Gordo

by Jaime Cortez

  “What’s the matter, Juan Diego?”

  Juan Diego tries to tell the story of the tears with his hands. His hands begin to move all over the place. Sometimes they look like little man climbing up stairs, a bottle rocket flying up and exploding, a butterfly in the wind, a claw cutting him across his cheek. Juan Diego looks up, and he sees everyone is quiet and confused. Juan Diego starts punching his heart.

  Boom.

  Boom!

  BOOM!

  He hits himself harder and harder like he wants to crack open his chest and take out his sad heart. Tio Hector grabs Juan Diego’s hand to stop him from hitting himself. Juan Diego’s so damned strong he keeps on hitting himself, then my tio grabs him with both hands and makes him stop. He puts his face right up to Juan Diego’s like he’s going to kiss him, but he doesn’t. Instead he talks to him real slow.

  “It’s okay, amigo mio. You can cry, but don’t hurt yourself. Whatever happened, it’s done.” Juan Diego looks down. He opens his fist and stares into his hand. He puts his hand on his heart and begins moving his mouth like he’s singing along with Vicente but with no voice. He tries to stop crying, but it comes out again, like a hiccup. Juan Diego looks down at the dirt, and his shoulders go up and down.

  “Let it out,” says Chulis. He’s crying too. “Llorala, Juan Diego.”

  “Llorala?” I think. How does Chulis know that Juan Diego is crying for a girl and not something else? Juan Diego calms down. He sits up and takes a big drink from the Monte Azul bottle.

  “You in love, Juan Diego?” asks Chulis. Juan Diego looks at him and he shakes his head no.

  “You okay then?” asks Chulis. Juan Diego lifts his thumb into the air to show he is okay now. He grabs the bottle of Monte Azul and drinks the rest in three gulps. Then he burps, and everyone laughs, and he laughs, and everyone starts drinking and talking.

  Suddenly, it’s like we’re all okay. I guess nothing happened.

  “That’s enough sad songs,” says Tio Hector. He walks over to the record player and says, “Now let’s have a party!” He looks through the stack and takes out an album. It’s KC and the Sunshine Band! He starts playing “Get Down Tonight”! YES! I love that song! Some of the older dudes aren’t too excited, but I am, and so are Los Tigres. They’re smiling, with their eyes almost closed from drinking, and they’re moving their heads back and forth and loving it. Benito, the little Tigre, stands up and starts moving his feet, then he leaves the circle, and he starts dancing. He’s really good, and every step matches the music. Benito pretends to be dancing with a girl, holding her by the waist, kicking up all kinds of dust in the dirt with his feets. Disco at Gyrich Farms! He turns around and shakes his butt at everybody, and they love it so much and start laughing. Some of the guys stand up and start clapping. Then Manuel, the other Tigre, stands up. At first, I think he’s gonna dance too, and I’m thinking it’s gonna be great. But noooo, it’s something else. Manuel looks really mad and he goes to his little brother.

  “You call that dancing?” shouts Manuel. “You can’t disco, puto! I tried to teach you, but you can’t disco!” Benito don’t care. He keeps on dancing. Then, Manuel starts dancing, and oh my God, he’s really bad at it. He can’t get down tonight or any night! He pumps his arms like he is weight lifting, and he thinks he’s so cool, but everybody is laughing, like it’s a big joke. Manuel’s face looks angry. He looks again at his little brother. Benito is so smooth, so cool. He looks like he’s dancing on Soul Train. Manuel’s eyebrows get all mean like a bad guy in a comic book, and suddenly he runs and tackles little Benito. They both hit the dirt, and Manuel is swinging and swinging, nailing his little brother on the shoulders, neck, face. It’s wild monkey fighting, man! I stand up to watch, and it makes me dizzy. I see Benito get out from underneath Manuel. He stands and faces Manuel. They’re breathing hard, and everyone’s telling them to stop fighting and settle down, but Manuel can’t stop. He grabs Benito by the shirt and pulls him down to the ground. Manuel swoops down to punch Benito in the face, but Benito kicks up at him. BOOM! Benito’s kick is perfect. He nails his big brother right under the chin with his work boot. Oh man! I can hear Manuel’s mouth snap shut and his head pops back and he lands face up in the dirt. My pa says, “Son of a bitch!” really loud, then everyone gets real quiet.

