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"I presume the experience was worse for the girl," was all Vargas said. Edward Bonshaw had stopped talking. But what Juan Diego didn't understand was why the postcard still bothered Senor Eduardo.
"Don't you think Dr. Vargas was right?" Juan Diego asked the Iowan on the circus bus. "Don't you think that pornographic photo was worse for the poor girl?"
"That poor girl wasn't a girl," Senor Eduardo said; he'd glanced once at Lupe, asleep in his lap, just to be sure she was still sleeping. "That poor girl was Flor," the Iowan said; he was whispering now. "That's what happened to Flor in Houston. The poor girl met a pony."
HE'D CRIED FOR FLOR and Senor Eduardo before; Juan Diego could not stop crying for them. But Juan Diego was some distance from shore--no one could see he was crying. And didn't the salt water bring tears to everyone's eyes? You could float forever in salt water, Juan Diego was thinking; it was so easy to tread water in the calm and tepid sea.
"Hi, Mister!" Consuelo was calling. From the beach, Juan Diego could see the little girl in pigtails--she was waving to him, and he waved back.
It took almost no effort to stay afloat; he seemed to be barely moving. Juan Diego cried as effortlessly as he swam. The tears just came.
"You see, I always loved her--even before I knew her!" Edward Bonshaw had told Juan Diego. The Iowan hadn't recognized Flor as the girl with the pony--not at first. And when Senor Eduardo did recognize Flor--when he realized she was the girl in the pony postcard, but Flor was all grown-up now--he'd been unable to tell her that he knew the pony part of her sad Texas story.
"You should tell her," Juan Diego had told the Iowan; even at fourteen, the dump reader knew that much.
"When Flor wants to tell me about Houston, she will--it's her story, the poor girl," Edward Bonshaw would say to Juan Diego for years.
"Tell her!" Juan Diego kept saying to Senor Eduardo, as their time together marched on. Flor's Houston story would remain hers to tell.
"Tell her!" Juan Diego cried in the warm Bohol Sea. He was looking offshore; he was facing the endless horizon--wasn't Mindanao somewhere out there? (Not a soul onshore could have heard him crying.)
"Hi, Mister!" Pedro was calling to him. "Watch out for the--" (This was followed by, "Don't step on the--"; the unheard word sounded like gherkins.) But Juan Diego was in deep water; he couldn't touch the bottom--he was in no danger of stepping on pickles or sea cucumbers, or whatever weird thing Pedro was warning him about.
Juan Diego could tread water a long time, but he wasn't a good swimmer. He liked to dog-paddle--that was his preferred stroke, a slow dog paddle (not that anyone could dog-paddle fast).
The dog paddle had posed a problem for the serious swimmers in the indoor pool at the old Iowa Field House. Juan Diego swam laps very slowly; he was known as the dog-paddler in the slow lane.
People were always suggesting swimming lessons for Juan Diego, but he'd had swimming lessons; the dog paddle was his choice. (The way dogs swam was good enough for Juan Diego; novels progressed slowly, too.)
"Leave the kid alone," Flor once told a lifeguard at the pool. "Have you seen this boy walk? His foot isn't just crippled--it weighs a ton. Full of metal--you try doing more than a dog paddle with an anchor attached to one leg!"
"My foot isn't full of metal," Juan Diego told Flor, when they were on their way home from the Field House.
"It's a good story, isn't it?" was all Flor said. But she wouldn't tell her story. The pony on that postcard was just a glimpse of Flor's story, the only view of what happened to her in Houston that Edward Bonshaw would ever have.
"Hi, Mister!" Consuelo kept calling from the beach. Pedro had waded into the shallow water; the boy was being extra cautious. Pedro seemed to be pointing at potentially deadly things on the bottom of the sea.
"Here's one!" Pedro shouted to Consuelo. "There's a whole bunch!" The little girl in the pigtails wouldn't venture into the water.
The Bohol Sea did not seem menacing to Juan Diego, who was slowly dog-paddling his way to shore. He wasn't worried about the killer gherkins, or whatever Pedro was worried about. Juan Diego was tired from treading water, which was the same as swimming to him, but he'd waited to come ashore until he could stop crying.
In truth, he hadn't really stopped--he was just tired of how long he'd waited for the crying to end. In the shallow water, as soon as Juan Diego could touch the bottom, he decided to walk ashore the rest of the way--even though this meant he would resume limping.
"Be careful, Mister--they're everywhere," Pedro said, but Juan Diego didn't see the first sea urchin he stepped on (or the next one, or the one after that). The hard-shelled, spine-covered spheres were no fun to step on, even if you didn't limp.
"Too bad about the sea urchins, Mister," Consuelo was saying, as Juan Diego came ashore on his hands and knees--both his feet were tingling from the painful spines.
Pedro had run off to fetch Dr. Quintana. "It's okay to cry, Mister--the sea urchins really hurt," Consuelo was saying; she sat beside him on the beach. His tears, maybe exacerbated by such a long time in the salt water, just kept coming. He could see Josefa and Pedro running toward him along the beach; Clark French lagged behind--he ran like a freight train, slow to start but steadily gaining speed.
Juan Diego's shoulders were shaking--too much treading water, perhaps; the dog paddle is a lot of work for your arms and shoulders. The little girl in pigtails put her small, thin arms around him.
"It's okay, Mister," Consuelo tried to comfort him. "Here comes the doctor--you're going to be okay."
What is it with me and women doctors? Juan Diego was wondering. (He should have married one, he knew.)
"Mister has been stepping on sea urchins," Consuelo explained to Dr. Quintana, who knelt in the sand beside Juan Diego. "Of course, he's got other things to cry about," the little girl in the pigtails said.
"He misses stuff--geckos, the dump," Pedro began to enumerate to Josefa.
