Earlier that day I had been on the roof at the back of the house and the whole world of the backyard was mine. The sun was just beginning to burn the dew off the sparse grass and the birds were still singing their morning songs. The grass had patches of green but was mostly brown and yellow with no fat on it. Bougainvilleas bursting with red leaves lined the chain link fence between us and our neighbors to the north. Laurelias, which were already dropping their white blossoms, lined the fence between our house and the dirt alleyway.  Several clothes pins strangled the wire on the clothes lines and 2 birds chased a dragon fly around the clothes pin bag that was filled to the top with pins, and was made in the shape of a small child's dress. The corners of the yard overflowed with wild cactus that my mother liked to cook every once in a while and birds liked to pick at every day. Between the cactus sprung Alovera plants that could cure a variety of ailments with their sticky blood. 

I could see the dirt road alley way behind the house which was barely wide enough for a car to go by. I could also see my brother Chucho's house behind the alley. To the south of his house was an empty lot where the shell of an old 1957 Plymouth Fury had lived there for years. We had to get through 2 foot tall dry weeds to get to it but it was always fun. Unless it was a spider day. Sometimes the spiders came out from under the seats and ran us off. But never on the very hot days. They stayed away on the very hot days. 

From the roof I could also see the chicken coop in the backyard of Gil and Chelita's house. They also had goats.  If I remembered to take rocks with me I would throw them at the chickens. I never hit one. I could hit the goats but they really didn't seem to care. People don't know this but chickens are fast. Very fast. When one of them got out one day my brother Albert and I chased it for a while in the alley and almost caught it before a stray dog got it.

Once when I was on the roof I saw my grandmother in the back yard. We all called her welita. Welita was scary. She had pulled back salt and pepper hair, hazel eyes, a chin from hell, and no teeth. She spoke only Spanish and when she did forces that I don't understand seemed to listened to her. I once saw her cure my neice of "susto" using an egg and some weeds from our yard. She rubbed both things on her body and muttered some Spanish words I did not understand. I just ran out of the house and tried to forget the whole thing.

The day I saw her in the backyard and she was in her bata. She was always in her bata. She had a chicken in one hand and an axe in the other. I saw her swing the chicken around by the neck until it stopped moving. Then put it on a tree stump that was next to the motor pump from la noria by the steps next the backdoor of our house. In one swing she chopped off the chicken's head and it's body dropped on the ground then got up and ran around once around in a small circle then fell to the ground again. She picked it up and then looked up and saw me. She had a headless chicken in one hand and an bloody axe in the other. That was the only time I saw her smile at me. A big toothless smile. The only thing I could think of was how on earth did she catch that chicken? 

There was no sign of welita today.

Today from the roof I saw my neighbors to the south of us. The Vargas family. I didn't know them that well but I was up on the roof when I heard the dad's truck pull up to the front of their house. He got out of the truck and slammed the door then went to the front porch where his wife was waiting for him. He started yelling at her and she yelled back. They were yelling in Spanish and I saw arms flying and fingers pointing. The wife started crying and went inside the house. I could see her through her living room window. She went up to her oldest son and started screaming at him. He yelled back at her and ran out of the living room to a room in the back of the house. I could see him through his bedroom window and he started yelling at his younger sister who I think was playing with his things. She threw something at him and screamed back at him and left the room. I saw her run out the back door to the back yard. She was real upset and crying and yelling at him from the back yard. As she stood there yelling their dog came up to her and rubbed himself up against her leg and she kicked it. The dog went yelping out the back gate and ran smack into the family cat who was just coming in from the alleyway after searching for food. The dog barked and snapped at the cat. The cat then proceeded to scratch the hell out of the dogs face and the dog went running and yelping down the alleyway. I learned two very important things this day. The first was that we should all be nice to each other because what we do and say to each other effects other people. The second, and more important, was stay the hell away from cats, they will mess you up. 

