Abuela Lucy made me get Heinekens for her, she made me sit there, and watch her as she glugged down suds, and the soaps that watched her as she lay, in a dutch-infused state. Is she dreaming? And of what? Tall brown men in bone colored suits and Sunday hats, crooning while smothering the strings with lust. I watched her uptown feet, that made sure all the Dominican boys eat, I watched her layâŠ
The road to Coroico, with coca leaves in our cheeks we dreamt through the winding Andean trail, whiplash vistas drenched in two histories. Gravelled inclines higher and denser into the clandestine jungle. Canine terra guards and suspect gazes marked our entry. We flew the valley the past strapped on our backs. From those heights we understood, that villages and forests, and farmers and brothers,âŠ
Now, as he neared the docks huddling into his coat against the sea wind, he felt not so much wiser for all the ills thatâd befallen him, just older. Thatâs what scared him most; not his death, but that time would move too fast for him to be able to stay afloat. The wind felt good though, cutting, reassuring the here and now. He felt that way about cold places, rather than warm. In the heat itâs hard to move around. In the cold itâs motivation to move fast, and you get more done, albeit with all your muscles clenched against that icy hand and tearing wind.
He saw his uncle right away, leaning against the sea rail, with one brogan propped into the low wrung, talking to a short man in a hard hat. His uncle waved him down with their whistle, and when he shook his hand and embraced him, he thought about him working in the cold for years and years; how it sculpted him rough so that he wouldnât have to feel all the things the boy felt daily, things that made him want to die. Maybe not, for heâd seen his uncle worrying those craggy hands before, late at night when heâd sit at the kitchen table long after weâd finished eating. Heâd have his glass of beer or something stronger, and heâd just sit there. Sometimes the boy would sneak into the hallway from his room. Stepping carefully lest he disrupt whatever inward journey his uncle had embarked upon, heâd watch through the doorframe as the big man rubbed those tellurian hands together, the sound they made was soft and hard at the same time.
âUh oh, so youâre back finally? What, you forgot about the place? Youâre going to ask for a hand out I bet.â His uncle smiled at the fisherman he was talking to, and the man patted him on the back and turned off back towards the market stalls that were beginning to empty, the merchants packing the unsold into icy crates, or filleting them and tossing the guts out past the break wall to the hoard of waiting pelicans and frigate birds that frequented the docks, so much so that they died during the off-season when the boats left for more remunerative waters. The water here at the back of the market was filthy, oily, and bacteria laden with treponema oozing from used condoms as they mingled with the cast-off viscera from processing the dayâs catches.
âNah uncle, I came down to work.â
âWork? Hah! Youâre about nine hours too late for that? Donât you remember we open pretty early around here?â
âI know uncle, but I figured maybe cleaning up or something. Its that, Iâm real light and you know I canât be around in the house all day, especially when mom comes home.â
âYeah, I know.â
âSo, I came down figuring I could do something to help.â
âRight, right. Well, Iâll let you in on a big secret around here. No one makes any money. What do you think about that?â
âYouâre shitting me. Look, I can just hang out, whatever. I donât want to strain anything.â
âStrain? Iâm not doling perfidies. The union head is making some kind of scandal to dredge up political support because theyâre going to be choosing a new head soon and he wants a quarrel so people will remember him as something of a warrior when heâs really just a pissed on drunk who fucks over anyone who comes by his way stupid enough to let him. You understand?â
âI guess.â
âSo heâs been hiking up all the prices and the vendors cant match up because if they mark everything way up people wont buy.â
âBut they have to understand donât they?â
âThey donât. They want the same prices they can get in the north beach market, thatâs private mind you, and if they cant get it here theyâll go there or wait out until the coming weeks and no one here is in any kind of position to withstand that. People have families. People have to eat.â
âSure. But why is he doing it? Why cant the vendors lean on him or something to bring prices back down?â
