She walked away from Chon around the back of the Suburban.
“I was hoping you’d drive,” she told him. “I’m feeling kind of tired.”
“No problem,” he told her. “Just don’t hit me with anything while I’m driving.”
They got in the Suburban and buckled up. Chon adjusted the driver’s seat to accommodate his long legs, and Araceli turned down the radio and leaned her seat back to roughly the same angle as a dentist’s chair. She closed her eyes.
Chon put the car in gear and turned onto F.M. 665 towards Alice. They crossed over Highway 77. Araceli spoke without sitting up in her seat.
“They came through here, John and Robe. They drove up 77 when they left—when they died.” She stopped here, seeming to be listening back to the word she’d just said—like she had never said it, not just about the Johns, but in her life, like she was learning a new word in a language foreign to her ears and tongue. “They drove up to Highway 181, where they died.” She said it differently this time, like she had just learned the word and wanted to use it as much as she could so as to not forget its pronunciation.
“Why?” Chon said. “Why would they come over to 77 when they could have taken 16?”
Araceli made a quarter turn away from Chon and curled her legs up. Chon looked over at the ball she’d made of herself and wondered if she was turning toward sleep or away from his question.
“We don’t know,” she said, not moving to face him. “They didn’t tell anyone that they were coming this way, they always did that. But where they died, off of 181, I think they were visiting a girl John had told me about. He said she lived in Sinton.”
“A girl?” Chon asked.
“Yeah,” Araceli said so quiet that Chon almost didn’t hear her. “He had told me about a girl he’d met, from Sinton. He said she didn’t mean anything and just happened to mention in passing that she was from there. It’s probably nothing, but that’s where they ended up dead—just north of there.”
She stopped there. “I’m tired,” she said. I’ll try to sleep now.”
Chon lowered the volume on the radio. He shook his head and rubbed his eyes to ready himself for the dark, silent drive ahead of him. Then he looked over at Araceli. Having her there next to him, comfortable enough in his presence not only to have him drive her father’s car, but to turn over and sleep with him roughly a foot away, made Chon want to rise to the occasion. He wanted to live up to being handed the keys and told all these secrets. He adjusted the rear-view mirror to get a better view of the road behind him.
“And Chon,” Araceli said, scaring him. “I care about you.”
Chon didn’t immediately remember the conversation they’d had so recently. The words Araceli said were enough to make him forget about anything she had said before she said them. She turned her head to the side, like she was talking to the ceiling of the cab.
“And Henry cares about you.” Now Chon remembered. “You’re cared about.”
She went back to resting her head on the seat and trying to sleep.
“Thanks,” Chon said. She didn’t say anything back.
Realitos is a town even smaller than Greenton, the last town you pass on Texas Highway 359 before you get to Greenton. Chon drove through it after midnight, remembering that the last road in town on the way home has a small church at its end, just a block off the highway. He crossed himself with his right hand as he entered the home stretch. There was only a sliver of a moon glowing in the sky. If it were daytime, Chon would be able to see the water tower standing over the east side of town and carrying all of Greenton’s barely potable water in a tank with the town’s name and running Greyhound logo painted on the side. He was looking up at the sky in front of the glow of the car’s headlights when he noticed the glow receding. The glow of the instrument panel and even the turquoise LCD glow of the time on the car’s radio unit began dimming too. Chon tried not to panic.
Then the engine died and the steering and brakes locked up. There would certainly have been an accident if the Suburban were not the only vehicle on the road. Chon had to use all of the strength he could force into his hands to pull onto the side of the road. The sudden change in speed and Chon muttering fuck, fuck, fuck woke Araceli.
“What’s wrong,” she asked. “What’s happening?”
“It turned off on me,” Chon said, his heart pounding so hard he could feel its rhythm on his dry throat. “It just died.”
“Is it the battery?” Araceli adjusted her seatback so that she was sitting upright. She looked groggy but no longer frightened.
