The Lieutenant of San Porfirio

The Machado family home had been built with love and care by his father and older brothers. It had mud walls and a dirt floor that his mother constantly swept, hunched over with her old broom made of branches and the long, strong grass that grew prolifically in the surrounding marshes. In her futile attempt to keep a well ordered house for her family, she harvested the grass as often as possible, being careful to avoid the huge old anaconda that lived in the deep pool since before she and Juan Marco’s father had been married. The Machado family plot had been given to them as a wedding gift from the overseer – who had taken it from another family when the father had gotten sick and unable to work the land. In the house there were two large rooms, one was the living room where the family of seven spent most of their time (when they were not in the fields or with the cows, of course). The second room was for sleeping. Machado recalled the feeling of warmth and companionship as they spread out together on the floor covered by blankets for their short night’s sleep.

On the walls of the living area were old posters of the Virgin Mary and Jesus – the European version portraying them as blond, blue eyed Caucasians. Given as a Christmas present by the landowner family, they served to remind them of the true nature – and race – of the Holy Family. There was some rough furniture, made by hand by the elder Machado. These consisted of a few chairs, a table, and a bookshelf to hold the five or six book library they’d amassed over the decades. The roof was made of zinc sheets, a thin metal that was fantastically loud during the long, powerful rainstorms of the Great Plains, when they would huddle together, using their two buckets to collect the rainwater that flowed freely from the holes in the roof that the elder Machado could never afford to fix. The whole house smelled musty, like the odor of an early mountain morning – very earthy and clean. The kitchen, where Senora Machado spent most of her time, was out back behind the house. Frequently in the late afternoons when he was back from work helping his father and brothers, Juan Marco would listen to the sizzling as she made the inexpensive but nourishing meals; collected mostly from things grown on the land by their hands.