The World in Pancho's Eye - J P S Brown

by J P S Brown

  He hung out on the football field so faithfully that the Horsemen made Becerro their mascot. He kicked with the punters and fieldgoal kickers, passed with the passers, centered with the centers, tackled with the linemen, and ran laps before and after practice. He could think of nothing but football and the big game that was the reason and goal of the season, the most important goal of the whole school year: the defeat on Thanksgiving Day by the Horsemen of the Santa Fe High School Demons.

  Athletics became Mikey's passion. He performed adequately as a student, but that was only a duty to fulfill. Athletics brought out a bloom in a boy like Mikey who loved adventure, contact, exertion, and competition. He could find no end to the athletic trials that were available to him at St. Mike's. He caught on quickly, improved fast, and excelled in everything from kick the can to boxing.

  As he excelled, he made enemies. Because they were part of the busy community of Saint Michael's, only he and they were ever aware of the enmity. Not the Brothers, not his classmates, not even his best friends knew the enmity that boiled between Mikey and three other boys in his class.

  The enemies were three day-scholar bullies in his class who lived in a section of Santa Fe called La Canada and bragged about being members of the Canada Street Gang. One was a freckle-faced, redheaded boy named Jimmy Rojas. The other two, Skinny and Porky Franklin, were first cousins. The three had been companions since babyhood.

  They tried to bully Mikey by acting as though they owned him after the first time he played in an organized tackle football game. He caught the ball on the kickoff and ran it all the way back for a touchdown and made them jealous. As he ran he saw Rojas and the Franklins drop softly to the ground one by one and cover their heads with their arms to protect themselves before anyone hurt them.

  As long as Mikey played football with the three Canada bullies he never saw one of them make a clean, hard block or a brave tackle, but they were always nearby to criticize Mikey if he tried one and missed. Usually, when Mikey hit somebody, he became airborne and there was no doubt about who had made he tackle. The only time he ever saw the Canada Gang go in for a tackle was after somebody else hit the runner and stopped him and gave them a chance to pile on from behind.

  The bullying began after that first game. The three smiled a lot in Mikey's face and patted him on the back. At first they invited him to hang around with them at recess, then they demanded that he meet them at recess. If he did not show up, they demanded to know where he had been. To stay away from them was to grant them an opportunity to backbite him to his classmates.

  As a nine-year-old seven hundred miles away from his folks, he was vulnerable in a lot of ways, but he was sure the football field was not one of them. There did not seem to be any dark corners where cowards could hide on the athletic fields of Saint Michael's, but Mikey found out there were plenty of mean political corners everywhere else in that society.

  ELEVEN

  THE STAKES

  A cattleman sits in a poker game with God to serve Him. God has unlimited stakes and has dealt himself all the winning cards. The man's stakes are the land and livestock he has worked to obtain. The man is dealt cards that are the sum of the talents he needs to win enough prosperity for his livestock so that he can stay in the game for another hand. God's hand is always flush with drought, disease, accidental catastrophe, and the wild dispositions of animals and men. The man cannot hope to win temporal prosperity without end; he can only hope to stay in the game for the love of the game and of God. If the man loses too many hands in a row, God takes his land and livestock and the man is left with nothing more to ante, so he goes away with his heart broken to find something else that God might want him to do.

  At first Mikey liked all the Brothers who taught at Saint Michael's. The look of cowmen was in their eyes. As the school year progressed, he learned to dislike some of them, but the ones he met that first night always remained his favorites.

  Some of the Brothers showed their anger more than others. Brother Louis put up with a lot of mischief and rowdiness from the Little Boys. A flare of anger reddened his face from time to time and Mikey knew he was angriest when his nostrils pinched in and turned white. He recovered from anger quickly and never held a grudge. He always knew what a boy needed. He made it his most important business to know every boy's aspirations. He found out that Mikey was born on August twenty-fifth, the feast day of Saint Louis King of France, the saint whose name he assumed when he became a Brother. When Mikey felt low in his first days at Saint Michael's, Brother Louis cheered him with examples of Saint Louis's fortitude. When he ran out of Saint Louis stories, he bolstered Mikey with stories about Saint Michael the Archangel and the sinful life of blustery old Saint Paul. Brother Louis was a bolsterer. He knew boys would always have reasons for gloom, but gloom must be put down and did not deserve discussion.

