BOUGAINVILLEA ROAD LIT MAG
Bougainvillea Road publishes writing that is eclectic, alive, and intrepid. We value the heart over the head. Guidelines: ( BRLM is currently closed for submissions. We plan on re-opening in January of 2016. Sorry for any inconvenience.) Editor: Brian Michael Barbeito/ Assistant Editor: Kelly Kusumoto
Sunday, December 6, 2015
Memorias de la Tierra - by Frank Strong
The votive candles flickered with the light taken
from a remembered dream. An image of the Virgin of Guadalupe sat atop the altar
with her heavy gaze perpetually searching the earth for the son she had lost.
There were other faces though, hidden amongst the blooming marigolds,
photographic portraits all colored with the same somber grey. The outlines of
their features—strong jaws, wide eyes, linear brow lines—seemed to be pulled by
Time’s eroding fingertips.
Tamayo kneeled in front of the altar and uttered a
prayer to those faces, his ancestors. He imagined that the purifying salt atop
the table was only a collection of dried and forgotten tears. Incense dripped
into the air, and in between the bending and shifting wisps of smoke Tamayo
heard whispers, sighs, moans, but they were faint and unclear as though the
voices were coming from the opposite end of the desert expanse. Tamayo wondered
how far his own words could travel, if those on the other side of Death could
hear his prayers. His voice didn’t need to travel that far, he only wished that
it would reach his disappeared mother so he could tell her that even though he
loved his abuelo he didn’t want to live with him any longer, that he missed
being with her, in her arms, how her hair smelled like flowers, how her hands
were both rough and soft at the same time, and how her soothing touch was the
only thing that could send him to sleep on certain restless nights. Maybe her
voice was already there, alongside the others, murmuring to not be forgotten on
this day, All Soul’s Day, Día de los Muertos.
A voice, heavy and human, called out to Tamayo and
he lifted his eyes to see his abuelo standing in the doorway. The old man
always stood a little taller in the shadows of nightfall, as though once the
oppressive weight of the sun was gone his spine straightened out to its true
length.
“Hijo, come. We have work to do.”
“Tonight?”
“Sí,” the old man said and walked out of the
doorway, the orange candlelight making his image linger a moment longer. The
old man never spoke much and Tamayo never asked many questions. Tamayo trusted
the old man, and he trusted the old man’s silence even more.
He peered up at the Virgin Maria and the other
nameless faces upon the altar, and they seemed to beg him to stay, to hear
their stories, as if they had recovered a little life from him and a second
death awaited them once they were alone and forgotten.
The old man was already waiting outside in his
rusted pickup, the engine wheezing in the placid blue air of night. They drove
off, two men, one old and one young. Somewhere along the way Tamayo lost track
of their sleepy town, the constellations of streetlamps, the empty highway, the
silent side streets, and he found himself on a crumbling road that trailed up a
bald hillside. The headlights picked up the slowly swaying path, the curves a
vague dance that only the hillsides knew. Low-lying, dead brush protruded from
the otherwise barren soil and Tamayo imagined that those leafless branches were
the hairs of a giant beast which hibernated just beneath the earth.
The old man parked the truck at the end of the
paved road, then he walked a little farther off with Tamayo following, the
ancient gravel sighing beneath their feet. The old man carried a small basket
and Tamayo could smell the aroma of warm tortillas. They stopped at the edge of
a vista overlooking the scattered light below. Tamayo whispered that the
pockets of light looked like pools of water, maybe small oceans with invisible,
black waves rippling through them.
“I’ve only seen the ocean once,” the old man said,
his voice course like burning embers were lodged in his throat. “But I’ve known
her cousin, the desert. It’s a waterless ocean, a sea of stones.” The old man
was quiet for a moment. “After a lifetime you learn to love it in your own
way.”
“It’s pretty,” Tamayo said. He thought about the
old man and all those memories that must reside within that leathery, sulpheric
skin of his. It was like peering at a dry riverbed and imagining the torrents
of cold water that must have flowed through at one time. Tamayo only knew his
grandfather had made a living as a ranch-hand his whole life, and if the old
man stopped working his hardened hands would probably dissolve and be reclaimed
by the parched soil, the same soil which had forged them with its inexhaustible
sand and dirt.
They waited longer, Tamayo walked in circles to
keep his legs warm, and time seemed to lurch directly alongside the light
breeze.
The old man lifted a finger to the distance and
said, “Beyond those hills is Mexico. You can’t see it, but it’s there.”
Tamayo had heard the whispered rumors about that
place, that his mother had crossed back over the prismatic, crystalline
frontier and she’d probably never return. His fragmented thoughts coalesced and
he wondered what kind of place Mexico must be, where women drift in only to be
swallowed whole and never heard from again.
“Our blood first simmered over there in that black
heap. It still simmers to this day. You can hear her prayers sometimes, carried
through the winds and the rains,” the old man said.
Tamayo listened and heard nothing. But maybe that
was the prayer: a dense, monolithic silence. “Do you think Mama is there, like
they say?” he asked.
“We pray for everyone on All Soul’s Day,” the man
answered, “even those that are lost.”
Images seemed to rise from the earth and saturate
Tamayo’s mental landscape, his mother’s soft face, her hair, then a deep chasm
that slowly opened like a sleepy eye, and a pupil that was filled with an
ancient, granulated black.
