A Miracle Every March

La Vista is a decaying and remote mountain village with a deserted church, one store, and no school in the memory of the oldest residents. Nearly invisible from the town's seedy run-down central square are two narrow passes cut through high forested mountains -- one toward Jalapa and the sea, the other toward the interior Capital. Uneven foot-trails only as wide as one overloaded mule or two men side-by side. Underfoot in much of the packed dirt survived remnants of paving stones once serving pre-Conquest Montezuma's taste for fresh sea foods and for military conquest. La Vista residents no longer wonder how those stones got there, still being polished by sandals of few visitors, woodcutters, herders, or "ladrones" five centuries since fish-runners and warriors climbed those uneven trails. But La Vista enjoys a great annual optimism. Dusty kneelers in the empty church pray for another March miracle to bring sudden wealth and prosperity for a whole year. It's happened for six years already -- so why not always? This year, at the end of February, a young school teacher rides down the hills and into La Vista from the Capital assigned to the national campaign to stamp out illiteracy. El Maestro presents himself and his documents to Gregorio, La Vista's storekeeper and in-charge of all that happens in the lives of villagers. Curious residents check the town's only calendar inside Gregorio's store. With March and Miracle time coming close, watching men suspiciously asked each other "un maestro ? por Dios?" while the tired young newcomer spoke earnestly to Gregorio. Nobody would utter the word "Miracle" but it's on everyone's mind as a stranger arrives. Unbelieving, the shuffling men overheard from the dusty newcomer that La Vista is ordered to have a school because of a federal law of "each one teach one" and any age illiterate must go to school. The new teacher has his own secret he will never tell anyone. He was exiled to this dead-end assignment in the remote mountains as punishment for inciting student riots in the Capital,and chose this instead of jail. So in his first hours in LaVista as he shook hands quickly with villagers, El Maestro became both curious and concerned when so many asked him, "How can we eat reading and writing?"