So they bid farewell, not yet ready for the embrace but conjoined in peace for now. After all, the man between them is in jail.
Twilight finds Mrs. Mayfair fixing her evening face above her evening self, pulling her tummy in on a half twist for full advantage in the mirror. The lovely reward is not what it was, but then again it’s more. She frowns. She smiles. She smiles wholeheartedly; there it is, the puss that won the west, or a fair corner of it, anyway. Not that Frederick Wendell will score the prize. He wants it so bad he can taste it, and he’s a nice enough man with an unimposing disposition, which would put him in the running if the world were a better place. But score he will not, because he’ll snore long before the witching hour instead of ordering more drinks and hungering for one more dance and then begging like no tomorrow, please, just this once, you and I. But no, dearest Frederick has neither the skill nor the stamina for romance.
Faithfulness seems a further stretch to a hussy intimate with middle age and a hot tamale who’s in jail. Still, an old gal winks in the mirror at the feeling between Antonio and herself. She calls it the love of her life as a joke and knows she isn’t so old if the sap rises so readily in such a vital young man. Cocking her head in flamboyant resignation, she reaches slowly for the stars, closing her eyes and letting her beautiful hands settle on her still-lovely loins, from whence they slide, gently, for the silky feeling.
Milo sends Baldo home. Only a maniac would want to guard the little turtles night and day. Baldo nods vociferously, because he is and does, but Milo sends him on.
Baldo resists, miming last night’s attack from the tijerillas.
Milo insists that another attack will not occur with Luís and Tomás on sentry through the night.
Baldo leaves with his injured bird, who rides beneath the wing of the protector. But they circle back to clarify hazards with Luis and Tomás, both of whom pledge diligence against a sneak attack until sunrise, when El Capitán will return.
So Baldo heads home at last, weary as a boy can feel, anticipating the comfort of cleaning himself and sleeping at home. He arrives cautiously, anticipating Quincy’s secret troops. The place feels forlorn as a ruin of ancient times, empty of the life once lived there, deserted and cold.
Everything is as he left it except for the telltale pillowcase. He secures his bird beneath the table with an oyster shell of water and a piece of fish on the side. He plops onto his hammock for a short rest before personal hygiene, after which he will prepare for tomorrow and then go for something to eat. He falls asleep quickly and wakens to Lyria, arriving with dinner for a king.
Half a grouper surrounded by Planchar deluxe and nearly half a nopole salad sit him up and remind him how hungry he is. Lyria smiles and ruffles his hair and runs her cool fingers up and down his ribs like slender mallets on a xylophone. They practically stick out through his T-shirt—the ribs—and he writhes and squeals at her touch. He eats like a boy, but she gets him a beer because he looks tired as a man.
Entering her own house for a beer, just one, Rosa the mother waddles from the bedroom with a quixotic smile and a small item in her hand. Rosa breathes short, blushing and nearly tearful. “Here, Lyria. What you wanted.”
In Rosa’s hand is a photograph of herself taken a year before Lyria’s birth. They stare at it together, until Rosa holds it next to Lyria’s face for the spit and image that are one. Rosa cries, but whether she weeps for the joy of parenthood and the blessings bestowed upon her, or for the cruel fat awaiting her fair daughter is a matter of speculation.
Lyria hugs her huge mother in response to both potentials, because a mother like Rosa elicits love easily as a blue sky draws clouds. And such a hug hides her own tears.
“Come. Look,” Rosa says, leading Lyria to the stack of pictures she has found.
By the time Lyria returns, Baldo is finished. The room smells of soap and he softly swings on the hammock, shirtless in fresh jams with his eyes closed. She sets the beer down within reach and watches him, until he opens his eyes and sits up with his pillow in his hands. He wants to know where is the telltale pillowcase.
She explains it is okay; that the woman with the pelotas grandes has disposed of it or will dispose of it. Baldo looks unconvinced but takes the beer and drains half of it and lies back. He scoots over to make room for her, for the solace siblings have to offer each other, she tells herself.
