Antonio chases him away, not for decency but to prevent a frenzy of seagulls. That would surely give them away.
Baldo kneels by the second dying trumpet and ends its misery with dispatch. Stunned in their daze, the younger brother whimpers and weeps while the elder gazes at the surreal yet inevitable scene. Thoughts swarm: How could this be? At least it has been. Baldo kneels in supplication to the departed soul, the one with fins and scales, until he looks up and runs back as the tijerillas make their move on the baby turtles.
Then Antonio stands alone, wondering what next to do, knowing mistakes must be few.
Jesu Cristo is right; what has happened here? Antonio asks this of himself, knowing full well what has happened. He knows from the depths of his past and everything he has seen and heard that big events come along in every life, and then you choose to take action, or you let nature take its course. Ah, but there, my father, he thinks, is the difference between a life of circumstance and a life of sentient control. Jesu Cristo, the fisherman said, yet already Antonio wonders if the fisherman said these words.
How did Jesu let it come to this? Was this fisherman a bad man? Well, he was bad tonight, not to mention more foolish than Baldo could ever be. Who could not look at a six-foot boy skinny as a chili pepper carrying a machete and carrying on over a dead fish and not look again?
Crying and grieving, his eyes dark as the demon’s who stole his voice, does not Baldo tell you point blank who he is? Baldo is insane, a condition known only by two men in the world, one of whom sleeps in the dirt. Make that three men, another of whom sleeps with the fishes and will dream the liquid dream tonight and all nights forever more. “Thou shalt not kill,” Antonio tells the half head as it flops in the wave wash, reminding the fisherman of rule numero uno. True, Baldo killed as well, but Baldo is his brother and more. Baldo is a man who is not quite a man but rather a soft and foolish boy and perhaps an avenging angel besides and, maybe, the dominant factor in tonight’s discord.
Antonio is proud of his analytical power in the face of certain danger and drags himself through these thoughts by sheer will. He likewise drags the body up by the heels to where the waves won’t catch it. He tucks the half head under a floppy arm and wraps the fingers around the brow.
He scans north and south for walkers.
With a frightful commotion to the north, Baldo makes it a night of carnage, saving his baby turtles. But Antonio sees no human traffic. So he rinses his hands, checks himself for unsightly stains, and strolls casually north like a man out for a twilight constitutional.
He can use the towrope from the big banana but should not use the towboat because the boat is moored beyond the break and would require swimming with the headless body in tow. Unless of course he had a rope long enough to secure the ankles and reach beyond the breakers. He could swim out to the boat with the other end. But he has no such rope, and besides, it would be too heavy to pull through the breakers. Well, he could, but still. What would he do with the half head? He could get a pillowcase from Lyria, but that would take too much time. Make no mistake; he could do any and all of these things if he had to, but he knows the one thing he must do above all; he must decide what is the best possible thing to do in this given situation.
He will use a Jet Ski. He can lash the ankles and leave the body in the shallows, then maneuver the Jet Ski from the shallows through the break with Baldo’s help. Then, very slowly, to keep the noise down, he will drag the body halfway to the Rock of Oaxtapec, maybe three miles out, give or take, where the bottom sinks to five hundred meters. The half-head will fit in his T-shirt as if swallowed by the panther itself.
He moves deftly and quickly with no time for hesitation, knowing as he measures progress that he must quell whatever agitation remains in his unbalanced brother. What he knows amounts to everything necessary to solve this grizzly dilemma, including the laws of buoyancy resulting from gaseous decomposition. A corpse will pop to the surface in no time, if it’s not properly weighted. Antonio breathes deeply and slowly to better facilitate the separation between what he knows and what he feels. Time will come soon enough for reflection and assessment. He must sink the fisherman with certainty.
Scanning the items of every day he thinks of poundage but discounts them one by one. The chaise lounges are too big and bulky and besides, they’re plastic. The anchor from the boat would be perfect but its absence would establish a weak link of its own. And what about the half-head? He could tether the shirt to the body, but then the shirt as well would give him away if the head popped to the top, which he doubts it will. But either the head or the body could rise with the gasses that build in a few days, so the T-shirt is also untenable. He sets these and other potentials aside for a stroll farther north, to see what Baldo is up to.
