Oscar Casares (10 page)

After lunch, when he still hasn't come up with anything, he asks Mary Lou, the cashier, where she would take a kid. She's always talking about her four boys. She should know.

“Take him to play video games,” Mary Lou tells him.

“Nah, he doesn't like them that much,” Jesse says.

“¿Cómo qué, he doesn't like them? Everybody plays those games.”

“He likes to read books.”

Mary Lou shakes her head in disbelief.

“Why don't you take him to ride the little ponies at the flea market?”

“He doesn't like to be outside.”

“He doesn't like to be outside?” she says. “N'hombre, mine would sleep outside if I let them.”

“That's the way I was when I was a kid.”

“What's he like to do then?”

“Nothing,” Jesse says. “That's the problem. Nothing.”

When he picks up Little Jesse that afternoon, he's still not sure what they'll do to celebrate. He thinks about asking Little Jesse, but he's afraid he might say pizza. Finally, he decides to take him to the movies. Jesse buys tickets to a movie about some talking dogs, nothing he would ever pay to see on his own, but at least it's cheaper in the afternoon. He loads Little Jesse up on buttered popcorn and Coke. “Just don't tell Mommy, okay?” Jesse says as they take their seats. He knows Corina never lets the kid drink soda, doesn't keep it in the house, and he hopes buying one now might be a small clue to his son that his father isn't such a bad guy.

“Did you like the movie?” Jesse asks after they're back in the truck.

“I liked the little one.”

“Wienie dogs are always funny, no matter what.”

“They're called dachshunds. I saw it in the encyclopedia.”

“You can call them whatever you want, they're still wienie dogs to me.”

Little Jesse is quiet after this. He seems to be thinking about what his father said.

“Can some dogs really talk?” Little Jesse asks.

“Only to other dogs.” And then Jesse barks.

Little Jesse looks at his father for a second and starts laughing. The rest of the ride home, Jesse answers all of Little Jesse's questions with a bark.

Corina hasn't forgiven Jesse for something he did. It happened the summer Little Jesse turned four. Jesse and Little Jesse were walking through the parking lot at the mall when the boy stopped to look at a motorcycle. He stared at his reflection in the chrome, smiled, and reached out to touch the muffler. Jesse saw him at the last second and yelled louder than he'd ever yelled in his life. He grabbed Little Jesse's arm and yanked it away before he touched anything. Little Jesse started crying that second and didn't stop until after they were home. Jesse felt he had to defend himself the more the kid cried. When he finally did stop crying, he threw up on his pillow. Corina held him the whole time, but Jesse could see she was already accusing him with her eyes.

“Why weren't you holding his hand?”

“I was holding it.”

“If you were holding it, this wouldn't have happened.”

“Okay, but nothing happened. Look at him, he didn't get burned or nothing.”

“He threw up, Jesse.”

“That's not my fault.”

“Did you hit him?”

“I pulled him away, Corina, that's all.”

“Did you yell at him?”

“Just so he wouldn't touch the muffler. Just to stop him.”

“What about in the truck?”

“What about it?”

“Did you yell at him?”

“There was no yelling, there was only him crying. He wouldn't have heard me back there anyway.”

“Back there where?”

“In the back of the truck. I told you, he wouldn't stop crying.”

“You put him in the camper of the truck?”

“He's ridden back there before. He likes it.”

Corina didn't talk to Jesse for more than a week. At first, he couldn't understand what she was so pissed off about. The kid had been crying and screaming. Jesse tried to hold him the way he'd seen Corina do when he fell. He thought maybe Little Jesse had touched the muffler and he hadn't seen it, but his hand was fine, no marks or anything. Jesse told him he was sorry for yelling. He told him it was all over now and they were going home. They could watch videos or read his books, anything. He told Little Jesse that if he stopped crying, he'd take him to the raspa stand that was close to the house and buy him whatever flavor he wanted. But nothing worked. Jesse thought he was going to go crazy with all the crying. He wished Brownsville wasn't so damn flat because he wanted to drive off a cliff. If Little Jesse wasn't crying, he was screaming. If he wasn't screaming, he was crying. Back and forth like that, back and forth, back and forth, until Jesse couldn't take it anymore and carried him to the camper.

