Sample "And Kino drew back his arm and flung the pearl with all his might. Kino and Juana watched it go, winking and glimmering under the setting sun. They saw the little splash in the distance, and they stood side by side watching the place for a long time." John Steinbeck from The Pearl, 1947 Chapter One Lucio lived in the cluster of dusty shacks and metal Quonset huts on the outskirts of La Paz. For generations his people had lived, and worked, and died here. Rarely did a person born in this little Mexican village ever leave it, or even travel very far. This was the only home they ever knew for their entire life, and it was the world to them. Although the people were not all related by blood in a family sense, they were bound together by the blood that they spilled in the daily struggles to survive. And it was this that brought them even closer than any family. By chance they were thrown together, but of necessity they were united – against the tantrums of nature manifested in the violent storms that sometimes blew out of the Sea of Cortez, now called the Gulf of California. Periodically, as though willed by the vengeful gods, the winds ripped through the estuary, destroying the houses fashioned from rusted metal and corrugated tin, the rough wooden shacks made from packing crates, and left the people who had so little without homes. With great determination they battled the sea that was at once their friend, providing them with life and their enemy, often taking away the very lives of so many of these poor fishers. Together the people of La Paz celebrated life. They rejoiced in the marriages of their young, and were hopeful with the birth of each new child. And together they mourned, for they were no strangers to Death. Death was something that came and found them much too easily, often assuming the guise of accident and chance. Death was a figure that hovered in the dark corners of a room, who came to them in the form of sickness, starvation and in childbirth, or from the stinging bite of a snake. Death was a silent passenger who daily rode with them in their fishing boats, or appeared suddenly in the violent Gulf storms. Death waited in the jaws of the sharks that threatened their fragile lives forty feet below the surface of the blue waters, where the fishers dived for pearls. There, with only as much air as a man could hold in his lungs and a diving knife for protection, a pearl fisher struggled to tear Luck loose with the oysters that clung to the coral reefs. And because Death was always so near, the people weren't afraid, but they had learned to accept Death with resigned indifference, as the inevitable and sometimes welcome conclusion to a hard life. Then it was the tearful women of the village who carefully washed and wrapped the dead, preparing them for burial. It was the stoical men who carried their dead to the sacred ground of the cemetery behind the large church. And the tired old priest sprinkled holy water with indifference on the crude wooden coffins, and said his mumbled magic prayers that liberated their souls and elevated them to a better, easier eternal life. Luck was something real and important to these people, as real to them as their religion, a curious blend of Christianity mingled with the old Indian beliefs from the time before the strangers came to change their lives forever. To them, Luck was as tangible and palpable as the Christian God who lived inside their church. So daily the people prayed to the infant Jesus to send Luck on a visit whenever they marked their numbers for the lottery. They lit candles and recited their magic spells to coax the crucified Christ to move God the Father and the other ancient gods to send Luck to the sandy floor of the Gulf whenever they dived for pearls. This trinity of Luck, Religion and Superstition was second only to the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. It colored every facet of the people's being, and it gave meaning to their difficult lives. But even if the gods refused their requests for fortune, the people still prayed for Luck, for they knew that often it was only by courting Luck that Death could be avoided. And in their deepest desperation, the people of La Paz always maintained their impossible dreams, and their fervent hopes. They said their prayers of being some day blessed, of finding a pearl that might give some comfort to their difficult lives and change them for the better. And because this was the way of life in La Paz, it was also how these people viewed the world. Lucio was just one fisherman in La Paz. He was a young man, strong, and dependable. Everyone in the village knew that he was someone to be counted on whenever there was hard work to be done, whenever there was the need of another pair of hands, or a strong back. And Lucio was handsome too. In the day time, when he wandered by the houses of his neighbors on his way to the beach, or into the city to sell his pearls to the buyers, all the little girls giggled and called to him when he passed, "Good morning, Lucio.” “How are you today, Lucio?" The young women, who were more reserved, smiled shyly if they caught his glance, or they hid their faces behind lace shawls as he went by them, and they blushed behind their hands to cover their embarrassment that Lucio might be able to read their secret thoughts from their eyes. Often at nighttime under the security of darkness, when the only sounds were those of sleep, it was Lucio who entered the dreams of these same young women. So now when they saw him pass in the daylight it made them blush even more. But as Lucio walked by he always held his head high and kept his eyes focused straight ahead. This was done not out of any sense of pride or conceit, but out of innocence. For Lucio was a simple man who never considered what effect he might have on the hearts of these young daughters of his neighbors. He did not give this matter a single thought, as he hardly gave a thought to any of those who always thought of him. However, there was one young woman, Corina, the only daughter of Ernesto and Heléna, who was special to him. When they were children he took an interest in Corina and protected her when they played together. Then, when he was older and had to give up being a child to learn fishing with his father, Lucio often looked for her on the beach where she remained with the other young girls. And Corina watched Lucio as well, worrying him safely home on stormy days, waiting for his boat to return. After the death of Lucio's father, whose life was taken by the sharks in a dive for pearls, and after the death of his mother from