âThatâs not how it works. Unfortunately, this guy has some small kind of power and heâs just throwing it around for his own personal. Heâs shitting on people he thinks he can shit on and get away clean. Heâll see though. He holds no boon. What he doesnât know is that weâre all connected and the people whoâll keep him in the head are aligned with us. Heâs a dumb shit for figuring he could fuck us over and keep face with the union. Most of the vendors are from fishing families and they get earfuls everyday from them. They wont let it slide. Not now, with Christmas coming and everyone hard up for money.â
âDamn. I never figured there was so much drama going on around here.â
âLook. Thereâs always politics everywhere, all the time. Donât let anyone tell you different. Every situation, every moment of life is filled with some bullshit thatâs the result of someone throwing their weight around instead of working to help people, theyâre helping themselves.â
âRight on.â
âDamn right Iâm right on. Now listen. Go over past the stalls and get Mario out of whatever drunken reverie heâll be in and tell him to set you up power washing out those coolers back there. Wake his ass up and donât be shy with the kicks if yeâ has to because heâs been drinking that rat killer since paid off this morning. Get him to hook up the compressor, or, well shit you know how to do it right?â
âSure.â
âYeah, sure. Youâve done it all before. Anyways, just get it all hooked up and grit wash all those coolers until they donât stink none more. When youâre done there come find me in the office and weâll see about maybe getting you something else because that washing wont take you more than an hour.â
âSounds good.â
âI bet it does.â
He brought out the long hosing and attached all the couplings from the washer to the small compressor and its dedicated three-liter gas generator. It turned over on the third tug of the ripcord and emitted a smoke puff as it chugged to life with all of its two-point-eight horses. He hadnât even bothered to wake the Mario who was leaned way back against the shed door frame in a rotted out Concordia chair with no seat skin. The half empty bottle of aguardiente lay under his knobby knees in a stance of protection. Whoâd want to steal that shit, the boy thought, unless it was to thin paint or maybe degrease an engine block. For levity he fetched a kick into Marioâs sweetbreads as he passed with the coiled length of ribbed piping swathed around his shoulder. âMotherfucker,â He enunciated through the contracting meat of his midsection. He glared up with rheumy eyes at nothing and nobody, muttering curses to the boyâs back and settling back onto the chair after checking the bottle and taking a nip.
The boy found the coolers already upended against the cracked concrete of the processing floor, reeking and stained off-blood hue from numberless carcasses draining their life out into the spider webbed plasticized interiors. He gauged up the nozzle and aimed it at the first of the three hulking iceboxes and let loose a stream of scalding water and grit from the hose that bucked gently as it came forth spraying true smacking against the aging innards. He zoned out to the rhythm of the spray, remembering when heâd first started coming down here to hang with his uncle. One time, a small and ancient fisherman called the macaque brought in a twenty kilo sturgeon from somewhere off the three islands. He sat their proud, counting his money and taking a coin or two from passing tourists who posed by the upended leviathan while their kin snapped shots of them japing next to the chthonian hulk bled out gray and bony-plated in the waning afternoon glow. Thatâs what the boy paused on most in his remembrances, how the Sunâs stations created light plays on the oceanâs surface, rays striating through the air or suffusing into it, creating a different rhythm to the heart and breathing of the young boy as heâd sit and watch the phasing of light like something alive and precious he could hold onto even as it changed in its dynamo splendor, now sparks skittering through the eyelids squinted, now glowing on the faces of children lead by the hands down the pier by their parents to disappear in the too-bright glow of our most precious star purpling to dusk.
By the time he finished the difference between his sweat and the splash back grit water vanished and a high whine of blood careened around between his ears like carom balls finding no purchase or nesting pocket. He thought of his blood like a mist, or molecules all racing and bashing into each other while his breath labored in the hot stink air of the cooler room. He swung the jointed arm of the power washer across the dulled white of the cooler boxes one last time and hit the shut off valve with his foot. The machine honked a forlorn adieu and the hum of the generator filtered back to overtake the soundscape.