She removes her sweater to ease the constraint of too much clothing in a hammock and lies next to him. Soon she is focused on the ceiling, wondering what it is actually made of, breathing short and fantasizing that a growing boy given a beer will soon complain of needs unmet, that he will need milk.
This is because Baldo has lifted her T-shirt as casually as a pup burrowing through the fur to snuggle in for a nice suckle. She can’t help the high-pitched sounds emanating from deep within herself and knows that this is one of those things that only a woman of experience can understand, and now she does. She smiles from within at the sound of cooing that only her love can release from the skinny brother who wields the vengeance. She wishes the lights were off, but then what would people think?
Next door, Rosa has a beer of her own and then another. Remembering those days and honestly feeling no different from then to now, she has another and counts what is lost and gained.
A few miles down the road in a cell with limited ventilation but not too many horrible noises, the darkness turns darker. Then it turns black. Complete lack of light opens Antonio’s eyes to utter stillness. He anticipated the horrible sounds of men confined too long and driven to horrible acts. These horrors feel conspicuously absent in the tingly perfect blackness surrounding him. He senses something, but it’s only fatigue creeping in, and his eyes gently close. They squeeze shut when a blinding light blasts him from sleep and a deep voice says, “This will take as long as necessary. We have some questions.”
You have to wonder: when does Quincy sleep? Here it is six o’clock or ten or maybe it’s two a.m., and he’s still here, trapped like a prisoner instead of enjoying life out on the town with drinking and dining and perhaps some dancing, and maybe later some hoochie coochie fun.
Quincy settles like the troll under the bridge, first to his haunches, then to his pork-fed butt when a lackey brings a chair. He sinks affably to a full slump in the gut and shoulders. He breathes laboriously, but seems happy to be here. With mordant satisfaction, he assesses what he’s earned that nobody can take away, least of all the pitiful prisoner now in the unfortunate intersection of the cross hairs of his focus.
Antonio seeks facial adjustment to best reflect his own fortitude, somewhere between confidence and innocence with a dash of irritability.
Quincy says, “You know …” And a smile takes shape, because he is happy. His many teeth reveal the extent of his happiness. Antonio does not know, nor does he ask what he should know. Or who is meant by we in we have a few questions.
Who? You and el pequeño in your pocket? No, Quincy has nothing in his pocket but holes. Nor can he derive satisfaction like a normal man from the answers to a few questions.
Both men wait for the time it takes to measure the other.
Antonio measures the fear simmering inside as well, wondering how this casual approach to a few questions can indicate anything but the most horrible potential of all.
X
Sunny Blue Skies and a Brand New Day
It’s all a ruse, a game, a formidable but futile attempt to intimidate by veiled threat. Antonio knows this in the first hour or two but will not succumb to arrogance, nor will he submit to what is not true. Well, he might submit; what else can you do? But he won’t confess, because he’s innocent. Quincy has nothing but stumbling utterance of his brother or someone else’s brother, or you know, or he knows.
Get some clues, hombre!
Antonio wants to yell it or convey it with a smirk. But among the lessons assimilated early on by a young man on the fast track is the practical value of the low profile. Punch lines might be golde
n with a straight man wry as Quincy making the set-up. But such a rickety stage can make for hazardous delivery to a policeman, and Antonio knows it is sometimes better to concede the spotlight to the pudgy straight man with the bumpy face. Let him shine and have his say. See what follows, laughter or applause or the numbing stillness of an empty cell. Any way it goes, where can the fat man go from here?
Quincy may be fat and have a bumpy face but he’s far from pudgy in the brain. He’s lean and mean between the eyes. With his first twenty plays scripted on his clipboard he paces the sideline, at a distance, watching, seeking greater control.
Antonio answers carefully, weaving elliptical obtusion and dialectic lexicon like a seasoned apologist of the smoke and mirrors school. The exchange is tape-recorded. So why say anything that can and will be used against you? It’s not easy to feign a most sincere yet obscure regret while staying on your feet and giving the illusion of progress.