At least the scene is quiet if not tidy. A dead frigate bird with a broken neck lies in the sand. Another one, badly injured, whimpers nearby. Also whimpering and strewn with feathers and blood, Baldo is beside himself with grief. With his head bowed in mourning he laments the lifeless infant in his hands, willing its return but failing. Antonio sits beside him and leans close for emphasis. He grasps Baldo’s arm with gentle but great pressure for further emphasis, and he tells Baldo that the baby turtles will be safe for now, now that the marauders have been successfully chased away.
Baldo holds up the five fingers of one hand. Five babies are lost, all taken except for this one left behind.
Antonio reiterates his joy over Baldo’s successful defense of the remaining hundred and eighteen babies. He says he is proud and confident that these babies will reach maturity with very little additional mortality. He pulls Baldo’s arm and whispers with urgency that they must turn their attention elsewhere, however, or their lives will be lost, spent forever in prison cells.
Baldo is inconsolable; he doesn’t care about the rest of his life but, rather, moons over the dead baby in his hands, until Antonio reminds him that going to prison tomorrow, or maybe later tonight, will leave these babies unguarded, leave them to certain death. Baldo rises and steps forward, responsive at last to the reality at hand. He strolls south. Good. Antonio will gather the towrope and—“Wait, Baldo. Help me. We need the Jet Ski.”
Okay, Baldo is waiting, but what can be used to hold the body down, and where can the head reside?
Antonio scans north and south again. All is calm. Only the night drinkers stir like another set of gentle waves at the pool bar where they commiserate on the meaning of life. Always nearing the crux, they agree further and have another round. “Baldo, wait! Wait for me! I will be right back! You wait!”
Okay, nothing for it but to duck inside for a pillowcase. Ah, ha! And a mop bucket, to clean up this mess. A mop bucket? For what, to mop up the sand? Hey, the turtle nursery is bloody with feathers. The guests don’t want to see this or know this. They want these babies unharmed. We will make it so, maestro Antonio and Baldo, my assistant.
This story will fly, Antonio thinks, running across the vacant deck on his way in to the laundry room, which is happily open and empty. He shags a pillowcase and then another, just in case, and around the corner, as if luck is favoring his receptive mind, is a mop bucket. Bending his knees, not his back, and looking up, he stoops to lift, grunting for the sixty pounds of it, which shouldn’t be enough to draw a grunt but the bucket is so cumbersome, so far from his body.
Finding a bucket this easily is very good, until he jumps, startled by Inez of the night shift in the laundry room, who stares in disbelief that Antonio doesn’t even know how to wheel a mop bucket. “It has wheels,” she says, pointing them out. “It rolls. You can roll it. You don’t need to carry it.”
“Ah!” Antonio says. “I am so foolish. Ha ha.” He rolls it out to the foyer, heat flashing from within and without under the glare of Inez, who must wonder. He stands straight and tells her, “I must clean the … by the pool, you know. We have a mess.” Inez lightly nods, so Antonio nods too, confirming the consensus between them. Then he shrugs and s
toops to push the bucket on his way.
“How can you clean with no mop?” Inez calls. Antonio laughs and shakes his head. He cannot, of course. She hands him the mop while he continues wagging and laughing, and he pushes the bucket much easier now with the mop to steer it by.
He must lift the bucket again for the steps down from the lobby and the steps up to the pool, but that’s okay. Even a cumbersome sixty pounds is nothing next to a hundred fifty each of sit-ups, crunches, and push-ups. He wonders if his grand total should not be an even five hundred, but then he would have a hundred sixty-six for sit-ups and push-ups and a hundred sixty-seven for crunches. Wait, two times six is twelve plus seven is nineteen; it should be a hundred sixty-seven each for sit-ups and push-ups, and a hundred sixty-six for crunches. But who can remember so many odd counts?
And why must I consider push-ups and crunches at a time like this, when my faculties must remain clear and focused on the job at hand?
