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Updated: June 6, 2025
Martinez would be seated on a reed stool with one elbow on the counter, reading Perez Escrich, his favorite author, in bulging grimy volumes with the corners worn down from having passed from patrol to patrol along the coast. Siñá Tona was convinced at last.
The other patrolmen, friends of Martinez, and the fish-women on the beach, were always teasing them with indirect allusions which, if anything, were too direct. And the expected happened. To silence her own misgivings, siñá Tona argued that her boys needed a father, and Martinez was just the man.
And the time came when the wretched scamp, in a blue sailor suit, a white cap cocked over one ear, and a bundle of clothes over his shoulders, dropped in to bid Dolores and his mother good-by, on his way to Cartagena where he had been ordered to report for service. Good riddance, after all! Siñá Tona was fond of her boy, but he wouldn't be getting into trouble again for a while!
And the pots and pans hanging on the walls could be set sizzling in an instant with all kinds of good nourishing victuals. Just think of it! A widow starving a short time since, and now already on Easy Street! Say all you want but God looks after decent people! With plenty to eat and nothing to worry about, Tona seemed to grow young again.
For his sister was now on ground where, from the long tirades of Siñá Tona, she could be counted quite expert. She talked passionately, with a tinge of irritation in her sweet vibrant voice. "Women, eh! Women! Not a bit of it! It's the men, I say, and I know what I'm talking about. Among the pigs in this world, the prize hog is the man! See trouble anywhere?
The Mayflower had been caught abeam by a huge breaker, and was being turned end over end. She was seen for a second, bottom up, and then she sank, out of sight. The women crossed themselves. Strong hands laid hold on siñá Tona and Dolores, to keep them from leaping into the sea. Everybody had guessed what that bundle was, floating out there toward the shore. "The boy! The boy!"
How tenderly he had cared for his little brother, his comrade in poverty, who had rested his little brown head sometimes on his very cheek! Yes, Rosario had been right. His brother! More than that, his child! For it was he, really, more than siñá Tona, who had been a loving parent to the boy, spoiling him, slaving for him! "And now, I'm going to kill him!
Yes, he would send for the certificates necessary for the marriage license. But it would take time of course, because Huelva was a long way off. Tona waited, with her thoughts on Huelva, a city hazy in the distance, which she figured must be off around Cuba, or the Philippines, perhaps. And time went by, while the situation grew more and more alarming.
Little Roseta, a favor left behind in the tavern-boat by the considerate patrolman, gave her mother hardly a moment's peace. She was growing up like an untameable wildcat. Every evening Tona had to go and hunt for her before she could shut her up in the boat after a hard spanking; and from morning till night she would never be seen unless she happened to be hungry. Thy will be done!
And how excited they would get when the postman would throw down on the wet counter a narrow envelope, sometimes sealed with red wax and then again with bread dough, and a complicated address written all over it in huge fat letters: "For siñora tona The Woman who keeps The little café near The barn on the Beach."
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