Dear Valentina,
We are very upset that the Americans devalued our peso to fifty cents to the US dollar! General Miles stepped one boot on la playa de Ponce, and by the time he set down his second boot, he’d raised our cost of living! There is a rumor that our silver pesos are ending up in the US Treasury, where they are adding five cents’ worth of silver to remake them into American silver dollars! We were also shocked to read in the newspapers that we are now the island of Porto Rico! Ernesto is furious because Porto is not even a Spanish word. I hope you are well.
Siempre,
Elena
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE DEVIL
When Vicente’s father taught him about coffee, he said, “El café es brujo.” As a young boy, he understood that coffee was the devil the first time he picked the berries and his hands became swollen from mosquito bites, his neck red from the pricks of the plumillas. But it was more than that: coffee was at the mercy of nature and commerce. It had been a brutal year but finally, in July, the weather became more moderate and Vicente thought that his first harvest would be a profitable one.
That morning in early August, Vicente had gone with Raulito and Javier to the finca. They had brought fruit picker poles and empty sacks with them. After checking the condition of his coffee berries and pronouncing himself satisfied, Vicente reached the pole into the guava tree, plucking a guava.
He brought it to his nose. “Perfecto.”
Raulito picked one. “Perfecto.”
“Javiercito, smell this guava.” Vicente put the fruit under his son’s nose. “Smell it?”
Javier nodded.
“Hold out your hand.”
Vicente placed the guava in Javier’s hand.
“Feel it. Gently. That’s how you know a guava is ready to eat.”
Javier bit into the red flesh, smiling.
“Not sour? Or too sweet?”
The boy shook his head.
“That’s what you want in a guava,” Vicente said. “That’s what we want with coffee, isn’t that right, Raulito? A little sweetness.”
“That’s right.” Raulito bit into a guava.
“But coffee isn’t sweet,” Javier said.
“There is a very subtle sweetness, just a hint of the taste of sugar that only those who live for coffee can taste,” Vicente told him. “That only people who need coffee as they do water can know.”
Javier tossed the pit on the ground.
Vicente pulled down a coffee branch. “See these green berries, Javiercito? They’re not ready yet, but by October they will be.”
“Can we take lots of guavas to Mami? So she can make us pasta de guayaba?”
“Who doesn’t love pasta de guayaba?” Raulito reached his pole into the guava tree.
They heard horses and the sound of marching men. Javier ran to the slope.
“Soldiers!”
Vicente and Raulito set down their poles and walked to the slope, where they watched the cavalry climb the hill.
“Americans,” Vicente said.
“Hundreds of them,” Raulito said.
“¡Americanos! ¡Americanos!” Javier waved. “¡Bienvenidos! ¡Bienvenidos!”
A jíbaro dressed in white led the US Cavalry—American officers on big, healthy horses and hundreds of foot soldiers—and a hundred of their barefoot countrymen mounted on the island horses that looked like runts. The soldiers wearing cloth hats carried rifles and bayonets along with tents and other supplies strapped to their backs and gray blankets slung over their shoulders, reminding Vicente of burros; he pitied them their sunburnt faces. Some looked only a year older than Raulito. They awaited orders, sweating in wool uniforms and thick canvas leggings. The commander was a tall American, spare of build and dark haired, but with eyes so light they appeared almost colorless—just as Vicente imagined the eyes of all Americans to be. Vicente exchanged looks with Raulito. What would the Americans want from them?
The jíbaro on horseback, one of the few of his countrymen who wore shoes, announced in a hoarse voice that seemed yanked from his vocal cords that he was Emiliano Morales, the Americans’ guide and interpreter. He introduced the captain of the cavalry; the soldiers were from Illinois, America, and the men in white were Puerto Rican patriots.
Vicente gave the customary polite salutation, introducing himself, his son, and his brother.
“Your brother?” Emiliano Morales looked down at Raulito from the height of his horse.
“That’s what I said.” Vicente crossed his arms.
The guide dismounted. “Caballero, I promised these americanos some Spanish soldiers to string by their thumbs, and I haven’t found even one dirty Spaniard.”
Vicente waved his hand. “This is my farm. There aren’t any Spaniards here.”
“We’re searching for filthy Spanish soldiers hiding out as jíbaros.” Emiliano Morales turned to Javiercito. “You see any filthy Spaniards hiding like cowards?”
“Don Miguel is a filthy Spaniard,” Javier said.
Vicente put his hand on Javier’s shoulder. “Don Miguel’s family has lived on this mountain for three generations—as long as my family.”
Emiliano Morales explained that he came from nearby Adjuntas, where not so many years before, citizens suspected of wanting independence from Spain had been arrested and tortured. “Where I come from, we hate the Spanish.”
“We’re all Puerto Ricans here,” Vicente said.
Emiliano spoke to the American officer, then turned back to Vicente.
“The Americans couldn’t have crushed the Spanish without our help. We told them when and where to attack. Puerto Ricans were waiting on the beach at Guánica to guide them.”
Vicente had read in the newspapers about the Americans landing in Guánica, and that ever since the invasion, there had been a rush at the ayuntamientos throughout the island as Puerto Ricans registered their children as Americans. Most likely, there were now hundreds of children named Jorge Washington. So many Abraham Lincolns and Tomás Jeffersons born that first week alone. Vicente looked at Emiliano Morales, a skinny man whose face and neck were burnt dark caramel by the sun, one of many Puerto Ricans who believed that the Americans had come to save them.
“The men must be thirsty,” Vicente said. “My boy can take them to the stream.”
“Here, boy.” Emiliano Morales held out the reins of his horse to Javier, and Vicente nodded permission. Morales relayed to the American officer Vicente’s offer and Raulito and Javier led the cavalry and the others to water.
“The Americans don’t want to be our masters, like the Spanish.” The guide took off his hat and wiped his brow with a kerchief.
“Glad to hear that,” Vicente said.
“You sound like a Spanish-lover,” Emiliano Morales said, taking an American cigarette from a pouch around his waist. “Don’t you know that America is ‘the land of the free’?”
“I know coffee,” Vicente said.
Two days after they met the US Cavalry, Vicente and Javier started down the mountain just as the fog began to lift on Cerro Morales. They walked alongside the horse, laden with sacks of guavas to sell in the market. When they reached the edge of town, they heard the cannons. Boom! Boom! Boom!