None of them expected it would be so difficult to read the books they found. Even Amanda, who Lisana said was real smart, kept scratching her head and making faces as she flipped through the pages.
The five of them sat at a long table on the fourth floor, each one looking for information from a different book. The college library was very quiet. Only a handful of college students sat at the tables or walked through the bookshelves.
From the start, Trino had enjoyed the silence of the large room. It was so different from the busy noise of school or the crowded commotion at his house. He thought about his mom, working in a place like this. He bet she’d enjoy the quiet, too.
“Look at this,” Hector grumbled, giving Trino’s arm a nudge. “There are no pictures in this book. Just pages and pages of writing—and the print is so small. How are we supposed to read a book like this in one afternoon?”
“We don’t have to read the whole book,” Lisana told him. “We just take notes on the information we find. Then we put it into our own words for the report.”
Jimmy held a thick green book about the Texas Revolution, but he hadn’t opened it yet. “How long does the report have to be?” he asked.
“Coach said about four pages,” Amanda said, then sighed. “I guess he figured that each partner could write two pages.”
“I never wrote two pages about anything,” Trino said out loud.
Everyone looked at Trino with surprised expressions.
He knew he could be honest with Lisana, but it was time to see if the others would accept him like he was. He stared at them one by one as he said, “Well, it’s true. I’m not big on school stuff like you guys.”
“They’re the ones big on school stuff.” Jimmy gestured with a thumb towards his sister. “Only my sister would use college books for a seventh-grade report. And when Coach paired Lisana up with Amanda, I thought, ‘Well, there’s a pair of A reports right there.’ These two are going to make the rest of us look bad.”
“Maybe Coach put us together because he knew we would be good partners. One of us wouldn’t do all the work because the other one is lazy,” Lisana said, then stuck her tongue out at Jimmy.
“I’m not lazy,” Jimmy replied. “See?” He finally opened the green book to the back and started going over the index. “I’ll look for the pages that mention Burnet, write down some notes, and call Mario tonight to read to him what I found. Happy?”
Amanda looked up from the book and said, “You know, Lisana, what’s making this so hard is that I don’t know what to put in the middle. Of course, Coach wants us to tell when Francisco Ruiz lived and died, but gosh—we’ve got a whole lifetime here. What do we put down and what do we leave out?”
“Didn’t Coach make you write down ten questions?” Trino asked Amanda.
“Ten questions?” She gave him a long-eyed look, as if Trino shouldn’t even talk to her.
Trino spoke to Lisana instead, “Coach told Hector and me to write down ten questions about Navarro. He told us that if we answered all our questions, the report would fall right into our hands.” He left out the part about getting in trouble.
“What kind of questions?” Lisana asked him, leaning slightly across the table.
Trino opened up his spiral notebook. He was embarrassed that it looked so crumpled and torn. He knew that Amanda thought he was a loser. Every time she had to speak to him she looked like she had a stomachache.
He found the page where he had written all his questions. He was glad that he had already written down some answers below them. “You told me that Navarro was one of the tejanos who signed the declaration, so I started there. Then I thought of other questions about him—my mom gave me some ideas too.”
He could see Lisana was reading what he had written down. “This is a good idea, Trino.” She picked up the notebook and showed it to Amanda. “Look, Amanda, we could do the same thing. We could follow Trino’s questions for Franscico Ruiz.”
“Not for everything,” Trino said. “Ruiz was Navarro’s uncle. Since he was older, he probably spent more time in Mexico than Texas.”
Lisana smiled. “How did you know that Ruiz and Navarro were related? I almost told you the other day, but I didn’t.”
“It didn’t surprise me when I found out. I figured if they were the only tejanos to sign the Texas declaration, there had to be a deeper connection. Familia. It made sense.” Trino gave Amanda his own long-eyed look. “Amanda, you’d need to be tejano like Lisana and me to get it.”
“I grew up in Texas, Trino. I know what familia means.”Amanda’s manner was as smooth as her voice. “Ruiz and Navarro loved Texas and wanted it to be independent. Just like my relatives who settled here.”
“Amanda’s mom traced her family heritage,” Lisana said. “Did you know that her relatives were part of Stephen F. Austin’s first colony? Isn’t that cool?”
“Cool,” Trino said, because he didn’t know what else to say. He had wanted to be mean to Amanda because of the way she looked at him, but he was the one who felt embarrassed. Amanda had famous relatives. Maybe that’s why she thought she was better than him.
Lisana pointed to something on Trino’s notebook. “Wow, Amanda. Look at this last question of Trino’s. What happened after Navarro signed the declaration? If we could find the answer to that question for Ruiz, wouldn’t it make a great ending paragraph?”
“Hey, wait a minute!” Hector said, suddenly pulling the notebook out of Lisana’s hand.
“These are our questions. You can’t copy us.”
“We don’t need your dumb old questions,” Amanda said, giving Hector one of those “you’re just a cockroach” looks she gave so well. “Lisana and I can figure things out on our own.”