her sorrow, Lucio was alone in the world. Then it was Ernesto who became like his second father, completing Lucio's education, teaching him the secrets that would enable him to hold his breath just a little longer to take more oysters on every dive. And it was Ernesto's wife Heléna and their budding flower, Corina, who brought Lucio food to keep up his strength, and provided some solace for his sorrow, until he was able to deal with his great loss. It was no wonder that this same girl, Corina, having grown into a beautiful young woman, who often found her way into Lucio's secret thoughts and into his plans for the future. He knew that some day, when he picked someone to marry, it would be no one but Corina, if she would have him. But Lucio also knew that marriage could come only when he had the money to support a wife and the means to provide for the children that would inevitably follow. So, for the present, Lucio put the thought of Corina and the dream of marriage in the back of his mind. And although he felt the occasional loneliness of a bachelor, and sometimes he yearned for the warmth and softness of a wife who would comfort his nights, Lucio was glad most often that the only worries that filled his head were for his own survival, and for the illusive pearls that he hunted. For the present, at least, his only concern had to be for himself. Like the other pearl fishers, Lucio prayed to Our Lady of Loreto, the Virgin Mother of the Christ Child, to intercede on his behalf with her Son for the good fortune to find just one pearl to change his life. Sometimes, before a dive Lucio threatened and sometimes he pleaded directly with God the Father, and with all his ancient gods, bargaining with them for good luck. Lucio made a solemn promise that if his prayers were answered he would tithe and donate a tenth of his fortune to the church in La Paz, and that he would make generous contributions to the poor as well. Lucio knew that this was just a fancy, as remote a chance as picking the winning numbers in the national lottery. But there was a part of him that secretly believed it could all come to pass, and that thought gave Lucio some hope. La Paz was known for the beauty of its pearls, collected and used by the Aztec artisans in their work even before Columbus arrived in the New World more than five hundred years ago. When the plunderers came over the blue water in their floating houses, with their horses and their gunpowder and their new religion, they were at first welcomed as gods. And in return these gods conquered the people who greeted them with open arms. They stripped the Gulf of its treasure, sending back in their strange wooden ships great fortunes of gold, silver and pearls to adorn the robes of Spanish kings, of European nobles, and of Catholic popes. The gold and silver were pure and the price of pearls gathered at the cost of the Indian lives, which were expendable, was cheap. For centuries the strangers enslaved and exploited these people and dominated the land and sea. But even after the stranglehold of Spanish colonialism was broken, the next onslaught that swept south along the Baja into La Paz came from corrupt government officials in far away Mexico City. And nothing changed for the pearl fishers, except the faces of the strangers who lined their pockets with wealth and almost depleted what remained of the pearls. In the last remaining years of the 20th Century, the invasion came in the form of big North Americano petroleum companies in search of cheap oil to fuel the fancy cars of gringos in the U.S. They were followed by a flood of manufacturers eager for cheap laborers to assemble their machines or sew their labels on clothing and sneakers that would sell for a fortune in the North. Prosperity came to the Baja, as up and down the coast mechanical monsters drilled the sea and tore up the land. But it was prosperity only for the strangers, for those who owned the factories. The vacation homes, the new condominiums were built for the gringo businessmen who ran these factories and needed places to escape the pressures of their lives. It was prosperity as well for the officials in Mexico City, eager to line their pockets with easy money and bribes. They passed the laws to protect these new conquistadors, again handing over land they didn't own and sacrificing the lives of people they didn't know. And La Paz became the new Mecca for hordes of speculators who, like Midas, hoped to turn cheap land into gold. Soon vacationing gringos clogged the barren streets, fast food chains mushroomed beside the quaint silver and pottery shops, and the once pure waters of the Gulf filled with dead fish and pollution. Foul oil and gasoline from industrial spills and the many pleasure boats that put into the estuary smothered the young oysters in their beds and threatened to destroy all that once had been. Now Lucio and his people, even in the middle of such wealth, were lucky if they could wrestle from the sea just enough pearls to survive. Lucio padded over the rubble that covered the beach. Through the thin rubber soles of his sandals, made from the automobile tires discarded by the new gringo factory, he could feel hundreds of years of history in the generations of broken oyster shells that mixed with the coarse beach sand. Lucio stopped to remove from his sandal a piece of purple shell, rounded and smoothed and made almost translucent by the countless eons of waves that washed into the estuary. He examined it with the intense interest of an expert in such shells, trying to determine its age, wondering if, perhaps, it was part of an oyster that once contained a great pearl. And he considered the man who might have pulled this shell from the sea, and what his life had been like. He wondered if the man might have been related to Lucio in some way. Maybe, he thought, the shell had simply been carried by a hungry gull that dropped the oyster, causing it to smash on the rocks. Often had he seen these birds cheat starvation by such cleverness. Lucio turned the shell over again in his hand, and then he tossed it away. Carefully he made his way toward the place where he and his neighbors beached the brightly colored fishing boats with their proud, high bows and the short, sturdy masts that could support a small homemade canvas sail. Such boats could easily pull a man over the breakers to the blue waters beyond, where the oysters and the fish played out the drama of their lives. Lucio's boat lay on the beach above the dark water line of seaweed and foam that marked high tide. Like the other boats, it was painted and plastered, layer upon