More than three years on, at the frazzled end of a long college night, sitting drunk and alone in my dorm room, I come across her fragile teenage cursive in the back of my high school yearbook:
Please forgive and understand me but I was too young to realize the beautiful friendship I was going to lose. Believe me, now I understand it all and I regret treating you the way I did with all my heart. I guess you can say I barely grew up. . . .
Exactly the words that I should have conveyed to her.
Pinche Locura.
JEEP IN THE WATER
THE RIO GRANDE WE CALL it on the US side. Río Bravo is what they call it in Mexico. The difference is the difference. Somewhere in the murky depths of this beleaguered band of water is a demarcation line invisible to all but the respective governments of both nations.
One morning a long time ago, which in El Paso could mean either fifty years ago or yesterday, two Border Patrol field agents on their rounds spot a dealer-fresh cherry-red Jeep parked in the shallow Rio. It sits unattended right in the center, the brown water coursing halfway up the doors, loaded with kilos of marijuana. Upon inspection, the agents surmise that some audacious drug runners from Juárez somehow got it into their cabezas that if they had the right vehicle, they could simply drive through the river at its shallowest point and safely transport their cargo to its destination. It almost worked. They probably felt like geniuses as their Jeep readily churned through the water in the dead of night. But right at midstream with no horses to jump to, the Jeep had come to a gurgling halt, mired in deep silty sludge. The dried spatters of mud on the shiny red exterior suggest to the agents some recent desperate heaving back and forth of the vehicle. Apparently, the deflated smugglers abandoned their mission and waded back to Juárez, sans Mary Jane.
Pleased with their catch, the Border Patrol field agents notify their superiors and summon a tow truck to drag the Jeep to shore. By now, a small crowd of people has gathered on both sides of the river to gawk, alerted to the spectacle by the traffic choppers of morning radio. The congregations seem harmless enough, more bemused than alarmed at the sight of a stranded Jeep in the middle of the river, so the agents take only standard cursory notice.
The tow truck appears on the scene in due time and the young attendant begins running a long tow line to the Jeep. That’s when things take an ugly turn. Before he can reach the vehicle, he’s being pelted by the Juárez assembly with stones, slabs of concrete, bottles and whatever else is handy, and he is driven back out of the water. The agents shout admonitions to the suddenly bristling mob, but at that moment a tow truck on the Mexican side backs up to the bank and two men charge into the river with their own tow line. This brazen act affords some incentive to the Border Patrol tow man, and he barrels back into the water. An uproar of curses rises from both side of the river in two languages as the men slosh like lunatics to the Jeep with their tow lines. The Mexicans secure theirs to the rear fender of the Jeep while the American ties his to the front. Then the contest begins.
The tow trucks rev their engines, pull the tow lines taut, and proceed to pull on the Jeep in opposite directions. An international tug-of-war commences with great noise and cheering from the gathered spectators, many of them already picnicking on the promontories with churros and beer. Back and forth lurches the Jeep, first toward Mexico, then toward the US, then back Mexico-way. Wagers are taken on who will prevail. Some brave boys even grab the line and tug hard to stack the odds in Juárez’s favor. The Border Patrol fire warning shots in the air to disperse the crowd and demand the tow-truck desperados cease their criminal acts, but it’s no use. Nobody can hear the shots above the shouting and the clamor of the news choppers directly overhead. This is now a full-blown international incident.
At long last, a larger heavy-duty tow behemoth designed for hauling eighteen-wheelers pulls up to the US embankment, and its seasoned driver, long in the tooth and short in the saddle, dodging various projectiles, succeeds in attaching his own tow line to the derelict Jeep. Once ashore, he climbs into his cab and sets to towing it out of the water. The crowds fall silent as the steel cable tautens. Señor Jeep heaves mournfully for a moment over the loud grind of the overheating engine of the Mexican tow truck. Then a hideous crunch is heard as the rear fender snaps off and flies into the air like a catfish being reeled in. To cheers from the Americans, and jeers from the Mexicans, the Jeep slowly taxis northward to America, but not before some daring half-naked Mexican kids rush to snatch some bags of pot, souvenirs of this mighty Pan-American match.
The Jeep is impounded, the marijuana seized, displayed and destroyed, and the story, widely circulated for a time throughout the Southwest with many a chuckle, is eventually forgotten in the mix of more sensational and bloodier stories of the War on Drugs bedeviling the region.