The lights below and the stars above floated and
danced, both pulled by the same invisible tide. He wondered how many lives
these lights had presided over, indifferent witnesses to the sufferings of
those below. Then, for a moment, the faint scent of incense pressed against
Tamayo’s nostrils, followed by the sound of hooves beating and dragging against
the earth, but those noises seemed hollow, as though emanated from the shifting
westerly winds more so than any real point in time.
“Ah, here we are,” the old man said.
A tall silhouette approached from out the darkness
and Tamayo recognized the unmistakable outline of a man on horseback. The horse
trotted with a severe limp, almost stumbling over itself. A stench of stale and
dry sweat proceeded the lonesome rider, and as he came closer Tamayo made out a
floppy Stetson resting on the rider’s back, gold yet rusted button’s running
down his legs, leather boots with crevices like veins, a frayed poncho over his
chest with dark circles matted into the cloth like spots on aged wood. A thin
moustache and high cheekbones graced the man’s face along with deep set eyes
reminiscent of precious metal that hasn’t been mined yet. Desert dust covered
his whole body.
Tamayo’s abuelo spoke in an even-keeled Spanish to
the rider, “Ella is muy bonita,” he said and stroked the taut neck of
the brown stallion.
“Ay sí, pero her legs are hurt,” the rider
said.
“I see. Her legs,” the old replied. “She needs
rest. Come down and I can help you unsaddle her.”
The rider hesitated and didn’t move.
“You don’t recognize me,” the old man said. “It’s okay. Yo soy un primo de su papa. You’ve been away from the ranch a
long time.”
The rider looked over the old man and then Tamayo
felt the heavy gaze fall upon him.
“How long has it been?” the rider asked.
“Mucho tiempo. Un año” the
old man said. “But you have the papers, of course.”
The mysterious rider nodded his head. “Sí.”
“Come, we’ll help you get them to su padre,”
the old man said.
The rider dismounted from his ailing horse, which
let out a deep, asthmatic breath. Tamayo peered at the rider and by the light
of the moon he saw a face, young, barely on the cusp of manhood, yet vaguely
familiar somehow, a resemblance to Tamayo’s own face but unfamiliar also, like he
was peering through the shards of a broken mirror.
“Who is he?” Tamayo whispered to his abuelo.
The old man lay an almost skeletal hand upon
Tamayo’s shoulder, “He’s one of those lost souls we pray for on this day.”
The rider faced them and asked, “Your hijo?”
“My grandson, Tamayo. Your distant primo,”
the old man said.
“Israel. Mucho gusto,” the rider said with
an outstretched hand, scars running across his knuckles.
Tamayo took the man’s grip and an alien sensation
tore through his body, like infinite grains of sand and stone penetrated into
his skin, burrowing itself in his arteries. He felt the languished desert sun
burn in his chest, shrieking echoes clawed through his ears, a coldness cleaved
through and severed his psyche in half. He saw them with innocent eyes,
crystalized calamities, memories that weren’t his own.
***
He crossed over the border, that prismatic frontier
of dry lands, the terminal point of two worlds: the United States and Mexico.
The border-town was sleepy, a prevailing unconsciousness extruded from the
peoples’ faces, similar to those early-morning dreams one has just before
awakening.
Israel pushed past the town and rode farther along
into the depths of the forsaken lands. Here, the thirsty mountains loomed a
little closer in order to carefully examine the solitary figure riding along
their stone ribs. It felt like he had been through here before, as though he
were also crossing that nocturnal frontier within his soul towards some
preordained rendezvous on the other side of the horizon.
Israel’s family used to call this land, Mexico,
their country. But an invisible incision had been freshly sliced into the
earth. After the war with the Norteamericanos Israel and his family found
themselves stranded in Alta-California, strangers to their own land, foreigners
of both the body and soul, motherless nomads. They tried to get along, make a
life as they always had, but other settlers questioned the legitimacy of
Israel’s family properties: a massive ranch whose only demarcations were the
natural wrinkles of the earth. Israel’s padre, too old and too proud to
leave his land, had sent Israel to ride into Mexico and retrieve the official
documents that would justify ownership and the family’s right to live on the
ranch they had always called home.
The sun and its endless caresses of warmth seemed
to conjure a dream within Israel’s exhausted mind, one of stars collapsing, an
oasis of flesh, an ocean evaporated, documents and papers written with the
shifting sands in a language he didn’t recognize. The dream passed and Israel
knew it was time to rest.
Inocencia, his horse, was strong but he could sense
her muscles stiffening with fatigue. He remembered the words of his father:
horses are like women, treat them right and they’ll keep you alive.
Once he set up a small, makeshift camp he watched
the sun fall as though it was tired of holding up the weight of the sky.
Long, symmetrical rows of crops lined the hillside
and horizon, a signal that Israel was leaving behind a solitary expanse and entering
the lands of other men. He rode past a crumbling church with men lazily working
as though their limbs, faces, and bodies weren’t their own, trying to
reconstruct a distorted skeleton of walls and empty windows.
He arrived at the center of the small town around
midday, the sun at its apex and the town devoid of shadows. Dust covered
everything, the adobe walls, tiled roofs, iron bars, windows, and porticos.
