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

by J P S Brown

  Forbes traveled to Lamy with Mikey in the La Fonda station wagon to board the train. Mikey helped him on the train with his big suitcase and looked after him. Forbes's father would meet him in Phoenix and Frankie Cunningham would meet Mikey and drive him to Nogales.

  On the train Mikey fell into a conversation with a rancher from Las Vegas, New Mexico, named Albert Mitchell who knew Viv O'Brien and the Sorrellses. They talked about ranches, rain, cattle, and horses, but when Mikey asked the man if he knew Paul Summers, he said he did not. The boy was disappointed. He thought that everybody who knew his uncles knew Paul. His uncles' reputations had all been made in company with Paul. Mikey suspected that Mr. Mitchell knew his dad, but did not want to talk about him. Some people hated drunkards worse than any other kind of sinner, and cattlemen like Mr. Mitchell did not allow themselves to talk about people whose habits were bad, so they just would not admit that they knew them.

  That day the man was worried about more than acquaintances who drank too much. He had shipped two thousand weaner calves to irrigated pasture near Phoenix by rail that morning. He would arrive only a few hours ahead of them. He said the calves and their mothers had spent a summer with no rain, and the calves were a hundred pounds too light to sell. He hoped they would bloom on good alfalfa and barley pasture near Phoenix.

  "That's always the story, isn't it, Mr. Mitchell," Mikey said. "Everything might have been all right if you could have had one more rain. We always need just one more rain."

  "Aw, youngster, it's a darned poker game and the cards we're dealt and the stakes we gamble are never enough," Mr. Mitchell said. "All we do is try to stay in the game from one year to the next."

  Later, Mr. Mitchell said that he had been up since two thirty that morning and laid his head back and closed his eyes. Mikey turned toward the window to think. He thought about Viv and vowed to be good to him. Ever since he told Viv that he could not be his dad, their friendship had been strained. Mikey worried about that a lot. If he had only used a little of Paul Summers's blarney, only enough to grin at Viv and say, "Heck yes, you can be my pappy and I'll be your kid," even if he did not mean it, their friendship would have grown. Mikey still worshipped Paul Summers but did not have much hope that he would ever see much of him anymore. He was able to be with Paul less than anyone else he loved. He wanted to have a great friendship with Viv and he knew that if he did not watch out, he would lose him too.

  Mikey was confident that Viv O'Brien wanted him to cowboy and he would be used as a cowboy no matter what other training he was given. He felt lucky and grateful to Viv for that. The way he looked at it, he might not be raised by the best cowboy in the world, but he would be raised by one of the best cattleman in the country who was admired by other cattlemen like Albert Mitchell and he would never be denied the chance to pursue his rightful calling. When Mikey and Forbes got off the train, Forbes's Anglo father was waiting on the platform. He walked right past Mikey picked up Forbes's suitcase, and headed for his automobile. Then Mikey saw Frankie Cunningham smile and wave at him from down the platform. Mr. Mitchell stopped to say hello to Frankie and told her he and Herb planned to meet at the Adams Hotel in Phoenix the day after New Year's.

  The drive to Nogales with Frankie was a long trek for Mikey because he wanted his house to be around every curve of the road. He and Frankie would ordinarily have laughed and talked all the way, but he was anxious to be home and that was all he wanted to think about. He sat up with his nose against the windshield when Frankie finally turned into his yard.

  Baxter came around the back of the house, saw Mikey's face, wagged his tail, and gave a joyous bark. The whole yard came to life. Mikey's heart jumped and then his mom came in sight, then Bica, Maudy Marie, and Granny. Mikey squeaked with pleasure. Then the Horrells' skinny, cranky Popie dog crossed in front of Frankie's car, intent on harming Baxter while his attention was on Mikey. Baxter was unaware of him. Popie pranced with stiff legs up behind Baxter.

  Baxter smiled and barked and wagged his tail in a blur for Mikey. Mikey shrilled Baxter's name with the greatest joy he had known in a long, long time and right then Popie charged and nipped Baxter. Baxter was so surprised, he tucked his tail and darted aside, looked back at Popie, disappeared under Frankie's car, and screamed.

