Tampico (James A. Michener Fiction Series)

by Olson, Toby

  They dug down into the earth to expose the roots, moving out and away from the stump as their shovels clanged into them. The roots seemed hard as iron, and when Larry sent the axe down into one and it bounced away they thought they saw sparks fly up. They dug, their shovels slipping between thick tuberous snakes, casting the dirt up behind them, and the sun rose and soon they were sweating and the pit they were making under the stump was growing, and soon the hole was a good twenty feet in diameter, ten deep, and the exposed root system was a massive basket rising above them, the stump and the roots a giant petrified spider, still as some odd prehistoric monument at the river’s edge.

  “She was watching Matthew. He’d climbed into the root chamber, and I’d seen her creep up to a higher step so she could see over the hill of cast-up dirt. She had her hands in her lap up there, and her face was back in shadow under the archway of her hat and veil and I couldn’t see her eyes. But she was watching him, and so was I, jealous of her watching.

  “He’d taken his shirt off and his curls were pasted to his brow with sweat, and his arms and chest were sweaty, slick and hard as the roots he was climbing among and blond as the nicks our shovels had gouged into their surfaces. He was reaching out for the taproot, deep in the twisted thicket of others, a straight column descending, and his body was limber as he slipped among the roots, and his bare arms were rootlike. He carried the axe against his chest, and at times the roots seemed to be piercing him. I saw his extended arm, the taproot near his fingers, then the earth moved.”

  The nun rocked a little on her step, and he saw the tractor’s fender vibrate in the sun, then he looked back over at Matthew and saw the hole opening through the roots below his suspended body, years of hidden erosion, the whole far side of the chamber’s earth floor falling away, the cliff side gone, and he could see the river through the shaking roots as the stump settled and the axe fell, and Matthew caught in the roots looking out at him, the hint of a quizzical smile on his delicate, thin lips.

  Theresa was a farmer’s daughter and she knew the tractor, and Larry climbed up and got the chain, then slid down again and stood at the edge of the root basket and reached the thick links in to Matthew. The roots held him at his hips and shoulders, but his arms were free, and he grinned at Larry and winked and then hooked the chain around the taproot. Then he reached out and gripped Larry’s arm at the wrist and they both looked up into the dark canopy of dirt and fiber. The stump had slipped a few feet down, blocking the sun, and Matthew’s blond limbs had grown darker, his chest and face deep in shadow, but Larry could see his blue eyes, his hair turned to amber, and could feel desire in his quick pulse. They said nothing, just smiled at each other, then Larry scrambled up the embankment again, dragging the heavy chain behind him.

  Sister Theresa sat on the high seat, then fired up the tractor’s engine, its lung pulsing to life over the rush of the river, then worked it into gear and pulled ahead until the chain lifted from the ground and was taut and shaking in the air. Then she pressed the pedal down slowly, and the huge tires guttered and the chain vibrated, but the stump didn’t move. She backed off and looked over her shoulder at Larry, and Larry looked down at Matthew. His arm thrust out through the roots and his thumb was up, and Larry waved at Theresa, and she turned again, geared down, and pressed the pedal, and Larry stood there watching.

  The tractor roared and the nun shook in her seat. The wheels guttered again, then began to turn, and the small tires at the front of the tractor rose from the ground and her veil lifted and waved in the air behind her. The chain hummed and Theresa rocked in her seat, and Larry saw Matthew shaking, the roots vibrating, and when he looked up the veil and the stiff white hat were drifting away over the river, and her dark hair was unfolding, pins popping free, and it blew out to stand where the veil had been, a dark wave riding the summer air, billowing, as were her black garments, and she was a nun riding a crazy horse or a hurricane.

  The tractor bucked, the tires dug down reaching for purchase, and the stump growled in the earth, then Larry saw it shake and settle, and when he looked down Matthew was gone under a flood of dirt, and when the tractor stopped and the dust settled, the taproot was bent like a bow, the others twisted and flexed, and Matthew’s eyes were closed, his body impossibly entangled.

