Drowning Tucson (25 page)

When he emerged from the bathroom, Rudolfo told Jaime to have a seat. Dinner doesn’t matter right now, only listen. Jaime looked at him with concern but kept silent. Rudolfo asked him look at my eye, do you see anything funny? and Jaime peered closely and said yeah, I see a pulse but isn’t that normal? which bothered Rudolfo because he prayed, oh he prayed he was only imagining it. Jaime was worried, unsure of what was the big deal about the old man’s eye. Rudolfo told Jaime about losing his wife and son and how it haunted him and the smell and how he had lied to Jaime all along. He wanted revenge too.

He fidgeted with his cup of tea, turning it around by the handle and picking it up to play with the ring it left on the table, anything to keep his eyes from meeting Jaime’s. The more he thought about it, the worse it became. He fingered the bag beneath his left eye, pinching it softly, then grabbing it and probing it until he felt a pea-sized lump and his eyes grew wide in terror. The more he played with the lump, the more it grew, until it felt the size of a walnut. Unable to bear it anymore, he
ran back into the bathroom, slamming the door and flipping on the light switch. He brought his eye up to the mirror and examined it closely and knew that whatever it was in his eye, he was sick of it. So he started rubbing it hard, faster and faster, and poking at it. He felt the pulse building as if his heart lay not in his chest but beneath his left eye, and he fumbled around in his medicine cabinet looking for anything he could use to relieve the discomfort. His eyes rested on a pair of tweezers and he grabbed them and began pinching the lump and moving it around beneath his skin, and though he was repulsed he was certainly more annoyed, so he pressed the sharp-pointed tips of the tweezers hard against his flesh until they pierced the surface. He opened them, widening the gap that streamed blood down his cheek—his pent-up tears and guilt and loneliness all in one. Rudolfo pulled at the mass, muscles ripping and veins disconnecting, yet through all the pain he felt cleansed and relieved as he stared into the hole beneath his eye and the pink and purple tissue between his tweezers and brought it to his nose and smelled it and even touched it to the tip of his tongue in an effort to determine its origin, but when it touched his tongue he thought his heart would burst from the pain, and he cried out. A thunderous river of red poured from the wound in his face, cascading against the rim of the gouge beneath his eye, a clumpy fluid seeping between his lips, the tinny sap of blood creeping into his mouth as it rushed past, down his chin, streaming along the creases in his face, which seemed as if they had undergone years of construction for this moment when Señor Rudolfo Gutierrez opened his dam and let the wrinkles carry the swell of liquid along the arroyos of his face, each line chiseled into place by the years he carried like a pack mule, cowering a bit more each day in the shadow of his torment, waiting for the opportunity to finally be allowed to lay down his load, his throbbing and twitching anguish pinched between the arms of the tweezers and soon half his face was painted with blood, and he banged his head against the mirror and wept and moaned and held the mass of flesh he had torn from beneath his eye—it had finally stopped twitching, it had finally stopped—and then he laughed and laughed and laughed, even when Jaime kicked in the door and stood staring at him, his face full of disgust and horror and his
skin becoming pale as he drew near to Rudolfo to lift him onto the toilet seat while the old man laughed and laughed and laughed and held out his hand and showed the boy the source of his torture and then terror returned to his face when he took a deep breath so he could continue his laughing and he smelled his son’s burning feet again, the feet again, AGAIN, as the twitching returned worse than ever.

Rudolfo slumped over and fell into Jaime’s arms. Jaime reached into the tub with one arm and rinsed a washcloth with warm water. He tried to stop the bleeding beneath Rudolfo’s eye, but realized he needed more than a washcloth to wipe up the mess. He grabbed the first thing he could find—an old sock lying in the corner—and rolled it up into a tight ball and forced the sock into the cave on the left side of Señor Gutierrez’s face, tying a towel around it as fast as he could.

He dragged the old man to his room and placed him on the bed, then climbed on top of him until he quit flailing. Señor Gutierrez’s body trembled and convulsed and then he lay silent. Unconscious.

After he had tied Señor Gutierrez to the bed with spare sheets, Jaime scoured the house for every flower he could find—orchids and xenias and red anthurium and protea. He arranged them carefully throughout the room—on the bed, the nightstand, the floor. He even held some in his arms while he sat at the foot of the bed and watched the man stricken with terror and insanity, weak from the years of grief and anguish. The house was silent except the whoosh-click of Señor Gutierrez’s oxygen tank pumping beside his bed. Whoosh-click—I wonder—whoosh-click—if—whoosh-click. He reached toward the old man’s face, feeling for the tube beneath the bloody towel and tracing it up to Señor Gutierrez’s nose. He pinched the tube lightly and listened—pfft-click—but no breath—pfft-click. He let go and Señor Gutierrez struggled to breathe, but didn’t put up much of a fight. Jaime waited a minute, thinking about Gutierrez and how kind he’d been to him.

Me. A complete stranger on the run. I needed a place to hide and lick my wounds, and this man—with wounds of his own—opened his home to me. His excitement from before was completely forgotten in light of Señor Gutierrez’s pathetic, collapsed body.

Jaime reached for the tube again, knowing the man in front of him was still smelling his son’s feet, and he pinched and held it a little longer and—pfft-click pfft-click pfft-click—he let go and, for a long time, watched the old man struggling for breath. He gathered all the flowers in the whole room, pulling them from their pots and vases and baskets, and laid them on Rudolfo’s chest and face. He searched beneath the flowers and the bloody towel for the oxygen hose and—pfft-click pfft-click pfft-click—did not let go—pfft-click pfft-click pfffffffffffffft-click click click. Click. Click. Click. Finally the old man’s breathing stopped, and Jaime hoped more than anything in the world that the last smell Señor Rudolfo Gutierrez smelled was the flowers.