Even the townspeople’s faces couldn’t escape the omnipotent granules, they were
there, between that old woman’s wrinkled eyelids, and here, beneath this young
man’s tongue. The thin film of sand was a reminder that any lives built atop
the exiled lands were condemned to Time’s amnesic gaze.
The official governmental building was adjacent to
the central square, which wasn’t more than an open space with a few dead plants
and one dismal, leafless tree in the center. Israel tied up his horse, and then
once inside the building he spoke to an older gentleman, explaining the
situation, the official documents required, who his father was (he was well
known due to the sheer size of the family ranch), and the correspondences they
had with their former country’s government.
The older gentleman said that yes, they had been
expecting the young sir form Alta-California, the paperwork would be ready in
one, maybe two days at most, governmental bullshit, you see, and leaned his
heavy body closer to Israel.
“The matter of time is important,” Israel said.
“They’ll have it ready when it’s ready,” the man
shrugged, “governmental bullshit.” Then he told Israel to enjoy this small
town, that he would personally see that Israel found the finest accommodations,
some lodgings where the young man could get some well-deserved sleep.
Israel agreed, helpless to do otherwise. He retrieved
Inocencia from outside and followed the man to the lodgings across town. Once
again the outline of the ruined church reappeared in Israel’s view and his
sun-poisoned mind wasn’t sure if he had seen the crumbled walls only once
before or a hundred times.
That night Israel lay awake in bed. Acclimating to
the world of men is difficult when one has found the ocean of solitude between
the desert and the sky. Outside the thin window he heard voices, murmurings of
the town, then a woman singing a corrido about a drunken hero who buried his
dead wife in the desert, but the sleek and slender body of the woman was
actually only a large stone, and the man had never loved anyone in his tired
life because the desert, that overbearing and jealous mistress, loved him too
much and she would never let him out of her labyrinthine grip.
He idly listened a little longer to the sounds
brought to his ear, before dressing and making his way to the stables out back
where Inocencia was resting. She too seemed uneasy with this night and its
noises. Israel patted the stallion’s thick neck and whispered sweet and
soothing words into the animal’s ear. This domesticated beast was the only
connection Israel had to his home, the ranch, and its crusted hillsides he knew
so well growing up that they were firmly embedded within his soul. He could
almost see all the faces of the ranch, tías and tíos, hermanos, abuelos,
nephews, cousins, all the faces that passed through their land, their features
slight variations on the same theme because they were forged by the same blood,
sun, and history. He envisioned his father, the old soldier, riding atop his caballo
with his perpetually loaded rifle because the old man was still at war, with
time, with nature, with his own soul. He envisioned his mother with her stoical
gaze, which always peered into the empty spaces of life’s shattered reflection.
Could she see him as he was, a young man, tired, hungry, lonely, and maybe a
bit older now because his soul allowed the bitter cold of the desert night to
enter in? A fleeting, transparent notion crept across Israel’s mind, that his
loved ones had forgotten him the moment he cleared the border.
He whispered a prayer into Inocencia’s ear, “Bring
me home, querida,” before leaving to rest once again.
He went searching for those nocturnal sounds he
heard earlier, but the town was a semi-conscious specter. Then, from out of the
opaque night a silhouette appeared, and only a moment later did Israel hear
footsteps.
The feminine outline spoke to him, her voice seemed
like the fingertips of a cascading shadow: “Are you alone out here also?”
“Sí,” Israel said, then added, “It isn’t
safe for a woman to be out alone. People might get ideas.”
The woman laughed and moved closer to Israel.
“Everyone in town knows me and they know I’m not that type of girl. They think
I’m mad, but they know I’m not like that. And I’ve found you, so I’m not alone
now, am I?”
“No, I guess you aren’t alone now,” Israel said.
Thin yet strong lips above an angular chin with
soft and slender cheeks composed the young woman’s face. Her large and round
eyes competed with the half-moon above. She was simply beautiful, but something
in her eyes made Israel hesitate, as though instead of looking at the
constellation in the night sky she peered into those black recesses of
nothingness which separate the needlepoints of light.
“May I join you?” she asked.
Israel shrugged and they started along together.
“I knew I’d find you,” she said. “It’s like I had
remembered it before it happened, or I had read it somewhere.”
“You can read?” Israel asked, surprised that a
woman of humble origins knew the writings of men.
The subtle wind seemed to laugh for her and she
said, “No, not words. I read the same things everyone else does, the wind, the
rain, the sun, all those things which carry the fate of men within them.”
“Ah, I see,” Israel said.
They walked along and she spoke more, about strange
things, stories, the origins of this town, coyotes, empty graves, life,
sickness, death, pyramids buried beneath the sand, the sun, the crumbled
church, lost children. Israel tried to contemplate what she was saying but he
lost her words as soon as she uttered them. Still, something in her voice was
reminiscent of the hazy heat which woke Israel on summer mornings.
“We’re both a little lost,” she said.
“You don’t know your town?” Israel asked and
surveyed the adobe buildings flanking either side of them. His hand brushed
against his knife, just to be sure it was still there. He had heard stories of
conniving women who preyed on the souls of unsuspecting men.
“No, I know this town well. It’s probably the only
thing I’ll ever know. But us, you and I, we’re lost in a different way,” she
said.
