Amigoland Part 8

"At first I was all right and not nervous, but it was when they put the sheet over me that I started getting scared, like I didn't know what the barber was going to do with those sharp scissors. My mother had put a sheet over me, but this barber wasn't my mother. Papa Grande was standing by the chair and he kept talking so he could distract me."

"Saying what to you?" Socorro asked.

"Nothing to me, really. He liked to talk to the barber and the rest of them who were waiting for their haircuts." The old man glanced around the room again and this time closed his eyes and lolled his head.

Socorro sat back in her chair. Now she wished she hadn't asked the question and instead just let him keep talking. "The important thing is that you can remember how he took you," she said. "Most people would never be able to, already so many years ago."

Don Fidencio blinked a few times before fully opening his eyes. "And later when the barber had finished with my hair, he asked him if he had cut enough. Papa Grande told him to cut just a little more in the front, but 'not too much,' he said, 'because one time I saw an Indian scalp a man.'"

Don Celestino shook his head at this.

"No, what?" his brother asked.

"No, not those made-up stories."

"So now an old man is not allowed to talk about one of the few things that has stayed with him."

"The only ones who believed the story were little children," Don Celestino said, then turned toward Socorro. "Our grandfather used to tell us that when he was a little boy growing up in Mexico, some Indians attacked the ranchito where he lived with his family. The Indians killed most of the adults and took off with some of the children, kidnapped them and rode off to the north. And he used to claim that that was how he got over to this side of the river."

"It sounds like something from a book or movie," Socorro said. "Even a novela."

"This was one of those kinds of stories."

"If he said that the Indians took him, then the Indians took him," Don Fidencio said. "He saw them kill his mother and father. What more proof do you want? Tell me why would he make up something like that, about riding all night with the Indians and the Mexican army chasing them." The old man stopped to wipe the spittle from the corner of his mouth. "Not only that, but you forgot to tell her that the man they scalped was still alive." He used the edge of his hand as if he were slicing back his own scalp, the same as his grandfather would do when recounting the story.

She made a face as she pulled away in the chair.

"Our grandfather was a little old man who liked to talk." Don Celestino sat back near the corner of the bed. "He thought that because the stories happened so long ago and over there, on the other side, that people would believe whatever he said. Everything was more dangerous back then, everything was more exciting back then. The men were different, the women were different. Always, always with the way things were."

"You say that only because you were born over here. How would you know how things were back then, if you hardly spent any time with Papa Grande? I was the one who would go spend days with him. It was the last story he ever told me. By then he had told it to me hundreds of times, but I let him tell it one last time. He told me like he had only just arrived here. It mattered to him that other people remembered the story, even those who would never believe it. He told me that if he had one regret in his life, it was that he never went back, at least to see if anyone had survived or what was left of the ranchito. Then he said to me, 'Tocayo,' because we were both Fidencio, but he hardly ever called me by my name. 'Tocayo, someday when you are older you should go back and see how things are now, what there is of my ranchito. Tell them I always wanted to go back.'"

"At least he had you there with him," Socorro said.

"He died that night in his bed. Later I thought about going back like he said, but I was always working or busy with something else, and by the time I could go, I had forgotten what he said, until last night when it came back to me."

"And now you want to go back," Don Celestino said, crossing his arms. "And you want me to take you."

"What's so wrong with that, if you have the time?"

"That I'm not here to do your errands," his brother said. "I wasn't the one he told to go looking for the ranchito."

"And why not," Don Fidencio asked, "if this is our grandfather?"

"Why do I need to go searching through Mexico for something that never happened? And this is only because you made a promise ages ago and then forgot about it until now."

"How can you be so sure it didn't happen?"

"And how can you be so sure it did?"

"You were the only one who never believed the story. What would it hurt you to help an old man with his last wish?"

Don Celestino stood up when he saw both of them looking at him, waiting for a response. "Who knows, maybe one of these days we can go," he said, hoping this would satisfy the old man until he forgot about it, as he usually did with most things.

"One of these days?" He flicked his wrist and turned toward the window. "You say it like I have so many left."

"Why don't we talk about something else, eh?"

Don Celestino glanced at his watch, then over at Socorro, but she seemed in no hurry to leave.

"Your room is quiet," Socorro said. "It must be good when you need to rest."

"Only when this neighbor of mine isn't yelling in his sleep."

"Every night that way?"

"No, but still last night it was hard because I had to go four times to make water." He held up the appropriate number of fingers to show her. "Four - I counted. And then another because I thought it was time to make number two." He held up a pair of fingers on the other hand.

"Fidencio, n.o.body wants to talk about being sick. Please find something more pleasant to talk about?"

