by Steve Earle
And then they were eight.
Manny was behind the wheel, Teresa in the middle, and Doc rode shotgun. In the back, Marge and Dallas barely managed to squeeze into the third of the seat that wasn’t already occupied by Santo and Maria. By the time Graciela came running down the back stairs, Manny’s old Ford was fairly groaning under the load, and the only seat available was in Doc’s lap. She climbed in without hesitating, twisting Manny’s rearview mirror around to blot her lipstick on a scrap of toilet paper.
Doc marveled at how tiny Graciela was. She seemed to weigh next to nothing, but when the big V-8 lurched forward, the press of her body against his was profound. Her hair whispered of chamomile and Ivory soap, and Doc shuddered when she leaned across him to roll the passenger-side window up.
He was reminded, against his will, of another young girl a long time ago, back in New Orleans. A beautiful girl from a good family whose expensive, store-bought perfume made promises she had no intention of keeping. Her name was Cynthia. Not Cindy; he had made that mistake once and she had corrected him in a cultured drawl as icy as the first week of February. Other voices out of his carefully suppressed past intruded now, like his mother’s, thick and sweet as cane syrup, cooing her assurance of his superior bloodline and upbringing, ever reminding him of who he was and what was expected of him … in sharp contrast to his father’s insistence that he would never amount to anything at all.
Maybe it was the change of scenery that awakened those ghosts as Doc and the delegates rolled out Broadway and past Brackenridge Park; warm yellow light filtered through the lush canopy of live oak and pecan trees that shaded the neat rows of stately Victorian houses they passed on their way uptown. Quiet, orderly streets, not unlike the one Doc grew up on. Nothing like the bleached-out monochrome of South Presa. Years of living in the back alleys of Louisiana and Texas, not to mention a boatload of dope, had hardened Doc against most memories: the disappointments, the betrayals, the humiliations of his youth. He had cultivated his heartbreaks in the shadows, nurturing them with anger and remorse until they crystallized into a seemingly impervious shield around him. Now, as Manny’s Ford dragged him out into the light, he didn’t kick or scream but he wanted to and he could feel his carefully crafted veneer beginning to crack; he felt naked and vulnerable.
The delegates watched the big houses go by and oohed and aahed like sightseers on a guided tour of polite society. They had only a vague idea of Doc’s past but they reckoned that he was infinitely more familiar than they with the alien landscape that unfolded before them, and they bombarded him with an endless barrage of questions. Manny had dabbled in burglary in his youth, and though he’d often heard tales of big scores in fat houses uptown, he always stuck to the south side, knowing that stealing from his own would attract little or no attention from the police. He marveled at how the old Ford glided along on the smoothly paved north-side streets. Santo intimated that he had been to the park for birthday parties when he was a small boy. His father would hang the piñata from a low-hanging limb of a great pecan tree, and his mother would bake the cake, and the family would sing “Las Mañanitas” and feast on homemade tamales around a concrete picnic table. Though he was within sight of the entrance to the world-famous zoo, Santo had never been inside to see what sorts of exotic beasts made all of the strange noises that emanated from beyond the stone gates. The price of admission for a family of nine was simply beyond his father’s means. Marge and Dallas hadn’t always been whores but they had always been white trash and the north side was every bit as foreign to them as it was to the Mexicans. When she was younger, Dallas had been a telephone girl who worked the high-dollar johns: doctors, lawyers, even a city councilman or two. Some of them probably lived in big white houses like these, but she always met them in rooms rented by the hour in downtown hotels. Marge whistled long and low when they passed one antebellum structure so opulent that Graciela mistook it for a cathedral. Doc gently corrected her. “That’s not a church, child. It’s a house. Está la casa. Somebody lives there. Somebody very rich. El ricos.” Teresa just wanted to know how they kept everything so neat and clean and green.
Doc did his best to answer all their questions with a minimum of condescendence. He alone had been inside houses like these, and he fully understood the level of contempt in which he and his compadres were held by the kind of people who lived in them.
