Read Online Bulletproof Vest by Maria Venegas - Free Book Online Page B

could be traced directly back to God himself. Hypocrites. It was one thing for them to have brainwashed his wife, for them to have tried to brainwash him, even, but now for his wife and the hallelujahs to have brainwashed his kids—to have turned them against him—this was unforgivable.
    The thought of standing face-to-face with her now sends the rage flaring in his veins. The bartender comes over and fills up his empty glass, eyes him as if saying, have this one on the house and then you should move along, Jose. But he’s not paying attention to the bartender. He’s trying to keep up with his thoughts, where, in that vast void, a new idea is dawning. It’s something that stems from the same bottomless pit that drove him to the boulders behind Pascuala’s house when he was seventeen and she was fourteen and kept him there, day in and day out, for three years, waiting and hoping to catch a glimpse of her face. He still remembers the moment that she stepped out of the small church in Santana, and into his life.
    It was a Saturday, and he and Salvador, his younger brother, had just completed their mandatory military training and were due to perform in a parade in Santana. They were wearing their pressed uniforms and milling about with the other young men under the shade of a mesquite in the square when three young girls stepped out of the church. Though there were three, he only saw the one. Her long black hair fell loosely around her shoulders, framing her high cheekbones and her full lips.
    â€œQue no se te caiga la baba,” Salvador said, cupping both his hands under Jose’s chin as if to catch the drool. “That’s Pascuala, she’s Manuel’s younger sister.” Jose knew who Manuel was. They were roughly the same age and often competed at the local rodeos. Any bull released in the horse run in front of either of them was sure to be taken down.
    He watched her turn away, and then the three girls were walking down the dirt road and before he knew it he was on their heels. “Oiga, señorita,” he said, trying to keep up yet look nonchalant. “Would you like to be my novia?” She pushed open a wooden gate, held it open for the other two girls to go through, and then she was gone.
    â€œPascuala,” he repeated, later that night, and for countless nights after, while he tossed and turned in the dark. In the morning, while tilling the fields, each time the mules reached the end of a fallow, though he knew he would not see her, still, his neck craned, his head turned and he looked toward Santana. When he could not stand another day without seeing her face again, he saddled up his horse, rode to Santana, hitched it to a mesquite in the square, and waited for hours, hoping that she might once again step out of the church or happen to walk by.
    After several days of riding to the square and waiting in vain, he relocated. There was a boulder behind her house, which provided him with a clear view of her courtyard, and from there he sent the rays of sunlight skipping across her front door and reaching into bedroom windows with his pocket mirror. He hoped that she might see the light and step outside, maybe even have a word with him. When this approach didn’t work, he decided to write her a letter. This is something he was dreading, as he knew he had terrible penmanship—hadn’t written a single word since he had been expelled from school when he was twelve years old. In the letter he wrote how he had not stopped thinking about her since the day they had met. She was his rising star and his setting sun, and if he could, he would collect all the colores in the campo and give them to her. He was willing to kill and to die for her if she so much as asked him to.
    He passed the letter along to a young boy, who then handed it off to Doña Adulfa at the communal water well. Doña Adulfa was Pascuala’s neighbor, and she hand delivered the letter to her.