layer, with the secret formula of preservative known only to the fishermen of La Paz. The secret was something that had been handed down, over the generations, from father to son. Though each of the boats might appear to be the same to the inexperienced eye, each one was different. Each boat had a life, a soul and a personality of its own. Every fisherman took special pride in caring for his boat, which was, at once, his livelihood and his life, his identity and his status in La Paz. And so the fishermen treated them with tenderness and love and respect. The gleaming surface of Lucio's canoe was painted and decorated with unique and ancient designs that identified this boat as his own. Once it had belonged to his grandfather, Kino, a pearl fisher who was well known and well respected in La Paz. Even nearly a century later, the stories were told of Kino, his wife, Juana, who was Lucio's grandmother, and their first child, Coyotito. They were an important part of the history of the village. And people still told stories of how long ago, the young Kino had once found the "Pearl of the World," the largest, most perfect, most beautiful pearl ever taken from the Gulf waters, a pearl easily worth a hundred thousand pesos. They told how Kino's prayers of being a rich man, of having a better life for his family, had been answered. And they told how it had all been taken from him by the evil that came from the city. There were those old ones still alive who said they remembered, though they were only children then, how Kino, in a final act of defiance against the corruption that had ruined his life, threw his great pearl back into the Gulf in full view of the entire village. These same old ones also told how Kino and Juana's first-born child, Coyotito, had been killed by the evil unleashed from the great pearl. They told how Chance had sent a bullet through the top of the baby's head. These stories endured in the people's hearts, and in their minds. And because they were told over and again, they had become legend in the village, mythical, a central part of the lore for the people who lived there. The story of Kino and Juana's tragedy was taken as a warning to everyone: "Be careful what you wish for. The gods just may give you what you ask." Still there were others who regarded it as a sign of hope. Lucio knew all of the stories, and he knew the old place at the back of the holy cemetery where worn stone crosses marked the graves of Kino, Juana, and the baby Coyotito, as well as the others who came after, including the recent graves of his own father and mother. Lucio patted the smooth sides of his boat as one might caress the flank of a horse, or the arm of a loved one. He knew every inch of this boat that had come to him from Kino through his father. Lucio knew even the place at the bottom where once a hole had been broken through. Lucio's father had told his young son the story many times. How the hole had been made by dark forces to prevent Kino and Juana from leaving La Paz with the great pearl to get a fair price for it in Mexico City, more than a thousand miles from La Paz. That was long before Lucio's father had been born. And even though the surface of the canoe had been repaired and restored with years of the secret plaster, Lucio could still trace with his fingers the edge of the break, like the almost faded scar of a wound long healed. Lucio often thought about these stories, and how his life might have been different if Kino had sold his "Pearl of the World" and kept his fortune of a hundred thousand pesos. Then Lucio would have been born into wealth and lived in a real house in the city. It was a pleasant daydream, one that brought a smile to Lucio's face, as he imagined his life as it could have been, but he couldn't afford the luxury of indulging these fantasies for long. Sobering reality told him if he wanted to survive, if he wanted to eat, he had work to do. Lucio checked to see that all his equipment was ready for the day's fishing – his old net, repaired many times, his harpoon with a place at the end to tie a line so it wouldn't be lost in the sea or in the back of some large fish, his diving rock and basket, the coils of rope that were his life line. He felt in his belt for his knife. And though some part of Lucio believed that a man was ultimately powerless to change his fate, another part of him knew he had to be prepared for all the possibilities. A pearl fisher didn't expect pearls. They came by luck. And Lucio knew that Luck was a spoiled child, a fickle lover. The illusive pearls, if there might be any at all, were only faint promise of a man's future. Not every oyster contained a pearl and not every pearl was a good one. A pearl fisher in possession of a pearl then had to sell it to the buyers in the city, and a pearl fisher was at the mercy of these men who were stingy parting with their money. Sometimes, Lucio knew, in order to change his luck when it was bad, in order to find a pearl when one had eluded him for a long time, he must forget about pearls completely. Sometimes, he knew, he must turn his attention to fishing with a net or a harpoon and turn his back on Luck and on the reluctant pearls. As pleasant as it was to dream of being a rich man, Lucio knew it was better having food to put in his stomach. A fish could be eaten, and some, if the catch was big enough, might be sold. Even just a single fish gave a man life, at least for another day. To Lucio that was reality. Already the sun was a red blister on the blue sky. Lucio shaded his eyes with his hand and he could see the masts and the sails of some of the other fishers off in the distance. He bent his back against the side of his boat and strained until it grated across the sand and shells, inched along the beach and came alive when it felt the water. Expertly he set the mast and hoisted the sail. The wind that came across the land and carried with it the strange smells from the city filled the orange and blue striped canvas, patched over and again, and pulled the tiny boat and its pilot over the breakers and toward the sun. The prow cut the calm water like the blade of a sharp knife slices through a man's soft skin. Lucio pressed against the tiller and guided his boat to a place about a half-mile from the shore where the water formed a deep basin. It was not a place he could take oysters because the water was too deep to dive, but it was ideal for fishing. Often the larger fish chased the little ones into the bottom of the pool and trapped them there, feeding until they were sated. The pool was a place of death for the little fish, and it was a place of life