  I go over to Manuel and like a dummy I ask if he is okay. The guys circle around Manuel. He opens his mouth and inside it’s like a cup of blood. He spits it all out and pokes his finger in his mouth.

  “My tongue,” he says. He can’t talk right. Benito gets on his knees next to Manuel, takes off his T-shirt, and gives it to his big brother.

  “Press this against your mouth,” says Benito. Manuel takes the shirt and does that. Benito looks down, and his hands shake. He starts crying. Then Manuel starts crying and they hug hard. The blood is all over both their faces, necks, and chests. One of them keeps saying, “Forgive me, forgive me,” but it’s hard to tell if it’s Benito or Manuel.

  * * *

  Big Rafa gets up and stands above the hugging Tigres. He puts one big mitt on each boy’s shoulder and separates them. Big Rafa barks at Manuel.

  “Open your mouth, idiota.” Manuel opens his mouth. Rafa looks disgusted.

  “Spit it out so I can see in there,” orders Rafa. Manuel spits out a bunch of blood. Rafa looks into his mouth again.

  “This is bad,” says Big Rafa. You cut right through your tongue. You need to go to the emergency room at Linda Hawkins Memorial now.”

  “It’s only a cut,” says Manuel. “I don’t wanna go.”

  “NO,” says my pa. “You’re going to the hospital before I kick your ass some more for being so stupid.”

  “But—” Before Manuel can say what he wants to say, Pa points at him, and his finger is scary like a spear.

  “Okay,” says Manuel.

  From the darkness outside of the tractor barn, I hear my ma’s voice.

  “Gordo!” she says. “Gordo!” I turn toward her voice, but I can’t see her. She’s like a ghost.

  “Come here, hijo,” she says.

  “But Manuel’s bleeding,” I say.

  “We’re taking him to the hospital,” says Big Rafa. “Go with your mom. Nobody worry.” I walk toward Mom’s voice. She puts her hand on my shoulder, and we begin walking toward our house.

  “I’m sorry,” she says.

  “Why?” I ask.

  “I should never let you stay with them when they’re drinking. It’s too crazy.”

  “But I wanted to be with them.”

  “What is that smell on you?” asks Ma.

  “Nothing,” I say. “They spilled some tequila on me.”

  “Never again,” she says.

  * * *

  We get to the house and she goes in.

  “Ma,” I ask. “Can I sit on the front steps? I wanna see when they leave. I promise I’ll stay right here.” She looks at me real tired.

  “Five minutes,” she says. “Don’t go anywhere. Then you come in.”

  Big Rafa brings his pickup and backs it up to the tractor barn. I hear them arguing about how to get Manuel to the hospital.

  “Lay him down in the truck bed.”

  “No pendejo, he could choke on his own blood.”

  “Then put him on his side.”

  “He’s hurt man, you can’t lay him on a steel floor. He’ll get more hurt.”

  “Sit him in the front with Rafa.”

  “No,” says Big Rafa. “I’m not gonna get my seats and dash full of this idiot’s blood. He rides in the bed.” Finally Dad talks.

  “Everybody listen. Here’s the plan. We put my chair in the truck bed right against the cab. We sit Manuel down in the chair. Benito and Chulis, you sit on the floor next to him and watch that he doesn’t fall off the chair. Cuatro, you help me lift my chair onto the truck.” Pa and Cuatro try to lift the chair up, but they’re too drunk. Cuatro is all wobbly in the knees, and Dad can barely walk straight. Then poor Cuatro, who’s a tiny guy, d
rops his side of the chair and it falls on him, then Dad falls onto the chair. It’s like a cartoon, and I want to laugh, but I don’t. This is bad.

  “Goddammit, Cuatro!” says Pa. He is smoking mad now, and everybody looks at him to see what happens next. He gets up. Juan Diego helps Pa stand his chair back up. Pa looks down at Cuatro, who is still on the ground, rubbing his leg. Dad and Juan Diego hold out their hands, and Cuatro takes them. They pull up little Cuatro like he’s nothing.

  “Sorry, Cuatro,” says my pa. “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” says Cuatro. My pa turns to the guys.

  “Muchachos, help us get the chair up into the truck bed.” This time, four of them do it together, each one on a corner. They lift the green chair, drop it in the truck bed, and slide it till it bumps up against the cab. Dad looks over at Manuel, still bleeding at the mouth.

