by Gary Soto
We parted. I skipped a few houses where dogs with crazy eyes dwelled behind chain-link fences. But at one pretty house, I climbed the stairs, ran my fingers through my unruly hair, and announced to the person who opened the door, "Ma'am, we're having a school fund drive for the poor." The woman closed the door none too softly.
At the next house, I said, "Ma'am, we're keeping youth off drugs." This door closed quicker, the breeze adjusting the curls on my head. Still not ready to admit defeat, I braved the next house. "Ma'am, we're here early because cats need loving homes." The woman narrowed her eyes at me, then scanned the wreath in my hand and asked, "Are you selling bushes?" Before I could answer, "No, ma'am, we're selling preseason Christmas wreaths," she closed the door on me.
I was out of luck, and my sample wreath was now nearly as bald as Uncle Joe.
I dragged my red wagon down the uneven sidewalk, each bump shaking more needles from the wreaths. I had no energy to combat the sneering laughter of a kid asking, "Hey, ugly, how come you're hauling bushes around?" No, I kept my eyes cast on the sidewalk, which soon revealed a large shadow. When I looked up, it was a smiling Uncle Joe.
"Sold em all!" He did a jig on his gimpy legs.
"Great," I managed to say.
Uncle Joe looked down at my wreaths. He asked, "Hey, what did you do? Strangle the wreaths?" He picked one up as if it were a baby and put it back down gently. He picked up another and examined this one, too, mumbling complaints about the bald wreaths. Finally he settled on the best of my bunch and beckoned me to follow him.
"I told this lady that I would put one on the front of her car."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"You'll see," he said vaguely. He walked two blocks before we stopped our parade in front of a very nice house. On the front door, I noticed, hung one of his wreaths.
"Looks real smart," Uncle Joe bragged.
I had to admit that the wreath on the door was a nice touch, even though Uncle Joe wasn't worth a million dollars. Still, he had bills and coins in his pocket and they weren't about to come out soon! The guy was too stingy.
"You wait here," he ordered. He climbed the steps and visited with the homeowner, a mother with two children wrapped around her ankles like snakes. He descended with a whistle on his lips.
"She says it's okay," he announced.
"What's okay?"
Uncle Joe didn't elaborate. He just drew a length of wire from his pocket and tied the wreath to the grille of the Volvo station wagon in the driveway. He explained this was the style—not only did people put wreaths on their doors, but also displayed their Christmas spirit by attaching them to their cars.
"It's neat, huh?" Uncle Joe added that the woman had bought two wreaths because of his war injury.
"What did you tell her?"
"Nothing, really." Boyishly, he kicked at the ground, a sign of embarrassment, and jingled the coins in his deep pockets.
"You told her a lie, huh?"
Uncle Joe dramatically snorted. "Boy, you got to learn how to talk to your elders." He then confessed that, indeed, he had extended the boundaries of truth by informing his customer that he'd had the tips of both shoes run over.
"You didn't," I admonished.
"I did, and I feel bad." He pouted.
"How could you?" I scolded.
He shrugged and muttered that he'd been wrong to fib, but he needed the money because his injury cost him more than an ugly foot. When he bought shoes (every six years), he had to buy one in size nine and the other in size ten. His flattened toes needed more room to breathe, he explained.
We walked up the street, now growing dim, but Uncle was still in the mood to make money. He scooted the wreaths from the wagon into the gutter. In their place he started tossing in aluminum cans from the neighborhood trash cans, after stomping them flat in a crazy dance.
"Uncle, I got to go," I announced after ten minutes of this kind of work.
"Go?" he barked. "There's money to make."
"You make it," I said.
He gave me one of his narrow-eyed stares until I groaned and agreed to help.
We canvassed the gutters and trash cans until the wagon chimed like music as we hauled our loot down the street. Uncle Joe said that life was hard, but if you didn't have to pay for it, it was good.
"What does that mean?" I asked.
"Think about it, boy," Uncle Joe advised. "I'm not sure myself, but I know there's truth in my words."
Like Ben Franklin, he knew about pennies, as each can we scavenged was worth a few of them. And no can was going to be passed up.
