The Spanish Bow Read Online Free

dining-room chairs—even Carlito, who kept squirming off his seat—to tell us what had happened. Rebels fighting for independence from Spain had triggered an explosion in the harbor. The building where my father worked had caught fire, killing Papá and nine other men. Now America—a place that meant nothing to me, beyond the fact that Spanish ships had discovered it—appeared ready to enter the fray.
    Mamá cupped my chin in her hand. "Your Papá should have lived three centuries ago, when the world was getting bigger. Now it's getting only smaller and more loud."
    As if to prove her point, the train departed at that moment, wheezing and clanging, south toward Tarragona.
    When it was out of view, she said, "Papá meant to deliver these gifts with his own hands. They're from his travels. He had his own intentions, but I'll leave the choice to you."
    I picked up the compass first, watching the little copper-colored needle spin and bounce. Then the blue bottle. Then the jungle cat. They were enticing, but I did not choose them. Maybe I felt contrary on this rare morning alone with Mamá, away from the superior airs of my elder siblings; maybe I felt the need to reject the gifts that had the most clearly childish appeal. I picked up the one object that made no immediate sense: the glossy brown stick. At one end it had a rectangular black handle dotted with one small circle of mother-of-pearl. At the other end it had a fancy little curve, like the upswept prow of an ancient ship.
    I lifted it out of the box. It was longer than my arm, a bit thicker than my finger, and polished smooth. I held it out in front me, like a sword. Then upright, like a baton.
    "It's pernambuco—a very good South American wood," Mamá said, her eyebrows raised.
    The anticipation on her face made my throat tighten. I returned the stick hastily to the box.
    "Tell me," I said. "I don't want to choose wrong."
    I expected her to reassure me. Instead she said, "You
will
be wrong sometimes, Feliu."
    Her lecturing tone reminded me of the times she had helped tie my shoes, tugging the laces hard enough to upset my balance. I couldn't know that those days of playful rough-handling were numbered, to be replaced by a grief-filled overprotectiveness.
    When I still hadn't chosen, Mamá asked, "Do you remember your Papá?"
    "Yes," I answered automatically.
    "You can still see him in your mind? As clearly as you can see me?"
    This time, when I didn't answer, she said, "Always tell me the truth. Maybe other people need to invent drama. Not us. Not here."
    I'd heard her say this earlier that year, as the survivors of the
Desastre
of '98 had straggled into town, living ghosts from failed faraway colonial battles. The Americans had invaded Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, Spanish colonies already struggling for independence. The last vestiges of the Spanish Empire were collapsing around us while another empire rose to take its place. Now the soldiers and bureaucrats and merchants were returning—limbs missing, heads and torsos wrapped in stained bandages. Many who passed through Campo Seco seemed lost—they weren't our missing men, we had nothing for them, so why had they stepped off the train here? We rented our cellar to one of them, moving all the casks and wax-sealed bottles aside, furnishing the dark, cool room with a cot, one chair, and an old cracked mirror. The man paid in advance for a week's stay but left after three days, without explanation, prompting Tía to castigate Mamá, "I told you not to put the mirror down there. A man like that doesn't want to see his face."
    I closed my own eyes and tried to see Papá. He was a blur, except for his dark mustache, thick under his nose, curled and twisted at the tips; and the wide bottom cuff of his pin-striped suit pants. I had clung to those pants while he directed the secular village choir. And I had perched high on his shoulders, smelling his hair tonic while we watched local processions. Papá had