Six Books

 THE LITTLE TOWN OF THE GRAPE VINES

There are still some places in the west where the quails cry "cuidado"; where all the speech is soft, all the manners gentle; where all the dishes have chile in them, and they make more of the Sixteenth of September than they do of the Fourth of July.  I mean in particular El Pueblo de Las Uvas.  Where it lies, how to come at it, you will not get from me; rather would I show you the heron's nest in the tulares.  It has a peak behind it, glinting above the tamarack pines, above a breaker of ruddy hills that have a long slope valley-wards and the shoreward steep of waves toward the Sierras.

Below the Town of the Grape Vines, which shortens to Las Uvas for common use, the land dips away to the river pastures and the tulares.  It shrouds under a twilight thicket of vines, under a dome of cottonwood-trees, drowsy and murmurous as a hive.  Hereabouts are some strips of tillage and the headgates that dam up the creek for the village weirs; upstream you catch the growl of the arrastra.  Wild vines that begin among the willows lap over to the orchard rows, take the trellis and roof-tree.

There is another town above Las Uvas that merits some attention, a town of arches and airy crofts, full of linnets, blackbirds, fruit birds, small sharp hawks, and mockingbirds that sing by night.  They pour out piercing, unendurably sweet cavatinas above the fragrance of bloom and musky smell of fruit.  Singing is in fact the business of the night at Las Uvas as sleeping is for midday.  When the moon comes over the mountain wall new-washed from the sea, and the shadows lie like lace on the stamped floors of the patios, from recess to recess of the vine tangle runs the thrum of guitars and the voice of singing.

At Las Uvas they keep up all the good customs brought out of Old Mexico or bred in a lotus-eating land; drink, and are merry and look out for something to eat afterward; have children, nine or ten to a family, have cock-fights, keep the siesta, smoke cigarettes and wait for the sun to go down.  And always they dance; at dusk on the smooth adobe floors, afternoons under the trellises where the earth is damp and has a fruity smell.  A betrothal, a wedding, or a christening, or the mere proximity of a guitar is sufficient occasion; and if the occasion lacks, send for the guitar and dance anyway.

All this requires explanation.  Antonio Sevadra, drifting this way from Old Mexico with the flood that poured into the Tappan district after the first notable strike, discovered La Golondrina.  It was a generous lode and Tony a good fellow; to work it he brought in all the Sevadras, even to the twice-removed; all the Castros who were his wife's family, all the Saises, Romeros, and Eschobars,--the relations of his relations-in-law.  There you have the beginning of a pretty considerable town.  To these accrued much of the Spanish California float swept out of the southwest by eastern enterprise.  They slacked away again when the price of silver went down, and the ore dwindled in La Golondrina.  All the hot eddy of mining life swept away from that corner of the hills, but there were always those too idle, too poor to move, or too easily content with El Pueblo de Las Uvas.

Nobody comes nowadays to the town of the grape vines except, as we say, "with the breath of crying," but of these enough.  All the low sills run over with small heads.  Ah, ah! There is a kind of pride in that if you did but know it, to have your baby every year or so as the time sets, and keep a full breast.  So great a blessing as marriage is easily come by.  It is told of Ruy Garcia that when he went for his marriage license he lacked a dollar of the clerk's fee, but borrowed it of the sheriff, who expected reelection and exhibited thereby a commendable thrift. Of what account is it to lack meal or meat when you may have it of any neighbor?  Besides, there is sometimes a point of honor in these things.  Jesus Romero, father of ten, had a job sacking ore in the Marionette which he gave up of his own accord.  "Eh, why?" said Jesus, "for my fam'ly."

"It is so, senora," he said solemnly, "I go to the Marionette, I work, I eat meat--pie--frijoles--good, ver' good.  I come home sad'day nigh' I see my fam'ly.  I play lil' game poker with the boys, have lil' drink wine, my money all gone.  My fam'ly have no money, nothing eat.  All time I work at mine I eat, good, ver' good grub.  I think sorry for my fam'ly.  No, no, senora, I no work no more that Marionette, I stay with my fam'ly."  The wonder of it is, I think, that the family had the same point of view.

