Oscar Casares (11 page)

They're almost at the head of the line when Rata Jr. reaches over and grabs a piece of Little Jesse's cotton candy. Little Jesse turns away, but the kid does it again. The third time it happens, Little Jesse looks up at Jesse as if he needs instructions on what to do next. Jesse finally takes the cotton candy away so Rata Jr. can't reach it. He's holding it above his own head when Rata turns around.

“Hey, bro’, why do you have be so pinche?” Rata says. “It's just some cotton candy.”

“Go buy yourself some then. They sell it over there.” “What, you think your boy's too good to share?” Jesse's about to say something about how he doesn't want his son catching any rat diseases, but the gate opens and it's their turn for the ride. Little Jesse climbs into a red bumper car with a white racing stripe down the middle. Corina is waiting along the railing and Jesse can hear her yelling at him to get inside one of the cars, but he pretends not to hear her. He helps Little Jesse get strapped in and then walks to where Corina is standing.

“He's too little to be doing it alone,” she says. “No he's not, Corina. Look at the other kids.” She shakes her head, but Jesse is busy waving at their son. Little Jesse smiles and waves as he drives the bumper car in a half circle. He's still saying hi when Rata Jr. rams his car from behind. Little Jesse laughs and tries to bump him back, but he doesn't turn the steering wheel fast enough and Rata Jr. hits him again.

“Hit him back!” Jesse yells. “You can do it!”

Little Jesse looks up long enough that he doesn't see the bumper car coming at him from another angle. Jesse can hear Rata laughing only a few feet away. “Like that, Junior, like that. ¡Chíngatelo!”

Jesse tries to ignore Rata at first.

“Hey, bro’,” Rata says. “Your boy don't know how to drive. Where'd he get his driver's license? Matamoros?”

“Nobody's talking to you, man.”

“Oyes, güey, don't get all pissed off just ’cause your boy can't drive for shit.”

Corina pulls on Jesse's arm. “Leave him alone,” she whispers. “It's not worth it.”

“He's the one talking to me.”

“Leave him, Jesse.”

Little Jesse lets go of the steering wheel and waves his hands in the air. He's looking everywhere for Corina and Jesse. His lower lip is quivering the way it does right before he begins crying and screaming.

“Go get him,” Corina says.

“How? The ride's not finished.”

“Tell them to stop the ride, that you need to get your son.”

“He'll be all right, Corina.”

But Jesse knows this isn't true. Some other kids bump into Little Jesse's car and he's stuck in the far corner of the floor. He's crying out for Corina now. She climbs over the rail and onto the metal floor before the ride stops. Jesse doesn't know what's worse, watching Corina rescue him or watching him cry in front of everyone.

Rata Jr. slams into Little Jesse one last time before Corina gets to him.

“Ya déjalo, Junior,” Rata yells. “He's a baby. He can't even reach the gas pedal with his leg.”

Jesse wishes he hadn't heard these words. He feels as if he's on one of the carnival rides and the momentum is taking his body. He can't stop himself. He shoves Rata against the rail. He wants to yell at him, call him a son of a bitch, a fucking asshole, a puto, but he's choking on the words.

Rata turns around and backs up. “¡Orale, pendejo! You want some shit with me?”

It's over almost as soon as it starts, not because Jesse kicks his ass the way he wants to or because Rata shows him what he did to the last guy who was stupid enough to lay a hand on him, but because a couple of cops walk by and see them fighting in the grass. One of the cops pins Rata to the ground, facedown, and handcuffs him. The other one pulls Jesse away and slams him against the bumper car railing before handcuffing him.

The first cop stands Rata up and leads him toward the front gate. The other cop waits until they've left before he turns Jesse around from the railing. A small crowd has gathered. One father is holding his son on his shoulders. A skinny carnival worker wearing red suspenders is standing next to a milk bottle game. He spits a long brown stream of tobacco juice into the grass. A large woman in a flannel shirt watches while she eats a candy apple. A young boyfriend holds his girlfriend from behind, his arms slung over her shoulders and the letterman jacket she's wearing. All these eyes bear down on Jesse. He feels as though he doesn't exist anymore. He's just a guy who started a fight with another guy, a couple of strangers these people will remember years from now when they think about the carnival. His right cheek feels bruised and he can taste a little blood from the cut on his lip. His shirt is ripped open and his jeans have grass stains at the knees. His right shoe slipped off when he and Rata were on the ground. He feels the dry grass pricking his foot.

