Soul's Road: A Fiction Collection

by Cody Luff

  Indeed, change did make devils out of good men.

  Don Armando sent her flowers at first and notes asking for a visit. Her favorites were the kind with a yellow center but he didn’t know the name of those so he sent her all of them. But, after returning from a visit with Chiflada, they were all at his door step with a note that was direct and concise, telling him he was not welcomed in her home. Confused but not wounded, he sent the flowers to the cemetery and entered his house to compose another note. This one had only one word since only one word occurred to him: Why? This time he sent the letter with Maria Cristina who returned within the hour with a response written in delicate handwriting: Because I said so.

  The note made Don Armando laugh, a laugh that could be heard throughout the town like thunder during the rainy season. Doña Catalina heard the laugh and locked her doors to stop the mocking barreling her way. The temperature in her small one bedroom house rose to that inside of an oven and, for the first time since her divorce, her insides jumped as if something was about to change. That, among other things, worried the proper woman the most. Change makes devils out of good men. The next day she had another lock installed on her door, purchased an angry dog, and gun for her protection.

  That same day, Don Armando found himself in the jewelry store of his dear friend Fausto guessing Doña Catalina’s ring size. Fausto was confused about Armando’s sudden interest in diamond since Armando did not know his friend to keep the company of a woman who wasn’t Chilfada. So he asked his friend for whom the ring was for. With a grin, Don Armando said coyly, “My next and hopefully final wife.” Fausto laughed. “Here I thought you were going to make an honest women out of Chiflada.“ Armando was taken aback. “Fausto, a man of my stature could never marry a woman like her. She‘d give me a bad reputation.” Armando then turned to the young girl next to Fausto, about ten years old, and asked her opinion since all women, regardless of age, loved jewelry. “It’s pretty,” she said. “It is,” he agreed. Armando reached into his pocket and handed Fausto double the amount of the ring. “This is too much!” Fausto exclaimed. “Use the change to give this pretty young girl anything she wants. She should be showered with gifts!”

  He showed the ring to Chiflada during their next visit. Her plump fingers reached for it but stopped short. She promptly scurried out of the bed and wrapped herself in a tattered red silk robe. She tried, as much as any woman could in these situations, to detach herself from her emotions and appeal to her best client’s logical side.

  “She won’t have you. She purchased a gun and will shoot you dead if you come near her.”

  “She won’t.”

  “Oh, but she will! And what will become of me? What will happen if you were no longer here?”

  “There are others.” He kissed Chiflada, and left her bedroom for the last time, with the smell of her regret on his clothes. And Chiflada, a woman pushing middle age who helped a man recover from the loss of a dead wife, never recovered from the sting of the last gentleman skipping out of her room to ask another woman to be his.

  The next day Don Armando, armed with chucks of raw meat and the sparkly ring, marched to Doña Catalina’s house outside of Santo Cristobal. He wore the same suit he wore to his first wedding with the stiff, white glowing shirt that made him look so dapper. He wore his hair, which was dark with gray at the temples, slicked back as he usually did for special occasions. Don Armando’s hair was beginning to thin but everyone, even Chiflada, knew better than to tell him. In his pocket were two tickets to the Capital on the 1:30 train, which left in thirty minutes. Don Armando never missed a train and he didn’t intend on starting now. He picked up the pace and sprinted through the plaza, past the market, past Chiflada’s place and her scowling glare, past the church and the jewelry store of his good friend Fausto and his daughter. He passed all the town’s landmarks looking dashing as a Don should. In his formal attire he was a General leading an invisible army and from the smug smirk on his face he intended to win his war my any means necessary.

  As he stepped up the path to the house, Doña Catalina felt the air shift around her warning of a change to come. She looked up with just enough time to see Don Armando, pitching the chucks of meat toward the angry dog which ceased its ferocious growling to eat.

  “Why are you here?” she demanded as she glanced toward the front door of her humble house and cursed the heavy bolts on the door, wishing she was on the other side of it. At least she still had her gun in the pocket of her apron.

  “I’ve come to claim what’s mine,” Don Armando said.