Every house in the town of the vines has its garden plot, corn and brown beans and a row of peppers reddening in the sun; and in damp borders of the irrigating ditches clumps of  yerbasanta, horehound, catnip, and spikenard, wholesome herbs and curative, but if no peppers then nothing at all.  You will have for a holiday dinner, in Las Uvas, soup with meat balls and chile in it, chicken with chile, rice with chile, fried beans with more chile, enchilada, which is corn cake with the sauce of chile and tomatoes, onion, grated cheese, and olives, and for a relish chile tepines passed about in a dish, all of which is comfortable and corrective to the stomach.  You will have wine which every man makes for himself, of good body and inimitable bouquet, and sweets that are not nearly so nice as they look.

There are two occasions when you may count on that kind of a meal; always on the Sixteenth of September, and on the two-yearly visits of Father Shannon.  It is absurd, of course, that El Pueblo de Las Uvas should have an Irish priest, but Black Rock, Minton, Jimville, and all that country round do not find it so.  Father Shannon visits them all, waits by the Red Butte to confess the shepherds who go through with their flocks, carries blessing to small and isolated mines, and so in the course of a year or so works around to Las Uvas to bury and marry and christen.  Then all the little graves in the Campo Santo are brave with tapers, the brown pine headboards blossom like Aaron's rod with paper roses and bright cheap prints of Our Lady of Sorrows.  Then the Senora Sevadra, who thinks herself elect of heaven for that office, gathers up the original sinners, the little Elijias, Lolas, Manuelitas, Joses, and Felipes, by dint of adjurations and sweets smuggled into small perspiring palms, to fit them for the Sacrament.

I used to peek in at them, never so softly, in Dona Ina's living-room; Raphael-eyed little imps, going sidewise on their knees to rest them from the bare floor, candles lit on the mantel to give a religious air, and a great sheaf of wild bloom before the Holy Family.  Come Sunday they set out the altar in the schoolhouse, with the fine-drawn altar cloths, the beaten silver candlesticks, and the wax images, chief glory of Las Uvas, brought up mule-back from Old Mexico forty years ago.  All in white the communicants go up two and two in a hushed, sweet awe to take the body of their Lord, and Tomaso, who is priest's boy, tries not to look unduly puffed up by his office.  After that you have dinner and a bottle of wine that ripened on the sunny slope of Escondito.  All the week Father Shannon has shriven his people, who bring clean conscience to the betterment of appetite, and the Father sets them an example.  Father Shannon is rather big about the middle to accommodate the large laugh that lives in him, but a most shrewd searcher of hearts.  It is reported that one derives comfort from his confessional, and I for my part believe it.

The celebration of the Sixteenth, though it comes every year, takes as long to prepare for as Holy Communion.  The senoritas have each a new dress apiece, the senoras a new rebosa.  The young gentlemen have new silver trimmings to their sombreros, unspeakable ties, silk handkerchiefs, and new leathers to their spurs.  At this time when the peppers glow in the gardens and the young quail cry "cuidado," "have a care!" you can hear the plump, plump of the metate from the alcoves of the vines where comfortable old dames, whose experience gives them the touch of art, are pounding out corn for tamales.

School-teachers from abroad have tried before now at Las Uvas to have school begin on the first of September, but got nothing else to stir in the heads of the little Castros, Garcias, and Romeros but feasts and cock-fights until after the Sixteenth.  Perhaps you need to be told that this is the anniversary of the Republic, when liberty awoke and cried in the provinces of Old Mexico.  You are aroused at midnight to hear them shouting in the streets, "Vive la Libertad!" answered from the houses and the recesses of the vines, "Vive la Mexico!"  At sunrise shots are fired commemorating the tragedy of unhappy Maximilian, and then music, the noblest of national hymns, as the great flag of Old Mexico floats up the flag-pole in the bare little plaza of shabby Las Uvas.  The sun over Pine Mountain greets the eagle of Montezuma before it touches the vineyards and...