Arcadio Page 4

  Who are our kinfolks among the Mescans I asked mi madre who was your Mescan madre who was your padre? Indios she said and I said what is that what is an Indio? Old people of the race, said mi madre. La Raza. Los Antiguos that was told to me by mi abuela my old grandmother Lupe Luisa. Said La Raza the race es muy antigua. Would not die nobody could wipe them out, said mi madre. Once the whole raza was eaten up by coyotes. Next time a great huge wind blew all La Raza away, and then next rain of fire and next flood of great water. But we went on, los Indios. This is what my grandmother told me about us Mescans Chupa said. I do not know any more except that the Españoles Spaniards cut off the head of my grandmother’s grandfather when my grandmother was a little girl and put it in a cage and hung it on the plaza. My mother’s story made me feel very old and lost perdido is our word for it. Where are your mother and father, I asked Chupa. I do not know, she said. Quién sabe? No me importa. Would you like me to go with you to hunt for them? No, she said. What am I, I asked my mother. Mestizo, she told me. Mixed. Half and half. Are you mestiza? I asked Chupa mi madre. Pureblooded, she said. And do not ask more questions.

  Because when mi madre Chupa run off Papá and I lived in a whorehouse over a Chinese restaurant by a dead river in Memphis, Tennessee, China Boy was name of it if you wan hear it, you wan hear it? Twas owned by a seventy-year-old fox name of Shuang Boy, not a bad man in hisself but a cutthroat woman dealer. Had the gist of sex like a hot fox, could deal in it as if twas canned tomatoes, was a crackerjack storekeeper, ace salesman of it—and I don mean canned tomatoes. That’s somethin you cain’t can. That’s somethin you cain’t can, or Shuang Boy would’ve, that Chinaman would’ve sold it in a can if could’ve. I was never sure what my papá did for Shuang Boy but I guess he was a kind of a strawboss of his women. My papá Hombre walked around naked with’s can of beer in his hands is all I saw him do. I looked upon my father’s nakedness. Whenever I asked him about mi madre he let go such a swearin that I’d hide under somethin until he cooled off. Then he’d say ‘Cadio ‘Cadio where have you gone? Commere you little sonofabitch, didn’t mean to scare you away, commere I’ll give you a ice-cold Coca-Cola, why you shiverin so? But all day I’d turn away from him and wouldn’t say a word. I planned to run away, partly to be alone and to be away from him and partly to try and find my mother. But my papá had his good side to him and then he could be a sweet man, and gentle; blue man, though, blue and soft man when he wasn’t drinkin. You wan hear it? Mi padre Hombre took me to buy me white shoes for Easter and took me to the vaudeville show at the Memphis Sunshine on a rainy Sunday afternoon where the bubblin colored lights bubbled in the Memphis rain, give me a feelin for runnin away to a place that would be like the colored bubbles in the rainy air of hot Memphis, Tennessee.

  But when Papá drunk beer and walked up and down naked it was terrible. He was on the rampage and wouldn’t stop until he wore himself down. Sometimes that took a long time. And I hid again to where he couldn’t find me and made him call and call for me and look for me. And I would see him with the women. I would see what he did with them and scared me and give me feelins that I didn’t want to have. Because I seen that what he did with the women was what he’d done with me; one time he caught me and pulled off all my clothes and I was revealed to him. From then on I would hide where he couldn’t get to me up on top of the closet, when I saw him comin drunk and swingin his big member at me. When I was eleven and one of the women was ahuggin me and touched and took me down with her and found me there was when the whole thing started. I laid down with the women then and the men they had and my father too, more and more, in his drunkenness, and Shuang Boy, too, he was with me in his calor hotness and his old hot yellow lizard’s body. But my father clung to me and held me close until he almost killed me with his green mad eye aburnin upon me, shiverin and crazy and callin my name and tellin me I was his, all his own and that we was savin our money to run away together. You wan hear it?