  “There’s nothing here that belongs to you. Go away.”

  “Now I’ve tried to do this nicely, mujer, but the time of courtship is over.”

  “I want nothing with you. Go now and leave me in peace.”

  The whistle from the train wailed in the distance.

  “One last chance, Catalina.”

  “I’ve heard about you and your whores. I am a plain and simple woman and don’t need to be associated with you. My reputation is better than yours.”

  She reached into her apron pocket, aimed the gun, and fired without realizing it was bullet-less. But by the time she went to correct the mistake and reached into her pocket for the bullets, Don Armando had hoisted Doña Catalina up on his shoulder and marched toward the train. Catalina beat her tiny fists into Don Armando’s back, her screams sharp and loud. This did not worry him in the slightest; he would make her happy in their marriage, he thought to himself as they boarded the train. They were the last passengers on the 1:30 departure toward the Capital.

  When the newlyweds returned from their honeymoon two weeks later, Doña Catalina Rocio de Castillo de Mejia stepped off the train dressed in a rose-colored satin gown, her hair curled and flowing past her shoulders, and wearing the latest fragrance the Capital had to offer to women of her stature. She was linked arm in arm with her loving and attentive husband whom she adored beyond reason not only because he was, indeed, attentive, but because the idea of being married to someone who knew what he wanted and stopped at nothing to get it both pleased her and infuriated her.

  At a reception for the couple, given by Fausto, he asked his friend how he was able to convince Catalina into matrimony.

  “I appealed to her reputation.”

  For 14 years and almost right up to his death, Fausto thought about what his friend meant that faithful day about reputations. The meaning was lost to him until someone close to him nearly lost theirs.

  And so it was that Don Armando and Doña Catalina lived in peaceful matrimony for many years, sleeping in separate rooms, eating at separate times, and occupying different wings of the house. They would attend social functions, church, and occasional outings together as per their agreement to keep Doña Catalina’s reputation spotless. However one day, as was custom in these situations, familiarity grew into fondness and then into curiosity.

  “How is it that you have this reputation of an expert love maker, Don Armando?” she said one day.

  “Just rumors, my dear wife.” he responded.

  “Prove it.”

  Doña Catalina died being made love to by a man with an under-exaggerated reputation who experienced a devilish change.

  Part IV

  Mayra Marquez Santos was the type of young woman who usually didn’t believe town rumors. If rumors held any truth to them the ones about her would have set any decent, God loving person’s hair on fire. The truth was that she was not a virgin and she swore that she would take the name of her deflowerer to her grave. But that was only one time and it hardly qualified as the first time. It was really more of an accident out of curiosity than one of love. Mayra had never fallen in love and was curious as to what all the fuss was about. Regardless, she and her parents considered her pure and rumors or not that was the story she wanted to believe and ninety percent of truth is belief.

  Don Armando was a customer in her father’s jewelry store. She remembered him when he purchased the ring for Doña Catalin
a. Pobre Doña Catalina, she was still so young when she died and the rumors of her death were shocking. Imagine dying after being made love to savagely by a husband who learned his manly duties from a fat prostitute! If she was alive she’d die from the loss of her reputation. But again, who can believe the rumors about a sweet old man like Don Armando and the prude who was his dearly departed wife.

  When her father suspected of her fall from grace he instantly took ill. From his death bed he coerced a confession from her guilty lips. As soon as the truth tumbled out of her, he sent for his good friend Don Armando, now in his 50’s and aging quicker than stale bread. He promised, at Fausto’s death bed, that he would marry his daughter to make her honest and cleanse her of her soiled reputation.

  At first she refused but as her father inched closer to death she relented and planned for her wedding as one would plan for a funeral. She would have to abandon her silly girlish notions of marrying for love and wed a man so old and wrinkled that the thought of his touch made her weep for days.

