My heart was going crazy-loco! “Would have Chavaboy gone to prison if he had lived?” I asked, almost pissing in my pants, I was feeling so scared. I didn’t want to have to go to prison. I was still too little. I wanted to stay with my mama and papa.
“No,” said my father, “I don’t think he would’ve. Chavaboy was different than you and me. He was more like your mother. You’re more me, a real cabrón. Remember how you pissed on me when you were still in diapers,” he said, laughing. “And now you blackmail people.”
I froze. I didn’t know that my dad knew about my blackmailing. “How do you know about that?”
“What? About your blackmailing?” he asked.
I nodded. I was sure that I was now in deep trouble. But my dad only laughed.
“Don’t be frightened,” he said. “Remember, fear is only good when the other guy’s got it and you don’t.”
“Then you’re not mad at me for blackmailing people?”
“Hell, no! I love it! But also, you’re now too big to keep doing that, because…blackmail is a serious business that can get very dangerous. I’ve seen grown men, tough men, get killed because they didn’t know when to quit. A man needs to know when to quit, mijo. This is the secret—not just to gambling and blackmail—but to all of life.”
“Quitting? But I thought you told me that a good man never quits. That he’s a burro macho, and just keeps going and going, no matter what.”
My dad smiled. “Good. Wonderful. You’ve just come to the crucifixion of life, la vida. You see, in everything we say that’s true, the opposite is also true. This is how we catch our balance and have understanding, instead of opinions. Opinions, you see, they’re like assholes, everyone’s got one, and they all stink. But understanding, she smells sweet, and she’s the start of wisdom. Capiche?”
“I don’t know,” I said, shrugging. “Maybe I do, a little bit.”
“Good. The beginning of all wisdom is to understand that you don’t know. To know is the enemy of all learning. To be sure is the enemy of all wisdom. Look, yes, a good man never, never quits when the going gets tough, or great tragedies hit your familia. But also, a good man a las todas has got to not be stubborn and know when to say no to that next drink, or to that next turn of the cards, and walk away from the game. Your mother, she’s the one who, with all her power, finally got me to quit my wild gambling and bootlegging, and go legal.
“No, we good men never quit. Never! And yet we got to know when to stop and say ‘mañana es otro milagro de Dios’ and get a good night’s rest so we can see things a little more clear in the morning.”
I nodded. This made a lot of damn—I mean, blessed—good horse sense to me. Then it hit me like a lightning bolt; horses did think, and a lot of people knew this, or then this expression of “good horse sense” wouldn’t even exist! I suddenly felt very good. This was when the humming began again behind my left ear. I smiled. Papito Dios was massaging my head. He was telling me that He agreed with what I’d just figured out.
“Are you feeling better?” asked my father.
“Yes,” I said, “I’m feeling a lot better, papa.”
“Good,” and saying this, he gently took me by the shoulders and turned around, and we headed back home. The branches of the whole huge old pepper tree began to dance in the breeze. I just knew that my dad and I were not alone.
The next morning my dad surprised me again by telling me that I didn’t need to go to school if I didn’t want to. “Over is over,” he said, “so why the hell go to school, eh? What are they going to do, flunk you twice?” he said, grinning. “I say we all eat breakfast together this morning and then we all go horseback riding like una familia de LOS ALTOS DE JALISCO!
I’ll never forget that morning, I felt so good to eat huevos rancheros with my familia, instead of just eating alone with my father so I’d have time to do my chores before I went to school. And at the corrals, after we’d saddled up, my father reached in his pocket and gave me five single dollar bills. “From now on, no more blackmail, but I do want you to start carrying money in your pocket at all times, mijo, because money is good, and not just to spend on candy and pendejadas like that. But also to give to our people who come up through our valley, following the railroad tracks below our home. Some of these poor gente come all the way from deep in Mexico by foot, like my mother and I did.
“They’re tired, hungry, and looking for work. They’re good people, mijo, the best! Not wanting nothing for nothing. You give them money if they’re broke so they can go to the store to buy bread and milk and meat. This is the great miracle of money, it can save a hungry person’s life. I know, we were starving to death when we crossed the border. Hunger is what I’ve feared all my life; not death. Dying is easy compared to being un pobre mendigo that can’t speak the language, not even to ask for water.
