A Glass of Water

by Jimmy Santiago Baca

  They ordered drinks.

  The boxing ring in the back was red, the ropes blue. In black leather booths suited men and flashy women sipped expensive tequila. Weathered cowboys, cocaine lawyers, glazeeyed potheads, homeboy policemen, drug dealers, and citizens usually in bed after the evening news, all crowded the tables and filled the steel folding chairs around the ring.

  He spotted his opponent. A muscular black guy flaunting an American flag bracelet and gold earrings, with long braids of his cornrows interwoven with silver wire; brawny and chiseled and as wide as he was tall. He sported a black panther tattoo on his forearm and his two front gold teeth flashed diamonds to match the shimmering, tall, blonde woman at his side. Fans gathered around paying tribute.

  Vito was pumped up and excited by this forbidden world. With the exception of accompanying his mother to the bar where she used to sing, this was the first bar he’d ever been in. His father hated places like this. Before coming to Albuquerque, Vito hardly ever went beyond the camp’s boundaries. And his father constantly warned against hanging out with hoodlums and hustlers. Now he took it all in.

  “Gotta get a little excitement here,” Vito yelled, spouting off contemptuous provocations in the black man’s direction. “You better believe in spirits, that’s the only help you’re getting tonight.”

  The black boxer didn’t get worked up by the taunt. He stepped closer to Vito to intimidate him but his Filipino cornerman blocked his way, holding him at arm’s length.

  The confrontation revved the crowd. They whistled for the boxers to get it on and it spurred Vito. “I’m the reason it rains, buddy. You should have put a bowl of water under your bed last night to ward off evil ’cause you’re going on your knees tonight sucka, two knees, not one.”

  Vito caught sight of Puro out of the corner of his eye, sitting in a booth, and Puro’s hand slid across his throat, gesturing to Vito to cut the crap.

  In the men’s bathroom he changed into his gear. Ignacio laced up Vito’s gloves—the ones he had found in the car trunk.

  He said to Ignacio, “I wonder what the initials on the gloves stand for.”

  He imagined the kid’s last moment—a sunburst eruption of burning steel, ripped bolts, and shattered glass, airborne, grinding noise spinning to a halt. Blood, panic, terror, pain, and charred regret, then the inexorable lightness of floating above this life, into the land of spirits. He kissed the gloves to show respect.

  When Vito came out, the black fighter was waiting, looking all of a million dollars and change, decked out in a silver cape with matching gloves and shoes, face shining with grease, a gold medallion that read STUD hanging from his neck.

  Vito climbed into the ring and said, “No U-turns! This is going to be a Sunday sightseeing drive for me. I’m putting it on cruise control.” He smacked his gloves and lunged at Stud, who didn’t move, and as the ref warned Vito no more antics or he’d risk forfeiting, Stud mad-dogged Vito, eyes brewing a savage poison. The ref shoved Vito to his corner and he turned around to face the spectators, lowering his head to pray, when all of a sudden an older woman two rows back from ringside shrieked.

  “He’s got Johnny’s gloves! Take them off!” and she collapsed into tears of agony.

  “Must be the kid’s mother,” Ignacio said.

  Just as the ref ordered Vito to the middle of the ring for instructions, the woman started clawing to free herself from her husband, yelling, “Take them off!”

  Vito climbed over the ropes, made his way to them, and knelt next to the couple. “I found them in a car at the junkyard I work at. Maybe it’s his way, you know, of doing something through me, like he wants to fight again. Please, let me use them. I’m sorry, just let me use them, just tonight.”

  The father patted his wife’s shoulder, consoling her. “It’s okay, honey, calm down. Let him fight for our boy, just tonight.”

  The woman moaned into her cupped hands, then wiped her tears, gulping her breath. “Okay, okay.”

  The ref yelled, “Is the visit over?” A pause. “Or are you forfeiting?”

  Vito leaned in, “I’ll bring him honor … me la rayo.” I promise. The mother pressed her fingers to her lips and rubbed the initials.

  The bell rang.

  Vito danced, bobbing in and out buoyantly, showing off the ease he had avoiding the slugger’s punches, smiling at the spectators, until the first blow connected and Stud decked him. Bleary eyed, seeing fuzzy twos, head floating light with bath bubbles, not sure what had happened, he rose wobbly kneed.