  Don Armando had eyed the raven haired beauty for the past year. What he thought was lust in her eyes was in reality pity for an old man without a companion. Don Armando, knowing his age, never thought to approach Mayra because it was his best friend’s daughter, though that did not stop him from lusting after her, wanting to know her in the way he’d known the other women in his life. He yearned to touch young, fresh skin like a hungry man eyes a piece of bread. So when his friend asked for the favor from his death bed, to make his daughter honest, he jumped at the chance. She would be his third and final wife, one who could take his reputation. After a lifetime of living and loving women who couldn’t, he deserved someone who could.

  After Fausto’s funeral, the wedding plans continued and Don Armando spent no expense. Whatever the bride wanted she had. He only asked to be allowed to wear his favorite suit, the one with the crisp, white, glowing shirt. That was nonnegotiable. Of course Mayra relented.

  Upon hearing of his upcoming nuptials, Chiflada paid the bride two visits. One as a congratulatory visit, and the other as a warning.

  “And why should I be warned about Don Armando?” she asked.

  “You do know of his reputation, si?”

  “It is nothing but rumors. Not all of them are true.”

  “Like the one about you?”

  Mayra stood still and stopped breathing before continuing. “Those rumors are all lies.”

  “How could they be when I saw you and your lover sneak into the market after dark with my own two eyes?”

  The room spun and Mayra could not believe what she was hearing. “How did you---”

  “Child, that is of no consequence,” Chiflada waved her plump hand. She grabbed her handkerchief and blotted away the sweat. “Goodness, the heat! What you should know is this. Everything you heard about your future husband is true. Be prepared!”

  For days after the prostitute's visit, Mayra thought about what she said and how she could have possibly known of her indiscretion. What if her new husband wanted more than what she was prepared to give? What if one day she did fall in love? What if she died like his other wives?

  On the day of the wedding, facing disgrace or certain death, she messaged over to her cousin Teresita a note at the church. Hopefully, leaving Don Armando at the altar would shame him to the point of not wanting her. She had no other plans after avoiding her wedding day. Perhaps she’d move to the Capital like other modern ladies and find a job working in an office. Or perhaps, and it was almost too much to think about, she would find love closer to her own age.

  But forgetting about deathbed promises wasn’t going to be as easy as simply saying no. After much struggle and nearly losing his balance along the way, the aged Don Armando banged on Mayra’s door with his cane.

  “We’re supposed to get married! Come out!”

  “No!”

  “Come out, I say!”

  “No!”

  Somehow, and from where it came was a mystery even to the people who watched this scene happen, Don Armando knocked open the bolted wooden door with a shove and shuffled into the room. He then shut the door for a private word with his wife-to-be.

  The crowd stood there as angry shouts were exchanged between them. Don Armando’s words, whose voice sounded like a cat’s fading meow earlier, thundered in the room and rattled the walls. It was as if the younger Don Armando, Señor Mejia, was in the bedroom yelling. Mayra was never a subdued woman and returned his loud shouts word for word. Unlike the former wives, Mayra lacked Doña Catalina's plainness and Doña Karina’s respect for propriety. The awkward silence among the crowd grew as they continued to try to hear the couple’s argument. Don Armando was not going to take no for an answer and Mayra did not want to end up like her predecessors. Besides, she said, she was too young to be a Doña or a Señora. She liked the sound of Señorita better.

  Then a pause erupted and the crowd looked at each other with confusion and fear. Could the disagreement been strong enough to have given Don Armando a heart attack? He was, after all, elderly.

  Slowly, the hall filled with the sounds of lovemaking which spilled over from the room. In an awkward procession, the crowd left the couple to work out their disagreement in that manner. By the time the crowd spilled to into the street, some laughing while others had faces frozen in horror, their sounds had grown louder. By the end of the hour, they could be heard in the next street over, at the end of three hours mothers at the plaza covered their children’s ears, and by the end of the day, the farmers on the outskirts of town tossed and turned not being able sleep because of the noise. For three days the deafening sounds of Armando and Mayra’s lovemaking continued uninterrupted. During those three days, Chiflada sat on the stoop outside her brothel and laughed. She laughed so hard and turned so red, the town thought she would have died from it. Her deep laughter mixed in with the couple's love making until, by the end of the third day, it stopped.