Jesse looks around for Corina and Little Jesse, but he sees only blank eyes staring back at him. Everything in the carnival seems bigger than it was before. The Zipper towers above, each end rising and disappearing into a starless sky. The Moon Walk looks inflated enough that it might float away with all the kids tumbling around inside of it. The cop begins to lead Jesse away. A river of people moves past them on either side. Off to the left, Jesse sees Corina standing next to the House of Mirrors. She's holding Little Jesse next to her and turning his face so he doesn't see his father.

Jesse knows he did the right thing, standing up for his son. He tells himself that any father would've done the same. Corina won't see it this way, though. She'll say that he has to grow up already and stop acting like he's eighteen and that if he really cared about Little Jesse, he would've taken him out of the bumper car and not paid attention to Rata. Jesse can already hear her. She'll say he only started the fight because he's too proud, which is what he always thought fathers were supposed to be of their sons. Proud.

The crowd of people has almost doubled now. Some of the men in back are pushing as though they've paid to enter a sideshow, the chance to see a real bearded woman or a three-headed goat. A couple of people in the crowd are pointing at Jesse. A woman holding a little boy by the hand shouts out in Spanish that this is a carnival, not a wrestling match. If he wants to fight, he should go on
Lucha Libre.
The crowd laughs. Someone else yells out that he needs to put on a mask if he really wants to be Mil Mascaras. They laugh some more. The crowd parts as the cop leads him toward the entrance. Jesse searches for Corina and Little Jesse along the way, but he sees only strangers staring back at him. A teenage boy has Jesse's other shoe and he's waving it in the air like it's a prize he won. Jesse wore his old brown shoes because he didn't have to worry about keeping them clean. They're scuffed up and the laces busted years ago. These are his shoes for working in the yard or cooking out or taking his kid to the carnival. He wants to ask for his shoe, but the cop is tugging at him. Jesse steps awkwardly every time his right foot comes down. It looks as though he's stepping into a small hole and then out of it again with his next stride. People are laughing at the way he's walking and telling him not to forget his shoe, that he'll need it when he gets out of jail. The boy with the shoe mimics the way Jesse walks, making him look more like a chimp than a man. This gets the biggest laughs so far. Jesse could step on his toes and look like anyone else walking out of a carnival. But he doesn't. He lets them keep laughing. It's the only thing he can hear now.

Charro

M
arcelo Torres was running away from a large barking dog that was about to bite him. The dog was foaming at the mouth, and Marcelo could feel it spitting on him each time its jaws snapped shut. He couldn't understand why the hell he hadn't worn more than his boxers. It was late at night and his neighbors were watching him through their window blinds. Marcelo ran and ran, but he moved as though he were waist deep in a river. And right when the animal was about to bite down, when Marcelo could feel its hot, rabid breath on his legs, he woke up and realized that it was only a dream but that the barking dog was real and outside his window. It was 3:30 in the morning.

Marcelo walked to his neighbor's house after work the next day. Someone else might have settled the matter by calmly explaining the situation, but Marcelo Torres wasn't a man who spoke with soft or tactful words. He didn't speak this way on the ranch where he'd lived before he was married and moved to the city. He didn't speak this way at work as a livestock inspector for the USDA. And you can be sure he didn't speak this way when somebody's dog wouldn't stop barking outside his window in the middle of the night.

He banged on the screen door and it rattled on its hinges. One of the Sanchez boys, a fat kid with a crew cut, opened the door holding a fish stick covered in ketchup.

“Where's your father?”

The little boy ran to the kitchen. Marcelo heard voices and then the boy came back, still holding the fish stick.

“My father says if you can come later. He's eating supper.”

“Tell your father I want to talk to him now.”

