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    Gabriel
    Gabriel
    Gabriel
    Ebook124 pages1 hour

    Gabriel

    By Sarah Rebecca Kelly

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    About this ebook

    GABRIEL is based on an unmarried teenage couple who sailed to America from Mexico to give their unborn baby a richer life. Tony Valdez and Maria Angelina Delgado would have been street children of the early 1900s. They were the star entertainers of Magdalina's Cantina,owned by Magdalina Chavez,an affectionate, dominating woman.She would have forced Maria to have an abortion. They had to escape.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSarah Rebecca Kelly
    Release dateApr 10, 2011
    ISBN9781466132429
    Gabriel
    Author

    Sarah Rebecca Kelly

    Award winning author, Sarah Rebecca Kelly, was born between old fashioned Kansas and the toughest part of Texas, in the Panhandle of Oklahoma. Her specialty is ‘no tears’ animal stories. She now lives in Arizona with her adorable husband, Jake, along with a loveable bunch of “mutts” and the smartest cats ever collected in one place. Sarah is known for her close relationship with Jesus and her children and many grandchildren revel in her special love.

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      Book preview

      Gabriel - Sarah Rebecca Kelly

      GABRIEL

      Published by Sarah Rebecca Kelly on Smashwords

      Copyright © 2002 by Sarah Rebecca Kelly

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      * * * *

      GABRIEL

      Chapter One

      Back in 1953, two fourteen year old girls, Sarah Rebecca Kelly and her best friend, sat at a kitchen table, listening to an old woman. If I was writing a story, she said, I would not waste my pencil and five cent paper pad on an apple tree full of green apples, like those Everett boys. I would write about their father. Someone old enough to have earned a few calluses on his hands and the dashing scar on the side of Gabriel's handsome face. She began to tell about what had happened a long time ago. Then all of a sudden, in an age trembling voice, the harsh words she used, shattered the stillness into an ever-lasting memory.

      YOU MEXICAN SONOFABITCH! Because of you, my daughter is going to have a bastard! From deep in his grave, the old man’s voice screamed its way back into Reverend Gabriel Everett’s thoughts. After more than twenty years he could still feel the sting of the horsewhip across his face. You filthy Mexican! You shamed my daughter! You brought shame down on my household! With great effort, the country preacher shook his mind free of this painful memory. Early afternoon sunshine was filtering through new leaves arching above the damp familiar road. A most refreshing gust of pure excitement brushed away the scars of his imperfect past. He was hauling the trailer house, he had purchased that morning, behind his shiny truck. This blessed hour was not meant for such despicable thoughts, as so often surfaced at unexpected moments. Not now— when he and Pearl, the love of his youth, were finally able to put Texas behind them. Why should the failings they had learned to accept come flooding back to haunt him with such force. He shuddered, realizing the epithet which had been aimed at the conception of his firstborn son totally encompassed his own heritage: bastard. Only a few minutes before, Gabriel had reveled in anticipation of seeing the delight of his family, Pearl and their seven children. When he appeared in the gleaming new rig, they would be one step closer to fulfilling the promise. Miles sang by as he turned south toward the goat farm he and his foster father had carved out of the unyielding soil that now joined the old Tatum place.

      Yet, exactly at the corner of the gravel highway where he turned onto the dirt road leading to the barn, sorrowful thoughts began to crowd into his hard-earned happiness until they blotted out everything but grief. His thoughts were moody, pulling at each end of the emotional scale. He tried to separate his dark regrets from his fondest memories, remembering how Jack Everett had taught him the ways of the land and the special periods of contentment they had shared… when God saw fit to smile upon their efforts.

      He slowed at the ruins of Jack’s cabin trying to better remember the unusually tall, lanky dirt farmer who had raised him as his own… to bring back every weather-furrowed line of that leathery face, which rarely contorted into a full smile; to remember those huge, rein-calloused hands that taught by demonstration, comforted with a brusk roughness, and had delicately picked and placed wild flowers atop a lonely grave that he would not explain. Once in a while, not very often, Gabriel would catch Jack there, bending on one knee, in whispers, talking to God about the spirit of that dead person. He understood Jack had never married. So that spot of hallowed ground was not the grave of his wife. As a child growing up, his normal curiosity failed to breach the mystic of question. Still, the visits of the dusty Franciscan priest astride an equally dusty burrow, encouraged his mind to wonder, yet refused to provide the courage to invade an old man’s privacy.

