Burro Genius

by Victor Villaseñor

  She didn’t want to, she really didn’t, but she then went to him with open arms, too, and they drew each other close, held, and then they began to kiss. He was kissing her, and she was kissing him. Not one single sound could be heard through out the whole bar. Everyone stared at them, mouth open. Even the horse seemed to have calmed down.

  My dad stood up and they continued kissing, making that kiss that my father had been asking to make for weeks. Then finally, my mother and father turned and went out the front doors, and I was left with the drunken horse. But every time I tried to lead Cherokee to the front door, he’d rear back in panic. Finally, it dawned on me that something very bad must’ve happened to him at the entrance.

  “Hey!” I yelled at everyone. “Did something happen to this horse at the entrance?”

  “Yes,” said the bartender, “he hit his head on the doorway and got knocked down to his knees when your dad rode him in.”

  “Oh, then that’s why he’s scared of the entrance. Is there any other way to get him out of here?”

  “I don’t know anything about horses,” said the bartender. “But I’d guess that the back door isn’t big enough for him to fit through.”

  “Can somebody hold the horse, while I go take a look?”

  But no one would come forward to help me, until one of the women who’d been near my dad when we’d first come in, now walked around from the far side of the bar. She had red hair and was older, but very youngish-looking and beautiful.

  “I’ll hold him,” she said in a deep, throaty voice.

  “Do I know you?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said, acting a little nervous. “I’ve come over riding to your place a few times.”

  “Oh, I see,” I said.

  She took the reins and spoke gently to the horse. I could see that she knew what she was doing. The bartender took me to the back. We walked past cases of beer and wine and whiskey. Getting to the back door, I could see that he was right—the door was way too narrow. The front entrance was still the best way to go. We went back to the front of the bar. I hadn’t noticed all the cigarette smoke before. The place was a sea of gray-white smoke and the horse was now heaving like he was going to get sick. The youngish older woman could barely hold him, he was slipping and sliding so much.

  “How much did he have to drink?” I asked.

  The bartender looked embarrassed. “About six beers and a couple of tequilas.”

  “Oh, my God!” I said. “One shot of tequila alone will kill a five-hundred-pound pig.”

  “Well, what could I do? Nobody can tell your father no. Hell, he said he’d buy the place just to fire me, if I didn’t serve his horse.”

  I believed him, and decided to put on my spurs. This way I’d just lunge the horse through the entrance, and hope to God that I didn’t get knocked off the saddle by the top of the doorway. It looked to me like there were only a few inches between the saddle horn and the top of the doorway. How my dad had ridden the horse in, I couldn’t figure out.

  Getting my spurs on, I told everyone to get back, which they all quickly did, except for the red-haired woman.

  “I’ll hold him steady for you while you mount,” she said, which made a lot of sense, the way the horse kept slipping all over the place.

  The whole bar was in shambles with all the havoc that Cherokee had caused.

  “Get him near that table,” I told her. “I’m still too little to get on a horse without a fence.”

  “How about a bar stool?” asked the barkeep.

  “That would be real good,” I said.

  He brought a bar stool over to me, but then backed away as fast as he could. I guess that they’d all seen Cherokee break things up, and were very wary.

  I got the stool and took it over to the nervous young gelding, talking gently to him the whole time. Then I checked the cinch, which was a good thing, because it was loose. I cinched him up good, tried to shorten the stirrups, but saw that they’d never go up high enough for my short little legs.

  “To hell with it,” I said, and climbed the bar stool. I was just about ready to put my foot in the stirrup and scramble up into the saddle when I felt two strong hands grip me, pick me up like a feather, and put me on the horse. I turned around to say “thank you” but I saw no one was behind me. Then I smelled my brother. I could smell that maroon woolen robe that he’d been using the last year of his life.

  A great calm washed over me, realizing that my brother Joseph was here with me. And it was a damn good—I mean, blessed good thing, too, because the next thing I knew, Cherokee reared up, wanting to go!