as well, for the big fish and for a skillful fisherman who could fill his boat with only a few casts of his net. Lucio steadied himself and he set the sea anchor that would catch the water and keep the boat from drifting too far. He turned from the late morning sun toward the shore and the light threw his shadow across the top of the water. Lucio reached into the bottom of the boat for his casting net. The circular net was weighted along the edges so it could be thrown. A coiled rope, long enough for casting, connected with another that formed the circumference of the net like a lasso, so that the open net could easily be drawn closed like the top of a sack. It was an ancient and efficient device that had changed little over the centuries, a deadly tool in the hands of a skilled fisherman. Opened, it covered a vast expanse of water. Closed, it became a trap, ensnaring whatever had the misfortune of swimming below the surface in the path of the lethal net. Lucio felt the boat move under his feet as the gentle swells rose and fell. Off to his right a scatter of silver fish broke the surface of the water. He knew the larger fish were feeding somewhere below him, sending these sweet and tender little ones to the surface. Once more Lucio checked the net, and he looped the end of the casting rope around his wrist. He couldn't afford to lose this net. Then he pulled back his arm and prepared to make his first cast into the center of the school of panicked fish. His eye caught the movement of a long, dark shadow deeper in the water, and he snapped his arms with the practiced timing of an expert. The weighted net arched out and hung briefly in the air, a perfect circle, before it fell. At the same time a shark's dorsal fin sliced through the water toward the center of its panicked prey. The net landed in the very path of the big fish, causing the shark to alter its course directly toward Lucio's boat. The shark hit the boat broadside with surprising power and the force of the impact tumbled Lucio into the churning water among the panicked fish. He tried desperately to regain the surface, to lift himself into the boat and out of danger, but the casting rope that enabled him to pull in the fishing net had tightened around Lucio's wrist. He fumbled with the wet rope, but the slipknot wouldn't yield. The net was caught around the shark's nose, snagged in the teeth of its gaping mouth. The startled, powerful fish turned and dragged Lucio deeper under the water, trailing him like the tail attached to the end of a child's kite. Normally Lucio could hold his breath for more than three minutes while he searched for pearls, but he had managed only a short breath before the shark pulled him down and the waters closed around him. Frantically he struggled to reach the knife in his belt to cut himself free. The pain was intense as the power of the startled fish almost pulled Lucio's arm from its socket, and the taut rope tightened even more around his wrist, stopping the flow of blood to his hand. The shark picked up speed, taking Lucio lower and lower to where the filtered light formed eerie shadows on the sand. The pressure pressed in on Lucio's ears and made his lungs feel as if they would explode. Lucio slashed desperately with his knife, but another sudden tug from the shark jerked out his arm just as the sharp blade sliced through rope and skin. Lucio's heart was pounding and the constricted flow of his blood, suddenly released when the rope was severed, pumped like a dark cloud into the water. The effect on the shark was immediate. It seemed to hesitate for just a second, scenting the water, and then made a wide turn, to find this new source of food. The shark came up from below, directly at Lucio, with its craggy mouth opened wide. Its dark, dead eyes were visible through the net that was still draped over the shark's face and was caught in the triangular teeth. Lucio jabbed at one eye with his knife and pulled on the fishing net with his other hand, trying to tighten it around the shark's jaws, or change its direction. Blood from his wound washed into the shark's mouth, jolting it like an electric shock or the first sharp taste of alcohol. The shark jerked to the left as Lucio swam down and to the right, heading for the bottom. Trailing blood, Lucio scrambled into a small grotto between two large rocks, just ahead of the lunging shark. Lucio's head ached. His chest felt compressed, as under a huge weight, and his lungs were ready to burst. He was dizzy from the lack of oxygen and the loss of blood. He could feel his vision fading and his mind clouding. He knew he had only a few more seconds before he would drown. With every ounce of strength that remained, Lucio prayed frantically to the Virgin Mary, to his dead parents, to Kino, Juana and to all his dead relatives. And then a little miracle happened in the form of a bright orange fish that swam directly into the path of the frenzied shark. Lucio watched as the frustrated predator took the fish with a snap of its huge jaws, shaking it viciously and breaking it in two. Then, as suddenly as it had come, the shark swam away and disappeared into the shadows. Lucio whispered a quick prayer of thanks to God the Father and the other ancient gods of his ancestors. Looking down, he saw the reflection of something shiny on the sandy bottom between the rocks where he was hidden. He grabbed for it and closed the hand of his injured arm around the object. His legs kicked off the sandy bottom like a taut spring, and Lucio swam frantically for the surface, his lungs screaming for air. When his head broke through the water he saw that his boat was less than twenty yards away. In seconds he had pulled himself over the side and he was safe. With the blood still pumping from the gash in his arm, Lucio wrapped it with a piece of fishing line he found on the bottom of the boat, tying off the knot with his teeth. He watched as the flow of blood eventually slowed and almost stopped. It was then that Lucio saw the fist of his injured arm was still tightly closed. Slowly and painfully he had to pry open his fingers with his other hand. Lucio stared in disbelief and his mouth dropped open with the surprise of what he saw. In the bloody palm of his hand he held a large and beautiful pearl, one such as Lucio had never seen before. This was the pearl of his dreams. A small stream of Lucio's blood trickled down his arm, and it mixed with the essence of the pearl, so that the two, Lucio and the pearl, became one, before his eyes closed and he passed out. © 2001 Joseph E. Scalia from Pearl A New Chapter in an Old Story (BACK)

