The Fable of Bing

by Tim Sandlin

  Bing finally looks out the window. They’re passing through a neighborhood he doesn’t recognize, which would be almost any neighborhood in San Diego. Many of the signs don’t have letter combinations he has seen before. The store lights are bright and yellow and the stores sit close to the street. There are more people outside than he’s seen at night when he travels with Rosemary. He knows now what drop you means, and this isn’t a place he cares to be dropped.

  “I have nowhere to be,” Bing says. Two women fight by a car next to a partially burned building. The one woman pulls hair and the other woman bites. T.J. and the boys don’t seem to notice. Loud music comes from somewhere behind the storefronts.

  “Where I lived before Rosemary, I used to hide,” Bing says. “I should like to find a new place to hide in.”

  T.J. and Martin exchange a glance. The two in back look out the windows. T.J. says, “We’re going to a place. You can hide there.”

  74

  Bing does not understand what it is to feel numb. For as long as he can recall, he’s felt something — joy, interest, fear, excitement, hot, cold, prickly, hunger, lack of hunger, sometimes boredom, which isn’t the same as numb. Even in decontamination, he felt alive. His fingers could touch. His nostrils could smell. After Rosemary said she doesn’t love him, he stopping touching and smelling. He feels nothing.

  At the border, they crest a hill to see a city spread out in lights. There’s a major traffic jam with some cars going through and some being directed into a parking area where dogs sniff wheel wells. T.J. tells Bing that these dogs are nose dead or they’d be on the other side of the border, sniffing cars coming out of Mexico, not cars going in.

  “Who’s going to smuggle anything in?” T.J. asks, and Bing says, “In what?”

  Martin pulls the car into a parking space and the four boys get out. T.J. motions for Bing to follow. They cross an asphalt span to a man in a gray uniform and a hat, sitting behind a card table. A tall man drinking from a paper cup joins the man at the card table, but the second man doesn’t sit. He stares at Bing.

  T.J. speaks a language Bing doesn’t know. It sounds somewhat familiar. He’s heard it at the zoo, but he doesn’t connect the words to meaning. The sitting man laughs loudly and talks, and T.J. laughs, as if to say, “We’re all buddies here,” but the standing man doesn’t laugh. Martin smiles and bounces on the balls of his feet. The other two boys stare into the mid-distance.

  T.J. talks for a full minute and as he talks, the man behind the table leans forward to look down at Bing’s feet. The Armani is worse for wear, by now, but it’s still an Armani. The man isn’t certain what to make of Bing.

  He and T.J. exchange comments until the standing man spits on the pavement. He says, “You speak Spanish?”

  T.J. answers before Bing can say anything. Bing doesn’t care.

  T.J. turns to Bing. “Get back in the car.”

  As they wander back to the car, Martin says, “They believed you?”

  “No shit. Let’s go.”

  The boys and Bing return to the car and drive into Mexico.

  75

  The boys and Bing pass under a huge white rainbow and enter a courtyard. Bigger than a courtyard — a plaza. Bing sees it as a habitat with no grass. Around the sides there are bars and game centers and places for changing one kind of money into another kind. Martin shows Bing a bail bonds store with the sign in English. Not a lot of people in the plaza. Three flags atop poles. A shirtless red-haired woman sits on the bricks and smokes a cigar.

  T.J. says, “I told the guard you are my cousin who went to Imperial Beach to a wedding and got drunk and white boys hit you. Took your shoes and money and papers. We’re here to carry you home.”

  “Idiot believed he’s your cousin?” Martin says, although it is closer to a mumbled grunt than articulate speech.

  T.J. shrugs. “Too much hassle to ask questions.”

  The painted Imperial crosses a bridge over a dribbly, weedy irrigation ditch. Bing can see people below, burning trash. They appear to sleep in a box.

  “I am where?” he asks.

  T.J. says, “Tijuana. Nobody finds you here. You can hide the rest of your life.”

  They drive around a road kill black dog being picked at by crows. Bing thinks about trying to save it, but he knows he can’t.

  He says, “This is proper.”

  Manny gives him a look that says a life spent in Tijuana is not proper and Bing is stupid to think it could be. It’s a complex look.

  “We’re meeting girls.” T.J. rolls his window all the way down. He rests his arm on the ledge with his fingers drumming the roof. “You like girls?”

  Bing’s nose twitches at the smell of burning tires and hot food. He is no longer numb. Parts of him are coming back, in spite of what he wants. “Dr. Lori says girls are a pox on the land.”

  “Our girls are clean. She’s talking about L.A.”

  “The only girl I know says I’m an ape.”

  T.J. laughs. He’s in a good mood. Has been ever since he didn’t die. “These girls we’re meeting go for apes.”

  After the bridge, the streets get crowded and loud. Traffic is more stop than go. The sidewalks are crammed with people not moving but blocking the horde of people who are moving. There’s music and color. And horns. Cab drivers drive with one hand on the wheel and the other pressing their horn, a cigarette they don’t touch between their lips. Men and women in khaki pants and solid color tops carry possessions on their heads. Bing has never seen people with stuff balanced on their head. A pizza delivery guy wearing an insulated pizza case like a hat reminds Bing he hasn’t eaten since bagworms at Balboa Park.

  T.J. turns the radio to a local hip hop station broadcasting in a mix of languages. He cranks the music to the point where the bass thrums Bing’s head. Other cars also blast thrumming bass beats so his brain is overcome. The stimulation onslaught pushes Bing past the reason he is here. What he thinks about now is finding a place to hide. He needs to curl up.

