Amigoland

by Oscar Casares

  “Now at least say ‘thank you’ to the man.”

  “Thank you, sir,” the boy said, and scurried off from the table and the guard.

  The old man bent over to recover the packet that had fallen earlier. He was returning it to the carton when his brother and the girl walked up.

  “I thought you didn’t like Chiclets,” she said.

  “I bought them just to pass the time.”

  “Well, now you have more time,” his brother said. “The next bus leaves in an hour but doesn’t get to Linares until after dark. We should just find a hotel so we can rest, then leave early in the morning.”

  31

  After staring at the grimy keypad for a couple of minutes, Socorro finally took out a pen and, on the palm of her hand, jotted down her mother’s number. She was standing on the corner outside their hotel, which had fifty channels on the television but no phone in the room. The noise from the traffic and the nearby torta stand was loud enough that she wondered if she shouldn’t have walked an extra block to the plaza and found another pay phone. Before this, she had gone to the pharmacy so she could buy the calling card she was now inserting into the card reader. The number on her palm still looked strange to her, like she was off a digit, but she couldn’t say which. She blamed her forgetfulness on all the traveling they had done that day. Who wouldn’t be a little disoriented so far from home?

  As the phone rang, she imagined, as she had most of the day, how exactly she would go about telling them where she was. It was still too early for her mother or her aunt to be missing her. She had thought she would ask her mother about her day, how she was feeling, if the swelling in her feet had gone away, if she had taken her afternoon nap and remembered to keep her feet elevated. There was no need to rush into the news about the trip. It would be like peeling an onion, layer by layer, and slowly revealing what had occurred and how, so her mother could see that the sudden trip actually wasn’t so sudden. There was the news of Celestino’s brother, the poor man living in a home filled with the elderly and infirm. There was the news of their grandfather and how he was kidnapped as a child by the Indians and taken from his ranchito in Mexico to the United States. There was the news of the terrible things that had happened to the other people in their family. There was the news of Don Fidencio’s promise to his grandfather to someday return to the ranchito in his place. There was the news of his need to fulfill this promise but also the unfortunate condition of his health (something her mother would surely be able to understand), and how if the poor old man were going to make the trip, he would need help. There was more, but with these details she thought her mother would accept the rest of what she needed to tell her. And perhaps her plan would have worked if she hadn’t blurted the whole thing out as soon as her mother answered the phone.

  “And then, what do you want from me?” her mother said, only after what seemed like an interminable pause. “What did you call here for? Not to ask for my advice, not to see if this was a good idea.”

  “Just to let you know, that’s all.” Across the street a taxi driver blasted his horn at another driver who’d tried to cut him off. “So you wouldn’t be worried about me.”

  “And now you want us to relax, knowing you ran off with two little old men?”

  “We didn’t plan it this way,” she said, then repeated herself over the traffic and the flush of heat she could feel spreading across her chest.

  “You also never said anything about taking a trip,” her mother said. “What you want is to go have your fun, leave us here, and then come back whenever you feel like it because here you always have a bed.”

  “Are you saying not to come back?” The remaining minutes on her calling card were counting down on the digital screen above the keypad, and she was glad she bought only enough for a five-minute call.

  “Not if you are going to act like a woman who any man can take to sleep wherever he decides you will lie down, and you run off with him.”

  She rubbed the nape of her neck and could feel a feverish sweat soaking through her hair. “Celestino is not just any man.”

  “He is to me, he is to your tía. We only know him from looking through the window when he drops you off across the street. For us, he is any man.”

  “Like bringing him to the house would change things, after the way the two of you talk about him.”

  “At least then we would know who you ran away with.”

  “Maybe later I will bring him to the house.”

  “And when will that be, when you come to tell us that already you married him?”

  “I never said we were getting married, that things were that serious.”

  “Not serious for getting married, but serious for other things,” her mother said. “And if he gets you in trouble?”

  “Trouble how?”

  “Trouble the way old men can get young women in trouble.”

  “You know if that was even possible for me, it would have happened years ago.”

  “With a little faith, it would have.”

  “I had faith.”

  “If you had waited.”

  “I did wait,” she said. “He was the one who didn’t wait, remember?”

  “You never stop blaming the poor man, dead so many years.” Her mother had more to say on this matter, but by now the automated voice had announced that only a few seconds remained on the calling card. Socorro thought about going back to the pharmacy to buy another card so they could finish their conversation, then realized they’d been having the same conversation for years and would probably continue to do so. Now she only had to wait for the seconds to tick away.

  32

  The restaurant at Hotel de los Monteros overlooked the plaza and a corner of the church. Since it was barely five o’clock, the hour Don Fidencio normally ate his dinner, they were the only customers in the place. The waiter had sat them at a table near the large picture window, smudged from people stopping to peer through the tinted glass. The old man was sitting closest to the window and next to the new shopping bags that sat on the extra chair.

  They were still looking out the window when the waiter came around to their table. His gaunt and slouched posture made him appear to be much shorter than he actually was. He was dressed in a white shirt, black pants and vest, and a faded bow tie that tilted upward like a broken weather vane.

  “Would you care to order something to drink — coffee, maybe a drink from the bar?”

