The Affliction

by C. Dale Young

  Carlitos was outraged. No prayers for an incomplete penance? An incomplete penance for supposedly striking his brother with a switch? He expected Father Happy to give him the largest penance he had ever received. He wanted fifty Hail Marys. He expected some Our Fathers thrown in and even a full rosary or two at the Stations of the Cross. Father Happy had confused him. The scale of penance seemed misaligned. The Sacrament of Confession seemed misaligned. How was this possible? But all Carlitos could say was a brief “Thank you, Father” and then promised to try harder in the coming week to avoid sin.

  The overcast sky outside cast only a dim light through the stained glass that morning and, as Carlitos stepped from the Confessional, there were no pink or yellow hues on the hardwood floors polished to perfection. As he walked, he turned his palms up and saw only red. It was as if even the light outside had decided to cease following the rules. Even Carlitos’ white shirt appeared reddened from the light slowly passing through the stained glass above him, the lighter colors somehow incapable of reaching very far in that poor light. When he looked up, Rosa Blanco was standing in the corner waiting for him, her face dim and sad as always. Carlitos could not recall his mother’s face any other way, could not remember her smiling; it had been so long.

  Pedro stayed home that Sunday. At least that is what I remember when I try to recall the whole thing the way it was told to me. I admit that there are some discrepancies about the entire thing when I think about it too carefully. But that is beside the point. The way I remember it, Pedro stayed home that Sunday morning because he had announced he was sick and kept coughing whenever his mother was nearby. Rosa Blanco supposedly told him to stay in bed, drink lots of water, and to say some prayers. But when Carlitos and his mother got home, Pedro was not there. He showed up an hour or so later with a story of how he had prayed and then felt better within a half an hour. All that Rosa Blanco said in response was “God is powerful,” before retreating to the kitchen.

  “That one stupid white boy that lives at the end of the block gave me four cigarettes. We should go smoke under the house.”

  “I don’t feel like it.”

  “Bitch, you such a baby.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t tell me, ‘yeah.’ Just come down there with me.”

  Carlitos went down into the crawl space with Pedro. He always expected to find a demon down there or, at a minimum, a large rat. He hated that space, but he found it more and more difficult to disobey his brother. He didn’t plan on smoking but went just so his brother didn’t have to go down there alone. Of course he ended up smoking a cigarette. And, of course, they ended up playing phone call. And again, Carlitos let his father’s name slip.

  “Shit, man. You don’t understand this game. You keep forgetting the rules.”

  “I’m sorry, Pedro. I didn’t mean to . ..”

  “You never gonna do that again.”

  “I really didn’t mean to ...”

  “I don’t fucking care!”

  Once again, their mother’s voice could be heard calling their names. Her voice was strained and sad, almost close to breaking. And again, as she had done many times over the previous weeks, she was calling them to prune the tree in the front yard. They dropped the cans. They crawled out from under the house, the smell of cigarette smoke in their clothes, their hair, the smoke itself still winding its way out from under the house through the lattice-work that wrapped around the underside of the porch. Pedro and Carlitos had no idea what kind of tree it was standing in their front yard, just that it was the biggest tree they had and that it was “a mess.” It wasn’t even very big, just slightly taller than Pedro, but it was still the largest tree in the yard.

  Carlitos called it a eucalyptus tree, but neither of them really knew if it was or not. Carlitos had seen the name “eucalyptus” in a book at school. Months later, he had seen an article in the newspaper about how the eucalyptus trees were dying off, how they had killed off much of the natural vegetation in the areas they were planted, their leaves making the soil around them acidic and poisonous to most plants. Very little grew in the front yard, so Carlitos took this as proof the tree was a eucalyptus. The article seemed to be rejoicing in the fact these trees were slowly disappearing from the California flora. But the only Flora that Carlitos knew was the old woman down the street who swept her front steps every afternoon, usually at 2:00 p.m. It was always hotter than hell at that time of day. Crazy old whore, Pedro called her, among other things.