“And when you use this money up, come ask me for more, or just go to our room and get some more out of my pants pocket, then tell me how much you took. You’re nine years old, a man of honor, and your honor has no price tag that dinero can ever buy. Do you understand, you got money, you know how to handle a gun, and no man or woman, no matter how big or important they think they are, can ever walk on your shadow again without your permission. Got it? You are now UN HOMBRE, and to be respected!”
I nodded. I got it. My heart was beat, beat, BEATING with AMOR! I took the five dollars and put it in my pocket, feeling like I’d grown up ten years since I’d been told that I’d flunked again.
That morning my mother and little sister—Linda hadn’t started school yet—went horseback riding with my dad and me. We went out the front gates, down Stewart Street towards Cassidy, turned left, went up the hill, then cut down the slope by Dr. Hoskins’s place towards the duck lagoon between Oceanside and Carlsbad.
“I hope that man burns in hell,” said my mother as we rode by the doctor’s place.
“Lupe,” said our father, “cálmate. We’re out riding and having a good time.”
She made a face at our dad. “You’re a man, Salvador!” said our mother. “Not a woman! You’ll never understand what a mother feels down here in her heart when she loses a child so young that he never had the chance to live!”
She burst into tears. Our father took a big breath, but he said nothing, and we rode across the hill towards the east, and it was beautiful. We were now riding on the big ranch east of El Camino that had just been bought by a world-famous Olympic champion ice-skater. From way up here we could see down the whole lagoon all the way to the glistening Pacific Ocean in the distance.
We got off our horses, loosened their cinches, and let them graze for a while. My father brought out his pint bottle of whiskey, took a swig, then offered it to our mother. I’d never seen our mother drink like this before, but she did. Still, when my dad went to kiss her, she turned her face away. Seeing this, I once more flashed on what our tía Tota had said about not wanting kids, and I wondered if our mother was now, also, maybe sorry that she’d ever brought any of us into the world.
My father said nothing to our mother about her turning her face away from him, and we cinched up our saddles again. Then my dad helped my sister and me get back on our horses, then he helped our mother, too, stroking her leg. After that he leaped, without putting his foot in the stirrup, right up on top of Lady, his big Morgan mare.
Getting home, we unsaddled, ate lunch with plenty of big, juicy avocados, freshly made cheese, and homemade tortillas and salsa. That afternoon, I went with my parents to take a lug of avocados to my teacher. And strangely enough, my teacher didn’t look so big and strong to me anymore. No, she looked kind of old and weak and nervous to see me come in with my parents. My dad and mom gave her the box of avocados. The lug had an envelope of money in it, along with the avocados. Seeing the envelope, my teacher didn’t want to accept the box.
“Oh, yes, you do,” said my father in a firm but calm tone of voice. “You see, we got a little plan. Lupe called our priest and spoke to him this
morning, see.”
My mother then told my teacher their plan. My teacher was to pass me, and then I wouldn’t be coming back to the public schools anymore. Instead I’d start attending Catholic school, which my dad had already explained to me was a much better and more dependable organization where money didn’t just talk, but could actually scream, and get you a guaranteed passage—not just of grades—but into Heaven, itself, with a fat-enough envelope.
My teacher saw the light, passed me, put it in writing, as my mother suggested, accepted the avocados and the envelope, and we went home whistling a happy tune. Boy, I loved this! I’d never realized that life could be this easy! Blackmail and bribery were really the way to go. But also, I realized that I’d promised I wouldn’t do blackmail anymore. Nothing had been said about bribery.
I was sound asleep when my mother came rushing into my room, grabbed me, started shaking me, telling me to wake up!
“HURRY! Get dressed!” shouted my mother. “Your father has gotten his horse drunk in a bar again!”
I only had a couple of days of school left. My father had just purchased a new horse named Cherokee. He was a white palomino that my dad had gotten in a trade when he and Jimmy Williams sold Blue Eyes to Harold Figstad, who’d opened up the new Mobil station on Hill Street and Cassidy.
