The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue

by Manuel Munoz

  It was nearly four in the afternoon now and his stomach growled, but he couldn’t ask his father for food. The Gerber jar of crema was on his nightstand, conspicuous, as if it were a jewel resting on a pillow. Emilio stared at it for a moment, but not even a pinprick of curiosity seized him. He folded down one of the chair’s armrests and willed himself over to the bed, surprised how his hurt allowed him to move so determinedly. The urge to cry overwhelmed him. He had not cried in all this time, all these hours alone. His body had felt like one of the wells over in the plum orchards, deep and mysterious and dark, but soundless when you dropped something into it. The house was quiet and he stifled his crying as best he could, but the tears kept streaming. He kept crying, circles and circles of grief edging outward, until he noticed the light in his room had changed. It was nowhere near evening, but there was enough fading sunlight to remind him how long he had been weeping, how exhausted he had made himself. Emilio wanted sleep now, and he probed his secret stash for a couple of pills, tucking them under his tongue, willing some saliva to wash them down. A few moments later, he reached again and took two more. Then two more, remembering break time on Shift Three, one more shot of whiskey, one more hit on the joint. Not knowing if he had crossed the line until he actually crossed it. He lay in the gradually disappearing light and drifted off into dream, the rustle of the grape vineyards during those break times, the dark shadows of the men hoarding their own stashes. Emilio broke through those vineyards to a warm white house with yellow light in the windows, and he approached, opening the door without knocking, and there at a simple brown table he found himself, wearing his deep green football jersey. He rose in greeting. “Emilio,” he said to himself. “It’s good to see you up and around.” It filled him with a flood of joy to hear that, to feel his own hand in his, a hand of understanding, of reconciliation, of appeasement, of sorrow and redemption, of love. He shook hands vigorously, in awe of seeing himself standing once more, not wanting to let go — he felt his heart break, knowing he would have to. His father woke him, and when Emilio opened his eyes, the light of day in the room had been replaced by the glow of a lamp. It was late, but there was no telling how late. His father felt his forehead, slick with perspiration, then helped him with a bedpan as if he knew he was filled to bursting and wouldn’t make it to the bathroom. When Emilio was done, his father wordlessly set the bedpan on the floor and helped him remove his pants, leaving Emilio in his boxers. He took the Gerber jar of crema and opened it. Even before he swirled it onto his fingers, Emilio could smell it — a mixture of lard, oranges, something peppery. He watched as his father smoothed the crema onto his thin legs, white and nearly hairless, working the mixture over his knees all the way down to his ankles, over the ugly scars. His father used more and more of it, not being thrifty with it as they had been with everything else in life, rubbing hard with belief, and Emilio kept watching, his eyes focused on the broken promise of his father’s wedding band. The clock said it was past five in the morning. Emilio thought of the pills again. Finally, when his father was finished, he put the little jar down on the nightstand and covered Emilio with a blanket. “Buenas noches, m’ijo,” he said, and reached down for the bedpan as he left the room, turning off the light. For a long time, Emilio lay in the dark. He thought of Catri. He thought of her baby and her husband. He thought of his father. He thought of his mother. He thought of the pills and their answers, and he remembered the taste of whiskey. He thought of La Viejita, and he thought of God and the devil and which of them she might know. He thought of love and not having it, of who had it and who got to keep it. He raised his arms in the dark, stretched them, willing, and when he brought them down, his hand bumped against the little jar of crema on the nightstand. Emilio opened it and smelled — the lard, the oranges, the pepper. Some violet from the coming dawn filtered through the window. He took the little bit of crema that was left in the jar and worked it onto the calluses on each of his palms, a long moment of circling his fingers in the dark violet of early morning, and when he was done, they felt smooth and absolutely brand-new.

  GRACIAS

  I WISH TO THANK each of the editors of the following publications, who published earlier versions of these stories with such kind enthusiasm: Epoch (“Lindo y Querido” and “Tell Him About Brother John”), Glimmer Train Stories (“Bring Brang Brung”), Rush Hour (“The Heart Finds Its Own Conclusion”), and Swink (“The Comeuppance of Lupe Rivera”). My deep appreciation always to the good people of Northwestern University Press, who published my first book, and who continue to receive me with open arms. Gracias to the National Endowment for the Arts for bringing me to grateful tears by awarding me a literature fellowship.

  Several people bear special mention: Stuart Bernstein, agent and faith healer, is always ready with needed encouragement and belief. El querido Chuck Adams, my editor at Algonquin Books, treated the lives of these characters as if they were Real (because he knows they are). Helena María Viramontes, mentor and literary madrina, is on every page here and those still to come. Abrazos over the many miles to mi familia, who now know why writing is so important to me and understand why I am so far away. Amá, gracias por las llamadas cada domingo — toditas, toditas.

  Finally, I want to thank the good friends who stood by me during the difficult time when these stories were written, who knew when to ask if I wanted to sit out on the front steps and just think aloud, talk some: I will let them name themselves.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Manuel Muñoz is the author of the novel What You See in the Dark and the short story collection Zigzagger. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts literature fellowship and the prestigious Whiting Award, and he is currently teaching creative writing at the University of Arizona in Tucson. The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue, his second collection of short stories, was a finalist for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award.

  Published by

  ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL

  Post Office Box 2225

  Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

  a division of

  WORKMAN PUBLISHING

  225 Varick Street

  New York, New York 10014

  © 2007 by Manuel Muñoz. All rights reserved.