The boyâs uncle came by to check on him just as he was coiling the hose around his shoulder and elbow, crisscrossing to keep it from tangling. âYou ready to do some real work now?â
âThat wasnât.â
âBoy, Iâm about to show you why I prefer it behind the desk nowadays.â He led him out and around back of the cooler room, skirting behind the wall on a slim lip of concrete that dropped straight off into the water sucking faintly at the embankment, wearing an oily sheen broken by flotsam and inorganic garbage accumulated into a slurry. He paused before they came to the clearing past the cooler shed, looking back at the boy, grinning. âI always wondered where the word offal came from, and why didnât they just call it awful.â He could smell it then, beyond the pale, the reek with no worldly comparison that only comes off of days old fish guts. Two barrels stood side-by-side like apish twins oozing from their underneaths, steaming with the redolence of sea death and Lazarusian spoilages. âThem thereâre your charges for the rest of the afternoon. An atunero derelict them here during the night and no oneâd touch âem for what theyâre holding. The winch is over there by the fry basin and youâll have to chain âem up by hand or weld something to âem to chain âem because they weigh a good quarter ton each. All I want is for them to be pushed over that away over the break and the barrels hauled back up and sprayed out. God damn boys just left âem here, but anyways, welcome to the wharf.â The boy stared up at his uncle for just a moment, registering in his eyes no mirth or mock. His uncle shrugged slightly and turned. âIâll be in the office when youâre all done, and you can shower in there too. I have some clothes since I believe yoursâll be in dire straights when youâre done.â
After his uncle had moved off, the boy forwent anything to do with the arc welder, moving straight over to the rusted winch to maneuver it into place. He got the chain end hooked up to the stout arm and swung it over to the far side of the barrels out towards the water. He turned to the offending twins and lugged up the heavy pry bar, clanging it on the side of one barrel. He wedged it up under the lid and jumped up, pressing down on the other end with his hands against his solar plexus. As soon as the lid slid off a sepulchral flume engulfed the boy and set him to gagging, crossing his arms back over his middle and staggering slightly to one side. âGod damn,â he muttered to himself, cursing his uncle under his breath and looking sidelong down the pier as if he would make to run off. At the second barrel with the pry bar, this time with his old shirt wrapped around his nose and mouth, he jostled the lid off with one motion and stepped back. The putrid contents of both barrels had a black and oily cap of fluid broken periodically by a random fish part sticking up through the semi-reflective film. He cursed his life and set about fitting the long, heavy chain round the circumference of both cylinders. Once heâd worked them something secure near the bottom of the containers, he moved back to the winch and commenced to see about dragging them towards the break wall. They wouldnât drag and began tipping as soon as he put the pressure on them. Damn, he though, oh well. He put on the force directly and the barrels tottered over in slow motion, spilling little first then all at once in a torrent as they capsized to boom against the concrete abutment. The slurry splashed out in a flood to the water below, instantly mixing in through the surface and under, creating a foul cloud of fluid mixture that rushed visually downward in dark clouds of filth. Looking back he saw his uncleâs face in the office window, smiling at him and the noise and the mess created at his bidding. Crazy bastard, the boy concluded, gets exactly what he wants even though its crazier than shit. He swung the winch back, threw two cinderblocks into the mouths of the barrels so they wouldnât roll around, and made off again for the cooler shed to fetch the power washer once again. The sun was cresting lower as he sprayed out the barrels, and the mist from the sluicing water created rainbows in the quavering air.
He liked to bank up money when he could. Not recently, but a year or so before heâd managed to put away a fair sum while he was working at a nightclub. He was fit for the job because he was there all day, cleaning when things needed to be cleaned, sleeping on the floor of the office when everyone left, and getting up in the morning to do it all over again. He wanted to be a bartender because they made money, but he liked being the back, the cleaner, the one to make all the machinery go. He was there when the party left, alone with the open stink of the place, the absent olfactory memory of bodies in motion. He used to like turning on all the stage lighting at night when no one was around. Not the fluorescents with their mean glare that the bartender would flip on when closing time came and they wished to oust everyone out of the bar, into the night. The colored lights were best, the blue and red, with their soft glow that made all the seedy couches and Formica tables look classy.