That was all this morning. I was out on the front porch now. I was ready to go. I had to runaway. I had promised mom I would not get back on the roof and somehow she found out about this morning and she was going to tell dad when he got home. I had to go.

I was ready but I needed money and supplies. I snuck back in the house and checked the sofas and under the beds and I came up with 17 cents. I figured that was enough to get me about 10 pieces of Dubble Bubble gum, 5 chocolate peanut butter cups, and some pixie sticks. I was set. I grabbed some old corn tortillas and a couple of carrots from the table. I stuck my hand into a couple of boxes of Gamesa brand cookies and grabbed some Barras de Coco, which my dad loved to dip in his coffee, and some pink and yellow Roscas cookies and put them all in one of my dad's handkerchiefs and walked out of the house. My mom was cooking in the kitchen and it smelled great. But I couldn't let freshly made flour tortillas and homemade charro beans stop me today. She had to know I was serious. 

After collecting my stuff I took one last look at our sala and the floor I had slept on for the last 8 years. I looked back at my mom in the kitchen and she didn't even look up. She was singing an old mexican song I didn't recognize. I walked out the front door and stopped in our front yard. I took a long cool drink from our old green beat up mangera that was watering our yard and headed out. 

I stepped out onto Trosper road in front of our house and headed north to the 5 mile line. Weber's field was a large weedy field across the road from our house. It was quiet and filled with sunflowers and the sun was about 2 hours from dropping behind Weber's house, which was at the far west end of the field. 

Trosper Road was scattered before me. This was the last year the road would be a fine talcum powdered dust. They would soon throw a heavier caliche mixed in with rocks. My mom and dad would no longer need to spend mornings outside with a water hose watering the road just to keep dust out of our house and off the clothes on the clothes line. People always walked this road. They were mostly coffee and cream colored people, and sometimes just coffee. Old ladies walking by in their old church shoes and handkerchiefs on their head, carrying those large mexican nylon see-through colorful bags with clothes or groceries. Old men with their canes and long sleeve shirts smoking thier Buglers and shuffling along the road leaving a cloud of dust behind them. They would all disappear in a few years when the new road would come. 

I walked past our neighbor Don Fermin's house and then crossed another small dirt road with no name. I was now in front of Don Polo's house. Don Polo was an old garbage man. His front and back yards were full of cool junk. Bicycle frames, piles of wood, metal barrels, old furniture, old car tires, and boxes full of stuff littered his yard. He was a big heavy set man with a flat top haircut who wore dark tinted prescription glasses and sat in old aluminum fold up chair in the front of his house all day long when he wasn't collecting trash. He kept a bucket of rocks next to him for the stray dogs and cats that roamed his junk for scraps or chasing possums and you could count on him to wave hello when you walked or drove by. Which was exactly what he did when I stopped in front of his house. I waved back and wondered if he knew I was running away. If he suspected he kept it to himself. I then saw him look past me towards 5 mile line road. I looked too and saw Don Pedrito, one of my other neighbors,  coming down the road. I started walking towards Don Pedrito and the 5 mile line road hoping he would just walk by without stopping to talk to me. This just wasn't my day.

Don Pedrito was nice old man who always walked the road in front of my house. I remember him always walking, smiling, and waving hello. He was a small man with a big hat and a thick mustache. His hair was dark with thick grey patches. He had the oldest and brightest smile I ever saw.   

