by Ron Arias
“Carlos! Don’t just stand there. Put the leaves in the basket.”
Once, as Carlos was stacking rocks along the open side of the courtyard, the king asked him if his mother knew about the castle.
“Does she know you’re here?”
“She thinks I’m in bed taking my nap.”
“Maybe ya oughta tell her.”
“She wouldn’t like that. She always thinks I’ll get hurt, and my dad wouldn’t like that when he comes back.”
“Where is he?”
“In the war. He’s a prisoner and he’ll be back when it’s over.”
They were silent for a while, and then the king took a deep breath and tipped his imaginary crown to the boy. “Just remember, Carlos, ya always got your castle. Yeah, it’s yours too . . . Hey, show me your house. Which one is it?”
“That one,” Carlos said, pointing. “See, the white one on the corner.”
“Got your own room?”
“Yeah, but I still gotta play in the garage. She says if I play inside the house, I’ll mess things up for when my dad comes home.”
“So listen to your mom.”
Now, as Carlos crawled up the hill over the dry earth and weeds, reaching for handholds, he heard voices. By the time he was nearing the castle wall, the voices became shouts but he couldn’t make out the words. He looked below at the white house on the corner and hoped his mother wouldn’t call him for lunch, that she would forget, that she wouldn’t call him until dinnertime.
Loose clods of hardened dirt rolled between his legs, bouncing, disappearing into the tall grass. Again the voices. He searched the hillside, trying the many ways of seeing what he had not seen before. The wind, thick with heat and the smell of sage, beat down the grass to form waves and slick little eddies where rabbits and birds like to lie. He couldn’t tell whether the voices were near or far, for the wind would bring them close and then suddenly push them away.
He reached the wall, climbed through a hole at one end and started up the stairs inside the Tower of Power, as he and the king called the main lookout. He heard the king shout—and he never shouted unless he was preparing for battle. Carlos had seen this once but it turned out to be a false alarm. There were no marauders scaling the walls, just a low-flying helicopter.
Crouching low, Carlos moved past the broken courtyard tiles and slipped through the Armory of rocks and club-like metal poles. He listened. The voices came from the arena. Suddenly, Carlos heard the king scream as if he’d been hurt. He shimmied up a water pipe to the flat top of the arena wall and crawled across to peek over the edge. In the far, deep-end corner was the figure of the king, squatting, hands over his eyes, before the redhead and four other boys. They were older than Carlos by several years and were jabbing Sam with sticks.
“Come on, you faker!” the redhead yelled. “Scare us now! Come on, you old wino!”
The boys laughed, and then picked up rocks and began to hit the gibbering target. Someone suggested they drop him from above. Sam then lifted himself on one knee. Another thrown rock just missed and the redhead turned and scanned the arena.
“Well, look who’s here.”
“Run, Carlos!” Sam shouted.
“Shut up!” the redhead ordered and let fly with a fist-size piece of concrete that struck the king on the chin.
“Hey, kid!” another boy yelled. “Come on down. Don’t you want to hit the devil?”
“Leave him alone!” Carlos shouted. He stood and ran along the top of the arena, glaring down at the marauders. “Leave him alone!”
“Look who’s giving orders,” the redhead said, and the others laughed.
“Get out of here! This is our place!”
“Your place?”
“Get out!”
“Make us.”
The redhead motioned to the other boys and before Carlos could duck, they all threw their rocks. Carlos fell back onto the concrete, shrieking and kicking his feet.
“Let’s go,” the redhead said. “We got him good.”
“What about the old man?” one of the other attackers asked.
“Forget him,” the redhead said, moving toward the arena’s shallow end. “He’s not worth the trouble.”
As the boys ran off, Carlos remained on top of the castle wall, pitching from side to side, still kicking and screaming, thick blood spilling off his face like an egg with a broken yolk.
By the time Sam reached him, Carlos was whimpering. “What happened, kid? Move your hand away . . . easy does it. Oh, my.”
