Oscar Casares (7 page)
The orange juice came with little chunks of ice, the way he liked it, but he had to be careful not to get the steering wheel sticky while he was driving and eating the cinnamon rolls. It felt like a road trip is what it felt like. They could drive anywhere they wanted to, Corpus, San Antonio, Houston, anywhere. He and Mando had always talked about someday taking a trip to see the Dallas Cowboys play. If he had more than two dollars in his pocket, he might have taken off right then. Instead, he turned down 511 and drove around the edge of town. There were a couple of new subdivisions, but it was still mainly farmland out there. Back in high school, Bony used to like to party and then go cruising. He remembered driving on this road alone one night and almost hitting a cow that was standing in the middle of the road. It came out of nowhere. He blinked and there it was, staring into the headlights. Bony had to swerve to miss it and then swerve back onto the road so he wouldn't hit a telephone pole. It could've easily been his time to go, but it wasn't. And now here he was with Chango.
He drove around for the rest of the morning and tried to come up with a plan. They traveled down Paredes, Coffeeport Road, Fourteenth Street, 802, Central, and Boca Chica. Going everywhere and nowhere at the same time. People were in a hurry to get places, but Bony and Chango were taking their time. On Palm Boulevard, they passed the big, expensive houses with trimmed lawns and then turned left at the first light. They drove another block and stopped in a parking lot across the street from the zoo.
Bony turned off the engine and listened for the animal sounds. He had to wait for a couple of school buses to turn the corner before it was quiet. All he could hear were the birds on the phone lines and a dog barking in the distance. He hadn't been to the zoo in years, but he was almost sure the monkeys were on a little island on the other side of the tall fence. Bony tried to imagine how he would've escaped if he were a monkey. Chango probably had it planned out months ahead of time, knew when the zoo people left at night, knew the perfect time to make a break for it. Chango was looking for something more than what he was going to find on that little island. Nobody could blame him for that.
Fifteen minutes went by before Bony started up the truck again. He was pulling out of the parking lot when he heard the monkey calls from the other side of the street. He looked at Chango, but Chango kept looking straight ahead.
They drove back to the neighborhood. Bony passed by his street and saw a city truck parked in front of the house. He drove on until he was on the other side of Lincoln Park. Two old men were sitting in a station wagon by the entrance. They were drinking beer and listening to a ranchera station. Bony parked a few spaces away from their car. He put Chango inside the plastic bag. The old men were laughing hard like one of the men had told the other a funny joke. They happened to look up at Bony as he was getting out of the truck, and the man in the driver's seat nodded hello to him. Bony nodded back to him and walked into the park with Chango.
He crossed a short bridge and stepped down to the canal. He took Chango out of the bag and sat by the edge of the water. The resaca that surrounded the park ended up here and then dropped off a small concrete waterfall. Bony and Mando had learned to fish in this canal. They used a couple of branches, some fishing line, hooks, and bread that Bony had taken from his mother's kitchen. Beginner's luck, that's what Mando called it when Bony caught a shiner that first afternoon. He called it luck whenever Bony beat him at something. In a lot of ways, he was lucky that he'd found Chango. How many guys could say they'd found a monkey's head in their front yard? He'd probably never find anything like this again. He was sure that if Chango were a guy they'd be camaradas. Same thing would go if Bony were a monkey. They'd be hanging out in the jungle, swinging from trees, eating bananas. They'd be putting the moves on all the changuitas, doing it monkey-style. He would miss his truck, but then what would he need it for in the jungle? It's not like there was anywhere to go cruising. And if he were a monkey, nobody would be hassling him to be something else. He'd be a monkey. He wouldn't have to go to school, or work, or file for unemployment. And something else: monkeys were always together. He and Chango would be friends until they were viejitos, all wrinkled and hunched over and walking from tree to tree because they were too old to be swinging. They'd be hanging out forever. “Right?” Bony said. “Right?” It took a second before he realized that he was talking to himself.