He was smoking a Bugler and stopped when he got to me. "Como estas Betito?" he asked. I told him I was fine. He took off his old cowboy hat and wiped the sweat from his forehead. He put his left hand on my shoulder and leaned on me as he swatted some ants off his boot with his hat. "Adonde vas?" he asked. I didn't know what to say. When I couldn't answer he squinted at me like if I was getting farther away from him. He then looked over at Weber's field. He used his hat to shade out the sun from his eyes. He took a good long look at the field and then he looked around as if he was looking for someone else. He then looked at me again but with a disappointed face. I was beginning to believe I wouldn't get too far today. Don Pedrito then looked to the sunflowers and said "Que estas haciendo Robertito?". I asked him what he meant and he asked me to take a look at Weber's field and I did, but all I saw were sunflowers and weeds. The whole field was full of them this time of year. Two hawks or falcons flew in a holding pattern over the field looking for mice. He saw that I was confused and he explained that sunflowers, girasoles he called them, almost always look at the sun. They follow the sun everywhere, he said. They are the only flower that God gave a face to so they could see everything. He said that sunflowers look away from the sun for only three reasons. When there are many clouds they look anywhere they want and you will see many of them looking in all directions. When the wind blows hard they look away from the wind. But sometimes they look at us. Not all the time, he said, but sometimes "cuando andamos mal". They follow us. They take an interest in us once in a while. That is why they have faces. I looked at the sunflowers and they were looking right back at me. I could feel them looking at me though the sun was blaring right behind them. 

Don Pedrito stood there and waited for me to respond. I didn't know what to say. I then looked at him and asked him if, you know, perhaps they were looking at him? He wasn't impressed. He put his hat back on and knelt down on one knee and looked me in the eye. "Vete pa la casa Robertito", he said. He then got up, swatted the dirt off his knee with his hand and walked off. "Saludale a mi Chuyito", he said as he walked off. He always told me to say hi to my dad that way when we talked. I stood there and watched him walk away. Sweat was pouring down my back and I was hungry. I looked at the sunflowers again and they still looked me. I looked away. I just stood there in the road for awhile. A lizard with a cricket in its mouth darted past me and into Weber's field. 

Then I heard my name. I saw my brother Albert running down to me. He ran right past Don Pedrito and when he got to me he was holding a taco in his hand. It was fajitas on a freshly made flour tortilla and it smelled great. I could see the grease from the fajita dripping from the tortilla.  "Don't go Beto", he said as he handed me the taco. I took the taco and ate in a few quick bites without answering him. It was about the best taco I ever ate.  Afterwards I thought about it, then I looked at the sunflowers, and thought about it some more.  I looked at Albert and asked, "Did mom make charro beans?". "Yes", he said. I raced him home.

About half an hour later I was sitting on the front porch of the house eating a flour tortilla with butter and drinking cherry Kool-aid. I looked at Weber's field and saw that all the sunflowers had lost interest in me. They were looking at the sun as it turned into a fading orange ribbon behind Weber's house. 

I thought about Don Pedrito and the sunflowers. I wonder how far I would have gotten if he hadn't stopped me. I wondered if he and the sunflowers knew something I hadn't. What was waiting for me out there? Thanks to Don Pedrito, sunflowers, and an especially good fajita taco I would never know. 

Many years later I sat in the kitchen with my mother and asked her about that day. I asked her about the sunflowers and she said she didn't know anything about that and that Don Pedrito had all kinds of stories about everything. I asked her why she hadn't even known that I had run away. She said she had.

"How did you know?"

"Your welita told me."

"How did she know?"

"I don't know."

"Oh, then you sent Albert with the taco?"

"No, your welita did." 

"Who told her I took off?"

"I don't know. Maybe the sunflowers did." 

Mom and I laughed. I don't know if she was kidding though. I had no idea that welita knew that I had left,or, for that matter, even cared that I had. And how did she know a fajita taco would send me running back? It still can, by the way.

I remember many things from my childhood, but what I remember most is the feeling that there was so much more to the world than what I could see. There was magic everywhere and only the old people knew it.  I felt it all around me though. I had no words for it back then and can scarcely drum up a few words for it now that will do it any justice. It is something that left me a long time ago and even now it's a fading memory. 

I am over 50 and Mom is gone 10 years now. Welita died the year after I almost ran away. Don Pedrito after that. I am the "old people" now. I am the old people now and I am afraid sometimes that there is no magic left in this world. Or is there?