Now thinking it over, there's no doubt in his mind that in a court of law he would be found guilty and sent to wherever it is they send bad fathers—in his case, to an efficiency apartment located three miles from the house where his family lives. And in this 400-square-foot box, he thinks about that afternoon and wonders if it would've been better if Little Jesse had touched the muffler. At least if he had fried his little hand, there would've been something to really make him cry and for Jesse to feel bad about. But he had stopped him from burning his hand and tried to make him stop crying. He did all this, and still he's doing his time. He also thinks about Co-rina's question of why he wasn't holding Little Jesse's hand, but he hasn't come up with a good answer. He wishes he could say that his hands were full of bags or that he only let go of him right in front of the car, but both of these would be lies. The only reason he's come up with for not holding his hand is that he didn't want to baby him the way Corina does. He wanted him to be strong. He wanted him to be normal.

It's taken some time for Jesse to get used to being alone in the apartment. He moved straight from his mother's house to the house where he lived with Corina and then to his small apartment, where it's just him. Jesse moved in with zero furniture and had to borrow a plastic lawn chair because he was tired of sitting on the floor or on top of the toilet seat cover anytime he wanted to tie his shoes. He picked up the mattress at a clearance sale. And he bought the TV for almost nothing because the wood paneling had been scratched on the floor. Little by little, he's getting more comfortable in the apartment.

Jesse can make anything with eggs: frijoles con huevo, chorizo con huevo, ham and eggs, bacon and eggs, potato and eggs. Making hamburgers on the stove isn't that different from grilling them outside. He borrowed two pots and a pan when he left. The smaller pot he uses to heat up vegetables. The big pot is for cooking beans or spaghetti. The pan is for making eggs or hamburgers or heating up tortillas. So far, he doesn't have any plates or silverware, but this has worked out because it means he uses paper plates and plastic forks and never has to wash dishes.

When he eats out, he usually goes to Reyna's Café. He knows Reyna because he eats breakfast there a few times a week, but their conversations are limited to the weather and how business is for the restaurant or the store. She doesn't know about Jesse's problems at home, and he'd rather keep it that way. He goes there for the breakfast, not counseling. They have a special every morning: two eggs, beans, a slice of bacon, and a flour tortilla for $2.50. Coffee is extra. Jesse shows up early, when it's usually quiet and there are only other men eating their breakfasts alone and reading the
Herald
or
El Bravo.
It gets louder about eight, when the bigger tables begin to fill up.

This morning he's sitting at the counter. The restaurant is busy for it being early. One of the bigger tables is filled with a group of Border Patrol agents, their walkie-talkies standing guard next to the salt and pepper shakers. Four businessmen sit at a table near the back wall and laugh about the one man who didn't show up because his wife doesn't let him out of bed this early. An older man and a young woman are nudged up against each other in a booth, both of them paying more attention to what he's whispering in her ear than to the food in front of them. Jesse is eating a machacado con huevo taco so big that the edges of the tortilla hang over the side of the platter. Halfway through his breakfast, the doorbells jingle and a little man walks into the restaurant. He's little enough that no one is sure if he's just a really short man or a tall midget. If it weren't for the faint whiskers sprouting above his lip, he'd pass for a seven-year-old boy. Most of the people in the place turn around in their seats and stare until they get their fill of him. Reyna walks out from behind the counter. She's smiling and serving coffee, but she doesn't take her eyes off the new customer who just walked in. A little girl at a center table giggles and asks her mother if they can take the toy man home. The mother quiets the girl, but they both keep looking at him as he walks around the restaurant. Jesse is taking the last bite of his tortillia when the little guy hands him a card that says he's deaf and mute and can you please help him out with a dollar donation. The back side of the card has hand signals for the Spanish alphabet. About half the people give him a dollar; the other half ignore him as though he were a fly that's been let inside the door. An elderly woman hands him two dollars and then reaches out and touches his cheek. It crosses Jesse's mind that the guy might be lying about being deaf and mute. He's heard of people scamming money this way, pretending to be mudos when they can talk like everybody else. Either way, Jesse gives him a dollar for being born a shorty. It's the one thing he knows the guy isn't faking. After the man pockets the dollar, he holds up his bony little hand and makes the sign of the cross over Jesse.

