The Gringo Champion

by Aura Xilonen

  The other gorilla tries to yell at me to stop, but I’m deafer than a post: all I can hear is the sound of my own breathing. I kick him in the shin while jabbing him hard in the ear, where his navigational system is. The gorilla snorts in bewilderment, his eyes bug out, and he tries to slap me in the face, but I’m faster than him and dodge, bending at the waist, and then, from below, give him a powerful blow in the coconuts that takes him out.

  “Fuck,” he says before he goes down.

  Just then I feel a pair of huge arms wrapping around me like an octopus from behind and lifting me like a fucking feather.

  “Fucker got me this time; I didn’t even see this guy coming.”

  I flail around, but I only manage to give the fucking giant squid a few kicks in the shins. He squeezes me harder, and I start to lose my breath. I figure when the fucking brute squad gets their shit back together, they’re going to stomp my ass.

  “Chill, man. Tranquilo,” the huggy giant says in my ear.

  “Chinga tu madre,” I reply, and head-butt him in the nose. He squeezes harder. I feel my skeleton being compressed just like my fucking styrofoam soup cup. If he squeezes any harder, I’m going to shit my pants.

  “Tranquis, bro,” he repeats, though his nose is now leaking sauce. The other two gorillas are just starting to show signs of life.

  “Let go of me, motherfucker!” I yell at him in a rage, my whole body spangalanged. “Let go of me and you’ll see where else you leak, asshole!”

  “Take it easy,” he says, “I just want to talk to you.” He then addresses his thugs. “Hey, pendejos, this little fucker thrashed you good.”

  He loosens his grip a little and allows me to catch my breath.

  “I’m going to let you go, but don’t try to run away, got it?”

  Yeah, right, I think. As soon as my feet hit the ground, I’m out of here.

  He loosens the pressure on my arms a little more.

  “I’ve got a business proposition for you, bro”—but there’s no way I’m interested. I’m panting like a fucking dog. “Fuck, man, I know what’s good for you.”

  “My ass,” I answer.

  “Hey, pendejo,” he tells one of the docile limp-dicks, who’s currently groping his bruised giblets. “Take out your damn iPhone so he can see it.”

  The earringed gorilla takes out an iPhone and shoves it in my face. I look at his reddened eyes. His nuts must look even worse. He presses a button, and a YouTube video starts to play. I recognize the chickadee’s building, then the bus stop. I see myself crossing the street. I see myself sitting down at the bus stop. I see the yup who’s in love with the chickadee come up behind me and deck me. The camera gets out of the car and starts coming closer. I see me lying there, and then ten or twelve fucking scruffs and addos surround me excitedly and start kicking the shit out of me. Then they stop kicking and scatter as quickly as they appeared. The video stops when Mr. Abacuc squats down next to me and gives me a handkerchief. Then the title of the video appears on the screen, along with a photo of me flipping off the camera: “How long?”

  “That you, bro?” the octopus asks me.

  “No.”

  “What the fuck do you mean, no? You’re even wearing the same fucking clothes.”

  “What the hell do you want?” I ask.

  “Just to talkear, man,” the octopus gorilla says. “I’m going to let go of you real careful-like now, hermano, so chill.”

  He slowly lowers me down and I place my feet on the stone stairs. A number of onlookers start to move away; the few scruffs also take off like cockroaches under rocks. The show’s over, and they’re probably still looking for their daily melee. I feel an overwhelming need to run, to get the fuck out of there. I’ll take a skedaddling over a paddling any day. The gorillas notice, and the three of them surround me like a wall of flesh so I can’t get away.

  “You calmer now?” he says before letting go of me.

  I nod, but I’m not calm. I haven’t been calm since I got to this country. I haven’t been calm one single day. I’m always hustling, being hustled, looking over my shoulder, evasive, paralyzed, with no sense of security.

  “It’s a simple business, bro. I need someone who can take a beating the way you can.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because you obviously don’t break easy. With the thrashing they gave you, you should be muerto now, man.”

  “There any money in it?”

