Tortuga (10 page)

Sadsack farted. “Catch that and paint it red, Mike! Har, har, har.…” He laughed like a seal, flopping his arms up to scratch the thin hair that grew like scrub grass on his pointed head.

“I love you too, Sad,” Mike smiled. He understood Sadsack's complaints, and they didn't bother him. “How you doin', Tortuga?”

“Great,” I answered.

“Been working out already, eh?” he smiled. He knew I exercised in the morning. “Jerry, did you get the sun up this morning?” he called, and Jerry only nodded. “Damn, I was having a beautiful dream before Sadsack started farting. I dreamed I was back home, and it was Sunday, and we had all gone to the park to walk around and look at the girls, the way we used to. And I met a beautiful girl, I mean she was the most gorgeous chick I've ever seen! She had long dark hair, beautiful eyes that sparkled with love, juicy red lips, and skin so soft and brown it melted to my touch—”

“Did you touch her?” Sadsack asked.

“Yeah, that's what the dream's about,” Mike answered.

“Bullshit!” Sadsack scoffed, “You didn't dream a chick like that, you're just making it up!”

“No I'm not!” Mike insisted. “I swear I saw her! I talked to her and went walking with her and I kissed her! Damn, Sad, I should know! It was my dream!”

“Aow, bull,” Sadsack shook his head, “you're making it up!” He wasn't believing any of it. He cleared his throat and his thick, rubbery lips let fly a wad which fell short of the side of the bed and landed on his arm. He cursed.

“You're jealous, Sad—”

“God on, tell us about it,” I urged Mike.

“Well, we met in the park,” Mike said enthusiastically. “She just appeared, you know, the way people appear in dreams, out of nowhere. So there I am, walking down a path to the river. The birds were singing and the sun was shining in through the trees like golden honey, and the grass all around was green and soft. Suddenly I was holding her and kissing her and my head was spinning, but I wasn't pulling any fast stuff, you know, because I knew I loved her and I wanted to marry her. God, it was so real—” He paused. “Then she took off her clothes, just like that, she's naked, and I'm looking at the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life—”

“Aw, Gee-sus! Get off it, Mike!” Sadsack interrupted. “That's a goddamned lie! She didn't take off her clothes! You're just making that up!” He scratched his crotch.

“She did, Sad, I swear she did!” Mike crossed his heart and swore he'd die if he was lying. I believed him. It was too real not to believe.

“Bull!” Sadsack jeered.

“Let him finish, Sad,” I said, “It's his dream, so let him finish it.”

“Well, that's all there is to it,” Mike looked at me and shook his head sadly.

“Geee-sus! Whadayah mean that's all!” Sadsack shouted. “For cryin' out loud, you brought us this far and now you're going to tell us you didn't get any!” He was really angry at Mike.

“It's hard to explain,” Mike said. “The sun was shining like gold on her bronze skin, she was like a goddess who wanted my love, she was pulling me down on the grass, kissing me with her warm lips, begging me to make love to her—I wanted to make love to her, I wanted to hold her in my arms forever, even if it meant staying in the dream with her—but I couldn't. I couldn't make love to her because I was ashamed to show her my ugly, burned legs. I was afraid she would be frightened, or turn away—”

The room was quiet; not even Sadsack complained. I was sure each one of us had wondered in our secret thoughts about the love of a woman and how it would come to a cripple. Outside the room the nurses pushed beds towards the surgery ward.

“Surgery today,” Sadsack said. Cries echoed down the ward.

“You should have taken a chance, Mike,” I said.

“Yeah,” Mike agreed, “it's not like me not to take a chance … that's not the way I think. But I had really fallen in love with the girl in the dream—”

“How can you fall in love with a dream,” Sadsack spat, “besides, women are a pain in the ass. Who needs women?”

“What's this about needing women?” Ronco asked and pushed his chair into the room. “Are you horney toads discussing your wet dreams again?”

“Sad's a dirty old man!” Mike grinned and threw a pillow at Sad-sack.

“Mike made up a dream about a real hooker,” Sadsack complained, “and that's not fair!”

“Why not? It's all we have in this madhouse, our dreams—”

“Dreams of getting out.”

“Dreams about walking, just getting up and walking—”

“Dreams about women, big, fat, juicy women who cuddle you up and make your tool wet with fire!”