You know what happened on the night of the twenty-second on the beach near the Hotel Oaxtapec, when Esteban Silvestre was murdered.
What? That’s it? Is this a question? Or one of those veiled accusations designed to draw reaction, a confession, as it were? A twitch, a blink, a furrow or uncertain, nervous flex can give you up for guilty, but nobody speaks body language more fluently than Antonio; with chin up, back straight, eyes proud and everything relaxed, Antonio budges not one millimicron as he sighs, “No, sir. I am sorry to say that I do not.”
“Your brother did it.”
Who would respond to such nonsense? Not Antonio, who can stare into next week. He will offer no denial or equivocation. The statement has no more meaning than, say, the sky is green Jell-O.
So they sit and stare.
Antonio won’t blink but finally states for the record, “Señor, my brother is a boy of fifteen years and a mute.”
“Do you fish?”
“No, Señor. I’m sorry to say that I don’t.”
“Did you ever fish?”
“Yes. A long time ago, with my father.”
“Your father is dead. Is he not?”
“Yes, Señor. He is.”
“Did he … make you fish?”
“No, Señor. He did not.”
“Then you liked to fish?”
“I liked being with my father. I can no longer be with him, except spiritually.”
“Did you know Esteban Silvestre?”
“I don’t think I know him.”
“You know he is dead?”
“No, Señor. I don’t know that.”
And so on round the bend, slow and rickety as a cart dropping junk off the top now and then when Quincy mumbles aside something like, “Your brother carries a machete.”
Antonio treads carefully behind the wagon, neither retrieving the trash nor stumbling over the big pieces, like this one that merits a nod and a clarification. “He uses a machete in his work.”
“What is his work?”
“He opens coconuts for guests at the hotel.”
“Hm. He doesn’t take care of the turtles?”
“Yes. As of yesterday he takes care of the turtles.”
“Where is his machete?”
“I don’t know.” Here Antonio slips with a half-smile tweaking past as he notes the need for a disposition on the machete. But the need is Quincy’s; the machete has yet to be found.
Furthermore, Quincy misses the slipped half-smile because he reviews his play list too closely, proving the superior benefits of improvisation. How can you go to question nineteen just because it comes after question eighteen, if nineteen is a digressive query on turtle care after eighteen exposed a flank on a missing machete? You will surely miss your chance, and Quincy does.
Antonio hides his irrepressible relief with another sigh and a slump, which is not a loss of posture but a ruse, a distraction, in which he stares at Quincy’s hair, calculating the mix between natural oil and bottled oil that lubricates the sheen. So the telltale smirk is not avoided but not detected either.
The game goes on. Into the night they volley from opposing baselines with neither man rushing the net. A tennis overlay gives a maestro a system in which to work that is better than free form. Let Quincy mumble innuendo and insult. Antonio hangs back and lets the ball come to him. No need to hurry the point.
In a few hours the harsh florescence loses its edge as first light fills the windows. Quincy rises too, saying that should do it.
Antonio doesn’t ask what it is, but sits still as a trained, professional witness.
Far from insensitive to such acute skill, Quincy doubletakes on his initial hunch that such a performance may actually prove his premonition. He hesitates, and Antonio trumps him by taking a bumbling initiative that a trained professional would never take.
“You work very hard, Señor Quincy.”
“Please. My name is not Quincy,” Quincy says, but he doesn’t say what his name really is.
“I think sitting in a jail cell all night asking questions must not be your first choice.”
Quincy allows for another smile, the first since his last smile, and he sits back down. “No it is not. Tell me something. What is your first choice?”
Antonio smiles big; it’s a fake, but Quincy takes the bait. “My first choice, Señor, would be for something good to eat and then maybe a beer, and then I would like to go back to the hotel, you know, if something is on TV, or else I will read from a book. I like to read books on business and the American stock market.”
“Is that what you did last night? Go back to watch TV?”
“No. 1 only went back to bring something to eat to my brother. He is guarding the turtles now and he’s very diligent. I had too much to drink. You know, Saturday night. I fell asleep.”
