The Fig Raid
To Rafael and Gabriel, Oscar Guajardo, was the richest man in the world. Mr. Guajardo (the boys called him Don Placido), was the owner of the little store a few block from the house where they lived. Chita was always sending the two boys to his store for something. Several times a week the order included the “big ticket items;” coffee, sugar, firewood and meat (café, azúcar, leña y carne was one of her standard orders). Other times she would send them to the store for milk, or bread, or when she didn’t make them at home, tortillas. But that was rare since she made the tortillas from scratch for boiled corn that she ground down. Alejandro and Catarino would buy the sacks of corn from the warehouse.
One day, Chita gave them two cents and told them to go and buy milk, “and make sure that is not goat’s milk,” his sister would yell at them as they left the house. They knew what they had to do go and rinse the two liter pan with a handle and cover and run to the store and get the milk. The pot was made of tin with a coating of backed enamel. But the enamel was chipped in several places and the pot was showing its wear. They got to the store and asked Mr. Guajardo for two cents of milk. Mr. Guajardo was extremely myopic and could only tell the boys were there by their voice. “Where is your pot?” He asked. The boys would place the pot in the counter with a bang so he could hear it, he would walk slowly to his container of fresh milk, dip it out with his measuring dipper, bringing the dipper within a couple of inches from his eyes so that he could see the level and poured the liter of milk into the boy’s pot. The boys would pay them and walked away.
Mr. Guajardo’s store was on the corner at the far end of the block farthest from their house. His house was around the corner with a big yard dividing his house and the store. But Mr. Guajardo owned the whole block, and it was the longest block in their neighborhood. He had a small building in the opposite corner of his property and the whole property was fenced in with a high fence made of various materials. Part of the fence near his store and his house around the block was made out of concrete. Mr. Guajardo had a big fruit orchard with oranges, lemons, avocados, and other assorted fruits scattered throughout the property. But the objects of the boys, desire were the two large fig trees near his house. Rafael and Gabriel loved figs and would do anything for them.
After walking out with the milk they decided to take the long way home – walk around the block. That would take them by his house and they could see how “their” figs were doing. They could see through the fence that some of the figs were beginning to get ripe and some of the ripe ones on top of the tree were already being eaten by birds. To them it was a shame to let the birds ruin those beautiful black-blue colored figs. They decided that since they needed them more than the birds, they “help” Mr. Guajardo get rid of the figs growing on top of the trees where he could not reach them anyway. Their strategy was to sneak out of their house just before sunrise when everyone in Mr. Guajardo’s house was still asleep, pick the figs and get back to their house before anybody knew they were gone.
The next morning they heard Chita get up and start a fire in the kitchen, their brother Alejandro also got up, had something to eat and left the house. Chita went to the back yard and the two boys got up stealthily and walked out of the house. The sun was just about to rise when they got to the far wall of Mr. Guajardo’s fence near his house. They climbed up the fence pole next to the concrete fence and on top of the concrete fence. They walked on the fence and climbed on the roof of the house. They walked on the edge of the roof to where a branch of one of the fig trees just hung over the corner of the roof. They had forgotten to bring something to carry the figs and Gabriel was the only one with a shirt. He took off his shirt and began to pick and eat figs. In the middle of this process they froze still. “Who’s up there?” Mr. Guajardo was yelling from the ground looking straight at them. The boys stayed perfectly still in the high branches. They knew Mr. Guajardo couldn’t see and he certainly could not even make out their outline from that distance. “Who’s up there?” He kept on asking, but not a peep from the two boys. He started to go back home calling his wife and the two boys took advantage of it by climbing to the branch closest to the house, up the branch, on to the roof, back the way they came on the concrete fence and down the first pole where the wire portion of the fence began. As they started down the street running, they could hear Mr. Guajardo swearing at the distance.
They got home with a shirt full of figs and Chita was very upset with them because the shirt was all stained. “Where did you get these? She asked as she took a bite of a big ripped one. “From a fig tree branch hanging over the fence in Mr. Guajardo’s property,” they both answered with the lie they had rehearsed on the way home. “The birds were going to get them anyway so we got up early and beat them to them!” They both said at the same time. “Don’t let me catch you stealing anything,” she said as she walked away.
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