"Get that one in the road," he commanded. He pointed to an aluminum can in the street and I hurried to retrieve it. While I was bending over, a three-eyed car moved toward me. The middle headlight appeared to be blazing. I righted myself and muttered, "What the heck!"
It was only after the vehicle surged past me that I understood that the headlight was blazing.
"Did you see that?" I called to Uncle Joe, who appeared confounded by the car that had just passed. He raked a hand over his sharp chin. He munched on his lower lip as if in deep thought. Uncles mind, I could see even in that early dusk, was at work. He spit sharply at the ground and remarked, "Yeah, boy, I did."
We watched the car stop at the corner, then speed down the street, throwing off a light like dawn peering over a mountain.
"I think it was the Volvo with—" I started.
"You don't have to tell me." Uncle Joe came alive, grabbed the handle of the wagon loaded with aluminum cans, and commanded, "Vámanos!"
The third eye of the Volvo was the wreath Uncle Joe had attached to the grille. Made of combustible twigs, it had caught fire. While it was an honest mistake by my well-meaning uncle, we felt like fugitives and galloped away.
"Are we in trouble?" I asked.
"Depends," he answered, and pocketed his dentures so he wouldn't lose them if we actually had to sprint.
Several times, at the sighting of cop cars, we were forced to hide behind bushes until we were soiled and drenched in sweat from throwing ourselves onto the ground. But we got home without incident.
We had to wait a whole worrisome day before we found ourselves in the news. Uncle Joe and I went down to the library to read a small article in the newspaper— buying a paper would be a reckless expenditure of money!
I broke the silence as we walked down the steps of the library. "Uncle, they could have gotten hurt." We had read in the article that an unknown scam artist was working the neighborhood, selling dry flammable wreaths. I could tell that Uncle Joe resented the implication: scam artist! Uncle was stingy and occasionally a weaver of stories that were not entirely true. But at heart he was honest.
Later, when we huddled at his small kitchen table, he poured the weakest of weak teas into a jam jar and pushed it with a knuckle in my direction. He had used an old tea bag, and I swore that the staple that held it together was rusty. But I kept my lip buttoned. Neither of us was in the mood to argue over something as meaningless as a tea bag.
"Drink up," he ordered.
Darkness at last climbed the kitchen walls. The wind rattled the windows, and the neighbor's cat walked the fence like a sentry.
Uncle Joe, head bowed, spoke into his weak tea. "I guess you live and learn." He tapped a finger against the kitchen table, and I could see that he was reflecting on the near tragedy of a woman driving her Volvo unaware that her grille had become a grill on which you could barbecue. He sighed deeply, raked his whiskery chin with his hand, and shook his large camel head.
We sat in silence, we sat in shame, and finally we sat in darkness. Uncle Joe rose and turned on the overhead light, then spoke up.
"Did I ever tell you 'bout a comrade of mine who parachuted into the arms of a beautiful Irish lassie? World War Two, that was." He took a sip of tea and re-counted the story of Fred Flitter, a foot soldier who was assigned to an airborne unit because he was chubby and everyone figured that if he hit the ground hard he could r
oll like a meatball and come up shooting. On the first day of a practice run, he parachuted right into the arms of a very strong local beauty.
I hadn't heard that one. I listened, now and then sipping my tea and trying to dismiss the fear that I might get lockjaw from the rusty staple in the tea bag.
"It was fun time for ol' Fred." He chortled. Uncle Joe told me that this guy Fred Flitter learned to shear sheep from this Irish lassie. Uncle pulled his chair away from the table and began to shave an invisible sheep, his hand making a swooping motion, all the while imitating the buzzing sound of a razor. With each uplifting stroke he increased the volume.
"This was 1944," Uncle Joe recalled. "Hitler was on the run, and the war was almost over. Fred parachuted again weeks later and twisted an ankle. The old fellow earned the same injury ribbon as me." His mood had improved mightily. He drank his tea, smacked his lips, and bellowed, "Let me show you again! No telling when it'll come in handy." He bent over and began to run an invisible razor over an invisible sheep. He made the buzzing sound and even shook out the invisible sheep wool. Soon I was called to imitate sheepshearing; after all, there was no telling when it would come in handy.
