yard in front of the Reyes casa as I rode up. “¡David!” she cried, and at once Goyo, Chaparro, and Angelita came running to meet me, followed by the wobbly baby, Armida. Next came Goyo’s young aunt, Benancia, who now seemed fully recovered from the bullet wound which her husband, José, had dealt her five months before. I learned that she was back with José again, and that they and their two small children were living together with Goyo’s family—making a total of fourteen persons living in the one-room, stick-walled hut.

Goyo hurried to try riding Hormiga, whom he had never before seen, while little Chaparro hung on my hand and grinned up at me. Angelita, called “La Cuata” (the twin), was dancing in circles shouting “¡Dabí! ¡Dabí! ¡Dabí!”.

“Where’s your mother?” I asked, looking around for her.

“Didn’t you know?” exclaimed Benancia. “She was stung by a snake!”

I hurried inside the hut, to find Goyo’s mother, Jesús (Chuy), lying on a catre, her foot swollen to double its normal size. “Welcome home!” she exclaimed, making an effort to sit up. She added mockingly, “It’s about time you got here! See what happens when you stay away!”

“What kind of snake was it and how long ago did it bite you?” I asked, inspecting the foot.

“Six days ago,” she replied. “I don’t know what kind of snake. We think a coralillo. Remedios and I were returning from Güisache where we’d borrowed sugar and beans—the river was still too high to get back to Ajoya. It was night and pitch black. Suddenly I felt a stab in my foot. We heard the animal slither off into the brush. That’s all I know . . .”

“You should have seen it three days ago!” cried Inez. “It was swollen like this!” She held up her hands about eight inches apart.

“It could have been worse,” laughed Chuy. “Actually, only one fang went into my foot; the other struck my sandal. So you see, Dios Padre protects his children.”

“How have you been treating it?” I asked.

“With contraveneno and the leaves of guaco,” she replied.

“Antivenin!” I exclaimed. “Where did you get it?”

“I made it,” she replied, “I put an alacrán, an ubar and a cienpie (scorpion, black widow spider, and centipede) in a small jar of alcohol and heated it in the fire. Then I put it outside in the dew overnight. Every few hours I rub a little of the antivenin lightly over the ‘sting’ and tie five leaves of guaco over it.” (Guaco, a slender serpentine vine with a large tuber, and a flower that looks like the head of a snake, is well known for its medicinal properties.)

“Where are Remedios and the older boys?” I asked.

“Remedios left yesterday with José for Candelero to return his father’s mule which he had borrowed for plowing. Camilo is working as a vecerero (calf herder) at La Mesa, the ranch of Jesús Manjarréz. It’s hard work. He’s only fifteen, you know. He has to get up between three and four in the morning and works until dark. Jesús Manjarréz only pays him five pesos a day,” she sighed. “Pero algo es algo.” (But something is something.)

“That’s criminal!” I exclaimed. (The basic minimum wage is twelve pesos for an eight-hour day.)

“That’s Jesús Manjarréz,” replied Chuy stoically. “But what can we do? Martín was heartbroken when school began this September and he couldn’t go. But Remedios says he has to work. Of course he couldn’t go to school yet anyway, none of the children can: the river is still to high to cross safely.”

“¡David!” cried Goyo, trotting up on Hormiga. “Have you seen our milpa? The corn is as high as the house, and the elotes are like this!” He waved the stump of his arm a foot from his good hand.

“Big fibber!” snapped Inez.

“Come on!” cried little Chaparro, tugging at my hand. “Let’s go to the milpa! The elotes are big like this!” He giggled and stretched his hands as far apart as he could.

“¡Chaparro!” barked Chuy. “Be still!” She swung her legs over the side of the cot and slipped her good foot into a sandal. “We’ll all go to the milpa!” she said. “And bring back elotes and melones and calabasas.

We’ll have a feast to celebrate your return!”

“You shouldn’t go with your foot like that!” I exclaimed.

“I shouldn’t,” said Chuy firmly, “but I will! If I lie on my back any longer they’ll light candles around me!” She tried stepping with her swollen foot. “¡Ow!” she exclaimed. She hobbled across the hut and picked up a large costal and a butcher knife, placed a tattered sombrero on her head, lit a small, brown, tapered cigarette, and said, “Let’s go.”

There was no dissuading her. The best I could do was to offer Hormiga for her to ride.

We were just about to take off when Chuy, noticing the dirt around La Cuata’s mouth, shouted at her three year old, “Cuata! Have you been eating dirt again?”

The child shook her head vigorously.