The king kept up a soothing patter as he lifted his apprentice in his arms and hobbled down the stairs at the end of the parapet. Outside, in the shadow of the castle, the stooped figure slowly made his way down the hill with his moaning, shivering burden. At the white house on the corner, the king pressed the doorbell twice with his elbow. Looking at the boy’s trembling face, he noticed the blood in and around the sunken socket was dry, the other eye shut but wet with tears.
“Go ahead and cry, boy,” he whispered. “It’s okay.”
Lisa opened the door.
“Your boy’s hurt,” Sam said. He couldn’t say more because Lisa erupted in a long, terrified squeal.
Later, after the ambulance arrived, after Carlos had been treated, bandaged and given a shot for his pain, after Lisa heard what had happened and was telling police officers, the king stepped close to the gurney and his little apprentice. He patted a small, exposed hand.
Carlos opened his good eye and whispered, “I saw them.”
“Yeah?”
“All of the them. I know them.”
“Who?”
“The marauders.”
The bony fingers curled around the hand and the king gave a squeeze. Then it was time for Carlos and his mother to be taken away, red lights blinking, siren rising to a hurtful pitch. Among the curious neighbors gathered in front of the house, King Sam, his grimy, sweat-stained T-shirt and baggy trousers announcing his status, watched and listened. Then he spoke, more to himself than to anyone in particular: “We’ll get ’em, kid.”
The Boy Who Ate Himself
How or why it started no one knew. As a baby, Tom seemed normal. However, his mother recalls that he did have fainting spells. About once a month, maybe more, Tom would stamp his feet, raise his arms and hold his breath until his face paled and he fainted. When he revived he would be quieter but otherwise as normal as his two brothers. His mother vaguely remembers he fainted a few times after he was denied something she had promised him, something like a visit to the zoo, permission to play outside or a donut. Chocolate was his favorite.
Shortly after his fifth birthday he was taken to a doctor. The pediatrician carefully examined the boy and prescribed a mild sedative. One of the green, children’s size capsules was to be taken at least half an hour before each possible denial. This solution seldom worked, his mother says, because she could never anticipate the times she would break her promises. After all, she had two other children who demanded her attention and she could not schedule her day to suit the whims of an oversensitive child.
A neighborhood curandero, or healer, finally provided the solution: three solid whacks on little Tom’s rear anytime he would start his fainting routine. Two aborted spells and the boy was cured.
About this time he began biting his fingernails. At first his mother dismissed the habit as a temporary nuisance, much like the eldest son’s bed-wetting or the youngest boy’s nose picking. It seemed to her that Tom was practicing a kind of grooming, like brushing his teeth or combing his hair. She would be patient and it would pass. Even when she noticed Tom gnawing at the flesh around his nails, she did not become alarmed. “Patience,” she reminded herself, “the habit will pass.”
But it didn’t—and Tom continued biting, gnawing, chewing.
By his eighth birthday, Tom was also a master of concealment. He never displayed his abilities in the presence of his mother, and since his father had left the family and remarried, he only had to hide f
rom his brothers who sometimes teasingly called him Rata. At home he usually kept his hands hidden under his armpits, behind his back or clasped in such a way that his mother and the boys wouldn’t stare at the raw, painful spots on his fingers, thumbs and knuckles.
His third-grade teacher didn’t wait long until she mailed Tom’s mother a reproachful note indicating that her son’s voracious attention to his hands had caused his classmates to ostracize him. Furthermore, his incessant biting distracted the students during their quiet periods or when taking tests. Would she please curb her son? And if Tom did not stop his ratlike habit, the teacher said she would take up the problem with the principal.
First came the jalapeño chili treatment. Announcing that she hated to do it, she applied the mashed-up pepper and watched his raw flesh soak up the juice while he winced and began to tremble. Tom refused to cry or even whimper. The jalapeño swabbing continued for three days, and although he was temporarily denied his usual pleasure, he quickly grew used to the spicy flavor and the burning in his mouth.