He felt good when he had saved up some money during that year. He knew it wasnât all on his own; they fed him and he had the place to sleep. Still, he felt independent and in the end, when he thought about it again, they didnât help him at all really. He had done it on his own. His mother had kicked him out after he got picked up for robbing that store and she came and bailed him out after pawning some old necklace his grandmother had given her. Sometimes, heâd break in there when she was off at work and raid the fridge, cooking whatever there was and at the best getting a coke or beer she left. After a while, she stopped keeping stuff like that. Maybe she had it somewhere else and she drank it warm, but it wasnât in the fridge. He didnât blame her. His dad left her, he thought, so maybe sheâs the one who drives men off. It wasnât his problem to worry about her. He had his problems.
When he was working at the bar, saving money, he felt heâd truly put the past behind him. He dreamt about finding a girlfriend and having a kid, and some of the waitresses even liked him. I want a nice girl, he thought, Iâd never marry a puta. Still, heâd talk to a few of them, and when there was nothing much going on a couple of them were nice to look at. Once, when they were talking about a party heâd asked them what club, trying to sound like heâd know places in the city. They all looked at him and laughed. He thought they were joking, but when they all stopped suddenly, this time looking at him with pity, he wasnât so sure. In the next moment, though, they brightened saying, letâs take him out with us. They all agreed.
He needed all the money heâd been saving. To party with them, heâd have to come through big. He wasnât planning on doing anything with the money really; heâd only felt good about saving it up as if it was a noble act in and of itself. Heâd kept it in the wall of the stairwell behind the stage. The frame of one window was loose, and when heâd pried it off accidentally, heâd discovered a brick was missing behind it. He wasnât afraid someone would find it. No one used that stairwell anyways. Theyâd teased him before, asking where he keeps his money, but the one waitress with the dyed hair had said he probably spends it on drugs so it doesnât matter. He went to it the day they invited him, after the bar closed, counting all of it again. It was enough, he thought. It was enough to go where he thought theyâd go.
The night came faster than he thought possible. Never had a week sped by like that one, blending days altogether flurried until he was cleaning the bar when the head bartender came up to him and said to meet them all at an address over in Pancho Villa in a couple hours. Pancho, he asked, who did they know who lived in Pancho? Why would you even ask that, smirked the bartender rhetorically.
He got off the bus with the wad heâd saved bundled in his jacket pocket. As he was walking into the neighborhood, he stopped at a hotdog stand, killed one there and got another for the walk. You have to eat if youâre going to party, he thought. His cousin taught him that. His cousin taught him how to party when he went and stayed with him up north, on those nights after heâd get home from work with his friends and they would watch the games and get steamed. The first night he threw up in the backyard next to where he tied up the dog, which started barking and straining at the lead as the boy was doubled over heaving. One of his cousinâs friends came out and took a leek, laughing at the boy as he shook himself and buttoned up his fly.
He was through with the second dog before he realized heâd been zoned out walking and didnât know where he was. Iâm close, he told himself, trying to remember the address the bartender had given him. Donât mess this up, he chided. If you do anything right in your worthless life, make it this. Find the house. Find the nerve and find the source of the fire. He thought of the early humans, whoever they were. Searching the horizon for lightning and then bee lining for the source of the heavenly flame. There were fights between groups over fire, and elected individuals whose job it was to keep the small flame going inside a basket or horn made of hide, feeding it small bits of pitch or peat as it sputtered and gutted in the wind. Thatâs who he was now, the keeper of the flame. He thought himself the last bastion against the dark of loneliness. He needed to summon some of that luck he always never had. He had to find it.