  “A mineral water,” Socorro said.

  “For me, a coffee,” Don Celestino answered.

  “And something for the gentleman?”

  Don Fidencio looked up from the menu and then turned around to make sure he was talking to him.

  “Bring me a Carta Blanca.”

  The waiter nodded and walked into the back.

  “Are you sure you should be drinking?” Socorro asked.

  “What’s so wrong with drinking one beer?”

  “Because of your medicines,” Don Celestino said. “All the trouble of going to the pharmacy, and now you want to be drinking?”

  The old man placed a hand on either corner of the table. “In the first place, it was your idea to buy a bagful of medicines, not mine. And in the second place, it has been forty years that I’ve been taking medicines and it never stopped me from having a beer.”

  “Before you weren’t ninety-one or living in a nursing home.”

  “So far you’ve told me all the reasons that I should be drinking.”

  “Say what you want, Fidencio, but you need to take care of yourself, at least for this trip.”

  “What you want is for me to stop living,” he responded. “If I keep taking the medicines that you bought me, what does it matter? Just let me take care of the rest.”

  The waiter returned with the order and made a display of pouring the beer into the small glass. He set a tiny bowl of limes to one side of the drink.

  When the waiter left, Socorro reached over to the extra chair and set the three shop
ping bags on the table. “Don’t you want to open them?”

  “You found everything?” the old man asked.

  “Almost,” she said. “We had to go to two different stores for the toothbrushes and the deodorant and the shavers.”

  Don Fidencio glanced again at the three medium-size shopping bags propped up in front of him. “And the other thing?”

  “Look inside the bag,” his brother replied.

  “Unless you bought one for a baby, I don’t know where you could have put it.”

  Socorro opened one of the bags and handed him a clear plastic package, a little bigger than a manila envelope. He turned it over several times. “And this?”

  “Open it.”

  He tried to undo the snap buttons at one corner, but his fingers weren’t cooperating and she finally had to pull it open for him. The three aluminum bars, zigzagging end over end, reminded him of the security grille they used at night to close the post office. He wondered what he was supposed to do with a mangled cane. But then she quickly extended the three parts and the handle into a full cane. “See if you like it.”

  “And if it comes apart?”

  “I tried it in the store.”

  “For you, a young girl, but just imagine a grown man.” He leaned the cane against the table. “I try it, I fall, I break my hip, my leg, my head, something, and from there I go back to that place.”

  “You’re not going to fall,” Don Celestino said.

  “Then let me see you who knows so much. Try it, see if it doesn’t give out on you.”

  “I don’t need to try it.”

  “Only because you’re afraid,” Don Fidencio said. “That, I can see from here.”

  “If I can walk without a cane, why would I be afraid of falling?”

  “Not afraid of falling, afraid that people will see you with a cane, like a little old man.”

  Don Celestino flicked his wrist at this idea. “Believe me, I’ll use a cane if that day ever comes, and I’ll use it without so many protests, like somebody I know.”

  The old man took a sip of his beer. “Then don’t expect me to be the first one to try that thing.”

  Don Celestino turned to Socorro, but she was already looking at him, waiting. Finally he stood up and tossed his napkin on the chair; he didn’t know how it was he let himself get talked into so much. He jiggled the cane in front of him as if it were a divining rod. As he took his first steps, he tried to remember if he had ever needed any help walking. With the exception of the diabetes, he had been healthy all his life, which made using the cane all the more ridiculous to him. What would they want him to do next? Go to the restroom every hour?

  “You walk like it was a rake and not like a cane in your hand,” his brother called out, loud enough to be heard across the room. “At least put some weight on it.”

  Don Celestino spread his legs now, so his stance would be similar to his brother’s. Then he leaned forward some, like a man looking for his keys in the grass. He tightened his grip to make sure his hand didn’t slip when he leaned on the handle. The lights had been dimmed around the other half of the restaurant, so he took his time maneuvering around the table and chairs in his way. The waiter had left a tray stand in the narrow aisle, and Don Celestino considered taking another route but then managed to get through the narrow gap. With the tip of the cane, he flicked away a cigarette butt. He imagined that if someday he did have to use a cane, he would walk as normally as he had without it, using it more as a precaution than anything else. His brother liked to exaggerate things. The walker probably wasn’t as bad as he had made it out to be.

  When he reached the far end of the restaurant, near the doors to the kitchen, he turned around. Socorro waved to him while his brother only motioned for him to come back.

  “I knew he would try to make it look so easy,” Don Fidencio said. “What does he know about needing it to go everywhere?”

  “He was just trying to help,” she said.

  “To make it look like there was no reason for me to be worried and that anybody could do it. Watch him, how he pretends to know how.”

  He was walking back in the same crouched manner and paused when one of the kitchen doors swung open. A different waiter walked out carrying a broom and dustpan but stopped and held the door when he noticed someone nearby. Then he rushed over to assist the older gentleman with the cane, obviously lost to be off in this dark corner of the restaurant.

  When Don Fidencio had finished off the last bit of his enchiladas verdes, the waiter removed all the plates from the table.

  “Can I offer the travelers a dessert?”

