Into the Beautiful North

by Luis Alberto Urrea

  Sometimes, when he walked down the street, he was so deep into his own rhythm that he snapped his fingers and shuffled a tiny sideways dance, keeping the beat.

  Irma, feeling fat and awkward, slunk into the cinema and watched Chava more than the movies. She writhed with envy, the way he put his arm around whatever tramp he was escorting. He would cool them both with a paper fan on a stick, the fans (distributed by the beer dealer) featuring blurry black-and-white photographs of great stars like Lola Beltrán. It was so gallant.

  Of course, in those days, nobody dared kiss in public. But was there any doubt, when Chava got his fan going, that he was going to reap great kisses from his various concubines? Everyone assumed he was a devil with the lights out. It made Irma feverish just thinking about it.

  Her moment of glory came in a rush, in a twelve-lane bowling alley with a layer of cigar smoke hovering two feet below the ceiling and the sound of a brass band punching the tuba and trumpet cacophony as sweat poured down her back.

  It was on the epochal night of the mixed men’s and women’s state bowling finals in Culiacán. Chava had gone down in flames to an upstart from El Rosario. There was no catching the blond bomber, Beto Murray, damn him! So Chava nursed his disgrace and was free to sit in the Camarones section, among the women who had gathered to cheer Irma. And she was magnificent. Just the hot sensation of his stare burning—finally—into her rump sent her hurtling down the lane. His gaze tingled her bottom and lifted her onto her tiptoes. Her throws were devastating. The pins seemed to shatter into toothpicks as she scored strike after strike after strike. Magnificent Irma! Chava rose. He cheered. He shouted. When she won, he leaped over the rail between them and lifted her off the floor in a wild embrace. Irma had not believed a man could lift her: it was disconcerting yet thrilling.

  They made love for the first time in Chava’s car, pulled off the road in a huge bean field. Cicadas bombed the car, and worried Brahman bulls sniffed the windows. He was Irma’s first, and only. Frankly, it didn’t feel all that great, and it left a mess. Chava, stylish even with his white skivvies around his ankles, produced a silk hankie and cleaned Irma with it, an act of tenderness she would never forget. But more than the feeling of Chava’s hands carefully blotting her with the cool silk, Irma would always remember the hazy half-moon out the back window. Ever after, when she saw the full moon wane, she grew melancholy. If she’d had any musical gifts, she would have sung ballads to the sky.

  Chava ran a small shrimp boat out of the estuaries. In the off-season, he fished for tuna and flounder and occasionally drove a truck. It was on a long-haul mango and banana run that he lost his head and broke Irma’s heart. He drove the ancient Dodge stake bed to Tijuana. He’d been to Tijuana before. What touring bowler hadn’t? But he startled them all by not returning. Perhaps they should have seen it as a harbinger of their future migratory fate. That Chava was always ahead of the curve. There it was, 1963, and he was already gone north.

  He sent word that he’d found work. He’d found a cheap house and a good-paying job, and he was going to apply for a green card and work in the tuna canneries of San Diego. His letters and telegrams to Irma were full of innocence and joy—amazing tales of bright American days and clean American beaches. Shining American bowling alleys! When he went on a small tour, he showered her with postcards of bowling alleys in Tucumcari, New Mexico; El Paso, Texas; Benson, Arizona. When it came time for her to bowl in the north of Mexico, the year of 1965, she went to Chava on a Mexicana flight, clutching a shiny black purse and wearing high heels for the first time in her life. She was expecting a wedding.

  But Chava had stayed in el norte for other reasons. True, the cannery had paid him well. His little yellow house in the bucolic hills of Colonia Independencia was cute. His sly smuggling of Irma into the United States for her San Diego bowling premiere was memorable. But he’d been oddly chaste with her. Even distant. And in the end, he had sent her home with a mere peck on the cheek.

  Only when she was back in Tres Camarones did Irma hear from Chava’s mother that he had impregnated an American woman. A blonde, no less. A cocktail waitress from the Aztec Lanes in San Diego. Chava was marrying her.