  I looked at the big plate-glass window that was right alongside the front entrance and wondered if I wasn’t better off just leaping Cherokee through it. But then, I remembered that Bert Lawrence, our horse-shoer, had done that last year at the Mira Mar restaurant at the north end of Oceanside after the Fourth of July fireworks, and broke his horse’s leg. I decided not to try the window, which looked pretty tempting, and I pointed Cherokee towards the front entrance, and when he started to panic, I suddenly gave him the spurs with everything I had.

  The horse bolted like a bat out of hell, slipping and sliding, and we shuffled around that wall and out the front door, with me bent over in the saddle real low so I wouldn’t get ripped off the horse by the roof over the entrance.

  Cherokee fell to his knees as we went through the doorway, skidded, scrambled, got back on his feet, and leaped forward.

  A cold wall of fresh air belted us as we hit the street, and there were speeding trucks and cars with their bright lights right in front of us. But this didn’t seem to frighten Cherokee. No, what he did next showed me that he was as quick and agile as any horse I’d ever ridden, and brave, too. Because the son of a bitch didn’t hesitate a pregnant-frog’s ass to leap over the first car, then dodged a truck, and there was the red Mobil horse blinking off and on right in front of us, and shit, WE WERE NOW FLYING, TOO!

  Hooves echoing at a gallop, we went right down the middle of Hill Street with cars honking and braking, and at the end of the first block, we turned right, hit dirt, and I now gave the horse the spurs again. I was beginning to understand that the faster we went, the better Cherokee could keep his drunken balance.

  We were racing up the street, flying past houses and neighborhood dogs. The Oxely girls, older than me, were coming in from a date, I guess, and I could see that they couldn’t believe what they were seeing—a drunken horse racing by them in a wild, wobbly run.

  By the time I got to the gates of our rancho grande, I realized that a car had been following me the whole way. It was that same red-headed woman who’d helped me in the bar, along with another woman, too, and once they saw me go in through the big white gates of our rancho grande, they turned around.

  Cherokee was pouring with sweat and beginning to sober up by the time we got to the corrals. It was a good thing my feet hadn’t been able to reach the stirrups, because the moment we quit running, he fell out from under me, rolling over on his side. I scrambled away as fast as I could so I wouldn’t get caught under his eleven hundred pound body.

  He was sick. He was gagging. I guess it must’ve been his first drunk, because he really didn’t know how to handle his liquor like Lady. Hell, the old Morgan mare would’ve just let me lead her out the entrance of the bar and walk her home as easy as eating apple pie.

  The next morning, my parents didn’t get up for breakfast and they barely made it to lunch. When my mother did get up, she fed her birds, and was whistling like one of her canaries. I guess that my parents were in love once again.

  CHAPTER eighteen

  Waking up the next day, I just knew that something kind of extraordinary had happened to me last night when I’d ridden that drunken horse home. It was like I now just knew deep inside of myself that I wasn’t going to die like my brother had died. I could now see so clearly that my brother Joseph had been absolutely right when he’d said that “his” was very different from mine, that “h
is” had been going on for a long time and so he’d already used up all of his nine lives, but I, on the other hand, had probably only used two or three of mine.

  Racing through the streets on Cherokee, I’d also come to know deep inside of me that I wasn’t alone, that none of us were ever alone, especially when we had so much familia up in Heaven pulling for us. I had my brother Joseph in Heaven. I had my two grandmothers. I had my father’s older brother, José, the Great, and I had my great-grandfather, Don Pio, the greatest man who’d lived next to Benito Juárez, the Abraham Lincoln of Mexico! Heaven was full of my familia and our amigos, too, and so this was why Cherokee hadn’t tripped and fallen face first in the street into oncoming traffic. Strings were being pulled for me up in Heaven, lucky strings!

  Going to school that day, I don’t know how to explain it. I now felt so much older than the other kids in my grade. And I was older by a year, because I’d flunked the year before, but there was something else. No, I mean, I was way older somehow. In fact, the teacher, herself, and even the principal didn’t impress me or scare me anymore. I was now un hombre, and no one was ever going to walk on my shadow again without my permission, as mi papa had so well explained to me.

