The Wetback and Other Stories

by Ron Arias

  “Can I touch it?”

  “Sure.”

  The man petted the nose. “Feels cool, smooth.”

  “Reminds me of those Colima dogs,” the woman said.

  “No way. Those are little and fat. This guy’s big and he’s got class.”

  The guests drank more beer and wine and after a while ate from a pile of steamy tiny tamales, corn husks off.

  A bearded man drew deeply on the stubby remainder of a joint, slowly exhaled and asked, “Why so many dogs?”

  “Why not?” his neighbor said. The two shared space on a sprawling bean bag cushion. “He likes dogs.”

  “Well, I like the homey in the middle,” said the woman who had mentioned the dancing Colima dogs. “He’s a fine specimen.”

  “Of what?”

  “I don’t know, of doghood, manhood . . . easy confidence, something like that.”

  “Like they’re all the same. I mean, like, like . . . it’s all dogs.”

  “So?”

  “Same kind of dog.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Like clones.”

  “Maybe that’s what he’s saying.”

  The artist and his wife didn’t seem to pay attention to the comments; they were busy setting out bowls of beans, rice, chicken mole, salsas and guacamole on a kitchen counter. Soon the friends lined up to fill their porcelain plates and headed out to sit, eat and drink. In this part of the city the house could be called a mansion—two floors, four bedrooms, a studio, a patio spread out in back and a gazebo by the flower garden. The guests spread out and the smell of mole poblano quickly mixed with the scent of night-blooming jasmine.

  Hours later after everyone had finished eating, the artist and another man entered the living room, lifted the Homey, as they all called him, and returned him to his usual home in the corner. Briefly, a wrinkle—almost a frown—appeared on the hardened, terracotta brow.

  “Weighs a ton,” the friend said, leaning against the wall and catching his breath.

  “If I could,” the artist said, “I’d make one as big as the Statue of Liberty.”

  “I don’t know, man . . . at least this size you can move him around.”

  “Bigger the better.”

  “Hmm. But why make so many?”

  “It’s a habit. The more I make of one thing, the better I get.”

  “Is this guy here your last one?”

  “Actually, he was my first.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. The others are really better.”

  “That’s hard to believe.”

  “Gotta look close. The little guys have more detail, more life.”

  “If you say so. Yeah, sure.”

  Later, as the guests drifted onto the sofa chairs and floor cushions, two of the artist’s friends began speaking loudly. “It’s gotta come from the soul, know what I mean?”

  “We back to that again?”

  “Yeah, man, soul comes from family, from your roots. That’s what makes art . . . uh, authentic. Then you’ve got some kind of movement.”

  “Bullshit. It’s just a bunch of dudes calling themselves artists.”

  “Why you always gotta piss on things?”

  “Not pissing. Just saying.”

  “Want another beer?”

  “Yeah, all right.”

  Alone in his darkened corner, the Number One Homey shrugged and his shoulders seemed to sag. His expression grew weary, his ears tilted as if they were bored with the discussion. He had assumed a pose of dreamy indifference, hands loosely clasped behind his back, one leg casually set forward, his body slightly bent forward at the waist, his tongue hanging out one side of his mouth. Meanwhile, the guests were so busy with each other—torrents of words and laughs, all to a thumping beat—that the transformation went unnoticed.

  “Good night,” someone said, and the Homey lifted his head.

  “Yeah, night.”

  “Thanks for everything.”

  “Want me to call a taxi?”

  “Nah, I’m okay.”

  When all the guests had left and the artist and his wife had gone off to their bedroom, the big Homey stepped forward. His eyes roamed everywhere. Ashtrays brimmed over, gobs of beans, rice and bits of limp salad lay spread on the dining room table. He could hear spiders outside in the garden spinning webs, snails crossing the driveway pavement. He even imagined moonlight shining through the leaves and on the dew-covered grass.