  Stud sighted him in the crosshairs of his rage and beat him down, growling, “I want to marry you, let the world know you’re my bride. Say you’re this nigger’s chili-pie bride, Mezz-kin. Mine.” All Vito could do was cover up, back against the ropes, protect his face, and flinch with each blow to his body.

  “Wear you on my arm like a shirt, bitch. Sing to me, bitch, sing to me,” and Stud kept pounding him in the ribs and lower back without mercy.

  As he was being beat he heard a back door open and felt a fresh night breeze sweep through the bar. Someone outside cried in Spanish to grab a chicken and cook it. A radio blared “Flor de las Flores.” People ordered drinks, moved table to table, and huddled in areas between tables. Their chatter, rising in English and Spanish, pitched against his ears with the festive rhythms of a holiday.

  Lungs smoldering and puffing short breaths, eyes burning like dry pine needles in fire, he found himself looking down at the people as if the ring he was standing in was the mountain peak center of the world.

  Stud’s brutal punches drove him over waterfalls, cooling the chili powder in his wounds, over cliffs, bouncing him until he was borne aloft, floating through air with a deafening roar in his heart that blocked everything else out. He turned end over end and splashed down into this moment, soaked in his perspiration, yelping in pain, swinging his right fist in the air to ward off the blows, until he felt himself lift off the bottom, an inflatable raft carrying him up from the dark drowning depths.

  He glimpsed Stud’s menacing face grinning through the water, his features wavering and watery. He couldn’t breathe. He struggled to swim but Stud pushed him down, down, until he felt he was losing consciousness and as he floated lifelessly down he vaguely remembered studying the gloves, the green leather, the beautiful initials embossed in yellow stitching.

  He was outside himself, watching himself go down to the murky bottom when the gloves pulled his arms out and up like a spring that shot him up streaming past the water. He coughed, he flung his head back and forth, and in a raging trance he pounded Stud’s face down to the ground.

  He’d never taken a beating like that and when the bell rang, Ignacio had to enter the ring and escort Vito to the corner. He was dazed, his face cut, bruised purple, and red with broken blood vessels.

  Hecklers cajoled him as another wannabe boxer.

  “I’m throwing it in,” Ignacio said.

  Vito cringed through the slits of his swollen eyelids—they were distended and discolored black and blue—shaking his head no. He looked at the crowd jeering and howling, enjoying his beat-down. His eyes rested on the parents. The father motioned his right arm toward his jaw, swinging it up several times. The mother swung her fist sideways, telling him to use a crossover. He saw Puro shaking his head in disgust and when their eyes met Puro ran his finger under his neck, ordering him to stop the fight.

  All of them expected him to lose—except for the kid’s parents—and it pissed Vito off.

  “Bring in the cows ’cause winter is coming on.” He slapped his gloves. “Come on lil’ doggie.”

  Ignacio wiped blood from his face, lubricated his cuts with Vaseline, and poured water over his head. “You sure, carnal, there’s always another day.”

  “Call me Mr. Blacksmith,” Vito grinned. “Time to melt down some scrap iron.” Ignacio, not knowing what he was talking about, shoved the mouthpiece in and grunted with confidence, “Go get ’em blacksmith.” Vito winced, the pain in his jaw
and ribs stinging.

  Stud’s gold teeth gleamed as he stood and scoffed, “After this I’m going to have ten gold teeth.”

  Just as the bell sounded for the second round, the phone rang at Rafael’s house. He was tired and ready to get into bed, watch the 10:00 p.m. news and hit the sack. He answered the phone. It was Lorenzo, informing him Casimiro had had a stroke.

  Rafael put on his boots, cap, and coat and drove to meet Vito at his GED class and maybe take him out to the pancake house and talk. On his way there, he passed the bar and pulled in, curious why the truck was parked in front and not at school. He entered the bar, greeted a few old friends, and froze when he saw Vito in the ring.

  He’d promised Casimiro he’d take care of Vito, guide him as a mentor would, teach him responsibility, and get him to graduate night school. And as soon as he saw Puro, it all came together. He was incensed.

