A So-Called Vacation

by Genaro González

  Victor insisted, “I was just asking your brother why that other girl couldn’t be her babysitter.”

  Gus imitated his guarded voice. “My parents don’t trust Gloria that much. That’s why they asked me to stay.”

  Victor gave Gloria a casual glance and nodded as if the excuse satisfied him. “Well, then, I’ll drop by later. But I’m telling you, we can’t let these college girls slip away.”

  Both brothers stayed outside after Victor left. They kept their distance from the girls, yet hovered close enough to make sure their conversation was proper.

  Gloria’s cropped hair was even lighter than Victor’s, even though she covered it from the sun with a Yankees cap. She liked to roll up her jeans just below her knees, perhaps to show off her firm, athletic calves. They reminded Gabriel of a tennis player’s legs, as did the even, golden tan that went well with her warm, caramel-colored eyes.

  Gabriel suspected that she liked him. If it weren’t for the fact that she was barely Paula’s age, he would have taken an interest too.

  She was sitting next to Paula on the porch steps, knees raised and propping up what appeared to be an opened, oversized notebook. Its pages were so large that it spanned both girls’ laps.

  Every now and then Gloria would glance up from the notebook and, for several seconds, stare at Gabriel. At first it made him uncomfortable, thinking that Gus might notice and start to tease him. In fact the glances were quite obvious, but after a while he noticed that she was also gazing at Gus.

  What made it even more baffling was that at times his sister would also look up. She too would stare intently before turning her attention back to the large notebook. Every now and then she turned to her friend and whispered something, and when she did this, the low, intimate laughter that followed only whetted his curiosity. He even tried to overlook their antics, but the sneakier their spying, the more difficult it became to ignore them.

  He was about to get up and ask what the fuss was all about when the girls stood first. As they approached, they held the large notebook cover before them like a protective shield. They were about three yards away when suddenly and simultaneously they stopped and flipped the notebook over.

  At that moment Gabriel realized what all the fuss had been about: it was an illustration done on dingy construction paper. The subjects were Paula and her brothers. Gloria, trying hard to suppress her proud smile, held a stubby charcoal pencil in her fingertips, smudged black where she had shaded the drawing.

  “Not bad, right?” Paula asked. She draped an arm around her friend, eager for some of the credit. “I gave her the idea and a little guidance. Gloria did everything else.” She nodded at both boys. “Like looking in a mirror. Right, bros?”

  Despite the distance, Gabriel immediately recognized his own caricature.

  So did Gus, even as he grimaced. “Please tell me that’s not me.”

  Paula flexed her fingers with excitement. “Then who?”

  “Anyone but me.”

  “Look at it, Gus. It’s more you than you yourself.”

  “Fine,” Gabriel told her, “but I don’t see you.” He pretended to study the drawing more closely. “Oh, here you are! I didn’t recognize you without those beady eyes.”

  But by now Gabriel had to admit that the likeness was indeed impressive. For that matter, his caricature did resemble him, down to his long eyelashes. It suggested that Gloria had noticed details that only a girlfriend might.

  With Gus she had merely exaggerated the obvious. She had padded his caricature with an excess of muscles, so much so that his torso seemed ready to pop out of his shirt, as though pumped with steroids.

  As Gus examined his own likeness he was flattered by the bulging muscles that seemed sculpted by steroids. So what if they were meant to poke fun at his vanity? What did disturb him were the large rodent ears that rested on top of each brother’s head. And the sparse mustache he was starting to grow was now a rat’s whisker. On top of that, he and Gabriel were stretched out on the ground, and over each eye was a conspicuous X. Since the eyes, ears, and facial hair had been sketched crudely, Gus confirmed his sister’s hand.

  Gabriel answered, “Those extermination jokes are getting old.”

  “Jokes?” Paula replied. “I don’t see anybody laughing.” She suddenly flipped the drawing toward her, scribbled something, and then showed them again.

  Underneath the picture, Paula had scrawled a title in bold letters: I SURVIVED THE CALIFORNIA TOUR.