“Which horse?” I asked my mother. I hoped it was Lady, his old Morgan mare, because Lady knew how to hold her liquor and behave herself. When my dad got to drinking, he sometimes also liked to give his horse a few beers. Luckily, my dad never gave his horses hard liquor. Only beer. But Cherokee, he was a young gelding who’d just been castrated, and so he probably had no idea how to handle a few beers.
“I don’t know!” said my mother. “I didn’t ask. I guess it’s his new horse Cherokee. All I know is that the horse has gotten wild and broken furniture and nobody knows how to get him out.”
Boy, was I ever sorry to hear this. This could, then, really be bad, because a horse that didn’t know how to hold its drinks, was a very dangerous animal.
“Hurry! Get dressed,” said my mother. “I’ll get your father home, and you ride the horse.”
I was ready to pee in my pajamas, I was so scared. I hoped the bar was the Pepper Tree that had a dirt road behind it, because I didn’t want to have to ride a drunken horse on concrete or slippery asphalt.
I quickly pulled off my pajamas, got on my Levi’s, my socks and boots, too, then put on a long-sleeve shirt, washed my face, and grabbed my spurs and cowboy hat. I didn’t know if I should wear spurs or not. It all depended on the horse being willing to go or not.
I ran down the stairs, out the front door, past the patio, and got in the car where my mother already had the motor going. We quickly drove down the long driveway, out the big white gates, turned right on California Street, went past old man Hightower’s new market, and turned left of Hill Street. About a block and a half down the street, my mother pulled over and parked across the street from Figstad’s new Mobile station. The great big red Mobil horse with flying wings was blinking off and on. We got out of the car and went into a place I’d never noticed before. It had a huge double-door entrance, but there was a solid wall right in front of the doorway, so that you immediately had to make a sharp turn to the right or to the left in order to get inside. I could hear my father’s big booming voice before we’d even gotten through the entrance. I could hear tables and chairs being knocked around, too.
Following my mother in through the right side, we rushed into a large room and there was my father by the bar with two women at his side, and his golden-white horse was slipping and sliding on the dance floor, trembling with fear and knocking furniture all over the place. My father had his Western hat pushed back on his head and he was singing in Spanish like Jorge Negrete, with a bottle of beer in his hand. He didn’t seem very concerned about Cherokee tearing the place up. Seeing my mother and me, his whole face lit up con gusto.
“QUERIDA!” he shouted as the two women quickly moved away from him. “ALMA DE MI CORAZÓN!” he bellowed. “You’ve come to join me, at long last!”
“No, Salvador! I’ve come to take you home!”
“Home? But, why home? The party is just beginning!”
I could see that all the other people in the bar were staying way back, too. Obviously, they were all afraid of the horse and all his kicking and slipping and sliding. There were more than a couple dozen people in the place, about half men and half women. The bartender—I thought I recognized him, but I wasn’t sure. He, too, looked very nervous. I guessed that he was the one who’d called my mother, instead of calling the cops. Which was good, because most of the cops wouldn’t have known what to do with Cherokee. Last year, two young cops had tried herding some of our cattle home that had gotten loose and ended up on the beach, and one cop had gotten his motorcycle too close to the cattle and the headlight of his motorcycle had gotten kicked out.
I quickly went over to Cherokee and picked up his reins, which he was stepping on, and pulled him up close, so he’d realized I had him.
“Easy, big boy,” I said to him. “Easy does it.” But I could see that he was so drunk and scared that he didn’t know what was what.
“LUPE, MI CORAZÓN! Mi novia! MI ESPOSA!” my father kept shouting. “LET’S DANCE, YOU AND ME, MI AMOR!”
“Salvador, you’re drunk!”
“So what! I still got feeling for you as big and deep and strong as the first day I lay eyes on you! You are MY ANGEL!” he bellowed, reaching for her and trying to kiss her.
“No, Salvador, please! You stink!”
“Yes! I stink LIKE A BULL who still breathes and adores every step you take, shifting weight from one beautiful hip to another beautiful hip with a poetry of movement that puts my HEART ON FIRE!
