She trudged behind the old man over the rough clods of the field. Stout legs and bare feet, hers tough but his were beast-feet. He punched the earth with his planting stick and she dropped the yellow kernels into their dark womb of earth.
The spring morning had given over its chill to send a patch of heat spread across her sweater and threadbare dress. She was come to the field like a big girl, yet ached to see the older children wind down the dirt road from their staggered row of earthen huts to the ochre-walled school. "Someday,I will too," she thought...
Distracted thus, she stumbled. Grains of seed corn fell from her pouched apron and she shot a glance to see abuelo's whiskered jaw tighten. She flushed, stooping quickly to pick up the precious grain.
But he too had marked the children thronging to schoolyard. And as she sought the lost seeds in the broken ground she didn't see him turn and raise his hand over her.
Rough as a dog's paw the hand hovered and then lit where her gleaming black hair was cleaved by abuela's fine-toothed comb. With the gentleness of the hen on her eggs he felt the heat of the sun on the child's head as she staightened to seek his face.
His hooded eyes were glossy with moisture. The taciturn face under the perennial shade of his hat could not hide that he felt for her what she did for him.
She would plant now and she without longing. "Someday" would come soon enough for abuelo and soon enough for her too.