  And they sold me in the China Boy. Everbody wanted me and it cost a lot. I never saw much light of day until I was fifteen. I laid in a shadow. My days was days of rollin lujuria lust in a shadow and my nights a half-darkness of hot juice and sweat and slippin flesh on mats and beds in rooms. I didn’t care, I loved it. I guess I really wanted to die. You wan hear it, don you? Oyente, listener. You not gonna run away, Oyente, are you? You wan hear it don you? Once Shuang Boy sent me out on a week’s hideout with a big oilman named Drake, big horny man but gentle like they are, a big rough tender man, out in the mesquite country on a ranch. That oilman offered me anything I wanted, the moon and stars, to stay with him, live back in the mesquite country on the hidden rancho with an old whiteheaded black woman to watch after me. Drake brought me purple silks and rosy satins and you won’t believe it but a diamond chain so long it dropped its sparklin little stars of diamonds down upon my young breasts. But I said you forget the cowboy of me, the charro part, Señor. I am not all rosy satins and diamond chains. Give that to the women, he said. Give me a cowboy hat, I said, and some cowboy boots, give me a horse. And I stole out once and walked in his starry cowboy boots and an embroidered sombrero along a cold green flashin little deep river in heat of one hundred and two degrees out in the hidden country of mesquite, and felt my balls, the power of my balls, I was a strutting charro, felt lonesome and wanted to be on the prairies going along with a strong horse under me between my legs and was so mixed up then and thought who am I, what am I? And could have run then but I wasn’t ready, I was fourteen I was not ready to give up the China Boy, all the flesh and hot hiding and all the feelins, the wild feelins I was a slave to, and people aloving me day and night. You wan hear it? Maybe you don wan hear this much, maybe you think I got a liar’s tongue of tin in my head telling a tale fantástico that Silvestro Pappas taught me, but it is the truth I’m telling, tongue of silver, I’m singin the truth what happened to me. I could have run away many times, but I was a slave to my feelings, esclavo of flesh, couldn’t quiet down couldn’t give it up, slave of being wanted, and wanting the feelins, esclavo of being a special piece. I was an addict, I uz doped, crazed, I uz in a cyclone of sex I uz in a coma of sex, I uz drenched in it soaked in it, you wan hear it you wan hear it? Oh I may go back, I may go back to the Show, I just may, the life I’ve led. I may go back to the glass jewel wagon and the golden chair of silence and gazing, give up words give up the telling of tales fantásticos and the mouthing of words, give up la grandeza and la belleza, and speak no more.

  One early morning I run out of Shuang Boy’s. By dawn I was out of town in a cowboy’s clothes. I was worn out and ashamed I was sick to death of my body and of my feelins, sleepin in the weeds outside of towns and cryin in the grass. One day outside of a town, because of my unbearable feelings, I tried to fix myself with a piece of glass but couldn’t get the courage to do it—and to tell the honest truth I couldn’t make up my mind which of myself to try and eliminate, I had no favorites, my lifelong problem in that terrible night of dying in my soul Jesucristo come to me and told me to accept myself just as I was, that He had made me as He had made all things and would be my companion from then on, wherever I went if I would have Him. Oh Jesus Jesucristo, I said, are you like me? Like you, said Jesucristo; and in the morning in peace I got up out of the weeds of the field and started on my way of acceptance, wanderin and abeggin at back doors. Little did people know that Jesucristo was with me at their back door, knockin, and when they come to ask what I wanted and saw me hungry and heard me ask have you got anything to eat? they give me some bread and they was afeeding Jesus Christ our Lord. I’m only tellin you what happened. If you wan hear. That’s all I’m singing you.

