Blood Brothers by Michael Schiefelbein

Author:Michael Schiefelbein [SCHIEFELBEIN, MICHAEL]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-62567-012-0
Publisher: Jabberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.
Published: 2013-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Twelve

BERNARDO

“Why cheat?” I said to José. I stood at my desk with my arms crossed.

“I don’t understand this stuff.” The gangly boy held his ground, glaring at me resentfully. “I thought history was supposed to be facts and dates, not essays.”

“Facts? What are the facts about the Civil War, according to the Republicans? Did it end successfully? Did they benefit?”

“Who cares?” José sneered. “The war ended before I was born.”

“Fine, José,” I said. “Maybe you’ll like Cervantes better. He’s timeless.”

I sat him down at his desk and opened the book in front of him. He would frown at a line, then transfer everything to his notebook, careful never to glance up or show any awareness of me. It was an old-fashioned exercise, and I hoped it wouldn’t ruin Cervantes for him. The passage was from the windmill scene. Most of the boys liked it.

Cheating was a common thing at San Servando. The boys had no qualms about it whatsoever. So many of them had been abused or abandoned, it never dawned on them that something so trivial as copying from someone else’s paper could involve morality. Maybe they were right. That’s what Juan Ramón would say. But they had to get along in the world outside the walls of San Servando.

When I’d finished grading a half-dozen exams, I sent José away. I took a piece of folded stationary from my backpack and read the bold handwriting, a blockish mixture of printing and cursive script:

Upon my flowering breast

Which I kept wholly for Him alone,

There He lay sleeping,

And I caressing Him

There in the breeze from the fanning cedars.

When the breeze blew from the turret

Parting his hair,

He wounded my neck

With his gentle hand,

Suspending all my senses.

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