Our three A students quickly went up to Moses and started talking to him excitedly, causing a big commotion, then they pointed at me. I glanced at Hillam. Why weren’t they pointing at him? He had also gotten As while Moses was gone. I could clearly see that Captain Moses was getting so mad as they spoke to him, that his ears were turning red, then they began to pulsate with a purple glow.
Suddenly, we’d no more than taken our seats, and Moses came rushing across the room straight at me and ordered me to get out of my seat and stand at attention. He began to yell at me and poke me in the chest with his index finger, so hard that it really hurt.
“Give me back your papers!” he ordered. “I don’t know what you did to that teacher while I was gone, but you will not get away with this anymore!”
I quickly handed him my papers as I’d been ordered, including the one I’d just written last night about Midnight Duke and a mare giving birth. Moses took my papers and he went to his desk—not giving me permission to sit back down—and brought out his big red marker and began going over my papers with a vengeance.
I stood there feeling all alone and so terrible that I could cry. Another thing I’d noticed that Mr. Swift had done was that he’d graded all of our papers in pencil, and lightly, too, like he respected the work that we did. But Moses, he was now marking up my paper with an anger and frustration that I’d only seen with castrated geldings when they’d mount a mare, but they couldn’t get anything going.
He was sweating by the time he finished marking up my first paper, and he now crossed out the A which had been penciled in, laughed, and put a huge D across the paper, and said aloud to all the class, “He’s such an ignorant farm kid that he thinks that animals are human and can think and have reason.”
All the class laughed at me, especially the three A students. The only one who didn’t laugh at me was Hillam. He was looking down at the floor and I could see he was feeling real bad for me.
Having given me a D, Moses now went after my second paper, and this time he crossed out the A before he’d even read my paper. Then, after going over this paper, he laughed and told the class how I’d written about my dog Shep disappearing to lead my brother’s soul to heaven when he died. He then told everyone that science had proved that there was no such thing as a soul. And also that he’d personally known my brother Joseph when he’d attended the Army Navy Academy and that Joseph Villaseñor had been a real cadet and not afraid to go out for football like I was, and that I was a little sissy Catholic who liked to wear a dress and help the priest say mass.
I lowered my head. This was awful! My mother had gotten me a special pass to leave school early on Fridays so I could learn to be an altar boy, but I’d failed. I hadn’t been a good enough reader to be an altar boy, either.
Moses now made this second D even larger than the first, with his red marker. In fact, I could see the D from clear across the room where I was standing at attention. I had tears running down my face, but I was afraid to wipe them for fear that I’d get into even more trouble.
Then Captain Moses took hold of my third paper that I’d handed in, the one on which I’d written my full name, Victor Edmundo Villaseñor—when normally I only wrote Victor Villaseñor—and the first thing he did was lash a line across Edmundo, wrote E-d-m-o-n-d in huge letters, and laughed again, this time telling the whole class that I was so stupid, I didn’t even know how to spell my own name, and he gave me a huge F without reading any of this paper.
I remember very well that something snapped inside of me at this point. I don’t know what it was, but I pulled back my shoulders and stood up as tall as I could, happy that I wasn’t seated, and now I stared at Moses, no longer ashamed of the tears that were running down my face. Because these tears, they no longer flowed out of my eyes with fear, but with pure-white, GUT-GRIPPING RAGE!
I was a cadet no longer.
I was now a warrior, an ancestral brave, hearing the beat, beat, beating of my heart as I’d never heard my heart beating before. Never again would I ever pee in my pants at school, or at night when I slept, because…simply, I now knew that I was going to kill…to kill this teacher Moses who stood before me, just as I’d helped kill well over a hundred head of livestock on the ranch in the last ten years.
I was no longer in the third grade and hunting in the hills behind our home with a BB gun or a bow and arrow set that was too big for me. I now hunted birds with a .20 gauge shotgun, rabbits and squirrels with a .22 rifle, and I hunted deer with my dad’s 30/30 Winchester lever-action saddle gun. In fact, last year at the age of thirteen, I’d taken and passed my hunter’s safety course, gotten my first California state hunting license, and I’d taken my first buck with my dad’s rifle with a three-hundred-yard running shot.
