Red Sky at Morning (11 page)

And, finally, a note on light blue paper from Marcia:

Dear Josh:
I'm sorry I've been acting like such a nut. Will you forgive me? The biggest muscle Bucky has is the one between his ears, and I feel as if I've been talking to a loaf of bread for two weeks. Will you talk to me at school tomorrow or will I have to become a Lesbian, which I just found out about and they're fascinating.
Your honcho,
Marcia

We were in English class one morning, making faces at the Lucy poems, when Chamaco Trujillo came in with Ratoncito, the principal, and began to whisper something in Miss Jefferson's ear. Steenie stood up and announced, dramatically, that he was the guilty party and to please take him away so he wouldn't do it again. He was giving an involved, psychological explanation for his crimes, whatever they were, when Miss Jefferson said, "Steenie, be quiet. Joshua Arnold, will you come here, please?"

Chamaco, acting in his capacity as sheriff and not as Fiesta impresario, was in full dress, Southwestern version of cop. He was wearing mostly khaki uniform with a neat black tie, but he set it off with high-heeled boots, a big Stetson and a service revolver hung low with the holster thong tied around his thigh. He was about forty pounds overweight, and a lot of him was hanging over his belt, but he looked serious.

As I walked between the desks toward the front of the room, Steenie muttered, "Breakout tonight in Wing D, pass it on," but Chamaco and Miss Jefferson and Ratoncito were all looking at me, and it wasn't time to laugh. I caught Marcia's eye on the way; she looked interested and alert, but not particularly sorry to see me taken away by the police. I believe she was figuring out a way to meet this new challenge; I pictured her, briefly, standing at her kitchen counter with an open cookbook before her and a messy array of cake-baking materials cluttering up the work space: flour, eggs, sugar, baking powder and a Nicholson file, recommended for sawing through three-quarter-inch chilled steel bars.

Ratoncito, Chamaco and I walked single file to a small room near the principal's office, and Ratoncito left us there. Chamaco told me to sit down, and sat across from me.

"Mr. Trujillo," I opened, "I'm really sorry about yelling at you in the Plaza. I mean, I know you were doing your best with those people, and of course it wasn't your fault it started to snow. They say it never snows here in September, and that was just a freak storm, but I really know how hard you were working and it wasn't nice to try to kid you about it, and I'm very sorry."

Chamaco stared at me during my little speech and kept on staring after I finished, as if he were afraid I might vanish in a puff of green vapor. He eventually reached into his breast pocket and withdrew a cigarette, which he lit. He blew smoke slowly and thoughtfully.

"What the faulk are you talking about?" he asked.

"Fiesta," I said. "You remember, this Fiesta when it started to snow and some friends of mine and I. . . ."

"Arnole, I been having a bunch of esmart-ass kids yelling at me since before you was born."

"You have?"

"Jess. That ain' what I come about." He blew some more smoke and stared at me again. "You know a boy name Tarzan? Tarzan Velarde?"

"Yes, I've met him."

"When's the last time that you seen him?"

"A couple of weeks ago, on Camino Chiquito."

"What did you talk about?"

"We didn't really talk about anything. He was chasing me, and I was running. He had a knife. I think it was a knife, anyway."

"Jess, it was a knife. He likes to go aroun' esticking it in people's tires. Lahs' night he estock it in a fren' of his. You prob'ly know him too. Maximiliano Lopez, goes to school here."

"You mean somebody stuck Chango Lopez with a knife?"

"Thahs right. Through the gots and part of the liver."

"Kill him?"

"No, didn't kill him. He's in the hospital, be there for a couple of weeks."

"Well, Sheriff, how come you're asking me about it? I hardly know Tarzan, just that time on Camino Chiquito. He's not what you'd call a good friend of mine."

"The reason I asked you is 'cause Chango tole me in the hospital, 'Ask Chosh Arnole.' Maybe he think there's something about it you know."

"I'm sorry, Sheriff, I don't know anything about it. I don't even know where Tarzan lives."

"Oh, we been to his house. He's not there, and his father tole us to go take a ronning faulk. So we think he's hide out somewhere, maybe in the hills north of town, maybe he hitch a ride somewhere."

"Mr. Trujillo, I swear I don't know anything about Tarzan Velarde, but if I see him I'll come tell you, and not stand there and argue with him."