“But you have a room at the hotel?”
“No, Señor. I watch the TV in the lobby bar.”
Quincy takes notes for the first time, then stands and nods and again says that should do it. He moves ponderously on, taking leave, but turns abruptly to ask how Antonio, making better money than most in the area, could risk everything on a simple hatred.
Antonio squints for meaning, confident that he hates nothing.
Quincy spells it out. “Hector Diàz. You bludgeoned him for no reason on his way home from his office. Or maybe you have a reason. Lorenzo Lorca. You killed him with a knife in a similar way.” Quincy waits.
Antonio looks up and says, “No sir. I did none of these things. I do not know these men. I’m sorry you cannot solve these crimes.”
Quincy leaves, leaving Antonio to wonder if this last exchange will in fact do it. Perhaps the bumbling human touch helped assuage suspicion. A maestro must often depend on the corollaries rather than on assessment, and this is one of those times.
The corollary in this application is: Who knows? Nobody can know until later. So why worry? It can only mess you up. He reclines to the soft comfort of the corollary and closes his eyes to sleep.
In a short time he is comfortably certain that his final flourish was effective in diluting suspicion. He also realizes that he can’t sleep with the sun rising, and here he is, on a tortuous side road off his proven path to development. Then again, no man is absolved from detours like this one, with its harsh conditions and disrespect and critical doubt on personal progress and, with the onset of fatigue, doubts on life itself.
Antonio has lived blessedly free of doubt, first as a child and then as a man who clearly perceived the changing world and its intolerance of caste. All the noise over Mestizo, Castizo, Espomolo, Mulatto, Zambiago, Cambujo and the rest of that ancient, hand-me-down constraint has no place in the modern world now geared to performance. Just look around.
Take a place like Jimi Changa’s, where the dance floor goes wild with people meeting the common need, swinging, flailing, writhing, and grinding, enjoying life to the maximum, because that is all we have.
Do the wild dancers ask who your parents or grandparents were? I don’t think so. Do they consider the lowl
y shrub that represents Jaime Ruíz’s family tree? It doesn’t matter, because Jaime Ruíz is now Jimi Changa. And what’s that? A cross between the rock icon Jimi Hendrix and the deep-fried gut bomb called chimichanga is what. It works, because people see and laugh, which is all they want to do, because it’s all they have time for. Even Quincy knows this is true, though Quincy appears far less tuned to modern times and most certainly doesn’t laugh.
Antonio remembers his late father recalling the ancestors of two and three generations ago, with tales of caste distinction and of proper rising through the ranks of structured society. Borquino, Cambujo, Mestizo, Coyote, Mulatto, Alvarazado and the rest. Who can know which was best or worst? Who can say that one person is of higher birth than another? Look at Antonio Hector Molina Garza, with a touch of the yellow, a dash of the red, hued dark as madroña and lit above all by the rare spark of the maestro. What does Quincy know? Perhaps he too is aware of the ancestors and their superstitions that imbued the people with fear and constraint for too long. Surely Quincy can see in today’s world who exactly is whom and where they are going.
Yet a short while after these comparative analyses between the rigid past and the overwhelming present in which each man will adapt or fail, interrupting the marginal numbness of the half-sleep, two men enter the cell. Perhaps now it is time to go home.
But then, why two men?
But of course Antonio Hector Molina Garza knows why two men have come to visit, just as he knows of the rigid past. He sits up as they sit him up, and he thinks again of the laughter that is a potential with every audience and, moreover, that every audience requires the laughter, no matter how bad the weather or their mood or state of digestion.
Except of course for this audience, who have come to work themselves, to extract that which fills a different need, to warm him up, as it were, in spite of his stormy night and foul outlook. They have brought another chair, a metal one just for him, and several lengths of rope. They bind him to it, hands behind and feet below. He wonders why not the cuffs again, but then he knows why not. The cuffs are also metal, which tends to scorch the wrists, which looks unsightly and reflects poorly on the investigative team.
Toucan Whisper, Toucan Sing Page 15