  The Brothers would not tell the boys anything about themselves. They did not have personal lives. Asked what they wanted from life, they answered, "For you to learn everything you need to be a good man." They all had taken aliases when they joined the order of the Christian Brothers of Saint John Baptist de la Salle. They called themselves "the religious" because they were members of a religious teaching order of the Catholic Church.

  Brother Louis told Mikey that when the Brothers joined the order they gave away their identities and birthrights. They would not tell the boys their family names, no matter how the boys pleaded, cajoled, or kidded them. The boys kidded them a lot, because they liked them and the Brothers liked it. The Brothers kept straight faces, took the cajoling, remained reserved, and never gave back more than a twinkle in their eyes, which was all the boys looked for.

  Brother Prosper was in charge of the infirmary and became angry at boys who malingered. If a boy showed up at the infirmary with a complaint, he had better be telling the truth. If he was faking, Brother Prosper put him straight back out into the breeze. The boys did learn something about Brother Prosper's former life. At a meeting soon after all the boys arrived for the school year, Brother Louis told them that nobody had better get caught stealing from the lockers or fake an illness to get out of classes because Brother Prosper had served as a medical corpsman in the French Foreign Legion. No thief alive could fool him and a faker was a fool to lie to him.

  The Brothers' reserve did not hide their affection for the boys. In fact, they had to care a lot for the boys. They did not have any other reason to be there, as they were not paid. None of them believed they were guaranteed to go to heaven. They admitted it. Yet, to care for every need of all those boys required the patience, generosity and fortitude of the saints. Their reserve was one of their defenses, but their candor also often saved them. Anytime one of those big men admitted in one way or another that he was not perfect and not sure he would get to heaven, it made a boy think better of him. Even the most rowdy boys soon approved of the Brothers as friends. Too many youngster feelings were hurt every day too many reckless kids were bruised and bloodied on the playground. The Brothers were everywhere. They could not let any one boy's problems bog them down, but they could make moving targets that any boy could find.

  The boys always managed to revive and recuperate from heartbreak, physical harm, humiliation, and other drastic afflictions of boarding school. To help them recover from the tragedies of the day the Brothers simply found work and other activities that kept them busy long enough for nature to heal them. Midway through the first semester Brother Damian replaced Brother Louis as prefect of the Little Boys. Brother Louis became prefect of the Big Boys for a while and then was made special assistant to Brother Benildus.

  Brother Damian did not have the look of the husbandman in his eyes. He was an overseer. He was tall and portly, narrow of shoulder, broad of beam, and ponderous in his every movement except in his long, delicate, white hands. He took over Brother Louis's alcove in Mikey's dormitory and spent his nights there. Though always reserved, the other Brothers' eyes showed kind regard for the boys. Brother Damian's r
eserve was heads-up and haughty and he never looked a boy in the eye.

  When the senior prefect blew his whistle at 6 AM Brother Damian turned on the lights in the dormitory and led the boys in prayer as they fell out of bed onto their knees. Brother Louis had awakened the boys good-naturedly and even helped the littlest boys dress. Mikey was one of the littlest boys and he could dress himself, but he appreciated it when Brother Louis helped the two boys who were smaller than he. Brother Louis's voice was high pitched and raucous and he scolded and taunted the boys goodnaturedly to help them get started. All his boys filed out of the dormitory in a good mood and ready to go to work.

  Brother Damian's voice purred the morning prayer, but he might as well have been saying, "I love to see your little bodies scramble at the sound of me, no matter how nicely I purr. I will make life miserable for you while I purr to you. What do you think I will do if you make me raise my voice?" The sound and sight of him made Mikey feel like a complete orphan.

