Iron River

by Daniel Acosta

  “Rudy saved your life?” The words just busted out of my mouth.

  Dad eyed me quick in the mirror. He said, “Rudy saved my life,” but he didn’t sound very happy about it, like a person might who’s just got rescued.

  For the next miles, I sat back in the back seat and made a movie out of Dad’s story in my head. I don’t know what the Kern River looks like so I imagined the stream at Marrano Beach. I tried to picture everything that Dad said, but I couldn’t imagine him and Rudy as kids. I knew what almost drowning felt like and that was easier. I almost drowned a couple of times last summer in the Smith Park pool when Cruz held me underwater just to make his friends laugh until I thought I was going to die. After a while I gave up trying to imagine.

  Then I wondered why Dad hated Rudy so much if he was the one who saved him. I wondered if he hated him because Rudy had saved him instead of him saving Rudy.

  Or maybe this. You know how Tonto is best friends with the Lone Ranger even against other Indians because the Lone Ranger saved his life? Maybe that’s how Dad felt. That he had to stick with somebody he couldn’t stand. Whenever Dad had to get Rudy out of a jam, Rudy could always remind Dad that he saved his life.

  We got to Kingsburg after dark. Dad pulled the car into the King’s Inn Motel which looked like a castle with a little drawbridge over a ditch with drooping chains on the sides and triangle flags everywhere. About ten tiny castles were lined up in a row with a parking space next to each one.

  When Dad and Ted came out of the office we drove to two castles next to a sign saying YE OLDE MOATE. I didn’t know what a ye olde moate was, so after Dad parked and all of us got out, me and Dorothy ran over to see it. It turned out to be just a dirty swimming pool filled with green water inside a rusty chain link fence. It had a faded blue diving board and a blue curved slide tipped over on its side. I was about to go through the gate when Mom called us to come to our castle.

  The door had a coat of arms and the word GALAHAD in fancy letters. I remembered about Sir Galahad in a King Arthur story Sister Mary Thomas read last year. I told Dorothy Galahad was a pure knight King Arthur chose to look for the Holy Grail, the silver cup that held the blood of Jesus. I didn’t tell Dorothy that Sister Mary Thomas said the whole thing was just a legend.

  Our castle only had one bed. Mom and Dad would sleep there. I looked around for where me and Dorothy were going to sleep. My stomach growled. The last time I ate was lunch in the mountains.

  I asked Mom for a taco. She told me I could eat after I took a shower. When I came out of the bathroom a few minutes later there was an open rollaway bed in the middle of the room. Mom made up the bed, and I ate my tacos. They were still a little warm in their tin foil just the way I like them. Dad said I could have the rollaway to myself, that Dorothy would sleep with them. I finished the tacos and got in bed and ran my feet across the crispy sheets looking for the cool spot. Even though I slept all afternoon, I guess I was still tired because in a minute I was asleep.

  In my dream I was drowning in a river. I was being pulled away from my family. The strong current pushed my head underwater and held it there. I felt like my heart was going to explode because I couldn’t breathe. I could feel sharp rocks banging against my body like somebody kicking me and my arms were getting scraped on the branches of dead trees.

  Through the clear water I could see Danny and Marco and Little running alongside me reaching down to try to grab my hand. I tried to reach my hand up to them but the current kept pushing it down. I went under a bridge and saw Dad and Ted on top reaching down to me, but they were too far away to grab me.

  When I couldn’t hold my breath any more, I stopped fighting the current and let myself go. When I did that, I felt my body float to the top. The current slowed down like it wanted me to just give up, and when I did it set me free. The water wasn’t cold any more. It was warm, and only my legs and back were wet. I felt somebody’s hand on my arm, and I knew I was safe. Or dead. The hand shook me trying to bring me back to life. It was a little hand like Marco’s.

  I woke up and Dorothy was standing by my bed. It was dark in the room, but I heard a small voice and I knew it was Dorothy’s. “You were having bad dreams,” she whispered. I sat up and looked around. I could see Mom and Dad in bed and Dad was snoring quiet-like. “You woke me up.” Dorothy said.