Chamaco extinguished his cigarette and lit another one. "That's a good idea. His mother tole me she thinks he's crazy and ought to be lock up somewhere. Me, I jos' hope I don' have to shoot him." He blew some more smoke, and sought Tarzan in the swirling pattern. "You a good friend of the Lopez boy, huh?"

"No, sir, I don't think you'd say Chango and I are exactly friends, either. As a matter of fact, he doesn't like me very much. Of course, I'm sorry he got knifed in the liver."

"I known Lopez since he was confirmed. He's toff, an' he's mean-talking, bot he ain' as moch trouble as a lotta boys. He wouldn't tell me how come Tarzan estock him. He says he's gone get Tarzan himself, which I don't think is ver' likely in his condition right now. Are you sure you're not a good fren' of Lopez's? He sure was talking there in the hospital like you was."

"If he thinks we're friends he's got a funny way of showing it. He keeps accusing me of messing around with his sister."

"Oh, jess. His sister. That's Viola." Chamaco made the cupped hand gesture in front of his shirt.

"That's the one," I said.

"Hokay, why don't you get back to the classroom. I'll tell Mr. Alexander to spread the word about keeping a lookout for Tarzan." He heaved himself out of his chair, and paused. "Nex' year, if I see you yellin at me by the bandstand, I'm coming offa there and kick the cheat out of you. Hokay?"

"Okay. Sheriff."

After classes that morning, Marcia and Steenie and I walked over to Rumpp's Pharmacy for one of their double-thin chocolate malts. The snow was beginning to melt, and was piling up gray and sad against the hedges. The gutters were full of brown water and in spite of the blue sky it was a depressing day, cold and slushy. I wanted some fresh snow to fall and cover up the ugly places.

Steenie felt it, too. "One more good snow," he said, "and we can go sledding down Otero Hill. You like to sled, Josh?"

"We didn't do too much of it back in Alabama," I said, "there not being any hills or any snow."

"We have a little game we play on the sled," Marcia said, "that we call
gallina."

"You mean you go sledding on a dead horse?"

"No, this is another kind of
gallina.
We'll show you when the time comes."

We sat in a booth, and Marcia tried to pump me about my date with Parker and the Cloyd girls.

"I assume you comported yourself like a man," she said. "I mean, after all, it's a simple biological urge, like eating and self-preservation. It's nothing to be ashamed of."

"Everybody else has made it with the Cloyds," Steenie said. "Well, almost everybody. I personally keep myself pure for my work, like a monk."

"As a matter of fact," I said, "we spent the whole evening talking about the price of fox urine. According to our computation, it comes to $14 a quart."

Marcia ignored me. "Was it a beautiful and tender experience," she asked, "or was it mechanical and sordid? I understand it can go either way."

"It can be frightening and repulsive, too," Steenie added. "Or mystical and religious. There aren't any hard-and-fast rules."

"I'm sorry," I said. "I don't want to talk about it. If you talk about something too much it sort of takes the bloom off. Just let me say it was a night I'll always treasure."

"You're a liar," Marcia said. "You didn't touch either one of them. You're a show-off."

Steenie patted her hand. "Don't try to take the lad's memories away from him," he told her. "Don't try to embarrass him. It's a decisive emotional experience for a boy, just as it is for a girl."

"Right," I said.

"Nuts," Marcia said. "I want another lousy malt, and if I get one my lousy face will break out and I'll put another lousy inch on my lousy hips, and I'll look even more like Sophie Tucker than I do now."

"That's ridiculous," Steenie said. "You're the most beautiful girl west of the Allegheny River. Josh and I are both blinded by your beauty. It's like going out and having a malt with Notre Dame Cathedral."

"You make Betty Grable look like a sack of oyster shells."

"You have hair like the mane on a clean lion, not that I ever saw a clean lion."

"You could drive whole regiments mad with your looks. Picasso is dying to paint you, with two noses and seven eyes."

"Natalie Kalmus wants to do you in Technicolor."

"José Iturbi wants to play the Minute Waltz in fifty-seven seconds, just for you."

"If your ankles weren't just a little thick, Gary Cooper would. . . ."

"What's that about my ankles?"

"Well," Steenie said, "they're not what you'd call gross, but maybe a half-inch less wouldn't hurt."

"Marcia," I said, "believe me. I think your ankles are fine. You're perfection just the way you are, and maybe a couple of inches more up on top there would do the trick."

"What's the matter with up on top here?"