  That was the end of Irma, that day.

  La Osa, her alter ego, appeared in all her relentless glory to inspire chagrin and penance in the homeland.

  Matt drove them to Hillcrest. Yolo had nabbed the shotgun seat, and Nayeli beamed smiles at him from the back. Their overwhelming girlscents filled the minivan. He was baffled by the whole visitation. What did they want? It was what the ZZs would have called “a for sure blow-mind.”

  Atómiko was sprawled in the third row, snoring again.

  Matt had the address on a scrap of paper. They took I-5 south to Washington and cut up the hill. The Hillcrest Bowl was across the street from a shabby little medical tower. They pulled into the lot. It was mostly empty. Atómiko stayed asleep in the backseat. A drunk street person addressed them in some ancient Babylonian tongue. Matt handed him a dollar, and they moved away from him.

  Nayeli put her arm through Matt’s as they walked into the bowling alley. She had this way of looking up at him from under her brows that made him happy. The old sound of bowling washed over them like a tide, the rumble/crash of balls and pins. Matt heard Patsy Cline playing on the jukebox. It must have been a law in America that every bowling alley installed “Crazy,” “Walkin’ After Midnight,” and “I Fall to Pieces” on their jukes.

  At the front desk, they asked after Chava.

  “Who?” the guy said.

  “Señor Chava,” Nayeli repeated.

  The guy looked at her.

  He turned and yelled, “Hey, Sal! You know anybody named Chávez?”

  “Chava,” Nayeli corrected.

  “Whatever.”

  They looked over at “Sal.” He was carrying a rubber bucket and a mop out of the women’s toilet. He wore blue rubber kitchen gloves that reached almost to his elbows. He wore thick-soled work shoes, and his gray trousers were pressed. His white shirt was buttoned up to his neck. Without the pomade, his hair had gone back to its tight curls. Except it had become white, as had his little mustache.

  He looked at them with a frozen half-smile on his face.

  Nayeli stepped forward.

  “¿Don Chava?” she asked. “¿Chava Chavarín?”

  Yolo and Matt were bowling. Atómiko wandered in and nodded to Nayeli and Chava. “¡Orale, guey!” he said. He settled in the booth at Matt’s lane and started insulting the bowlers.

  “That boy just called me a water buffalo,” Chava noted.

  He and Nayeli sat at a small table, sipping sodas.

  “He is a funny boy,” Nayeli said.

  “Funny. Yes.”

  Chava fidgeted. He seemed to have trouble meeting her eyes. He unwrapped her straw for her.

  “Gracias.”

  “Root beer is good,” he said.

  “What was it you said to that rude man?” she asked.

  “Which one? There are so many rude men. Oh. My boss? That was what they say here—‘Take five.’ It means I am taking a break. They have all these phrases you need to know. Like ‘easy ice.’ ”

  “Easy ice,” she repeated.

  “Yes. When you order a drink. They always put too much ice in it. It saves them money. But you want your money’s worth, you see. So you tell them not to put so much ice in the drink.”

  “Easy ice.”

  “Easy ice. Take five. See you later.”

  Nayeli did her smile for him and sipped her soda.

  “So. Tres Camarones,” Chava said, as if it had just come up in conversation. “How—is it back there?”

  “Hot.”

  They laughed.

  He rubbed his face.

  He said, “You will think I am a bad man.”

  And he told her the story of how he betrayed Aunt Irma so many years ago. Nayeli listened carefully, hiding her smile when he admitted to making love to La Osa.

  “W
e were young!” he said when he saw her grin. “Well, she was young.”

  His face was tragic as he told her about the blonde. He hung his head, turned his glass of soda around and around on the ring of water it left on the table.

  “Sal!” the guy at the desk called.

  “In a minute, boss!” Chava called. He glanced up at Nayeli. “Pendejo,” he muttered.

  They laughed.

  He cleared his throat.

  “And—Irma? What can you tell me about Irma?”

  “She is alone,” Nayeli said.