  “Sí.”

  “How much?” I ask.

  “Not much, but if it goes well, maybe it’ll even be enough for you to buy some new clothes.”

  “Were you guys the ones who trashed the bookstore?”

  “What?”

  “The one across the street.” I nod toward it. They turn to look and stand gaping like idiots.

  “Shit, man,” says the earringed gorilla, “what’s a bookstore, Chub?”

  Oof! Maybe that punch in the nose loosened his screws a little—or maybe he was like me when I discovered the bookstore for the first time.

  * * *

  [I was full of shit when I got to the city. Walking around, I saw there was work available. I didn’t want to go back to picking fruits and vegetables, since Pepe and the others must have crossed over to the other side by then. I didn’t know a fucking word of English, and then I came across a sign in Spanish taped up in the bookstore window: “Solicito ayudante.” Help wanted.]

  “We can talkearlo, bro, discuss it more comfortable-like someplace else,” the giant says, “in a bar or restaurant or diner or something. Is there somewhere around here where you feel comfortable? I’m Chuby Jon, and these two lardasses are Sakai Dark and Deamon Dean. What do you say, man, shall we head somewhere else to chatterize?”

  “Hell no,” I answer. “If we’re going to talk, we’ll do it here. We can wordify right here. Not like in fucking novels, where if they’ve got something to say they always go to a more comfortable place just to say what they could just say standing up and without wasting everybody’s fucking time.”

  “That’s cool,” the octopus says, befuzzled. He’s got a goatee, a shaved head and arms all tattooed with snakes or whatever, jeans, and motorcycle boots. His front teeth are gilded. With the back of his hand he wipes away the blood from a small cut on his nose from when I head-butted him. “I’ll get right to the point, güey,” he says. “I’m a lucha libre wrestler, but they kicked me out of the damn league in a fucking antidoping thing two years ago. I’m banned for life, but now I own this gym where I train a few guys, and I want to do things right and not half-assed. I’m looking to make a little cheddar with a vato who hits like a beast. I can’t get involved in lucha libre anymore, but nobody in boxing knows anything about me. So there’s no prob. And I don’t have a sparring partner good enough to take on my campeón. I saw your video on YouTube. It was uploaded by Chronica News, tagged with the location where the fight went down. I saw you and a lightbulb went on, man.”

  “How much?” I interrupt him.

  “I don’t know,” he says, flummoxed.

  “What? You come here to offer me shit and a half, and you don’t even know how much?”

  “A hundred a week,” he says hastily, like he’s trying to test my idiocrity.

  “A hundred a day or nothing.”

  “Ha!” he exclaims. “Not even if you were made of solid gold, bro!”

  “See you around, you silverbacked yups.” I move down one step, push them aside, and start to head off. A hundred measly dollars to let them pound me to a pulp? No way.

  “Three hundred a week and no more,” the mollusk suddenly blurts.

  I turn back toward them. “But with meals included, and Thursdays and Sundays off, and an advance of a hundred bucks right here and now.”

  The gorilla eyes me, wrinkles his forehead like a giant seal, and strokes his goatee from top to
bottom.

  It would appear the ape’s thinking.

  “All right, you win, man. But just for now, while we’re training our campeón.”

  “Whatever,” I say. Ultimately, I think, what difference would a few more punches make, and I don’t know when I’ll manage to find another fucking job.

  “Here’s the address.” He tosses me a card that windmills in the air along with five crumpled twenties. “We’ll start tomorrow at eight—we have to be ready for this year’s Golden Gloves Championship.”

  “That’s cool, man. See you around.”

  I head off toward the corner while the gorillas cross the street, limping like fucking bowlegged cowboys, and get in their boat. Poor preemie-dicked bastards, they’re gingerly cupping their balls. I watch them take off and fade away. Then I look up at the chickadee’s window and sigh. Aireen must be working like a dog at this hour. I sigh again. The light turns red and the cars stop.