Sample

"And Kino drew back his arm and flung the pearl with all his might.

Kino and Juana watched it go, winking and glimmering under the setting

sun. They saw the little splash in the distance, and they stood side by side

watching the place for a long time." John Steinbeck from The Pearl, 1947

Chapter One

Lucio lived in the cluster of dusty shacks and metal Quonset huts on the outskirts of La Paz. For generations his people had lived, and worked, and died here. Rarely did a person born in this little Mexican village ever leave it, or even travel very far. This was the only home they ever knew for their entire life, and it was the world to them.

Although the people were not all related by blood in a family sense, they were bound together by the blood that they spilled in the daily struggles to survive. And it was this that brought them even closer than any family. By chance they were thrown together, but of necessity they were united – against the tantrums of nature manifested in the violent storms that sometimes blew out of the Sea of Cortez, now called the Gulf of California. Periodically, as though willed by the vengeful gods, the winds ripped through the estuary, destroying the houses fashioned from rusted metal and corrugated tin, the rough wooden shacks made from packing crates, and left the people who had so little without homes. With great determination they battled the sea that was at once their friend, providing them with life and their enemy, often taking away the very lives of so many of these poor fishers.

Together the people of La Paz celebrated life. They rejoiced in the marriages of their young, and were hopeful with the birth of each new child. And together they mourned, for they were no strangers to Death. Death was something that came and found them much too easily, often assuming the guise of accident and chance. Death was a figure that hovered in the dark corners of a room, who came to them in the form of sickness, starvation and in childbirth, or from the stinging bite of a snake. Death was a silent passenger who daily rode with them in their fishing boats, or appeared suddenly in the violent Gulf storms. Death waited in the jaws of the sharks that threatened their fragile lives forty feet below the surface of the blue waters, where the fishers dived for pearls. There, with only as much air as a man could hold in his lungs and a diving knife for protection, a pearl fisher struggled to tear Luck loose with the oysters that clung to the coral reefs. And because Death was always so near, the people weren't afraid, but they had learned to accept Death with resigned indifference, as the inevitable and sometimes welcome conclusion to a hard life.

Then it was the tearful women of the village who carefully washed and wrapped the dead, preparing them for burial. It was the stoical men who carried their dead to the sacred ground of the cemetery behind the large church. And the tired old priest sprinkled holy water with indifference on the crude wooden coffins, and said his mumbled magic prayers that liberated their souls and elevated them to a better, easier eternal life.

Luck was something real and important to these people, as real to them as their religion, a curious blend of Christianity mingled with the old Indian beliefs from the time before the strangers came to change their lives forever. To them, Luck was as tangible and palpable as the Christian God who lived inside their church. So daily the people prayed to the infant Jesus to send Luck on a visit whenever they marked their numbers for the lottery. They lit candles and recited their magic spells to coax the crucified Christ to move God the Father and the other ancient gods to send Luck to the sandy floor of the Gulf whenever they dived for pearls. This trinity of Luck, Religion and Superstition was second only to the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. It colored every facet of the people's being, and it gave meaning to their difficult lives. But even if the gods refused their requests for fortune, the people still prayed for Luck, for they knew that often it was only by courting Luck that Death could be avoided.

And in their deepest desperation, the people of La Paz always maintained their impossible dreams, and their fervent hopes. They said their prayers of being some day blessed, of finding a pearl that might give some comfort to their difficult lives and change them for the better. And because this was the way of life in La Paz, it was also how these people viewed the world.

Lucio was just one fisherman in La Paz. He was a young man, strong, and dependable. Everyone in the village knew that he was someone to be counted on whenever there was hard work to be done, whenever there was the need of another pair of hands, or a strong back. And Lucio was handsome too. In the day time, when he wandered by the houses of his neighbors on his way to the beach, or into the city to sell his pearls to the buyers, all the little girls giggled and called to him when he passed, "Good morning, Lucio.” “How are you today, Lucio?"

The young women, who were more reserved, smiled shyly if they caught his glance, or they hid their faces behind lace shawls as he went by them, and they blushed behind their hands to cover their embarrassment that Lucio might be able to read their secret thoughts from their eyes. Often at nighttime under the security of darkness, when the only sounds were those of sleep, it was Lucio who entered the dreams of these same young women. So now when they saw him pass in the daylight it made them blush even more.

But as Lucio walked by he always held his head high and kept his eyes focused straight ahead. This was done not out of any sense of pride or conceit, but out of innocence. For Lucio was a simple man who never considered what effect he might have on the hearts of these young daughters of his neighbors. He did not give this matter a single thought, as he hardly gave a thought to any of those who always thought of him.

However, there was one young woman, Corina, the only daughter of Ernesto and Heléna, who was special to him. When they were children he took an interest in Corina and protected her when they played together. Then, when he was older and had to give up being a child to learn fishing with his father, Lucio often looked for her on the beach where she remained with the other young girls. And Corina watched Lucio as well, worrying him safely home on stormy days, waiting for his boat to return.

After the death of Lucio's father, whose life was taken by the sharks in a dive for pearls, and after the death of his mother from her sorrow, Lucio was alone in the world. Then it was Ernesto who became like his second father, completing Lucio's education, teaching him the secrets that would enable him to hold his breath just a little longer to take more oysters on every dive. And it was Ernesto's wife Heléna and their budding flower, Corina, who brought Lucio food to keep up his strength, and provided some solace for his sorrow, until he was able to deal with his great loss.