  People now had to speak to me with respect and they had to make good horse sense, too. They could never again bully me just because they were older, bigger, were a priest or a teacher. And man, did this feel good deep inside of me, especially after we, the Mexican kids, had gotten beaten down so much ever since kindergarten. And that playground teacher, the gallo-gallina, as we’d nicknamed her, I sure wished that I knew where she lived. She’d tortured us worse than anyone and she’d enjoyed it. I’d like to set a dynamite charge to her house and blow her ass to smithereens.

  God must’ve heard my request, because the very next day, I heard my mother call information and get someone’s phone number and their address. This meant that all I had to do was pick up the phone and call information to get that damn gallo-gallina’s phone number and home address, so I could have my revenge if I really wanted to. I loved it!

  Then school was out! I was free for the summer. And my parents were still behaving like they were in love. They decided to take a trip to Mexico for a month with our older sister Tencha. My sister Linda and I were not going to go. We were to stay with Hans and Helen on their chicken ranch in Bonsall. I hated to do this, because I wasn’t going to be allowed to take the .22 Winchester that my dad had just bought me, so I could continue to practice my shooting every afternoon. And I was getting really good with my pump-action .22 Winchester.

  Our parents left with Tencha in our new Cadillac, and my little sister and I went out to Bonsall. My sister and I learned German and how to make our beds with square corners and how to clean the eggs and feed the chickens and mark the chart of each chicken, so that we’d know who laid eggs and who hadn’t. After two weeks of not laying regularly, these nonproductive chickens were beheaded and cooked for dog food. Uncooked chickens were never fed to the ranch dogs, Hans explained to my sister and me, because the taste of fresh blood could turn even a good dog into a chicken killer over night.

  A few days later, I said that I wanted to have guitar lessons. That song of my brother’s with the cowboy chasing the Devil’s red-eyed herd just kept singing in my head all the time. Hans started driving me to Oceanside twice a week so I could get guitar lessons. I told my guitar teacher that I wanted to learn the words to my brother’s song. He got me the sheet music, and my sister and I began to recite the words to the music every afternoon. I don’t know how, but Linda could already read better than me and she hadn’t even started school. Singing “Ghost Riders in the Sky” under the big pine tree felt so good and full of magic, and yet it also felt real sad.

  When our parents returned, I didn’t recognize them at first, especially with the funny, colorful, old-world Mexican dresses that my sister and mother were wearing. That evening, my mother and Tencha showed us all the pictures that they’d taken in Mexico, especially in Acapulco.

  The summer ended and the days began to shorten, and it was almost time for me to start school again. This year I’d be going to the Catholic school at the San Luis Rey Mission. But I didn’t want to go to school. What was the point, to just find out that I was stupider than the year before? I could very well see that every year that I went to school, the reading was getting harder and harder, and I was just getting left behind further and further.

  I took my sister Linda aside—because this year she was starting kindergarten—and explained to her it was not a “kinder garden” that she was going to go to, as our parents thought. That teachers could be mean, especially since we were Mexican. She laughed and said that she’d just tell them that she was Chinese, if they asked her, because she loved Chinese food, like our father. I told her that I didn’t know if that would work. But she seemed so sure, that I just didn’t say anything more.

  Late one afternoon, just a couple of days before my sister Linda and I were to start school, I suddenly felt that little quiet purring behind my left ear, and I instantly knew that I was supposed to saddle up Midnight Duke and go riding down to the sea.

  Then I remembered that this was exactly what my brother Joseph had wanted to do before he died. I hurried over to the horse stables, caught Duke, haltered him, took him to the fence by the ramp where we loaded the cattle into our cattle truck, brushed him out real good, then I hauled my blanket and my little saddle up on the ramp and got myself up high enough—because I was still too short—so I could saddle up. Then I climbed up on the fence, took off the halter, and bridled Duke, got off the fence, turned him about, cinched him up good one last time, then climbed back up on the fence so I could mount him.