“He got to like it so much that he’d beg me to rub the chili on his hands,” she remembers. “I had to think of something else. I even tried iodine but it didn’t work. And he never cried. This time, though, I couldn’t stand it, watching him twitch like that.”
Finally, in desperation, Tom’s mother tried vinyl gloves as a remedy. She bought a box of extra-small, lime-green gloves and showed him how they were like a five-fingered balloon if you blew into them. Before putting them on his hands, she inflated one and he laughed. Then she let go of the puffed-up glove and it shot across the room, which prompted another laugh. Eventually, she carefully guided each of Tom’s damaged digits into the gloves. Then she ran tape around the top of the gloves at the wrist, thinking it would discourage him from removing them. It didn’t. As soon as she was gone, he’d rip them off and continue nibbling.
The teacher, along with the principal’s approval, sent an ultimatum: either the biting stops or Tom will be transferred to a school for problem children. His mother reacted angrily, complaining to the principal that her son was being treated unfairly, even cruelly. In the end, she realized Tom showed no signs he was outgrowing his “disgusting tricks,” as she now remembers calling his habit.
For a while she thought of taking him to the healer again but decided against such a visit because the result might be an even worse habit. Reluctantly, she gave in to the school’s ultimatum, and Tom was accepted by the county’s school for emotionally disturbed children.
After a thorough examination, both physical and mental, the school’s psychiatrists admitted they had never encountered such a case and were uneasy about any possible treatment. They told his mother that he would be closely observed for a two-month period, after which time a definite prognosis would be made. She, Tom’s brothers and other relatives could visit him only on Saturdays; if his condition improved, he would be released for weekend home visits.
Tom’s mother appeared satisfied with the arrangement. Since she was unmarried and had to work as a grocery clerk while raising three rambunctious boys, she confesses she was relieved that the doctors would now watch the son who caused her such worry.
As the weeks passed, Tom increasingly missed home and playing with his brothers, the deprivation only raising his anxiety. He begged his mother to bring him his toys, none of which he could play with or use because of his damaged hands and because the school had forbidden the patients toys that could be used to hurt themselves or others. Swallowing objects was also a concern.
Tom retreated to his corner of the play yard; undistracted, he proceeded to bite with even greater enthusiasm. Not just his hands but by bending over and contorting his legs, he managed to feast on his feet as well. Soon he drew the attention of visiting medical students, who would come in groups to observe the frightened, uncommunicative child who would lie by the far wall for hours, performing his many maneuvers. He had become an unusual yet routine sight for all visitors in the facility.
In a way, Tom was the star attraction. The curiosity did not stem from his compulsive eating disorder; rather it came from the professional concern about his body’s unusual defense against infection. No matter how dirty his flesh was—and many subsequent experiments proved this—the open wounds that covered his limbs would never become infected. Nor would he bleed as much as expected. These observations soon attracted medical attention throughout the world, and Tom was subjected to more and more examinations. In time, he was transferred to an isolation ward at the university medical center. Here the specialists could observe his progress at all hours, even while he gnawed at what he could reach in his sleep.
His blood, saliva, urine and all other body products were treated as precious laboratory specimens. Teams of research scientists worked in shifts to isolate his body’s chemical and molecular properties, hoping to solve a riddle that might lead to cures for many infectious diseases.
Fortunately for Tom’s mother, she was spared the pitiful sight of her son. He had removed all his fingers and toes, leaving only the scabby stumps of his knuckles. He was also starting to bite and strip skin from his lower arms, shins, knees and shoulders.
About this time, the doctors concluded he would soon kill himself. In vain they tried to halt his progress. They strapped him down, they bandaged and tied his hands and legs, and at one point they fitted him into a straitjacket. But these procedures only led to Tom’s insomnia, refusal to eat and loss of weight, so they were forced to remove the restraints that held down his body.
Toward the end, Tom seemed to channel his hatred for his keepers, for their detached, business-like emotions, by hastening his feverish activity. During the last two days he did not stop biting and swallowing the tiny morsels of himself.