      Only after the youth had finished his schooling at the village, a one room structure; strictly raised stiff-necked Southern Protestant, otherwise called hard-shell Baptist; and was ordained a minister of the Gospel at 18, that Jack revealed the history of the lonely grave. At once, Gabriel, now aware, ceased to probe. In reluctant acceptance, he lived with the sins of a dead mother he had never known … and it wrapped him in the travesty of being branded.

      Gabriel stopped the truck, his eyes sought out the grave. It was sunken, a mere indentation on a rough hillock; flowerless, though it was marked by a circle of stones that Gabriel, himself, had placed around it in periods of confused reverence. Peace came over him—blessed peace… Softened and forgiven, he turned the key in the ignition and guided the vehicle toward home.

      Tampico, Mexico, 1907, was more than a bustling seaport. It was a fisherman’s paradise, especially for the Norte Americano who came fully equipted to angle for huge, wily tarpan in the Rio Panuco; and also, they came laden down with a seemingly unending supply of U.S. cash dollars. Magdalena’s Cantina, owned and managed by that lady, herself, Magdalena Chavez, lay on a well beaten path between the docks and an even sleazier area to which those dollars drifted, in the way of salaries and gratuities from the pockets of tired deck hands who still had enough energy to enjoy the delicacies of the house. The towering facility was dirtier than some, cleaner than most. Magdalena prided herself on three things: food hotter than any of her competitors, cerveza colder, and a few girls categorized somewhere in the middle. Tony Valdez was not exactly born to Magdalena, but rather to one of her more transient entertainers. He followed the affectionate, brightly painted proprietress like an ever faithful puppy. She was equally attached. He was a precocious learner and could hustle with the best. In his early teens, he wrangled a guitar and played with the ferocity of a young man eager to be recognized. Exposed to such a world, his repertoire was representative of internationalism. At 14, because of his tall, slim bearing, he noticed the girls no longer giggled when he battered his heels in a flamenco unrecognizable by any Spaniard. They watched him with discerning interest. It came as no surprise to Magdalena when Tony moved from his crowded corner of her living quarters into a tiny shed tacked onto the back of the cantina. With a grin, and a sharp eye, he surveyed the window and his private entrance, little more than a gate. He used his carefully hoarded cache of coins to buy himself a gaudy shirt, a vest, black pants, a black hat and a pair of honest-to-God well-heeled boots, that would click and clop against the cantina floor at his royal command. He had made up his mind… He would become the greatest dancer who ever came out of Tampico. And when he found a way, he would travel splendidly, in ultimate style all around the world, entertaining and being entertained. Quite seriously, he intended to grow rich….

      It was a hot, murky Friday afternoon that Tony stood on the waterfront, struggling with himself for no apparent reason. He felt as quarrelsome as the boiling clouds that ushered in the rainy season, which in turn, ushered out the tourists and his extra earning power. For weeks, he had argued his way through regular chores, shrugged off little presents given by the girls for various favors granted and glowered at his own Magdalena’s efforts to cheer him up. Gentle pecks to his cheek conjured up many fantasies in her mind of glorious days gone by. Tony kicked his way passed the wheels of a vegetable cart and bulky pallets of lumber, copper and metal engine parts strapped tightly in place. He elbowed between stevedores as they crowed over exploits, bound to separate them from their hard-earned pesos. Garbage, oil, salt, fish and humanity reeked. This whole place reeked… Noise screeched from every corner of the great port, winches hoisting burgeoning loads vied with the dull, steady throb of tugboats and hawsers thudding against heavy wood planks. Music blared above boisterous voices, each in a different dialect, punctuated by unbelievable cursing. Tony begin to run.

      Not until he reached the area where nets from quaint fishing vessels hung, swaying in the sweat-drenched afternoon, did he slow his pace. Nearly invisible against the gray sandbags, sat a 12 year old girl, staring vacantly, out over the horizon. She paid little attention to the screaming seagulls as they dove for bits of waste on the choppy waves. Her dark, straight hair blew against her face, and a ragged dress was molded to her otherwise naked body. To Tony, who tried a hundred times in later months to recall the scene, there was no particular reason she had attracted his attention. She was just another skinny wharf rat, too young to pick up, too old to throw rocks

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