The Death of My Father the Pope

by Obed Silva

  But what my father was not aware of was that, at that moment, his life as my father was about to change forever. Because after he’d be bleeding from every part of his face on this grainy street on this pleasant night, he’d no longer be able to see me as the son who, no matter how much he pushed, would always show him unconditional love; instead, he’d see me as the son who once had a group of men break his face; he’d see the face of the son who hated him; he’d see the face of the son who was no longer willing to stand aside while he destroyed the lives of his brothers and sisters. What my father was not aware of was that at the moment when I said to him that I was just going to say hi to some old friends, I had disavowed him as my father.

  “¿Qué onda?” I said to the men at the truck as I approached them.

  “¿Qué onda, Obed, qué haces por aquí?” one of them said to me, putting down his caguama and walking toward me to shake my hand and give me a hug. “What a surprise,” he said. “It’s been a long time.” This was a guy I’ll call Javi, the same guy who’d given me my first tattoo many years ago. One of the others was my cousin Uriel’s closest friend, who I’ll call Rosendo. Though I didn’t remember the names of the other two, I remembered their faces and I knew they remembered mine because, like Javi and Rosendo, they greeted me with a handshake and a hug. And though the last time any of them had seen me I still had a pair of strong legs to carry me, none of them asked me why I was now in a wheelchair, which was good because I didn’t feel like getting into details about the past or about how fucked-up life can be. I hadn’t come here to reminisce. And when they did ask me questions about where I’d been all this time and where my cousins Uriel and Ulises were now living, I simply told them that I’d been around and that my cousins were now living in the States. That was all. I told them nothing more because all I wanted to do was continue with my plan and see my father bleed. So I went straight to the bone with them.

  “Look,” I told them, “I’m here because I want to ask you guys for a favor.”

  “Of course, anything,” said Javi, looking, indeed, ready to do anything for me that I asked. Rosendo and the other two looked at me in the same way. Brave they appeared, with raised shoulders and tightly closed fists. The girls, on the other hand, just stared at me with confusion, as if hoping that someone would tell them who I was and where I’d come from. But again I didn’t care to reflect on the past, so I paid them no mind. There wasn’t anything I needed from them in that moment.

  “Well,” I continued, “you see that man over there ordering tortas? I want you guys to fuck him up for me.”

  This was the last thing they’d been expecting me to say, because as soon as I said it all of their happy guises turned to blank expressions. Their raised shoulders dropped and their tightly closed fists opened up. They no longer seemed the willing comrades. The favor I was asking them to do for me had caught them by surprise. They stood silently and looked at one another with their mouths open, confused, now more so than the girls, who oddly enough now seemed more excited than anything. While the guys took a step back and seemed to shut down, the girls perked up like daisies in the sun and moved in close, giddy and seemingly eager to hear their male companions’ response to my most unexpected request. I noticed one grab the other’s hand and squeeze it with intensity. Yet like their male counterparts, the two didn’t say a word.

  “Are you serious?” Javi finally said, breaking the silence.

  “Dead serious,” I said, looking him straight in the eyes. But again there was silence. All four looked at one another once again and exchanged body language that said, Don’t look at me. I don’t know what the fuck he’s talking about.

  But all this silence and back and forth with their bodies was only making me impatient. I’d been expecting them to give me a straight “Yes, let’s do it” right away, but this was not happening. Time was passing, the tortas would soon be served, and I’d be on my way back to El Cerro with my father’s face still intact and with my dignity destroyed. I would have failed. And all because the little hoodlums who’d once been willing to commit violence on other people for no other reason than to feel powerful were quickly morphing into altar boys before my eyes.

  “So, ¿qué? ¿Sí o no?” I pressed them for an answer, annoyed.