The big houses petered out as they turned northeast across Wetmore Road, and then, suddenly, the grand tour was over and Broadway abruptly ended, dumping the South Presa contingent out at the main entrance of the San Antonio International Airport. As Doc had predicted, there were cops everywhere: city cops, highway patrol, even Texas Rangers in their telltale silverbelly Stetsons and shiny black cowboy boots. It was enough to make Doc wish he’d put a little extra something in the spoon that morning just in case he had to spend the night in jail. Even Manny, the founder of the expedition, wasn’t all that crazy about the situation now that they were actually there, but he put on his game face as they rolled up to the checkpoint that the cops had set up at the gate.
“You all right, Doc?”
“Hell, no, I’m not all right! In point of fact I’m about to break out in little assholes and shit all over myself but there’s fuck-all I can do about it now that we’re here. Manny, I want you to swear on your mother and the Blessed Virgin of Guada-fuckin’-lupe that this car is clean.”
Maria crossed herself to ward off any ill effects of Doc’s blasphemy. Even Graciela understood well enough to punch him in the arm, hard, raising a good-size knot.
“Clean as a whistle, Doc. Don’t you worry ‘bout that none.”
As it turned out, all of Doc’s anxiety was for nothing because the cop at the checkpoint only asked to see Manny’s driver’s license and then waved him through to the visitors’ parking lot.
“I must say, Manny, I’m impressed. You may be the only person of my recent acquaintance who holds a valid license.”
Manny shrugged. “I’m a businessman, Doc. Driving around with a glove box full of dope without a license is bad business.”
The parking lot was filling up fast. There were all kinds of people there, spilling out of their cars and filing happily if a little chaotically through the aisles toward the terminal building. Most were Anglos, but there were plenty of Mexicans, and a smattering of blacks. Some wore work clothes, khakis and coveralls and hospital whites, and some business suits of varying quality and style. There were soldiers from Fort Sam and airmen from Lackland, Kelly, and Randolph air bases, officers and enlisted men in dress blues and greens and fatigues. The women outnumbered the men two to one. Well-heeled Alamo Heights matrons in pillbox hats clutching their pocketbooks in two-handed death grips rubbed shoulders with middle-class housewives with school-age children in tow. It was a weekday, but they had been kept home from school especially for the occasion, their hair neatly combed and their little faces scrubbed pink. “You’re going to see the president,” they were told, “and you can’t go looking like heathen!”
The crowd was funneled into the breezeway adjoining the terminal building where they could watch through a chainlink fence from a distance of about a hundred yards as Air Force One taxied to a stop in the center of the tarmac. The U.S. Air Force Band of the West stood at parade rest behind the mayor, a contingent of local dignitaries, and military brass from the local bases.
The crowd chattered excitedly, with the exception of a small group of students who pushed and shoved toward the front, shouting slogans and carrying signs emblazoned with cryptic political messages that even Doc didn’t fully understand.
Manny wondered, “Where’s Vietnam at, Doc?”
“Close to China. A long fucking way from here.” Doc made no attempt to conceal his contempt for the demonstrators.
When the steps were rolled into place and the door of the big blue-and-white jet swung open, the band struck up ruffles and flourishes and then “Hail to the Chief,” and the crowd, as one, pressed against the
fence for a better view. The youthful president emerged and stood alone in the door of the plane for an instant, blinking in the blazing Texas sunlight, waving with one hand while pushing back a windblown shock of auburn hair with the other.
One of the housewives in the front of the crowd spotted her first. “There she is! There’s Jackie!” and pandemonium ensued. A high-pitched shriek challenged the big jet engines out on the tarmac, rising to a shrill crescendo and sustaining the same piercing frequency as if an unseen hand held the throttle all the way back: Jack-e-e-e-e-e!
Maybe, mused Doc, it wasn’t just a Mexican thing after all.
It was impressive. Even Marge had to admit it. “Geez Louise!” she shouted over the racket. “You’d think he was Frank Sinatra or somebody!”
“Well, he is very handsome,” Dallas gushed, and Marge’s newfound enthusiasm deflated like a tire with a sixteen-penny nail in it.