  My legs and back were still wet. The warm pee was starting to cool off and sting my legs. I told Dorothy to go back to bed, but she went over and woke up Mom and told her I peed the bed. Mom got up and put on her bathrobe. She came over to me and told me to take another shower. When I came back out in my clean calzones, Mom had already put fresh sheets on the rollaway.

  “The rubber sheet’s wet. I’ll have to wash and dry it in the morning,” she whispered, “but the blanket stayed dry.” She held up a corner of it and the top sheet for me to get back in bed. She said, “You need to stay dry because there’s no rubber sheet under you.” I ran my feet across the crispy sheets looking for the warm spot. I was glad she remembered to bring the rubber sheet and ask the motel people for extra sheets.

  I was afraid to go back to sleep so I spent the time thinking about Dad and Grandma and Rudy. The people at the prison told Dad Rudy’s heart attack was a bad one. That he probably wasn’t going to make it. I thought that maybe that was a good thing because if he got well he would still just be back in prison.

  Thinking about Rudy going back to his prison cell made me remember this guy named Raimundo. He was Little’s next door neighbor until he went back to Mexico last Christmas. Everybody just called him Mundo. He raised pigeons. Sometimes when I went over Little’s house, we’d go next door and look at Mundo’s pichones. He had a big coop the size of Grandma’s salón made out of chicken wire. Mundo raised all kinds of pigeons of different breeds and colors. My favorites were the tumblers.

  You can tell tumblers because they have these feathers on their feet that other pigeons don’t, and they only fly with other tumblers. He would let his tumblers loose. We’d watch them fly real high then tumble down through the sky toward the earth. Then, just in time, they’d pull out of their tumble and fly back to their coop.

  Mundo would sell regular pigeons to white boys who would take them home. When they let them loose, the birds would fly in circles, then disappear. In a little while the pichones would show up back at Mundo’s coop. Then he would sell them to other white boys who would let them go and in another little while come back to Mundo. Until he went back to Mexico he never ran out of pigeons or white boys to sell them to.

  Anyway, those pigeons were like Rudy. Grandma would get him out of jail, and he’d be okay for a while but he’d always end up back there in his coop. I guess that’s what Dad was so mad about. That Rudy didn’t care what Grandma and the family did for him or what he did to us. To Rudy, the Folsom coop was his real home.

  But that’s not the Rudy I knew in the time we had together. Rudy treated me good. He cared about me and wanted me to grow up to be a good man like Dad. He told me to stay away from lowlifes like him because they would only bring me trouble. I told him he wasn’t a lowlife—he was my uncle. He would laugh a little bit and punch my shoulder and call me a “crazy little man” then remember I didn’t like that name and call me a “crazy man-on-fire.” He told me not to let anybody put out that fire.

  I heard the water go on next door. It was probably Ted getting in the shower. Betty says he always gets up early even when he doesn’t have to go to work until later. I thought about them in the castle next door. About Betty waiting for her baby and about Ted’s Purple Heart and scars. Dad once told me Ted came back from the war and right away got his job at Safeway and saved his money and built a house for Betty on the empty lot Grandpa gave them for a wedding present. And about what Betty said about Ted’s nightmares and smoking reefer and not going the way of Rudy and the Purple Heart. Rudy didn’t have a way to show the war hurt him bad too.

  I wished the government could make a medal for men like Rudy. It’d
be called the Broken Heart and they would give it to all those men who came home from war all messed up inside and not able to fit back in.

  I thought about school. I wasn’t sad or mad any more about how far behind I was. In a way, I felt like the things that were happening to me like killing the hobo and seeing the Turk kill Lawrence and going to court and now going to see Rudy in the hospital again were like that time me and Danny got stuck on the train and taken to Colton. The things that happened were carrying me along. I couldn’t control where they were taking me. It was like that river dream I just had. The current was too strong to swim out of. The only thing I could do was just let go and hope somebody would grab me and save me before I drowned.

  The sun came in through a gap in the window curtains and flashed in my eyes. I moved my head back into the shadows and decided that staying in seventh grade wasn’t so bad. I would be in the same grade as Marco. I could still have Danny and Little one more year before they were on the other side of the high school fence from me. And we could still have the club.