  Oh twas people in cities still tried to pay me to do things, as of yore in the house of Shuang Boy, in the China Boy, to come to a hotel room and lay on a bed while they all looked and watched and drank, but I would not; and some rich men in Fort Worth offered me a whole lots of money to come away with them to a huntin lodge and let them all have a party with me. But I would
not. Was the love of Jesucristo saved my soul and saved me from lecherousness, from just going down into the dirt for love of the flesh and the feelins and just not caring; Jesucristo’s love kept me from feelin I was a freak, a Sideshow like Old Shanks called me, old bastard, and thrown back by the human race, give me some human dignity. Else I would have fallen low again cause of my special flesh I was born with and was put on me to test me, though I had temptations more terrible than could be told, and tis true that I had given in to all I told you when I was young and couldn’t stop. Oh I did some things, have to admit, got off with the wrong people a few times and let em have their way. Twas because I was so lonesome and in my lonesomeness remembered those feelins from what Shuang Boy’s house shown to my body, back there in those days I have described to you, in the China Boy. Such feelins come over me sometimes that I didn’t know what to do, thank God they’ve all gone by the wayside, majority of em, and I got some peace from that hellfire of feelin come over me when I let them have their way. Twas from those hellfire of feelins that I almost lost my way. I would wake up naked in the moonlight laying hurtin and thinkin Lord God Jesucristo what’s happenin to me am I bein stabbed am I bein stung am I goin to bust open what is drenchin me and burnin me and meltin me, I got all this on me, all this, and wish I’d never found out what it could do to me, what feelins it could give me, cause now I don know how to forget them, can’t stop them, cause now I know and have been hurt crazy by these feelins and I can’t get away from them now they have been laid heavy on me again, my God would make a lunatic out of me, a crazy hurtin gaspin thing out of me, cryin out for ease. Wish I could be a holy saint or a person without any feelins, a poor idiota like that Hector; or just a boy, a boy without the changin and hurtin that comes to you in a while, before you know it you done changed from something skippin along or off singin by yourself to a secret somethin lookin and huntin and wantin in the dark, lets you know what you got on you and the wild feelins that can come from what you got on you, wish I could go to a magician and have him wipe them off of me with a magic wand or with the wave of a silken handkerchief, or in a puff of smoke; or just paint over them as you can do on a picture. In me Satanas put on one body the two biggest troublemakers ever created from flesh onto one body and give that one person the torments of the whole human race, man and woman, all in one. Tis me. Arcadio. You wan hear.

  And I kept on havin, from time to time, offers of a lots of money, from people who wished me to display the work of nature on my flesh; but I would not. And one time a Turkish man, a rich Turk, wanted me, to take me away and put me in a little palace all of my own. I don know what town but in some town in Turkey, I guess. Turkish man said he would put silks and satins on me and pearls and rubies and just possess me all his own forever, pleasin me in any and every way that I wanted. This, I must admit, was a proposition, for the Turk was a muy caro person and I had nothing, not one thing, twas a real temptation, for pleasure and pearls and a little palace—a little security. But I would never have any privacy and would be owned by someone. And I would be back into my hellfire. So I would not. I would not go with this Turk.

  But the thing that really changed my life was that one night I come upon a Show travelin through Texas but pitched in a pasture outside of town of Refugio, a Mescan town of Texas, and the word come to me Investigate. So I went and said where’s the boss and they told me and I found the boss, Old Shanks, Tarrance Shanks, and said to him that I wanted a job and Old Shanks said doing what, and we went out in the field and I showed myself to the man, revealed myself, mi cuerpo, and Shanks said Jesus Christ. And after a minute said do you have any talent? Well I can play a good waltz on the frenchharp—a little; “The Waltz of the Spotted Dog,” I said. Never heard of the waltz but you got a job, said Tarrance Shanks to me, and wondered would I show myself, “nature’s harvest,” completely revealed, on the side to a special few who would no doubt be willing to pay an added fee. They would be screened out to detect any freaks who had abnormal ideas, man said. But I would not. I just would not. What would be my salary, I wanted to know. Cinco a week plus board and room, the man Shanks said, using a Mescan word the way Texans do. And I responded with a quick shot of Mescan, rattled out such a quick bunch of Mescan that it stopped him dead in his tracks and the man said what is that? And I said tips. It means in Mescan any tips? We have a sign outside says No Tips to the Attractions. That’s general procedure, said Tarrance Shanks.

  Though it was not a very good offer I agreed to dress up on the outside to indicate what’s on the inside for an additional one-fifty. But Shanks said not until there was an increase in attendance. Business’s been bad, he complained. Said twas because of rain and taxes.

  I took the job so I could always be among people, even if twas just settin still and gazin while bein gazed at and not bein alone in some faraway palace in Turkey or some cheap hotel in some city. And time passed on until where my mother Chupa found me and I excaped at her suggestion.

