Summary

The narrator arrives in Jacksonville and finds a clean, tidy home run by a husband and wife. Walking through Jacksonville, he quickly discovers how much more he likes it than Atlanta. He asks his landlady about getting work in the area. Her husband, a Cuban who works at the nearby cigar factory, suggests he get a job at the factory stripping the stems from tobacco leaves. The next morning he starts work at the factory. Having the deft fingers of a musician, he excels at his work and is quickly promoted to cigar-roller. Surrounded by Spanish speakers, the narrator also picks up the language with the same ease he learned music and reading. Through his studies he becomes so well-versed in the language he gets selected to be “reader,” the person who reads the news and any other printed material to the rest of...