  The small tree, without even a remote idea of shape, thrust its finger-like, thin branches in all different directions, but it was not a eucalyptus tree. That much I know. That much I can tell you. At times, that stunted tree surprised itself with a shock of small blood-red flowers. At other times, the telltale elongated pods filled with seeds hung from it. It had no business being in southern California. It made its way there, like so many other things, because of the Spaniards. And its inability to grow as large as the ones found elsewhere in the world was likely a result of the terrible soil in the area. To be honest, I have never seen one in that part of the world. It was most definitely not a eucalyptus tree. It was a royal poinciana, the same one called the Flamboyant Tree by the Conquistadores, what we in the islands called the shak shak tree.

  Pedro had pruned it before, but Carlitos had been too young to help then. Carlitos was worried about what to do, worried he might cut too much of the tree back and then end up killing it. He remembered hearing one of the men who worked in the fields talk about this, how sometimes los gringos pruned trees so much they just died. When Carlitos told Pedro this, he laughed and said something about white people being stupid. Pedro handed Carlitos the large instrument that looked like giant thickened scissors and laughed: “You Mexican too, boy.” Carlitos started cutting the straggly branches. They snapped with each click of the instrument locking. It not only looked like scissors but worked like scissors as well. Pedro was singing something about shooting gringos. The song made no sense to Carlitos, but the clicking as he snapped the straggly branches set up a kind of drumbeat for Pedro. Carlitos could see Flora out on her front step staring at them. But she wouldn’t come out onto the sidewalk or her driveway. It was too late in the day for that. It was shadow time, the light throwing lines across the yards, the sun within an hour or so of setting.

  “It’s been more than three years now.”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “He’s never coming back, is he?”

  “That man dead. He as dead as deadly.”

  “But suppose he’s not dead.”

  “So? Suppose he’s not. What does it matter?”

  “Then he might come back.”

  “Bitch, he never coming home. ¡Él ha desaparecido!”

  Carlitos stopped the trimming and stood there with a blank look on his face. He had never heard Pedro speak Spanish to him in this way. Pedro had never used more than, say, a single word for emphasis: vato, puta, mierda, cabrón. He used them as a kind of punctuation at the end of sentences, sentences usually addressing Carlitos or the stupid gringo boy at the end of the street. But an entire sentence? In Spanish? He had never heard such a thing from his brother. And why he understood it, not just what the words meant but what they really meant, was unexplainable even to his own mind.

  Carlitos cut the largest branch last. He held it in his hand. He felt the weight of it. He looked at Pedro. He looked at the back of Pedro’s head. Carlitos gripped the branch. Desaparecido. The word was lodged in his head. He gripped the branch. He gripped it tighter, felt the bark pressing into the lines of his palm. A splinter of the bark pierced his skin. But he didn’t let go. He gripped it with his left hand, the one the old nun at the grade school called “sinister.” Desaparecido. He gripped it until tears welled in his eyes. There was the viscous sensation of blood in his palm and the sun, now setting, heating his face. There was his brother’s neck, the back of it, brown and dirty, dirty and terrible. He gripped the branch. He gripped it as his hands went numb an
d his feet went numb. Desaparecido. He felt the weight of it. The branch, in his hand, was like a switch. He lifted his arm. He stared at Pedro’s dirty neck. He felt the blood in his palm, felt it sticky against the branch, and the branch was like a switch. As he stared at the back of Pedro’s neck, he wondered how many prayers he would have to say as penance for intentionally striking his brother. The branch was like a switch. It came down with incredible force.

  VI. Between Men

  You never know you want to live until someone tells you that you will die. For four years, Leenck had worked from home processing accounts for an investment firm. Leenck was, suffice it to say, painfully aware that he was dying. He had already gone to the bank and withdrawn all of his savings: at the counter waiting for this manager or that supervisor to sign this or that form, the teller had looked at him that morning as if she, too, knew he was dying. It was as if everyone stared at him. When Leenck arrived at his home, he telephoned his lawyer and told him to find a house for him to rent in Santa Monica, a small house near the beach, a house where no one would notice him. And within a few days, Leenck packed some of his clothes in a duffle bag and drove to the new place. It was that simple. He had no family in the U.S. His family had written him off for dead ages ago. He had no one who would notice him missing. His coworkers didn’t even know what he looked like.

