Tortuga

by Rudolfo Anaya

  “What the hell you screaming about?” Sadsack cursed.

  “You okay?” Mike asked.

  “Bad dream,” I heard Buck whisper.

  “I’m okay,” I nodded and opened my eyes and felt the instant light blind me, and saw the snowflakes of my dream floating by the window. “I’m okay—”

  “Aow, jee-sus! Will you look at that! It snowed!” Sadsack complained and spit on the floor. “Friggin’ snow!”

  I closed my eyes and tried to recapture the fading images of my dream. The river … the river had received me, hidden me. I had waited all morning in the shadows of the giant trees, and at noon the people came down the winding path where I had met la Llorona … singing, carrying great baskets full of food, led by the girls in white … down the winding path to the edge of the river where they set up tables and set the food for all to eat … and the men talked and laughed and sneaked away to take drinks of whiskey and wine … and the women talked to the girls about their duties to God and to men … I watched, hidden in the shadows, afraid to approach even my mother who searched for me among the boys who threw rocks across the water to see who could make them skip the greatest distance … skimming across the water which was mine, my river … and later the holy communion girls sang and danced, played their own game, spread flowers from their Easter baskets on the grass by the bank and held their hands as they danced in a big circle and watched me out of the corners of their eyes …

  Someone in the hall sang:

  Peter Pecker had a dog

  And what a dog was he!

  He took it to his mistress

  And it bit her on the cock–

  Tail, gingerale, five cents a glass

  If you don’t like my story

  You can kiss my royal asss–

  Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies

  If you ever get hit by a bucket of shit

  Be sure to close your eyes–

  Ice by the bucket

  Ice by the cube …

  And the song faded.

  “Listen to those idiots!” Sadsack moaned, “What are they so happy about? Bet the trip’s cancelled ’cause of the snow!”

  “A little snow’s not goin’ to stop this cowboy!” Buck said cheerfully.

  “Yeah, Sad, where’s your spirit?” Mike added.

  “I planned on the movie and now I bet it’s cancelled,” Sadsack repeated.

  “No way!” Buck grinned. “I’m goin’ if I have to push my chair all the way down town! Mike said he fixed me up with Rosita, and is she pur-ty! Hot dog! Pur-ty as a filly on a spring day, and hot to trot! Yahooooo! Hey, Tortuga, you goin’?”

  “Sure,” I nodded. At first I hadn’t planned on going, but Ismelda had said, you can’t sit here forever … You need to get out. You need to begin to see the world. How is it out there? I asked, and she answered, nothing’s changed, nothing’s changed … “Sure I’m going—”

  Ronco came in, dressed in a double-breasted, pin-stripped suit about two sizes too big for him. He had tied the baggy pants around his ankles so they ballooned out like the old zoot-suit pants, and he had found a broad-brimmed hat and sunglasses. He was carrying a pile of clothes for the rest of us, old discarded clothes which the Nurse had dug up for our trip to town.

  “Oraleeee! You look like a real killer!” Mike laughed.

  Ronco grinned and the thin mustache he had penciled over his lips curled up at the edges.

  “Just call me Bogart,” he said hoarsely.

  “Oooo-weeee!” Buck whistled, “You’re goin’ to have to beat the women off you with that outfit!”

  “Dig that!” Mike exclaimed. “Great! Great! Did you get the suit from the Nurse? Any left?”

  “Plenty,” Ronco said and dumped the clothes on the floor. “I got something for everyone.” Mike dug into the pile. He found a tan suit for himself and laughed. He found a levi jacket and tossed it at Buck and Buck immediately put it on and grinned. “Just what I needed! Hot dog! Find me some boots Mike! Boots! Hot dog!”

  Mike found an old woolen cap and stuck it on my head, and for Sadsack there was a flea-bitten fur coat and a fisherman’s hat which even made Sadsack smile. We were excited as we put on the wild outfits.