Antonio fills the bucket slightly in the pool for the benefit of anyone watching. Then he pushes it to the wall by the steps to the beach and mops a bit here and there. In a minute he casually scans east for random romanticos idling under the stars at the far end of the pool, innocent bystanders who may be called upon to say what they saw. But luck is holding. The pool deck is free of guests. So he quietly sets the mop down, empties the bucket into the sand, and carries it southward.
Darkness prevails now but thins under the half-moon rising, swollen yellow and beaming across the beach. Choreographing as he trudges over the sand, Antonio cheers himself onward with proper attitude in this time of strenuous effort. He will complete this task only with correct mentality, even as the mop bucket goes to a hundred pounds and a hundred twenty, and he surges on sheer will, confident his faith in mindset is well-placed.
He stops mere paces from his goal and sets the bucket down. Breathing hard, he fixes his hearing on the madness ahead, then squints against the blinding truth of what he sees. He buckles under a breaking wave, disbelieving, and stands awash in the faint rasp of Baldo’s gurgling gibberish and coconut hacking. Another sound nearby is the frenzy of las tijerillas. They circle and swoop in a rare evening feed.
Antonio will remember these soft hues that shade this eternal impression of his brother. Neither rage nor grief but rather a misty, serene calmness surrounds this small industry. Mincemeat remains of the fisherman, and though las tijerillas and las gabiotas and all their cousins could finish the feast laid out for them under the stars, the waves can catch the rest and wash it away. Like a fresco preserved for the years remaining to Antonio Garza, the scene burns its imprint of Baldo’s simple solution to life’s relentless challenge.
Baldo is not like other people. Baldo feels something unique to himself and the wild animals, something unfelt by other people. Moreover, Baldo feels nothing, like here on the beach, mincing a man to bits with all the emotion of taking out the trash. This too is unlike other people who would call Baldo dangerous. But isn’t efficiency among predators a blessed part of nature? Baldo is efficient and practical, besides deliberate, reflecting his superior place among survivors.
It’s important to ascertain the positive and establish credit where it’s due, lest people think him daft. He’s not. Just look at his logic in resolving this mess, first removing the sandals, then sliding the trousers off, and finally removing the shirt, button by button, then folding this clothing neatly for future use among the living. What’s more, disrobing the fisherman facilitates the dicing, because a blade loses efficacy on fabric and in fact grows dull.
For now, Antonio leaves the mop bucket behind with the towrope partly inside and partly hanging out. He notices that the half head would fit neatly inside if wedged by the roller and lashed down. But such synchronous fit must be set aside for all the difference it makes now, which is nada, thanks to the insanity pumping from the heart and coursing through the veins of his flesh-and-blood brother.
Baldo could as easily be prepping coconuts for a shift, though his current pursuit seems less precise relative to placement of straws with the paper pushed up just so for proper presentation. No need here for lime slices and a pineapple wedge for eyes and a mouth. No more eyes, no more mouth, this fisher is down to ceviche in a ghastly marinade beyond lemon and salt. But the birds screech delight and stuff their gullets with bountiful repast in a way Antonio can only hope his late father cannot see. Baldo raises the blade and slashes, so the big, bony chunks will be rendered to bite-size bits, lest the poor birds struggle and choke.
The last thing a careful man wants is to leave a grizzly mess. Antonio fears the attention a flashlight might draw, but how else can he see that the big chunks are accounted for? So he shines it to see and reviews. He paces and ponders and finally deems the scene clueless.
Baldo washes his hands and blade in the surf, cleaning his fingernails, plucking bits and squishes from his eyebrows before heading back north to where he is most needed. Antonio watches him with growing disbelief; Baldo is so mechanical, so matter-of-fact, folding the trousers and shirt over the huaraches and strolling up the beach like a regular Joe.
All right, it is okay. It is good. Well, maybe not so good. But maybe it is somewhat good that he recovers so quickly from such a challenge.
Antonio submits to his own insistence, backing slowly from the scene. Smudges in the sand melt further with each set as the waves wash the beach and erase what has been. Nothing will remain by sunrise. Yet, backing up, he stumbles over embers in a shallow pit left by the fisherman. Beside it is a basket with three corn tortillas, an avocado, a tomato, two limes, a half-empty bottle of mescal and one cerveza, perhaps to cleanse the palate. Plus a bent, rusty knife.