The water was browner and greener than he remembered it. A tire had washed up on the other side of the canal. An army boot floated and got stuck on some lily pads. He broke a dead branch into four pieces and pitched them into the water one at a time. When he ran out of branches and twigs, he threw pebbles. Time was passing slowly and he was avoiding doing what he had to do. Bony skipped a few more rocks across the water. He wished people would leave him alone, let him live his own life. If he drank, it was because he wanted to drink. If he stayed at home without a real job, it was because he wasn't ready for that yet. There wasn't anybody who understood him. He and Chango were hanging out. His mother and father didn't know what they were saying. His mother let herself be talked into crazy ideas by Mrs. Rivas. People were always talking at him and telling him how he should live. Sometimes he listened, but most times he didn't. He was just living. That's the best explanation he could give. Living. Bony leaned over and held Chango a couple of inches above the water. It was the last thing in the world that he wanted to do, but he let go.
T
his morning after the storm, the edge of the alley was the only dry place a man could wait for a ride. Water filled the gutter and spilled over into large puddles. A toad had been squashed in the middle of the street; its guts trailed down toward the curb. Tree branches leaned against power lines. Domingo squatted on his haunches, far enough away from the smell of wet trash and a dead tacuache that lay stiff in the middle of the alley. He tilted back his straw cowboy hat. His machete hung off the side of his belt. He had been waiting over half an hour for la señora Ross. If she did not come soon, he would have to start working after the sun had already made the day hot. He was not afraid of hard work, but at seventy-three years of age he knew it was important to work slowly and be sure the job was done well. As he waited for la señora, he tried to distract himself with different thoughts of how his day would go, but his mind drifted back to the same thought he had woken up with that morning: today was the birthday of his Sara. She would have been twenty-one years old on this day, a woman with her own family by now. He knew his wife was back home doing something to remember their daughter, to remember the one year she was with them. Like so many times before, Domingo tried to imagine what Sara might look like as a grown woman, but he saw her only as a little girl and this brought back some old feelings he had worked hard to silence. He was thankful when he saw that la señora had finally arrived.
Domingo opened the car door and la señora's little dog barked and barked. The dog had long brown hair and little black eyes that seemed to pop out of its head.
“Bueno días,” la señora said.
“Buenos días, señora,” Domingo said.
“Mucho trabajo at la casa,” she said.
These were the same words they said every Saturday morning when she arrived for him. La señora spoke very little Spanish and Domingo even less English. They had learned to communicate with their own sign language, which was made up of the physical motions of what they were trying to say. There was a sign for Domingo to sweep the grass off the sidewalk and driveway. A sign told him exactly how to trim the bushes. Another sign let la señora know that the lawn mower needed more gasoline. The sign they used the most was the one to say that it was very hot. La señora would wipe her brow with the back of her hand. “Mucho calor,” Domingo would say. “Mucho, mucho calor,” la señora said. “Sí, hace mucho calor,” Domingo said. If there was something they couldn't figure out a sign for, la señora would go next door and ask for help from the girl who cleaned her neighbor's house.
This Saturday, la señora stopped on the way to her house. She motioned for Domingo to wait in the car. She left the air conditioner on the HIGH setting and turned the radio dial to a Tejano station, smiling as she did this. He understood that she had adjusted the radio for him, but he had never cared for that type of music and the disturbing sound created with so many instruments. In any case, it was difficult to hear anything because the little dog would not stop barking. Where he came from, someone would have beaten the dog by now. Domingo tried to ignore the animal and enjoy the cold air. He put his face up to the vent and felt the air blow through his eyebrows.
When they finally arrived at the house, la señora showed him the area of the backyard where several branches had broken off the ebony tree and fallen over the patio area. Two smaller branches were floating in the light blue water of the swimming pool. He used his machete to cut the pieces so he could stuff them into the plastic trash cans. Later, la señora asked him to use a long pole with a net at the end to scoop out the tiny leaves in the pool. Domingo liked working for her because he knew he was guaranteed work for the entire day. Her property was much larger than those in the neighborhood where he usually worked. She also owned a new lawn mower that was more powerful than any he had ever used. La señora was very particular about her yard and how she wanted it maintained. The grass along the sidewalk needed to be trimmed a certain way so that it met up with the pavement but did not hang over the edge. Domingo took pride in his work and wanted la señora to be pleased with the way her yard looked.