I was excellent with weapons and horses! Absolutely excellent! And I also knew how to track and read terrain better than anyone I knew. No one in all my school had ever hunted or taken as much game as I’d taken. And so, looking at this man in uniform before me, I now knew that never again would I ever get so scared of him…or anyone else that I’d feel like pissing.
No, now I was set. I was in that smooth, all-true place that my dad had explained to me that every good man had to get to so he could defend his home, his casa, his familia, as my dad had done with his mother and sisters in the Mexican Revolution.
My heart was beat, beat, beating like a mighty drum, and the tears were running down my face, but I wasn’t the least bit scared or nervous anymore. No, I was now simply at this place called a Mexican stand-off, or un gallo de estaca.
Moses was now shouting at me, ordering me to sit down, but I no longer heard him. No, I was good where I was, right here, standing on my own two feet. I was excellent, in fact, here at my own safe spot, and I’d never be messed with again. Because, simply, from now on, if anyone pushed me or insulted me, I’d kill them…just as I’d killed that deer.
And why? Because, simply, a person’s name was sacred. Given to us by people who loved us. And my name E-d-m-u-n-d-o had been given to me by mi papa, who told me that he’d given me this name because one time when he’d been in prison—my dad had gone to prison three times—a big, huge cook, called Patas Chicas, meaning Little Feet, because his feet were so monstrous, had taken my dad, a Mexican-Indian like himself, under his wing and tried to teach my dad how to read, explaining to my father that reading and writing weren’t just White People’s tools, but also the future for nuestra gente.
The huge cook had read the book called The Count of Monte Cristo in Spanish to my dad. That book’s hero was named Edmundo Dantes and he’d been sent to prison unjustly, but he escaped, found a treasure, and was then free to avenge himself on all those who’d put him in prison and stolen his bride-to-be. But, then, Edmundo had found a light even higher than revenge, and that had been amor. A Frenchman named Dumas had written that book, and that Frenchman—Little Feet told mi papa—had been a black man, the son of a slave straight from Africa, and on his fiftieth birthday, that gigantic black man had a harness made for him out of leather that he’d put over his shoulders, and he’d then gotten up in the hayloft over his stables and raised a draft horse one foot off the ground with his legs and back muscles. This, my dad told me, was the story that had given him, mi papa—the guts, the wings, the hope with which to survive prison—and he, just being a boy of thirteen, and all those monsters in prison trying to rape him.
“And so I named you Edmundo,” my dad told me with tears in his eyes, “to give you the strength de corazón, to never give up, no matter what twists life throws at you or how impossible it all might seem at times. You are Edmundo! Victor Edmundo! The victor over all odds just like Edmundo Dantes!”
And here, this teacher, Captain Moses, had ridiculed my name, a sacred name, changing it into something else, with no respect for me or mi familia whatsoever, just like what had been done to the slaves that had been brought over from Africa and the Indians who’d been run out of their sacred lands and put on reservations.
Yes, with all my heart, I was going to—not just kill Moses—but gut-shoot him, then rope him and pull him upside down into a tree like we did to the livestock that we butchered. Then I’d cut him open from rib to rib, making sure he didn’t die, so he could watch his intestine slip out of his middle, and then he’d scream when I poured a sack full of live rats over him to eat him alive.
Now, I was the one who was smiling a nasty little smile as I stood there in class, having these juicy good thoughts of revenge. Captain Moses continued shouting at me to sit down. “THAT’S AN ORDER! Take your seat, cadet!”
But I didn’t. I just stood there, calmly looking at him. I was free. Never again would I let myself get trapped and enslaved with fear like had happened to me since the first day that we’d started school and they’d slapped Ramón, the best and bravest and smartest of us all, until he’d been bloody, terrifying the rest of us.