  The room was getting more light. I got up to close the gap in the curtains. Now I could see Mom and Dad and Dorothy on the bed. Mom was facing the window and Dad had his arm around her. He was still giving out a quiet snore. Dorothy was asleep closest to me. She was on her back and her brown curls covered her pillow like spilled coffee. She was holding her stuffed giraffe tight against her face like she always does when she sleeps. That poor giraffe’s neck got broken a long time ago and now it won’t stand on its own because the head flops and tips it over.

  The sound of water stopped next door. In a little while Mom would get up. She was always up first at home because she took longer to get ready for work than Dad. Dorothy would be the last one up. I looked at Dorothy again. She doesn’t wet her bed like me. I hope she doesn’t have my kind of dreams either.

  27

  We were finishing breakfast in a coffee shop in Fresno. I was looking at my map to see how far we still had to go to get to Folsom. Ted was out at the pay phone by the bathrooms talking to the hospital. There was still half of two pancakes left on my plate, but I was full. I looked at Mom and she shook her head to tell me not to try to clean my plate.

  Ted hung up and signaled with his chin for Dad to go outside with him. I could see them through the front window standing between our two cars talking. Dad slumped against the fender of our car and Ted put his hand on his shoulder. They stayed that way a long minute. Then they walked back in. Dad told Mom to take me and Dorothy back to the car. I pushed my plate of half-pancakes away and folded up my map and scooted out of the booth.

  Everybody else stayed inside. We could see them from the car. Betty was sitting next to Grandma, but Dad and Ted were standing up. Grandma had her back to the window. Then her body went all stiff, like somebody made her sit up like Capone makes me. She must have screamed because all the people I could see through the front window turned their heads real fast and looked at our table.

  Dad put his hand on her shoulder, but Grandma pushed it away. Then Grandma disappeared. I mean one minute she was sitting next to Betty and the next minute Betty was by herself. Then Dad and Betty leaned over and tried to lift Grandma up. I seen people faint in movies. I always thought it was fake, but I guess Grandma fainted and now Dad and Betty were having a hard time trying to get her up.

  A white waitress ran back to the counter and brought a glass of water. A white man from another table came over, but Ted shook his head and said something and the man patted his shoulder and walked back to his booth.

  They finally got Grandma to sit up. Dad slid into the booth beside her. I wanted to go back in and be with them. I pushed Dad’s seat against the steering wheel so I could get out of the backseat, but Mom turned back to look at me.

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “I just want to help Grandma.”

  “Then help her by staying still. Fix the seat and stay put.”

  Grandma’s shoulders were jumping up and down. I knew she was crying real hard. Then little by little Grandma’s shoulders calmed down. Dad give her a kiss on the forehead and slid out of the booth. He came back out to the car. He looked older than he did before we went in that coffee shop.

  “Rudy’s gone,” he told Mom.

  “Where?” Dorothy asked Dad.

  “Rudy’s dead.”

  “No!” I yelled.

  “The hospital told Ted Rudy must’ve had another heart attack. They said they checked on him at four this morning, but when they checked again at six he had no pulse. They said they tried to bring him back, but they couldn’t.”

  We all got quiet in that car. Mom lifted her arm over the back of Dad’s seat. She whispered “I’m so sorry, Manuel,” and touched the back of his neck the way she does to me when she kisses me goodnight. When Mom touches me like that it tickles and makes me shiver, but Dad stared straight ahead like he didn’t even feel a thing.

  “We’re going home,” he finally said. “Ted’s going on to Folsom so Mother can claim Rudy. They’ll put him on a train and send him home. We decided I should go back to make arrangements at Bouchard’s.” Dad’s voice was hard and sharp and heavy.

  I wanted to ask him if I could go with Grandma, but I decided to keep my mouth shut. I looked at Dorothy who was squeezing Giraffe. She was crying without making any sounds. Big tears were rolling down her cheeks making Giraffe’s spots darker. Mom moved over next to Dad and put her head on his shoulder. I knew she was crying. I wanted to cry too, but more than that, I wanted to be like Dad and he wasn’t crying.