  Ronco took out his shaving mug, lathered the soap up good and foamy and helped us shave. We splashed his watered down after shave lotion on our red faces and slicked our hair down with his pomade. By the time somebody shouted the bus was coming we were ready, nervous and excited. A sense of freedom filled the air. The rest of the boys who were going shouted up and down the hall. When we saw each other we laughed, but we were happy. We followed Mike and Ronco into the recreation room, singing our ward song:

  Oh we’re the boys of the institute!

  One, two … one, two …

  We love to drink and we love to screw,

  And we like the girls that like it too,

  One, two! One, two!

  The girls were already waiting for us. Normally they ran around in hospital-issue denim pants and shirts like us, but today they were dressed up in skirts and nylons. They had all teased their hair in wild hair-dos and had painted themselves with bright lipstick and blue mascara lashes. They looked grown up and exciting and they smiled coyly at us.

  Buck went crazy. He let out a wild yahoo, tossed his hat in the air and headed straight for Rosita. Mike found Sandra as everybody surged towards the door and the waiting bus. I looked for Ismelda and saw her standing by Samson, helping to load the girls in chairs. When she saw me she smiled.

  “Ready for the trip to town?” she asked.

  I nodded. “Are you going with us?” I asked.

  “I can’t … a new girl just came in and I volunteered to stay with her. It looks like it’s going to be a lot of fun,” she smiled. Then she leaned and whispered in my ear, “It’ll be good for you, just don’t go get drunk in town—”

  I laughed. “I won’t,” I said, “but I wish you were going—”

  “Ready! Ready for the wheelchairs!” the Nurse shouted.

  Samson lifted me, chair and all, and tossed me into the back of the bus. He slammed the door shut and ran around the side to the driver’s seat. Everyone shouted and laughed and scrambled for seats, and when the bus lurched forward a loud cheer went up. I pushed towards the rear window to wave goodbye to Ismelda. She stood by the hospital door, waving and hugging her light sweater around her shoulders. The sun glistening on the snow around her blinded my eyes as I stared at her. Dressed in her white nurses-aide dress she reminded me of the girls in my dream. I waved back, waved until the bus dipped downhill and she disappeared from sight.

  “Free at last!” someone shouted above the din.

  “Yahoooo!” Buck responded and pulled Rosita on to his lap. She smiled and put her arms around his neck. He went crazy.

  Somebody lit cigarettes and passed them around, and those who wanted took tokes.

  “Is somebody smoking?” the Nurse shouted from the front seat, and Mike innocently answered, “Noooo m’mam.”

  A couple of girls sang high school fight songs while most of the fellows moved around and tried to fix themselves up with dates for the movie. Tuerto and Mudo wrestled on the seats and chased each other up and down the aisle. Mike and Sandra disappeared in a passionate embrace. I could hear Ronco and Sadsack shouting and calling, but I couldn’t see them. Danny watched passively. He huddled in a corner and covered himself with the long coat he had started wearing to cover his arm and hump.

  After Ismelda had disappeared from view I relaxed, settled into my chair and turned to watch the antics of the crowd. The bright sun shining on the snow and the images of the dream which kept sweeping over me made me dizzy, and I thought I was going to be sick. So I sat back quietly and tried to focus on something that would hold me still and make the nausea subside. The loud shrieks and shouts in the bus and the landscape flashing by the window mixed into a single vibration which rumbled in my stomach and increased the sickness. I wondered if I should hav
e taken the trip to town; I wondered if I was ready …

  Then something else pulled me from my musing. I sensed someone’s eyes on me. I looked at Danny, but he seemed lost in his own thoughts, quietly staring out the window at the cold, empty streets. I turned and met Cynthia’s stare. I hadn’t seen her since the day I arrived. She sat quietly across the aisle with two other hunch-back girls with twisted backs and wrinkled faces. They were the ones the kids called the night people because they kept away from the other kids during the day and wandered the halls by night. Once when I was sick, after I had seen the vegetables in Salomón’s ward, I thought I had seen Cynthia one night. I had heard them whispering around my bed like I had heard them around the gurney the afternoon I arrived, whispering about my fate, the terrible ordeal I had been through, Salomón’s judgement, their own curse which had ravaged their bodies so completely that they were doomed to the night because they knew they were repulsive to the other kids. Only Ismelda and Salomón loved them, they said. They knew everything that had happened to me.