  The epigraph on page vii is reprinted by consent of Brooks Permissions.

  This is a work of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA IS AVAILABLE

  E-book ISBN 978-1-61620-106-7

  Also by MANUEL MUÑOZ

  Zigzagger

  What You See in the Dark

  We hope you enjoy this special preview of Manuel Muñoz's acclaimed novel What You See in the Dark, available in print and e-book formats wherever books are sold.

  One

  If you had been across the street, pretending to investigate the local summer roses outside Holliday’s Flower Shop, you could have seen them through the café’s plate glass, the two sitting in a booth by the window, eating lunch. You could have seen them even if you had been inside the shop, peering from behind the window display of native Bakersfield succulents, wide-faced California sunflowers, blue flax in hanging pots. The two of them sat in full view of everyone passing by, minding their own business. Their mouths moved alternately in long, drawn-out soliloquies, or sometimes they paused and deliberated, as if they had to choose their words carefully, grinning if they spoke at the same time. The girl was eating a thin sandwich and taking short sips from a thick glass of cola. The man ate with a knife and fork, his elbows up in a sawing motion, his eyes sometimes looking down to concentrate.

  He was the most handsome man in town for sure, and his mother owned a little motel out on the highway. He always seemed to be wearing only brand-new shirts: no one could keep shirts that color, that softness, time after
time, hanging them to dry stiff on a backyard line.

  He would be a good man to marry.

  They were eating in the café located on one of the choice corners on a better stretch of Union Avenue, the café that still had the plate-glass windows all the way down to the sidewalk, one of the few places that still did after the ’52 earthquake. You could see the entire booth through those windows: the table, the red vinyl, their dishes, the waitress’s white shoes when she came by to check on them, how the girl crossed her feet and rocked them nervously. She was not dressed as crisply as he was. Even if her clothes looked clean and pressed, you could tell right off that the day she began wearing nice things around town was the day the two of them had done more than talk and have lunch. His mother, whom everybody knew, had worked at the café since before the earthquake, and the waitresses who served him at any of the shifts—breakfast, lunch, dinner, or late-night coffee and cherry pie—had all known him as a boy, so it was hard to tell if their attentions to him were motherly or something more flirtatious.

  And yet the one to grab his attention was that skinny brown girl who lived above the bowling alley. Always on foot, always staring into the windows of the record shop, of the TG&Y, of the furniture store, of the Rexall, even of the shoe store where you worked, as if she hadn’t set up the displays herself. A very plain girl, not too tall, with slender hips, and hair as dark as her mother’s. Her mother had worked at the café, too—with his mother, in fact—almost eight or nine years ago. No doubt his mother remembered.

  You could see that girl walking to work at the shoe store, back and forth, going to her apartment during the lunch hour, then home again by the end of the day, no matter what the Valley weather brought: summer heat, fall rains, the terrible winter fog. Even in late November and December, when the sun had gone down by near five o’clock and the streets fell dark, she would walk home alone after the store closed. And that’s how it should have stayed, a plain girl like that all alone.

  But now this: a thin sandwich and Dan Watson, who was surely going to pay for it, then the waitress coming round with the dessert menu, the girl glancing at the clock, Dan urging her to choose something, then clearly instructing the waitress to hurry back. The waitress indulges him, of course, he being who he is, and comes back with two small silver dishes of vanilla ice cream. He leans over and spoons a small scoop of her ice cream into the cola glass. There is still a lot of soda left, the way she has been sipping it, savoring it. He points for her to take a taste and she does so warily, as if she’s never tasted anything like it before. But you have to believe she never has, once that look crosses her face, an amused arch of her eyebrows and a nod of approval.

  How people change when they get a taste of the good life! When suddenly the dollar bills in your hand can go for things you want instead of need. A fork-and-knife meal at the café; scarves and pearl chokers; pendants and brooches; jewelry boxes with ballerinas springing to attention; that lovely sound of pushing rings and earrings and bracelets against each other while you’re searching. Flowers from Holliday’s like the good husbands do: tulips and Easter lilies from Los Angeles in the springtime, a wrist corsage for attending a wedding. A car trip over to the coast, to Morro Bay and the enormous, beautiful rock basking just off the shoreline. A day in Hollywood, the exhilaration of knowing movie stars breathe in the very same sunshine. Silk blouses brought home in delicate paper; dresses that require dry cleaning; lingerie so elegant it refuses to be scandalous.

  Is that the life she knows she has ahead of her, the way she is sitting there, her feet rocking nervously after nearly a whole hour? Does she know how every young woman in town wants exactly this? Does she know that people turn their heads to watch them leave the café, to watch him open the door of his Ford truck for her? Does she know people discuss what they’ve seen, what his mother must think?

  Summer carries on, the heat still scorching into September. Harvest time has arrived in Bakersfield and more people have come into town looking for work, whole caravans sometimes. Faces are not as familiar as before, not at the supermarkets, not on the downtown streets. Bakersfield is the open door to the southern part of the state, and the workers come pouring through. So many people have arrived that it becomes difficult to find parking spots, to buy fresh meat, even to get a bench at the Jolly Kone hamburger stand. But this will be short lived—by the end of October, after much of the late-summer crop has been brought in from the fields, the town will go back to normal. The strangers will leave, counting their money, and Bakersfield will wait for those first few weeks of November when the sky goes gray and the fog rolls in over the coastal range and lingers for months on end.