  I cross and head toward the mall. I’m going to need groceries if I’m going to stay in the bookstore. Yes, it’s a fucking plan that will keep me alive. And then, out of nowhere, I start smiling. I have a little cash and the possibility of being close to the chickadee. Now that I know which window is hers, I can nod off to sleep in her shadow. I pass the little alleyway behind the bookstore and keep going.

  The 7-Eleven is two blocks away. I’m contemplating what to buy. Things that’ll last. I think about cans of tuna, pickled chiles, corn, peas and carrots, and a few sodas. Some boxes of the cheapest crackers. I can survive like a camel with a gallon of water; I’m used to not eating or drinking much. I can survive on almost nothing: a crumb and a dribble, like I did after I emerged from the fucking Rio Grande, my black plastic bag tied across the back of my shoulders. Like that, without water or anything, just eating a few fucking plants here and there that I found along the way.

  * * *

  [“It’s tougher now than it used to be,” the coyote had told me. “Crossing over used to be a walk in the park, but now the motherfuckers even have laser rays, fucking pain-in-the-ass gringos, and they peer down at us from above with their pinches satellites. So now you can’t even shit in peace out in the fucking desert, thinking they’re photographing your ass from up in the stars. But if you want, for fifteen thousand pesabundos I can get you over to where you’re home free, buddy.”

  But I was totally skint. I’d just taken off, looking to save myself, without any plans. Just escape and dreams, the dream of being on the other side of what you’re fucking escaping from. And when I was getting temerous after walking for hours in the desert, I drank my own sweat, and after more hours of walking, I even drank my own piss, because I crossed all by myself, reckless-like.

  “Look,” a wetback on the Mexican side told me. “You go straight across right here and start swimming. The current’s pretty strong out there where you see those whirlpools, so you’re going to end up over there. When you see a tree trunk that’s fallen over the water, make sure to grab on; if you don’t, you’ll head straight into the next life.”

  And so I plunge into the water, bam!, carrying my clothes in a black nylon bag and wearing only my underwear. And I start swimming, just like that, slowly at first, because the guy’d warned me, “Don’t wear yourself out or you’ll drown.” And the current kept getting faster, forming green foam on the green foam, greening my eyes. And it got so jittery that I saw the fallen tree approach and then go by and then be left behind. But I never even considered letting myself die; I’d gotten this far and wasn’t about to be food for some goddamn fish. So I started sculling with my arms until my muscles screeched with pain, but there was no choice—“Fuck it, life doesn’t grow in flowerpots.” And after eons had passed, I saw a rock I could cling onto like a pinche iguana. And so, yeah, I hung on with all my claws and lay there like a dead man until after the sun had already set.

  Then I felt like I was breathing for the first time, like I was a fucking sperm that had fertilized an egg. I got dressed and started walking oxically that direction, “where you see those hills”—that’s what they’d told me. And I pulled so far left that I ended up who the hell knows where, but just when I was running on fumes, a highway appeared. My feet were in shreds from all the blasters; my throat was leaden, clogged with sawdust.

  But I started taking off my clothes piece by piece, because now I felt hot from the inside, burning up like a huge bonfire; first I took off my coat, then my shirt, my pants, my underwear, everything, because I was so filled up with fire that I felt like a coal melting in a brazier.

  A car raced by and disappeared into the trembling hot air manufactured by distance and sunlight on the highways. There, already wordlessly cursed, parched, naked, I collapsed to my knees, awaiting my death.]

  I take out a twenty and stash the rest in the secret place—which is no longer so secret—in my waistband, next to the note from Mr. Abacuc and the card with the gym’s address, and enter the 7-Eleven. “I need canned food, water, and snacks,” I think, “things that don’t go bad but fill you up.” I wander down the aisles of the minimart. I try to seem normal.

  * * *

  [That’s what they told me when I finished my shift at my first and only picking job:

  “If you see a policeman, don’t run—if you run, they’ll nab you.”

  “Act totally normal. Even look them in the fucking eyes—they won’t know what to make of you.”

