She had told him, after all, that she’d grown up in the countryside, and what girl from the countryside didn’t know about skinning animals, and all the rest? But when María made a face, not managing as much as a smile the way she had over just about everything else he said, he suggested that maybe she’d find a job in the front office doing whatever people in those offices do.

“Do you know how to read and write?”

The question embarrassed her.

“Only a few words,” she finally told him. “I can write my name, though.”

Seeing that he had made her uncomfortable, he rapped her on the knee and said, “Well, don’t feel bad, I can barely read and write myself. But whatever you do, don’t worry-your new friend Sixto will help you out, I promise you that!”

She never became nervous riding with him, even when they had passed those stretches of the road where the workers stopped their labors in the fields to wave their hats at them, after which they didn’t see a soul for miles, just acres of tobacco or sugarcane going on forever into the distance. It would have been so easy for him to pull over and take advantage of her; fortunately this Sixto wasn’t that sort, even if María had spotted him glancing at her figure when he thought she wasn’t looking. Bueno, what was she to do if even the plainest and most tattered of dresses still showed her off?

Thank goodness that Sixto remained a considerate fellow. A few times he pulled over to a roadside stand so that she could have a tacita of coffee and a sweet honey-drenched bun, which he paid for, and when she used the outhouse, he made a point of getting lost. Once when they were finally on the Central Highway, which stretched from one end of the island to the other, he just had to stop at one of the Standard Oil gas stations along the way, to buy some cigarettes for himself and to let that lovely guajira see one of their sparkling clean modern toilets. He even put a nickel into a vending machine to buy her a bottle of Canada Dry ginger ale, and when she belched delicately from all the burbujas-the bubbles-Sixto couldn’t help but slap his legs as if it was the funniest thing he had ever seen.