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around Enrique’s neck. “All right then! For now, why don’t we go fix Sereno’s supper?”
    * * *
    Enrique’s daily life along the Santa Cruz River had become routine, which frightened him, and he tried not to think about it. Though he enjoyed his duties—caring for the twenty goats, milking the does, feeding the chickens, gathering the eggs, getting water from the river, or hunting wild game for food—whenever he began to feel content, it was like a prompt to put up a front against his happiness. He was too afraid that if he loved what was around him too much, it would all disappear.
    When these feelings came about him, he had learned to exercise his brain, to go on to something else. Such as during the saguaro fruit harvest, which reminded him so much of his family, but the priest told him that the memories of his family, good and bad, would never fade, so he might as well learn to live with them. It was good though, he also said, not to dwell on things and to move on. Enrique would think about his schooling, which he looked forward to each day. His lessons in biology, of the plants and animals in the Sonora, were quite enjoyable. The priest was impressed with how much Enrique already knew, and the boy assured him it was because of his grandfather.
    â€œHe must be a great man,” the priest said, with a consoling hand to Enrique’s shoulder. It was another moment when the boy preferred to go on to something else.
    Not only did the priest teach Enrique to read and write, but he taught him English as well as Spanish. The boy liked learning English, as he had always wanted to know what those drummers on the trail were saying. He remembered how frustrated they were trying to communicate with his parents, who didn’t know English. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Regardless of how much his mother liked the things the men were trying to sell, they didn’t have the money for them. Even if they had, his father would not have let her buy them.
    The boy’s lessons in arithmetic were past the basics and were now mostly exercised with random quizzes by Father Gaeta.
    â€œEnrique,” the priest would say as the boy carried water from the river. “How do you calculate the volume of water inside that clay pot?”
    â€œThe easy way, Father, or the hard way?”
    The priest laughed. “The easy way, of course.”
    â€œI pour the water out of the odd-shaped pot and into a perfectly square crock. Then I calculate the volume of a cube.”
    â€œVery good, my son.”
    Father Gaeta made Enrique’s lessons enjoyable, which helped him learn. Though the priest didn’t have many books, the boy read sparingly from what was there, and not too much at once—such as the Holy Bible. Enrique often read and reread the book of Job, the Song of Solomon, and the prophets, such as Jeremiah, Daniel, Jonah, or his favorite, Nahum, the comforter, who gave a message of judgment, and a verse that Enrique had memorized:
    Keep your feasts, O Judah, fulfill your vows, for never again shall the wicked come against you, he is utterly cut off.
    Though there was little in the priest’s library, Enrique enjoyed what was there, which consisted of a two-century-old book on learning by Sir Francis Bacon that he thought to be rather pompous and, at times, off track and boring. There was a book of Scottish poems, partially burned, that Father Gaeta said he’d acquired from a settlement that had been ransacked by Apaches, but its content was touching, nonetheless; and another favorite was a tattered copy of Benjamin Franklin’s
Poor Richard’s Almanac
. Enrique liked the verse, mostly for its clever wit. He often thought that if reading were like sustenance, then the Holy Bible would be the main course of a meal and the
Almanac
like a sweet dessert.
    He liked his duties, and enjoyed his education, but what he loved most was his time alone in the wilderness.