Tampico (James A. Michener Fiction Series)

by Olson, Toby

  There was a photograph of a boy on a pony wearing a cowboy hat. It was tied on with a string under his chin, and he wore a leather vest, ill fitting, that had obviously been provided for the occasion. He looked pleased in the saddle, tentative as well, and though he held up the reins and his other hand rested familiarly upon the horn, his pose was a little wooden, though he seemed anxious to please both himself and the photographer he was smiling out at. Maybe he was six years old. There was something odd about the picture, though just a stolid pony, a boy riding him as if he were a spirited horse, the split rails of a corral fence behind him. Then I found the odd thing, the dark trouser legs of the man holding the pony steady, seen through the pony’s thinner legs, his heavy dark shoes behind the hooves.

  He was meant to be out of sight, not part of the photograph at all, the invisible mechanic of the pose, guardian of the life situation in which the photograph was taken. The boy might imagine himself a cowboy in the future, and not a farmer, but the man was there to prevent him from stepping into that future too soon. But it never is too soon, I thought, and of course the boy didn’t make that move, or any other provoked by imagination, and I wondered about myself then, and about Carlos standing beside me as I turned my head, feeling a stiffness in my neck from long looking, and gazed down into the man’s face, my own face only inches away.

  It was a skull face, skin like parchment over bone. His lips were flat and almost gone, his teeth like those of a horse, visible to the gums, and I could feel no breath against my cheeks. Only his nose still held his personality. It was a flat workman’s nose, broken many times, but it too was beginning to fade away, collapsing down into the caves of his bony nostrils. His eyes were closed, and I wondered if he’d ever seen that panorama of his life above.

  “Through the lids, maybe?”

  It was Carlos at my elbow, and when I looked closely at the man’s eyes I could see the lids were thin now as waxed paper, and I thought I could see the outline of his pupils there, small circles pressing up like some official seal embossed in a document.

  It seemed impossible, but so did everything else just then, even that this veteran should have stayed alive through a killing cancer long enough to save the Manor for others old as him, so they could keep on living, even that he should linger on, if no more than a monument to that achievement. Maybe he had finally kicked the pony, stepped away from those dark trouser legs and become a cowboy, soon to be a skeleton riding a white horse.

  I could see the photographer standing near the meadow’s edge, his camera pointing in the wrong direction, as we approached the company under the umbrella awning at the food tables. It was a large box camera, on a heavy tripod, an eight-by-ten I thought and very old, and there was even one of those dark hoods hanging down limply over the viewing apparatus. And the photographer’s hair hung down as well, black and thick to shoulder length, and he was wearing a kind of blocky suit of woven fabric, rectangles of color sewn together.

  “That’s Alma,” Carlos said. “He seems to like the lighthouse. He’s here as a kind of escort, to accompany my grandfather when he goes back. It’s his hobby, taking pictures I mean.”

  We were crossing a space that had been a stone drive before, but now sod had been set in, and the lawn ran all the way from the meadow’s edge to the wall under the old solarium. Clusters of people were gathered to the sides of the awning, out in the sun, and I saw someone approaching the photographer, then pointing off at the lighthouse where the camera faced, the loose sleeve of a garment, a shirt or blouse, hanging down from an arm in the still air, and Carlos told me that was Kelly, the practical nurse who had moved in with him. He’d been a little sheepish in talking about their arrangement earlier, but then he’d shrugged his discomfort away through a sweet smile.

  “Maybe it’s about time for me,” he’d said, and I’d nodded, wondering if there would be any time of that kind available for me too in the future.

  “But what about the agoraphobia?” I asked, seeing his lover out in the air and free. “Did you cure it?”

  “Hardly!” he laughed. “The building still has to be in sight, with no intervening obstructions. All return routes open. If you watch Kelly long enough, you’ll see the careful checking. But it’s much better than it was.”

  We reached the awning then and stepped under it, and Carlos took my arm and guided me to one of the tables and introduced me to Larry, and I complimented him on the photographic arrangement. Then Carlos introduced me to his father, who looked nothing like him, though he too wore a white suit, and to his father’s wife, who was bending at the table’s other side, lifting cold shrimp onto her plate, delicately, with a pair of tongs. A little man stood beside her, but disengaged from her and looking off across the meadow toward the sea, where a structure at the edge was being dismantled. I knew it was Kelly’s house. I could see scaffolding rising up to the level of the chimney, the top of which was jagged where bricks had fallen away. The man wore a visor, and I saw the ragged hem of his baggy shorts at the table’s edge, knotty sinew pushing through at his thighs, and the splotches of dark scar tissue, serpentine, on his forearms. His T-shirt read TAMPICO.