I breathed as I looked at Moses yelling at me and I felt as strong and free as when I went home and passed through the gates of our huge rancho grande, and I knew then that nothing bad could ever happen to me again because I had familia…and their blood pounded strong in my corazón!
I was set now!
I was free!
I’d found my place, this warm secure place from where I could look out on the world without fear. Never again would I get so scared that I couldn’t hold my pee.
The second alarm went off. Class was over. I’d never sat down. I’d beat Moses. And everyone had seen it, too.
I picked up my books. I was the last one to go out of our classroom. All of my classmates were already outside assembling, so we could be marched to our next classroom. Suddenly, as I walked outside, our three A students rushed at me, hitting me with their shoulders so hard that I was knocked to the ground. My books and notebook went flying. They gave me a few quick kicks to the ribs, then slapped fives with one another. I couldn’t breathe. They’d really kicked me hard. Quietly, I picked up my books and notebook, but strangely enough, I could see that, well, I wasn’t really feeling as intimidated or scared as I normally would have been. George Hillam came over, but he didn’t help me pick up my things this time.
“You fool,” he said under his breath to me. “You’ve really done it this time. Don’t you know, you can’t fight the establishment. You can have those thoughts. We all do. Even with our parents. But you can’t be staring at people straight in the face, telling them with your eyes that you want to kill them, without them getting you.”
I was all confused. Hillam was always so quick to understand everything, like so many other fat people that I knew, that he always confused me.
“Moses told them to get you,” he added. “That’s why I can’t help you. They’ll get me, then, too.”
“Oh,” I said, looking behind me and seeing that Moses had watched the whole thing, and that he was now putting on his military cap and walking off to be with the other teachers at the head of our assembly. “Now I get it,” I said to Hillam, “then this is war.”
So now realizing the situation, I quickly finished picking up my things and tried to think about all the military maneuvers that we’d studied in our military history courses. They’d really hurt me bad. And it was Wallrick who’d kicked me the worst.
I took a big breath, glanced around, and tried to figure out a way to avenge myself. I spotted the new blond cadet named Igo, who was from North Hollywood, and his mother or uncle or someone in his family was in the movie business. Igo was still so new that he didn’t have any friends yet. He was a big, husky, strong-looking kid. So I got next to him when we lined up to be marched to our next class. We were all standing at attention to be counted off, when I poked Igo in the ribs, and instantly got back to attention with my eyes straight forward.
“Stop it!” said Igo, and he turned and poked me back.
Hearing the commotion, Wallrick, our top A student and class leader, turned and saw Igo poking at me.
“Knock it off, Igo!” he barked.
“But he poked me first!” said Igo.
“Did you poke Igo first?” asked Wallrick of me.
“Not me, sir!” I said, lying, and pretending like I was so scared that I’d never lie or misbehave. “He’s a lot bigger and stronger than me, I’d never do that!”
Feeling satisfied that I was a coward and knew my place, Wallrick turned back around to present our class to the extended assembly of cadets and instructors.
Quickly, I poked Igo again, sticking my tongue out at him this time. Igo, a big easygoing guy, laughed and hit me on the shoulder. And Wallrick, true to form, turned and saw our commotion again, and realized that the other assembly leaders were waiting for him to bring his class to order. He got so mad, he came racing into our ranks and got in Igo’s face.
“YOU SCREW UP ONE MORE TIME, IGO!” he barked. “And I’ll see you before messhall behind the barracks to teach you how to follow orders!”
“But sir, he’s the one who—”
“Don’t ‘sir’ me! I’m a sergeant! I work for a living!”
“But Sergeant, he’s the one who’s doing all the—”
The eyes of our A student leader were bloodshot with rage. He glanced at me, but I was standing at attention with my shoulders back, looking completely military-proper and scared, so our brilliant leader was just sure that I was too chickenshit to be doing anything wrong.