  Javi, continuing to speak for the four, placidly and apologetically, and to my own misfortune, finally said: “Pues no, Obed. It’s not like that around here anymore, we just don’t do that.” When he said this, I turned to the others to see if, in maybe one of them, I could find the slightest willingness to be his own man, and with a little bit more pressing, move him to step forward and tell me that he’d be more than happy to do me this favor. But all I got from each of them, as I looked directly into their eyes, was the same meek and apologetic expression with which Javi had given me his answer—what, after all, had been their collective answer all along. And though, just minutes earlier, the girls had seemed in favor of an ass-kicking, when I turned to them now to see if I could say anything to them that would make them talk their male counterparts into doing my bidding, they, too, looked at me with apologetic faces that, even worse than the men’s, appeared to convey pity toward me.

  I’d come all this way to get nowhere. And every time I looked at my father, who was waiting patiently for our tortas, I got angrier. He seemed so relaxed standing with his back to me and his arms resting on the stand’s ledge. And though I couldn’t hear what he was saying, I knew that he was having a conversation with the ladies making our tortas by the way they smiled and looked at him as they cooked. He was being the charming man he was known to be when not on a rampage—and I hated it. He was getting exactly what I’d told him he’d get if he came with me, and I was getting nothing.

  “What about for a hundred dollars?” I said to Javi as I turned my attention back to him. It was the only card I had left, and I figured they couldn’t say no to it. After all, it’s not every day that in Chihuahua someone offers up a hundred dollars in return for a simple favor like the one I was asking for. How could they possibly say no to me now? They just couldn’t. But they did. And firmly.

  “No, Obed, keep your money,” Javi said to me. “We don’t need it.” He didn’t even take a moment to think about it. And when I pulled out the hundred-dollar bill and hung it out in front of me so that the others could see that I was serious, all I got from them as well were blank stares. They shook their heads and closed their eyes as if embarrassed, and not for themselves but for me. I felt it and it hurt. How could I have stooped so low as to offer money to other men, honest, moral men, to commit violence against my father? It was at this moment that I finally felt the defeat of my own intentions. I remained still and said nothing, ashamed of my actions. And before I could put the money back into my pocket and apologize to Javi and the others for what I’d just asked them to do, I heard my father’s voice call out to me. He was still by the stand. Only now he was facing me with a bag with our tortas in it at his side. I figured he was about to call me over to pay, so I pushed the bill back into my pocket and slowly began to roll his way. But like someone who’d suddenly been stricken by a grand realization, my father stood still for a moment without saying another word and then slowly started walking in the direction of the Jeep. When I yelled out to him to stop, to wait for me, he picked up his step and eventually started running. I yelled, “Hey, wait! Come back!” and I tried to chase after him, but to no avail. He started sprinting past the Jeep and eventually down the street from where we’d come. Only once did he turn back to look at me. And when he did, he yelled, “I know what you’re up to, son! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” I didn’t get my torta that night, and my father didn’t have his face broken.

  * * *

  Chihuahua’s getting hotter by the minute and the people are coming out to watch the parade. “There goes the Prince of Fools!—the buffoon!” they’re yelling as they point at the white hearse. “And listen, they’re playing his song!” We’re moving at five miles per hour, and we’re wallow
ing in our pain, or lack thereof; at least for me this is the case. The thought of being constipated is beginning to fuck up my day even more than it already is. I can’t stop worrying about the possibility of the constipation leading to gangrene again. Then it will be me on the verge of dying again. “Chihuahua’s a good town to die in!” an old woman holding a child at her breasts yells from her front door to us and then quickly disappears back into her house. “There goes Juan Silva!” another man yells from the curb; he’s tapping his feet and drinking a caguama. He laughs wildly toward the sky and adds, “Hear me, San Pedro, and open your doors for this man!” Another chimes in as he stumbles by: “¡Por que era cabrón el hombre!” Then he drops to the ground on his back and a pint of tequila falls out of one of his pant pockets. There’s nobody there to help him up. Then, suddenly, another wino comes running out from one of the homes we’ve just passed and he’s yelling for us to stop. “¡Paren! ¡Paren!” cries the scraggly man. He’s running out of his yard holding a caguama in front of him. “I want to go to the funeral of the man who once gave me a drink and sang me a song. ¡Ese hombre era mi amigo!”