Antonio will scatter the hot coals to the sea and so too with the foodstuff, except for the beer, which he should drink for his nerves and besides, the fisherman’s palate is ultimately cleansed.
But no, a whole avo and two limes drifting in would clearly indicate traces of what has been, and the basket washed up on the surf would point as well to foul play. No, best to leave this little scene intact. Did not the fisherman say he has children? Will they not seek their father? They must know where he fishes, and by leaving these things as they are, the solution presents itself. The fisherman is gone; like a fish taking the wrong bait, so too did he take the errant step into the surf, where an undertow took him deep, or maybe a shark, or maybe both. Yes, maybe the undertow took him deep and then the shark ate him, or the shark dragged him in and chewed him up and then the undertow took him way out. Who knows? But look: all his things are here just so, so he must have run into trouble in the surf, which is of course exactly what he did.
Antonio now sees the two maimed trumpet fish, no longer flopping or gasping. With a headshake he picks up the beer and opens it, and with a long pull that feels like morning dew on a desert floor, he drains it. He feels calmer still with the belch that follows. He scans north and south at the glistening beach, awash in the half-light of the half-moon. Misty phantoms swirl above the surf.
“It was a life, my friend. A life.”
Drifting between hard efficiency and contemplation of a soul passing, however evil it might have been, he stoops to the mescal and wraps it carefully in his shirt. He uncorks it awkwardly with another section of shirt and tips it up to cleanse his own palate, hesitating on the notion of lip prints. Then he guzzles liberally and waits for the revolting liquor to do its job of changing a man’s outlook.
Dropping it in the sand, he strolls slowly north a hundred yards with the beer bottle. He fills it with seawater, wipes it down, and, holding it with a grab of shirt, hurls it beyond the breakers. He watches the splash point but sees nothing resurface, so he returns to the dead fire for the bottle cap. Rubbing it as well, he carries it in a fold to knee-deep water and drops it.
Then he hurries back north, seven-thirty already, and he can’t be late, not now. “I was having dinner, Your Honor, with my fiancée. We are engaged to be married.”
V
>
Dinner at Eight
At least Baldo has the sense to shag the mop bucket back to his outpost and then use it, however senselessly, to mop the feathers and blood from the sea-wall steps. He could just as easily fill the bucket and pour it over the mess, but he mops, dragging the damp head through the sand and pebbles like a fool, but a wise fool who knows the value of an explanation, even if it makes no sense.
The dead bird is gone. Antonio sees this as Baldo sees him shuffling near in a rare display of fatigue and perhaps early senility, talking to himself. Baldo nods up to the surf, indicating burial at sea for the late bird. The wounded bird rests quietly in a makeshift nest with his feathers carefully straightened over the makeshift dressing that binds the distorted wing. Baldo has torn strips from his own T-shirt. Beside the bird is an oyster shell filled with water, in case of thirst, and a small piece of fish, in case of hunger. The turtle nursery is buffed and organized like a well-oiled machine. Antonio reels briefly on the logistics of matching stories, on the need for parallel details that will cohere precisely to cover the last thirty or sixty minutes. It would be one thing if he and Baldo could engage in rational dialogue to compose a narrative with no holes, to troubleshoot, modify, and polish the finished version as necessary. But this is quite another thing. At least the situation lends some value to a mentally disturbed brother who is mute. Perhaps what has transpired tonight can be buried in obfuscation, just as the corpse was buried at sea.
He sits beside Baldo and sighs. Baldo nods and parrots his sigh. Baldo smiles and shrugs, relieved, it seems, with justice dispensed. Or maybe relief derives from cleaning up the beach. Or maybe Baldo is happy because his babies are resting peaceably again. Antonio shakes his head, leans close, and says, “We sat here since happy hour. We did not walk on the beach. No, no. Forget I just said that. We walked on the beach. The other way. We saw nothing. Nothing.” Baldo sits up straight, curls his lips back, sets his tongue behind his teeth, and mouths Nada.
Toucan Whisper, Toucan Sing Page 6