“¡Huh!” exploded Chuy. “¡Si comes tierra te voy a quemar la boca—ya veras!” (If you eat dirt I’m going to burn your mouth—just you see!)

The little girl opened her eyes wide with terror, and she spit.

As we hiked toward the milpa, Chuy riding atop Hormiga and the children scampering ahead, Chuy turned in the saddle and said to me, “What makes children eat dirt, anyway? They say it’s because they have worms.”

“One theory has it that it’s because of iron deficiency,” I said.

“Oh,” said Chuy. “When I was a child, I went on eating dirt until I was fourteen years old. I adored it. I liked the smell of it, just certain kinds of dirt, mind you. My mother tried everything she knew to make me stop. She whipped me. She made me eat garlic. But I’d still sneak out and eat soil. She tried blowing cigarette smoke in my face—that’s the usual cure—and finally she made me start smoking. So I started smoking at age fourteen and I’ve smoked ever since. I stopped eating dirt, all right, but I substituted one vice for another. Now I can’t give up smoking.”

“Look, David!” cried Inez, pointing ahead of us, “¡La milpa!”

Ahead of us rose the steep hillsides and ridges which in June I had seen as a burned and barren waste over which Remedios and his four sons had scrambled, punching holes with their güicas and dropping in grains of corn. Now these hillsides were glowing green. In places, the tall corn was indeed nearly as tall as the casa.

“What did I tell you!” cried Goyo proudly. “We grew it, Dad and I, with Camilo and Martín and Chaparro. But nearly all of the weeding I and Martín and Chaparro did by ourselves!”

“That’s true,” said Chuy. “By the middle of July we were running out of both corn and money—in spite of what you gave us—and Remedios got the chance to plow the fields of José Celis for ten pesos a day. José’s fields are on this side of the river, and in summer it was too flooded for José’s men to plow them, so Remedios and Camilo got the job.”

“I thought José Celís once paid to have Remedios shot,” I said.“He did.” said Chuy. “But what else could Remedios do when all these little ones have their mouths open like baby birds, screaming for food?” She laughed and added, “¡Así es!” (That’s the way it is.)

When we reached the milpa, Chuy dismounted. We tethered Hormiga to a guamuchil tree. Chuy continued on foot, hobbling but not complaining. We climbed up and down the steep slopes, weaving our way between the tall corn stalks. We broke off the tenderest elotes we could find. We selected the best pumpkins and squashes from their vines. Here and there we stopped to eat some of the small, oblong, pulpy melons which were beginning to burst with ripeness. As we trudged along, little Goyo went bounding this way and that, whooping and running ahead to find a hiding place to jump out and surprise us.

“Look, David!” said Chaparro as we came over the steepest ridge. “¡Ajonjolí!” (sesame). The sesame was growing as a garden of white flowers on the narrow alluvial flat between the base of the corn-covered slopes and a small stream. Sesame is grown as a cash crop by some of the campesinos, and I had loaned Remedios enough cash to buy the seed and a harness rig for plowing, in the hopes that the subsequent crop might put the family a little more on its feet.

“Look, Mama!” cried Goyo in alarm as we arrived at the sesame field. “¡Mochomos!” On a miniature super-highway winding across the ground between the plants, thousands upon thousands of leaf-cutting ants, each bearing in its jaws a proportionately huge piece of sesame leaf, streamed by like a busy regatta of tiny sailboats. We found that nearly a third of the sesame plants had already been stripped of their leaves, leaving the spikes as naked as corn stalks after the leaves are cut.

“¡Chaparro!” cried Chuy. “Run back to the house and bring the poison.” Chaparro left on the run. Chuy shook her head. “We’ve been fighting the mochomos all summer,” she said. “We’ll be lucky if we get half the crop we hoped for.”

When little Chaparro came running back with the ant poison, panting hard, we tracked the ant trail back to where it entered the ground and poured some poison down the hole.

“Does that stop them?” I asked.

“Oh, for a day or two,” said Chuy.

Chuy and I filled the costal with the calabasas and melones and elotes while Goyo ran to bring my mule. In one trip we could carry only a fraction of the produce we had gathered. Chuy mounted Hormiga. I heaved the heavy costal in front of her onto the saddle horn. Goyo, Inez, Chaparro, and I filled our arms with as many calabasas and melones as we could carry, and we set off in the direction of the setting sun.

“¡Al fin ahora no hay hambre!” said Chuy, looking back over her shoulder at the milpa. (Now at last there is no hunger!)

And as she rode, she sang.