“I’m not so sure,” Israel chuckled. “I was sent
here. I’m supposed to be here.”
“Any stranger that comes to his town is naturally
searching for something they’ve lost,” she said. “I can tell by your longer
left stride that you are searching for a home. And the way your head tilts
you’re longing for a mother.”
Israel straightened his stride and stiffened his
neck. “I have both, up North.”
“Then why are you here and not there with them?”
she asked. “But what I mean to say is that you are motherless, without a land,
an orphan to the hillsides with no dirt to call your own. Except maybe out
there somewhere,” she pointed to the distance, “isn’t that so?”
He didn’t answer and they walked a long stretch in
silence, the town also densely quiet, like it was on the precipice of
collapsing into the cold earth, as though someone else were imagining it, and
the dreamer was ready to wake at any moment.
“You can go ahead and tell me about yourself or I
can continue listening to the night and it’ll tell me everything I need to know
about you,” she said.
He spoke a little about himself, about his family,
the hacienda, how he was sent by order of his aging father, how he had traveled
through the desert without speaking a word, yet he heard more voices than he
could ever dream to count.
“And they sent you alone? No tienes hermanos?”
“They have their own lives, families, wives,
husbands, children.”
“They sent their youngest?”
“I’m not the youngest. There were others. But
winters are cold and help is far.”
The two had circled the town and they were
returning to the stables as she said, “It’s our innocence, you know, the
pendulum within us, our salvation that becomes our condemnation.” Her eyes
seemed to contain another story within, but the voice was too far gone, drowned
in the edges of her transparent irises.
“I need to rest,” Israel said.
“I know. I’ll wait for you tomorrow, here, at
sundown,” she said, and Israel agreed.
“You can kiss me goodnight,” she added, “I don’t
mind.”
Israel leaned in and his lips pressed against warm
flesh, inviting, soft and subtle like a thunderstorm a great distance away.
Then her slight frame slipped into the tactile night, her body swaying to an
ancient melody, and Israel was left alone with the ghost of a kiss that tasted
so familiar.
The day leaked through Israel, one yellow,
sun-streaked moment after another. The governmental papers hadn’t arrived when
he checked in the morning, and he found himself with nothing to do except
wander amongst the town once again. He attempted to retrace his steps from last
night while the sun painted his skin with its vibrant vitality. During daylight
the thirsty town appeared smaller and insignificant, as all things are when
flanked by a gravel abyss and omnipotent sun above. In the nocturnal darkness
of last night though, beside that peculiar woman, the streets had slithered
into a labyrinthine coil.
Droplets of white clouds diluted the blue sky
throughout the day until the quivering horizon swallowed the last daylight.
Israel visited Inocencia, brushed her coat down, and whispered that soon she’d
be free and out of the stable, amongst the open land where her muscles could
stretch to their full length.
The wait seemed long and empty until the aquiline
silhouette appeared. The young woman wore the darkness like a shawl draped
across her shoulders. Maybe she only existed at night, a tangential entity to
La Luna.
“How long have you been waiting?” she asked.
“Not long,” Israel replied.
“Here, I made these for you,” she said and
unwrapped a few warm tortillas from a bundle of cloth.
Israel bit into the warmed masa which melted and
slid down his throat.
“Good?”
“Sí.”
She added, “I’d made a good wife if I had the
chance.”
“Of course. Someday,” Israel said and took another
bite.
“No, fate will have it otherwise. I’ll live like
Our Virgin. She knows how similar we are.”
“You haven’t told me your name,” Israel said. “I
thought about it as I slept last night.”
“You already know it. Maybe you dreamt it last night. It’s Maria. Now, let’s walk while we still have time.”
“You already know it. Maybe you dreamt it last night. It’s Maria. Now, let’s walk while we still have time.”
He let her lead and the streets seemed to snake
into new possibilities, stretching and shortening at will. They ended at the
crumbled skeleton of the old church.
“Here again?” Israel asked.
“All paths, no matter where they are in the world, naturally
lead to the river or a pile of debris, sometimes even both.”
Israel said he had never heard that maxim before.
His thoughts turned to the small streams that ran through the hills of his
family ranch during the rainy season, and how he had mistaken the sighing water
for human voices when he was younger.
“That’s how things are. You’ll find out for
yourself, one day” she said and then continued on, telling the story of how the
church collapsed, how some said the walls were sunk by an old woman, others
claimed a child had opened her mouth and swallowed it, still others were
adamant that it was simply the weight of forgotten sins.
“And which do you believe is true?” Israel asked.
“All of them. I wouldn’t tell them to you if I knew
they weren’t true,” she said.
A current of light from the half-moon flowed onto everything below, except for
the woman’s face, her skin allergic to the phosphoric glow. What frontiers lay
within this woman whose presence was as solid as the ocean of stones and mountains
just beyond the town, her soul a composition of wind, sand, and the vanishing
horizon? Israel wondered if there was a point of congruence between the two of
them, if a space within their souls overlapped, or if they’d always long for
one another like the desert longs for its ancient ocean to return.
“Vamos,” she said. “There is nothing else to this town. Even if we
search every day for a year, we’ll still find nothing.”
Israel didn’t mind, he could have followed this woman through the ghostly
streets all night, but her hand, calloused and maybe even scarred, pulled him
along.