  Theresa leapt from the high seat. Larry was sliding down the embankment, and they met at the edge of the root basket. She’d grabbed the bag, and Larry saw her hand disappear into the dark folds at her hip, then emerge again, dragging a white handkerchief. He had the bag open, the water jar on the ground, and while she wet the cloth, he looked in at Matthew, whose brow was dirt-streaked, his closed lids awash in dust, a few tiny pebbles at the corner of his mouth. He’d reached to push at the roots as they’d grabbed him, and his arms were extended, his palms open now in his unconsciousness, and Larry saw the place where a spur hooked his pants at the buttons, pulling them down, the beginning of a narrow stripe, tiny blond curls descending. Then he saw the sister’s bare arm and hand, the soaked cloth as she reached into the root tangle, and when he looked over at her, the black robes were gone and he saw the white, horizontal ribs in her binding, black hair spilling over ivory shoulders, and a mole near the crease at her sternum. Something shuddered, and he looked back, and it was Matthew. She’d flooded his lids and cheeks, and now the wet cloth was over his brow and he was stirring, coming awake and moaning. His eyes opened into clear focus and a moment of bewilderment. Then he was smiling, knowing it was she there, and Larry thought he was looking at her shoulders, the dark mole, then he was looking at him, a slight blush in his grin. He was okay, just stuck there, and for moments they were laughing. Then they felt the earth shudder as the stump settled again, and through the roots and below his suspended body they could see fans of earth fall across the opening, obscuring the coursing river beyond.

  It was impossible. Roots at his ankles and knees, the small of his back, his armpit, the taproot pressing against his chest. And the roots were thorny and rough, and when Larry tried hacking away at them with a shovel the whole basket shook and a root pressed down onto Matthew’s neck and he looked up, his eyes wild for a moment, gasping for air. His pants were ripped, the fabric pierced by sharp spurs, and filamentary runners had woven their way into his hair.

  Larry looked over at Theresa, but she was going, her black stockings and black shoes and her petticoats, and her hair bouncing at her white shoulders as she scrambled up the embankment and over it and out of sight. He looked in at Matthew, who was smiling. His eyes glanced up the embankment and he shook his head, and Larry looked down at his navel and the stripe of curls and they both blushed a little and grinned when their eyes met. Then Sister Theresa was climbing back down, dragging the heavy grease bucket and Larry was pulling his shirt off.

  They reached in as far as they could, globs of grease in their palms, and coated his arms and shoulders, his neck, and the roots that entangled them. Then Larry climbed into the basket itself, slipping among the roots, until he could reach out and touch Matthew’s hairless chest, and he coated that, feeling the blood rise in his cheeks as he reached into his armpits, his slick fingers in musk. He felt a root press down on his leg, then Sister Theresa was in the basket too, suspended below him, the grease bucket hung on a nub, and he could see her stained scapulas, strands of her hair hung on the sticky roots and her extended white arms and her greasy fingers touching the buttons. He could feel Matthew’s breath on his cheek, and when he looked up their faces were inches apart and there was panic in Matthew’s eyes, and when he glanced down from them and along his slick stomach, he saw her hands on his bare hips, his pants and his underwear sliding down and his white erection just inches from her face.

  She coated his hips and that too, then reached back into the bucket. Then her hands were sliding down between his legs and she was twisting through the roots, greasing the backs of his knees and his calves. Then she was pulling his shoes and socks off, and Larry saw her greasy fingers sliding over his ankles and
between his toes, and before long they were covered with grease, their hands stroking the roots, and Larry slid his chest over Matthew’s hip and Sister Theresa’s arm was between them, and he pushed up, bowing his back, and the root gave a little, ripples of the shock wave of its movement radiating out to the basket’s edges, and Matthew’s leg came free. Then they worked together near his neck, both leaning against the bowed taproot, until his head could move, and then his extended arms were twisting in the lubrication, his wrists slipping free of the bondage, and they were out of the root matrix and standing in the pit, pulling him, naked and slick as a newborn, until he was free of the basket and was lying on the ground.