“No,” Chon said. “Well, yes. But the battery wouldn’t die while the engine is on.” Chon tried the key in the ignition. The starter was clicking in futility. “It’s the alternator.”
“Can you fix it?”
“No. I’m not even 100% sure that’s what it is,” Chon admitted.
Araceli leaned her head on the window beside her and closed her eyes, like she wanted five more minutes of sleep before getting up to face the day.
“Okay,” she said and sat up. “I’ll call my dad. My mom made me bring her cell phone in case of an emergency.”
“Smart lady,” Chon said. The fact that Araceli had a phone to call for help calmed him. He hadn’t released the steering wheel from his sweaty grip. He let go and rubbed his hands on his jeans and tried to slow his breathing.
Araceli dialed a number. After a while, she pressed the ‘end’ button on the phone and put it down on her lap.
“Shit!” she said. “I think he might still be at the fence job by Zapata. It went straight to voicemail. There’s no reception down there.”
“So no Henry either?” Chon asked.
“What would he do if we called him anyway?” She had a point.
“So are you going to try your house? Maybe he’s there and his phone is off.”
“Yeah, but maybe he’s not and my mom will answer and panic. She could come get us, but she doesn’t know anything about cars and my father would kill both of us if we left the Suburban out here. Can we call your house?” she asked.
“My dad knows less about cars than your mom does.” Chon was starting to feel nervous.
“Okay then,” Araceli said and dialed a number in the phone so quickly as to indicate muscle memory in her thumb from having dialed it too many times to count. She brought the phone to her ear.
While it was ringing, Chon asked, “Who are you calling?”
Araceli was listening hopefully to the line. Her answer was short. “A mechanic.”
The conversation Araceli had on the phone was short.
“Mr. Mejia,” she said. “It’s me.”
“I’m fine. I’m fine,” she reassured him. “The reason I’m calling is I’m having car problems. Yeah. Hold on.” She covered the phone with her hand and asked Chon where they were. He told her. “We’re just outside Realitos. About five miles. The car just turned off. We think it’s the alternator. Yeah. Okay. Thank you so much. See you soon.”
She put the phone down and rubbed her eyes and shook her head.
“He’ll be here as soon as he can,” she told Chon. He nodded, indicating that he thought this to be a good thing. “Are you okay?” she asked him. “You seemed pretty freaked out there for a while.”
Chon put the headrest behind him to use. He let out a long exhalation of relief. “I really was,” he told her. “I’m just glad you knew the home number to a mechanic who would come out and help us in the middle of the night.”
“Yeah, well…” Araceli started but didn’t finish.
“And how about you?” Chon asked into the silence of the sentence Araceli let die. “You seemed pretty freaked out yourself when you woke up. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m just glad you were driving. I would have probably started screaming and crying and run the car off the road.” Araceli laughed a little at this thought.
“You might have cried and screamed,” Chon said. “But you wouldn’t have run th
e car off the road. I had to fight the damn thing to park it here. We were a couple of seconds from being half-parked in the road.”
“Oh Chon, you saved the day,” Araceli joked. “My hero.” She reached over and laid a soft palm on Chon’s face. She was flashing a good-spirited smile to go with the playful tone she had set up.
The gesture froze Chon and scrambled his brain a little. He looked over at her, eying her hand on his face. Then he looked at her hard, letting her know he wasn’t capable of joking right then because of what her touch, what she, was doing to him—what she always did to him. She took back her hand—Chon could see clearly even in the near black of the starless night around them that she looked down and blushed.
This was where a smoother guy would say something to win the moment for romance. But Chon couldn’t come up with the anything at all to say, let alone the right thing. Later he was glad that the paralysis wasn’t limited to just his voice, because all he could think to do at that moment was grab her—grab her and squeeze her and, for as long as she allowed it, come as close to occupying the same space with her as possible. Would she have recoiled? Would all his hopes for winning her have been left to die on the side of the road?
Yes. He had readied himself for heartbreak from the onset of his pursuit of Araceli.