The boy hurried back to the kitchen and there were more voices. Marcelo was waiting on the porch when the dog came by and sniffed his pants. It went up the right leg and down the left, as if it were frisking a suspect. The dog was a German shepherd and chow mix. Its fur was a thick forest of black and reddish brown hair. The full mane was the chow part and the low, slanting back and long hind legs were the German shepherd part. When it licked the top of his boots, Marcelo noticed its tongue was the color of a dark bruise. He pushed the animal aside with his knee. For the past two nights it had been barking in his yard. Olivia and the boys hadn't had any trouble sleeping through this, which only frustrated him more when he was wide awake and listening to the dog. He figured he'd lost two or three hours of sleep because of the barking.

Marcelo waited a minute and yelled, “Sanchez!” through the screen door. He heard furniture scraping on the floor and his neighbor walking toward him. Sanchez owned a lawn mower repair shop that he ran out of his backyard. He was a short, round man who wore thick glasses, beige khakis, and a white V neck shirt to work every day. His thin leather belt split his large gut into two separate bellies.

“¿Qué fue, Torres?” They were looking at each other, eye to eye, through the screen door.

“Your dog, Sanchez.”

“Charro? No, pues, he really belongs to my boys. They found him over there in the park. They say he was lost.”

“Why didn't you call the pound?”

“¿N'hombre, pa'qué? He's a good dog.”

“He barks a lot.”

“That's what dogs do, they bark. Did you hear somebody stole one of my machines the other day? A Sears power mower, cost me eighty dollars.”

“Sanchez, I didn't walk over here to talk about your lawn mowers.”

“Then what?”

“Your dog's been barking in my yard at night.”

“He's just getting used to the neighborhood, Torres. I think he likes it here. It makes him happy, le da gusto, and he barks.”

“I don't care why the hell he's barking, Sanchez. He could've won the lottery and I still wouldn't care.”

“Why you getting mad, Torres? I can't help it if Charro hears things. You should be glad he protects the neighborhood.”

“All I know is, you better do something to shut that animal up. People got to sleep.”

“Nobody else is complaining. You're the only one, Torres.”

“Yeah, and I'm going to be the one calling the pound if I hear it barking again.”

Marcelo turned and walked off. He heard Sanchez saying Charro was just a dog and didn't know better, but he only raised his hand and swatted the words away as though they were flies.

The barking stopped that night. Marcelo woke up satisfied that Sanchez had done something to control his dog. For a while he had considered extending the wooden fence he already had in the backyard, but they weren't giving away fences and he wasn't about to pay for one because of Sanchez's dog.

The peace and quiet ended a few nights later. The dog trapped something underneath the house and all the barking roused Marcelo out of his sleep. He pushed hard on the window until it cracked open.

“Marcelo, what are you doing?”

“Nada, Olivia, the dog won't stop barking.”

He leaned on the windowsill with both hands and pressed his face against the screen. “¡Perro chingado, cállate el hocico!”

“Marcelo, people are sleeping.”

“Ya déjame, por favor, Olivia. This is between me and that damn dog.”

The dog stared straight at him and kept barking, only louder now. Marcelo felt his way around the dark bedroom. He groped inside the closet and grabbed the first thing he touched. Then he unlatched the screen window and flung a boot into the yard. The heel caught the dog on the back of the head and it ran off crying. Marcelo laughed.

“What's the matter, happy dog?” he shouted out the window. “You don't feel like barking? Andale, cabrón. No more bow-wow for you tonight.”

It was in the early morning, when Marcelo was leaving for work, that he found several chewed pieces of his calfskin boot scattered around the front yard, some of them still wet with dog saliva.

Sanchez claimed that his dog must have crawled under the fence. He said he'd been chaining it to a tree, but the kids kept teasing the poor animal. They would play with it by the tree, and the dog would chase after them until the chain yanked it back. He was afraid Charro was going to get hurt and have to go to the animal doctor. Anyway, he was sorry about the boot, but what could he do? It was a dog.

“You can buy me some new boots, Sanchez, that's what you can do. Those were handmade in Monterrey.”

But Sanchez said he couldn't afford to buy his own kids new shoes. How was he going to buy him some fancy cowboy boots? It wouldn't be right. Besides, it wasn't exactly his fault. He didn't throw the boot; he didn't chew it up. The dog was probably just playing.

“That's how they play.”

“Sanchez, you better hope I don't find your stupid dog playing in my yard.” Marcelo walked away from his neighbor's porch.