In fourth grade our English teacher, Ms. Ayala, wanted us to write a short story. She said the best story would win a bag of pan dulce. When she said that, every kid in the class smiled with wide eyes. It had to be a story like Robinson Crusoe. We had to pretend we were shipwrecked on a deserted island and describe what we would do. It was hard for us to imagine, because none of us had ever been on a ship and the only island we had been on was Padre Island. But Ms. Ayala said, “That’s what imagination is for. You can write anything you want.”

“Anything?” we asked. “Yes, anything,” she said with a warm, trusting smile. I thought about it all morning and during lunch. On the playground, my friends and I were playing marbles, and all I could talk about was the story we had to write. Ramiro Ramos, who was burning ants with matches he had snuck into school, looked up from his favorite hobby.

“You heard her. She said we could write about anything we want. We can’t get in trouble for writing what we want to write,” he said as ants curled to a hot flame.

A few days later our teacher started inviting students to read their stories out loud in front of the class. I can’t remember any of them, not even my own story, but I do remember Ramiro’s.

When she called him, he got up and walked in front the class and took out a folded sheet of paper from his back pocket. He unfolded it several times and cleared his throat.

“This is my story,” he said. “One day I was on a ship and it crashed on an island. And there were monsters and they ate me. The end.”

I started laughing because I thought it was the funniest story ever, but the other students looked confused. Ms. Ayala got mad and sent Ramiro to the principal’s office, and he was paddled three times.

FIN

 

Could I shoot a hummingbird? I had shot everything else in sight: dogs, cats, doves, crows, sparrows, chicharras, dragonflies and even ants. But a hummingbird is no more than two inches long and flies in quick zigzag jolts. And they’re hard to find too.

I knew of a bright blue hummingbird two blocks from my house. One Friday, walking home after school, I decided to take a different road and saw Mrs. Flores staring at something in her flower bush. She was the oldest woman in town and lived by herself, and always gave out the best Halloween candy. Her lawn was covered with every plant that had flowers. When you walked by her house, it was like walking by the women’s perfume department in a big store, but the scents didn’t sting your nose; they made you dizzy.

I stopped to watch her and she caught my eye and waved me over, but gestured for me to be quiet. I wasn’t sure what she was looking at and as I walked up to her very slowly, she pointed at the bush. I followed the imaginary line from her crooked bony finger to a hovering hummingbird.

We watched it dart from flower to flower, and then dash away with a blur. Mrs. Flores smiled, “Isn’t that bird beautiful?”I nodded. “Yes, Mrs. Flores. Does it live in that bush?”

“I’m not sure where he lives, but I always see him in the morning when I’m watering the flowers. I think he likes flowers with dew flavor.” She smiled and brought her hands together in thanks.

I went home and practiced shooting wooden clothespins off the clothesline. They were about the size of a hummingbird, but they were still. Hummingbirds never are. When I’d shoot I noticed the BB coming out of the barrel would have a slight curve and I kept missing the clothespin. This called for my pelt rifle. The soft lead pelts were more expensive but I needed complete accuracy.

I went inside the house and mom was cooking in the kitchen.

“What are you doing?” she asked in a suspicious tone.“Nothing, I’m just going to shoot some cans with my pelt gun.” She narrowed her eyes and nodded, “Huerco, you better be shooting cans.”My pelt rifle was a straight shooter and I broke every clothespin on the clothesline. My mother came outside, saw what I had done, and shook her head, “Huerco sonso.”

I borrowed my father’s travel alarm clock and set it for sunrise. When I left the house everyone was still asleep and outside it was cool and peaceful, and there was still dew on the plants. A good sign, I thought.

I strolled the quiet streets with my pelt gun and hoped that Mrs. Flores was not watering her plants. I walked by her house slowly and when I didn’t see her, I walked into her yard and went straight to the bush.

I kept one eye on the front of her house and one eye on the bush, searching for the blue bird. I stood very still and then I saw it float and weave between the thin twigs. I took aim at the chest, followed the fast wings for a minute, and then fired. The wings stopped and the humming bird fell like a feather.