  It was really late now. This was truly not a good time for me to go riding down through the marshlands to the sea. I’d seen how much trouble my brother had gotten into for taking just one wrong turn. But for some reason, I wasn’t scared. No, I was all excited inside. It was like this purring, this humming, was guiding me just as I’d been guided home off that tall mesa out by the cemetery where Shep had leaped into the sky to intercept my brother’s soul, and I’d also been guided the night that I’d had to ride Cherokee home from the bar.

  I mounted and quickly took off, riding fast so I could get across the marshes while there was still plenty of light. How I’d get back in the dark, I had no idea, but I just knew that everything was going to be okay. After all, Chavaboy was up in Heaven, so if I needed any help, he could get hold of our two grandmothers and Sam and Shep and even Jesus and Mary, if need be. I mean, the Heavens were now full of human and animal souls just ready to help me out.

  Quickly, Duke and I cut through the flat marshes as fast as we could, running when we could on the solid ground, then nibbling our way real slow and easy when we had to. Then we were at Hill Street, the coastal highway at the west end of our rancho grande. Duke and I waited for the trucks and cars to give way, then crossed the highway at a walk and took off at a run the moment we hit dirt again.

  We were in marshlands just this side of the railroad tracks that went from San Diego all the way up to Los Angeles. I galloped Duke under the railroad bridge, hoping that no train came flying by overhead, scaring the living shit out of Duke and me. Then I saw them; the waves rolling up on the shores of Buccaneer Beach just ahead of us.

  It was a beautiful low tide. The Father Sun was just beginning to set into the sea. The whole sky to the west was painted in colors of pink and orange and red, with streaks of lavender and silver. Duke was so happy to see the water that he wanted to gallop. I had to hold him back until we got to the sand. Once we were on the sand, which glistened like a mirror, he wanted to run out into the water itself. What the hell, I gave him his head and he turned north instead of south—the way I would’ve gone—and he was running wide open in the shallow surf like he knew where he was going. I wondered if he, too, was being guided by the Holy Hands of God, massaging him behind his ears.

  Once again I remembered
that this was what my brother Joseph had wanted to do—come riding to the beach on Midnight Duke.

  “CHAVABOY!” I called out as we raced in the surf. “HERE WE ARE, Duke and I! Just like you wanted to do before you—”

  I didn’t get to finish my words. Suddenly Duke stopped, just like that, on a dime, and he turned his big long horse face towards the incoming waves, snapping his ears forward like he was listening to something. I took off my hat and turned my head, wanting to hear, too, but I couldn’t make anything out, except the huge roar of the waves. But Duke seemed to really hear something, because he suddenly SCREECHED OUT, so loud and strong that his whole rib cage shook between my legs, startling the shit out of me.

  I couldn’t figure out what was going on. Who the hell was he calling to? I couldn’t hear anything and I didn’t see any other horses anywhere, up or down the beach. Then I saw something that looked like the top of a rock, a great big black rock, just this side of the huge incoming waves. But I couldn’t figure out why a horse would be calling to a rock.

  That was when I first saw the fins, and they were coming in with the waves, just to one side of the big rock, straight towards us. Duke was calling to them again and again with such power that I felt that his vibrating body was going to throw me right out of the saddle.

  I got scared.

  I couldn’t swim very well. And were these sharks or what? And here they were, getting larger and larger, as they kept coming right towards us.

  Then, I don’t know why, but that little humming at the back of my head began to speak to me. Not just purr. But actually speak, telling me to keep calm, to remember that dogs, horses, cats, all animals could hear and smell and sense things far beyond all of my human senses, so I must just trust that Duke knew what he was doing, just as I accepted and trusted a dog to give the warning of an approaching stranger way before I, a human, even knew anything about the situation. I nodded, trusting the little voice that was speaking to me right along with the humming.