"She was the one who asked me. And anyway, that's how it happens when people get old - nothing works anymore and then one day they wake up dead."

"Ya, stop talking like that."

"Why not, if it's only the truth?"

"n.o.body wants to think about getting old and dying," Don Celestino said.

"Bah, and just because you don't want to think about getting old, you think this will make it go away?" The old man sat back. "Maybe I should stop thinking about being constipated."

"You know what I mean."

"And now I can't talk about my own health?"

"Sometimes my mother goes the whole night without sleeping," Socorro said.

"But when I was finally able to rest, I had a dream that I was working again, delivering the mail. Imagine going to sleep and all you do is walk from house to house."

"Still, after so many years?"

"This one is the same dream over and over," Don Celestino said. "He keeps delivering the mail, even if they don't pay him anymore."

"Yes, but this time n.o.body had mailboxes."

"How do you mean, no mailboxes?"

"No mailboxes, no mailboxes, how much more simple do you want it? Houses with no mailboxes. Like pants with no pockets."

"And where were they?"

"Somebody took them."

"All of them?" Socorro asked.

"Why should that surprise you? We live in a town where people steal whatever they can - cars, lawn mowers, dogs out of the backyard. The other day some idiota walked into a store and tried to steal a stereo by putting it inside his pants."

"And then what else?"

He stayed looking at her for a few seconds.

"With the mailboxes?" she said.

"Yes, so there were no mailboxes," he said. "If I had found them, maybe I would have slept better. But no, I had to keep walking all over town for someplace to put my letters. The sun was hot and my bag felt like it was full of bricks.

"At first I didn't know what to do with so many letters and no mailboxes, but then I knocked and a young boy answered. He must have been nine or ten years old. He had hair down to his shoulders and eyes like a chinito. I asked for his mother or father, but he said they were gone, that it was just him. Then I asked him, 'What happened to all the mailboxes?' But he just shook his head like I was a crazy man. I asked him if he wanted the letter, maybe it was for his mother and father. But he said no, for me to keep it."

"But to do what with it?" she asked.

"That, he didn't tell me. I guess I was just supposed to keep carrying all the letters but for no reason."

"And then?"

"And then nothing. I woke up and stayed there in bed, waiting until it was time to go for my breakfast."

There was a knock at the door and they all turned to see The One With The Flat Face leaning halfway into the room. "Mr. Rosales, you need to get ready for lunch," she said before she continued down the hall.

Socorro glanced at her watch and it was only a couple of minutes past eleven.

"What else is there to do here?" Don Fidencio said. "It takes time to get all these old people into one room and ready to eat."

It seemed as though he wanted to say more but then was unsure what that might be. He gazed out at the archway where The Turtle With The Fedora was being lowered from the special van used to transport the residents to their doctor's appointments. The lift had stalled and he was waiting to see if her wheelchair might roll forward.

The point was, he had talked to his brother and the girl enough already. He had to go eat his lunch now; this was where he lived and slept and took his meals. His brother and the girl were nice to come visit him. It was nice of the girl to ask him questions like she was interested in his life. Tomorrow it might be different. Tomorrow they might not be coming around. Taking time out of their busy days to come visit an old man who couldn't remember the half of what he knew. And really, he wondered if he could blame them.

17.

This was Sat.u.r.day, according to the calendar hanging in the kitchen. Only the fourth day of the month, but by now Don Celestino had marked several of the dates with appointments to see one doctor or another - for his annual exam with his cardiologist, for a follow-up with the urologist, for his bimonthly visit to the podiatrist so one of the nurses could trim his toenails (a precaution his regular doctor had urged him to take because of his diabetes). Other dates on the calendar reminded him of when to change the oil in the car or when he was due for his next haircut, though he tended to go more by what he saw in the mirror than by what was on the calendar. Socorro's name took up the same square every week, not because he thought he would forget but just to have something to make the week appear not as long. His scribbled notes spilled across other squares, making it seem as if these days and weeks were actually one long day that wound down at the bottom of the page, only to begin anew on the next calendar page. In fact, since practically every square noted some activity, today's blank square looked that much more blank. Compared to the surrounding dates, the square appeared pristine, absent of the usual mundane tasks that might occupy his time or at least make it seem that he had more to do than he actually did. It was almost as if he had set aside the day for some special event, only now he had no idea what it might be. He checked the other dates to see if there was something planned for later in the month that he might be able to move up to today. It was only ten o'clock in the morning. He knew from experience that a day like this could drag on and the only thing he would have to look forward to was for it to get dark so he could go to sleep and wait for tomorrow to come around. The car looked fairly clean, and taking out the bucket and rags to wash it seemed unnecessary. His shoes he had polished only two days ago, after having spent most of the morning shopping for a new set of laces. The Wellness Center was closed on the weekends, and walking inside the mall had never interested him - much less if he had to deal with the weekend crowds. When the King Mart was still open, he and Dora used to sometimes go to the little cafe to drink coffee and read the paper. There was usually another married couple sitting there and they would often strike up a conversation that took up most of the morning. Doing this alone wasn't as easy, though, and now if he talked to anyone it was usually to some other widower looking for a way to pa.s.s the time.