In the end, his inaction seem prudent and considerate and prescient. Just minutes later, Andres Mejia passed them on the highway going in the direction of Realitos, only to slow down, make a U-turn, and park his truck behind them on Texas Highway 359 southbound.
Araceli jumped out of the car. Chon sat and watched in the side-view mirror as Andres got down from his truck—a slender man made to look big for all of his muscles—and very delicately leaned down a little to wrap his arms around Araceli. They spoke for a bit. He said something that made her laugh, and they came up to the car. Chon opened the car door a crack when they came close.
“Pop the hood,” Andres instructed him.
Chon did. He joined them in front of the car. Andres handed Chon a flashlight wordlessly and placed his toolbox on the ground. He worked the hood’s latch, then opened it and set it up on its prop rod. He held a hand out to Chon, who placed the flashlight in it. He shone the light onto the car’s internal organs and poked at the alternator belt. He reached into his toolbox and pulled out a couple of small wrenches. With these, he loosened one of the battery cables from its terminal. Then he grabbed a crescent wrench. He adjusted it to fit a bolt on a pulley through which the belt ran. He stuck it in and—with one hand, like he expected it to be easy—gave the wrench a turn. It didn’t budge.
“Damn,” he said. He tried again, pulling with both hands. “Okay, I’m going to need your help.”
Chon expected to be asked to hold the flashlight, but Andres handed it to Araceli.
“The self-tensioner is sticking. I’ll have to use both hands to loosen it so what I want you to do is slide that belt off the pulley when I do. Easy as that, just pull it off the track.” For the first time, Andres looked at Chon. He spoke quietly and patiently. “Can you do that?”
“Sure,” Chon said. He leaned in to better reach the belt.
Andres gave a nod and pulled the wrench back. When the tension loosened, Chon pulled at the belt.
“See,” Andres said, not looking at Chon. “That was easy.”
He got the flashlight back from Araceli and examined the belt.
“Cracked,” he said. “You’re in luck. I think I have one this size in the truck.”
He walked back to his truck toolbox and rooted around it, finally pulling out a new belt. He examined it and compared its size and length with the old one. Meanwhile, in front of the Suburban, both Araceli and Chon watched him, neither saying a word and neither looking at one another. Convinced that it was a right fit, Andres brought the belt to the Suburban. He snaked it around the proper pulleys and gears and brought it back up to the top.
“We’re doing the same thing.” His eyes seemed intimidating, but not challenging. “Only this time in reverse.”
He pulled back on the crescent wrench, straining to hold it there. When Chon finally got the belt over, Andres eased the tensioner into place. He pressed down on the newly installed belt.
“Good job,” he said. He replaced the battery cable, then started walking back to his truck.
“That’s it?” Araceli asked.
“Almost,” he said. “Try the key.”
Chon got in the car and turned it on. Nothing. Andres was back, holding a jump starter in his hand.
“That’s what I thought,” he said. “You ran your battery dead. I’ll start it up and when you get home, leave it running for about twenty minutes.” He connected his machine to the car.
“Now,” he said.
Chon turned the car on. Andres closed the hood.
Araceli and Andres stood outside, a thin pane of glass separating them from Chon. Chon tried to pretend like he couldn’t hear every word they were saying.
“Thank you so much for coming. I don’t know what I would have done,” Araceli said.
“It’s not a problem. I’m just glad you called.”
“How much does my dad owe you?”
“Mi ‘ja, don’t embarrass me. I can’t charge you.” Andres put down the jumpstarter he’d been holding. “What are you guys doing for Thanksgiving?”
“Going up to Houston to see my uncle,” Araceli told him.
“Your uncle Marky?” Andres said, giving a little bit of a laugh. “I thought him and your mom were fighting.”
“Yeah, they were. But they got over it.”
“That’s good. Tell them both I say hello. And Christmas?” he asked. “Will you guys be in town for Christmas?”
“I think so.”