"More wrist action, boy," Uncle Joe scolded. "Put something behind it!" He shuffled to the refrigerator and brought out a cloudy jar of prunes. He downed two, permitted himself a soft and painless fart, and returned to the kitchen table. He began a yarn about another Fred, someone named Fred Salinas, a man with arms like anvils and the tiny waist of an ant. But I cleverly tuned Uncle Joe out by making my lips buzz like a giant razor while I concentrated on my sheepshearing.
"Boy, are you listening?" Uncle Joe scolded.
"Yes, sir!" I answered, startled from my musings.
"I'm telling you 'bout Fred Salinas. Man who saved our nation in spring of 1944." Uncle Joe poked my shoulder with a finger. "How come you're so soft?"
"Because I'm tenderhearted," I answered.
"Tenderhearted!" he roared. "That will set you back, boy! Don't you know this is a dog-eat-dog world—and quit with that buzzing noise! What's wrong with you?"
So, late on an autumn day, I learned to shear an invisible sheep, absorbed monotonous stories about Fred Flitter and Fred Salinas, and as Uncle's last order for the day, raked leaves in the near dark. For my labor in the backyard, Uncle said if I found a penny, nickel, dime, or quarter in the grass, we could split it. How? I don't know. But I'm sure that wise Uncle Joe would have found away.
Seeing the future
AT THIRTEEN, Letty Rodriguez had fallen for Miguel Padilla. He was nice. That's what she liked about him, and that he was funny. He was not super handsome, but girls thought he was a catch. Letty's catch. While she was a top student in her seventh-grade classes, he was barely making it through eighth grade. His grades, already inflated because he was a charmer with the teachers, were mostly Ds and Cs. He blamed the situation on his home life: His father was gone, his mother worked a lot at the packing shed, and his two brothers and sister were noisy as pirates. He couldn't study with the television blaring and his mother on his case about one thing or another. Letty would suggest tenderly, "Miguel, you could study at the library."
"The liberry is for little kids," he would argue, and go off with friends to play soccer.
Letty thought Miguel was a keeper, even if she used her allowance to make him happy: Big Gulp sodas, candies and potato chips, tickets to movies that she didn't really want to see, like the one about snakes on a plane. But he was nice and funny, and she liked his hair. And there was a sensitive side to him.
"Yeah, I like flowers," he had once remarked. He sucked his Big Gulp through a straw and related how he and his friend Richard used to pick their neighbor's flowers and give them to their mothers. He sucked again on the Big Gulp, rattled the ice, and said, "You want some?"
Letty's heart swelled the afternoon he surprised her with flowers. True, they were artificial ones from a yard sale, but it was the thought that counted.
Letty even wrote Miguel a poem in gold ink.
"That's sweeeet," he crowed. With roving eyes he studied the poem. Letty assumed he was looking for it's meaning until he asked, "Hey, is that real gold?"
She took care of him by patting medicine on his forehead after he fell off his skateboard. "Poor baby," she cooed.
"I got me a scar," he responded proudly. "Puts a little edge on me. People be asking, 'Who did that to you?' and I'm going to say, 'Some dude now in the grave.'"
When they couldn't go to the theater because her allowance was used up, they watched movies at Letty's house. With his shoes off and his hand on his belly, Miguel was a king in the recliner. He would dip his hand into a bowl of buttered popcorn. The remote would be greasy when he left, and Letty's father would grumble, "That kid."
But Letty began to notice a change in Miguel. When he saw her between classes, he wouldn't rush to her anymore. Instead, he would hitch up his pants and stroll over with Richard or some other homie at his side.
Invariably he would ask, "You got any money, Letty?"
One day he approached her with smooches.
"Dawg, not so fast," she cooed. Her heart was beating, but her mind was calculating the reason for his sudden affection.
"I got to ask for a favor," Miguel said with his arms around her shoulders.
Her heart slowed. He's going to ask for money, she predicted. She had told him that her godmother had given her two hundred dollars for her birthday. His noodle of a brain had no memory for schoolwork, but when it came to money, he remembered.