He wouldnât have had the luck, but then he saw one of the waitressâ cars out front of a lit up place with music emanating from behind the walls. He unconsciously took his hands out of his pockets where they had been jammed while heâd been rambling through the neighborhood. This was it. He listened to the music, feeling the rhythm as best he could. He imagined syncing up in the party just as he entered the door, his steps coordinated to the movement of bodies and in crossing the space, all would realize his presence with an awe and interest. He felt the wad in his pocket, felt embarrassed as he realized he wasnât bringing anything to drink. Thatâs ok, he assured himself, youâll get an opportunity to show what youâre made of. Let them serve you for once.
The door of the house stood open and a young woman, quite small, stood framed by the inside light, holding up a lighter to a cigarette dangling from her mouth. Her hair was cropped close and the boy stopped dead in his tracks, mesmerized by the cool handed grace with which she moved. Frozen thus, he wasnât ready for when the girl finished lighting the smoke and turning to him said, âhey! This is a private party!â Her eyes flashed and he was struck, doubly frozen. She was wearing some kind of contacts that made her eyes ice blue. Heâd seen stupid ones before that made cat or snake eyes, and even some prieta girls who really wanted green or something, but these were different. Her eyes, not just the irisâ, were ice blue, entirely so that you wouldnât even see the separate parts. He cringed, as if struck, and made to turn and leave when he heard another voice.
âHey squeak, where are you going?â
âUm, hey man. I thought, I thought I had the wrong house.â
âYeah right, get in here.â He passed again to the front of the door and the girl moved aside for him, blowing a column of smoke into his face as he did.
Inside, he caught a glimpse of fantasy, of desire for something heâd thought bout often and had as of yet left unaccomplished, inexperienced. The immediacy of the staircase let you know there were two floors to this place, and the spaciousness of the first floor, the living room, kitchen, and dining room unobstructed by walls, let you in on the size of the place without having to see it. However, he had a feeling that the second floor would be partitioned, and this difference led him into a vision of closed off spaces, intimate portals to special false memories, and hands gliding down the separation between cloth and flesh. Around the circumference two long, identically tan couches seated some two-dozen forms in various poses, states, and interactions. A haze of gun blue smoke hung somewhere between peopleâs heads and the ceiling, with the plumes escaping from lips constantly adding to the cover. The ceiling itself was a caved in drop, the tiles missing, but the skeletal aluminum structure still intact, creating a strange matrix with which one could partition the space below.
âSo, youâre just going to stand there, or are you going to get a drink?â
âWhat? Oh yeah, sorry.â
âWhy the fuckâre you sorry?â
âNo. no, I just couldnâtâŠâ
âCouldnât what? You need a road map to the kitchen or something? This your first time sneaking out of your parentâs place?â
âYeah. Something like thatâŠâhe trailed off. He wasnât listening or seeing him really. He was rapt in a certain view that had appeared to him. It seemed as if a path had cleared to the kitchen which only he could see. Stranger still, there seemed to be some source of illumination, though from the looks of the worn in shag carpeting, he wondered if it probably should come from the ceiling or something, but he couldnât tell. He took a step forward half expecting to fall on his face or something to solidify his position as ass clown of the party, but no. He felt as if on winged feet, and as he inched closer to the door frame, the light grew more and more intense. Soon, he was at the threshold and he could barely stand its brilliance. âwhat theâŠâ but his thoughts and speech trailed off, caught and took in by the light.
âWant a drink?â
âI donât think he speaks. Look at him, heâs staring like half crazy stupid or something.â
âShut up. Heâs not a retard. Want a drink?â
âWhat?â he could hear the voices as if down a long tunnel, and still his vision was blotted out by the shining light.
âSee. Told you. Completely shit for brains. Heâs probably a Foco-head burn out. Come on, letâs go upstairs and Iâll play that new Lifetime Lounge disk I got for you.â He still couldnât see, but he heard some kind of commotion between the two voices talking to him.