  Mikey knew what it was to have control of herds of cattle and horses, so he knew how a voice inflection, a gesture, or a look could move an individual in a well-broken herd if the herder wanted his status to change. A good husbandman accustomed his herd to his subtle signals and he controlled it with as few threats and as little force as possible.

  Brother Damian purred, but Mikey could tell by the look in his eye that he did not know kindness. That scared Mikey into trying to stay out of his way, but the man was always too close, always hovering too big and near the Little Boys. The worst part was that most of the time he was the only grown-up to whom a boy could turn with a problem.

  One way that he exerted power was to call a boy out of a group at play or study hall to purr a disciplinary admonition into his ear. He especially liked to do it when he knew another Brother was watching. Brother Benildus would walk by a group of Little Boys on the playground and Brother Damian would call a boy out and purr in his ear whether he had done anything wrong or not. Every Little Boy came to attention when he spoke to them in the same way milk pen calves pay attention to the milkman who steals their mothers' milk. The hungry milk pen calf watches the milkman for the moment he will be released from his pen for breakfast at his mama's titties. The boys were more comfortable when they could work and play in the close safety of their herd of boys and Brother Damian used that to control them. They did not like to be called singly away from the herd. They did not go to Brother Damian happily because they knew he was not their friend and did not care about their welfare.

  If Brother Louis and Brother Benildus wanted to speak to a boy, they walked in and separated him from the bunch in a way that did not intimidate him. The boys trusted them as big friends in a community of big and little brothers.

  Brother Damian was intimidating even when he was not disciplining the boys. He could not just hand Mikey his allowance and be done with him. He had to put his hand on the back of Mikey's neck or around his waist and play keep-away with the quarter for a while before he gave it up. He could not hand Mikey his quarter at arm's length in a decent, manly way. Mikey felt that if a boy had his pay coming, the man should hand it over the instant he came within reach to get it.

  Brother Damian tried to harm Mikey in a sinful way. Halfway through football season when Mikey was in a glory of activity, Brother Damian stopped by his bed in the middle of the night and reached under his covers inside his pajamas to fondle his tallywagger round and round. When Mikey opened his eyes he was under the great, black hulk of a man that blocked the light from the golden bulb of the ceiling nightlight. When Mikey realized what Brother Damian was doing, he scooted down out of his reach and the hand retreated.

  Later, Mikey tried to think of a reason the man needed to do a thing like that. During the fondling, his tallywagger had not tallied even one wag of its own. It just rolled with the wagging and took it until Mikey realized what was happening and fled to the bottom of his bed.

  Mikey did not even know the word "pervert," but he was canny enough to figure the man had done wrong. He hoped Damian was the only Brother who did things like that. Mikey did not know what to do about Damian. He sure did not want to be fondled again. He only knew the fondling was not good like a caress on the ear by his daddy. His daddy had not caressed him anywhere on his entire carcass more than five times in his whole life and never, never reached for his tallywagger. His Nina gave him a lot of curicias, caresses, but not on the tallywagger. His mom offered big kisses when she felt like it without other hugs or touching, and his Granny offered little dry kisses and light pats only. His Uncle Buster liked to rub his back under his shirt with an old, hard hand when he asked Mikey to give him a report on his adventures. Mikey knew few caresses from his women and fewer from his daddy and uncles. He had always found it difficult to hold still long enough for that kind of foolishness, anyway.

  He knew Brother Damian's fumblings were not caresses by someone who loved him. "Thank God," Mikey thought, "he did not try to kiss me." Then he began to wake Mikey up with his hand inside his pajamas almost every night. All Mikey had to do was scoot down to the bottom of his bed and Brother Damian would give up and go away. He could not arouse Mikey. Loathsome assaults by huge specters in the dormitory dark scared the peewadding out of Mikey. The man was spooky enough in the daylight as he hovered about with his pasty face and hands and black skullcap and robe. At night in the dormitory, the white split bib of his collar and his pasty face and hands were all Mikey could see of him. The head floated in the darkness. When he stopped at Mikey's bed, the white hands fluttered nervously at his bedclothes a moment before the boy could wake up and escape to the foot of the bed. Mikey could only lie awake for so long. He always went to sleep while he watched for the black shadow of Brother Damian to turn away from his patrol on the center carpet and go to his own bed. Mikey learned to sleep with one eye open so he could awaken as the man's hands settled toward him like big, white moths.