  Larry bent over and covered Matthew’s delicate groin with his shirt, and when he looked up the sister was wild, beautiful in her soiled binding, her soft white shoulders, and her grease-crazed hair. Her hands were together and she was praying, smiling beatifically, “and I knew right then there was no hope for her, but that there was for me.”

  It had grown dark in the room, and Larry picked up the cards and leaned back, his face in shadow. Then Gino lit his pipe again and the match flared, and the tip of the cigarette in John’s throat lit his chin, the jaw of a skeleton, and Frank coughed and reached for the tubing and adjusted it. Then John coughed and ashes fell and sparkled in the moonlight.

  “Everything came out fine then,” Frank said, and Larry laughed lightly.

  “You could say that.”

  “Back to the nunnery,” said John.

  “It was just a school, but that’s right enough. It was Matthew’s school, not mine. We left the next day, and I never saw her again, him either.”

  “That’s too bad,” said Gino.

  “Not really. Maybe it was just adolescence, for him I mean.”

  “True, very true.”

  “What would you know about that?” Frank said.

  “I know a few things.”

  “Easy now, boys,” said John.

  “Do you know where the light is?”

  “I do, indeed, and if you’ll hold your horses for a fucking second or two I’ll turn it on.”

  “Not the bright one,” Frank said, and Gino got up from his chair, stretched and shook his lean body, then shuffled to the far wall and threw the switch. It was night-lights in the baseboard and a small lamp on a table.

  “Thanks,” Frank said, and Gino nodded as he passed him and headed back to his seat. He settled in and lifted his pipe from the radiator, then tamped it down and lit it and blew smoke at the ceiling. Then it was later, and Carolyn brought in their dinners on metal trays.

  “You’d think we’d have gotten at least this far from the war,” Frank said, pushing his fork around in the chipped beef.

  “You’d think,” Gino said.

  “With the microwave,” said Larry.

  “They could do better than this shit,” said John.

  “At least a TV dinner,” Frank said.

  But they ate it, and when they were done Gino farted and then lit his pipe, and Frank groaned, and John lit a cigarette and so did Larry and both of them coughed.

  “That’ll kill you,” Frank said.

  “I know, I know,” John said. “But at this point it’s a race.”

  “Who’s winning?” Gino said.

  “Certainly not me,” said Larry.

  “Chemo?”

  “Right. I’m heading out tomorrow.”

  “I told ’em to fuck it,” Gino said.

  “I wasn’t sure,” said Larry. “I haven’t tried it yet.”

  “It’s an experience,” said Frank.

  “And what else have we got?” Larry said.

  “Memory,” said John.

  “It could be a long story,” Gino said.

  “About your daughter, I bet.”

  “That’s right. A story about a lost daughter, found again in betrayal.”

  Kelly

  We took a slow boat down the Panuco River from Tampico and headed in mild anxiety toward the sea. I remember my mother standing at the rail clutching her purse, so full of pesos, watching refineries pass by, stillstacks and agitators, the ruined loading dock at the Alianza station, and when I was beside her in my linen jacket, flying fish flew up to startle us and I thought I saw stains on their bodies. There’d been an oil fire, and black smoke had drifted over the city, and when we passed the fire’s source at Aguila Petroleum there was blue oil in the water at the river’s edge and burning wood, and I saw a rat on a timber, flames rising at the end and smoke and hissing when it moved away and the fire touched the river, at least I think it was a rat. Aguila was devastated, and the fire had blossomed to the paraffin plant beside it, and we smelled a giant candle in the charred rubble. Then we came to a bend in the river and a sea breeze and left the influence of a smoky Tampico behind us, and we could see the Gulf and the hill at Chorreras, boats in the water, nets hanging in sunlight from their riggings.

  Empty of Spanish and subtlety, of all but a few names and money, empty of the continuity of our historical past now in my father’s revealed lies, we moved slowly along, my fingers brushing the sleeve of my mother’s cotton dress as we climbed the dusty road, then came in sight of the town, a small village of winding dirt streets, ramshackle houses, and the flat-roofed structures for net mending and boat repair at the water’s edge, where I saw women working and dinghies and a tilted fishing boat at dry dock on the sand and men scraping at barnacles. We were above the town, and we could see far out over the Gulf to the remnants of oil stations, a few active ones, pipelines suspended on wood structures running out from shore, and the misty shadow of a tanker at horizon.