  A moment later she added another caption beneath that in parentheses and in smaller, lower-case script: (My brothers ended up as road kill.)

  “When we get home,” she boasted, “I’m going to one of those places on the mall that makes customized T-shirts. I’m going to put the whole thing on a T-shirt.

  “Knock yourself out,” said Gus. “It’ll be one more stupid T-shirt in your closet.”

  Gloria, though, encouraged her. “Everyone will think it’s a souvenir from a rock band concert. From California, no less. What could be cooler?”

  “No,” said Gus, “everyone will just wonder what the heck it means. Instead of that message, you should put this on the back: ‘My family made me work in the fields all summer, and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.’”

  Minutes later, when their parents returned, Paula called out, “Come check this out, folks.”

  Gus waited until they had examined the drawing closely. Then he asked, “Now, tell me, what’s wrong with this picture?”

  Their father studied it again and said, “Your ears should be bigger.”

  “Come on, Dad, get serious.”

  “How can I when I don’t even know what the drawing’s about?”

  “It’s supposed to be road kill,” said Gabriel.

  Once again his father turned to the drawing, but this time he barely gave it a glance. “Look, the only road kill I remember was when …” He studied both sons, then looked at Gabriel and added, “It was when I was your age.”

  Their mother thought a moment and then laughed. “Oh, I’ve heard that tale! Tell them what happened.”

  He was either reluctant to tell them or else he was pretending and waiting for them to plead. Finally, at Paula’s insistence, he said: “What happened was that one year I decided to join my Uncle Chuy and his family. They’d done migrant work in Texas, but it was their first time out of state. And guess where they were headed that summer?”

  “California, of course,” said Gabriel. “And let me guess again, Dad. Your uncle was so cheap he fed his family bologna sandwiches the entire trip.”

  “No such luck!” said his father. “My aunt made a pile of bean tacos and packed them in a basket. That was going to be breakfast, lunch, and dinner, until we got there. By the next morning, those flour tortillas felt like hard rubber. So you could say I was relieved when he squashed that animal on the road. I figured we’d at least have a little meat for a change.”

  “Daddy! That’s so cruel.”

  “Why, Paulita? The animal, whatever it was, was already dead. And I was kidding about my eating it.”

  Gabriel agreed. “We’re talking about eating a carcass. Even Dad’s not that hardcore.”

  “It doesn’t matter if it was dead, Daddy. Why didn’t your uncle just swerve to avoid it?”

  “Swerve to avoid it?” her father repeated. “He went out of his way to run over it. I tell you, he was one ornery man.”

  “Well,” said Gus, “now we know where you got your mean streak.”

  “No, son, you don’t. Believe me, I’m a kitten compared to him.”

  Paula, though, could not get over the uncle’s cruelty. “So he actually swerved on purpose? To squash it?”

  “Sure. It was already by the shoulder. It wasn’t even in anyone’s way.”

  “That’s horrible, Daddy!”

  “Like I said, the man was no saint.”

  “Yeah. Sounds more like Satan.”

  “But,” added their father, “the animal was already
road kill.”

  “Haven’t you ever heard of karma, Daddy?”

  Obviously he had not, but he did not admit as much. Instead he turned to his wife, who had already heard the story.

  “The best way to answer that,” she suggested, “is by telling them what happened next.”

  He smiled to let her know he now understood. “I was just getting to the whole point of the story. Afterward my uncle got back on the road, but we hadn’t traveled five miles when we got a flat tire. We all had to pile out of the car in that horrible heat. Then we had to unload all our stuff from the trunk and take out the spare.”

  “That’s what karma is, Daddy. Bad karma.”

  For a while he said nothing more, implying that the story was over. Their mother, though, prodded him once more. “Keep going. Tell them the rest. Get to the moral of the story.”

  “Well, talk about bad kar—… whatever you call it. You’re absolutely right, Paulita. We pulled out a splintered rib. It had punctured the tire.”