“He died! He’s gone! And I, too, loved our son with all my heart, but what the hell are we to do? We’re still here and breathing! Come, let’s make the kiss, querida.”
“No, Salvador!”
“Yes, Lupe!”
“NO!”
“YES!”
I was trying to lead Cherokee out the crooked entrance, around the wall that was in front, but he panicked and reared up—almost hitting his head on the ceiling—then slipped on the floor and fell back on his ass. He looked like a huge puppy dog sitting on the dance floor.
I laughed, but people screamed, scrambling away, not thinking it was funny in the least. I held on to the reins as best I could, as Cherokee came leaping, slipping up on his four hooves. My father was instantly at my side.
“Hold him, mijo! You’re a charro de Jalisco, a lo CHINGÓN! Ah, life is so full of wild, twisted adventures, eh?” he said, with a drunken grin, licking his lips with his huge tongue. “You got troubles with a horse, I got troubles with THE WOMAN I LOVE!
“So the most important advice I can give you about life, mijo, is this…you lift up the tail, stick in your nose, take a big sniff, and you’ll always know who is a female! Do you hear me! LIFT UP THE TAIL, stick in you nose, JUST LIKE A STUD! And take a big sniff, THE BIGGEST! And you’ll ALWAYS KNOW WHO’S A FEMALE!” he repeated, licking his lips with his long, thick tongue.
“Look at your mother over there! She’s so BEAUTIFUL! She just comes into the room, and I start smelling! And what is it that I smell, it is the SMELL OF LIFE, LA VIDA, WITH ALL HER LUST AND BEAUTY—so RICH A SMELL that it brings tears to my eyes, blood to my corazón, and strength to my tanates!”
“SALVADOR! STOP IT!” yelled my mother, coming to us. “You’re an embarrassment to everyone!”
“Well, then, TO HELL WITH EVERYONE! Because, how can we stop it? Eh, you tell me, Lupe. Wars, starvation, death, the whole damn catastrophe of life happens to us, generation after generation, and yet nothing can stop this smell de la vida that WE SMELL!
“Hell, a bull smells a cow in heat five miles away, and that bull tears down fences to get to the cow, BELLOWING THE WHOLE WAY! And women, thank God, once they’ve opened their hearts, they’re in heat every d
ay of their lives, forcing us men to want to live! TO LIVE SO WE CAN LIFT THE TAIL, STICK IN OUR NOSES, and take a big—”
My mother slapped my father before he could finish his words.
Everyone was staring at my parents, especially all of the women. They had a liquored-up, wild, hungry look.
“SLAP ME AGAIN!” he shouted. “At least this is better than not touching me since our boy died! You tell me that a man can’t feel what a women feels! You tell me that a father can never understand what a mother feels when they lose a son! Well, I say BULLSHIT! AND COW SHIT, TOO!
“My mother, God bless her soul, lost child after child in the Revolution, but it was not she who broke! It was my father who fell apart, saying that God had forsaken them, and it was THE END OF THE WORLD!
“But mi mama,” said my father, staggering towards my mother with tears streaming down his face, “she never said that! No, she said ‘mañana es otro milagro de Dios,’ and with that conviction, she took us off the mountains of Jalisco and we migrated to Texas border. And that old Indian woman was a MOTHER! And she never, never, never once gave up on life!
“Come to me, Lupe! Come to these waiting arms! I love you con TODO MI CORAZÓN! The touch of your skin, the smell of your—”
“SHUT UP! SALVADOR! For the sake of God!”
“Okay, I’ll shut up! BUT I NEED YOU! I NEED TO HOLD YOU CLOSE! For how can we keep faith in life, if we don’t have the smell and warmth of each other to keep us going. I LOVE YOU!”
“Come, Salvador,” said my mother, glancing around at everyone. “We need to go home…Mundo will ride your horse.”
“Will you hold me, skin to skin?” he said, rocking back and forth on his feet. “Will you love me like I love you? Will you let GOD DO GOD’S WORK, and…and…Lupe! LUPE! LUPE!” he bellowed, dropping to his knees with open arms. “TU ERES MI ESPOSA! The handcuffs of my heart and soul!”
Burro Genius Page 28