But somewhere below the surface of this river, covered over by the silt of years like the footprints of an ancient dinosaur, lies the imprint of tire tracks from a solitary Jeep that challenged the legitimacy of this invisible line we call the Border.
SKINNY BROWN KID DOESN’T KNOW SHIT
A SKINNY BROWN KID DOESN’T know shit. He’s lost in his own house. Lost in his dreams for a skinny brown girl. All his insides dissolving to mush. Secreted through his skin as longing. I’m sitting on the fence looking across the street at the houses with their lights on. The moon coming up half-eaten, the twilight bus lurching past like a sick elephant. I can’t get the pictures out of my head. Cathy in the moors, Heathcliff dying in the dense nothing of his loss. The books I’m reading are lending all the credence I need.
Margaret O doesn’t know me. She doesn’t know how I feel. I tell her after English class but the words come out wrong, all jumbled up and wrong. I think I hold her hand once, I think I kiss her once, but I’m not sure any of it is real. I’m quoting lines from Annabel Lee, warning myself away from the evil taking hold of that vital organ I’d hardly known was there. I knew its steady thumping, but had thought it was only there to push blood through the veins of a skinny brown kid. Now I know it’s for loving. That’s the evil, the hurt that loving brings, the quiet broil in the chest that burns through the insulation of reason. Kills all your thoughts, sucks up all the things you used to like and drains them of need. A love that was more than love, Poe says.
I wander to the park where some Youth League ballgame is going on. My hands clench the chain-link fence. The floodlights are a comfort, the kids chanting batter-batter-batter-batter-batter, the parents yelling at the coach, the ice-cream truck dispensing soft-serve and sno-cones. Proof that the world goes on, that life is still mostly sport. But this skinny brown kid zeroes in on the Umpire. Tall and thick, dressed in black from head to heel, with a leather cage for a face. His Umpire voice is fierce and baleful, coarse as gravel. Strike! he cries, like a demand. Strike! like he’s telling the batter to take a swing at me. Strike down that little fool for these grown-up degradations in his heart! And when he shouts Yerrrrrout! he makes that ripping gesture with his arm like he’s eviscerating me, and the ketchup blotches on the pavement are signs to be read. All the signs saying no and no and not this time and no way, ese. This Umpirical black figure, who Catherine feared, who chased Poe through the streets of Baltimore, who set fire to Rochester’s bed, who dared my hands toward the fuzz taking root in my groin. A foul ball slams against the fence at my face, and I gasp. The Ump scowls in my direction and pulls a fresh ball from inside his black chest. Foul! he cries.
I’m walking home through the soggy grass and I feel him behind me. I step inside my house and feel him in my backyard. He’s looking in my window. I bury my face in the pillow and cry. O Maggie, Maggie O. What can I do? My insides turning to soup, all guts and hominy. The want taking over everything. The Umpire tapping on the pane says, You’re up. I can’t think, I can’t feel anything but this evil. I can see through my shirt the skin and through the skin the pathetic little knot of tissue calling for her, Maggie, look at me hurt, look at me demeaned in the dark of my love fo
r you, Margaret O, I’m dying. I find my dog-eared Brontë on the dresser. It’s assigned to us for English I, but right now I’m reading it for Biology. I curl up in my preteen desolation, fever through the words written years and miles ago and locate the place of pain in the story. There are no moors in El Paso, I don’t even know what moors are, but the Wuthering Heights are right here. Oh yes, right in here. A refuge, a sweet and fiery sanctuary for this skinny brown kid who doesn’t know shit but is sure as hell learning it by heart.
SIREN SONGS
THE FERROUS TASTE OF THE air after a good rain is what I remember.
That and the sounds of frogs chirping in the sodden fields behind our house. In the fields and in the park with the swing set and the small trees glistening in the aftermath of a storm that barreled through the night before.
It’s like the rain coaxed them out to sing. Like the earth became so saturated that it yielded up a crop of frogs overnight, with their reedy songs pre-empting the roosters at the first blue wink of dawn.
It’s me and my brothers and the boy who’s seeing my sister in the morning of some July, walking outside just as the last bank of clouds rolls off, and we’re struck by this jangly chorus. It’s a strange cacophony we’ve heard before but never so spirited this early in the day, never pitched with such ecstasy.