It was no wonder that this same girl, Corina, having grown into a beautiful young woman, who often found her way into Lucio's secret thoughts and into his plans for the future. He knew that some day, when he picked someone to marry, it would be no one but Corina, if she would have him. But Lucio also knew that marriage could come only when he had the money to support a wife and the means to provide for the children that would inevitably follow.

So, for the present, Lucio put the thought of Corina and the dream of marriage in the back of his mind. And although he felt the occasional loneliness of a bachelor, and sometimes he yearned for the warmth and softness of a wife who would comfort his nights, Lucio was glad most often that the only worries that filled his head were for his own survival, and for the illusive pearls that he hunted. For the present, at least, his only concern had to be for himself.

Like the other pearl fishers, Lucio prayed to Our Lady of Loreto, the Virgin Mother of the Christ Child, to intercede on his behalf with her Son for the good fortune to find just one pearl to change his life. Sometimes, before a dive Lucio threatened and sometimes he pleaded directly with God the Father, and with all his ancient gods, bargaining with them for good luck. Lucio made a solemn promise that if his prayers were answered he would tithe and donate a tenth of his fortune to the church in La Paz, and that he would make generous contributions to the poor as well. Lucio knew that this was just a fancy, as remote a chance as picking the winning numbers in the national lottery. But there was a part of him that secretly believed it could all come to pass, and that thought gave Lucio some hope.

La Paz was known for the beauty of its pearls, collected and used by the Aztec artisans in their work even before Columbus arrived in the New World more than five hundred years ago. When the plunderers came over the blue water in their floating houses, with their horses and their gunpowder and their new religion, they were at first welcomed as gods. And in return these gods conquered the people who greeted them with open arms. They stripped the Gulf of its treasure, sending back in their strange wooden ships great fortunes of gold, silver and pearls to adorn the robes of Spanish kings, of European nobles, and of Catholic popes. The gold and silver were pure and the price of pearls gathered at the cost of the Indian lives, which were expendable, was cheap. For centuries the strangers enslaved and exploited these people and dominated the land and sea.

But even after the stranglehold of Spanish colonialism was broken, the next onslaught that swept south along the Baja into La Paz came from corrupt government officials in far away Mexico City. And nothing changed for the pearl fishers, except the faces of the strangers who lined their pockets with wealth and almost depleted what remained of the pearls.

In the last remaining years of the 20th Century, the invasion came in the form of big North Americano petroleum companies in search of cheap oil to fuel the fancy cars of gringos in the U.S. They were followed by a flood of manufacturers eager for cheap laborers to assemble their machines or sew their labels on clothing and sneakers that would sell for a fortune in the North. Prosperity came to the Baja, as up and down the coast mechanical monsters drilled the sea and tore up the land. But it was prosperity only for the strangers, for those who owned the factories. The vacation homes, the new condominiums were built for the gringo businessmen who ran these factories and needed places to escape the pressures of their lives. It was prosperity as well for the officials in Mexico City, eager to line their pockets with easy money and bribes. They passed the laws to protect these new conquistadors, again handing over land they didn't own and sacrificing the lives of people they didn't know. And La Paz became the new Mecca for hordes of speculators who, like Midas, hoped to turn cheap land into gold. Soon vacationing gringos clogged the barren streets, fast food chains mushroomed beside the quaint silver and pottery shops, and the once pure waters of the Gulf filled with dead fish and pollution. Foul oil and gasoline from industrial spills and the many pleasure boats that put into the estuary smothered the young oysters in their beds and threatened to destroy all that once had been. Now Lucio and his people, even in the middle of such wealth, were lucky if they could wrestle from the sea just enough pearls to survive.

Lucio padded over the rubble that covered the beach. Through the thin rubber soles of his sandals, made from the automobile tires discarded by the new gringo factory, he could feel hundreds of years of history in the generations of broken oyster shells that mixed with the coarse beach sand. Lucio stopped to remove from his sandal a piece of purple shell, rounded and smoothed and made almost translucent by the countless eons of waves that washed into the estuary. He examined it with the intense interest of an expert in such shells, trying to determine its age, wondering if, perhaps, it was part of an oyster that once contained a great pearl. And he considered the man who might have pulled this shell from the sea, and what his life had been like. He wondered if the man might have been related to Lucio in some way. Maybe, he thought, the shell had simply been carried by a hungry gull that dropped the oyster, causing it to smash on the rocks. Often had he seen these birds cheat starvation by such cleverness. Lucio turned the shell over again in his hand, and then he tossed it away.

Carefully he made his way toward the place where he and his neighbors beached the brightly colored fishing boats with their proud, high bows and the short, sturdy masts that could support a small homemade canvas sail. Such boats could easily pull a man over the breakers to the blue waters beyond, where the oysters and the fish played out the drama of their lives.

Lucio's boat lay on the beach above the dark water line of seaweed and foam that marked high tide. Like the other boats, it was painted and plastered, layer upon layer, with the secret formula of preservative known only to the fishermen of La Paz. The secret was something that had been handed down, over the generations, from father to son. Though each of the boats might appear to be the same to the inexperienced eye, each one was different. Each boat had a life, a soul and a personality of its own. Every fisherman took special pride in caring for his boat, which was, at once, his livelihood and his life, his identity and his status in La Paz. And so the fishermen treated them with tenderness and love and respect.