  "Oh, Lord, Mikey, I killed your dog," Frankie cried.

  Mikey had not heard the thump that usually happened when he was in a car that ran over an animal. He jumped out and ran back to his little dog. Nothing was left of Baxter except a small patch of mangled hair. His white coat was recognizable, but it was stained with the car's black grease. Leonard Wingo from next door, who never came over to Mikey's house, appeared, picked Baxter up with a shovel, and buried him at the foot of the hill behind the house.

  Baxter's terrible death at the very instant that he and Mikey recognized each other and his being carried away as a mangled mass at the end of a shovel the next instant broke Mikey's heart. His grief warped the shape and sound of every object and every person in his world. He cried with the most terrible sorrow that he would ever know and he did not want to stop. He stumbled into the house ahead of Maggie as she and Frankie talked about the trip and he did not know how he would keep his feet moving from one step to the next. He stopped when he bumped into a corner of the front room by the picture window. He faced the world and his elderberry tree and cried. His front yard and trees, the highway, railroad tracks, and arroyo were there in front of him again. He had longed for them during his months away without knowing it, but he did not care about them now and did not want to stop crying.

  Maggie and Frankie came in to sit and talk and Maggie ordered him to stop. He could not even attempt it. After a while, she ordered him to stop again and he tried and got scared that he might not ever be able to stop. After her third and most stern order to stop, he was able to curb his crying enough to satisfy her, but he could not leave the corner by the window.

  Baxter had always been careful not to go out onto the highway where he could be run over. It took the very car he most wanted to see, at the most joyous moment of his reunion with his oldest, closest friend, to kill him in his own driveway. Mikey believed that nothing in the world could have hurt him more than the way he lost Baxter that day. He was never cured of his grief for Baxter. He would be stricken with that grief until the day he died.

  TWELVE

  COMEBACK

  The Mexican vaquero says, if during a difficult journey you want to know if your horse is finished, dismount and pull his tail. If he resists, you can count on him to go on.

  Mikey did not look up to face the world until spring. He had not known a victory for so long that he walked around school with his gaze on his feet. Before Saint Michael's he had set his own goals and realized personal victories. At Saint Michael's he did not seem to have time for personal goals, but he won small victories with his team in football, in other games, and in class. He had seen Brother Damian's perversity beaten but felt no sense of personal victory in the man's downfall.

  He had returned to Saint Michael's after Christmas a ruined boy who believed that he would never recover. He had not been well, either. When he did not have a bad sore throat, a boil erupted somewhere on his carcass.

  Then, on Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, he looked up and did not have a boil or a sore throat. His feet were dry, his keys were all in his pocket, his clothes were folded and clean in his locker, his bedclothes smelled good, he knew how to keep his schedule without being prodded, his books were all in his desk and he was in possession of enough pens, pencils, paper, and ink to finish out the year. All of a sudden he felt personally victorious, not the kind he knew after a stunt or a touchdown, but the kind that was won by perseverance, modesty, and courage inside a community effort.

  The whole school fasted and abstained during the forty days of Lent. The boarders did not go to the movies. Saturdays were spent on all-day hikes. The boarders carried an orange apiece and hiked to Little Tesuque or Sun Mountain and returned to supp
er on empty, or as Cabezon and Paul would have said, they "went all day on one Gillette." Friday afternoons after class and before supper were spent in celebration of the Way of the Cross. Mikey's downtrodden mood had been well suited to forty days and forty nights of Lenten sacrifice. He was ready to deprive himself of his comforts as gifts to God because he did not see any other good reason for them and the Brothers taught that it might be appreciated. Now that he felt victorious, he could be magnanimous by giving all his downtroddenness to God.