We follow the siren song to the park, the freshness of the morning air against our faces. It won’t be long before summer heat grinds itself in. At the park, there’s flooding everywhere, enormous pockets of rainwater all over the lawn reflecting the overcast sky above. And frogs everywhere. Fat grey muddy frogs of all sizes, sitting in the puddling like stones, their throats ballooned with amphibian boleros. They start slopping about when we come near, thrusting their long legs into the air, landing haphazardly on top of each other. It’s an orgy of frogs and standing in the middle of it is Demon.
That’s what we call him. One of the local kids, he’s not air after a good rain is what I really a kid. He might be two years older, he might be ten, but he’s shorter than us by almost a foot, and he doesn’t talk much. His eyes are always bloodshot from the paint thinner he sniffs and his skin is bad, and his head is shaped like a baby’s when it’s fresh out of the womb. He looks like he could be dangerous, but not to us. With us, he’s almost a child.
Demon is watching the frog dances around him with sullen detachment. Picking the largest frog in his perimeter, he takes out of his pocket a Black Cat for the Fourth of July and places it in its mouth like a cigarette. We start laughing. It’s funny to see that frog with a firecracker in its mouth. Then Demon lights the greasy fuse and backs away and watches it explode. It’s kind of horrible. But we laugh even louder. My sister’s boyfriend takes a Black Cat from Demon and lights it on another frog and up it goes into the air, shredded to pieces. Then other kids come out with their firecrackers and soon there’s a different kind of orgy. And everyone’s laughing. All these dead frogs all over the park, and specks of mud and blood on our shirts and faces and we’re laughing.
We go back to our house and sit around the porch and then we’re quiet. Nobody’s saying shit. I don’t know why, like I don’t know why we were laughing. Demon comes by and squats on his haunches. He sticks a cigarette in his mouth. He lights it and puffs out his cheeks as he lets out a long thin strand of smoke. In the distance, it’s not the frog choir we hear but the constant pop pop pop of firecrackers. And the silence of the park for many summers after.
FIRST DAY
WE’RE IN HIS BUICK REGAL, letting the brassy noise on the radio pass for conversation. Dad sitting high in his seat and me slumped in mine. We haven’t been close for some time. The barrier between us is made of various compacted resentments and coarse particles of dried emotional dung. But it can’t keep him from guessing what I think of his job. He’s the day cook at the locally famous taco joint on Montana Street. He’s seen the look on my face when he comes home reeking of fryer fat and onions, his shirt smeared with ketchup, mustard and burnedin lard. No following in the old man’s footsteps for me.
Still, I need the job. My last gig delivering the El Paso Times around the neighborhood didn’t go so well. I kept oversleeping, finding flats on my bike, throwing the papers on the wrong front porches and generally infuriating people. That lasted a whole month and the cash I had to show for it didn’t amount to squat. Consequently, my route goes to another paper boy and I resign myself to the taco palace.
Several blocks away from the place, Apá turns the radio down and rattles off some things I should know before going in. Smile and stand up straight. Make sure your hair is neat and combed and tuck your shirt in. Listen to the manager and don’t be afraid to ask questions. Above all, respect your customers. I know, I know, I mutter back, trying not to sound whiny about it.
We arrive half an hour before opening and most of the crew is there. Conchita y Maria, both of whom must be in their mid-sixties, prep in the kitchen area, stirring the sauce for the tacos and grating the cheese that goes on top. Buenas, Tavo, they call to my dad. In the front counter area, the manager Mr. Alarcon assiduously counts the bills in the register while the other four employees wipe down the counter and sweep the floor around the tables. My apá introduces me and everyone greets me with morning smiles and mucho-gustos. All the employees come in various shades of brown like me, except for the tall wiry light-skinned guy who wears his hair combed down over his brow like Paul on Abbey Road. Without pausing in his count, Mr. Alarcon assigns him to me.
Cisco, enséñale cómo se hace todo.
Cisco nods in that easygoing way that I’ll learn is his trademark and tosses me an apron. Then he asks me, ¿Cómo te llamas?, ¿Junior o Tavo Jr.?