  At least I thought I had seen or heard her during the time of that deep despair, I couldn’t remember. Now she was sitting across the aisle with her two friends, glancing at me from time to time, exchanging whispers and giggling. They were dressed in white, a first communion white of silk and lace, and I had to wonder if Cynthia, or someone like her had been there the day we all made our first communion, the day we lost our innocence … the day which kept returning to me when I felt feverish or great moments of joy. I smiled, and yes, I could see them dancing in that glade by the river where the sun glimmered in the just-new cottonwood leaves … Did they know I had met la Llorona that day? Had they seen my nakedness and heard my curse? Were they with Ida and June and Rita and Agnes when they called my name … called me back into their arms.…

  Tor-tuuuuuuu-gaaaa … they called, and the cry echoed down the river valley.

  “Tortuga! Hey! We’re here. Look.”

  I opened my eyes as the bus slid to a stop in the ice and slush in front of the movie house. The marquee said the Frankenstein movie was playing. It must have been a Saturday, because a small group of high school kids stood in line at the ticket window. They turned to watch us.

  A wild cheer went up as soon as Samson opened the door. “Let’s go play the pinball machine!” Tuerto shouted, and he and Mudo bounded out the door towards the cafe across the street.

  “Hey! A drugstore!” Sandra shrieked. “We’ll be right back!” she told Mike. She grabbed her crutches and scrambled with the other girls for the drugstore next door.

  “Come back! You hear me? Come back!” the Nurse shouted, but nobody paid attention. In the meantime Samson quietly unloaded us and set us down on a wide sheet of ice which covered the sidewalk in front of the theatre.

  “Hey, how about a drink before the movie starts?” Mike asked Ronco. He pointed at the bar down the street.

  “You bet!” Ronco nodded.

  “Me too!” Buck shouted.

  “No! No!” the Nurse shouted and grabbed Mike’s chair, almost slipping on the ice as she did, “You do that and we’re going straight back up the hill! It’s already bad enough! Everyone’s supposed to stay in one group!”

  “Okay, okay, hold your horses,” Mike grinned, “I was just kidding—”

  “Call the others back,” she said, not letting go of his chair. Mike put two fingers to his mouth and whistled.

  “Jee-sus, what’s happening?” the dimpled girl in the ticket booth asked. Her mouth and eyes were opened wide. Around us the high school kids jabbed each other and laughed. They were mostly football players because they all wore letter jackets. Their girlfriends also wore sweaters and jackets with letters.

  “We just escaped from the crazy house,” Buck answered and pasted his face against the glass pane. The girl shrieked and jumped off her seat.

  “It’s all right, it’s all right, we’re from the hospital,” the Nurse explained. “We called in about bringing the, the kids—”

  Mike whistled again and the girls came rushing out of the drugstore. “The old bag in there told us to get out!” Sandra cried and took Mike’s arm.

  “Why?”

  “She said we were a bunch of freaks, and we just wanted to make trouble … All I wanted was to buy some lipstick—”

  “Ah, screw her,” Mike said, “let’s see the movie.”

  “Yeah, screw her,” one of the girls repeated and threw a finger at the drugstore. “Sticks and stones may hurt my bones, but names will never hurt me!”

  Across the street Mudo and Tuerto came careening out of the cafe with the cook on their tails. “You little bastards!” he shouted and waved his broom.

  “Okay, Nurse, we’re ready,” Mike said.

  “Line up! Line up for tickets!” the Nurse shouted.

  Mike groaned. “Nurse, we don’t have to line up. You know how many there are, right? So just buy the friggin’ tickets—” He led the way into the theatre lobby and we followed. The startled manager asked for tickets but we swarmed past him. Everyone rushed for the popcorn and candy counter.

  “Hey, what’s this?” one of the surprised jocks cried out. He was a big guy with short, crew cut hair. “Have the freaks escaped?” His friends laughed.