  Aarón stops the truck and the happy wino joins the other mourners in the back. I watch him through the back window as he climbs onto the bed and eagerly offers his hand and a drink from his caguama to everyone. And before he sits, he gratefully thanks Aarón for having stopped for him. “Gracias, peloncito, por parar para que este pobre borracho los acompañe.” But his happiness doesn’t last long. As he takes a seat and the truck begins to move again, he becomes overwhelmed with sadness. Holding his caguama close to his chest he looks around at all the faces he’s just joined and begins to weep. “My friend,” I hear him say, “my friend is dead.” He’s crying heavily into his bottle now and everyone’s looking at him with compassionate eyes, even me. “I’m going to miss him, you know?” he says, and then he takes a drink. As he does so, the others respond with:

  “Sí.”

  “Claro.”

  “Sí.”

  “Sí.”

  “We’re all going to miss him.”

  “Todos.”

  We all understand the wino. We all know where he’s coming from. He’s one of us; not a Silva, but an “alcoholic who still suffers.”

  “He was one of my best friends, a good man. ¡Ah, que pinche Juanito! ¿Por qué? ¿Por qué? ¡Subanle a la música! ¡Ah, como le gustaba esta pinche canción a Juanito!”

  The old wino continues to cry for his dead friend like a child cries for his absent mother. If only I could be doing the same for my father.

  * * *

  I’d met this wino once before on one of my trips to Chihuahua after I’d been shot and gotten off probation in 2006. My father and I had still been on fairly good terms then. There’d been an exhibition of some of Piña Mora’s paintings at the historic Quinta Gameros mansion.

  “Hijo, I want to take you somewhere,” my father said that morning without telling me anything else.

  “Where?” I asked him.

  “You’ll see. It’s a surprise. Te va a gustar.”

  We were on our way. But before we could make it to the car, a man I didn’t recognize met us in the driveway. It was the wino who was now joining us to bury my father. “¡Q-vole, Coruco!” my father said loudly, opening up his arms when he saw him, and the man, who was known as Coruco, smiled and walked into my father’s open arms. “Look, Coruco,” my father said to him, “this is my son Obed from el otro lado.” My father said it like that, as if “from el otro lado” was a part of my name. But it also implied that my father had told his friend about me before this moment. Coruco extended his hand to me and I extended mine to him. “It’s great to finally meet you,” he said. “Jaunito has told me a lot about you. Me da mucho gusto conocerte.”

  Coruco went on and told me that it was such an honor to meet me, that he’d never met anyone from el otro lado before, and that he hoped to drink a beer with me. I told him that that would be great, that I’d like that, and apparently this would happen sooner rather than later because my father would invite Coruco along on our little trip and he would gladly accept.

  Coruco was drunk. In fact, I’d later learn, he was drunk every day. He was a terrible alcoholic. He was one of those alcoholics who roam the streets all day looking for a way to get their next beer. He had a melancholy face most of the time, one that made you feel pity for him, which is why it wasn’t too difficult for people to hand over their pesos to him so that he could keep drinking. It’s also why my father cared for him so much. He felt bad for the guy. My father would later tell me that the reason Coruco drank so much was because his wife had left him for another man and that she’d also taken their children from him. “After she left, he started drinking and hasn’t stopped since,” my father said. “You have to feel sad for a man like that,” he added.

  “I can’t even imagine his pain,” I said, in agreement. “Must be something almost unbearable.”

  Something else about Coruco that evoked sadness was his own name. Coruco wasn’t his real name. It was one that the people in the neighborhood had given him because of his seemingly meaningless existence. “Un coruco,” my father told me, “es un piojo de gallina.” “That’s fucked-up,” I said to my father, “why would anybody call him a chicken louse?” “Because,” he said to me, “in the same way that a chicken louse is a pest to the chicken, people feel that he’s a pest to society.” My father never told me his real name, and I never asked for it. Everyone called him Coruco, so I called him Coruco.