“It would be great if you’d come visit. She would really appreciate it. We both would.” Here, Chon had to look at Andres, if even only briefly. He met Andres’ expectant eyes and turned back to staring at the steering wheel, embarrassed.
“Of course, I’ll go over,” Araceli said in a tone like it was ridiculous for him to have even asked. “Of course.”
“Good,” Andres said, then turned to walk back to his truck. Araceli walked with him. They stopped behind the Suburban and talked for a bit.
In the rear-view mirror, Chon saw a man who could well be described as handsome, perfectly built—his graying hair and wrinkling skin only adding a dignified air to his look. It was in that stance—arms crossed at the chest, right knee locked and left knee bent, left toe planted on the ground behind him, its foot probably wagging like he was waiting for a pitch—but not so much in his similarly-built muscular frame, that Chon saw John. John used to stand like his father.
This is what John would have come to look like as an adult, as a grown up.
In fact, John could have ended up like this, like his father. He might not have gone on to play professional baseball. He could have easily gone on to sustain some freak injury or to flunk out of school—undrafted and unaffiliated with any team or club, only to try his luck and fail at tryouts in the minor leagues. Or, almost unimaginable and incongruent to the idea John had made of himself and all of town had made for him, he could have gone on to fall out of love with baseball. He had fallen out of love with Araceli enough to break up with her, proving that the fairy tale that was written for him in life and cemented for him in death was just that. It was a fable, a myth that represented what people in town wanted regardless of what the boy might actually have come to do—or want to do—in life.
John might have gone on to become a mechanic or a librarian or an English teacher. He could have done anything. Except that now his options had been cut short. The narrative of what he might have been, the story of him, had turned into who the boy was.
Chon felt bad for John. He would have given anything just then for John and Robe to be alive—for them to fulfill the prophesies of a whole town’s expectations. Or for them to fail or to quit or to do something altogether different. Chon would e
ven have given up the ground he’d gained with Araceli. The way it was now John Mejia and John Robison would never be left to rest in peace because they had parts to play in the fantasies of everyone in Greenton. John Mejia would never get the chance to choose whether or not to be a mechanic, whether or not to walk in the footsteps of his father, the father he looked so very much like.
Araceli got in the car and buckled her seat belt. She blew into her hands and rubbed them together like it was colder than 69˚ outside. She looked back at the headlights of Andres Mejia’s truck. Finally she looked at Chon.
“He’s waiting for you,” she said. “He’s going to follow me home to make sure there are no more problems with the car.”
Chon okayed this and, using his blinker to indicate his intentions, pulled onto the highway and headed for home. Andres followed closely, driving at 75, making Chon have to speed up to not be rear-ended or overtaken.
“I’m sorry,” Araceli told Chon who was looking in the rear-view more than the road in front of him.
“For what?”
“Back there, I didn’t mean to have a whole conversation with him while you waited in the car.”
“Oh, it’s fine.”
“And I’m sorry if he was kind of rude to you. I don’t think he was ready to come out and find me with a guy in the middle of the night.”
“Did you tell him we just went to the game?” Chon asked, wondering if some sort of explanation or excuse should have been offered. Judging by the way Andres was driving, the whole situation might not have come off as couth per the Mejia handbook of propriety and chivalry. Chon comforted himself in the knowledge that there was no way the man would run him off the road while Araceli was in the passenger seat.
“Yeah, of course, but still. Anyway, don’t take it personally. He’s just real protective of me. I think more because of my relationship with his wife than what John and I had.”
“So, she’s really that bad?” Chon asked.
“Yeah. I mean, can you blame her?”
“No, of course not. She’s allowed to be sad forever, to cry 24/7 for the rest of her life if she wants to. But it seems like she’s getting beat by the same thing, over and over again. She’s going to wake up tomorrow and be as sad as she was yesterday. It’ll be like that every day until she gets over it. And she may never.” Chon looked over at Araceli, Greenton High School passing by them in the passenger window behind her.
Seeing Off the Johns Page 12