“Don’t be lying to me!” He turned, barking at Igo. “Meet me behind the barracks if you have any balls!”
“Well, okay, I’ll be there, but…honestly, he’s the one who—”
“ATTENTION!” barked Wallrick. “I will not have anyone in my squad making me look bad!”
I’ll never forget—we went to our next class, but we couldn’t pay attention because we were all so excited. Then we were dismissed to clean up before messhall, meaning lunch, and we all rushed behind our barracks to see if this whole thing was really going to go down. And there was Wallrick, stripped to the waist, and it was easy to see that he was the biggest, strongest kid that we had in the whole seventh grade. He had already started shaving, was almost six feet tall, and looked like he should be a junior or senior in high school, and yet he was only about thirteen years old like the rest of our class. In fact, because I’d flunked the third grade, I was actually about a year older than most of the kids in my grade, but I had such a baby-smooth face that nobody believed that I was as old as I was.
Wallrick was flexing his arms and cracking his knuckles. And Igo, he finally showed up, but you could see that he really didn’t want to fight, and yet he’d do it to save face. The other cadets made a ring around Wallrick and Igo. Myself, I kept back out of sight because I didn’t want Igo to see me and suddenly decide to come running after me, instead of going after Wallrick. Everyone was betting on Wallrick to win, but myself, I figured that Igo had a good chance because I’d horsed around with him a few days back and I’d seen how quick he was.
With fire in his eyes, Wallrick came swinging and cursing at Igo, telling him how he was going to teach him a lesson, because he wasn’t going to allow anyone in his squad ruining his chances of eventually becoming the adjutant cadet of the whole school and then going on to West Point.
Igo hit him.
Igo hit Wallrick with a straight right to the face while our A student leader was talking about his future. It shocked Wallrick. In fact, it shocked all of us. Wallrick stopped and reached up to his lip with his right hand, then he looked at his fingertips, saw the blood, and his eyes went crazier than before.
Bellowing, he now went rushing in on Igo again, but the kid from North Hollywood was really fast, so he just sidestepped and hit Wallrick with two more quick lefts to the face, then a right uppercut to his middle. We all groaned with the sound of the hit to the stomach. Igo really knew how to box, but Wallrick was bigger and stronger. He wasn’t our class leader for nothing, so he didn’t go down. No, he caught his breath and now lunged at Igo, got him in a headlock, and started twisting Igo’s
head off of his neck with all his might, and then began kneeing him to the body.
Igo cried out in pain, but he was tough, too, so he now lifted Wallrick off of the ground, threw him down, and now they were both pounding on each other as they rolled around on the grass. My God, I’d never meant for all this to happen. I’d just been trying to even the scorecard a little with Moses and our A students, who’d knocked me down and kicked me.
Well, the fight continued until they were both a bloody mess. But you could tell that Igo had won, and now he had lots of friends. At this point we all had to go to our rooms to clean up before we could go to lunch. But when Igo saw me, he forgot all about lunch and took off after me, saying he was going to kill me. I had a head start, so I took off running and hid behind the trash cans, where it smelled so bad that I figured that he wouldn’t want to search for me very much.
It worked. He left. But then, right after lunch, Igo spotted me again and this time I didn’t have much of a lead, so I knew that he was going to catch me because I wasn’t that fast of a runner.
I ran down alongside a building, trying to figure out what to do real quick. Then I remembered how my dad had taught me to set traps for rabbits as he’d done in the middle of the Mexican Revolution to get food for his mother and sisters who’d been starving.
Rounding the far corner of the big building, I pulled out my pen and pencils from my book bag, selected one pencil because it was recently sharpened and held it out like a spear as I heard Igo coming around the corner at a full out run. And he was fast, too, so he hit the end of my sharpened pencil with his chest at full speed, which drove the pencil into him.
Seeing the big, long yellow pencil sticking out of his chest—I’d let go of it the moment I felt it penetrate—he screamed in terror and started turning pale and began to gasp.
Burro Genius Page 5