Oscar Casares (2 page)

“Y tú, Ricky, what are you laughing at?” Mr. Z said. “Didn't I tell you to sell the Black Snakes to the men who come in alone?”

“Yes, sir.”

“¿Entonces? What happened with that last man with the red shirt?”

“I forgot.”

“
I forgot.
You better not
forgot
next time.”

The boys did better with the people who stopped by the rest of that afternoon. Mr. Z kept walking behind the customers and exaggerating his smile to make Diego remember what he had said. Ricky sold three packages of sparklers and Black Snakes.

At four o'clock, Mr. Z said it was time for dinner. If they waited until five or six, there would be too many customers. He asked the boys what they wanted from Whataburger.

“I didn't bring enough money,” Diego said.

“You don't need no money. I pay for all the meals my boys eat. You just tell me what you want.”

Mr. Z brought back three cheeseburgers, fries, and drinks. They sat on the tailgate of the truck and looked at the passing cars and trucks. The boys wouldn't get paid for another week, so the meal was a small reward. Diego liked working hard. His father worked hard as a mechanic, sometimes taking side jobs to bring in a little extra. On those weekends, two or three cars would be parked in the backyard, waiting to be repaired. Diego took another bite. He thought this had to be the best cheeseburger he ever tasted.

The stand closed at ten o'clock. Mr. Z counted the money while the boys swept the inside of the stand and locked the doors and windows. Ricky had ridden his ten-speed bike to work, but Mr. Z told him to put it in the back of the truck because he was giving them both a ride home.

The old man used his hand to sweep the crumpled newspapers, used bags of chicharrones, soda cans, and Mexican lottery tickets from the passenger's seat onto the floor. Diego sat in the middle and Ricky leaned against the door. A tiny hula girl was glued to the dashboard. The boys watched her grass skirt swish around each time the truck hit a bump in the road.

“You two remind me of my boys.” The old man pulled out a black-and-white photo that was clipped to the sun visor. “Mira, aquí están, when they were still in the hospital.”

He turned on the cab light to show them the photo of the twin babies. Their faces were scrunched together and they were both crying.

“What do you think? Do they look like their old man?”

“Kind of,” Ricky said.

“What do they look like now?” Diego handed back the photo and Mr. Z put it in his shirt pocket.

“You have to ask their mama that question. She left to Chicago when they were still babies.” The old man was quiet for a while, looking at the truck's headlights on the road. “But if they're my boys, they're probably some handsome men now,” he said and laughed a little.

They were at the Four Corners intersection when the old man opened the glove box. Some receipts fell out and he grabbed a quart of whiskey. The bottle had a picture of a fighting cock on the label. Mr. Z took a quick drink and handed the bottle to Diego.

“Andale, you got to drink to your first day of work. It was a good day, we made some good money,” the old man said.

Diego winced as soon as he tasted the whiskey. He wanted to spit it out, but he drank it instead.

“You too, Ricky. Today you're workingmen, hombres tra-bajadores.”

Diego was glad that the old man held on to the bottle for the rest of the ride.

His mother and father were waiting for him in the living room. His sisters came out of their room when they heard him walk in the door.

“How was your first day?” his father said.

“Are you hungry, mi'jito?” his mother said.

She reheated some tamales, and the family crowded around him at the kitchen table.

“So, Diego, are you going to lend us money now?” his oldest sister asked and laughed.

“You girls leave your brother alone—he's eating,” his father said.

When Diego finished his meal, he told them about learning how to work inside the stand and eating cheeseburgers on the tailgate of the truck and selling fireworks to little kids and going to the rest room behind a mesquite and almost seeing a wreck between an 18-wheeler and a car that pulled out onto the highway too fast and cleaning the place after they closed. He told them everything, except the part about the ride home and the bottle with the rooster on it.

The next day Diego made it to work before Ricky. He took care of the few customers that came by early. Mr. Z kept looking at his watch and shaking his head. At one point, the old man wrote something in the little notepad that he used to record all the sales for the day.

Diego was rearranging the bottle rockets when Ricky finally showed up for work. His mother had driven him to the stand. Diego noticed she was a lot younger than most of his friends' moms. She wore large hoop earrings and her dark hair was in a ponytail. She apologized to Mr. Z for Ricky being an hour late. Someone had stolen his bike. Ricky's eyes were swollen as though he had been crying.