  Leenck had no intention of getting to know Santa Monica. What he knew of it he knew by driving through it on his way to the new house, described in the real estate ad as a charming bungalow. It is always amazing the lies these ads can tell. One bedroom and one bathroom, a living room, a small kitchen, a patio and a strangely large yard, and still the new place seemed enormous to him, larger than he felt he deserved. The house came partially furnished. It had no table and chairs in the kitchen, and there was no dining area. The same linoleum covered the floors in both the kitchen and the living room. It was yellow, though it was easy to tell it had once been off-white. If one wanted to eat, such a thing would have to be done standing in the kitchen or sitting on the couch with the coffee table functioning as dining table. But there was a bed, a couch, said coffee table, and a plastic lounge chair in the backyard. There were overhead lights but no lamps, and Leenck had no intention of remedying that fact.

  The beach was exactly an eight-minute walk away. And despite wanting to stay locked up inside the house, Leenck found himself walking down to the beach twice a day. It became a habit for him, a kind of pilgrimage. It was always the same. He would walk down his street, make a left-hand turn, and walk over the pedestrian bridge to the beach. Sometimes, he would walk on the pier, but mostly he just walked or stood on the sand.

  Orange juice and sparkling wine: what more could one desire for breakfast? Each morning, Leenck drank a cup of instant coffee and then filled a tumbler with ice followed by a quarter glass of orange juice and the remaining three quarters of the glass with sparkling wine. The walk to the beach then followed. On some days, he would even forego the coffee. There were times when he would stay at the beach for hours. On other occasions, he would walk around for fifteen minutes and then walk home. He saw some of the same people at the beach almost daily. There was the old man who always wore pastel blues and pinks and sat on the rotting bench eating a bagel each morning. He was a man of few expressions. There was glum and glummer with only a mild change in his face as he ate the bagel. And there was the Chinese woman who did stretches and quick jabbing movements with her hands, jabbing at the air as if at birds only she could see, birds attacking her. There was the homeless man who wandered aimlessly muttering something about cats and cleanliness. There was the young woman briskly walking her small dog, a dog that always appeared better groomed than she did, at least four pink or red ribbons in its fur as if the mane on its head were in fact a hairstyle. The sun would be far behind them all, on the other side of the city. There would be light in the sky, but no sun. The sand would be a filthy grey dotted with trash, but at least the trash changed daily. The ocean would be there with its insistent noise and smell. At least there was this one constant. Leenck knew what he would find at the beach. He knew what each day brought. And each morning, on his walk, he wondered if his final day had come, if that very day was the one.

  Some people, when faced with death, find themselves possessed with an undeniable urge to do things, to do everything they had ever wanted to do but had never found the time. They travel to distant lands. They jump off of bridges into murky water. They rappel down cliffs, fly in helicopters, dive in shark-infested waters, venture out on walking safaris in the bush hoping to hear the lion’s unmistakable grumbling roar. They live and live dangerously because they know they are about to die. But Leenck was not one of those people. Honestly, neither am I. Leenck wanted to die privately. He was absolutely certain about this. He wanted to die alone. He wanted to disappear the way an actor playing the Buddha might in an old movie. It has taken me a long time, but I actually admire this about Leenck when I think of him now. But back then, I did not understand any of it.

  “Hey man. You okay?” I said to Leenck. I could tell he had almost no idea what I had said to him. He turned around and stared at me with that odd expression on his face to which I would, over time, become quite accustomed. “I’ve seen you out here before. Man, you almost walked into that garbage can.”

  “Oh. Sorry. I was just thinking. Sorry.”

  “No problem, man. I do that sometimes, too. I’m Diego. Diego.”

  “Hi Diego, Diego.”