"Matter? Nothing's the matter. It's delightful, what there is of it, and I guess it's enough."

"Technically speaking," said Steenie. "Medically speaking."

"I don't know why I let myself be seen with you two
pendejos"
she said. "Bucky Swenson said only nice things about me."

"Like what?"

"He said I was cute."

"That's my Bucky," Steenie said. "A master of sweet talk. He purrs those golden words in your ear. . . ."

"Those honeyed words. . . ."

". . . those honeyed words in your ear, and you swoon. You turn over the keys to your jewel box to him. You let him drive your Rolls-Royce."

"I wish I could talk like Bucky Swenson," I said. "I get all tongue-tied around girls."

"Me too," Steenie said.

"Why don't you and Josh go fly a lake?" Marcia suggested.

"How about if we go jump in a kite?" Steenie asked her reasonably.

"You know what I mean."

I took her hand and looked earnestly and, I think, soulfully, into her eyes. "Marcia, we love you. We really do. We think you're the swellest girl on the block." Steenie took her other hand. "Nobody can play marbles or get scabs on her knees as well as you," he said.

"You're just like one of the fellows. Nobody would ever know you were a girl."

"Now, stop it!" she said briskly, her eyes beginning to get red. "I told you I was sorry about going around with Bucky. I crawled on my hands and knees to you. I humiliated myself."

I kissed her on the cheek. Steenie kissed her on the other cheek.

"You're both a couple of never minds," she said.

"A couple of whats?" Steenie asked her.

"My father doesn't want me to use the word. He says it's a sign of a weak vocabulary. But you are. Both of you."

"Are what?" I asked.

"Bastards."

Steenie dropped his spoon and looked at her aghast. "Marcia! A word like that coming from your sweet lips! I'm disgusted."

"I'm going to throw up my malt, right here on the table," I said. "Language like that makes my stomach turn over. Argghhh! I'll never be the same again; I've been in contact with true filth."

Marcia looked solemnly at Steenie and then at me. "Oh, shit," she said evenly.

"That's my girl," Steenie said.

"Now you're talking," I said. "That's my good old Marcia."

We each had another watery chocolate malt, a genuine wartime confection, and wondered where all the chocolate, and malt, and ice cream went in wartime. Steenie felt that it was converted into explosives at a secret arsenal near Bunkie, Louisiana. Marcia claimed it was dropped on Tokyo, so that the Japanese would eat it and break out in acne, thus bringing a swift conclusion to the Pacific war.

As we walked back to school, Marcia suggested that we visit Chango in the hospital. "Poor guy," she said, "lying there with plasma dripping into his veins, and nobody to stomp on. Too sick to protect Viola from a fate worse than death. Why is it called that, by the way?"

"Don't ask me," Steenie said. "I don't call it that."

"Well, I'm perfectly willing to visit Chango," I said, "if you can promise the strain of entertaining visitors will kill him. Maybe we can all sit on his bed and bounce up and down."

"That's a horrible and nasty thing to say," Marcia said, "and I know you don't mean a word of it."

"I can always pick a bouquet of chamiso for him. If he sneezes enough it might break open his stitches."

"There's something about injecting an air bubble into the vein," Steenie suggested. "A painful death, and no trace. I can probably sneak a syringe out of my dad's bag."

"You guys are just ghoulish," Marcia said. "There's nothing wrong with Chango that a little love and tenderness won't cure."

"Love and tenderness and a new liver," Steenie said.

The afternoon went slowly, and the classes buzzed with talk about Tarzan and Chango, neither of whom was in the running for Best Personality to begin with. The boys all swore they were going to carry side arms until Tarzan was captured and brought to justice, but the only one who owned a side arm was Parker, and he wasn't going to wear his. "A gun is a tool of game management," he announced, "and not a weapon. We use them for killing predators."

"I can't think of a better word for Tarzan Velarde," I told him.

"Don't try to mix me up," he said.

The nurses on duty pointed out Chango's ward to us that afternoon. Apparently we weren't going to get him alone. There were four beds in his room, two of them empty. An old man lay in one of them, his face turned toward the wall. A group of what could only have been relatives sat on chairs in a semicircle around his bed. Chango was lying next to the other wall, looking pale and small under the white sheet. Someone, probably a doctor with a strong sense of hygiene, had washed his hair. He lay with both arms above the sheet, and raised one weakly. "Hi," he said. "It's nice of you to come." He'd lost his
pachuco
accent, too.