Cry Macho

by N. Richard Nash

  Not that he was religious. Well, sometimes he was and sometimes he wasn’t. But he always believed in Mary. Whenever he made a deal with her she never let him down. He kept his promises to her; she kept hers to him. If she said, “Fight and you’ll win!” it always turned out the way she said. He might get bloody but he’d win. She was all right, Mary was. He liked her. He liked her a hell of a lot better than he liked his own mother. And he liked Mary better than he liked Mary’s son.

  The thing that bothered him about Mary’s son was the nails. Rafo would damn well never let anybody hammer nails into him. No matter what people ever wanted him to do, he would do it rather than nails. Nothing, he couldn’t imagine anything, he’d suffer nails for; maybe someday he might be able to imagine something, but he doubted it.

  He was really puzzled about God. He had to tell himself, once and for all, that he did believe in Him. Even if it wasn’t true. For if he didn’t believe in Him, he’d have to think about God more than he was willing to think about Him. So he decided to believe in Him, and it worked out better that way. Of course he’d never be able to get as intimate with God as he was with Mary. She did things in a way he could understand. Even punishments. Once she whacked him across the ass for stealing a guava from a blind woman. And he never stole from a blind woman again, not guavas.

  Often, if things were going really well, and if he was getting enough food, and if the food was particularly delicious, he’d leave a little behind for Mary so she could taste the good cooking. Sometimes, at her behest, he even went to church. On Easter or his saint’s day or perhaps on San Miguel’s day. He had been to confession only a few times in his life, then he stopped going altogether. Finally, on a rainy night when he began to have bad feelings for reasons he couldn’t understand, somebody said he had to go and confess because that was a way to reach out and touch God so that God would touch him. Well, he went to confession and he got touched, all right, by something groping for his cock and he knew damn well it wasn’t God because what did He need it for? And he never went to confession again.

  But he never totally ruled God out, never, and Santa Maria would always remain his true friend. Tonight she had proved herself again. And in a few days, when he said good-bye to the gringo in Texas, he’d let the man know that he, as well as Rafo, owed Mary a debt. He wondered if the Yankee, driving the bus, had the vaguest sense how much he owed her. He wondered too what the Yankee was thinking about. Maybe he wasn’t thinking about anything; maybe he was asleep.

  Asleep—while driving the bus? He might be. Or dizzy. Rafo would have to keep an eye on the man.

  “Mike!” he whispered.

  The man turned. “What?”

  “You’re awake?”

  “Yes,” he said, “I’m awake.” And he gave Rafo a small smile.

  Rafo didn’t smile back at him. You don’t get on my good side by smiling at me, he said to himself. I still don’t like you.

  But, thinking about it, he realized he had called the man Mike. Always, before this, he had called him gringo.

  11

  The bus lumbered into Janasco shortly after daybreak. The main street was narrow and rarely straight so there was no long view of the town and it seemed smaller than it was. It looked dustier too, as if it had never had a spring rain.

  Like numberless Mexican towns, it hid its greenery, its reticent public squares, its bashful fountains, its secret fuchsias and bougainvilleas and all its summer hush from the horns and headlights of the touring buses. Even on the more public streets, its modest stores had no braggart windows; one couldn’t tell the tobacco shop from the farmacía, and the little shoe-boot-huarache shop had no window at all. The fishmonger’s was obvious enough, for the huge tin trays had just been filled with ice, and a middle-aged man was arranging the fish—haddock and sierra mackerel—from buckets marked Mazatlán, and eels, mojarras and roosterfish from Veracruz. A little farther down the street, a truckful of bananas, huge branches of them, red, green, yellow ones, was parked outside the produce store.

  The bus pulled to the curbstone, behind the banana truck, and stopped. Rafo was the first one out, proprietarily calling inside, announcing safe arrival. The elderly and the children got off first, giggling, not believing the good luck that they had arrived. Mike, among the last, got out before the driver did, then made comforting noises to encourage the man to come. Sometime in the night the drunk had hoisted himself off the floor and fallen asleep across a double seat. He was still not sober and had some difficulty getting out. Like a folding ruler that had come apart, he now tried to reassemble his articulated sections into a single man. When he managed to get outdoors the sun was agonizing to his eyes and he whimpered a little, not knowing where he was.

