And the rhythm of the family song was the grinding stone where Juana worked the corn for the morning cakes. The Song of the Family came now from behind Kino. A late moth blustered in to find the fire.

Behind him Juana's fire leaped into flame and threw spears of light through the chinks of the brush-house wall and threw a wavering square of light out the door. And a goat came near and sniffed at him and stared with its cold yellow eyes. He saw the specks of Gulf clouds flame high in the air. Outside the door he squatted down and gathered the blanket ends about his knees. He slipped his feet into his sandals and went outside to watch the dawn. Now Kino got up and wrapped his blanket about his head and nose and shoulders. Juana went to the fire pit and uncovered a coal and fanned it alive while she broke little piesh over it. Coyotito looked up for a moment and closed his eyes and slept again.

On her hard bare feet she went to the hanging box where Coyotito slept, and she leaned over and said a little reassuring word. It was Juana arising, almost soundlessly. His blanket was over his nose to protect him from the dank air. In Kino's head there was a song now, clear and soft, and if he had been able to speak of it, he would have called it the Song of the Family. That does not mean that there were no personal songs. The songs remained Kino knew them, but no new songs were added.

His people had once been great makers of songs so that everything they saw or thought or did or heard became a song. Perhaps he alone did this and perhaps all of his people did it. It was very good- Kino closed his eyes again to listen to his music. Kino heard the little splash of morning waves on the beach. She was looking at him as she was always looking at him when he awakened. Her dark eyes made little reflected stars. Kino could never remember seeing them closed when he awakened. And last he turned his head to Juana, his wife, who lay beside him on the mat, her blue head shawl over her nose and over her breasts and around the small of her back. Kino's eyes opened, and he looked first at the lightening square which was the door and then he looked at the hanging box where Coyotito slept. Outside the brush house in the tuna clump, a covey of little birds chittered and flurried with their wings. The roosters had been crowing for some time, and the early pigs were already beginning their ceaseless turning of twigs and bits of wood to see whether anything to eat had been overlooked. The stars still shone and the day had drawn only a pale wash of light in the lower sky to the east. Chapter 1 - The Pearl Kino awakened in the near dark.

The pearl book john steinbeck