“Eee-ho, I can buy that!” Ronco shouted. “I love the big mamasotas! The bigger the better!”

“The characters in your comic books are make believe, Sad,” Mike pointed at the comic books that lay in a clutter around Sadsack's bed, “Wonder Woman's make believe, so why can't I make up a girl to dream about!”

“Ah! You made her up! You admit it! You made her up! Did you hear that? He made her up! She's not real!”

“Of course I made her up, I mean she was in a dream—”

“So she can't be real!”

“I said she was like real!”

“Hold it!” Ronco put up his hands. “This is getting me confused. There's only one reality: warm snatch. Rule two: if you need some you get some. It's that simple.”

“Whores!” Sadsack drooled.

“Tom-catting,” Mike smiled.

“No, no, you got it all wrong,” Ronco shook his head. “Women don't have to be whores to get your little wand up. I'm talking about just plain women. A mamasota. A warm woman. A woman who knows how to love can solve any problem in the world. Ask Tortuga. He came in here stiff as a board and little Ismelda's been playing tricks with him and now he's squirming like a lizard!” He looked at me and winked.

“We've been through this before,” Mike said, “what's the best medicine. As far as Ronco is concerned it's warm snatch, period.”

“Right,” Ronco nodded.

“So what else is new?” Sadsack groaned.

“Nothing. Let's go eat,” Ronco suggested.

“Too early.”

“Let's go for a swim at the pool then.”

“They won't let us in this early,” Sadsack complained.

“That's what I like about you, Sad, you got the power of positive thinking. It's more fun to lie around and feel sorry for yourself, huh?”

“It's easy for you to talk,” Sadsack scowled, “you'd mount anything! You don't have to live with people when you get out!”

“Hey, my old man's people,” Ronco smiled.

“Ronco's dad has a cabin up in the Black Range,” Mike explained, “to the south of here. He says it's the most beautiful mountain in the world. And Ronco's been let out a couple of times to visit, cause it's close.”

“Cause he's getting too old for this place!” Sadsack snapped.

“It's a beautiful mountain range,” Ronco said, “it's not barren like the mountains around here. It's green, and in the summer when the sun comes up it sparkles on the dew like diamonds. At night the moon is so big you swear you could reach out and touch it. My old man says he's a rich man to have all that around him, of course the winters are tough, but in the summer it's like being in heaven. We sit on the porch all day, drink cold beer, and my old man plays a banjo he picked up in a card game, and when we get tired of sittin' around we jump in the jeep and head down for El Rito where we buy some booze, find us a couple of hot mamas and throw a party! Chingao, that's living! When I was there last summer we drank a case of whiskey, slept with every mamasota in town, started a fight in the bar and raised more hell than two mad bulls! My old man got half his ear cut off and I broke my arm, but damn! We showed them we could fight! It was worth it, cause we didn't start it. A couple of redneck cowboys started saying I should be home quilting and not drinking in a bar with men, cause I was still in my chair. But we showed them! And when we was broke and tired and the mamasotas who took care of us started talking about marriage we crawled back up the mountain and slept for a week. Damn, that's life!”

“You live like animals,” Sadsack said. He sucked air and farted.

“Maybe,” Ronco smiled, “but I wouldn't trade it for anything. We're not out to hurt anyone. We accept the world as it is.”

“Yeah, maybe you're lucky,” Sadsack muttered. “It sure as hell ain't that way when I visit at home. The last time I went home for a visit my old man was having a party for his clients. It was a con game. They brought a bunch of people from the east and were going to sell them some lots they had subdivided out in the middle of the goddamned desert! Anyway, he didn't want me around. Told me to stay outta the way, acted like getting polio was a sin! The sonofabitch. I stole a bottle and started drinking in my room, and the drunker I got, the madder I got until I pushed myself right into the middle of the party and started shaking hands with everybody. I was wearing only my shorts, and you should've seen their faces when I said, ‘Hi ya folks, Sadsack here.' I went around and shook their hands and that scared the shit outta them. They began making excuses and heading out. My ole man screamed his head off. ‘You ruined my deal!' he cried, ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself! Why can't you stay out of trouble like your brother! Look at you! Just look at you—'”

Sadsack shook his head slowly. “Damn, how could I tell him that I have looked at myself, a million times I've looked at myself in the mirror and cursed myself for being deformed and ugly. A million times I've asked: why me?”