  Mike took the man’s hand and congratulated him for having brought the ship to port. The driver nodded gratefully and started to smile. Now all the passengers took up the generous deceit. They thanked the sodden man for a pleasant journey, called him the best driver in the world, the best natured, the cheeriest, the handsomest, and they wished him well and his family unending joy. The fiction became a festival of emotion, with people kissing one another and kissing the bus driver and weeping in their happiness. The driver, proud of an accomplishment he was not too clear about, wandered into the café, looking forward to tequila for clarity.

  When the passengers had drifted away, and the street was empty, Mike looked up and down the thoroughfare, thinking how dry, unpromising and alien the town was. And how unfriendly it would probably be to a man who had no money, no food, no transportation—and no language with which to promote any of it.

  To make matters worse, Rafo was saying, “I have to tell you something.”

  “You’re hungry,” Mike said.

  “Yes—but look.”

  He was pointing to the truckload of bananas. “Eh! What do you say if I take a banana?”

  “I say no.” Mike took a few steps closer to the buildings, giving the banana truck a wide berth and hoping Rafo would do the same.

  But Rafo was now even closer to the bananas. “I take only one, yes?”

  “I said no.”

  “You said it too late.”

  He moved his hand from behind his back. Smiling, he held up the banana. Mike couldn’t understand how he’d managed to swipe it, undetected, without seeming to have moved a muscle. His smile of triumph broadening, Rafo had barely taken one bite of the fruit when the banana man appeared. He had black hair, tied in a knot at the base of his neck, and a black voice. The voice doomed Rafo with a malediction as the man snatched the banana out of the kid’s hand and threw it across the street. Starting to throw the boy after it, he grabbed Rafo and lifted him off his feet, but Mike interceded, pushed a little, shoved a little, separating them. The banana man let Rafo go and turned his curses on the Yankee.

  Mike tried to placate him. “I’m sorry, mister,” he said. “I’m sorry it happened.” He reached into his pocket and, pulling out his lone peso, offered it to the man. The fruit vendor didn’t take it. He preferred cursing.

  Rafo edged his way into the altercation. Not too close—only as near as a gadfly. “You know what he say?” The boy was translating for Mike’s benefit. “He say you are a crook son of a bitch.”

  “But I offered to pay him!” Anxious to avoid a fight, Mike again turned to the man. “You got me wrong, mister—I’m not trying to do you for a banana!”

  The man wasn’t as loud as before but he wasn’t mollified. Rafo continued to interpret. “He say your father was born in a pig’s belly.”

  “Well, ask him to keep it a secret. Come on.” Mike was concerned: any moment a crowd might gather. “Come on!”

  But Rafo didn’t move. “He say your mother puts dog shit in your enchiladas.”

  “Tell him that’s the way I like them.”

  Mike was right about the crowd forming. The tobacconist had come out on his doorstep and wa
s looking down the street at them. Some kids were gathering.

  “Come on!” Mike said.

  “He say you are a gringo pimp that would sell the Virgin Mary.” Then, seeing Mike start to walk away, Rafo barked, “You are suppose to hit him for that.”

  Rafo’s trick dawned on Mike. He turned. “Why, you—!”

  “Hit him!” Rafo yelled. “Hit him!”

  “You crawling little crud! You’re trying to pick a fight so that while we’re killing each other, you can swipe bananas!”

  Mike turned to the banana man. In his ridiculous pidgin Spanish, he begged the man’s pardon. “Seenyor! Excusese! Perdoan! The kid’s hungry! Perdoan!” His apologetic miming was more persuasive than his words. The banana man went through stages of suspicion, confusion and amusement. Conciliated at last, he smiled, the forgiving soul. Then laughing, he waved the Yankee away. Mike turned to Rafo to point out that civility had been more effective than belligerence.

