The Jaguar's Children by John Vaillant

like that—amazed and sad all at once like he was saying, “You? In this? How is it possible?”
    Tío Martín said the truck belonged to him and his boss and the bank, and he was laughing, but I didn’t care if he had to share it, that Chevy was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. “¡Bienvenidos a El Dorado!” he said. “Where you can have everything but own nothing.”
    â€œThis is not Esprangfail?” I whispered, but Papá didn’t answer.
    It was December and I had never seen snow before that day. We drove through the tall stone city and out onto a highway with the windows up. Our truck at home was an old Chevy Apache that didn’t even have all its windows, but this one was so new and quiet it seemed to float above the road. While Papá and Tío Martín hurried to fill in the missing years, I stared at the blinking radio, at the shiny paint outside and at the great green road signs growing bigger and bigger until they disappeared.
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    The place Tío Martín worked was in the forest and except for some tall pines all the trees around there looked like they were dead. The hotel was big and gray and made of wood with black windows and a stone roof. Everything inside it was made of wood also—the floors, the stairs, the toilet seat. It was nothing like Oaxaca, and I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to stay in such a dark, cold place. Across the road was a field, but there was no sign of corn or flowers anywhere. Everything had died from the cold. In their place were lights—in the windows, in the trees, on the roof, all blinking day and night like fireworks that never ended. I knew it was for la Navidad, but where was the nacimiento? The camels and the kings? This did not look like a fiesta por el niño, it looked like a fiesta for lightbulbs.
    We stayed in a room above the garage. Papá worked for Tío Martín and I followed him around in a pair of red rubber boots that were cold and heavy on my feet. There were some gringo kids there and they liked to stare at me. They waved and said things, but they made no sense. “Why do all these gringos talk like babies?” I asked.
    â€œIt is their own language,” Papá said. “English, and you will have to learn it. That is your job here, that is why I brought you.”
    This made me feel scared and proud all at once. I was small and young but I wanted to work because that is what we do. Always in the pueblo I helped my parents. This work, given to me by my father who can go for days without speaking, filled me with a reason.
That is your job here
. So I worked hard. At night I told him all my new words, and he nodded and said, “Say them again.” When he was working, shoveling the snow or taking out the trash or cutting firewood, I could see his lips moving, trying to make these new sounds himself, but it was so hard for him. He’d try and then shake his head, hawk up a big one from deep in his throat and spit into a snowbank. It was like those words were fishbones stuck in there.
    There was a lady and her name was Señora Ellen. She ran the hotel with her husband, Señor Ron. Señora Ellen was the opposite of my mother—so tall and thin and white you could see through her skin to her blue veins. Have you seen some small plant trying to grow under a pot or in a dark place? They will look like this and I thought, even then, This pobrecita needs more sun and tortillas. I was afraid of her at first because she looked like la Catrina, the tall fine skeleton lady who comes out por el Día de los Muertos. She does not have her own lotería card, but she is famous in Oaxaca and before last year, when the tourists stopped coming, you could buy her in any form. Some of the workers at the hotel called Señora Ellen “Catrina” behind her back, but she was kind to me—she gave me cookies and taught me little songs. This is when I