The gleaming surface of Lucio's canoe was painted and decorated with unique and ancient designs that identified this boat as his own. Once it had belonged to his grandfather, Kino, a pearl fisher who was well known and well respected in La Paz. Even nearly a century later, the stories were told of Kino, his wife, Juana, who was Lucio's grandmother, and their first child, Coyotito. They were an important part of the history of the village. And people still told stories of how long ago, the young Kino had once found the "Pearl of the World," the largest, most perfect, most beautiful pearl ever taken from the Gulf waters, a pearl easily worth a hundred thousand pesos. They told how Kino's prayers of being a rich man, of having a better life for his family, had been answered. And they told how it had all been taken from him by the evil that came from the city.

There were those old ones still alive who said they remembered, though they were only children then, how Kino, in a final act of defiance against the corruption that had ruined his life, threw his great pearl back into the Gulf in full view of the entire village. These same old ones also told how Kino and Juana's first-born child, Coyotito, had been killed by the evil unleashed from the great pearl. They told how Chance had sent a bullet through the top of the baby's head. These stories endured in the people's hearts, and in their minds. And because they were told over and again, they had become legend in the village, mythical, a central part of the lore for the people who lived there. The story of Kino and Juana's tragedy was taken as a warning to everyone: "Be careful what you wish for. The gods just may give you what you ask." Still there were others who regarded it as a sign of hope.

Lucio knew all of the stories, and he knew the old place at the back of the holy cemetery where worn stone crosses marked the graves of Kino, Juana, and the baby Coyotito, as well as the others who came after, including the recent graves of his own father and mother.

Lucio patted the smooth sides of his boat as one might caress the flank of a horse, or the arm of a loved one. He knew every inch of this boat that had come to him from Kino through his father. Lucio knew even the place at the bottom where once a hole had been broken through. Lucio's father had told his young son the story many times. How the hole had been made by dark forces to prevent Kino and Juana from leaving La Paz with the great pearl to get a fair price for it in Mexico City, more than a thousand miles from La Paz. That was long before Lucio's father had been born. And even though the surface of the canoe had been repaired and restored with years of the secret plaster, Lucio could still trace with his fingers the edge of the break, like the almost faded scar of a wound long healed.

Lucio often thought about these stories, and how his life might have been different if Kino had sold his "Pearl of the World" and kept his fortune of a hundred thousand pesos. Then Lucio would have been born into wealth and lived in a real house in the city. It was a pleasant daydream, one that brought a smile to Lucio's face, as he imagined his life as it could have been, but he couldn't afford the luxury of indulging these fantasies for long. Sobering reality told him if he wanted to survive, if he wanted to eat, he had work to do.

Lucio checked to see that all his equipment was ready for the day's fishing – his old net, repaired many times, his harpoon with a place at the end to tie a line so it wouldn't be lost in the sea or in the back of some large fish, his diving rock and basket, the coils of rope that were his life line. He felt in his belt for his knife. And though some part of Lucio believed that a man was ultimately powerless to change his fate, another part of him knew he had to be prepared for all the possibilities.

A pearl fisher didn't expect pearls. They came by luck. And Lucio knew that Luck was a spoiled child, a fickle lover. The illusive pearls, if there might be any at all, were only faint promise of a man's future. Not every oyster contained a pearl and not every pearl was a good one. A pearl fisher in possession of a pearl then had to sell it to the buyers in the city, and a pearl fisher was at the mercy of these men who were stingy parting with their money.

Sometimes, Lucio knew, in order to change his luck when it was bad, in order to find a pearl when one had eluded him for a long time, he must forget about pearls completely. Sometimes, he knew, he must turn his attention to fishing with a net or a harpoon and turn his back on Luck and on the reluctant pearls. As pleasant as it was to dream of being a rich man, Lucio knew it was better having food to put in his stomach. A fish could be eaten, and some, if the catch was big enough, might be sold. Even just a single fish gave a man life, at least for another day. To Lucio that was reality.

Already the sun was a red blister on the blue sky. Lucio shaded his eyes with his hand and he could see the masts and the sails of some of the other fishers off in the distance. He bent his back against the side of his boat and strained until it grated across the sand and shells, inched along the beach and came alive when it felt the water. Expertly he set the mast and hoisted the sail. The wind that came across the land and carried with it the strange smells from the city filled the orange and blue striped canvas, patched over and again, and pulled the tiny boat and its pilot over the breakers and toward the sun.

The prow cut the calm water like the blade of a sharp knife slices through a man's soft skin. Lucio pressed against the tiller and guided his boat to a place about a half-mile from the shore where the water formed a deep basin. It was not a place he could take oysters because the water was too deep to dive, but it was ideal for fishing. Often the larger fish chased the little ones into the bottom of the pool and trapped them there, feeding until they were sated. The pool was a place of death for the little fish, and it was a place of life as well, for the big fish and for a skillful fisherman who could fill his boat with only a few casts of his net.