  With an easy effort he sauntered into the kitchen. Then he opened the refrigerator and took out a beer. After twisting off the cap he lifted the cold bottle to his thin lips and drank it all. Next he pulled out the covered pot of cold menudo. He was about to search the contents when he saw a plastic container of leftover ribs. For a long while he gnawed on a single bone, finally dropping it on the floor and licking his muzzle.

  The Homey returned to the living room, pausing to give out a loud belch, then continued. The floor creaked under his weight. He stopped to listen. His ears stiffened and he seemed to sense movement in the room. He sniffed the air and peered into the semi-darkness.

  There, from somewhere near the fireplace, came a faint chuckle. Again, only this time it was a distinct, tiny laugh, followed by other small voices laughing. Number One frowned and a long, slow, gravely growl rose from his throat.

  “Something funny?” he asked.

  After a moment he heard them again.

  “Who do you think you are?” said a high-pitched voice coming from the shadows. “All puffed up like you’re alive or something.”

  “You think you’re human or what?” another voice added.

  “Shut up!” The big dog shouted.

  “Oye, pendejo. Statues stay in one place. You’re not supposed to move.”

  “I said shut up!”

  “You think you own the place?”

  “All right,” the Homey told his small-fry brethren. “I’m going to bust you guys all over the place.”

  A dapper figure with a wispy goatee emerged from the shadows. “You and who else?” he said. “We can move around too, and we’ve got you surrounded.”

  “So what?”

  Suddenly, the diminutive statue Frisbeed a stiff corn tortilla at Goliath’s crotch. The disk broke into pieces and scattered at the Homey’s feet.

  Another small figure in an orange jump suit stepped forward, a hammer raised menacingly in one hand. “Come on, loco! We’re taking you down!”

  For a moment, the Homey almost felt sorry for the puny challenger about to strike. It would be so easy to make chorizo of this little one.

  “Drop it,” he ordered.

  When the hammer tilted backward, the Homey licked his muzzle once. He caught the hammer in mid-arc, then used it to smash his attacker to powder and bits of unglazed clay.

  “Who’s next?”

  He scanned the nervous smiles around him. Slowly they began to retreat.

  “Hey, man,” one said, “relax. Just testing. Don’t worry, nobody’s gonna hurt you.”

  “Hurt me? That’s funny. That’s really funny. I’m not worried. Do I look worried. Why should I worry? I’m the best dog here. Look at me. Ever see muscles like these? And check this face. Perfect. Teeth like knives. And I’m fast . . . ”

  “Yeah, man, we believe you.”

  “You’ll never see another homey like me. I’m the original, the only original he ever made.”

  “He made . . . me,” a tentative voice said.

  “Me too,” another said.

  “He made us all equal!” shouted the statue with the goatee.

  “No way, güey. But I’m the first, I’m the best,” the Homey said, stepping forward.

  “Wait!” the goatee cried. “I won’t say no more. You’re the first, the one, the only.”

  That’s when the Homey went crazy wild. He flung himself at the terrified creatures, arms swinging, feet kicking, teeth snapping into his little brothers. He smashed them to pieces, then furiously turned and faced the others hanging
helplessly on the walls or propped on easels. He ripped into the figures, tore away the sketches, the painted oil canvases, flinging the wooden frames on the floor.

  When he was finished, he was breathing heavily. With a smug expression, he surveyed the room, listening, waiting for another challenge, another giggle, another obscene finger. Finally he shrugged, removed a comb from his back pocket and calmly began smoothing his head of hair.

  In the morning the artist raised his hungover head from the pillow. His wife was still asleep. During the night he had heard noises. Now that he thought about it, he remembered a strange dream about fighting dogs. He rubbed his eyes, swung his legs off the bed and staggered into the living in his black boxer shorts.

  For a moment the artist was quiet. Then he pressed his hands to his temples and screamed. The one remaining oil of a gouged, laid-back Shepherd cruising in a chopped and lowered, vintage Chevy fell to the floor. In the master bedroom the artist’s wife opened her eyes with a start, then felt the empty space beside her.

  The Homey stood in his corner, motionless, trying hard not to smile, thinking, “the fool will never guess who did it.”