  “That’s what caused the flat?” asked Gus. “A bone?”

  “This was back in the days before steel-belted radials. And my uncle was too cheap to buy tires with thick ply.”

  “How about that?” said Gabriel. “Another family trait.”

  “Never mind that,” said Paula. “Now we’re talking double-dose karma.”

  Their mother’s eyes brightened, as if appreciating the irony. “Oh, wait till he’s through. You’ll have to come up with a new level.”

  Their father paused again, perhaps to spite her, but his silence only added to her insistence: “Go ahead. Finish it.”

  “Hmm … so after Uncle Chuy put away the flat tire, he decided to join the family under a tree where everyone else was waiting. But no sooner did he sit down to rest than a pickup sideswiped the car.”

  “Wow!” Paula added an eerie whistle. “That is so weird!”

  “Wow is right, and so is weird. It was one of those old, iron-side pickups.”

  “What did the driver say?”

  “Nothing we could hear. He just kept on trucking, like he’d …”

  “Like he’d run over a dead animal,” Gus interrupted.

  “He kept driving like nothing happened. He just honked and waved from the rearview mirror.”

  Paula repeated her spooky whistle. “The perfect pay-back, Daddy. It doesn’t get more cosmic than that.”

  Although their father was sometimes a superstitious man, this time he appeared unconvinced. “No, I wouldn’t say that. It’s not like my uncle ended up as road kill.”

  “Speaking of road kill …” Gabriel slowly turned to his brother to make sure they were on the same wavelength. “Remember that café we stopped at in New Mexico?”

  “How could I forget?” replied Gus. “History was made there. Dad actually took us out to eat without us bugging him first.”

  “I’m not thinking about that type of history,” said Gabriel. “I remember seeing a roadside marker as we pulled in that night. One of those historical plaques. Now I know what it said: ‘On this spot, the meanest man in Texas ran over a dead animal.’”

  Gus immediately picked up on the sarcasm. “So that’s why that place specialized in road kill!”

  But their father was an old hand at this sort of sniping. “You mean the same road kill both of you wolfed right up? As I remember, neither one of you left enough for a greasy spot.” After a moment he added, “Besides, Uncle Chuy never got that far.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Gus.

  “We never got out of Texas. By the time a tow truck took us to the nearest garage … by the time they patched up the car while we did dead time in a motel … by then my uncle barely had enough money to take us back home.”

  Gabriel still sensed a tinge of sadness in his tone but humored him anyway. “So you were a migrant worker wannabe, Dad?”

  He smiled a bit. “I didn’t make it to the Promised Land.” His smile broadened. “Until now.”

  14

  Later that day, after supper, Victor returned to their porch with a friend that Gabriel had seen around camp. He was nicknamed Strawberry Boy, and judging from his size he might have been Paula’s age. Gabriel doubted it, though, since he could not imagine Victor befriending someone so young.

  The boy always had an open smile, as if he liked everyone he saw. Up to now Gabriel had assumed that his nickname came from that lopsided grin, because it reminded him of cereal commercials for kids, where the various cartoon fruits wore a goofy grin.

  But now, as he got a closer look, he realized that Strawberry Boy’s face seemed flushed, like someone with permanent sunburn. His face was also dotted with a dozen or so tiny moles, which reminded Gabriel of seeds on a strawberry’s skin.

  Yet what fascinated him most about the boy was the rumor he had heard: Strawberry Boy was the only kid in camp who had ever given the Borrados a run for their money. When Gabriel asked whether the tale was true, Strawberry Boy’s grin grew broader.

  “Twice,” he answered. “The oldest one once and the middle one too.”

  Even Gus was impressed. “So how did you do it? Drug them?”

  “It’s all in the eyes.” He moved closer as if to demonstrate with his own. “You can see it all there.”

  Victor draped his arm around him in order to bask in his reflected glory. “My friend here is a master of psychological warfare.”

  “You have to be a pretty good picker too,” said Strawberry Boy.

  Victor backtracked at once, as if being careful not to upset him. “Well, sure, that goes without saying.”