  We walked down the road and into the town’s central square, just a few stores, cantina and church, a dribbling stone fountain at the center, and what looked like a public building off to the side, and my mother demurred, and it was up to me to go in with the names.

  The old man at the desk wore a wrinkled summer suit the same yellow as my jacket, and he shook his head, considered the hammered tin ceiling for a moment, then dragged the information up from dim memory and looked at me with bright eyes. He gave me the street name, then repeated himself, then counted the numbers out on his fingers. “Último,“ he said.

  It was midday and humid after rain, and by the time we’d trudged up into the foothills a little and found the street and the house at the end of it, we were sweaty and our shoes were coated with dust and my mother’s permanent had fallen in limp curls to her cheeks and my own hair was wet and straightened, and we stood in the dirt road before the house like immigrants.

  It seemed an ancient place, weathered wood and moss on the wood roof and cloth hanging in window frames, and a front door at the end of a stone pathway, a hatch of slats woven together with twine or wire, standing open, and at the house side, where the hill ascended, flowers and thick vines had crept down to it and climbed up over its walls and halfway across the roof, and there were flowers growing around a crude skylight, its door pushed up into them, a screen of vines over the opening. And there were flowers in the yard, roses and blooming cactus in clay pots, and bougainvillea ran blood red on a trellis surrounding the doorway, bleeding up into the eaves above it. The sea lifted a gust of perfume and the vines shook and petals blew, and one landed on my cheek, a touch of velvet, and I lifted it away and looked down in my palm, a translucent purple crescent, and I wanted to eat it. Then I heard a creaking, and when I looked up a woman stood in the doorway, tall and very thin, a loose dress hanging from the points of her shoulders, sleeves falling around bony arms, as old as my grandmother would have been, had I had one.

  Mother touched my arm, and I saw the purse clutched at her chest, then turned to see the woman step out beyond the trellis, the face of a skeleton, but smiling, her hand up and gesturing.

  “English?” she said. “French? German?”

  I answered, and she spoke again.

  “Come in! Come in out of the heat!”

  The room was dark and cool, and she brought ic
ed tea and cookies and small folded rags on the tray beside the pitcher so we could wipe our brows, and breeze lifted the hanging cloths in the window frames, and the rugs on the bleached wooden floor shone in their subtle earth-tone colors as stripes of light came in. We sat in white wicker, around a wooden table, and there were pictures of mountain snow scenes on the wall behind her and a military uniform dripping with medals on a hanger hung from a nail, displayed like a picture, and flowers in stone pots sat on tables and wood pedestals below the pictures and in earthenware vessels on the floor in the corners of the room. The blond table was waxed, and my mother’s purse sat at the corner as on a mirror, and the woman glanced at it, and when my mother mentioned the names we’d come with, the woman smiled faintly, then turned toward the cloth window, the skin at her cheek like parchment, and sighed, and then turned back to us, and when she spoke her voice was thin and steady and I heard a faint echo, as if her skull were an empty chamber.

  “But they’re gone,” she said, “my brothers. There’s nothing anymore. Just that.” She glanced over her shoulder at the uniform. “And a few trinkets and documents. Like any family. Now you tell me of Roberto, and he too is gone, and now there is only me.”

  “Roberto,” my mother said. “From fishing. A hard life.”

  “My father,” I said.

  “Yes, my dear. And I am your aunt.” She looked at my mother. “But I have been gone, you see, since the early ’30s, when I was seventeen. To Europe for my study. Then for a life. I just recently returned, two years ago. I came back to die here in Chorreras. This is my home.”

  “Are you ill?” my mother said. “Is there anything we can do? Can we give you money?”

  She was looking at the purse, wanting rid of it I thought, to be done with the whole thing finally, to be rid of my father.