She told him to eat, finish the rest of the tortillas. “God knows you won’t
have any more home-cooked food.”
They arrived back where they started, somewhere outside the stables where
Inocencia slept. Israel thanked her for the food along with the walk and her
stories, and he began to say more but she interrupted.
“You don’t have to say, but I know you love me. I’ve heard it before, a remnant
of your voice. And in my own way I love you, ever since you crossed that border
up North. I know you can never take me to those lands up there, but for tonight
you can be with me,” she said with sad eyes, her vision focused somewhere
beyond Israel, behind, in the darkness that stretches across time itself.
Once the two of them were in the room she began to undress, silently, her
fingers and hands following some preordained action. The same wind which had
carved out the hills and the plains also shaped her almost perfect curves, and
he stroked her waist with trembling hands, yet the wispy sensations in his
fingertips was familiar, a path he had navigated many time before.
“Probrecito, probrecito, my little lost angel. You haven’t been with a
woman before, I know.” She kissed his neck. “Don’t be afraid, there is nothing
you can do, I’m barren.”
No, she was an oasis of skin, flesh, and tangible scents. He pressed his body
against hers, he embraced her supple skin, his salvation was there, within the
diaphanous yet fractured edges of her soul. Her breath was a chorus unearthed
from the dry soil, an echo finally arriving from years past.
“How many times must you perish in my arms?” she whispered.
Israel knew he loved her, maybe even at the simultaneous moment she loved him,
the exact moment he stepped through the crystal frontier. He loved her because
she was barren, encompassing in her absence. He closed his eyes and an entire
night sky floated through his head, the stars—those tiny needlepoints of
light—liquefied and dripped down to the dry plains below.
The warmth of the sun gently stirred Israel awake like motherly hands. Daylight
filtered in through the window, illuminating the bed devoid of a woman’s flesh.
Somehow Israel expected it, her absence at dawn, because she was a creature
that existed within the lungs of the night. She could never live beneath the
sun, and he knew it.
The official documents had arrived at the governmental building and he had no
trouble retrieving them. Inocencia’s muscles were well rested and relaxed, and
Israel left the town simply like a whisper.
The days didn’t pass by, rather, they replayed in a cyclical loop fueled by the
sun’s shrieking heat. Hadn’t he already seen those hillsides, the ribs of the
desert? Hadn’t he already passed that creosote and cacti, the charred
navel-hairs of these plains? He kept the morning sun to his right, the evening
sun to his left, and Inocencia’s nose pointed North towards the lands he had
been born into.
Visions traversed over the backdrop of Israel’s mind, simple impressions
of the life he once knew, the dark and potent coffee his father drank, the
crisp hiss of earth as it was being shoveled, water dripping off balconies
after a storm, his mother’s joints that creaked like wooden walls on a cold
morning. At nightfall he heard voices, the voices which whisper a man’s fate
and cause time to exist and then pass on by. In the aquiline moments just
before sleep he thought about her, that peculiar woman he had loved briefly in
that unconscious town, the strange and sublime stories that poured from her
mouth. At times he still tasted the ghost of her intimately familiar kiss, and
he wondered how much longer it would linger upon his cracked lips now that he
was out here in the amnesiac expanse. Her warmth was near also, hovering beside
him, extruding from her oasis of flesh. He opened his eyes, his reveries
disappearing once he gazed upon the dying embers of his campfire and the ocean
of stars above, indifferent to his presence below.
The sun was renewed once again as Inocencia trotted along. Roads, trails, other
towns should have crossed Israel’s path by this stage of the long journey, but
the open landscape hinted at nothing except a continuation of its placid, beige
coloration. His food was gone, the final droplets of water sloshed through his
canteen, and Inocencia hadn’t lapped up anything to drink in days. The papers
he had been sent to retrieve were still stowed away safely within a wooden box
and the tough leather of his saddlebag, the ink and paper thrummed with life
and gained weight the farther he pushed towards the horizon. He dreamed of
casting the papers into the lifeless sand and riding off, Inocencia in full
gallop back home. These papers were a needless anchor tethering him to the
oceanic gravel. No, he convinced himself he could survive these lands with the
papers intact. He recalled the words his mother spoke to him ever since he was
a small child, that his family blood had been forged in the choking dust and
heat, that it was an inseparable part of his soul.
He dismounted and rested Inocencia in the shade of rock outcropping. It was
better to only run her at night from now on, when the cooler, blue air
reinvigorated exhausted lungs. He looked across the dead plains and laughed at
the shimmering, false water of the distance. With his right hand against the
butt of his pistol he whispered to the cracked earth that he wasn’t that dumb,
that he knew her tricks well enough. His voice clawed its way from out of his
body as he cursed himself, then aimed. One, two, three, gunshots disappeared
into the phantom waters of the distance.
