walls were lined with shelves for the sweet rolls. At the center was a big square bin where we dumped the bolillos. It was the only bakery left in Izayoc that still baked bread in a wood-burning clay oven. The oven was like a brown igloo covered in soot. My father said it was the oak and hickory that gave our bread its unique flavor. I loved the smell of the fire. Early in the mornings when Lucio got the fire going, you could smell the sweetness of the bread and the sour spice of the smoke from blocks away.
Working at the bakery wasn’t so bad. Ever since Gaby and I were little we were given chores there. We’d spent so much time there it was like a home away from home. I was usually stuck with cleaning. I swept the sidewalk out front, washed the tall windows and the big round aluminum trays and tongs the customers used to pick out their bread. I also carried in the firewood and helped Lucio with the baking.
Lucio was old and skinny. He kept his long gray hair bunched up into a net and wore his pants below his waist just like Cantínflas. He told me once he’d spent most of his life in the gutter until my grandfather rescued him. But my abuela always referred to him as a stray, un perro callejero.
My grandfather defended Lucio. He said it was better to teach a man to bake bread than to just give him a bolillo every other day. Lucio stuck with it. He was very faithful to our family.
The next day, Gaby and I went to work at the panadería. She attended the register, and I wiped down the displays. After I cleaned the front and set out the second batch of bolillos in the bin and pan dulce on the racks, I went to the back with Lucio. It was like a barn back there, but with a tiled floor and thick walls. There were no windows, but it had a long door that we always kept open to let the light in and the smoke out.
On a corner we had stacks of flour sacks, a big pile of firewood, and three long shelves with jars and cans with sugar, honey, yeast, cartons of eggs and all the other ingredients Lucio used to make the bread. By the door, near a small counter, Lucio had placed a small altar with a little statue of the Virgen de Guadalupe and a pair of veladora candles which he kept lit all day long.
Lucio was preparing dough for the mid-morning. I sat on the side of the long wood counter and watched him work. His thin arms moved like a wave, forward and back, his whole body leaning over the dough. One hand punched in under the dough while the other one pulled at the top, over and over. He said it made the crust crispier and the inside of the bread fluffier.
After a while he stopped and gave me the signal. I took a handful of flour and sprinkled it on the counter and on the blob of dough, which looked like a dead body.
“Did you hear about el profesor Quintanilla?” I asked.
He nodded and got back to work, leaning over the counter with all his weight, in and out, turning the dough little by little. “And the girl too, ¿que no?” Lucio said without stopping his work.
“She was Leticia’s cousin.”
He nodded again and glanced at the neighbor’s chickens, four brown hens that always wandered in and scratched and pecked relentlesly at the ground.
“You know, I saw her.”
“¿La niña?” He reached over the counter and turned off the little transistor radio he had hanging on a nail.
“Mosca and I went to the dump. She was naked.”
“Pass me the stick.”
It was one of his baking tools. It was just like a small broomstick. He rolled it over the dough to flatten it into a long thick blanket. Then he grabbed a plastic spatula and in a few swift moves, cut the blanket into sections.
“It was scary,” I said.
“I can imagine.”
“Who do you think killed her?”
“God knows.” Lucio moved quickly, his hands rolling the flat little blankets into rolls and stacking them on one side of the table. “There are bad people in this world.”
“But why would anyone kill her?”
He finished stacking the rolls and tapped the side of his head with his index finger. “You’d be surprised how many people have problems up here.”
“I guess.”
“I noticed they’re going to have wrestling at the feria again this year.”
“Yes.” I chased the chickens out the door. “Did you see who’s coming?”
He laid out the rolled chunks of dough, each piece just bigger than his hand, then made a small indentation with the stick over each piece and placed them in a metal tray.
“El Hijo del Santo,” I said.
“Didn’t he retire?”
“Not anymore. It’s on the carteles all over town.”
“Did I ever tell you about the time I met Mil Máscaras?”
He had told me the story a million times. He grabbed the long wooden pole with the flat end that looked like a big oar and slid it under the metal tray and carried it to the clay oven.
“I was an assistant to one of the grips at Estudios Churubusco, and one day Mil Máscaras showed up.” He slid the tray into the round oven. “When I walked by him, he grabbed my arm and told me I was too skinny, that if I ever wanted to wrestle, I had to build up my muscles.”
“Did you want to be a wrestler?”
He finished with the last tray and set the pole down. “No, qué va. That wasn’t my thing.” He smiled and leaned against the table. “But all the other boys did.”
“Who do you think was better, Santo or Mil Máscaras?”
“An eternal question, ¿que no? I think most people will tell you Santo.”
“I think Santo, for sure.”
He shrugged and clapped his hands. “Ándale. Stop wasting my time. Let’s get back to work. Fetch me the flour and some water.”
I took one of the big sacks of flour from the side and dragged it on the floor.
Lucio helped me lift it to the counter. We poured the flour, the eggs, and the cinnamon and baking powder into one of the big mixers. When Lucio turned it on, he bobbed his head up and down and gyrated his hips, dancing to the sound of the mixer’s motor.
Later, my parents arrived at the panadería. We had just pulled out the bolillos from the oven and placed them on the cooling racks. Lucio was preparing conchas. I rolled a rack of bolillos into the store. I wanted to see what was going on. Enrique Quintanilla’s wife Yolanda and Rocío’s father Ignacio were with them. I placed the rack of bolillos by the bin in the center of the store, but my father waved me away. “I’ll take care of that. Go help Lucio. Stay in the back.”
I did as I was told. Lucio was busy spreading icing on the little mounds of dough for the conchas. I turned back and pushed the door open just a little. The rack of bolillos blocked most of my view, but I could see my father leaning against the counter.