He thought to himself for awhile then said, “Getting polio was something I never dreamed of. Shit, when I was in high school I was flying high. I could've played college basketball after I graduated, I was that good. Every college in the state wanted me … and then what happened? I was walking down the street one day, and I turned to look at my reflection in a store window, and I saw myself falling down … I began screaming, because I was falling and I couldn't hold myself up … and that's all I remember. It was as if the image in the glass had broken into a thousand pieces—” He turned and looked at us. “But why me?” he asked.

“Because some little beasties got loose in God's experimental laboratory,” Ronco said half-heartedly.

“My parents think it's something they did,” Sadsack said, “they think they're being punished for their sins—now they drink a lot—”

“Ah, damn, what a way to start a morning—”

“Yeah,” Ronco said, “it's depressing. Come on, let's go eat.”

“Too early—”

“What about Tortuga? He never mentions his family.”

“You got a family, Tortuga?” Ronco asked.

“Yeah,” I answered. I thought about my mother. She would be waiting for me.

“Tortuga's not planning on any outside help to make him well, he's working at it on his own,” Mike said. “He works out every morning.”

“He wants outta here bad,” Ronco said.

“That's rule number one, Mike's rule: get out.” He jumped into his chair and pushed himself to my bedside. “You do want out of here bad, huh Tortuga?” I thought about going home, crippled like Ronco or Sadsack. It would be rough, but it was the only thing I wanted. “You'll make it,” Mike nodded, then he spun his chair around and raced into the hall with Ronco on his tracks. Sadsack slowly climbed into his chair and followed them. At the door he bumped into old man Maloney.

“Watch where you're goin' you little punk!” the old man growled. “You little bastards think you own the world,” he mumbled as he came into the room. He came in every morning before breakfast to collect the urinals and bedpans. He usually stayed long enough to run a cold wash cloth over my face and to help me with my breakfast tray. He mumbled and cursed as he tossed things about, working his false teeth back and forth in his mouth, peering down at me through extra thick glasses and pausing from time to time to scratch the flaking dandruff on his thick, white eyebrows. When he was through cleaning up the urinals he set my tray on my nightstand and stuffed lumpy, cold oatmeal and dry toast into my mouth. “Least you're not trouble, not yet,” he mumbled as he helped me eat, “but you'll get goin', like them, and you'll be a pain in the ass, I can tell, just a pain in the ass—” He made me wash the oatmeal down with orange juice then he grunted, cleared the tray and moved on, collecting bedpans and cussing the kids that used them at night, helping to feed those who needed help.

After breakfast there was a lull in the ward. The kids who could make it to the dining room usually went on to therapy or swimming. Some went to arts and crafts classes, classes which were supposed to teach them to do something useful for when they were released. Once a week the doctors visited the ward, but even they went quietly about their rounds, creating ripples in the monotony of our lives only when they announced a release or when someone was ready to get off the bed and get walking braces, crutches or a wheelchair. Those times were important, because they meant whoever could get up acquired a certain amount of freedom and they were milestones in the long process of complete freedom.

In the quietness of the morning I could hear Franco singing in his room. His sad words floated down the hall and mixed into the sounds of morning.

And I don't think

I can go on

Cause it keeps right on a'hurtin'

Since you used your surgery knife

Since you cut into my life
.…

7

On clear mornings the sun warmed our room. The ward was very quiet after breakfast. Jerry sat on his bed and braided beads into belts and pouches. I exercised then slept. I had a lot of time to think, and most of my thoughts centered around the vegetables in Salomón's ward. It had been a depressing place to visit. I wondered how long Salomón had been in the hospital, and why had I seen him in my dream before I knew him? Now, when I listened very carefully, I could hear his stories as they made their way up and down the ward. Salomón had sent me a stack of books, and I began to read some of the stories and poems which he liked, but reading reminded me of him and the eternity he would spend doing nothing but reading and sometimes in a rage I would toss the books away and release my energy in doing whatever exercises I could do by myself. But more and more I returned to them and read, and in them I explored a new kind of freedom, a freedom which didn't have anything to do with the movement of my muscles and nerves. The words struck chords and a remembrance of things past would flood over me and in my imagination I would live in other times and other places …