Inocencia’s stride stretched across the nocturnal abyss, galloping along,
chasing the silver mist cast by La Luna. Israel knew his horse’s muscles ached
to be let loose, to be free from the constraints of the day’s heat. He had
found a path earlier in the day, a forgotten path overgrown and barely visible,
and he hoped it lead to somewhere, a town, a village, the cool waters of a
river. Crisp air with azul edges blew across his face and sliced open
his brittle lips. Every few strides Inocencia snorted thought her giant
nostrils and Israel caught a draft of her hot breath against his neck. If
Inocencia kept up this pace they’d make it home in a few short nights, the work
finally finished and his homecoming complete, a son worthy of his own name. His
exhausted muscles were on the verge of shattering and his starving stomach was
gnawing into his ribcage. He shed those agonizing thoughts and left them behind
to the deprived earth. Across the infinite sands there were people, loved ones
awaiting him, those who would appreciate the fresh wrinkles carved into his
face. His poncho trailed behind and caressed the wind as he kept Inocencia
moving across the night.
Two loud, jerking snaps tore through the air. The pounding hooves ceased
instantly, Inocencia shrieked. The boundless night halted, an absolute
transparency overcame Israel’s mind. The desert whispered chorus of secrets to
him, a revelation unfolded, and he saw each mountain, each forgotten crevice, each
grain of sand, each thistle and thorn with perfect clarity, the images
composing a panorama of desolation. Then he felt himself fall to the earth, his
brittle body pummeled into jagged stones, his chest almost collapsing in on
itself. He lay there, face down and cheeks bleeding, huffing the grains of sand
that clawed at his parched throat. He slowly rose to his feet and attempted to
brush off the dirt which clung to his body, trying to reclaim his skin as its
own. His right arm and shoulder dangled uselessly, broken in more places than
he could count.
Behind, a few paces back, lay the massive body off
Inocencia, her hind legs kicking and scrambling, hooves scraping against the
dry earth. She whimpered in pain and attempted to stand but her unsteady legs gave
out and she buckled with a deadening thud. The whimpers continued, air
siphoning out of her lungs as she lay inert. Israel drug his own wounded body
towards his horse, his refuge, his sole connection to his home and his youth.
The hazy dust-cloud between Israel’s temples cleared long enough for him to
examine Inocencia, and his fingers brushed upon her broken and mangled front
legs. She couldn’t go on, her stride would never return, her terminal point had
been reached, here, on this lonely patch of land.
With his one functioning hand Israel stroked the
neck of the animal he had loved like a member of the family he was desperately
trying to remember now. She peered at him with her primitive eyes, terrified,
unable to comprehend the numb cruelty of the night. Her shuddering hide calmed
after Israel whispered words into her ears, “It’s okay, relax, I’m here. Niña
bonita, estoy aquí.”
A throbbing pain swelled along the right side of
Israel’s shattered body and he kneeled down. The night churned in its indifference
as Israel nestled Inocencia’s head into his lap.
“You did good. You’ve always done good,” he said.
“It’ll be over soon. Just rest, amor, rest.”
He muttered a dry curse to the placid stars above,
the points of light that traced out every constellation and mapped out the
unknown fate of each man. How many deaths had they witnessed from above,
privileged in their apathetic reign overhead, while the lives below reached a
silent terminus? Maybe this place, the desert and the sky, had seen too many
deaths, knew the outcome of every man who wandered through with sin and
innocence in his soul, and now this palace devoid of walls or windows had no
use for the suffering of men.
A warm liquid seeped into Israel’s lap and for a
moment he thought it was the blue night itself spreading across his skin, but
the sensation was too warm, too thick. His fingers followed the droplets up
towards the source: Inocencia’s flared nostrils. She huffed a few more heavy
breaths. She wouldn’t make it to the morning. Regret and unfulfilled memories
settled over Israel, he couldn’t give her one last sunrise, one last glimpse of
the open land she had been born and raised to traverse. He unfurled his poncho
and spread it over her head along with her eyes, those brown marbles that absorbed
the mute heavens. The muzzle of the pistol briefly caught the silver light of
the moon, trembling as Israel pressed it against the poncho. A single salvo
ruptured the night before the opaque silence returned.
Israel grabbed the box of cherished papers with his
hand, the left hand, the good hand. He staggered on, his aching body desperate
to leave the negative expanse of land, sky, and the invisible incision of the
horizon that separates the two and keeps the entire world aligned. Fleeting
visions crossed the desert of his mind, forgotten as soon as they arose,
fragments of lights, shards of sounds, voices, hands, warmth. Heavy feet barely
slid over the sand, dragging dust along, each step seemed to cost him another
lost night of his life, yet he lumbered on. How many steps had he taken, how
many nights had passed? He peered behind to see how far he had gone only to
gaze upon the limp outline of Inocencia still close, just barely out of reach.
The desert wouldn’t give him up.
The wind picked up and whispered a hymn to him, low
at first, then it gathered into a chorus until he heard voices, distinct
murmurings, and they relayed stories to his ear, about how he was meant to stay
here, how he had always been here, year upon year the same fate, voices like his
mother’s, his father’s, the woman from the sleepy town that he loved only in
the dead of night, and even more voices, familiar, always familiar with their
prayers calling to him.
The dry earth, anxious for her ancient ocean to
return, swallowed the saline droplets that fell to her, her thirst quenched for
the night. Opaque silence settled once again.
The rounded outlines of moisture vanished in the
heat of the sun’s rising tide.
***
Tamayo pulled his hand back from the caballero and
the crystallized memories retreated into the night. He peered at the rider,
Israel, and saw a face covered in dust, cracked lips and a sadness in his eyes
that was washed out in the misty moonlight, yet Tamayo recognized all of these
features as his own, like a reflection of his face filtered through a corroded
mirror.