  Satisfied with the reply, Strawberry Boy added, “You see, I’d been messing with their heads for some time.”

  “So have we,” admitted Gabriel. “But the whole thing just bounced back on us. It’s like they’ve got a one-track mind. How do you get them off the rails?”

  “I told you, the trick is in their eyes. You see, I started watching them real close. I noticed their eyes have this glow, almost like a little lightbulb inside. Well, one morning I saw how the oldest one’s eyes were a lot brighter. It gave me the creeps at first. But by that afternoon the light started to flicker. Sort of like a lightbulb, just before it goes out. It gets a lot brighter for a moment. Then it starts to flicker and finally goes bad. So I was ready the next morning.”

  “And I was there,” Victor boasted. “He walked up to that freak and took him on, in front of everybody.”

  “It still wasn’t easy,” said Strawberry Boy. “For a while it was touch and go.”

  Gabriel admired his honesty. Unlike the other boys, who downplayed the Borrados’ stamina, he gave them credit where it was due. Perhaps, Gabriel thought, it took another hard worker to appreciate it.

  Victor must have decided that the conversation had dragged on too long without his being the center of attention, so he turned to Gus. “Are we still set for meeting those girls I told you about?”

  “I never said we were set.”

  “Come on, man. They’re college girls.”

  “From which college?”

  “How should I know? Oh, wait … they had this thing on their car. It said …” He turned to Strawberry Boy. “What did it say?”

  The boy’s grin turned to laughter. “Unifornia of Caliversity.”

  “Yeah,” said Victor. “I didn’t get it at first, until he explained it.”

  Gabriel seemed confused. “That’s what they have? On their car door? Like it’s official?”

  Strawberry Boy laughed again. “No, it’s just a bumper sticker, like a joke.”

  “I still can’t say it,” said Victor. He tried to pronounce it, but it proved too much of a tongue twister. “See?” he pleaded with Gus. “With this messed up English of mine, you’re my only hope.” He hooked his arm around Gus’s neck the same way he had done with Strawberry Boy. “Come on, let’s do this thing! You’re the main man here! You’ve got the mouth … you’ve got the muscle … and you’ve got the moves.”

&n
bsp; Instead of answering him, Gus asked, “Which one?”

  “What do you mean which one? What are you talking about?”

  “Which university are they from?”

  “Why, the University of California, of course.”

  “But which one? Don’t you follow college football? There’s more than one campus.”

  “I know there’s more than one. Lots more. What difference does it make?” But Victor hesitated, perhaps worried that he might mention the wrong place. “Do you have a favorite team or something?” Still not getting any hints, he said, “Well, maybe it’s the …”

  “The Bruins?” asked Gabriel.

  Victor, hoping it might be a clue, said, “You know, I think those girls did mention …”

  “Or maybe the Bears?” added Gabriel.

  “Or maybe that was what they said.”

  “A bear and a bruin are the same thing,” replied Gabriel.

  Victor nodded this time but said nothing.

  Gabriel added, just to mess with Victor, “But they’re still different teams.”

  Victor spoke cautiously now, as if treading on thin ice. “Yeah … I … suspected … that …”

  But the only thing Victor actually suspected was that Gus’s brother did not intend to help him out. He was just toying with him, so Victor shifted the spotlight toward him by asking Gus, “So your brother thinks he knows it all, huh?”

  Gus, reluctant to enter that discussion, asked instead, “So why are these college girls here in the first place?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Victor.

  “Well,” said Strawberry Boy, “as long as they’re not dentists.”

  It sounded like an inside joke to Gabriel, and when Strawberry Boy began grinning again he asked, “What’s so funny?”

  “You tell them, Vic.”

  Victor didn’t bother to add anything until Strawberry Boy opened his own mouth, and by then it was too late.

  “It’s just that Vic doesn’t get along with dentists. We went to see one in a nearby town once. They had a free clinic day for migrants.”

  “Are you afraid of them?” asked Gus.