Harriet Doerr by The Tiger in the Grass

Mexico City.”
    “But if not, if she couldn’t make him understand, what then?”
    “Then one of the stops between. Felipe Pescador, for instance.” And they remembered an old town near a lake gone dry, a town of a church, a bar, and a straggle of farms.
    “Or La Chona,” said Sara. “It has an inn. And that plaza.”
    On the moonless road to Ibarra she reminded Richard of the trees in the plaza of La Chona. So ambitious was the gardener that he had clipped a pair of laurels into the crowned figures of Ferdinand and Isabella and then trimmed a tree that faced them into Christopher Columbus presenting his report. And behind Columbus, as though he had brought them along, three leafy ships, the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa María, sailed up the graveled path.

5
    The Watchman at the Gate

    It was evident from the start that the two North Americans totally lacked suspicion and were therefore destined to live out their lives handicapped, like accident victims who have lost a leg or infants born deaf. In the village of Ibarra, everyone from the cura to the goatherd was of a single opinion, that the señor Everton and his señora had reached maturity oblivious to the envy and greed that, except in rare instances, underlay the nature of man.
    The Evertons had been in Ibarra only a month when Luis, their gardener, proposed that they hire his friend Fermin Diaz as night watchman.
    “We do not need a watchman,” said Richard. “There is nothing to take.”
    “There are the cans of food, the bags of fertilizer, and your shoes,” Luis said. “And it is widely known that you have lost the key to your front door.”
    “Perhaps later, when the house is furnished,” said the North Americans.
    Then Luis spoke again. “You may have forgotten, señor, that Fermin went to work at the age of fifteen in the Malagueña mine for your father’s family.”
    The next day the Evertons engaged Fermin to be the watchman.
    On his first night at the gate, Fermin told them, “Those were the happy times, when I worked as an apprentice underground for five pesos a week and was given a sack of corn and a sack of flour to take home on Saturday night. I lived better then than I will today on the salary you have promised, which is twice what my job is worth.”
    Fermín said he remembered the revolution of 1910 and, groping along the high front wall, found the bullet hole left by Colonel Torres and his men on their way to rob the safe at La Malagueña.
    “But this Coronel Torres, so proud of his boots and his gun and his stolen horse, had no luck with the safe. The colonel shot at the lock and tried dynamite without success. That night he could not pay his men, and half of them deserted. They crossed the mountains and were on the floor of the valley by morning. But hungry people had been there before them, and the soldiers had to forage for field mice and lizards, and one by one they starved.”
    “What happened to Torres?” asked Richard.
    “Coronel Torres fled north to Zacatecas,” said Fermin. “He may even have reached Chihuahua, where Pancho Villa was issuing thin wooden slats to use for money. Fifty pesos, moneda nacional, he would print on one; one hundred or a thousand pesos on another. Though all the slats a man could carry would not buy a loaf of bread.”
    The Evertons discovered a low stool, suitable for milking a cow, among the flowerpots on the porch.
    Luis explained. “After you are asleep and the house is dark, Fermin sits here until daybreak, in order to protect you against intruders.”
    “Why not use a comfortable chair?” Richard asked Fermin that evening.
    “Because on such a chair I might not stay awake until sunrise,” the watchman said. “If I become drowsy on this stool, I immediately fall off and am wide awake again.”
    “We think you should sleep at least part of the night,” first Richard, then Sara told him.
    “Then the skunks would tunnel for worms under the honeysuckle, and the coyotes would carry