  Chava Chavarín might have jumped a little.

  “She never married.”

  Chava let out a small puff of air.

  “I think I mentioned that she has won the election for mayor.”

  Chava laughed.

  “That’s my girl,” he sighed. “That’s my Irma.”

  “But Don Chava,” Nayeli said. “What of the blonde waitress? What of the baby?”

  “Sal!”

  “Hol’ your horses, boss!”

  He put his palms flat on the table. Studied the backs of his hands.

  “I have to go,” he said.

  Then he settled back in his seat.

  “I am not going to go.”

  Atómiko walked past, on his way to the toilet. He flipped Nayeli’s hair. Chava watched him.

  “She left,” he said. “The blonde. Of course. She left with a sailor. Who wants a poor Mexican cannery worker? She took a bus to Texas. I never saw her again. I never saw the baby.”

  He closed his eyes. Nayeli fell back. He was crying.

  “I could not go home. I was so ashamed!”

  He banged his fist on the table.

  Atómiko reappeared.

  “Cheer up, pops!” he said.

  Chava looked away from Nayeli and collected himself by watching Atómiko try to cadge a bowling lesson from Yolo so he could feel her arms around him. Chava wiped his eyes. “I don’t know if I like that fellow,” he noted. His face was the saddest thing Nayeli had ever seen.

  “Off your butt, Sal!”

  “On Mexican time here, boss!”

  Nayeli reached across the table and put her hand on his.

  “Now it’s my turn,” she said. “Let me tell you a story.”

  When Chava Chavarín volunteered to join them on their journey, it was only after Nayeli assured him that everyone in Camarones would be thrilled to see him again. Everything would be forgiven—they needed him. Even Irma needed him. He wrung his hands. Irma, he mouthed. He nodded once and shook her hand and went back to work. Nayeli looked across the rail at Yolo and held up one finger. Yolo hurried over to her.

  “Isn’t he old?”

  “He’s wise.”

  “I thought we wanted young men.”

  Nayeli said, “He knows all the words the Americanos use. It’s a very complicated language.”

  Yolo thought about it.

  “He’s not a soldier. Or a cop.”

  “But Irma asked for him.”

  Yolo nodded slowly. She grinned.

  “That’s one,” she said. “For Tía Irma!”

  They slapped hands.

  Matt and Atómiko were rolling appalling gutter balls. When the girls were able to pull them away, Nayeli made her full report. Matt drove home. He had to admit, he was loving this whole story. It was like falling into one of the books he’d been reading before he dropped out of college to go to Mex. It was crazy.

  They got home to the doors of the duplex standing open, and the lights all on. Vampi was out on the lawn with Carla the tweaker. They had a hibachi fired up. Apparently, nobody cared that they were cooking hot dogs at midnight. Next door, Sundog the Mongol and Alex El Brujo were engaged in a furious bilingual game of Guitar Hero III.

  Yolo nodded at Vampi and held up one finger.

  “We got one,” she said.

  Vampi smiled and looked into Sundog’s door.

  She raised her hand and showed them two fingers.

  “Two,” she said.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Rigoberto wouldn’t let Tacho spend any money. Tacho felt guilty, but Rigo seemed to get a thrill out of helping him. He had prisms hung in his kitchen windows, and they shot rainbows all around the walls. In his bathroom, he kept tall brown bottles of almond oil shampoo and conditioner. Tacho smelled edible. Rigo’s housekeeper and cook were laughing girls from Playas de Tijuana, and they recolored Tacho’s hair and made great omelets that they ate with sourdough English muffins. Tacho had never eaten English muffins, and he had never heard of sourdough.

  “Let’s have some tea,” Rigo said.

  The girls placed a clear glass pot on the table. They dropped in a green puck of crushed leaves.

  “Watch this,” Rigo said.

  They poured in steaming water. The puck unfolded into blossoms and leaves, a small garden in the pot. Tacho had never seen the like—his mouth fell slightly open and he sat there smiling.

  “I love that,” Rigo noted.