The familiar voice of Tamayo’s grandfather broke
in, “You must be tired, very tired.”
“Sí,” the caballero said.
“Are you hungry? We brought you food,” the old man
said and handed a few tortillas to the caballero.
“Me estoy
muriendo de hambre. I can’t
remember the last time I ate,” he said as he bit into the warm masa. “I just
want to see my mother and then sleep.”
“Sí, she has been waiting for you. You can
give us the papers and then go on and rest. We’ll take them to your father.”
“Muchas gracias,” Israel said, digging out
the small wooden box from the worn leather saddlebag. He handed the papers to
Tamayo who held them with uneasy hands.
The old man broke in and asked, “Did you see any
others out there, also returning? A woman, lost amongst the border, searching
for her son?”
“No, there were no others. The desert is a lonely
place,” the rider said, then he walked away. Dark splotches littered his torn
poncho and the gold buttons of his pants shifted like reptilian scales. He lay
a hand upon his horse’s thick neck and led her off, the two of them, a lost son
and a crippled horse, disappeared into the night.
Tamayo peered up at his abuelo but the old man kept
gazing into the darkness as though his eyes gathered those things that one only
sees in old age. The box of papers within Tamayo’s hands seemed to yawn
alongside the cool air.
“I saw things, Papa. Strange things,” Tamayo said.
“Yes, you’ve seen the delicate tragedy that
christened out blood. It’s our collective memory, our collective fate. We
become lost, Tamayo, always.”
Tamayo opened the box and the brittle wood exhaled,
but inside were no papers, no documents, only a pile of sand that sifted
between Israel’s fingers, warm somehow, reminiscent of a mother’s caress.
Images cascaded through his mind and he thought of her, her voice, her hands,
her hair that flowed like a riverbed, her body and flesh the consistency of
sand, her eyes the consistency of gravel. She was still out there, across the
sea of stones, that ocean devoid of water. He could still hear whispered traces
carried over by the warm winds.
They waited a long time upon that vista, two men,
one old and one young, one searching for a mother, one waiting for a daughter.
“I don’t think she’s coming, Papa,” Tamayo finally
said.
The old man shook his head. “No. We’ll pray for
next year.”
Tamayo followed his abuelo. The rusted pickup
gurgled to life and they began their descent back downhill.
------------
Frank Strong takes his inspiration in equal measure from his
philosophical studies and the almost ceaseless sunshine of Southern
California/Northern Mexico
Tuesday, November 10, 2015
WRITING CONTEST WITH GREAT OPPORTUNITIES FOR ON-LINE AND PRINT PUBLICATION
CICATRIX
PUBLISHING AND BOUGAINVILLEA ROAD ARE HOSTING A WRITING CONTEST WITH A
MONETARY PRIZE, ON-LINE AND PRINT PUBLICATION, AND COLLABORATION WITH A
HIGH CALIBRE ARTIST!
This is a really fine contest for emerging and established writers alike. The promotion of the winner is such that their piece will be published at not one but two new on-line literary magazines. The work will be paired with an artist of high calibre. The selected short story and nine runner ups will be published in a one-time print publication, with the winner being awarded $100.00 USD. Please let your contacts, writing groups, students, colleagues, family and friends know about this great opportunity! Send us your best. Submit today! http://www.cicatrixpub.com/b3sc.html
This is a really fine contest for emerging and established writers alike. The promotion of the winner is such that their piece will be published at not one but two new on-line literary magazines. The work will be paired with an artist of high calibre. The selected short story and nine runner ups will be published in a one-time print publication, with the winner being awarded $100.00 USD. Please let your contacts, writing groups, students, colleagues, family and friends know about this great opportunity! Send us your best. Submit today! http://www.cicatrixpub.com/b3sc.html
Saturday, November 7, 2015
Fake With Your Left - By Donal Mahoney
Far away and long ago stuff happened in Gramps’ life that he’d like to forget but he can’t, even though he can’t always remember what he had for breakfast, lunch or dinner.
But anything that happened 40, 50, 60 years ago he remembers clearly. His grandson, Patrick, is in grammar school and has to write an essay about an event that shaped Gramps' life when he was a kid. Patrick keeps asking Gramps to tell him about it. In two weeks he has to hand in his essay.
“Tell me something good," Patrick keeps saying. "I have to get an A."
Gramps
remembers many childhood events that might make a good essay but the
one that stands out is not something he should tell Patrick about. His
parents would disapprove.
It happened during WWII, when Gramps was Patrick’s age, and although it had nothing to do with the war, it created commotion in the family home. Gramps was in grammar school himself back then.
Young Gramps was a good student, earning straight A’s in his first three years of school.
His behavior at times was a problem but the nuns usually gave him a
pass because he was good in his studies and did well on tests, something
unusual among the boys in his class.
The
girls always did well but they studied. Young Gramps studied too
because he couldn’t go out to play until his homework was done. He would
be quizzed in the kitchen by his mother while his father sat in the
living room listening to his answers. His father would yell when he could go out.
Then young Gramps’ handwriting became a problem. In the transition from printing to cursive, his penmanship was so poor he brought home a grade lower than an A in penmanship and that disturbed his father who despite little formal education in Ireland had a signature that would rival a calligrapher’s art.