I picked up the little body and felt the warmth in my palm, and then an overwhelming sense of guilt. I needed someone to yell at me. I needed someone to tell me what I did was wrong. I sat on Mrs. Flores’s concrete porch, so when she stepped out and saw I had killed her little flower bird, she could wring my neck.

FIN

When I was twelve years old, I was awakened one morning by a dove outside my bedroom window. It wouldn’t stop singing and I wanted to get back to sleep. After a few minutes, I got up, grabbed my faithful BB gun, walked to the back door, took steady aim. I shot. Easy. It dropped like a rock.

Going back to my bedroom, I heard my grandfather call out to me. I opened his door but made sure he didn’t see my BB gun. He lit his pipe and asked me what I had done. I wanted to lie, but it was too difficult.“Well, I . . . I was asleep and this stupid bird started making all this racket. So I took my BB gun and shot it.”

My grandfather was an emotional man. His eyes began to fill. “David, do you know what that dove was doing? It was singing a beautiful song no other animal can sing. A song you or me could never sing. A song God taught it to sing. And you went and killed it.”

I tried to say something, but couldn’t find the words. He told me to close his door, and I did. I leaned against the wall and stared at my BB gun, then put it in my room and went outside.

I looked at the dove, picked it up and held its still-warm body. I got a shovel and dug a small hole and placed the bird in it. I took two twigs from the tree the bird had been singing in and made a cross to put at the head of the grave. I cried for a bit and told God I was sorry and promised I would never again kill any living animal as long as I lived.

FIN

In fourth grade I started a fight between Flaco Flores and Nacho Negrete, two kids who were always fighting each other. It was during Mrs. De la Garza’s class. She was my mother’s bowling partner and I saw her every Wednesday night at the bowling alley, so I had to be extra nice in her class.

One afternoon the whole class was quiet, doing their assigned work. I sat in the row against the wall and finished my work pretty fast and was waiting for everyone else. I got bored and noticed Flaco and Nacho were actually doing their work. They sat in the row next to mine: Flaco in the front seat, Sulema behind him (she sat across from me, but she was absent), and then Nacho.

Flaco had his face down and I could see his pencil scribbling away and every now and then he’d scratch his head like he was thinking or feeling for lice. Nacho had his face down too, all scrunched up with his tongue sticking out and his fingers deep red from pressing the pencil down too hard.

I took two pieces of paper and made two tight paper balls. I threw one at Flaco, hitting him on the back of his head, and quickly threw one at Nacho, hitting him in the face. Flaco spun around and Nacho looked, slamming his pencil down.

Flaco shot up and they exchanged several bad words in Spanish and then Flaco grabbed Nacho’s desk and flipped it over. Nacho wrestled himself out of his desk and sprang up like a cat on Flaco. Mrs. De la Garza shouted for them to stop, and then yelled at the top of her lungs for coach Villalobos.

The door flew open and coach Villalobos, a soldier who had fought in the war and was as big as a gorilla, charged in like a hurricane, grabbed Flaco and Nacho by their collars, shook them like rag dolls, and dragged them out of the classroom to the principal’s office, where they were paddled.

Mrs. De la Garza regained her composure and adjusted her hair and told us to complete our assignment. After twenty minutes, Flaco and Nacho came in and took their seats gingerly. I thought it was pretty funny, but I also felt pretty guilty. I walked up to Mrs. De la Garza’s desk.

“Mrs. De la Garza, I have a confession to make,” I said. She smiled pleasantly at me. “Yes?”

“Well, you know that fight Flaco and Nacho got into?” “Of course, I was right here when it happened.”“Well, I started it.”

She smiled kindly, “I know they’re your friends and you’re trying to help them. Now go sit down.”

“But Ms, it’s my fault. See, I took two paper wads and threw one at the back of Flaco’s head and then I threw one at Nacho and they thought they did it, so they got into a mistake fight.”She smiled, “I believe you. But those two need to be paddled every day.”

FIN