work in progress.... much editing needed

jose cuervo, yes like the tequila. the american tourists would ask to see his license, buy him drinks and take photos to show off they had met a man with a familiar name. jose thought the whole thing was a farce, he had been named jose because both his mother's father and his father's father had been joses. jose was such a common name, as a child he had wanted a more unique name, a name that he could make all his. though his father's name,cuervo, he would carry until his body was buried under the hard-packed earth. As a man, he was proud to share the name of his ancestors. names were powerful. Shakespeare's "rose by any other name.." silly man had never met Rose. jose could not imagine her by another name. She was the woman he knew that God had intended he marry. She smiled and never grew bitter, despite all the pain he knew she had endured. Of the five children they had conceived only three had taken their first breath. And poor Rodrigo had never reached his third birthday. But there was Isabelle, their sweet five-year-old daughter and Manuello, who was now seven.
jose wondered how many arranged marriages were successful. He had been lucky to have married for love. Had his father been alive, he would have never permitted his son to marry a simple peasant's daughter with eight brothers and no land. He would have most likely tried to arrange for him to marry some political contact's daughter. But both his mother and father had been killed in the revolution, leaving him the estate and the fortune when he was ten. He had feared his father's intolerant nature. His father would often disappear for months at a time, and return with the stench of raw tobacco and liquor expecting a hot meal and his wife to attend to her marital duties. His mother never smiled the way Rose does. jose wondered if she would have run away had she not wanted her son to be a rich man's heir instead of a poor woman's bastard. after his birth, the doctor had said she was barren. Sad the word for her condition in Spanish is inuntil, useless.
Jose didn't believe a woman who couldn't bear children was useless. Lucy was not useless. After his parents died, Jose would sit along the riverbank to be alone and remember his youth. That was where Lucy found him crying. He wasn't embarrassed then to cry in front of a woman. Though, Lucy had only been three years his senior. She was as much a child then as she is now. She lived in an abandoned shed along the water. Everything made her happy. She spent her days collecting clay to paint with, picking flowers, and scrawling poetry in the mud with her fingers or her bare feet. Only several years ago, when Raul had asked Jose to speak to her as to why she would not marry him, had Jose been embarrassed to cry in front of her.
"Lucy, why have you denied Raul the joys of marriage to you," he had asked her.
"joselito, my brother, I have lied to you. I am not an orphan like you. When my mother died, my father expected me to take her place in the home; cooking, cleaning and to lie beside him at night. After several months, I ran away. I cannot have children and Raul deserves a son to carry his name. I am blessed to have Isabelle and Manuello as my niece and nephew but I could not permit Raul to destroy his rights to hold a child of his own in his arms."

jose had to fight the tears. poor lucy. how unfair life had been to her. Yet she herself did not seem upset.
"Doesn't it hurt you, Lucy?" he asked.
" It did once, long ago, but I have known for so long now. There are so many things in life to make me smile that I cannot cry about the things I cannot have."
How his father had not been able to see the strength behind a woman's smile, Jose could not fathom. He left Lucy admiring her spirit, hoping to one day be half as strong as she was.