âFuck off, donât grab me like that. I told you Iâm not going upstairs with you. Why would you think would? Eeew.â
âOh, you bitch. You think youâre so fucking cool, just because your daddyâs a rich motherfucker and you got to go to school and take vacations and shit. Fuck you. Iâll take you up there anyways later. Youâll see, IâllâŠâ
âSure. Iâll take drink.â
âWhat?â The guyâs voice shifted now, closer to him. Angrier than when heâd been yelling at the girl, tinged with a different kind of rage.
âI said Iâd take a drink.â And just as he mumbled this, certain that in the next moment heâd feel a fist crash into his face and though heâd continue on being blind, the shade would go from white to black and he might even take a nap there on the kitchen floor. But no, the words were like magic, pulling his vision up from behind whatever screen it sat, clearing away the blinding whiteness and light to reveal the kitchen as it was, the people as they stood, all at once, everything clear and correct.
He saw a table directly n front of him. On this table were three large, plastic five-gallon water jugs filled with some cloudy liquid in which floated many ice cubes, and some kind of green leaf. Underneath this table was a cooler and besides it a keg of beer resting in a trashcan. There was a large stack of green plastic cups sticking out of a cellophane wrapper leaning awkwardly next to the water jugs and he made to go for one of these, happy that he could see and focusing on keeping this good momentum going, momentarily forgetting the rest of the room. This lapse may have been because the rest of the kitchen was very unremarkable, like a thousand others he had seen. Or maybe it was because he didnât so much like the meanness of the guyâs conversation with the girl, harsh words like the overhead fluorescents. Heâd forgot them momentarily, but now he paused in getting the cup from the cellophane and turned to see what they looked like.
At first, he couldnât see the girl behind the wall of her bangs, but her clothes hung well. The guy, however, was already busy staring him in the face. He was reckless youth with a penciled in mustache and a smashed nose. He had a mop of curly dark hair and eyes thatâd make better sense sunk into the carapace of a deep-sea creature. He grinned at him then, asked âso, you do want a drink, eh retard? Have you regained your faculties? Here, let me get that for you.â He reached backwards without taking his eyes off him and grabbed at the cups standing on the table.
âUm, well, Iâd rather if I couldâŠâ Too late. He came back around, not with an empty cup, but with his own full one at he had sighted on the table and swooped up without breaking his gaze. The foamy beer hit him in the face, went up his nose, in is hair and started soaking down the back and front of his carefully picked out party shirt.
âYou dick.â Screamed the girl. âGet out of here, now!â
âOh yeah baby. Now you want to leave with me. Well ok, lets go.â
âFuck you,â she tore away from his grip. âHey, get in here and get this fucking guy out of here!â she called back into the other room, and in turning away the boy finally got a good look at her. He and the girl looked at each other and then the bouncer from the club came into the kitchen and grabbed the guy around the neck with one bear paw, the other hung relaxed at his side loosely clutching a beer bottle neck.
The guy spat, looking up into the bouncerâs face, carefully, hitting the big man dead in the eye. Too much, too soon, the boy thought. The bouncer, in tossing him aside and wiping his eye at the same time, looked almost like a large baby who had just been giving something to eat that disagreed with his juvenile palate. The guy however, as the bouncer threw him against the counter top, well he was all rag doll and not pretty at all as he tried to catch himself but the force bent back the fingers on one of his hands and his head hit the stone edge with a sickening thud. He dropped down and there was already blood left there where heâd struck. âThat motherfucker spit on me,â whined the bouncer, whose work and short temper the boy knew well from experience. Poor guy, he thought, even if heâs a dick, heâll be lucky to have a functioning one after the nights done. The bouncer leaned over and easily picked up the guy one handed, and started off with him through the hall behind the kitchen to the back of the house and whatever semblance of a yard would serve as the whipping grounds.