  “Oh no,” Chiflada gasped as she scurried toward Mayra’s house. She galloped up the stairs to find her suspicions confirmed.

  “I’ll get the priest.”

  Don Armando died being made love to by a woman who spent the rest of her life seeking love until one day, during her middle age, on the steps of the church, she encountered a young man weeping.

  NATHAN CHANG

  On the Campaign Trail

  IT’S ABOUT SEVEN IN the morning, or so the clock claims. My first thought of the day is that the clock is a lying bastard. It is blaring a bad country band, one that I’ve never heard of. The room is terrible: cheap furnishings, wood-panel tube television, pictures of Jesus, Elvis and a guy who looks inexplicably like both Jesus and Elvis and Thomas Kincaid rip-offs adorn the walls. I roll over in bed to find a blonde woman wearing too much makeup. Lipstick smeared across her lips and cheeks, cheap perfume radiating from her pores along with the faint scent of aftersex wafting up from beneath unwashed sheets. She’s holding an empty bottle of vodka in her hands and mumbling something about Dirk Diggler while the room stinks of sweat, anger, regret and spilled tortilla chips; nacho cheese flavor.

  I get up and stumble into the bathroom. This is apparently where things went terribly, terribly wrong. The counter is cracked, torn off its foundations and sagging like the end of a Viagra kick. The pipes leak brown water into a large pool in the middle of the green tile floor. The mirror is cracked and smeared with an acrid-smelling, yellowish substance that might, before it dried, have once resembled cheez whiz. What went on here? Did we have raucous sex on the bathroom counter? Did someone try to dance on the counter with a can of cheez whiz in their hand? Too many questions, not enough urinating. I lift the toilet seat up and to my abject horror, find that a picture of a bearded man, presumably Jesus, has been vandalized and left to deteriorate in the toilet. Embellished with a drawn-on handlebar moustache and a gunshot wound to the head, he resembles a man I think I know, but cannot recall a name to go with the face. Or he would resemble a man I knew if I gave him a f
ake moustache and shot him in the forehead with a large caliber handgun.

  I feel bad about peeing on this picture, this once-beautiful-perhaps-even-sacred image that until last night had occupied the bathroom wall undisturbed. But my need to relieve myself is greater than the picture’s need for me not to. I finish my business and flush the toilet, but it doesn’t work. Stinking, festering water bubbles up from the malfunctioning appliance and begins to overflow the lip and dribble onto the bathroom floor, adding even more foulness to the pool already eating its way through to the bathroom below. I decide to go back to bed, but I don’t quite make it. My head is still swimming from whatever chemicals I put in there last night. I do the best I can, and collapse across a threadbare chair that would only be comfortable if my spine bent at right angles.

  Who am I? Where am I? Where is here? How did I get here? Was Jesus watching me penetrate this woman who looks like a hooker? Was Elvis? Was the other guy? Did they join in? Part of me wants to see if this is my wife or someone else, but a quick glance reveals her ring does not match the one on my finger, and the rest is a foregone conclusion. As my mind reaches into the well that is my memory, flashes of the previous night come to life. A dinner at Sizzler, finding a lady in a purple dress at a bar. Drinks. Some ecstasy, then a swim in the hotel pool, filled with leaves and teenagers trying to make out with a middle-aged man and woman skinny dipping next to them, presumably us. Not much else.

  A knock at the door. “Sir? Senator?” Who the fuck is it, I find myself saying in what sounds like a chamber that echoes a mile and back. My head wants to explode.

  “Sir, we have to get you ready, you have a town hall to attend in two hours.”

  “I’ll be right out!” I say, reflexively. I don’t know why. Just seems like the right thing to say.

  I fumble through the sheets, looking for my underwear. I find them across the room, covering a lampshade. I collect the rest of my things as quickly as I can, before the woman wakes up. She’s beginning to mumble; I don’t have much time. I toss her a twenty for cab fare and hope that she doesn’t remember my name, what I look like or how long I lasted before my muscles tightened and I made that stupid face that men my age make when they climax in a woman they suspect is not their wife.