  I’d like to pull out a ragged photograph, once tinted but now the tint is faded away in most spots, taken of me in Albuquerque once when I was at my fullest. Perhaps you will someday remember me. In it you will see me wild-looking, something dangerous in my facial glance, in my dark Mescan flashin face of burnin eyes and red lips with some of the red still on them if you’ll notice and my black head of curling hair, tis a wondrous thing this photo and shows me how I was, if you don believe me now. Perhaps you will remember me. And while you gaze awhile upon it I will play my frenchharp, the waltz called “The Waltz of the Spotted Dog,” my favorite through the years and the only song I know. You wan hear?

  8

  My Mother Chupa’s Song Continued

  SO SAID SHE WAS twenty-one when she run away from my father and me. You wan hear it? With her dress torn off her back said she run into the night, looking back to see a drunk man running crazy after her, falling and getting up and floundering and running and falling, until she did not look back any more. Chupita! she heard a voice cry. But my mother did not look back and run on.

  For some time she traveled in the company of a blond man that was excaping the Law which was in pursuit of him. This man Joel had stolen enough money for him and my mother Chupa to flee comfortably from city to city, living in pretty good hotels and eating in good cafés. Joel gambled and kept winning, my mother said. But when he suddenly lost everything they had to live with nothing in terrible places. My mother said she suffered bad from poverty. She was often dirty and hungry. Which led her to despise herself, she said. The blond man Joel wanted to rob a place but my mother would not offer her help as an accomplice, dressed like a man as he suggested and showing a revolver to a bank clerk. It was somewhere in Sonoma County that the blond man Joel wanted to make this robbery, my mother remembered and told me. You want to ask which particular town I’m sure but please to hold your questions I like to tell my story in as much of one piece as I can, por favor—chiquito. The way you would not interrupt a singer and his song, comprendes. My mother Chupa would not lend her hand to a robbery. She would, however, agree to loiter nearby in an alley and wait for Joel to finish his deed. She was dumb enough to believe that he would come out of the bank like he was just another person who had cashed a small check and walk on calmly away with her—which was precisely his plan, according to what my mother Chupa told me. My opinion is that Chupa my mother should have cut herself away right then and there from Joel the blond man, given him the shake-off; but of course I see that the poor woman was in love with him and afraid to lose him, and afraid to be alone in the world, way up in the Valley of the Moon in Sonoma County California, God only knows which town, she never told me.

  Of course they blew off the crown of Joel’s blond head. And right before my mother’s eyes while she stood in her appointed place looking in Joel’s face as he come towards her. He fell at her feet and she fell upon him—and all the bank money that had fallen out—and held him to her. You’ve blown his brains out she screamed to the Police. Get out of th
e way lady, the Police shouted to her, you’re cradling a dangerous criminal wanted over the entire Valley of the Moon. Well he’s not wanted any more my mother said she said, as they pulled her up from the crownless Joel. In her bosom was a hundred-dollar bill and two twenties which she’d slipped there. Said she saw Joel’s blue eyes looking green at her through the red blood. Do you know this robber? the Police asked her. No, I’m in the nature of a Good Samaritan, said she told them. Then please go on your way, he’s beyond any Good Samaritan, let go of him lady.

  That’s how my mother Chupa started the next piece of her life, bloodstained with a blond man’s blood and with one hundred and forty dollars of stolen bank cash in her bosom in far up Sonoma County in the Valley of the Moon in California, I don know what town. Maybe Vallejo I don know even if it is in the Valley of the Moon or even if tis a town may be a valley, Vallejo is all she told me, Vallejo. My mother was afraid to try to use the one-hundred-dollar bill for fear of being suspicioned and so she kept it in her bosom. The forty dollars got her started with clean clothes and off on her own—to where? Where was she to go, where was my mother to go, so alone? With another man, of course. Who popped right up before the day was over. By nightfall he’d had his hand in her bosom and fingering the hundred-dollar bill. Senseless because a man had his fingers on the nipples of her breast, poor fool of lonesomeness and sex that my mother was, she lost the hundred-dollar bill in that manner, in the fashion that I have just told you.