ustxtxb_obs_1982_10_15_50_00022-00000_000.pdf

who has long advocated abolishing the office, assures us, however, that the auditor would be answerable to county commissioners and already performs most county fiscal duties anyway. We recommend a YES vote. SJR 6 \(Interest rate ceiling . This amendment would raise the constitutional interest-rate limit on all state general obligation bonds, except for veteran’s land bonds, from 6% to 12%. Veterans’ land bonds would remain subject to the 10% ceiling approved by the voters in Nov., 1981. The bonds immediately affected by the new 12% rate would be water-quality enhancement and water conservation bonds, park development bonds, and student loan bonds. Since the 6% interest limit for general obligation bonds is apparently too low to allow the state to sell bonds in today’s bond market, we recommend a YES vote. /../V 11 1 VAL/Pi 1 : “” Send the Observer to name address city state zip this subscription is for myself gift subscription; send card in my name $20 enclosed for a one-year subscription bill me for $20 name address city state zip THE TEXAS OBSERVER 600 W. 7th, Austin, Texas 78701 ANDERSON & COMPANY COFFEE TEA SPICES TWO JEFFERSON s MRE AUSTIN, TEXAS IS 512 453-1533 Send me your list. Name Street City Zip The Dark Holes By Ruperto Garcia In the beginning, I used to think that it would be simple enough. In the quietness of the evening, the other children and I would walk out onto the open, plowed field beside our house and bury ourselves in our holes to look at the stars. They weren’t really holes. Not really. They were rearranged plowed ditches; the rearrangement caused them to form almost a tomblike effect. In one of them a child, only one, could fit rather comfortably lying down, face up, unable to be seen from the distance. Mothers knew this, of course. When the children arrived home late in the evening, or when there was no noise outside that indicated that children were playing, the mothers would know the children were safely interred across the street in the open field. Sometimes, the smallest of the boys would come in, having gotten scared being in the darkness by himself, and having been sent inside by one of the older boys. His mother would remove herself from the small group of senoras sitting together talking, dust off his clothes, sometimes even bathe him as the others talked together in her living room, then put him to bed. She would then return, and in the yellow brightness of the small house, visible to any child sitting up in his hole for a few seconds, her voice would rejoin the hums of the evening. There were no voices out there. The piled dark dirt would surround the small, brown, frail bodies, forming a dark telescope to the sky. They would lay there quietly, gazing at the many distant lights, imagining the different forms they made, the rows they created across the sky. Or they would lay there not seeing the stars at all. Some still could see the progress of. the afternoon, the recent football game with the others, the murmur of the people in the distance readying them selves for the evening, or an occasional car passing by, full of young men drinking, hoping to see a young woman sitting by a window, looking angelic with the yellow glow. But besides the sounds, the stars, the distance the faraway distance of it all there was not too much else. Occasionally, one of the older boys would hear a younger one in another hole. The fear had finally covered him, the hole had finally closed and he’d begun to feel he had to rise and leave, but he lay there, sobbing gently in the darkened evening, the star-filled, echoing evening, and wouldn’t move. His arms would be stretched out, as would his legs, and his chest would be convulsing to the bek of passing cars, whispering women, and the gentle, dark, nighttime breeze. Less often still, when this had gone on too long and had not subsided, an older boy would leave his hole and come to the small child, stand over him or crouch so as not to disturb the others scattered around the field, and in the most inaudible whisper, tell him to go home. “Vete pa la casa.” Go home. It’s okay. The others always heard. They always , knew who’d left. Who’d gone away from all of them for even a short minute, who wasn’t in his hole, and who had returned. They could hear the footsteps thumping against the ground,4he whisper moving across the open field, stopping, almost too quietly, then passing on. And yet they lay there, looking at the stars, not looking out to confirm the slightest doubt, and gazed straight up. The boy, whoever had cried and been sent away, would walk back quietly, stepping carefully across each plowed row, the dark dirt creating small rowsized landslides beneath his feet, and finally disappear into one of the small, lit houses across the street, as the others peered into the starlit sky. 22 OCTOBER 15, 1982