“It won't happen again,” she promised.

“No te preocupes por eso,” Mr. Z assured her. “I'm sorry you had to bring Ricky all this way. I would've been happy to pick him up.”

Mr. Z walked her to the car and he stood talking to her for a couple of minutes until she drove away. He was smiling when he came back to the stand.

“Why didn't you tell me your mother was such a beautiful woman, eh, Ricky? And alone, without a man? I thought you and me were friends.”

Ricky looked at the ground.

“N'hombre, if I didn't have a business to run, I might have taken the afternoon off.” The old man laughed.

Diego tried to turn away, but the old man looked straight at him.

“That's a joke, son—laugh. I thought you were going to smile more.”

Diego gave him a half smile, but Mr. Z only turned his back and walked to the truck. Ricky was quiet, and Diego felt bad for even trying to smile. He didn't understand why Mr. Z was talking about Ricky's mom. At school you didn't talk about anybody's mother or sister. There was a boy in class who wrote some bad words in the rest room about a girl named Letty, and her four brothers jumped him on the way home, near the canal by the church. The brothers took turns kicking him in the stomach and head.

Later in the afternoon, Mr. Z bought a family box of fried chicken and biscuits.

“Is your mother a good cook, Ricky?” the old man asked.

“I guess so.”

“Nothing like a beautiful woman who can cook.”

“My father barbecues in the backyard,” Diego said. “My tío Lalo, he's my uncle who was in the navy, he comes over and they make chicken and fajitas, and sometimes they throw beer on the fire to make it…” He stopped when he saw the old man glare at him as if he had a piece of food hanging out of his mouth. He realized that Mr. Z didn't want to be interrupted. No one said anything. They ate the rest of the chicken and listened to the passing cars on the highway.

On the ride home, Mr. Z opened a new bottle of whiskey and turned the radio to a Tejano station. The old man knew the song and was swaying a little in his seat. Ricky looked out the window. Diego watched the hula girl's skirt. When they were in front of his apartment, Ricky swung the truck door open.

“Tell your mother good night for me, eh, Ricky?”

The boy just walked away. The old man drove to Diego's house.

“What do you think, Diego?” he said.

“About what, sir?”

“Is she a good-looking woman, or is a she good-looking woman?”

“I don't know, sir.”

“That wasn't one of the choices, son.”

They stopped in front of Diego's house.

“Thank you for the ride, Mr. Z.”

The old man gunned the engine and took off.

The next day, Diego and his father drove by Ricky's apartment and gave him a ride to work. Mr. Z looked surprised to see both boys getting out of the car.

“Eh, Ricky, why didn't you tell me you needed a ride?” the old man said. “I would've stopped by your house.”

“It's okay, Diego said his father could give me a ride.”

“And who the hell is his father? You don't work for his father.” The old man stared at the boys until they looked away.

Diego thought he was helping out by giving Ricky a ride to work. Now he felt sorry that he had somehow made things worse.

The boys restocked the displays. They placed everything in the same position it had been in the past two days, the bestsellers in the front and the less-popular fireworks on either side of them. An hour passed before the old man stood in front of the stand to watch the boys work. Ricky was helping Diego sell more fireworks to a man who had driven up alone.

“The best one for little kids are the Black Snakes,” Ricky said. “They're safe because there's no popping and that way there's no chance of getting hurt. All you do is light the fuse and a little snake comes out.”

“Yeah, they come out like the rattlesnakes do on the King Ranch,” Diego said. He thought it was a clever way to explain what they actually did.

The man added two packages of Black Snakes to the fireworks he was buying.

Mr. Z walked inside the stand after the customer left.

“Diego, how come you told that man a lie?”

“What do you mean?”

“Rattlesnakes,” the old man said. “There no rattlesnakes on the King Ranch. I've hunted there, lots of times. I've never seen rattlesnakes.”

“My father told me there was.”

“Then your father lied. Your father told you some bullshit.”

“He's never lied to me.”

“You're calling me a liar?”

“No, sir.”

“¿Entonces?”

“Nothing, sir.”

“Bueno, you better watch what you say to people or you're going to turn out the same as your father, a bullshitter.”