  “That’s Gino,” Larry said, and the man turned and looked at him, then at me, then touched his brim and smiled, his daughter glancing over at him affectionately, her hair falling in dramatic action across her rouged cheek. She was close to sixty and looked it, lines free of makeup at the corners of her eyes. She wore a long party dress, loose and flowing as a nightshirt, much like the lounging suit that Larry wore, though richer in its deep blue color than his more fashionable earth tone. I looked down and saw Larry’s woven sandals, then glanced up to his beaded skullcap, African I thought, new hair curling thinly at the edges.

  “And that’s my grandfather, over there,” Carlos said, pointing with his chin, and I saw a man standing beside the two doctors, his empty wheelchair off to the side behind him, sunlight in its metal spokes. He stood erect, his shoulders back, hatless and unwavering in the sun. He had come to his sexuality again, and it was visible in the confidence of his posture, though when he shifted on his feet the frailness in his stiff legs was evident. Erica was there as well, and Frank stood beside her, though a little back from the small gathering.

  There were others there, workmen and their wives, the contractor and architect, and a few I’d seen quite often in my days in Provincetown, a pharmacist and a locksmith, even the mailman I recognized without his uniform. Warren was there, his wife beside him, and I caught his eye and waved to him.

  “And what about these others?” I said. “Your crew? What’s going to happen there?”

  We had moved beyond the awning and into sun, and I saw Alma, the photographer, squatting down to rearrange things in his camera bag. Kelly was standing over him, and when I looked back to see the gathering at the tables and the others I was asking about, I caught sight of the old nun marching across the Manor’s lawn, then stepping into shadow under the still umbrella and reaching for a plate. Carolyn was there as well, her starched uniform like a cutout dress for a paper doll, brighter and more severe than the nun’s soft, dingy cotton. Larry had moved between them, a wraith in night clothing, and the three were talking, looking very much like maskers in some ancient miracle play.

  We were standing at the meadow’s brink, and I looked out at Kelly’s ruined house, half dismantled in the time since I’d arrived. I could see a green, official truck, off to the left at the barricades, men in uniform carrying sawhorses and blinker lights. The barricades were coming down as well, and I saw a dark car, moving slowly through the meadow toward the Manor. I knew it was the man named Arthur, Kelly’s chauffeur, and that he was making the trip for the last time.

  “It’s pretty simple,” Carlos said, “and not unexpected. Larry’s going back to Philadelphia and his AIDS hospice work. Frank and Erica will stay here for a while, getting used to each other, then maybe even staying on. I can’t be sure. As for my father and Ramona, they’ll stay too, at least for
a while. John’s heading back beyond Tampico, in a week or so with Alma, to the village and Chepa. He says he’ll be there permanently and we can visit if we want. The only one to wonder about is Gino. He’s been talking about Chicago, but then he speaks of the West Coast, even New Mexico and Arizona. The only sure thing is that he won’t be here for long. Says he has some wandering to do.”

  “And what about you?” I asked. “And Kelly.”

  “We’re staying put,” he said, smiling up at me. “You can come over for dinner anytime.”

  By the time the party was drawing to a close, the sun had dipped down in the sky behind the Manor, and the few remaining elements of Kelly’s house, a vacant doorway of studs, scattered clapboards, and a pile of chimney bricks, were silhouette figures at the escarpment’s crest, the flat sea visible beyond. Months of wind and shifting ground had loosened every nail and mortar line. They’d had no need for heavy equipment, and the dismantling had been easy and quiet and had gone unnoticed as the party progressed. Even the lighthouse was silent and inactive now, its beam dark under its black witch’s hat, all the tourists departed. And all the guests at the party, but for the principals, had departed too, and I turned from the meadow and saw the empty tables under the awning, a few remaining champagne glasses and soiled linen napkins on the white tablecloths. Then I saw Alma. He was adjusting his tripod, settling the legs down in the lawn, the large camera tilting above. It was taking him some time to get it right, pointed toward the edge of the Manor’s property, the lens aiming out into the meadow beyond. We were alone out there for a moment, and I caught that acknowledgment in his enigmatic smile once the camera was fixed in place and he looked up from his work to see me watching him. Then we were no longer alone.