  There was no Rafo. He had disappeared. He looked in one direction, then the other. There was no sign of his companion, none at all. At top speed he ran to the end of the street.

  When he got to the corner he turned. The narrow street was an outdoor stairway, a long flight of worn stone steps that descended to the lower town. Far below, at the base of the stairs, he saw Rafo. He had Macho under his left arm and, slung over his right shoulder, he carried a whole limb of bananas, a huge one. He was running down the steps, spilling away from Mike.

  “Rafo!” Mike yelled. “Stop! Rafo!”

  When Mike got to the bottom of the steps, the boy was gone. No sign of him. No sign of anybody, in fact, only two street dogs that slunk into an alleyway, and a cat looking down from an upstairs window. And tiny, crooked little streets, dozens of them, all coming together at once and twisting away in bewildering directions.

  For an hour he searched for the boy and, except for coming upon a banana skin, he found no spoor of him. When another hour went by Mike got worried. Yet, he couldn’t believe Rafo had run away for good. What would make him do so?—a reverse in their fortunes?—the loss of the truck, the theft of their money, the argument about bananas? The boy was made of tougher stuff. And he certainly didn’t feel kidnapped, did he? He was going north by his own choice, to be part of a rodeo, to see his father. . . . No need to worry about him, Mike thought; the boy would come back.

  * * *

  • • •

  He didn’t actually come back, Mike came upon him. Having given up searching in the lower town, Mike mounted the steps again and, drifting from place to place in the upper neighborhoods, found himself in the zócalo. There, sitting serenely in the serene little public square in a serene bower of greenery, sat Rafo. With Macho strutting a few feet away, he lounged on an old iron park bench, taking his ease at an enormous meal of bananas. The limb of fruit lay on the bench beside him, a couple of hands of bananas already missing. Their skins were piled on the ground, neatly stacked at his feet. His entire face bulging with banana mash, Rafo tried to smile when he saw Mike, but his swollen cheeks couldn’t accomplish both chewing and cheeriness, so he settled for a crinkling of the eyes.

  Mike’s eyes didn’t crinkle. When the boy pulled the limb of bananas toward himself to make room for Mike to sit beside him on the bench, the man pointedly disregarded the gesture and lay down on the grass, away from Rafo, by the far side of the long seat. Rafo at last swallowed his mouthful. Then, without pause, he pulled another banana off the hand closest to him and started to peel it.

  “You want a banana?” he asked.

  Chafing, Mike didn’t respond.

  The boy ate the banana with spiteful noisiness to indicate how delicious the fruit was. Then he started on another one. “You want one?” He waited only a moment for a response and when he didn’t get it: “If you are hungry you should eat a banana. Bananas is very good for you.” He took a bite, a smaller one this time, for he was getting full and talking had become more important than eating. “Especially a sweet banana. A sweet banana is very, very good for you. And this is a sweet banana.” Still getting no reply, he continued. “This is the most sweet banana I ever eat in my whole life!”

  Mike realized his silence wasn’t bothering the kid at all. He seemed only amused by the situation, even proud of himself, not even faintly disturbed by anything. Only Mike was disturbed—he couldn’t tell why. He wouldn’t think about it anymore. The hell with it.

  Lying on the ground, under the soft shade of a pepper tree, he tried to enjoy the peace of the zócalo, the delicate greenery of an acacia tree and the clean camphor scent of a flowering cinnamon. The quiet was broken by the pealing of the church bell across the plaza, then by the sound of children spilling out of the parochial school on their morning recess. Some played in the churchyard, others poured across the street and came running into the zócalo, racing as fast as they could, trying to use up all time and space in the fifteen minutes of recess. They were not rich children but they were all respectably dressed, indistinguishable from one another in their auburn and white uniforms.

  Some of them were Rafo’s age. Without glancing at the boy, Mike wondered whether Rafo was watching the other kids and, if he was, how he viewed them—did he envy their security and their uniforms or was he happier with his freedom, his rags, his stolen bananas?

  Mike tried to shake the nagging resentment. He couldn’t.