The boy turned his attention to the large plastic jugs, and grabbing a cup, turned aside to the pretty girl and asked âwhatâs in these?â
âTheyâre mojitos. Are you all right?â
âOh yeah, nothing happened. Iâm wet,â he said finally, as if he was just realizing it then.
âYeah, you are. That guy was being an asshole since he got here. No one even knows him here. I think he showed up with someone that left already and heâs just been creeping out the place since. I hope he gets fucked up.â
âOh, I think its safe to assume thatâs going to happen.â
diga si van pronto a salir
porque si no para seguir
repartiendo el pan
repartiendo el pan
repartiendo el pan
para comer
âŠ
     He thought then about Tin Tan, how slick he was. The whole Pachuco thing, the zoot thing, speaking Calo argot and getting over on people â the trickster character: migrant, transbordered, flamboyant. He wanted to be like them, wanted to go to the other side and learn to party like they did.
The song had repeated again, but was halfway through when it again grabbed the boyâs attentionâŠ
y traigo hojaldras, novias,
cuernos. Que paso
muchachita va usted a salir si o no?
âvoy que me estoy peinando.â
âĂĄndele pues muchachita tĂłmele.
traigo corbatas, volcanes, piedras,
viudas, rejas, un abraso no?â
ây los cuernos, que paso?â
âhay no se va a poder
muchachita.â
     That last part always made him laugh. He sang it back to himself. The beauty of the line is that itâs working on several levels at once. He thought about being the bread man for the millionth time, how heâd have horns for all the girlies in the neighborhood, on all the blocks. Himself, he preferred conchas. Again he laughs, thinking, youâre doing it again.
He reached down for his shoes and got up, twisting around to loosen his back. His mother wasnât home. He could tell she had already left for work by the half full coffee pot on the counter next to the cup with a spoon sticking out above the rim.
The bathroom was still moist from his momâs shower, but he wasnât going to wash now. He looked at himself in the mirror, pressed his fingers into the swollen part of his face, bruised around the eye socket. His eye itself, red and bloody, the pupil unnaturally dilated. He pressed harder and winced at the pain, smiled.
Outside, the sun already beat heavy and the street was congested. The line of vehicles was bordered by food stands and pedestrians. He joined the flow until the corner where a tostiloco cart stood mobbed by commuters wolfing a quick bite amid the stream of passing people. He watched the vendor slit the bag lengthwise and ladle in ceviche. He looked down at all the colors inside the bag, orange carrot, pale fish, green chile, white onion all reeking of lime and reddened by the salsa. The inside of the bag was shiny silver and mirrored distorted color blurs that heightened the effect. He dug in with the spoon and continued on.
The boy slid along the street with the central market on his right. In his mind, he went through what he had to do. Talia would be home later and he could get some money from her. For now though, he didnât have enough even for the bus down to the docks where he might be able to find some work at the fish market with his uncle El Metate. They called him that because of his face. He was a big man, but had an even bigger head. His head looked too big for his big body. It was rectangular, huge, and his face hung flat on the front. His features barely extruded from his face and he rarely smiled, hence El Metate.
He didnât have anything in mind and this worried him. He kept walking past places he knew and streets where down friends lived, but he wouldnât turn in. what worried him most was the weather. The clouds were coming in fast and he couldnât come home until after his mom went to bed again after work or else sheâd have it out with him. He was surprised she didnât wake him this morning, screaming and kicking him out for the millionth time since she decided he was no good anymore. No, if it rained he was screwed out of luck.
He stopped in the park along the ocean front at the start of the boardwalk. The big mangoes were leafy but bare of fruit, and the shade they cast blanketed the whole block so that no other trees grew anywhere else. There used to be three of them, his uncle had told him when he first brought him there as a child, but the hurricane tore one out and deposited it way up blocks from there, smashed into a facade. You should have seen it, he said. Everything was just torn to shred from that storm. People died. Your grandmaâs house almost caved in, and thatâs when she came and lived with your mother. You still werenât born yet, he recounted, but it was like nothing Iâve ever seen. Your grandmother remembers other storms like it, but who knows. She was around when there were dinosaurs!