  His sense of well-being was short lived because that Ash Wednesday morning during class the La Canada bullies decided to make a target of Mikey. He looked up from his desk and Skinny, the one he thought of as The Skull, made a fist at him from across the room. Skinny, Porky, and Rojas sat in the last three seats in the corner by the door. The other two turned their faces toward Mikey when Skinny made the fist. Then Porky made a fist at him and Rojas laughed. Rojas's seat was the last in the row. All three could mug at Mikey's side of the room without being seen by Brother Louis. To make a fist at another kid at Saint Michael's was an invitation to Fist City. The bullies made fists at smaller, gentler kids to show that they intended to beat them up. Mikey figured the Canada kids must have decided not to make Lenten sacrifice themselves. Instead they would make Mikey bleed for Christ.

  Mikey decided to call them on it. He was through with being tormented. Their constant enmity bothered him as much as the boils and sore throats. He at least could defend himself against these three pus heads. They were not on the back of his neck; they were in a place where he could reach them and squeeze. This might be a good way to clean out all the poisons that bothered his system. He had suffered the torment of Job since he left home. The three sneaks would have been in absolute glory if they had known about Baxter and Mikey's sore throats. They enjoyed it plenty when they could see he had a boil. Today he did not suffer from even one affliction and felt altogether sound and whole for a fight. He reminded himself of the advice Maggie gave him the first time he came home after a confrontation with a bully at Lincoln School.

  "Listen, Mikey" she said, "when somebody tries to bully you, just punch him on the end of the nose the way you did old Panfilo. He might be bigger than you and he might think he's meaner, but you be just as mean as you want to be and at least give him his money's worth. A Sunday punch on the end of a bully's nose will probably give him all the trouble he'll ever want from you."

  So Mikey vowed to give the bullies their money's worth. When the buzzer sounded for recess he headed straight for them. They stood up, smirked at one another, and huddled beside the door to let him pass. He stopped and made them shuffle out ahead of him. In the hall they separated and sauntered out to the playground. Several of Mikey's classmates joined him because everybody in class had seen Skinny make the fist at him. Outside, Mikey stepped up behind Skinny and turned him around. Skinny affected a surprised look, then smiled. Porky and Rojas kept going. Skinny was just Mikey's size.

  "Now, Skinny tell me why you showed me that bony little fist," Mikey said. "Most of the time you only wipe your mocos, snots, off your mean little mocoso face with that hand."

  Mikey figured that Skinny was the meanest of the three bullies because he was the ugliest. He had to know he was the ugliest kid in school unless he was a complete moron. Mikey always made sure that he knew he was ugly by the way he looked at him. Porky was not as ugly and he tried to be everybody's friend when Skinny was not around. Mikey was small for his age, but Porky was such a half-pint that his posture as a bully was pathetic. Rojas would not even have anything to do with Porky when Skinny wasn't around. Rojas did not bully Mikey, but he let it be known that he would back up the other two. Well, he would miss his chance if he kept making tracks away from them.

  "No, I don't want anything with you, Summers," Skinny said. "You think you can beat me up? Now's your chance."

  "No, you're wrong, Summers. I don't want trouble with you."

  He did not act weepy or cowardly. He was on his dignity and gave Mikey a dead Indian eye.

  Then Rojas walked up on Mikey's blind side and slapped him full in the face with both hands. Mikey was stunned, so Rojas boxed both Mikey's ears. Mikey swung a fist at Rojas's head, but he dodged it easily and slapped Mikey on both eyes. Mikey's classmates grabbed Mikey around the arms to keep him from fighting, so Rojas smacked his cheeks and ears again.

  Brother Adrian stepped in and stopped it. The Brothers rarely interrupted a playground fight, but Brother Adrian must have seen this was too much a one-sided massacre. Mikey walked away to the wash hall and bathed his face and ears in cold water. His ears and both sides of his face throbbed and glowed as red as stoplights.

  At the end of the last classroom session before noon, Mikey headed for the Canada bullies again. He did not want his ears boxed, but he wanted to see if Rojas could hit him when he was not being held. The bullies left the school ground as fast as they did the day Tommy Franklin hit Mikey with the bat.