  “What happened?” the artist’s wife asked, bracing herself in the doorway.

  “I yelled.”

  “What’s all this? Sweetie, what did you do?”

  “Broke a few things.”

  “A few!”

  “I got tired of the same old stuff.”

  The artist stepped over to the Homey and tickled him in the groin. Then he approached his wife, who was yawning and stretching one arm.

  “I’ll clean up,” he said and pulled her toward the bedroom.

  A House on The Island

  For most of the semester Elena Álvarez drove the class relentlessly, and in the remaining days only Nan and Ricardo remained, ready for the end. The young professor and poet had frightened all the others from the island.

  Is this what you want?

  Yes.

  Me?

  Does it matter? Right now we’re good for each other. We’re far from everyone.

  What are you staring at?

  The birds. They’re watching us. I can see their outlines through the leaves, and with a little sky behind. They see our flesh. Imagine if they could think.

  You’re not concentrating!

  Yes, Ricardo, I am.

  Well?

  Well what?

  I’m done.

  That’s okay. Just stay with me a little longer. Stay the way you are.

  The leeside of the island was quiet, warming. A breeze filtered over the palms that lined the upper edge of the strand, and the light-blue water inside the reef was smooth with crystal glints of light. On the cove’s white beach two figures slept deeply.

  Elena tapped the lectern with a pencil until they woke. As usual she began the morning class in a grumpy mood and without her first taste of coffee. The wall clock showed six minutes after the hour.

  “Ricardo, would you close the door? There’s too much noise in the hallway.”

  Unlike most Spanish classes, Elena’s were held just inside the entrance to the Life Sciences Building, far away from the Humanities. Hydra and starfish collected dust in open cases under the windows.

  “Can you open a few windows, too, Ricardo? The air’s stale.”

  Elena wore dark, fish-eyed glasses. She removed them and shuffled back and forth across the sand, snapping impatiently at the two flaccid expressions, one in the first row, the other in the third. Her complexion was soap-clear and smooth above the beige wool-knit dress, plain, severe. A small, intense woman, she seldom relaxed her students until well into the hour. Her wide hips turned, legs apart, feet planted, she scrawled several lines of words on the board.

  Just stay with me a little longer. Stay the way you are.

  Finally an image struck Nan and she displayed it timidly. “Since the bird is in free flight, maybe the poet is suggesting he has no will either. Maybe the bird means . . . ”

  Ricardo (bored) and Elena (thinking of real birds) listened from habit. “I think I see it now,” Nan said. “The poet wants to be free.”

  Elena sighed and, after a long pause, suggested they forget the poem and explore the island.

  “This end is deserted,” she said. “My father and I were the only ones who used to come here. There’s nobody for miles around. It might be fun to take a look.”

  Ricardo threw down his books, but Nan wanted to know where they were going.

  “To my house,” Elena replied.

  Nan begged Ricardo to stay.

  “Don’t be a wuss,” he told her.

  “Don’t go, don’t leave me.”

  He kissed her lightly on the lips. “Come on, let’s break the routine.”

  Nan shrugged. She hadn’t stuck it out this long only to be dropped before the semester’s end. Professor Álvarez had something special in mind.

  “Wait a minute,” Nan said, and she hurriedly applied shadow to her eyes, brushed her hair and rubbed her front teeth with tissue paper. Next, she straightened and patted down her skirt. After brushing off some grains of moist sand at the hem, she was ready.

  “Hurry up!” Ricardo shouted.

  Elena had kicked off her shoes and was moving into the shade.

  Nan quickly dabbed her armpits with talcum.

  “Hurry, goddamit!”

  Nan had always perspired easily, so grooming and precautions came to her easily, which is probably why she won a beauty contest as a Rotary Club entry.

  “Come on, girl! Okay, I’m going.”

  Nan trudged after him across the sand and onto firm ground.

  “Here, grab my hand,” he said.

  Nan held on and daintily hopped over a fallen palm frond.