What’s worse, young Gramps' father could sign his name with both hands at the same time. One of the signatures would be written backwards and when held up to the mirror it looked exactly the same as his regular signature. He had been a prisoner of war, a guest of the English, after the Easter 1916 rebellion in Ireland and had plenty of time to practice signing his name backwards with his left hand. This was during his two-year confinement on Spike Island, off the coast of Ireland, where the British housed Irish prisoners.
Young Gramps’ father
had been 16 when imprisoned for running guns for the Irish rebels and
18 when the British freed him as long as he left Ireland. He chose to
come to the United States.
Unlike his father, young Gramps had trouble writing legibly with just one hand. It was a big enough problem that he was made to sit at the dining room table after supper and practice his writing.
But a nun then discovered Gramps couldn’t
read the blackboard from the third seat in the middle row. Speculation
began that perhaps poor eyesight was affecting his handwriting.
A visit to Dr. Max Erman, an optometrist and the only medical professional in the neighborhood, determined that Gramps was nearsighted and would have to wear spectacles
the rest of his life. This news turned out to be a greater tragedy for
his father than the news about young Gramps' bad handwriting.
“God
help us, Mary,” Gramps remembers his father saying to his mother. “The
boy will be in all kinds of fights at school. Glasses aren’t something
boys should have to wear. That’s how the other boys will think.”
His father was right in some respects. Spectacles on boys in the Forties were not common in
grammar school, at least not at his school. Girls wore glasses and had
no problems. Boys didn’t pick on girls unless they wanted to stay after
school for the rest of their lives, as the nuns were quick to tell
them.
When
Dr. Erman put the new glasses on young Gramps, he had to admit he saw
stuff he didn’t hadn’t seen before. His little sister, he discovered,
had freckles. He was happy about being able to see better but in light
of his father’s attitude about a son wearing glasses, young Gramps kept
quiet about this new advantage.
When
they got home, however, his father decided young Gramps needed to be
ready for any teasing that might take place at school. Despite
protests from his mother, he took the boy down to the basement and told
him to take his glasses off. Then he showed him how to put up his fists.
And, as young Gramps remembers well, his father got down on his knees
and put up his own fists and proceeded to teach Gramps how to defend
himself.
Young
Gramps quickly learned how to fake with his left and cross with his
right, a standard maneuver his father had used to advantage as a boxer
after emigrating to the United States from Ireland. It seemed to be a
nice trick, but young Gramps didn’t think he’d have to use it. The nuns
patrolled the schoolyard during recess.
But
during the lunch hour on the first day young Gramps wore his glasses,
Larry Moore came out of nowhere looking to have a fight. Fights back
then were always fair. No kicking or anything like that. Only fists were
used. The fight would go on till one boy quit or the nuns broke it up
and levied their punishments—something just shy of staying after school
for the remainder of life.
Young
Gramps beat Larry Moore that day. The fight didn’t last long and no nun
saw it. Young Gramps faked with his left and crossed with his right and
Larry Moore got a bloody nose. And young Gramps beat Billy Gallagher
the next day using the same combination.
But the
following day Fred Ham, a boy big for his age, came looking to have a
fight as well. He didn’t know young Gramps but he knew that he beaten
Larry Moore and Billy Gallagher, both reputed to be pretty tough,
although Fred had won fights with both of them.
Against
the much bigger Fred, young Gramps faked with his left, crossed with
his right, and hit Fred in the eye. There was no blood but Fred got a
black eye that brought an end to other boys looking to have a fight with
young Gramps.
Much
to his surprise he caught no flak from his father who took the phone
call from the nun who had called to report the fights young Gramps had
been in. In fact, his father, while verbally deploring such behavior
over the phone, seemed rather pleased to discover his tutelage had
worked out so well. His mother, however, was obviously disgusted.
“This
isn’t Ireland, Tommy,” she said to his father. “We can’t have a boy
going around beating up other boys just because he has to wear
glasses.”
Those memories were all clear in Gramps’ mind
but at the moment he didn’t know how to explain to his grandson how
this event—having to wear spectacles and learning to fight at an early
age—had been a seminal event in his grammar school life.
His
grandson was alive now in a new day and age at a time when mothers
wanted sons to play soccer out of fear they might get hurt playing
football. And schoolyard fights in the suburb where his grandson lived
were probably unknown. At least Gramps had never heard of one.
The
only real competition his grandson faced at his age was largely in the
classroom where boys and girls tried to get the best grades possible.
The hope was that one day they would win a scholarship to college.
As
a result, Gramps finally told his grandson he’d have to think about
what to tell him for his essay because his mind wasn’t as sharp it used
to be.
"If all goes well, Patrick,” Gramps said, "I should have a good story when you come home from school tomorrow.”
But probably not as good as the one that had just run through his mind after more than 60 years.
Gramps knew it was the best he could offer.
But not to young Patrick.
—————————————————————————
Donal Mahoney, a native of Chicago, lives in St. Louis, Missouri. His fiction and poetry have appeared in various publications, including The
Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, The
Christian Science Monitor, The Chicago Tribune and Commonweal. Some of
his online work can be found at http://eyeonlifemag.com/the-poetry-locksmith/donal-mahoney-poet.html#sthash.OSYzpgmQ.dpbs=
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