  Leenck was always amazed at the way Americans could just strike up conversations, how they always seemed to want to talk. Leenck believed that silence bothered Americans. And yet, I was the first person who had spoken to him at the beach. Leenck mumbled a few more things and said he had to get going. On the way home, Leenck must have wondered why I had talked to him. Later, he told me how once home, he had gone out on the patio, sat in his single lounge chair and fallen asleep. When he woke up, it was already late afternoon, time to return to the beach. On the walk to the beach then, Leenck noticed the creamsicle-colored blooms of the hibiscus in various yards. He wondered why anyone would plant such hideous plants with their gaudy display intermittently disturbing the hedges. He could hear the crackling of the telephone wires overhead once he made the turn toward the beach, knew that the humidity must have been fairly high that afternoon. Slowly, he found himself filled with anxiety that I would still be there at the beach. He was worried that maybe even someone else might talk to him. And so he stopped, turned around, and walked back to the house. Do I trust the story? Do I trust the way he recalled things? Not really. You know I don’t trust the way many of these things are recalled. But memory is always like this. I don’t pretend it can be any other way. I stopped pretending a long time ago.

  *

  “When did the pain start? What did you first notice?”

  “I fell off of my bike a few weeks ago, and ever since then I have been sore.”

  “Where are you sore?”

  “Here.” Leenck pointed to his left side just where he felt the last of his rib bones, just under the skin.

  “Did you take anything for it?”

  “I took some Advil, some ibuprofen, and it helped a little. But I think I may have broken a rib.”

  “Well, we will take a look. But this doesn’t sound like a broken rib. Sounds as if you bruised a muscle there.” The doctor emphasized the word “bruised” as if Leenck might not have noticed the word otherwise. The doctor had a way of emphasizing words that made Leenck feel as if the doctor believed he were a complete idiot.

  Leenck did not like doctors. In the old country, in the town where he grew up, there were no doctors. There was the old woman who was the teacher. She knew how to help people. She would touch you and tell you things about what hurt you. But these American doctors, they barely ever touched you. And when they did, they wore gloves as if they were handling raw meat. Doctor Peterson was probably a nice man, but to Leenck he was distant and calculating. He s
aid little besides asking his various questions and, honestly, Leenck had only seen him once or twice. Despite his distrust, Leenck always did what the doctor said. He took the pills three times a day. Even when they made him feel sick to his stomach, he took them. He tried taking them with milk or when he ate something, but it didn’t really help. Nothing he did to make taking the pills more bearable worked. He took the pills for two weeks, and they didn’t help in the slightest. They only gave him a dry mouth and a sometimes-dizzy feeling in his head, as if he had had one too many drinks.

  When Leenck returned to the clinic, the doctor seemed surprised that the pills hadn’t worked. He sent Leenck for a CT Scan. Leenck sat in the waiting room outside the radiology department. And then he sat in a smaller waiting room inside. And then a nurse took him into the room with the giant donut-shaped scanner, placed a needle in his arm and had him lie down on the table, the room smelling a little like burning rubber. Above his head, he could see a red light on the top of the large ring that encircled the table. The table inched though the ring and then slid back out, the light sometimes green and sometimes red. And then, he felt the liquid tingle rushing through the needle and into his arm, and then he felt the table inching through the giant donut a little more. Ten minutes later, a young man told Leenck his spleen was very large and that he needed to call Doctor Peterson immediately.

  For Leenck, that was not the beginning but the end. He called Doctor Peterson. He did more tests, had blood drawn, suffered through seeing a woman doctor, an oncologist, who rammed a large bore needle into his hip and pulled bloody fluid out into a syringe. He was warned of the pain but felt nothing. He was thirty-six years old, and he was dying. This is all he could remember about the woman doctor. Most of the time, he couldn’t even remember her name.

  *

  Leenck hated the grocery store. There were just too many people darting around grabbing things and throwing them in carts: too many people talking to themselves about what they needed to pick up, how many, what size, etc. It irritated him to see people like this. It irritated him when people spoke to themselves out loud. He felt it was a weakness of some type, an indication of a feeble mind. He wanted to order groceries and have them delivered, but that would have meant having to set up phone service. And this was unthinkable to Leenck. Phone service, connection: what was the point? But he needed orange juice and more sparkling wine. He knew exactly where they were in the grocery store. He bought the most expensive orange juice and the least expensive sparkling wine. As Leenck walked down the aisle toward the produce section where the more expensive orange juices were shelved in a refrigerator, he saw me. Leenck knew that I also saw him, and you could practically see the gears turning in his head, see him thinking about how he might turn without making an incident. But it was too late. And I was quite intent on talking to him.