Lucio steadied himself and he set the sea anchor that would catch the water and keep the boat from drifting too far. He turned from the late morning sun toward the shore and the light threw his shadow across the top of the water. Lucio reached into the bottom of the boat for his casting net. The circular net was weighted along the edges so it could be thrown. A coiled rope, long enough for casting, connected with another that formed the circumference of the net like a lasso, so that the open net could easily be drawn closed like the top of a sack. It was an ancient and efficient device that had changed little over the centuries, a deadly tool in the hands of a skilled fisherman. Opened, it covered a vast expanse of water. Closed, it became a trap, ensnaring whatever had the misfortune of swimming below the surface in the path of the lethal net.

Lucio felt the boat move under his feet as the gentle swells rose and fell. Off to his right a scatter of silver fish broke the surface of the water. He knew the larger fish were feeding somewhere below him, sending these sweet and tender little ones to the surface. Once more Lucio checked the net, and he looped the end of the casting rope around his wrist. He couldn't afford to lose this net. Then he pulled back his arm and prepared to make his first cast into the center of the school of panicked fish.

His eye caught the movement of a long, dark shadow deeper in the water, and he snapped his arms with the practiced timing of an expert. The weighted net arched out and hung briefly in the air, a perfect circle, before it fell. At the same time a shark's dorsal fin sliced through the water toward the center of its panicked prey. The net landed in the very path of the big fish, causing the shark to alter its course directly toward Lucio's boat.

The shark hit the boat broadside with surprising power and the force of the impact tumbled Lucio into the churning water among the panicked fish. He tried desperately to regain the surface, to lift himself into the boat and out of danger, but the casting rope that enabled him to pull in the fishing net had tightened around Lucio's wrist. He fumbled with the wet rope, but the slipknot wouldn't yield. The net was caught around the shark's nose, snagged in the teeth of its gaping mouth. The startled, powerful fish turned and dragged Lucio deeper under the water, trailing him like the tail attached to the end of a child's kite.

Normally Lucio could hold his breath for more than three minutes while he searched for pearls, but he had managed only a short breath before the shark pulled him down and the waters closed around him. Frantically he struggled to reach the knife in his belt to cut himself free. The pain was intense as the power of the startled fish almost pulled Lucio's arm from its socket, and the taut rope tightened even more around his wrist, stopping the flow of blood to his hand.

The shark picked up speed, taking Lucio lower and lower to where the filtered light formed eerie shadows on the sand. The pressure pressed in on Lucio's ears and made his lungs feel as if they would explode. Lucio slashed desperately with his knife, but another sudden tug from the shark jerked out his arm just as the sharp blade sliced through rope and skin. Lucio's heart was pounding and the constricted flow of his blood, suddenly released when the rope was severed, pumped like a dark cloud into the water. The effect on the shark was immediate. It seemed to hesitate for just a second, scenting the water, and then made a wide turn, to find this new source of food.

The shark came up from below, directly at Lucio, with its craggy mouth opened wide. Its dark, dead eyes were visible through the net that was still draped over the shark's face and was caught in the triangular teeth. Lucio jabbed at one eye with his knife and pulled on the fishing net with his other hand, trying to tighten it around the shark's jaws, or change its direction. Blood from his wound washed into the shark's mouth, jolting it like an electric shock or the first sharp taste of alcohol. The shark jerked to the left as Lucio swam down and to the right, heading for the bottom. Trailing blood, Lucio scrambled into a small grotto between two large rocks, just ahead of the lunging shark. Lucio's head ached. His chest felt compressed, as under a huge weight, and his lungs were ready to burst. He was dizzy from the lack of oxygen and the loss of blood. He could feel his vision fading and his mind clouding. He knew he had only a few more seconds before he would drown.

With every ounce of strength that remained, Lucio prayed frantically to the Virgin Mary, to his dead parents, to Kino, Juana and to all his dead relatives. And then a little miracle happened in the form of a bright orange fish that swam directly into the path of the frenzied shark. Lucio watched as the frustrated predator took the fish with a snap of its huge jaws, shaking it viciously and breaking it in two. Then, as suddenly as it had come, the shark swam away and disappeared into the shadows.

Lucio whispered a quick prayer of thanks to God the Father and the other ancient gods of his ancestors. Looking down, he saw the reflection of something shiny on the sandy bottom between the rocks where he was hidden. He grabbed for it and closed the hand of his injured arm around the object. His legs kicked off the sandy bottom like a taut spring, and Lucio swam frantically for the surface, his lungs screaming for air.

When his head broke through the water he saw that his boat was less than twenty yards away. In seconds he had pulled himself over the side and he was safe. With the blood still pumping from the gash in his arm, Lucio wrapped it with a piece of fishing line he found on the bottom of the boat, tying off the knot with his teeth. He watched as the flow of blood eventually slowed and almost stopped.

It was then that Lucio saw the fist of his injured arm was still tightly closed. Slowly and painfully he had to pry open his fingers with his other hand. Lucio stared in disbelief and his mouth dropped open with the surprise of what he saw. In the bloody palm of his hand he held a large and beautiful pearl, one such as Lucio had never seen before. This was the pearl of his dreams.

A small stream of Lucio's blood trickled down his arm, and it mixed with the essence of the pearl, so that the two, Lucio and the pearl, became one, before his eyes closed and he passed out.

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Pearl