  “Nothing for me,” Socorro answered.

  “Coffees for the gentlemen?”

  Don Celestino shook his head. “Just the check, please.”

  “And for me, another Carta Blanca,” the old man said, ignoring his brother’s gaze. “I want to make a toast.”

  “We don’t need to be making toasts, Fidencio.”

  “Me, not you,” he replied.

  The waiter returned with the beer, poured it with the same flair as earlier, and left again. Don Fidencio raised his glass and waited for his brother and the girl to do the same. “To Celestino,” he said, “the brave one who kept his word about the trip and this morning rescued his brother.”

  His brother and the girl raised their glasses and drank.

  “There’s more.” He kept his glass in the air. “May he live a long and happy life with such a lovely companion by his side.”

  Socorro reached for Don Celestino’s hand.

  “And at last, I raise my glass to my little brother for finally believing our grandfather’s story and for helping me to keep my promise to him.” Then he leaned back and swilled the drink.

  “Because I said I would take you there doesn’t mean I believed it,” his brother responded.

  “Then what?”

  “That I would take you, that was all. Why does it always have to be more with you?”

  “It sounds like you’re taking a child, only to amuse him.”

  “What does it matter why I said yes?”

  “It matters,” the old man said. “I was going to tell you what else I remembered today on the bus.”

  “Tell us tomorrow on the way to the station,” Don Celestino argued. “I want to get some rest.”

  “At seven o’clock?”

  “I woke up early to go get you, and I wasn’t the one who slept most of the way on the bus.”

  “Bah, now you want to blame me for being able to sleep. If tonight is like most nights, I’ll be lucky to sleep a few hours.”

  “Go on and tell us, and after that we can go rest for tomorrow,” Socorro said.

  The old man looked at his brother and then over at the girl.

  “I’m only telling it for you,” he said. “Whoever else can listen if he wants.”

  He took another swig of his beer and then poured the rest of the bottle into his glass. “Papá Grande had only ever been on an old mule that belonged to his uncle. La Chueca, they called it, because it walked with a limp. You can imagine how slow the poor animal must have walked?” He jounced about on his wooden chair to demonstrate to her how it might have been to ride the gimpy mule. “And now here he was, this little boy on a real horse, being taken by the one who had killed his father.”

  “With the arrow?” she said.

  “Exactly, and already you know where.” He checked to see if his brother was listening. “But that wasn’t all of it, because he had also seen almost everybody at the circus killed, even his mother, who had been hit across the face with the back of a small ax. Then there was the midget that they scalped. And not just scalped, because this one was still alive when they peeled back the top of his head.”

  “And so now he’s a midget?” Don Celestino asked.

  “He was always a midget, that’s the way he was born.”

  “All the other times it was Papá Grande’s uncle or just a man in the circus, nobody else.”
r />   “So now I remember the circus man had a midget with him. Somebody had to help him with the bear. What difference does it make?”

  “It sounds like you’re making up the story as you go.”

  “Why would I say he was little if he wasn’t little? This is only what Papá Grande told me.”

  “Maybe he remembered wrong — maybe you remembered wrong.” He looked at Socorro but found no support. “Before, you said the circus man came alone. You never mentioned anybody else. Now you made it the helper and maybe one of our uncles who got scalped. Next you’re going to tell us that it was our uncle who was the midget.”

  “Then tell me how you remember it.”

  “I don’t remember any midget, that I do know.”

  “By then they had killed and skinned a small bear that was in a cage.”

  “Now the poor bear?” Don Celestino glanced up at the ceiling. “What more, a lion?”

  “He never said anything about a lion, just a small black bear.” Don Fidencio stared at his brother a moment longer before turning back to the girl. “And after that they rode away as fast as the horses would go, crossing fields and small riverbeds and valleys. All night they rode this way. Papá Grande had never been any farther than Linares, and now they were taking him from everything he knew. Already he had some idea that this would be the last time he’d see his home and that there was no one left. But still he couldn’t help looking back, wondering if anybody was following them. The sun had gone down, and the world around him had started to grow dark.” He paused to sip his beer.

  “The Indians kept going and only stopped for the horses to drink water. There were times when Papá Grande thought he was going to fall asleep on the horse. He felt weak because since that morning he hadn’t eaten and only chewed on some kind of beans that the Indian had given him from a tree they passed. It was when they were climbing a large hill that they saw what looked like twenty soldiers following their trail, maybe only a mile behind them. This gave Papá Grande a little bit of hope, but they were still so far away.” Don Fidencio noticed his brother wanting to interrupt. “Now that I think about it, I remember he told me that it was just before dark that they saw the soldiers. How else would they be able to see so far?” He took a sip, then wiped the edge of his mouth with his cuff. “But whatever time it happened, it was right then that one of the other children, a little girl, she thought it would be a good idea to scream so the soldiers could hear them. And without thinking about it, the Indian she was with reached around and cut her throat, from one ear to the other. The screaming ended right there. No more screaming, just the horses running. The Indian tossed her body to one side without slowing down. And what could they do now but stay quiet-quiet and pray that the soldiers would catch up? Papá Grande said those Indians knew about horses better than most men, probably better than the soldiers.”