"What is it?" she asked cautiously. Her hands were on his biceps, which she noticed were not taut with muscle but flabby. The result of devouring candies and sodas? She felt a little guilty about embracing him while thinking, Just push the dude away and run!
"I was gonna get my class ring," he began, then stopped to holler to a friend that he would see him at four at the courts. "My mom got sick," he continued with a weak smile, "and she was supposed to buy it for me." He stopped and waited, his eyes shifting away from her when someone called, "Hey, Miguel, you ugly fool." It was a homie friend with a sucker in the corner of his mouth.
"But Miguel," Letty whimpered in a little-girl voice. She explained that the ring cost over a hundred dollars, maybe two hundred, and she was saving her money for something special.
"Fool, where we be meeting?" the homie hollered.
Letty winced. She had started not to like his friends, and how he was always trying to cuddle up to her when he needed something. Even if he wanted a bag of potato chips, he would hold her hand and try to kiss her. He would leave grease on her throat, which made her queasy. "Why do you let him call you that?"
"Homegirl, they ain't nowhere," Miguel replied as he took her hand and applied a greasy kiss.
He moved his face toward her throat, but she pushed him away. She barked, "I'm not your homegirl. I'm your girlfriend."
"That's what I'm saying," he said, his shoulders lifting and his arms spreading out. "Just a loan, Letty. We're tight."
Letty began to think she could do better than a boyfriend like Miguel. But could she? She was slightly overweight, with a pinch of baby fat around her middle. No matter how she cut back on junk food, it stayed. And while people said she was cute, no one went as far as saying that she was beautiful. She was smart. This much she knew. She was the one with a row of As on her report card to back up the rumors about her intelligence.
Are we tight? she wondered. Should she lend him the money, or save it for an academic summer camp? A school counselor had suggested she apply for a summer program at San Jose State. There, she could take a class in architecture, an interest of hers ever since she'd watched a PBS special on the Roman Empire. She had watched part of it with Miguel, who only said, "I wonder if those Roman dudes had, like, lowrider chariots, all tricked out."
But Letty was still convinced that he was nice and funny. Plus, there was his hair, and he was popular. But her conscience nagged her. He's a user, girl, part of h
er mind told her. He's trying to use you and then drop you.
She had left him that afternoon promising to think about the loan.
"What's there to think about?" he asked later as he walked at her side, his hand pulling up the back of his pants every fifth step. "We're tight." He told her he would get the ring, but she could wear it on a chain around her neck.
At the time, Letty didn't think of the chain as being similar to the ones binding the hands and ankles of prisoners in old movies. She didn't consider the class ring a rock that would weigh her down. No, she imagined the ring around her neck as evidence of attachment, a sign to others that she had a guy. Still, she had to ponder her relationship with Miguel. Hadn't she already lent him twenty dollars? And why had she? To feed his fool friends?
"I'll think about it," she told him.
Letty had to hurry home because her mother wanted her to come along on a visit to her grandmother, who had had surgery for the removal of a tumor. All had gone well, but a visit would perk Grandmother up.
"How are you, Grandma?" Letty asked as she bent over the woman for a gentle hug. Letty wasn't sure if a hardy squeeze might hurt her.
"Okay, mi'ja," her grandmother answered softly. On the table beside her was a Big Gulp, which reminded Letty of Miguel. The rings on her grandmothers fingers also reinforced her memory of Miguel. "Can you get me some ice?" her grandmother asked. Her head swiveled toward the Big Gulp.
In the kitchen Letty stalled at the refrigerator when her cell jangled. She examined Miguel's number and couldn't help but think, It looks like a prison number. She chuckled as she pocketed her cell and admonished herself for such an unkind thought.
When she returned, her grandmother and mother were revisiting a family hurt that went back years. They did this often, hissing like snakes, pulling in their fangs only when others were around. The two became quiet as Letty entered the bedroom.
"Oh, thank you," Grandmother said as she took the Big Gulp cup. "How's school?"
"Good. I'm saving my money for a summer program at State." She had begun to explain her interest in architecture when her grandmother demanded, "How come your hair is so short? Do you like boys?"