  “They can smell fear. If they can tell you’re scared, they’ll nab you. And don’t get too comfortable—always keep an eye out. You have to toe the line, or else they’ll nab you, beat you up, gulp you down, and then shit you back out where you fucking came from.”]

  I pick up some cans and toss them into a little plastic basket. I go over and browse the snack-food aisle. Then I pick up a couple of votive candles for light and grab a gallon of plain water. You don’t need much to survive. Though maybe you do to live.

  * * *

  [Once I walked through this city at night, past its restaurants with glittering windowpanes and palm trees and lights illuminating their sumptuous gardens, their facades and terraces; where valets parked gleaming vehicles. There I saw decked-out women in brand-new sneakers and glossy papasitos nibbling at cow-sized steaks. I saw restaurants with candles and without candles, with dimmed lights, almost dark; I also saw caves with lights like sparklers that shellacked the eye to the beat of a strident boom-boom-boom. La vida loca. There, outside a Latinatious fleapit, I heard a vato singing named Calle 13 y que me prendo.

  “Hey, Jefe, have you heard those bands that rap in Spanish?”

  “You russet-colored runt, I don’t even listen to my santa madre sing. Music prevents a man from thinking clearly.”

  “Is that why you don’t sell records or movies at the bookstore?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And so what are you thinking about, then, when there’s no music and it seems like you’re lost in space?”

  “Fuck off, you ecritical worm.”]

  I get to the register and lift up the little plastic basket. The cashier starts to swipe the items over the barcode reader and places them in bags. I ask for some matches so I can light the candles when I’m up in the loft. The total on the register comes to $19.80. The girl seems like she’s Latina, but she speaks to me in English. I pay with the bill. She gives me the change. I take the bags and go out. Night isn’t falling yet. I sit down on a bench next to a planter in front of the 7-Eleven, pull out a bag of potato chips, open it, and start eating. Then I uncap the gallon of water and drink straight from the jug. I chew slowly, as if I were waiting for the potatoes to dissolve like fucking sacred hosts instead of crunching. I chew slowly until little by little the sun begins to evaporate.

  The streets begin to turn blue, and the streetlights slowly begin to come on. In the tallest buildings, the offices light up. Down below, the businesses turn on their signs and the shops
light up. The cars turn on their headlights. People pass by me. A while back I noticed that the papasitos walk straight and tall; the rest of us, the polloi, from scruffs to addos and dudebros, walk like apes, as if untouched by evolution. It’s like we feel less fully ourselves and are still hunching our backs to brandish a mandrill’s red rump. Like we’ve already been prevanquished by some divine, carontic clause of fucking unalterable destiny.

  I finish the bag of potato chips. I take a last sip of water and cap the jug. That’ll be enough till tomorrow. I close the bags with a double knot and wait a while longer, still sitting on the bench. The lumps on my face have unhardened and gone down. My face is almost back to normal except for a small cut above my right eyebrow. I still ache a little from the blow to the neck they gave me in the park, but everything else is practically the same as ever.

  When I feel night brewing, thickening in the air, I pick up the bags and head back toward the street where the bookstore is.

  Before reaching the corner, I turn into the alleyway out back. It’s unlit and smells like piss. There are a couple of dumpsters beside the service door of the next building over. I see the bookstore’s door. It’s tapestried with cobwebs and dust. It hasn’t been opened in years. I walk to the end of the alley. I take off my belt and use it to tie the bags from my purchase together and sling them over my shoulder, like I’m getting ready to cross a river. I get a running start and leap like a monkey so I can clamber into the bookstore.

  Sleep frazzles out and immediately I open my eyes, pauperized, sensing that it is now very late. Up in the loft, everything is dark. I put out my hand and knock over the votive candle holder. I hear it roll until it stops next to the edge of my blankets. I have no idea when I went lights out. After closing the window and stuffing the plastic from the bags into the frame to wedge it shut, I laid out the blankets on the floor, blew out the candle, and rolled myself up like a burrito, and I stayed like that all night, without moving, like a fucking caterpillar that’s gone into its cocoon to wait for the moment of truth.