  He’d known Puro for years and knew he was one to exploit an opportunity to make money, no matter the cost. Somehow Puro had trapped Vito in his web. Getting a young, impressionable kid on his side, especially one as big and strong as Vito, might put some money in his pocket, despite the damage it would do to Vito. But Rafael had given his word to Casimiro and that bothered him more than anything; his integrity had now been drawn into doubt and dragged through the dirt by this… son of a bitch.

  Puro was leaning against the wall when Rafael shoved him, at the same time grabbing his hand and stopping Puro from going for his waistline gun. Rafael seethed, “Keep your hands off this kid.”

  Their eyes probed each other’s like the children they used to be when they climbed up in the trees at night and stole apples, each wondering if the noise they heard was Mr. Javier coming out of his house. It was fear in their eyes under the moon back then, and fear now in both their eyes that something was happening they couldn’t stop. It was like that with passions that open up gates of fury or love, changing lives forever.

  The fans hardly noticed them, so enraptured were they by the turn of events in the ring. After the first round, many had paid their tab intent on leaving, but now the chairs were occupied. Suddenly the crowd was on its feet, high-fiving a clean punch to the jaw, which was countered with a crushing blow to the ribcage. They were whipped into a frenzy at Vito’s comeback.

  “Look at him compadre,” Puro begged. “Look, first time he’s boxed. It’s incredible.”

  And Rafael turned and saw Vito smack Stud at will, wearing him down to a thin wafer of submission. He was intimidating now, stepping almost daintily and looking around with fierce black eyes, burning a dark fire hotter than blue and white flame, his eyes demanding tribute of one who knows that nothing can resist fire. He hopped and skipped around the ring, a young lion over a wounded doe, or a sparrow with its first straw for its nest.

  Rafael gasped, struck with such force by the sight of Vito pummeling his opponent with powerful uppercuts that sent Stud sprawling out of the ring. He turned and left just as the ref stopped the fight.

  The dark, the cigarette smoke, the lamps illuminating the ring, the stench of sweat and reek of perfume and cologne, the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd saw it and for a moment an underwater silence overtook everyone and no one breathed. Each brain clocked the last punch that was, alone, worth the money they paid to get in.

  Vito had been smacked down and was losing badly, humiliated by a clubhouse draft horse, as vulnerable and defenseless as a bird on the ground with a bad wing. He tasted the air exhaled from the smoking and drinking crowd, knew he could fly, and rose to a call in his blood greater than him, greater than the sum of all those in the bar cheering every punch his adversary smashed into his jaw, ribs, arms, chin, head, and stomach.

  As he stood there staring at Stud on the floor, he spit to the side, sweat and blood shimmering down his face and chest, heart shouting for more violence. He slapped the dead boy’s gloves together, yelling for Stud to get up. He wanted to hit and get hit, duck and catch shots, block, counterpunch, get stunned by an uppercut and sting back with a left hook, sweat flying and spraying into the crowd, blood spattering the floor. He relished it, he exulted in it, it was his element, where fire was born, fire was used, and air and earth and water streamed through his gloves to make him an element of earth that could not be dominated, bent, broken, or tamed.

  Sixty or seventy fans heaved in waves into the ring, squashing him with offered drinks and cigars, reaching over each other to touch any part of him. He couldn’t move, dizzy with head-splitting pain. He was coming back, returning to the place and time but still withdrawn; fans seemed a blurred nest of buzzing flies joyfully feasting on horse shit.

  I told you, he thought, talking to the dead boxer. The win is mine, but it’s yours, too. Those motherfuckers, he thought, and kissed the gloves, and to the spirit boxer he thought, I told you I’d honor you. You took me to the water’s edge and I stepped up on the shore. You gave your gloves the music of war, all I had to do was move them and horses charged forth from each one. I felt it when you pulled me up. Gracias.

  Part two

  14

  Ah, my man Casimiro, all those people you loved as a boy and had faith in that they could deliver you from poverty. They told you keep your sights high and described the wonders of America and how life could be if you worked hard and trusted in the American dream. It will never let you down, they said, and you rose early and went to bed knowing the words were true as the ten commandments and that you had a life waiting for you beyond the border.