  “She’s crazy, you know. Why didn’t she just take us over to the cafeteria for coffee? What do you bet we get lost.”

  “She knows her way.”

  “The hell she does. Look, she’s already stuck.”

  Elena had tripped on a coconut but was up and moving before they could reach her. “Don’t be afraid, you two!” their professor called back. “Just stay close behind. And bring the coconut. We’ll eat it later.”

  Elena was glad the path still existed, though it was now covered with tree roots and grass. But she worried that it was unused. She turned and decided to wait for the two students.

  When they caught up, she told them, “I always came this way. My father would bring me on Vicente, our one-eyed burro. Poor Vicente. A scorpion got his eye when my brother José, the retarded one, left Vicente alone in the forest. ‘How do you punish a dumb child,’ father said, and I answered, ‘if it wasn’t Vicente’s eye, it might have been José’s.’ And he shrugged as if to say José could afford to lose an eye.”

  Elena spoke as the three rested on a fallen tree trunk. Termites and rot had gutted the core. Nan was busy slapping the insects on her legs, annoyed at the heat, her sweat and Elena’s digressions.

  Their teacher continued: “After that, Vicente was always falling into traps. He’d knock you over if you stood too close on his blind side. He was next to worthless, so my father gave him to me.”

  “Did we have to go this way?” Nan asked. “It looked much better along the coast. We’d find a clearing, then a trail. But here we’re going to get lost and I have to make a nine o’clock seminar.”

  Ricardo remembered their first date. They had gone to a movie before finals and Nan was tense. He was late in calling for her and they arrived at the theater ten minutes after the film had begun.

  “I don’t want to see it,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “We missed the beginning. Then we’ll have to sit and watch the first part of the next showing.”

  “So let’s skip the beginning. We can figure it out.”

  Ricardo said he had read about the film and would describe the beginning for her, more or less, from what he remembered.

  “So what’s happened?” she asked as they
approached the theater. “What have we missed?”

  “I don’t know. I lied.”

  “Lied?” She searched his face. “But why?”

  “Nobody’s going to test you. There’s no quiz, Nan.”

  Nan kept silent throughout the movie, and Ricardo didn’t have to explain what might have happened in the beginning.

  Eventually Elena turned and faced Nan. “If you want to go another way, go on. There used to be an old man who lived above the rocks at the south end of the beach. He had two sons, fishermen, who were always looking for mischief when the wind was down. There’s hardly any wind today. Be careful if you go that way.”

  “Will you go with me, Ricardo?”

  “I’m a coward.”

  Elena smiled and moved away. The three began pushing through thicker brush, once losing the path, backtracking and starting over again. The low cover thinned out, the trees grew taller and the sunlight barely poked through the dense roof of leaves. The air turned cooler, the path darker. Elena led them in silence. The house was at the top of a hill at the end of the valley. She told them many islanders were conceived in the forest. “My father made love to nearly all the young women on the island and probably half of them were brought here.”

  They stopped briefly to drink water from a stream. In her eagerness Nan forgot bacteria, parasites and diarrhea. She drank handfuls in gulps.

  “It’s safe,” Elena said bluntly. “The excrement always went down the other side of the hill.”

  Slowly they climbed out of the forest and onto a sloping trail that rose gradually into a lower growth of bushes and more wooded, stiffer branches. The ground became drier. Behind them the steep-sided valley flattened in the distance, stopping sharply at the sea’s edge.

  Caught in the moment, focused on each step, Ricardo long ago stopped whistling. He was climbing the hills above the old Pasadena freeway, a polo-shirted kid with a stick for snakes. And at the summit, on a clear day, he would see the ocean.

  Nan was now hiking barefoot, her soles punished by rocks and an occasional thorn. Her clothes choked her; they cut into her waist and wrapped tightly around her chest and arms. Out of the shade, her skin burned. Exhausted, she began to panic. They had left the coolness below but Elena seemed to ignore the change and picked up the pace. Of the two students, only Ricardo, his nicotined lungs heaving, doggedly kept up, determined not to lose her.