Jesse sticks around the restaurant drinking an extra cup of coffee. He wonders where the little guy came from and if his parents were midgets. If they were small, would they have been happy with a regular-size baby? Corina and Jesse didn't notice any real difference when they first came home from the hospital. Their baby was like any other baby, laughing, crying, crawling, getting into things. It wasn't until he stood in the playpen that they noticed anything. The doctor told them about a procedure to stretch Little Jesse's leg, but they'd have to wait until his bones grew more. In the meantime, a shoe lift would help make up the difference. Jesse remembers at first wanting to blame the doctor. And the more he thought about it, he blamed himself, except he didn't know what for—his genes, his blood, his partying too much when he was younger. For a while, he blamed God. Then he blamed himself all over again. But he couldn't understand what he had done in eighteen years to deserve this. Corina only blamed herself, never really believing the doctors who told her there was nothing she could've done. Jesse used to help Corina with the baby at night. Sometimes he'd walk around the house, carrying him until Little Jesse fell asleep; other times, he'd sit in the recliner and give him his bottle. After the baby fell asleep, Jesse would massage his shorter leg. He pulled on the skinny thigh and calf as though he were trying to pull off a long sock, thinking that maybe if he kept doing it, his legs would be the same length by the time he started walking and they wouldn't have to take him back to the doctor. And later, when Little Jesse kept falling, Jesse told himself he was only getting his balance the way all babies did. The worst was hearing other people, especially women, say, “Ay, pobrecito,” every time he fell. He knew Corina had carried Little Jesse because she didn't want him to hurt himself. But Jesse carried him because he didn't want people to know their baby wasn't like a regular baby. Of all the things he's done, this is the only one he's ashamed of.

J esse is closing for Mary Lou. She asked for the night off so she and her husband could take their kids to the carnival. It reminds Jesse of how when he was a kid he couldn't wait for the carnival to come to town. He used to walk all over the neighborhood collecting aluminum cans to make enough money for the rides and games. Once he rode the Zipper seven times in a single night. Another year he won a Kiss poster at a booth and hung it on the wall in his room. He keeps thinking about all those times until he finally phones Corina to say he wants to take her and Little Jesse to the carnival. Corina says she's taking Little Jesse to the children's parade, but she thinks he's still too young for the carnival, and besides, there are always too many people.

“That's what carnivals are for, Corina—people, families.”

“I don't think he's going to like the rides.”

“What six-year-old doesn't like rides?”

Two nights later, Jesse drives by the house to take them out. He treats them to Pizza Hut first. Little Jesse likes the pizza but wants to know why there aren't any big stuffed animals walking around. “Big-people pizza,” Jesse tells him. “You're a big boy now, aren't you?” Little Jesse nods and takes another bite. Corina seems happy at first, but she doesn't like it when Jesse orders beer. “I'm not drinking,” she says. Jesse pours her beer back into the pitcher. “Whatever you want, Corina. Whatever.”

Jesse isn't going to let her ruin the night, even when she happens to be right about there being a lot of people at the carnival. So what? They're at the carnival. Rock music is blaring out of giant speakers next to the Himalaya roller coaster. The only thing louder is the screaming of young girls begging to get off the rides. Jesse can't remember the last time he was at a carnival. He can tell that Little Jesse is having fun and likes the rides. Jesse doesn't care that they're all kiddie rides, either. He buys his boy cotton candy and lets him throw away money on a game where he has to pop balloons with darts. Five dollars later, Little Jesse hasn't hit one balloon, but it still doesn't matter. They're all laughing and having a good time.

After a while, Little Jesse says he wants to ride the bumper cars, but Corina thinks the line is too long and they should wait for another time. “Another time won't come until next year,” Jesse says and grabs Little Jesse's hand.

They wait in line behind the other fathers and sons. After watching the bumper cars slam into each other for a few minutes, Jesse notices the father and son in front of him both have rattails. Rata and Rata Jr., he thinks to himself. Jesse imagines the father and son sitting next to each other in barber chairs and telling the barber they want the exact same haircut. He can see them spinning around afterward and checking themselves out in the mirror, each one reaching back to play with his colita. Rata Jr. looks like a perfect copy of his dad, only smaller and without the homemade tattoos and fresh love marks on his neck. Jesse laughs a little, still feeling kind of buzzed from earlier. Right then, Rata turns to look back at Jesse but doesn't say anything, just looks at him hard. For a second, Jesse thinks the guy might have heard him laughing. Rata finally cocks his head back to say hello. Jesse does the same back to him. He knows this is the main reason Corina didn't want to come to the carnival. When she said there were “too many people,” what she really meant was that there were too many people like Rata.