  “Can you get up in the truck bed?” Manuel nods his head. He goes to climb up on the truck bed and almost falls back, but Juan Diego is right behind him and pushes him in. Manuel lands hard on his knees.

  “Now Benito and Chulis help Manuel stand up and get into the chair,” says my pa.

  “No,” says Manuel. He can barely talk, but he doesn’t want any more help. He crawls to the chair on his hands and knees like a bleeding saint. He lifts himself up and sits down real slow, like an old man. Benito goes next to the chair on one side and gets down on one knee. He puts one hand on the chair and one on Manuel’s shoulder. Chulis does the same on the other side. Dad shuts the gate on the truck bed, climbs into the front seat with Rafa, and closes the door. The truck begins moving. Big Rafa is drunk, but he goes down the bumpy dirt road really slow. Juan Diego waves and waves goodbye.

  * * *

  The truck crawls toward San Juan Highway to get to the hospital. Manuel, sitting up in the truck bed, is like a bloody prince on a green throne. Benito and Chulis are the servants protecting him and holding him up, like he’s special. The red taillights on the back of the truck slowly get smaller and smaller. I feel like Doctor Strange in a comic book, flying outside of my body and watching a sad float in a night parade that no one else wants to see.

  Alex

  It’s Saturday morning and my pa isn’t drunk today. He wasn’t drunk last night either, so I feel pretty lucky, and my ma does too. When I wake up, she’s in the kitchen playing her album of Los Panchos. It’s nice to hear her singing again. Ma has been kind of sad since we moved out of San Juan Bautista and came to Watsonville about five months ago. We have our own house now, and it’s nicer. We have a flush toilet, a lawn, and a telephone. We moved because my pa got a job at Hirano Chicken Ranch near Watsonville. Ma got a new job too, at the Jolly Giant vegetable plant. They don’t have to work in the sun anymore, so that’s good, but I miss the Gyrich Farms Worker Camp. I miss living next door to my nana and grandpa. I don’t have friends at my new school, Las Lomas Elementary. Not yet. Maybe next year I can have a friend.

  I stay in bed and listen to Ma in the kitchen. Even before she calls everyone to come and eat, I smell her fresh flour tortillas and coffee. When the house smells like that, it feels like maybe we’re doing okay. She calls us, and we go to eat. Even my big sister, Sylvie, the seventh-grade, full-time professional snot, looks pretty happy at the table.

  I serve myself beans and fried eggs and sit down at the table. I’m rolling up a hot tortilla to take my first bite when we suddenly hear a weird little motor noise from next door. It sounds like a pissed-off baby lawn mower. Everyone looks out the window to our neighbor Alex’s place to see what it is. At first, nobody sees nothing, and then I look up and see him. Alex is waaaay up in his acacia tree. He has his legs wrapped around a branch and he’s holding a buzzing chain saw. He has a blue bandana wrapped around his head like a cholo, even though he’s not a gangster. He’s too old for that, maybe forty or more. His work shirtsleeves are rolled up to the elbows, and he has on brown leather gloves.

  Last week, the rain and wind were wild. They knocked a huge branch off Alex’s acacia tree, and it crashed into the little chicken coop he made and killed two of his little red chickens. I heard he made caldo de pollo out of them, so they didn’t die for nothing, but now I guess he wants to cut off some tree branches before another storm happens and another branch falls and maybe kills him or his mean junkyard dog, Choco.

  “Alex es un diablo,” says my ma. “Climbs like a monkey. Look how he got way up in that tree with that big saw.”

  “Pfft,” says my pa. “No safety rope. That idiota is gonna fall.”

  Soon as he says that, the branch breaks, and Alex falls. It’s like my pa did a magic trick. Alex drops behind the rusted and busted cyclone fence covered with ivy between our yards. I hear the chain saw cough one time, then it don’t say nothin’.

  I stand up first, then everybody does the same. We look at each other, and nobody knows what to do for a second, then BOOM! Sylvie goes flying out the back door. I book on out right behind her, slamming the screen door against the wall on my way out. We run up Hudson Street to get to Alex’s. Ma and Pa are walking fast behind us. We sprint up Alex’s driveway, through the side gate, and into his backyard. Sylvie’s fast and arrives first. I’m right behind her. Alex’s big black-and-tan dog, Choco, is barking like crazy, standing on his back legs, pulling on his heavy chain. He’s as tall as me and you can see his big cojones swinging and jumping around when he pulls on the chain and tries to get closer to Alex.