  It was real late at night when Dad pulled the Chevy under the ramada. The drive from Fresno took all day and nobody talked the whole way. We stopped in Bakersfield again to gas up. I didn’t even taste the cold tacos I had to eat for lunch. I didn’t care about places on the map because all I could think about was Rudy laying there dead in the hospital.

  I remembered when Grandpa went in the hospital after his stroke. Dorothy was a baby, and Mom didn’t let me go visit him. I think he was there only three days before he died, but I remember how sad and empty the house felt when he was gone. I hardly saw Grandma those three days and when I did she looked so sad and old.

  I think the worst part was Grandpa’s velorio. There were lots of people at the Mission for the rosary the night before his funeral. The coffin was open, and it seemed like everybody from Sangra got in line to see Grandpa off.

  At first his old friends went by. Old ladies blessed him. Old men stood with their Mexican cowboy hats in their hands or leaned on their wood canes. So many people hugged Grandma. I didn’t know anybody could cry as many tears as she did when her friends put their arms around her. The men gave respectful abrazos to my dad and mom and Betty and shook hands with Ted and touched my shoulder with their rough old hands.

  After everybody else left and the Mission was almost empty, Dad and Mom helped Grandma walk to the coffin to say goodbye to Grandpa one last time. Betty held my hand and we walked behind them. I didn’t want to look at Grandpa. I was scared of what he was going to look like. Betty had to pull me up to make me walk with her. I pulled back, but she glared at me and shook her head.

  At the coffin I stood between Dad and Ted. I didn’t want to look down at Grandpa. I wanted to close my eyes and just picture him the way I always saw him in his blue overalls and Mexican cowboy hat watering his plants or cutting branches off bushes or sweeping the driveway with the big push broom he used just for that job. I wanted to imagine him sitting at the kitchen table eating cocido with a spoon in one hand and a rolled-up tortilla in the other. I wanted to see him fixing my kite after I broke it trying to pull it off the telephone wires on the rightaway.

  Dad tapped my shoulder. I opened my eyes and looked down. I thought I was going to see Grandpa but instead what I saw was a statue of Grandpa wearing the blue wool suit he always wore to Sunday Mass. The statue’s waxy white hands were crossed and holding a blue rosary. I never saw that rosary before. Grandpa never
said the rosary with me and Grandma. I don’t know where they got that rosary to put in the statue’s hands.

  I looked at the statue’s face. It didn’t look like Grandpa. Grandpa’s face was always sunburned up to his white forehead where his cowboy hat stopped because Grandpa was always outside tending his garden, but this statue was white like a candle and the skin was pulled tight like a bed sheet to get rid of the wrinkles. And it was smaller than Grandpa. The suit fit it big like my suit fit me before Mom took it apart and sized it to my body. The longer I looked at the statue the gladder I was that Grandpa wasn’t there.

  The inside of the coffin was real fancy the way they made the sateen wrap around the statue in a million little pleats. And all around were pictures and holy cards and roses and other things people put inside when they said goodbye. I felt Dad next to me shaking. I looked up. He wasn’t crying, but his body was shaking and his eyes were closed. I took his hand with mine. It was rough and hard. He wrapped his hand around mine and squeezed it for a long time. His shaking arm made my whole body shake until he let go and turned me away from the coffin by my shoulder.

  We walked down the aisle of the Mission church. I looked back one last time before we went outside. I saw Mr. Bouchard close the lid of the coffin with Grandpa’s statue inside.

  Grandma’s house was dark and cold. I didn’t sleep the whole way back because I wanted to stay awake to help Dad stay awake. I heard stories about people falling asleep behind the wheel and going off the road, but Dad was careful and got us home safe. Dorothy was asleep choking Giraffe and Mom fell asleep around San Fernando, but she woke up when Dad turned off the car.

  I went straight to my old room. I wanted to get under the blankets because I was real tired now but Mom told me to wait until she made the bed and put on the rubber sheet, so I just sat on the front room couch and waited. I was glad Cruz wasn’t there. Dad came in carrying Dorothy and put her in the bed in their room. Mom came out of my room at the same time Dad came out of theirs. She put her hand on his shoulder.