The Five Acts of Diego Leon Read Online Free PDF Page A

Carranza, with Villa, Zapata, and Obregón, kicked Huerta out. Now we have Carranza’s Constitutionalist army fighting the rebels. It’s all a mess. Why are you asking?”
    Diego shrugged his shoulders.
    She glared at him. “Don’t go getting any ideas about charging off like your father did. He left, and look at him. Back now two years, and he’s still not right.”
    It was true. In the time since his return, his father had grown more and more distant. With each passing day, Diego sensed him drifting further away. Gabriel León, Elva said, had lost hope, had given up.
    “His will had been so strong before he left,” she said. “And whatever happened to him out there pulled that will from his spirit and cut it loose, and now it’s lost, wandering the earth without a purpose, without a home. It’s a very bad thing.”
    The next morning, he worked the plow alongside his father and Luis Vara. He was bored, the task exhausting, so he sang to keep his mind occupied, to ignore the fatigue and the hunger. Once in a while, Luis whistled along.
    “Diego has quite a voice,” Luis said to his father. “Don’t you think?”
    But Gabriel remained quiet as he worked, not seeming to notice.
    Xúmu
, Diego thought, looking at the thick fog veiling the trees and mountains in the distance.
Karichi
. He watched the goats.
Tsíkata
. He saw a group of chickens pecking at the ground for worms.
Karhasï
, he remembered, was the word for worm.
Kúchi. Kúchi
was P’urhépecha for pig. He glanced around. Where were they? Where were the
kúchi
?
    The fields had gone fallow while his father was away, so there was no money, no food, and even the animals were growing desperate, hungry; many of them had simply collapsed.
Tiriapu
, Diego repeated to himself as he held a few kernels of corn. Seeds, like food, cost money, and there was no money, so there was little food. What measly crops they planted and harvested were sold for a few pesos to buy coffee or flour or beans. What little corn was left, they ground up for tortillas or fed to the animals.
    “Sing to us some more, Diego,” Luis urged him now.
    “No,” insisted his father. “We have to concentrate on plowing the field.”
    “Gabriel,” Luis protested. “Let the boy—”
    His father turned to Diego now. “Go to the house. Get me some tortillas. I’m hungry.”
    “Yes, Father,” Diego said, then turned and ran through the cornfields toward the house. Taati, he said to himself. Taati was full of ikiata. His father was full of anger.
    He knew why his father was mad: the land refused to yield anything beyond a few diseased ears of corn. They came from the fields tired, dirty, the handles of his hoes and sickles faded and splintered, worn not just from hard work but anger and resentment. All he did was work, and nothing came of it, he would say to Elva. They barely had enough to eat. When she told him not to lose hope, to be strong for Diego, his father merely shook his head and glared at him. What would be left of them, he wondered, as he made his way back home to fetch his father some tortillas.
T’upuri
. That’s what would be left of them. Nothing but t’upuri.
    Nothing but dust.

    In preparation for the feast of the town’s patron saint, which would be held on June thirteenth, Father Solís announced that he would be organizing a performance of the Dance of the Old Men and needed four boys whom he would teach the steps to. Diego said he wanted to learn it, even though Elva told him he shouldn’t. His father would not approve, she insisted. But Diego ignored her and asked Father Solís if he could participate. When he said yes, Elva sighed and shook her head.
    “Stubborn child,” she said. “Just like your mother and father. Always doing what you want.”
    In the weeks before the festival, Father Solís had Diego and the rest of the boys practice for an hour each day. There were three other dancers—Ignacio Flores and the twins Mauricio and Mateo Avila—and they