He liked his uncle. His mother would say he was nothing like his father, and although he never knew him to tell the difference, he figured since his uncle came around all the time and he like being with him, it was just as well. In fact, it wasnât until his uncle went to Los Angelis to work in the textile mill that his mother stopped being happy and everything went to shit. He followed part too, becoming angrier and more defiant everyday so that his mother was driven mad between him and what she called âthe wicked world.â More and more, he thought, in her mind he was becoming part of that sphere as well.
He decided to walk to the docks. It was a long ways with two hills between him and there, but he had nothing to do and no money to spend doing it. A least, his uncle would get him some food or something. He always had some change for him, or would go with him to get some of the delicious drippings they sold near the ticket booth for the water taxi to the island. He liked those drippings, hot in the wax bag, salty and filling. He and his uncle would sit off to one side on the railroad ties that ran through the market, eating the drippings and talking about nothing in particular. He and his uncle were good at that, lazing away an hour or so talking about clouds, as he would say, crunching on the fried bits and cracking jokes that were only funny because they were there together. Not that his uncle was lazy. Far from it, you could tell by his hands that heâd done more work than four normal men. It was only that he enjoyed the boy, maybe even felt he was a father to him, although he was to humble to ever admit it.
Walking suited him just fine. He took off from the park and wove into the center, away from the beach and the hill that rose up in the south of the city. He would cut in and loop around to meet the road on the far side of the hill that then continued on along the port side of the peninsula until heâd get to the fish market. He could have just double backed and cut in through the center, but he preferred walking along the naval road because he could see all the ships and there were never many people on it.
As the boy made his way through the industrial park next to the tanker docks, he took to glancing in the houses he passed through their windows. He saw a family eating, a man watching TV in his skivvies, a woman reading, and in one a painter at work, stepping back from his canvas with the palate resting on the back of his hand. The painting was of a young woman seated at a low counter in front of a large window through which you could see a beautiful garden, bursting green in spring. The effect of looking through two windows, one real and one painted, transported the boy. For a moment he stood transfixed on the garden outside the womanâs window. He wished he could be in the garden, could walk away from the city through the painted window.
He snapped back to himself at a noise coming from up the street. He turned and saw a man walking on all fours, grunting with the effort and smoking a cigarette jammed between his teeth. He inhaled smoke with every breath and steamed out the ends when he took each step forward. He was dirty ragged, but his hair was short and heâd had a shave recently. The white, stubbly growth on his head was patchy and you could see some gleaming scars running around his skull like an insignia. He wasnât moving fast, but you could tell he covered some distance in a day despite his position. The boy wondered if he had to walk that way, or if it was a matter of choice. It couldnât be, he thought, no matter how crazy no one would choose to walk that way, itâs too hard.
When the man got within a space of the boy he craned his neck up awkwardly and looked at him. He didnât say anything, but the sound of his heavy respiration was loud enough to fill the boyâs head. He didnât like the way the man looked at him, and he moved back a step or two, made to go around him or let him pass. The man took a step closer to the boy, seeming to follow him in his retreat. The boy took another step backwards, this time moving into the street. The boy moved forward then, and began walking around the man. He had not taken more than two steps when the man moved sideways, blocking his path. A gurgling sound came from him then as he moved closer to the boy, and when the boy tried to move away again and get past him the man let out a bark like a dog. The boy smirked then, losing his fear, and kicked the man full on in the face with the toe of his heavy longshoreman boot. The man made a sound like a bag with a rubber neck loosing wind, a deflating sound terminated with a toned wheeze like a sendoff of a trumpet thought. He rolled off to the side with blood trickling from his mouth and a painful grin. The boy leaned over the man and looked into his eyes. He looked for signs of intelligence, fear, rage, anything that would identify the man, but he could see nothing. In the manâs eyes, he could not even see recognition.
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