Diego didn't know what to say. He wanted to be angry with Mr. Z, but he also wondered if he should apologize for arguing with him about the snakes.

Mr. Z walked back to the truck. He stayed there for the rest of the afternoon. When he left to buy dinner, the boys stood in front of the fireworks stand and threw pebbles into the ditch.

“I bet there are rattlesnakes at the King Ranch,” Ricky said.

“That's what my father says,” Diego said.

“Don't listen to the old man. He's just mad because my mom didn't bring me.”

“My father doesn't lie.”

“I know. You don't have to tell me.”

Mr. Z brought fried chicken again. The boys each grabbed a piece with a paper napkin. They looked out at the cars driving past them. The sun was burning on the horizon and it would be dark soon.

“How's the chicken today, boys?”

“It's good,” Diego said.

Ricky nodded.

“You know, people tell me that snake tastes like chicken,” the old man said. “What do you think, Diego?”

“Maybe.”

“What do you think your father would say about that?”

“I don't know.”

“Really? I thought your tío would come over to the house and barbecue snakes.”

“No, sir.”

“Ahh, I think you forgot, Diego,” the old man said. “Maybe I should ask your father myself. He probably has some good ways to barbecue a snake.”

A family in a white van stopped next to the truck, and Diego put away his food to help them. He stayed in the stand for the rest of the night. They were busy that evening and the old man didn't have time to say anything to him.

After work he made sure to sit next to the passenger door, where he wouldn't have to hear as much of Mr. Z talking. His father was watching the late news when Diego walked in and sat next to him on the sofa.

“How was it today, mi'jo?” his father asked.

“It was okay.”

“Good. Are you paying attention to Mr. Zamarripa?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Are you going to college so you can study to be a businessman?”

“Maybe,” Diego said. “But I'm kind of getting tired of selling fireworks.”

“You been working three days, Diego. You don't know what tired is.”

“But we're not even getting paid until the last day.”

“It's only one more week. Just be glad you have a job. ¿Me entiendes?” His father was serious now.

“Yes, sir.”

They watched the weather report for a few minutes. His father wanted to see if there was going to be a cold front.

“Dad, remember last year when we drove by the King Ranch?”

His father nodded.

“And remember how you told me there were rattlesnakes all over the ranch?”

“Yeah.”

“Have you seen them?”

“No, mi'jo, but I can imagine there are lots of them. Why?”

“Mr. Z goes hunting there and he's never seen one.”

“Pues, maybe he's right. I'm not a hunter.”

Diego had trouble sleeping that night. What his father had said about the rattlesnakes didn't sound like a lie, but it wasn't exactly the truth, either. He thought about how it might be possible to imagine something and for it to be true. Diego wished there were an easy way of telling his father what had happened. Explaining it to his mother wouldn't help. His father would find out and he'd have to tell him everything, straight to his face. Diego pictured himself trying to say what Mr. Z had said, and he knew he couldn't embarrass his father that way. Even if he was only repeating the words, it was still an insult. He hated the old man for saying his father was a liar. And he hated the fact that he couldn't quit his job.

Diego's father dropped him and Ricky off at work. Mr. Z met the boys in front of the stand. They watched Diego's father wave as he drove away.

The old man was the first to wave back. “Come on, boys, say good-bye to the bullshitter.”

The words stung Diego like a fresh scab being torn from his arm. The rest of the day was filled with Mr. Z making jokes about Diego's father, about how he'd make a good politician, about how he could fool one of those lie-detector machines, about how he probably lied all the time, even to Diego's mother.

The old man left to buy dinner at the usual time. Diego told Ricky he was going to the rest room. Then he sat behind a mesquite and cried. He held the loose dirt in his hand and it slipped through his fingers. There was nothing he wanted more than to be older and be able to talk back to the old man. He didn't know what he would say, but he wanted to hurt him. Maybe he could set the stand on fire and ruin his business. Diego could see himself going to jail for this, and he thought it would be worth it. If he were bigger, he would've fought him and knocked him to the ground. He'd hit the old man hard, maybe knock out a tooth. There would be tears in his eyes and blood dripping from his mouth. Diego would keep kicking him in the stomach until he begged him to stop. People passing by in cars would laugh. And he'd slap him with the back of his hand one more time, just to make sure the old man knew he had done wrong.