The Bean Trees

Neither of them said anything, but they didn't urge me again to call them by false names.

Later we found a place that rented boats by the half hour and Estevan and I took one out onto the lake. Esperanza didn't want to go. She didn't know how to swim, and I wasn't sure about Turtle, so the two of them stayed on the shore feeding ducks.

Estevan and I took turns rowing and waving at the shore until Turtle was a tiny bouncing dot. By then we were in the very middle of the lake, and we let ourselves drift. The sun bounced off the water, making bright spangles and upside-down shadows on our faces. I rolled my jeans up to my knees and dangled my bare feet over the side. There was a fishy-smelling assortment of things in the bottom of the boat, including a red-and-white line floater and a collection of pop-top rings from beer cans.

Estevan took off his shirt and lay back against the front of the boat, his hands clasped behind his head, exposing his smooth Mayan chest to the sun. And to me. How could he possibly have done this, if he had any idea how I felt? I knew that Estevan had walked a long, hard road beyond innocence, but still he sometimes did the most simple, innocent, heartbreaking things. As much as I have wanted anything, ever, I wanted to know how that chest would feel against my face. I looked toward the shore so he wouldn't see the water in my eyes.

I pulled the wilted flower out of my braid and twisted the stem in my fingers. "I'm going to miss you a lot," I said. "All of you. Both, I mean."

Estevan didn't say he was going to miss all of me. We knew this was a conversation we couldn't afford to get into. In more ways than one, since we were renting by the half-hour.

After a while he said, "Throw a penny and make a wish."

"That's wasteful," I said, kicking my toes in the water. "My mother always said a person that throws away money deserves to be poor. I'd rather be one of the undeserving poor."

"Undeservedly," he corrected me, smiling.

"One of the undeservedly poor." Even my English was going to fall apart without him.

"Then we can wish on these." He picked up one of the pop-top rings. "These are appropriate for American wishes."

I made two American wishes on pop tops in Lake o' the Cherokees. Only one of them had the remotest possibility of coming true.

At dusk we found picnic tables in a little pine forest near the water's edge. Both Mattie and Irene had packed us fruit and sandwiches for the road, most of which were still in the Igloo cooler in the trunk. We threw an old canvas poncho over the table and spread out the pickle jars and bananas and apples and goose-liver sandwiches and everything else. Other picnickers here and there were working on modest little balanced meals of things that all went together, keeping the four food groups in mind, but we weren't proud. Our party was in the mood for a banquet.

The sun was setting behind us but it lit up the clouds in the east, making one of those wraparound sunsets. Reflections of pink clouds floated across the surface of the lake. It looked like a corny painting. If I didn't let my mind run too far ahead, I felt completely happy.

Turtle still had a good deal of energy, and was less interested in eating than in bouncing and jumping and running in circles around the trees. Every so often she found a pine cone, which she would bring back and give to me or to Esperanza. I tried very hard not to keep count of whose pile of pine cones was bigger. Turtle looked like a whirling dervish in overalls and a green-striped T-shirt. We hadn't realized how cooped up she must have felt in the car, because she was so good. It's funny how people don't give that much thought to what kids want, as long as they're being quiet.

It's also interesting how it's hard to be depressed around a three-year-old, if you're paying attention. After a while, whatever you're mooning about begins to seem like some elaborate adult invention.

Estevan asked us which we liked better, sunrise or sunset. We were all speaking in English now, because Esperanza had to get into practice. I couldn't object to this-it was a matter of survival.

"Sun set, because sun rise comes too early,"

Esperanza said, and giggled. She was very self-conscious in English, and seemed to have a whole different personality.

I told them that I liked sunrise better. "Sunset always makes me feel a little sad."

"Why?"

I peeled a banana and considered this. "I think because of the way I was raised. There was always so damn much work to do. At sunrise it always seems like you've got a good crack at getting everything done, but at sunset you know that you didn't."

Esperanza directed our attention to Turtle, who was hard at work burying Shirley Poppy in the soft dirt at the base of a pine tree. I had to laugh.