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Chapter One
Joe grew up on a farm in Nebraska dreaming of following in his father's footsteps and becoming a farmer. It was a hard life with sweet moments, many of the sweetest in the company of birds.
Early spring, Joe would plant corn, trying to keep his rows as straight as his father's. White gulls swirled around his tractor, occasionally swooping down to pick grubs from the tilled soil. Sea gulls, everyone called them.
Every time they did so, they distracted the young Joe. His dad used to say that he could read the heartbeat of his son's attention from the zigzags in his row. But Joe couldn't stop wondering where those gulls had come from. Nebraska is a long ways from the sea.
With the heat of summer came the long, back-breaking days of haying. Joe would stack the ninety-pound bales in the loft of the barn. The only company in that hot spot under the roof were barn swallows and sparrows sailing through the door to their nests and pigeons sitting on the rafters cooing to each other while they watched him sweat.
But the small farms started to go under. By the time Joe was a young man, his dad had to sell off most of his land to pay the bills. Farming became a business run by people in offices who had never put their hands in the soil. Joe decided this was not for him.
The school counselor suggested teaching instead. After all, Joe loved to read and talk about what he had read.
So, Joe ended up in the classroom. Putting books in his students' hands was not all that different from sowing seeds in a field. Still, something seemed to be missing from his life.
Early mornings, in his rented apartment, he would sit at his desk, reading a book, sipping a strong cup of coffee. Sometimes, he'd look out over the fields that his father had once owned and farmed. Computerized projections now determined the size of the harvest before the seeds were in the ground. The rows were all uniform. The gulls, gone. Years went by. The fields outside Joe's windows became parking lots and housing developments, small malls with big chain stores. The coffee he drank got fancier. Beans from all over the world. The rents higher. The loneliness deeper.
Joe married a city girl and moved to Omaha. But the marriage didn't take. For years, Joe kept to himself, following his routines, but still feeling adrift, a little lost. Finally, one Christmas, he decided to take off. A vacation might help him get out of the rut he was in.
It being winter, it being Nebraska, he thought of the tropics. Searching the Web, he discovered all kinds of resort packages, photos showing barely clad beauties tossing beach balls with waves sounding in the background.
That's just what he needed. Some time to figure out where he was going, maybe mend a broken heart with a new romance--and get a suntan in the bargain.
Joe browsed for hours, sipping his cup of coffee.
He found a great deal: Dominican Republic: the land Columbus loved the best ... Joe clicked and typed and pressed, and in a few minutes, he was confirmed on a package vacation to the lap of happiness.
Excerpted from A Cafecito Story by Julia Alvarez. Copyright © 2001 by Julia Alvarez. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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