Perplexed by their impending failure to stop such a rare and unique case of autocannibalism, the medical team retaliated with scrupulous efficiency. Three attendants were by his side at all times. Every ten minutes, two of them would lift the naked figure off the plastic bed mat, while the third wiped away the puddle of blood drippings, urine, bits of flesh, tissue and scabs, all of which would be analyzed in the laboratory. An array of monitors kept track of his vital signs, while a tube inserted directly into his stomach enabled attendants to feed him liquid nourishment.
After almost six days of such attention, Tom died at 5:48 in the morning. His glistening, emaciated body was placed and sealed in a vinyl bag and taken away for an immediate autopsy. About noon, just before the lab technicians’ lunch break, a doctor from the medical center called Tom’s mother to inform her of his passing. He regretted that they were not able to stop her son’s self-destruction nor discover the cause of Tom’s ailment. “However,” the doctor said, “you should know that we will cover all his medical expenses, including burial costs.”
Tom’s mother now says she was confused about her feelings when the doctor called that day. “I knew it was coming,” she reveals in the interview on the first anniversary of his death. “But I was glad the little guy was finally at peace. . . . Sometimes I wonder if I caused his problem. My boys ask me why their brother was like he was, and I tell them I don’t know why. Just to say he was born that way or he got off to a bad start—that’s not enough . . . So a few days after he died, the head doctor calls me to see how I’m doing. I’m listening but I’m not really listening because I’m thinking about Tom and all this stuff he went through. And then I hear him say they’ll pay for everything. I’d been worried about the finances and really down about that. But all of a sudden, it’s like I woke up and felt normal. So I said thank you.”
The Interview
Buenos días. No, stupid, it’s late. Buenas tardes. Antonio Chávez a sus órdenes. Smile. Good afternoon. My name is Tony Chávez and I’m interviewing persons of Hispanic origin.
He mumbled the words, toyed with them, rolled them around, bit their edges, mocked them with gestures, raised his voice, deepened his voice, finally whispered the greeting with a beggar’s hum
ility. He wiped his brow and wondered if this heat, dehydration and sunstroke were worth eight dollars per interview?
Age . . . sex . . . marital status . . . occupation . . . While walking with his three-ring notebook through the yellowed, weedy lot, he tried in vain to find some trace of saliva in his mouth. Religion? Catholic . . . Protestant . . . Other . . . . Smog clogged the air and his lungs tickled when he breathed. Where were you born? Where were your parents born? Nearby, the freeway trucks revved into higher gears, blasting him like giant dentist drills. The noise and heat wrenched his mind from his body, creased it, folded it, let it hang in the air like burnt tissue paper. His hair curled, singed at the ends. You call yourself Mexican, Mexican American, Chicano, Latino, Hispanic, Salvadoran, Guatemalan, Honduran, Colombian, Cuban, Dominican, Puerto Rican . . . Other . . . Good afternoon. I’m Tony Chávez and I’m . . . I’m thirs . . . I’m thirsty.
Chávez stopped to scratch his ankles; burs covered his socks. Have you ever felt discriminated against? No . . . Seldom . . . Often . . . . He raised himself, and his head floated somewhere above his shoulders. What’s your usual response? Fucking heat. Got to do this at night.
The worn dirt path led him past a junked car and a rusty stove with its insides spilled out in the weeds. Looking ahead he saw two bare-chested men sitting on a mattress in the shade of a lopsided tree. Between them was a brown paper bag, twisted at the top. As Chávez approached, the thin man with a snake tattoo on his forearm looked up alertly.
“What you got, man?”
Chávez tightened his grip on the notebook.
“You give us a dollar and forty-five cents?” an older, fat man said. “See?” and he pulled out the empty bottle from the bag. “Port costs a dollar forty-five.”
Chávez glanced at the street. The wood-frame houses looked uninhabited. Shades were drawn, a low, squat Impala pointed up the driveway, and a dog lay quietly by a shabby picket fence.