But Graciela had eyes only for Jackie. Doc, paralyzed by the crush of the crowd, could only watch helplessly as she ducked beneath his arm and slipped through the crowd and, by virtue of tenacity and her diminutive stature, reached the fence. The First Lady, dressed in an immaculately tailored powder blue suit, smiled and waved the perfect parade wave to the crowd: elbow, elbow, wrist, wrist … Graciela waved back as best she could, squeezing one of her tiny hands through one of the ragged diamond-shaped links in the galvanized fence.
“Yah-kee! Hola, Yah-kee!” she shrilled, not even noticing that she had scraped her wrist badly on the rough fencing as she’d forced her hand through. Tiny drops of blood flecked her dress; she paid no attention. It was worth it. Jackie was so beautiful, the most beautiful woman that Graciela had ever seen. Even at a great distance she radiated warmth and grace and charm. While the president greeted one dignitary after another, the First Lady continued to engage the crowd, smiling and waving until she and the president reached the waiting motorcade lined up along the taxiway. There was even a moment there when Graciela could have sworn that their eyes met and Jackie smiled at her.
And she was right. All of the other women in the crowd witnessed it and each and every one believed that it was intended for her, and all their hearts melted into one. Even Marge and Maria sensed a common bond with the glamorous Jackie as she regally accompanied her husband down the receiving line, a half step behind, as protocol in the man’s world of politics dictated. But in fact, Jackie was smiling at Graciela and Graciela alone, and only Graciela saw the sadness in her eyes and that sadness became her own. Her grandfather had a name for such moments, the instant in which people like himself and Graciela saw what others could not see. He called it la luz. The light. Something sacred passed between them, from Jackie to Graciela and from Graciela to Jackie.
And then she was gone. She ducked out of sight, and the massive presidential limousine pulled away, preceded by a brace of police motorcycles and followed by another black limo, and then another, and then two more, and then a final pair of motorcycles for good measure. The din of the crowd died down to a clamor and then a murmur, and then they began to disperse, returning to their cars and their everyday lives. Doc finally managed to make his way up front and found Graciela still sitting on the hard concrete watching in the direction that the motorcade had traveled. He knelt down and as he gently helped her to her feet, Graciela winced a little, and he noticed her wrist.
“What have you done to yourself, child?”
She absently nodded toward the fence but she wasn’t the least bit distressed about the injury.
“No, es nada.”
“Nada, my foot. That’s a nasty little abrasion you’ve got there. If I had the serum I’d give you a tetanus shot, just to be on the safe side. At the very least that wrist could do with a good cleaning and a proper dressing. Let’s get you home and then we’ll see what we can do.”
The drive home was a lot quieter than the outward journey. Santo and Maria compared notes quietly in Spanish, and Marge snored loudly, her head resting on Dallas’s shoulder. Teresa uttered not a single word the entire ride home, though she was wide awake in wonder at her encounter with royalty. Manny had a question or two.
“How much you reckon a limo costs, Doc?”
“I don’t know, Manny, four or five thousand, I reckon. A lot more for that big Lincoln that the president was riding in. It’s a custom job, bulletproof, you know.”
Manny’s eyes widened but never left the road.
“No shit? Bulletproof?”
“That’s what they say.”
“Well, I’ll be damned.”
VI
All day long, Hank prowls the South Presa Strip from the beer joint to the railroad tracks, covering the distance each way in the space of single malignant thought. Pedestrians he encounters notice only an incongruous chill, it being a typical sunny South Texas November morning, but they shake it off and go on about their business. There are those lost souls with one foot already in the grave who perceive a shadow falling across their paths, but they shrug it off as too much of this or too little of that and stumble along to their doom. Hank can see them, all right, and worse, he can hear them, whining and crying like babies about nothing, but he can’t make them hear him no matter how hard he tries. Only Doc can hear Hank, and Doc’s nowhere to be found.