  They were pushing the narrow ambulance stretcher unsteadily through the grass newly grown above the sod, its spongy softness grabbing the wheels and causing all four of them to lean into the task. Carolyn and the nun flanked the temporary bed, and Kelly pushed at the foot, while Larry pulled at the handle near the man’s bald head. I saw what looked like a bowl of fruit resting on the prone figure’s chest. Then it moved, and I knew it was the yellow chihuahua, then saw her head and saw the sun shining transparently through her broad ears. The others were to the side and behind the conveyors, watching out for them, and I started across the lawn, then thought better of it and pulled up at the canopy’s edge. He’ll get there eventually, I thought, and he did, much quicker than I’d imagined, and I saw them turning the stretcher to face into the camera when they reached the meadow’s brink, then saw the nun cranking a handle to the side near the figure’s chest, until he had risen and was resting as if sleeping in a lounge chair, at the beach or at a resort in the mountains, his small, vibrant pet alertly curious on his soft lap.

  Alma stood at the tripod, waiting, long hair glistening in the sinking sun, the black hood hanging, graceful as a veil on a mannequin, ready to be lifted up and put on, and when I looked back to the man in the stretcher, I saw the others gathering around him, getting ready for the picture.

  John stood beside his wheelchair, fingers touching the handle above the leather back, his scar an emblem of that sweet, youthful impetuosity below his bushy brow, and Carlos had climbed into the chair, switching generations. He’d tilted his fedora back so that his broad forehead was a stone slab in the sun, and Kelly stood to the other side of him, hand on his shoulder in certain possessiveness, looking down at his profile, face expressive in the grin of a lover who has found a good cowboy or politician. The man in the stretcher was flanked on the other side by Frank in his white shirt, his bulldog face fixed in formal expression reminiscent of a general standing for a portrait to be hung in some official place, and Erica stood at his elbow, the light frosting her blond hair and casting shadows that looked like heavy makeup into her angular features. It was as if she were posing in a parody of her former self, that beleaguered woman dragged by the hair to a toilet, and her broad smile was making a proper joke out of it.

  Gino was beside her, at the tableau’s perimeter, shorter even than she was, but taller in the broad sombrero he’d donned for this occasion, a miniature revolutionary in a cartoon etching of Zapata’s army, and I saw the V shape of Ramona’s fingers above his hat’s crown for a moment, then saw her nudge into Manuel beside her, laughing and shaking her loose hair. Then her fingers were gone, and she had settled in against her husband, behind her father, and was looking out at the camera smiling, one in a satisfied family at the end of reunion, waiting for the commemorative moment. Carolyn, in her little white hat, stood behind Carlos in the wheelchair, the nun beside her, and beside the nun was Larry in his African skullcap, and I thought he was looking over at me and not at the camera. The three were those maskers once again, this time the resurrected after the magic pills, ready for a curtain call. Then there was Arthur, in his dark chauffeur’s uniform, his look hid under his hat brim, standing at the stretcher’s head, the skull face of the citizen who had saved the Manor below the shadow of his chin.

  Still, the man’s eyes were closed, that skull shadowless and without particular expression, and I knew his was the eventual face of all of us approaching our final repose, and I thought of the Mexican etchings and engraved prints Carlos had displayed for me on my coffee table close to a year ago.

  The sun disappeared behind the Manor completely, just as Alma crawled under the black hood. He raised the metal T holding the explosive up above the camera at arm’s end. Then he said something, in Spanish or another language, that I didn’t understand, though the others did.

  They moved in their bodies for a moment, adjusting their bones under their skins. Then they stood perfectly still in the picture that was the picture before it was taken. The last rays of the sun faded from their attentive faces, shadows falling in complex patterns among their gestures and expressions, and I could read parodies of stories and engagements in their postures, the way they touched and turned toward each other. Only Arthur, the chauffeur, stood alone and uninvolved. Then I saw the eyes in the skull face opening below his chin, the last remnants of lips pulled back from the white teeth, and I wasn’t sure whether this was the man still alive or the calavera awakening for the dance.

  I saw the yellow chihuahua, stretching in the man’s lap, and I thought I saw the bare finger bones of a skeletal hand, stroking her vibrant body as she turned and settled down on her haunches on the soft white sheet and faced the camera. A dull thud of explosive then and a brief white light, and for a moment all their faces were illuminated skulls, eyes empty in dark sockets, but their teeth in those perpetual and wise grins. They had joined the vibrancy of the living to the dead’s parody, as if the photographic image were an etching, or an engraving, and was fashioned in homage to the great Mexican artist José Guadalupe Posada.