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Show I tiptoed down and opened the front door. On the porch lay several heart-shaped pieces of paper roughly decorated with crayon. Some were cardboard and some were frail as tissue paper but each had a crease down the middle marking the fold he'd made to cut a shapely heart. Each had my name on it, and nothing else. Martin at least had seen my woe and had done something about it. He'd made the crude Valentines, half a dozen of them in different colors and sizes, and had trudged back into town from his father's ranchhouse to deliver them. Perhaps he noticed my loneliness because he_ was lonely. He not only lived some distance out in the grainfields but he had a serious speech problem. At first I couldn't interpret his words except "Yes" and "No" and nods of the head or gestures of the hands. But we were close friends after that. I soon learned to understand him in spite of his handicap. We went on many jaunts through the fields and hills of the Centinela Valley together. Always he was fun-loving and generous, and his parents were hospitable to me in that rambling crumbling old adobe house. I wonder what happened to him. I hope things came out all right for him. He was the chief reason I regretted leaving Inglewood for Nada. Like a tidal wave Father's enthusiasm swept everything before it. Almost everything. |