  What the man did accomplish after a while was to cause Mikey to wet the bed every night. The peeing made the monster quit fooling around because Mikey's bed smelled like a skunk, and the boy stank like stale urine all the time except on Wednesdays and Saturdays when the Little Boys took their showers.

  Stinking like pee all the time changed Mikey's status on the campus, but it did not make him miserable, afraid, or ashamed. He slept well and sometimes did not even wake up when he peed the

  bed. Every morning after Mass he hung his bedclothes and mattress outside so all the world could read the map of his battleground. Every night his bedding was fresh again when he brought it in, but it stunk again as soon as he climbed in and warmed it up. The boys were allowed to change their sheets and pillowcases every two weeks, but the legend of the Damian war was etched on his mattress forever.

  Because Mikey was afraid of Damian and because the man was afraid of having his sin discovered, he had little to do with Mikey in the daylight. The closest he came to touching Mikey after he began to stink like pee was on Saturday when he stuck his hand way out from his body and dropped the quarter allowance into Mikey's hand.

  Mikey's wetting the bed brought him a lot of conversation and communication of a kind he did not want with the other members of the community, but he did not know how to stop it. After all, he was not the only Little Boy who wet the bed. Little Forbes from Nogales was another one.

  Damian presided over the Little Boys' study hall by sitting at a big desk on a raised platform in front of the boys. When a boy raised his hand for help with homework, he was told to come up close and whisper his problem so as not to disturb the other boys. His custom was to reach under a boy's shirt and massage his back while he helped solve a problem. The other Brothers who were not perverts also massaged the boy's backs and necks from time to time. Uncle Buster did that, so Mikey did not worry about Damian until after he turned into a pervert. Before Damian showed his unnatural tendencies, Mikey had put up with the massage because he was little, it was not unpleasant, and he needed answers for his studies. He we
nt up to the man because he needed his help and having his back rubbed was better than being stupid the next day in class.

  Then one evening Damian was helping Forbes in study hall with his hand under his shirt when Ignacio and Carlos Enriquez looked in the door to wave at Manuel. When they saw what Damian was doing they gave him such a wild, passionately savage, mean Mexican look that he snatched his hand out from under Forbes's shirt as though he had grabbed a buzz saw.

  After that the Enriquezes spent more time with Manuel and Mikey. Mikey was now not only called El Becerro; he was also called Summers Valdez. He could not only be Summers, a gringo, so he was given a Mexican name.

  Mikey quit going to Damian for help after Damian let it be known in front of everyone in study hall that he could not stand Mikey's bad smell. Mikey already had a whole corner of the room to himself. He did not mind being a stink. He was darned afraid of Damian's purring ways and fluttering moth hands and was glad to stay away from him. Brother Louis did not mind helping him, and he was Mikey's fourth grade homeroom teacher. Brother Louis did not seem to notice how bad he smelled. That was odd, because even Mikey could not stand his stink in a closed room. About a week after the Enriquezes gave Damian the dirty looks, he was transferred away from Saint Michael's. The expulsion happened so quietly, no one knew he was leaving until he was gone. One morning he was there to awaken the boys and usher them to wash hall, Mass, and classes, and that evening Brother Louis presided over the Little Boys' study hall. The Brothers offered no information about his leaving and nobody asked about him. Mikey forgot about him immediately and probably would never have given him another thought, except one day the Enriquez brothers said that they had helped Damian carry his satchel downtown to the La Fonda station wagon. After that, Mikey quit wetting the bed.

  Six weeks later Damian returned to the school and was assigned as assistant to Brother George in the manual training shop. He helped teach shop, carpentry, and other manual arts and crafts. The recreation room shared space with the shop. The punching bags, the weights, and the Ping-Pong and pool tables were in the same big room with the planers and squares and stacks of lumber.