  “Fuck off!” Mike snarled. He stopped his chair in front of the bully and was ready to go at it, but Ronco pulled him back. “Come on, Mike, let’s not waste time on the apes, let’s go see the movie!”

  “Yeah, dah apes!” Mudo muttered as we swept past the jocks and their cheerleader girlfriends.

  Laughing and armed with popcorn and candy and cokes we entered the dark theatre. Mike led us to the front row where there was room for our chairs. Those who could threw aside their crutches and others lifted themselves from their chairs to sit on the theatre seats. Then amid much confusion and whistling and calling we settled down as the camera light flashed through the musty, dark air. We cheered the cartoon and booed the Movie-Tone news which showed us giant bombers high above the clouds dropping bombs on a small village somewhere in a dark jungle. Burning children screamed in pain, a scream we could not hear above the roar of the planes and the exploding bombs. The small theatre seemed to shake and tremble with the explosions.

  I closed my eyes and tried to recall the images of my dream instead, but I couldn’t. The booming voice of the news commentator would not let me slip back into my private world. And the greasy, foreign odors that clung to the movie seats filled my nostrils with body smells of prior passion and frustration. How many, I wondered, had come here to see their fantasies played out on the screen? How many lonely lovers? How many crippled bodies? How many dreams woven into the cracks and fabric of the dingy walls? I smelled the sweat of old desires … I heard the groans of love about me as in the dark my crippled friends groped for each other …

  Tortuga, someone whispered, may I come and sit with you and hold you to my bosom in the dark?

  I looked across the darkening water of the river … the dancing girls lifted their skirts to their knees and called for me to join; the tambourines beat a sensual dance.

  I am here, I answered, hiding in the shadows of the cottonwood trees, here at the grove where the cattails grow so thick beside the river …

  “Heeeeey! Tortuga!”

  “Look! There’s Dr. Steel!”

  Cheers shook the theatre. The movie had begun. On the screen a mad doctor mumbled to himself, hidden partially by the jars and beakers of his laboratory, he did resemble Steel, he did turn and speak to … He told us he wanted to create a new man, a superman, someone not heir to the insane passions which ruled mankind … Look! he shouted and his arms swept outward and revealed his laboratory, I have all the scientific tools at my disposal to rival God! I can create a better man! I can create a man who will be free of the wickedness which plagues mankind … And I can infuse him with the fire of science, yes, I can-revive his dead cells with this! He shouted, pulled aside the cloth which covered his secret machine, a table with wires
running to the apparatus, electrodes to be implanted in the brain, glass bottle and tubes for feeding … and suddenly he pulled the switch and the machine sputtered alive with electricity, hot, flashing electricity which sputtered from one pole to the other …

  “That’s Steel all right!” someone shouted.

  “Playing God!”

  “A little cut here, a little cut there!”

  “Bull!” Sadsack scoffed and farted in the dark.

  “Oh my!” Billy cried.

  “Looks like surgery day—”

  “Yeah, here come the patients! Right out of the vegetable ward!”

  We looked as the doctor and his assistants haunted the cemeteries and collected the cadavers he needed for his experiment. Later, in his laboratory, in the secrecy of night, he scrubbed them down and dissected them carefully, like a used car lot mechanic looking for the best used parts.

  We laughed uneasily. The creature which took form under the mad doctor’s hands was one of us. We too were patched up with steel pins, braces, implanted nerves and muscles. We too knew how it felt to be created again, to breathe new life again. We watched intently as the dark clouds of winter swept around the laboratory and the wolves howled in the forest. The doctor didn’t notice anything. His eyes burned with the mad obsession of creation, he stopped eating or sleeping, he was driven to finish his new man. And the poor grotesque monster grew as the doctor sewed and patched together the different parts of human bodies. We cringed in the dark; even Steel had never gone that far. This was life and death. This was a part of the nagging question we faced when we thought of the vegetables … poor creatures kept alive, mummified, denied death, cheating death, until the mad doctor came to haunt their ward with his machine, forcing them to come alive, forcing them to walk … oh God pity them if that should happen, what worse fate than to be dead and walking in the desert … alone, each one alone …