Lisana lowered her eyes to the reference book in front of her. She drummed her fingers on the table. Amanda, Jimmy, Hector, and Trino seemed to follow her lead and began to read the books in front of them
The book Trino had been trying to read wasn’t a regular book. It was called a “thesis.” Amanda had told them that a “thesis” was a project for a graduate student—that her father did two of them to get his science degrees. She had told them that really good thesis projects were made into books. Her father’s was at his university in Austin in its library.
Trino felt very dumb as he tried to read something written by an advanced college student. He skipped a few pages, then would try to read again, but it still seemed hard to understand. He skipped a larger group of pages and looked down again. A line of Spanish caught his attention. “El tiempo hablará por todo.” Time will speak for everything. It was in quotation marks. Did Navarro say this?
Trino started reading the paragraphs above and below the Spanish sentence. He shifted in his chair and eagerly turned a page. He had found the section about the Texas Declaration of Independence. After reading and re-reading, Trino understood that after Navarro signed the paper, he said, “El tiempo hablará por todo.” It never occurred to Trino that Navarro spoke Spanish, but it made sense. What guts it must have taken for Navarro and his uncle to walk into a room of fifty men who didn’t speak the same language as they did!
Trino took his notebook back from Hector.
“Did you find something?” Hector asked, then yawned. He had leaned his head into his arm as he read from the book in front of him.
“I think I did. I’m just not sure what to do with it.” Trino took the nearest pen and started writing, El tiempo hablará por todo.
“What does that mean?” Hector asked, leaning closer to Trino.
“Don’t you speak Spanish?”
“Not much. What does that sentence mean?”
“El tiempo hablará por todo. It means ‘Time will speak for everything.’ According to this book, that’s what Navarro said after he signed the Texas Declaration of Independence,” Trino told Hector.
“Does your book say anything about Francisco Ruiz?” Amanda asked with an anxious voice. “Did Ruiz say anything after he signed the declaration?”
Trino looked back, tracing some sentences with his fingers. He looked up and shrugged. “There’s nothing about Ruiz on this page.” He saw Amanda’s eyes dull with disappointment. Since she was Lisana’s friend, he said. “When I’m finished, you can use this book, Amanda. I bet you’ll find something since you probably read faster than I do.”
“Thanks—Trino.” Amanda gave him a little smile.
“El tiempo hablará por todo. It’s almost like a line of a poem,” Lisana said.
Both Jimmy and Hector rolled their eyes as they said, “Aw, man—not poetry.”
Waving off the boys’ reaction, Lisana said to Trino, “Navarro’s words are really important. Could Amanda and I use them, too? I mean, we’ll tell everyone that Navarro said it—and I promise that we’ll tell Coach that you found the sentence in a book. When you think about it—that time will speak for everything—I mean—it’s so truthful. Sometimes when you’re first doing something, you just don’t know if it’ll work out. But Navarro signed the paper and truly believed that everything would work out well for the Texans. And it did.”
“I think it’s cool that Navarro and Ruiz, two tejanos that probably didn’t speak English, come into this room filled with Anglos—” He looked at Amanda, and suddenly slowed his words, “—and they all work together because they all want the same thing.”
Trino nodded, feeling very proud of what he had learned today. El tiempo hablará por todo. He looked at Hector. “Should we let Lisana and Amanda use the words I found?”
Hector chewed on his bottom lip a moment, then said, “I guess we can. Since Ruiz is related and everything. ‘Course they can bring us some brownies or cookies on Monday as payment. After all, we found such a—” He paused to change his voice, “—bee-you-tee-full line of poetry!”
Everyone laughed together at Hector’s silly voice, then Lisana copied down Navarro’s words into her notebook. Then she wrote Trino to the side of the Spanish words and drew a smiling face inside the o.
Irene and Trino’s mom had made cookies with a jar of the apricot jelly and the torn bag of flour that Trino had brought home from Mr. Epifaño’s store. The house smelled good, even though it was hotter than usual because the oven had been on.
Tía Reenie kept calling Trino “college boy,” but Trino didn’t mind because he had come home from the college feeling like a different person. He and Hector had more facts for their report, and he was starting to get excited about telling the class what he had learned about José Antonio Navarro, a real tejano hero. Amanda had started to act nicer, and he still felt really special that Lisana had written his name in her notebook.
But the best part had come when Jimmy had teased Trino in the library.
“Trino, your handwriting looks like a chicken scratched it out.”
Trino had glanced at Jimmy’s notebook and said, “Well, at least I know that freedom has two e’s in it.”
Later as they walked back to the bus stop, Hector had said, “Hey, Trino, trying to start a new style with those holes in your shoes?”
And once again, Trino managed to come back with a friendly put-down. “I’m just glad that my feet aren’t as big as yours, Hector. My whole family could live in your shoes.”
The joking around had made Trino feel like he was welcomed into their group.
Now that he was home, he enjoyed the jelly cookies his mom and her comadre had baked. Working in the library had made him very hungry.
“So what is the college like?” his mother asked, sitting down by Trino at the kitchen table. “Did you look around?”
“It’s pretty big, Mom. There are a lot of buildings. I can see why they need more help cleaning all those rooms. I only saw the library inside. It’s so quiet in there. And they keep it so clean. They have a lot of computers and books, of course,” Trino said.