  In a little while he heard a movement on the bench and, out of the corner of his eye, saw Rafo get up. The boy didn’t go anywhere in particular, just wandered away a little bit, shifted aimlessly from foot to foot, then wandered back. On his return he came and quietly stood over Mike. The boy had a fresh banana in his hand. Peeling it back halfway, he took one bite, chewed it, swallowed it. On his face, a fixed grin.

  “I know why you are mad at me,” Rafo said brashly. “Because I get away with it. Because I am smarter than you.”

  Mike didn’t move. He tried to keep his voice as level as possible. “You are?”

  “Yes, I am. You are there—on the ground—angry and hungry. And I am standing up—smiling and eating bananas.” He turned, swaggered back to the bench and sat down.

  I can’t believe he’s getting under my skin this way, Mike said to himself. Slowly he got up and walked to the bench and stared at the boy without saying a word. Rafo looked up at him with that same insolent smile.

  “You creep,” Mike said quietly. “You miserable little creep!”

  Rafo was uncertain and watchful. Tense, too, and ready for anything. “What?”

  “You’re smarter than I am, are you?”

  “You bet, gringo.”

  “You think I give a shit whether you steal a bunch of bananas?”

  “Then what is up your ass?”

  “You want to get thrown into a dirty little jail—for stealing a few bananas? A stinking little small town jail—for a few bananas? You want to get shipped back to Mexico City and get thrown into a big jail—for a few bananas? You want to wreck this whole goddamn trip—for a few bananas, you creep, for a few bananas?”

  “Is not the first time I steal—but I never go to jail—never!”

  “Because you’re so smart, right?”

  “Yes—right.”

  “And they’re so stupid.”

  “Yes.”

  “You are, you little creep—you’re the stupid one!”

  It was the deepest cut. “Not me, gringo!” he shouted. “Not me!”

  “Stupid—stupid!”

  In an outbreak of temper, “I am not stupid, I am not!”

  Mike tried to pull back but an indefinable rage kept driving him onward. “No, I take it back—you’re not stupid,” he said, “you’re shrewd. You’ve got a shrewd little brain up there. Shrewd and little—like an alley rat. That’s what you are, kid, you’re an alley rat!”

  Also out of control, the boy shouted, “I am no
t an alley rat!”

  “An alley rat!”

  The boy’s voice was violent, hectic. “You gringo bastard—don’t you say that to me! I didn’t do something so bad! A few bananas—I steal a few bananas! What do you want I should do? If I’m hungry, what I’m going to do—starve? What I’m suppose to be—a nice little boy like those boys over there? What I’m suppose to do to get smart—go to school with a clean white shirt and a clean white face? I try but I cannot do it! I try a hundred times, but I can’t—I can’t! So what I am suppose to do—what I am suppose to be?”

  Losing control, frenzied, he started to throw bananas around, all over the place, hands of bananas, clusters of them, single ones, as many as he could throw at once, all over the grass and the gravel and across the street at the church and, mostly, at the school. The people started to gather—some of them laughed at the insane kid, some gaped in mute alarm, a few started gathering bananas. Rafo at last came to his senses and, filled with humiliation, fled to the other side of the zócalo.

  He disappeared for a few minutes. When he reappeared he was on the periphery of a group of boys who were playing with a plastic wheel that had a fringe of string around it. They tossed it to one another—like a frisbee, Mike thought—and Rafo was watching them. Once, only once, it seemed to Mike that the boy was saying something to the other kids. Although he was all the way across the zócalo, too far to hear his words, there was no question: it was an insult of some sort—he was trying to pick a fight. But none of them paid any attention to him and, in a little while, the bell started to peal again and the recess was over. The boys left the zócalo and Rafo, alone now, leaned up against a lamppost and lighted a cigarette. Even before the first one was totally smoked, he used it to light a second.

  From the other side of the zócalo Mike watched him, wondering whether to join the boy. He hadn’t meant to bring up the subject of school—the kid had done it—it was none of Mike’s business. If the little bastard had a whole set of hatreds and terrors of such institutions, that was all his own affair, all of it, and he’d have to work out his own alternatives.