Hard Red Spring by Kelly Kerney Read Free Book Online

money. She’d sent more money when they bought the bugs in January, when Father advanced the Indians their pay last year. When the police chief arrested their worker Raffie for startling a white woman and made Father buy him back in time for the second harvest, which ended up drowned in the early rains anyway.
    â€œIs he going to bribe someone?”
    Mother paused, her pen point pressed into the paper, and glared at Evie. “Where did you learn that word?”
    â€œFrom Judas,” she lied. Because Judas wouldn’t care or blame her if Mother scolded him for it. He understood survival on the mountain more than anyone. Evie certainly could not say that she’d learned it from Mother’s teas with Mrs. Fasbinder.
    â€œWell, you surely are getting a Guatemalan education,” she observed crisply. “But no, we won’t use Grandmother’s money for bribes. We pay people to
work
, Evie. Bribes are for cheats and criminals. Your father’s not that kind of man.” She turned back to the letter, writing in a burst. “I did not marry that kind of man.”
    â€œHow come the President says the volcano didn’t erupt? Did it erupt?”
    â€œOf course it did, Evie. You saw for yourself, didn’t you?”
    â€œYes. But why does he say it didn’t?”
    â€œSometimes, Evie, the truth can be very expensive.”
    After finishing her letter, Mother began to play the piano. She played “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” which Evie had never heard her play before. She stabbed at the keys with fierce fingers, making many mistakes, trying to reach Father in the fields. Evie knew that by suggesting they sell “some things,” he really meant the piano. It was the only thing they owned in Guatemala that was worth anything, outside of the mountain itself. Father didn’t have nice things and Mother had left all her jewelry in New York, for fear of tempting thieves.
    This piano was like a part of the family. When they left for Guatemala, itaccompanied them on every leg of the journey. First shipped by rail across the U.S. to New Orleans. From there, it came on the coffee steamboat with them from New Orleans to the port of Coatzacoalcos in southern Mexico. Then it was loaded onto a car on the Tehuantepec Railroad, hauled across Mexico, to a Pacific port, where men rolled it onto another coffee steamer bound for Champerico, Guatemala. From Champerico, the piano took up a whole compartment in another railroad car to Retalhuleu. Then it was pulled by a team of horses to Xela, where Father unloaded it at the base of the mountain and pushed it onto a wooden cart, to which he attached Tiny, the skeptical mule he’d just bought.
    â€œIf you think getting here has been a trial for us,” Father had said, sweating and swearing at Tiny, who refused to complete the last mile of their monthlong journey, “just imagine how the coffee planters feel. Whoever solves the shipping problem in Guatemala will be a rich man.”
    On several occasions, Mrs. Fasbinder had offered increasing sums of money for the piano, but each rising price offended Mother more than the last offer. And though Evie knew she had just been making a point, her mother’s suggestion that they sell Evie rather than the piano was not as much of a surprise as one would think. And Father’s hint about selling it in the first place made her realize how bad their situation must be.
    â€œWill all our workers be drafted away, even Judas?” Evie asked over “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
    Somewhere else, somewhere civilized, with her eyes closed, Mother tapped a foot to keep time on the old floorboards. “I don’t know, Evie. I hope so. No. No, I don’t.”
    â€œIf he goes, will he die?”
    â€œNo, Evie. He’ll come back, don’t worry. This isn’t the railroad draft. A lot of Indians get drafted to the coffee plantations and come