“So does my godson think he’s going to go to college?” Tía Reenie asked. She stood at the oven, checking on the tray of cookies still baking. “Going to be a school boy now?”
Trino didn’t have to answer because Beto came inside crying. He had scraped his knee. Félix returned home a little later from his weekend with his father. The man had sent only a twenty-dollar bill for their mother.
Irene and his mother started talking about men who cheat their kids out of child support money and other stuff that Trino didn’t want to hear about. He grabbed two jelly cookies and went into his bedroom to read again what he had written down about Navarro. Imagining the past would be more fun than living in his present.
“What are you two up to? I haven’t seen you leave this table the entire period.” Coach Treviño stood behind the table where Trino and Hector had been copying their notes and turning them into a report.
“We’re writing the report,” Hector said. “This is the only time we can do it. I’ve got practice and Trino works after school.” He didn’t stop writing even as he spoke to his teacher.
“Trino, you work?” Coach asked him.
Trino put down his pen. His hand hurt from all the writing he had done in the past hour. He looked over his shoulder at Coach. “Just a couple of hours every day helping out a man in a store. His arm is broken.”
Coach Treviño smiled at Trino. “It probably doesn’t pay much, but I bet you feel good helping him.”
The job softened Trino’s guilty feelings because he didn’t help Mr. Epifaño when Rosca had beat him up. A little pocket money wasn’t bad either. Trino shrugged off Coach’s comment and picked up his pen again.
“El tiempo hablará por todo. Where did you find those words?” Coach’s voice sounded deep with suspicion.
Trino’s hand shook a little as he said, “In a book about Navarro.”
“In our library?”
“We went to the university library on Sunday, Coach,” Hector said, his voice ringing with pride. “Trino found those words in a thee—uh? What did Amanda call it?”
“A thesis,” Trino answered. He lifted his head, also feeling proud about what they had done on Sunday. He turned and looked at Coach Treviño. “A graduate student did his thesis on Navarro, and I read some of it. After Navarro signed the paper, this is what he said.” He almost laughed at the raised eyebrows and open-mouth expression on his teacher’s face.
“I’m impressed, guys. Really impressed that you both went out to the college library to get this information. You two are going to teach the class a lot when you give your report.”
“Will you give us extra credit since we used college books?” Hector asked, turning himself in his chair.
Coach Treviño chuckled, clapping one hand down on Trino’s and Hector’s shoulders.
“Guys, I’ll give you all the extra credit you want, any time you want. You just need to do the work.”
As their teacher walked away, Trino and Hector turned towards each other.
“All right!” they both said, and put their hands together in a high-five.
Friday after school, it wasn’t Mr. Epifaño who stood at the cash register. It was a younger man with a bushy moustache and big rabbit teeth. Trino knew it was Mr. Epifaño’s son. He had taken his father’s place for a short time after Mr. Epifaño had been hurt by Rosca.
“You must be the boy who helps my old man. Well, he won’t need you anymore.” His voice was rough and mean. “He’s at the clinic getting his cast off. I got to pick him up later. I’ll just close down the store for an hour. What else can I do?”
In the past few weeks, Trino had met several of Mr. Epifaño’s male relatives. Not one of them seemed to actually care about the old man. Mr. Epifaño worked hard in his store. Trino had seen it. And he was fair with his customers, even offering a little credit to people who were short on money. And after the first few days, Trino didn’t have to beg for his pay. Mr. Epifaño gave it to Trino before he left, and had even started giving him two nice dollars, not crummy bills or a handful of change.
“I can stay and watch the store,” Trino told Mr. Epifaño’s son. “If you show me how to work the cash—”
“You think I’m going to leave a punk like you in the store while I’m gone?” The man spit something brown onto the floor, a floor that Trino had mopped faithfully every day for the past month. “You think I’ll trust you with the cash register, boy? How stupid is that? Now, get out of here. No telling what you’ve been up to in this store the past few weeks!”
Trino’s body stiffened as his fists curled up at his side. He wanted to leap over the counter and punch his fist right into those rabbit teeth and break out every one of them.
Suddenly he remembered that look on Nick’s face when Mr. Caballero had tried to cheat him out of their tree money. He understood Nick’s rage, because, like Nick, Trino had worked hard for the job he was paid to do. Now this man, Mr. Epifaño’s son, was saying that Trino’s work didn’t deserve any kind of praise—that after all this time, Trino couldn’t be trusted to watch the store for an hour while the son went to bring his father back from the clinic?
Trino wasn’t going to let Mr. Epifaño’s son cheat him out of a job. Even if Mr. Epifaño’s arm was out of a cast, it didn’t mean the man couldn’t use some help at this store. And help wasn’t going to come from his son or nephew, that’s for sure.
He used all the strength of his anger to his advantage as he spoke to Mr. Epifaño’s son. “Tell Mr. Epifaño I will come back tomorrow.” Trino’s voice was clear and deadly serious. “Mr. Epifaño and I can talk about my job. You don’t have a say about it.”
The guy with the big teeth snarled at him like a mad javalina.
Trino turned on his heel and walked out of the store like a man who had better places to go.