At lunchtime, la señora's daughter brought out two ham and cheese sandwiches for him to eat. The young lady had a pleasant smile, and it was hard for him not to wonder how beautiful his own daughter might have been, but he knew these feelings would not do him any good and he tried his best to distract himself with other thoughts. He was hungry by this hour of the day, so he ate everything she brought out to him. He sat in a lawn chair under the patio umbrella, imagining this was how people of money ate when they stayed in hotels. The sandwiches were filling, but at his age the spicy mustard upset his stomach. He would have mentioned this to la señora, except he didn't have the words to say it, and even if he did, he didn't want to seem unappreciative.
He was finishing his lunch when la señora came out to show him what she wanted him to do next. She made a hacking sign to tell Domingo that he needed to cut some more broken branches left from last night's storm. The tallest limbs were cracked and hanging on to the house. He nodded and made a motion as if he were climbing a tall ladder. La señora walked with him to the garage, where she kept the larger tools.
Domingo gazed up at the sky as he climbed the aluminum ladder, stepping lightly on each rung. The white clouds floating over the Rio Grande Valley appeared close enough for a man to reach out and touch with his hand. Sweat was streaming down his face, and the band of his hat was drenched. His machete hung off the back of his belt. The ladder wobbled slightly as he hacked at broken branches, and he thought he might have been more secure on the rungs if he had climbed barefoot. He would have done this, but he was embarrassed to show his tired, cracked feet in front of la señora. They were the feet of an old man who had worked his whole life like a mule. Some of the jobs he took paid very little, but he felt fortunate to still be working. No one could say he had ever backed down from a day's work.
He had to climb onto the roof to reach some branches that were near the antenna. Domingo looked down and saw la señora watching him. The roof was over thirty feet high, and it occurred to him that this was the highest place he had ever worked. La señora owned a two-story house that was bigger than most of the houses on her street. From where he was perched, he could see the red arch on the Matamoros side of the bridge. If he stood on his toes, he could barely make out the tops of the billboards that invited tourists to drink more rum and eat dinner at restaurants across the river.
Seeing this little bit of his country made him think of his home. It also made him think of Sara.
La señora was yelling something up to him, but he couldn't understand what she was trying to say.
“¿Mande, señora?”
She jerked her hands up as if she were being shocked, and Domingo understood he wasn't supposed to touch the antenna. He waved back to let her know that he understood.
One by one, he cut the branches loose and let them fall to the ground, making sure they landed a good distance from where la señora was standing. As he worked, his memory took him back home. He could see the baby walking the way she did, like a little drunk man. She crawled faster than this, but she was determined to walk on her own. Sara was always learning new things, which made Domingo and his wife believe God had blessed them with an intelligent child. He thought now that if he had stopped her from trying to walk and made her crawl, maybe she would not have been so curious to see what was down in the pit. His wife had asked him to build a fire so she could heat water to wash clothes. He turned around for a second. Even now he had trouble understanding why his wife had left him with the baby. They took her to a woman who knew how to heal, but she offered them only prayers. They borrowed money from their family to take her to a clinic, but there they told them her brain had been damaged by the fire in the pit and the best they could do was keep her comfortable. They asked God for a miracle. The women of the family prayed a Rosary over the little girl every day.
Domingo and his wife made a promesa that if their baby were to get better, they would walk the ten or twelve days it took them to get from where they lived outside of Ciudad Mante to Mexico City, in order to visit the Basilica, and, on their knees, give thanks to the Virgen de Guadalupe. And still the child suffered for a month until the night she died. After they buried her, Domingo told himself he would never enter another church unless he was carried through the doors in a wooden box. But he knew this was wrong, and for a long time he had wanted to make peace with these bitter feelings. As he looked toward the river, he thought that today, on Sara's birthday, might be a good time to speak to God. He wished he could go back and be with his wife, cross the bridge and buy a ticket for the next bus headed south. But he had to remind himself that he had been home less than a month earlier and getting back across was becoming more difficult with the immigration authorities stationed along the river. He concentrated on the work he was doing, letting the machete fall harder on the broken branches, but the need to find peace in his heart would not leave him.