  All you had to do was cross miles of desert, hide from Blackwater assassins and Blackwater mercenaries and keep moving north along sandy ravines, burying yourself in dirt to sleep, because you believed in what they said.

  But over the years you became a man without hope, without a single wish that came true, and that hurts more than anything in the world and it can never be erased because that was all you ever talked about, about the promised land under stars. Believing what they told you opened your heart and you would have done anything for them and you did, you gave it all up to follow them, and the lies broke you. It was not as they said, you were no longer who you were. Despair and darkness poured out of your eyes and there was nothing you could do about it. You were completely powerless to even whisper a complaint and you carried this dark need to avenge the betrayal, to devour people and destroy, to make people pay for what they had said, make them suffer, and that was what you hated most, because you are a good man, and became not much of anything.

  The soil of your soul, the soil of your breath, the soil of your words extinguishes the fire of your life, blows and rearranges your days to become another’s story and with every retelling a new detail is imagined, another diamond added to map your transformation.

  One son works in the fields and another son’s face blows in the breeze—Vito’s black hair waving over his eyes and mouth, his lips grim as he watches you wave good-bye.

  I know, my love, I know. As mist drifts over the fields around the camp and you inhale its musk, staring into the glint leaf of a new morning, remember my love, do not escape hardship through the trapdoor of a bitter dream deferred.

  15

  March 2003

  After doing a few chores on a Saturday afternoon, it was too hot to work in the warehouse and Casimiro decided to wait until it cooled a bit. He relaxed in the doorway of the Pullman and picked at the calluses on his palms, looking over the fields toward the river, wondering how Rafael and Vito were doing and feeling that maybe it would all turn out for the better. If anybody could tame a young colt, it was Rafael. They had worked side by side in the rows and there was no one better at working than Rafael. He was the only one he could trust with his son’s welfare and it was fitting because he had waited outside the door the whole time during Nopal’s labor until Vito was born and because of that Casimiro considered him Vito’s godfather.

  Thinking with pleasure about Lorenzo’s first birthday, Casimiro then remembered how, eleven months after they had met, on a Thursday mornin
g, Nopal’s water broke. While the women escorted her to Elena, the midwife, Casimiro carefully cut the plants the midwife had anointed and placed them to dry on the Pullman windowsill. Then, he crushed and burned them, waving the smoke around the railcar as he prayed to the spirits to care for his wife and infant.

  A year passed and they celebrated their baby’s first birthday by walking to the river and eating watermelon. Casimiro held his son’s tiny hand in his as the child toddled across the fields. Lorenzo lurched excitedly over the rows, his wobbly head weighing more than his body, no taller than a plant. He yelped at everything he saw, heard, or sniffed, pausing now and then to read his parent’s eyes for signs of danger.

  Casimiro had felt sad that his son was going to be a slave to the fields, too, but before he could tell his wife he was sorry, that he’d work harder to make sure he would go to school in the city, thinking how to say to Nopal that he had more than paid for his son’s freedom with his sweat, she surprised him with the news that she was pregnant again.

  After a while, Casimiro got up and he walked out to the field to check the irrigation water. He didn’t want it going over the rows into the road. He heard the dirt murmuring Nopal’s name up at him.

  He suddenly felt flushed with heat, nauseated. His arm ached, his vision blurred. His head hurt. He walked slowly over to the water truck, pulled the freezing ladle from the ice-filled cooler, and drank heartily as some of the water dribbled down his mouth, onto his shirt. After wiping his mouth with his forearm, he lit a cigarette, and with the greatest pleasure exhaled the smoke out on the air. Still, his face felt feverish and he poured water over his head, drenched his handkerchief and draped it over his head, and he fell down and found that he couldn’t get up.

  * * *

  The puppet strings holding him up were cut and with all his strength he tried to move, closing his fingers into a fist and using it as a support to rise but it didn’t work. He gave a heaving moan of frustration and fear. Scratching at mud, he licked his lips and tasted the dirt he had been working his whole life. Dizzy and disoriented, he rolled over, stared at the sky, told himself to breathe deep and relax. When the spell was finally over, he rose and looked around to make sure no one had seen what had just happened.