After flipping through the thirty or so channels and not finding anything that caught his attention, he walked out to the driveway to get the newspaper. By now he knew to breathe with his mouth to avoid the bad smell drifting through the yard. The smell occurred most mornings and disappeared by noontime, but by then the day was too hot to do much of anything outside. Even the tap water had a lingering odor and taste to it, enough that he had taken to buying purified water. He figured the smell had to be coming from either one of the drying resacas or the sewer plant a couple of miles away. Tamez worked as if he were immune to it. He waved from across the street, where he was mowing a neighbor's yard. Don Celestino did his part and waved back before he started for the front door. Tamez probably thought they were on good terms, that Don Celestino had appreciated his offer to take care of the yard for a reduced rate, as he did for several of his other elderly neighbors. "Not now," Don Celestino had answered, and left it at that. Though what he had really wanted to say was, "Not anytime soon, cabron." Or better: "Not until after I die and they put me in a hole in the ground and the yard belongs to somebody else." Did he see him walking around with a cane or a walker? Did he have a handicapped tag hanging from his rearview mirror? Had they built a ramp for him to roll his wheelchair up to the front door? If anything, he felt he had more energy than ever to dedicate to his responsibilities around the house. Just a few days earlier, he had spent part of his late afternoon tr.i.m.m.i.n.g the gra.s.s all along the sidewalk leading from the front steps to the street, and he had done this with a fifteen-inch knife that cut an edge as straight as he used to do when tr.i.m.m.i.n.g one of his customers' sideburns. After he finished with the sidewalk, he took the small piece of carpet that he kneeled on and placed it along the curb so he could trim the gra.s.s near the street. Tamez did the same work at the other houses, but always with one of those weed-tr.i.m.m.i.n.g machines that Don Celestino had no idea about how to operate. No one needed to ask who did a better job, he or Tamez, just as no one needed to ask if an electric shaver did as good a job as a straight razor.

Back inside the house, he sat in his recliner to read the paper, scanning the first couple of pages for anything that he hadn't seen on the news at five that morning. He managed to get through only half of an article about the city commissioners' meeting before his eyes grew faint and he nodded off. Less than a minute later he woke up, upset with himself for not having stayed more alert; it wasn't noon and here he was dozing off. He tossed the paper aside and walked to the kitchen. He ran the water until it was hot enough to rinse the one plate he'd used earlier. The orange grease of the chorizo streaked its way down to the sink and into the drain. He squirted a generous amount of dishwashing liquid onto the sponge before wiping the plate clean on both sides, then repeating the process. His coffee cup could get by with a simple rinse and wipe, but he preferred scrubbing inside and out, around the handle, too, where some coffee might have dribbled down.

The clock on the stove read 10:56. It was still too early to eat his lunch or tune in again to the weather report on the television. He opened the refrigerator so he could pour himself a gla.s.s of water. With the pitcher less than full, he walked back to the counter for the jug of purified water. The old jugs used to be the five-gallon size, but one day he saw Socorro struggling to lift the plastic container and he rushed over to help her, something an old man would've never been able to do. Then later that afternoon, just to make it easier on her, he had gone ahead and replaced the five-gallon with the three-gallon size. Now he kept two smaller jugs and made a trip to buy more water whenever he noticed one of them getting low.

The first water station he pa.s.sed was spray-painted with EL NOE Y LA ROSA EL NOE Y LA ROSA on its side and along the metal counter where people set their jugs to retrieve water. Farther down the same street, he pa.s.sed a station that charged a nickel less, but it meant driving across a parking lot riddled with potholes and broken gla.s.s. Some of the grocery stores also sold water, only these outlets were located near the entrance of the building, and he would have to find a parking spot, then walk over to buy the water, then use a shopping cart to bring the filled jugs to wherever he left the car. Socorro had mentioned to him the filter systems she'd seen in some of the other houses she cleaned. He told her he would think about it, but he had trouble believing these machines did as good a job as the water stations. Besides, if he bought the filter, he wouldn't need to go buy water a couple of times a week, and that would be one less thing to occupy his time during the day. on its side and along the metal counter where people set their jugs to retrieve water. Farther down the same street, he pa.s.sed a station that charged a nickel less, but it meant driving across a parking lot riddled with potholes and broken gla.s.s. Some of the grocery stores also sold water, only these outlets were located near the entrance of the building, and he would have to find a parking spot, then walk over to buy the water, then use a shopping cart to bring the filled jugs to wherever he left the car. Socorro had mentioned to him the filter systems she'd seen in some of the other houses she cleaned. He told her he would think about it, but he had trouble believing these machines did as good a job as the water stations. Besides, if he bought the filter, he wouldn't need to go buy water a couple of times a week, and that would be one less thing to occupy his time during the day.