  There’s all this blood on Alex’s side. He’s on his back with his eyes closed up tight and making awful noises that sound like laughing but it’s not laughing and sounds like a woman but it’s not no woman. It’s Alex. His legs are halfway covered in the leaves and yellow flowers of the broken acacia branch. His chain saw is way over by the trash cans. Three chickens have flown up to the roof of the chicken coop and they’re looking at the action like they’re in a stadium watching El Puma wrestling against Diabolico for the championship belt. Alex is really jacked up. His arm don’t look right. It has a weird bend, like when you take the arm off a Barbie and pop it back in backward. Also, it looks like some bone or something is trying to pop out from under the skin.

  I get on my knees next to Alex, but I don’t know what to do.

  “Are you okay, Alex?”

  “No, Gordo. I’m not okay,” says Alex. Behind me, my ma and pa arrive. My pa whispers, “Chingue su madre” and gets down on his knees next to me. Alex’s eyes are closing and his head is dropping to the side. Pa calls Alex’s name.

  “Alex, Alex. Look at me. Que te pasa?” asks Pa. Alex can’t answer. He keeps saying, “Ay ay ay.” Ma has her hand over her mouth, and she’s shaking her head like she’s saying no, then she turns to Sylvie.

  “Sylvie, run to the house and call the operator, and tell them to send a, what do you call them? Chingado … it’s the hospital vans, the white ones with the whoo whoo!”

  “The ambulance?” says Sylvie.

  “Yes, the ambulancia. Call them right now! Go, muchacha!” Sylvie runs off and now Alex is quiet and closing his eyes, like he’s gonna fall asleep. Pa is slapping Alex on the cheeks, telling him to wake up. Alex opens his eyes. He looks around like he doesn’t know where he is.

  “What happened?” asks Alex.

  “You had a bad fall, Alex. You’re probably confused. It’s me,” says Pa, “your neighbor Antonio. Do you understand what happened?”

  “Yes. No. Yes. I fell.”

  “That’s right. You fell out of the tree. We calling the ambulance.” Alex tries to move, and it hurts him. He groans again.

  “Don’t worry, Alex,” says Ma. “They’ll be here in a minute. We’ll stay here with you till they arrive, okay?” With his good arm, Alex tries to pull down his sweatshirt zipper.

  “Alex, don’t try to move—you have a big cut on your side. Let me look,” says Ma. Ma kneels in the dirt and unzips the bloody sweatshirt and opens it. Oh God. It’s like he got machine-gunned. So much red. Through the tear in his shirt, you can see a long cut that l
ooks like a giant mouth with bloody lips.

  “Ai, Dios mio,” says Ma when she sees this.

  “Viejo, give me your shirt,” says my ma. Pa takes off his shirt. Ma rolls it up like a burrito and presses it on Alex’s side. Alex makes terrible noises. Choco is barking and snarling and looking right at me like it’s all my damned fault.

  * * *

  The Hudson Street dogs hear the ambulance first, and they start howling, first King up the hill, then Nelly, Pepita, Apache, Boomer, and even old Red. It’s like a chorus, and Choco starts howling too. Soon I can hear the ambulance coming up the road and stopping in front of Alex’s house. The ambulance guys get out. They kind of look like Officers Jon and Poncherello from the TV show CHiPs! CHiPs is the best television show ever in all of 1977 and me and all the other fifth graders at Las Lomas Elementary love the motorcycle police on CHiPs! The gringo officer Jon is tall with blond feathered hair and a mustache. The other one’s Mexican, and he looks a little like Elvis when he was skinny. His hair is combed back and super black like Superman’s. Officer Poncherello sees the blood everywhere, and he stays calm. He starts to ask Alex some questions.

  “Can you wiggle your fingers?” Alex does.

  “Can you lift your head?” Alex tries. He screams. No good.

  Officer Jon bends over a black case with a zipper, and his perfect golden feathers fall across his forehead. He pulls out these long scissors with roundy tips.

  “Okay, my friend, what is your name?” says Officer Jon.

  “Alex.”

  “Alex, my friend, we need to get a look at your arm and your side. We need to cut off your sweatshirt and T-shirt because we can’t take them off without hurting you, okay?”