Peanut smelled his father’s workboot when it landed by his nose. But he ignored it. It was a smell he was used to because every morning his father did the same thing. He stepped between his children sleeping in a row, tastefully separated by two-foot intervals, on the living room floor of their one-bedroom house.

His father never turned on the lights in the morning. He didn’t need to. He knew the spots where each of his children slept and had memorized their patterns of sleep—Yolanda on her side; Gordo on his back, legs splayed; Carlos on his stomach; and Peanut in the fetal position. And each morning Peanut awoke the same way—the smell of his father’s leather workboots, the coffee machine clicking on and gurgling Folgers. The one-bedroom house filled with the smell of coffee and the sound of his father brushing his teeth—hawking up spit to the beat of some childhood rhythm that perhaps his mother had taught him. Brush, brush, hawk, brush, gargle. Repeat. Then the sound of the shower and his father blowing his nose under the running water. Never used toilet paper. He constantly lamented the cost of toilet paper and the vast amount that the women of the house consumed on a daily basis. He was the only man Peanut knew who actually used handkerchiefs to blow his nose. Every time he saw his father pull out his handkerchief and blow snot into it, then fold it over and stick it back into his pocket, Peanut thought, who does that anymore? That’s some serious Huck Finn shit.

And the last thing Peanut heard each morning before his father left the house for work, while the sky was still black outside, was the clink
of the spoon in the coffee mug, and his father hawking up more spit as he closed the door behind him and made his way to the old Ford truck, where he sat and pumped the gas for five minutes, sipping his coffee, until he was sure plenty of gas had worked its way into the carburetor, and then he turned the engine over and drove off.

But today Peanut smelled his father’s boot and the smell didn’t leave. His father stood above him with his legs spread and breathed deeply. Then he spoke, knowing each of his children was awake, waiting for the coffee, the shower, the rituals of morning.

He spoke softly at first, in the low tone lovers use after they turn out the lights for the night. Kids. Get up. Get up. Your father’s not going to work today, so we’re going to have a family outing. All four of his children moaned, longing for the ritual, not wanting to wake up and acknowledge his comment, but knowing they had to because he so rarely asked anything of them. And you don’t question Dad. Besides, there was something different in his voice today. Something pathetic. Beaten.

Peanut didn’t want to get up. But he was the oldest—one year out of high school. And he knew he had to be the first to make a move because somewhere along the line an order had been established. Oldest to youngest. Peanut does something, and the others follow suit. It was the same with everything. Peanut showered first in the morning. Then Gordo. Next Carlos. Last Yolanda. And at dinner. And when their mother dragged them to mass at Our Mother of Sorrows.

Their father stood above his oldest child, legs apart, voice directed toward his head. He enjoyed that his children had consented to this order without being shown. As if given divine instruction in the womb, they had come into the world and known their places. They helped each other. Looked after one another while their parents were at work—Freddie at the music store, Isabella at Circle K. He was proud of them.

Peanut sat up on the floor. Then Gordo, Carlos, Yolanda.

When all his children were sitting up, Freddie said today we’re going to the park as a family. You guys stick together. And you’re each to take a trashbag and fill it with cans. There’re so many cans. Always going to waste, or some drunk gets his hands on them to buy another night of denial. And that’s the problem, children—Peanut rolled his eyes, thinking
great, another fuckin sermon. His dad went on, that’s how the white man keeps beating us. He takes our land and gives us liquor in return. And so many of us fall for it. We take the drink and say thank you, white man, and then pass out. When we wake up, he’s piled us all into a corner and told us to stay there together, living on top of each other like roaches, until they need us for harvest season or to watch their livestock while they vacation in the Virgin Islands. We have to do our part to stop this. No matter how small our role. One less drink and maybe the drunk will wake up one day and see he has nothing. See his home gone and a mall standing in its place.

Peanut glared up at his father, saw he wasn’t looking, and flipped him off—so did Gordo, Carlos, and Yolanda—thinking fuck you, Dad. Just because you have no one who’ll listen to you but your kids. You sad man. He was tired of always hearing his father bitch about the gringos. Like it was only their fault. Like tequila didn’t exist before them. Like we weren’t smoking weed before they came. He didn’t feel like showering just to walk all day in the sunnyass park, so he got up and put on yesterday’s clothes.

When Peanut and his siblings finished getting dressed, they gathered in the front yard, where their parents sat on lawn chairs, sharing a cup of coffee. The family sat in silence, watching the sun come up over the mountains. After Freddie and his wife finished their coffee, he placed the mug down on the hard dirt, and they walked in a group toward Reid Park. Peanut walked just ahead of his family with his head lowered, hoping none of the Kings were up this early to see him with his family. Oh, they wouldn’t dare say anything to his face, but he knew they’d talk all kinds of shit behind his back.

Peanut knew once they reached the park, he could have his bag filled within a matter of minutes because he knew exactly where to find a shitpile of cans. Behind the bandshell where he and his boys sometimes drank and where all the drunks passed out each night in a mound of empty beer cans, clutching their brown-bagged beers to their chests. Let the rest of em dig around in trashcans like a bunch of bums, Peanut thought. I’ll go right to the stash and be done with it. He barely gave any thought to why they were searching for cans. He’d heard enough of his father’s goddam sermons by now.