He passes for a white kid from the West Side, but like the others, he’s a recent import from across the río in Juárez. Something in the dusty blue of his eyes insinuates the Third World in his blood. Even with that Tiger Beat grin, he’s entirely and indisputably Mexicano.
Ni uno. I tell him in my own broken Spanish that I’m neither a junior nor a Tavo. I want to be Octavio. That’s how I’m known in school and what I want to be called at work.
Cisco chuckles with a knowing wink, slaps a paper hat on my head and proclaims: Time to work, Octavio.
We spend the first part of the morning going over the menu and the procedure for taking orders on my pad, then he trains me on the register. With the deftness that comes from years of working these fast food palaces, Cisco demonstrates how to put the food and drinks on the tray without spilling a drop on the napkins and little paper cups of chile. I’ve hardly thought to look toward the kitchen area, but I know Dad’s watching me the whole time.
¿Qué pasó? he gruffly asks. You don’t want to be Tavo Jr.?
He’s at the service window in a spotless white shirt and apron, looking like Omar Bradley in his crisp paper hat. He’s relaxed, genially twirling the spatula like a baton, looking softer than I remember him at home. Not the stern and stoic father I’ve set my moat around.
I like Octavio better, Dad.
¿O sí?
Yeah, I think so.
Pues . . . He pauses, then nods. Está bien.
At 9:30, the manager moves on to the other branch and the first customers make their way through the door. My hands are shaking as I take down orders and I have to keep looking back at the lit-up menu for the prices, but I seem to be getting things right. More customers stream in as we hit the lunch rush, and suddenly everyone’s racing around me, their fingers hitting the keys of the register at a speed I can’t match, fixing their trays with such blurring ease, and through the service window, I see Maria and Conchita prepping and garnishing so crazy fast while Apá is flipping up to twelve patties of burger meat on the hot grill, and all of them get that raw glow of perspiration on their brows. Cisco and the others take turns calling order numbers on the microphone in their stiff border accents—number 26, number 26, 26 please, number 27, number 30—while walk-ins at the counter are bellowing demands—not so much ice o
n the Coke, no onions please, extra chile por favor, three bean burritos and two orders of tacos to go and still more crowds file in for their midday bite—number 56, number 57, 57 please—and I’m finally getting the hang of this thing, until I drop a whole tray of sodas on the floor and Cisco laughs and yells, Get a mop, Octavio! Number 89! Number 90! 91! Two men in work boots and sunburned arms stalk in and order twenty-five singles of tacos with the sauce on the side and eighteen cheeseburgers with fries to go and Letty who takes the order says, Tavo, can you do it? My dad looks at the slip and shakes his head like he’s going to say no, but actually says yes, and looks at the two men and says it again so they hear it, Yes, we can do it. Now he’s packing the grill with more patties than I’ve ever seen and putting pans on the stove to heat the buns on while the señoras in the back fix the tacos in their trays, and now he’s really sweating, his shirt getting those small Rorschachs in the back and near the arms, and his hat slips to a more rakish angle as he slams a stack of frozen taters into the deep fryer and still the others shout his name: Tavo, we need more cheese on this, Tavo, this lady says she’s in a hurry, Tavo, make that two double-cheeseburgers. Tavo burning his fingers on the grill, his Tavo face getting grease-spat by the fryer, Tavo shoving to-go bags under the heat lamp, it’s ridiculous how soundly he works, without panic, without rancor, with the full-on poise of a West Texas short-order cook in one of the most enduringly popular taco spots this side of the Rio Grande.
At last, the crowd has thinned, the two men load their togo orders onto their pickup, and my dad cleans his grill with a worn black pumice brick as he orders Conchita and Maria to take their break. I’m dead on my feet already, trying to figure out how the time went from 11:30 to 2 so damned quick. Cisco not only managed to take more orders than anyone at the counter, but he also raked in a couple of girls’ phone numbers too. Mis girhfrens, he says. He laughs at the soda and salsa stains all over my shirt and pants. I’m laughing too. Then he turns my attention to something going on in the back storage area. Conchita and Maria are clapping at the sight of my apá lifting the 500 lb. ice machine so that Letty can get her mop under it. His forearms swell till the veins show and he’s red in the face, but he’s beaming all the same. We are, too. Cisco, in his smooth Cisco manner, only cocks his head to ask me one more time.
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