Hank’s having one hell of a time keeping up with Doc since he’s taken to pretending that he doesn’t hear him when he calls. Laying off the dope some too, not that he’s taken the cure. He’s a hophead to the bone, Doc, but lately he’s not hitting the old medicine like he used to do. Just dibs and dabs to keep sickness away. Hank knows that the higher Doc gets, the better he listens, and more than anything else, the dead want to be heard.
So Hank just keeps searching, up and down the street, eaten from the inside out with rage; not the white-hot, short-lived kind that exorcises lesser demons and affords a body some kind of relief, but the slow-burning, festering strain that neither time nor distance can ever heal. He checks all of the traps, over and over again. Doc’s not in his room or at his usual table or anywhere in between. When Hank comes to the railroad track and tries to cross over, he discovers, to his horror, that without Doc to hitch on to, the other side’s closed to him now.
That’s the last straw. Doc’s given Hank the slip and gone off somewhere he can’t follow. Hank throws back his head and he opens his mouth. And nothing comes out. Nothing at all.
VII
That night Marge, Dallas, Doc, and Graciela gathered around the TV in the boarding-house parlor and watched the coverage of the day’s events on the ten o’clock news.
“I thought I saw you for a second there, Marge!” insisted Dallas. “You was way in the back and there was some kind of a shadow across your face but I’d swear it was you. I’d know that big ol’ head of yours anywhere!” Marge snorted and Doc chuckled and excused himself.
“I reckon I’ll turn in early tonight. We’ve all had a big day and I could do with a good night’s sleep.”
It wasn’t to be.
Just after midnight somebody banged on his door.
“Who is it?” Doc called. From the other side a female voice answered, soft and hoarse, obviously in distress. “It’s me, Doc! Helen-Anne!”
“Coming!” Doc said, but Graciela, whose cot was a step closer to the door, got there first.
When she opened the door, a statuesque redhead stood there. She was speaking, the words interspersed with sniffs and sobs, but Graciela understood only the tears. One arm around the taller woman’s waist, she guided her to a chair and offered a handful of tissue, which was gratefully accepted.
Helen-Anne said she was in trouble again and that there was just no way she could have another baby. Her elderly parents were already raising her little boy and they were barely getting by on her daddy’s disability and whatever she could manage to wire home. Like most of the girls on South Presa, Helen-Anne had two habits to support, her own and her boyfriend’s, but she had managed to scrape together all but about twenty dollars of Doc’
s fee, which she offered to let him take out in trade. Doc declined and told her not to worry about it.
“You got any dope, honey?”
“Yeah, Doc, I had a pretty good weekend so I bought a quarta last night; how much you need?”
“It’s not for me!” Doc chuckled. “I’m fine, but you’re going to need a good lick. But not too much, now. I don’t want you going out on me. Uh, you best get out of that nice dress first. You got a nightgown or something you can put on?”
“I’m sure I can scare up somethin’, Doc,” offered Dallas, who had suddenly materialized in the open door blinking and yawning, with Marge right behind her looking more than a little put out.
“I’d appreciate that, hon, and while you’re up you think you could take Graciela along and bed her down in your room for the night?”
Graciela didn’t understand all the words but it was obvious that she got the gist, and Doc, recognizing a now-familiar glint in her eye, nipped the argument in the bud. “No! You don’t need to see this, child. ¡Ahora vaya, muchacha!” Graciela grudgingly complied and followed Dallas out of the room.
Doc kept Helen-Anne talking while he prepped for the procedure, taking care to keep his instruments out of sight and his patter light and impersonal. Helen-Anne fired up a bag of dope and then lay back on Doc’s bed. As she drifted there on the edge of consciousness, her features softened somewhat, and she suddenly appeared years younger. Doc suspected that Helen-Anne was showing her actual age rather than the mileage she had accrued on the street. Doc didn’t know any more about Helen-Anne than any of the other girls on South Presa, but he reckoned that she couldn’t have been more than twenty-three or twenty-four. She more than likely came from good enough people. Poor, honest, hard-working folks that never got ahead but did all right as long as they kept their heads down and didn’t study too much on what they didn’t have.