  Mikey realized that he had postponed his boxing instruction too long. Sometimes he practiced on the light bag in the boarders' recreation room and put the gloves on to play with Manuel, but he did not know any way to protect himself against somebody like Rojas who really knew how to hurt him.

  Every Thursday night the Brothers rented the school's gym to a promoter who put on professional wrestling matches. A twenty-foot square regulation ring was set up in the center of the gym and a heavy punching bag hung as a fixture in a corner. After school on the day Rojas almost slapped his face off, Mikey headed for the gym to see if he could teach himself to strike a moving target with his fists.

  Paul Garcia, a high school student, was at work on the heavy bag. He asked Mikey to get behind it and hold it for him so it would not swing away from his hooks. Paul was an experienced amateur boxer and was training for a tournament. Mikey asked him if he could train with him.

  "Polito, you've come to the right man," Paul said. "You keep me company here every day and I'll make you a champion."

  After that, every day it was jab, jab, jab with the left until the lines and extension of Mikey's jab pleased Paul. Then, it was jab, jab, jab with a right lead until Mikey's right jab made Paul smile. Then, Paul coached him on how to jab with the left and move, move and jab, then cross with a right hand behind another jab. In that way, Mikey learned to punch straight with both hands and make a moving target. He worked on it until his punches did not stray or waver off a straight path to the target and his body launched his punches through the target.

  After two weeks Paul decided to invite the whole school to come to the gym to learn to box. He gave all the boxers two weeks' training and then held a tournament in the gym during recesses and after school. Mikey won his sixty-five-pound class and the La Canada bullies never bothered him again. He was too busy learning to box to worry about revenge against them, anyway. Paul convinced him that a boxer must also be a gentleman. A person who worked hard to master the manly art of self-defense had no business squaring off with anybody who was not a boxer, not even in play, not even as a joke. A gentleman did not raise his hands to strike anyone outside the ring. He took off all his clothes and performed in the ring in front of the whole world with discipline for himself and respect for his opponent. All those guys who picked fistfights had no class. After Mikey won his weight class in the school tournament, he forgot about challenging anyone to a playground fight. His enemies would have been the last ones in school to try to beat him in a fair fight, anyway.

  Mikey learned his shortcomings in that first tournament. His classmate Joe McGrath owned a right hand punch that even a high school boy could respect. Mikey had sparred with Joe a lot in preparation for Paul's tournament. He and Joe were the same height, but Mikey had not been matched against him in the school tournament because Joe was heavier. Joe won the seventy-pound division. No boxer in the tournament could have escaped Joe's mighty right hand for three rounds. Joe had stopped two of his opponents in the second round with that right hand.
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  During Lent, the Brothers set up a projector and showed movies on Friday and Saturday evenings. The main movie was always a musical, a comedy, or a drama, but they also showed sports reels of Notre Dame football and professional boxing. The Brothers owned a library of the most famous fights ever filmed. The boys greatly admired the old champions and the fight reels were their favorites. Mikey studied form and style and began to develop his own. He read everything he could find about it. He dreamed that he would be a great world's champion. The dream helped lift him out of the loneliness and despair that Baxter's death had caused.

  He did not like boxing as much as football because he was afraid before every contest, but he became obsessed by it and he had never been obsessed by football. He had been nervous before football games but never afraid. He was so afraid during the hour before he climbed into the ring with an opponent that he peed every ten minutes and turned as pale as any complete coward. Fear fell away and was replaced by a lust for combat after the first punch was thrown. Boxing and football were alike that way, but he was naked and alone in the ring. He trembled when he had to march half-naked into the lights in front of scores of people, but when the fight started, he knew being vulnerable and alone was the only way men should fight, if they were brave.

  Mikey and Brother Adrian became good friends and often held philosophical discussions. One day Mikey confided in him that he did not know why he liked boxing, as his fear gave him an awful time and experience did not seem to make him any braver. The next day, Brother Adrian loaned Mikey a book called Boxing in Art and Literature and turned the pages to Aristotle's Nicomucheun Ethics.

  "Read that and you'll know that your fear before a fight is good," Brother Adrian said.