  At the exhibition, my father and I walked around and stared at the paintings in awe, but Coruco looked confused, and finally, as my father and I discussed one of the paintings, he interrupted and asked, “Juanito, what are we looking at?” And my father, rather cruelly, said to him, “¡Ah que Coruco, no sea pendejo! These are paintings by our very own Aarón Piña Mora, Chihuahua’s greatest painter.” “Ahhh, okay,” Coruco responded, as if he now knew exactly everything about the paintings and their painter, and for the rest of our time there, every time my father and I would stop in front of a painting and discuss it, Coruco would stand behind us and nod in agreement. We stayed for no longer than thirty minutes. There were other exhibits in other rooms, but we were not interested in them. My father had brought me there only for Piña Mora and nothing else.

  Our first stop on our way home: the first expendio we saw—three caguamas, please!

  * * *

  Corucos are everywhere.

  Ralph spends his days wandering the streets and drinking on curbs and bus stop benches around my mother’s house in Buena Park, California. I met him many years ago when she first moved to that area. I was living there with her and my brother and sister at the time. Ralph had been sitting on the asphalt between two parked cars in front of a bar called the Town Tavern that was on the corner of Knott and La Palma. He was drinking a beer and looked like shit. I noticed him as I rolled by, and I asked him if he needed help. I thought he’d fallen and had been unable to get back on his feet. But no: “If you really want to help me,” he said, slurring his words and looking up at me with yellow eyes, “then you can get me another beer. Any kind you want.” Say no more. I bought him a six-pack of Budweiser from the liquor store next to the Town Tavern. “Wow! You’re a really swell guy,” Ralph told me as he took the six-pack from me with both hands while not making any effort to get up off the ground.

  After, I’d often see Ralph dragging his shaky body through the streets of Buena Park day and night. And every time I’d see him I’d buy him a beer or two. And every time I would, he’d remind me that I was a swell guy.

  Back then, Ralph was in his late forties, had a family that consisted of a mother and a few brothers and sisters. His father was already dead. Ralph was also an uncle. He’d told me this during many of our conversations after I’d buy him beers. I also know that on many occasions every one of his family members had tried to help him. But Ralph had refused the help every time. He’d told me this, too.

/>   “They want to help me by not letting me drink,” he’d said to me once, and added: “I don’t want that kind of help. I’d rather sleep under a bridge and drink a beer.”

  That was it. That’s all Ralph ever wanted: a beer. Ralph didn’t want a home with a warm bed and blankets and pillows to sleep with, and he didn’t want a car to drive to and from work every day; and he didn’t want a wife and children either. Hell!—Ralph didn’t even want to have sex.

  “This is my woman,” he’d say, raising up a tall can of Budweiser. “She’s all I need to keep me happy. And she doesn’t even cook.”

  * * *

  Lost. Free. Lost. Free. Lost. Free. Lost. Free. Lost. Free. Lost. Free. Lost. Free in the fire.

  * * *

  After a time, I never saw or heard from Ralph again. My best guess is that like every alcoholic, he finally found his peace in heaven.

  18

  I was in Chihuahua the first time I ever got drunk. I was thirteen and had been staying at my tía Lupe’s house with my cousins Uriel and Ulises during one of my summer visits. One day my cousins asked me if I wanted to drink and get a tattoo. I said yes. Seemed like a good idea at the time: my first beer and my first tattoo with two of my favorite cousins. If only I could’ve known what a not-so-promising future drinking has to offer—no, I don’t think knowing this would’ve made much of a difference. I still would’ve done it: A boy can’t say no among friends. Because drinking’s a man thing to do, at least that’s what boys are always being told: “You can’t drink. You’re just a kid.” Well, what a boy wants to be least is “just a kid,” and what he wants to be most is a man. It should be no surprise then that the boy dreams of drinking.