He pulled the car into the small parking lot of the San Juan Water Station. The station had an outlet on either side, but he preferred the left since it was on the driver's side and shaded by a row of Sabal palms that stood at the far end of the lot. A palm from one of the trees had fallen overnight and now lay withering across the dark asphalt. He placed the first jug on the counter and lowered the retractable spigot so it rested less than an inch above the mouth of the jug. After he fed the three quarters into the slot, he pressed the three-gallon b.u.t.ton and waited as the water shot out with the force of an open fire hydrant.

He was capping the jug and was about to place it in the backseat when he heard a car honking from the street. An elderly man in a motorized wheelchair was driving halfway on the shoulder and halfway in the right lane, forcing traffic to either slow down or go around him. Some drivers might have missed him were it not for the small U.S. flag fluttering on an antenna high above the chair. He was dressed in a blue-striped Western shirt, khakis, short black boots, and a straw cowboy hat, all of which appeared exceedingly large for him, as if he had shrunk since putting on his clothes that morning. On his lap he held an empty three-gallon jug.

Don Celestino stepped around to the other side of the station to ask the old man if he needed help getting his water, but the man only mumbled something to himself as if he hadn't seen another person nearby. A strip of spittle had dried at the corner of his mouth, caking itself onto his two-day-old stubble. He grabbed the wooden cane hooked on the back-rest of his chair and positioned it between his legs as he stood up. Once he had set the jug on the counter, he pulled out a long black billfold with a fighting c.o.c.k embroidered on its side and then fumbled through a stash of lottery tickets until he finally located his money.

"That machine can be difficult sometimes," Don Celestino said when he noticed that George Washington's face was as worn and tattered as the old man's.

"Eh?" He tried to remove his money from the tray but managed to s.n.a.t.c.h only a corner before it tore off in his hand. "Then why the h.e.l.l do they have it here, just to steal my money?"

He stared at the spigot, waiting for his water to come out. A few seconds pa.s.sed before the tray expelled the torn bill and the service panel began to flash: PLEASE TAKE YOUR MONEY. PLEASE TAKE YOUR MONEY. Then it darkened before it flashed again: Then it darkened before it flashed again: POR FAVOR RETIRE SU DINERO. POR FAVOR RETIRE SU DINERO.

"The other side works better," Don Celestino said.

"And why would I give them more of my money?" He grabbed the jug off the counter. "It would be better if I just drank the dirty water I have at home." He sat down in the wheelchair, muttering something else to himself, and finally whipped around the station to the other counter. There he looked through his billfold again, but the only dollar he found was more wrinkled than the first one.

"Here," Don Celestino said, and from his own wallet handed him a crisp dollar bill.

The old man held the jug under the rushing water. Afterward he paid Don Celestino with one of his own wrinkled dollars. "I appreciate the help," he said, extending his hand. "Pano Garcia."

"Celestino Rosales."

The old man c.o.c.ked back his hat. "The one who was a barber?"

Don Celestino nodded as he tried to recognize the other man's face.

"I thought you had died." He lowered himself back down into the chair.

"That must have been somebody else."

"They said you had problems with your heart or something."

"It must have been somebody else, maybe my older brother Fidencio."

"No, I am almost sure it was Celestino Rosales that they told me had died. This was two or three years ago."

"Maybe because of my diabetes."

"No, not because of your diabetes." He looked at the ground and spit, then wiped his mouth on his shoulder. "Why would somebody waste their time telling me that you had diabetes? Tell me who doesn't have that."

"Two years ago was when I sold my business."

"Maybe that was it. Not that you died, but just that you sold the barbershop. Maybe that was what they meant to say."

"People like to talk," Don Celestino said. "Even when they have no idea what they're saying."

"I can tell you don't remember me." The old man laughed to himself. "But how, after so many years? You used to cut hair in a barbershop near Washington Park. I would cut my hair with the one named Lalo, who was my uncle."