  His lover, Wilivaldo, was in Mexico City shooting a commercial for Pan Bimbo. It turned out that Wili was also bleached blond, and his clothes fit Tacho, more or less. Rigoberto decked Tacho out in fresh black Jordache jeans and a black silk T-shirt. He put a pair of Italian shades on Tacho’s face and smiled. “What do you think?” he asked his cook. She nodded.

  “Exactly,” she said.

  “Exactly what?” Tacho asked.

  “Keep the sunglasses on,” Rigoberto said.

  He left the kitchen and returned in a minute with a picture in a gold frame. “Wili,” he announced. Wili looked like Tacho, or enough like Tacho with the shades that you would look twice. The spiky blond hair, the skin color. Tacho looked like Wili after Wili had slacked off at the gym for a year. The same sunglasses. They could have been mistaken for brothers.

  “Audacity is the only solution,” Rigo said.

  He reached into his back pocket and produced Wilivaldo’s passport.

  He smiled. The girls smiled. Tacho smiled.

  “Who wants to go to San Diego?” Rigo cried.

  “I do! I do!” said Tacho.

  It’s different in a BMW,” Rigo said.

  They were in the slow simmering lanes of traffic waiting to enter Los Yunaites. The windows were up: the world was silent. The inside of the car was cool and dark. It had the scent of leather and Tacho’s sweet almond hair. Rigo had dabbed on the slightest hint of XX, and the cologne sweetened the smell imperceptibly. The CD changer was murmuring Manu Chao. Tacho held a go-cup with cinnamon coffee.

  “No kidding,” he said.

  The many gates of the border crossing were open. Agents in booths asked questions. Tacho watched them walk around cars, sometimes inspect trunks. On the big bridge over the booths, he could see cameras mounted every few feet, watching the traffic. Mexican curio sellers in blue smocks walked between cars, selling an amazing array of kitsch: plaster skulls, blown-glass pirate ships, brightly painted flowerpots, shawls, sombreros, Mexican blankets, statues of Bart Simpson, bulls’ horns, paper flowers, plaster Yodas, churros. The ubiquitous Indio kids wandered among the cars with their sad cardboard trays of Chiclets. Fake Red Cross volunteers with cans asked for change. A man with no legs wheeled his chair up and down the line, looking in car windows. He gestured at Tacho. Tacho hit the button and was hit by the wave of sound and exhaust as the glass slid away like melting ice. He gave the man his Mexican coins. The man said nothing, simply turned his chair away and rolled to the next car.

  “Tacho,” Rigoberto said. “Don’t encourage them.”

  The window re-formed and shut out the sound and the light.

  “Don’t say anything when we get to the booth.”

  “No problem.”

  Rigoberto grinned and reached over to squeeze Tacho’s knee.

  “I’ll miss you, you criminal.”

  Tacho laughed.

  “I owe you.”

  “Not at all.”

  “More than I can sa
y.”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  They moved forward a car length.

  “This is a good day,” Rigo said. “It takes three hours to get across these days. We’re really moving. Everybody’s hunting for Iranians. Nobody cares about us.”

  Tacho looked up at the dead dirt-clod hills above the border and saw the trucks watching. He watched a team of US agents walk down the line with an agitated German shepherd. It sniffed at the cars. It strained on its leash, wagging its tail.

  “You think it’s hunting for drugs?” Rigoberto asked. “Or bombs?”

  “Or us,” Tacho said.

  Another car length.

  “Look relaxed,” Rigo said. “But bitchy. You’d be amazed how far a BMW and some attitude gets you. Let me do the talking.”

  Tacho slumped in his seat and put on his best bitch face.

  “That’s hot,” Rigo said. “Keep the shades on.”

  He rolled up to the booth and opened his window. He took off his own sunglasses. Smiled up at the suspicious woman sitting on a tall stool within. She stood, adjusted her gun belt, was already looking beyond them to the next car as she held out her hand for their papers. She typed in the license plate information of the next car with one hand and reluctantly turned her eyes to Rigoberto.