  Martin slows as they drive by a woman in a tank top with ragged cut jeans shorts. Her legs are black and her face a blotchy tongue color. Her white hair is cut short as a putting green.

  Martin says, “Now there’s a pox on the land.”

  Even Manny snickers at that one. Only Bing and the nameless kid in the middle are silent.

  Twenty minutes later they pull into a lot next to the Cinépolis multiplex. The front lights are blue and pink and brighter than daylight. The smell is rancid French fry oil.

  Martin honks the horn — one long, two short — and a gaggle of girls gathered under the Coming Attractions poster separates itself from the wall and shuffles a few steps closer without actually coming close. Bing tries to count them, but they’re dressed in similar fashion and he loses track at three. There aren’t many. They shouldn’t be difficult to count.

  The four guys pile out of the car, laughing and cursing and behaving like young men anywhere. The sulker from the middle acts tough, probably because he has to, while T.J. and the ones who are tough can act anyway they want. Bing emerges last, somewhat stunned. Imagine a gazelle in headlights.

  The girls in black shorts and tight jersey shirts haven’t embraced the Mexican look at all. They could be from Billings, hanging out at the mall on a Montana summer night, except these girls tend to cover their teeth with one hand when they laugh and their earrings are striking beyond what you see at the Billings mall.

  T.J. nudges Bing in the ribs. “Merelda there is mine, but you can have your pick of the others.”

  Martin says, “What the fuck?”

  T.J. hangs his arm around Bing’s neck, as if they are cousins raised together in an extended family. “You bring me back from the dead and we’ll see about you having first shot at the chi-chi.”

  Bing has no idea which one is Merelda and T.J.’s hand is dangerously close to his face. “I should hide now.”

  T.J. looks from Bing to the girls. “But check out those sweet bitches.”r />
  As if they can hear him even though they can’t, the girls pose along he curb. Bing checks out, as ordered. He is able to distinguish individuals, based on shape as opposed to clothing and hairstyle. One girl stares big-eyed at him as if he’s the one in the zoo and she’s the school kid on a field trip.

  T.J. grins and squeezes Bing’s neck. “I can fix it with Tonia there. She don’t speak a word of English. You’ll love her.”

  Bing studies Tonia, working out the word love with respect to a stranger. It doesn’t fit. “I am not enthusiastic about chi-chi tonight. I think I will go this way.” He points toward a narrow street leading off from the metroplex.

  The other three boys have sauntered into the girl gaggle and are culling individuals from the herd. Only T.J. hangs back and he’s ready to move on. “You sure?”

  “That is correct?”

  Manny is leaning toward the girl named Merelda, speaking quietly into her ear, making T.J. anxious. “I have to go.”

  “Thank you for aiding my escape.”

  “No prob.” T.J. walks away, then stops, obviously nagged by doubts. “You okay? Tijuana isn’t always sweet to white boys.”

  Bing looks down the narrow street where he plans to find a hiding hole. It doesn’t appear threatening, by his standards anyway. There’s people and lights and smells. Couldn’t be worse than the hyena habitat.

  “I will stay on top of the situation.”

  “See you around then.” T.J. walks to Merelda, shoulders past Manny, and swings his arm around her neck in the same gesture he’d used on Bing a moment before — more possession than affection.

  He calls back to Bing. “We’re even now.”

  “We are even.”

  T.J., his gang and their girls move in spurts and stops with friendly shoves and insults toward the box office. Only Tonia stays behind to send Bing a seductive smile.

  Bing waves to her.

  She hesitates, then waves back.

  Bing misses the invitation.

  76

  Forms push in and out of Bing’s bubble of awareness. Strangers bump him. Noises assault. Voices come but Bing can’t say who is talking.

  “Viagra.” “Cialis.” “Black tar.” “Marry me.”

  The pavement beneath his feet is sticky. Warm, like blood. The air smells similar to the elephant habitat. Bing turns right, then left, and within a short time is lost with respect to backtracking to T.J. He’s on his own, looking for a tree or a cave or any place without people who can see him.

  His path is blocked by a very old, very short woman, pushing an umbrella stroller full of trash. She rams him with the stroller and barks a word Bing doesn’t know yet he does know it is not meant with grace. A cat sees him and reacts violently. The cat was cleaning itself, ignoring all the other bodies on the sidewalk. Why arch and Yowl at Bing? He does not understand.

  He hears gunshots. At least, Bing thinks they are gunshots. He’s heard them before on Rosemary’s TV, and once at the zoo keepers put down a broken legged okapi with a gun. Always before, they helped animals die with syringe shots, not gun shots. Something was unique about that okapi.

  A thin man with black teeth, wooden crutches, and rank breath hisses at Bing. “You want crank. You strike me as a boy looking for crank.”

  Bing says, “I could use a drink of water.”

  “Three dollars. I’ll supply good water. No bugs.”

  Bing thrusts his hands in his Armani pants pockets. “I do not have money.”

  “Why you wasting my time?” The black teeth man spits on Bing’s leg. “Move from my way.”

  Bing steps aside. The man humps a crutch on Bing’s foot and swings his weight on it as he hops by. Bing doesn’t jerk his foot back for fear the man might fall.

  Limping now, Bing comes to a corner with a traffic light upside down so the green is on top and the red on bottom. He hesitates, not sure if he should cross, and two young women in mid-riff tops, shiny slacks, and knee-high boots laugh at him. They call him a cabron. They point at his crotch. He smiles — always the good sport — and they laugh harder. When he crosses a taxicab bears down on him, causing Bing to leap back over the curb. The taxi driver shouts and flings a rude arm signal.

  A half block later, Bing’s foot kicks a man who is either asleep on the sidewalk or dead. Bing can’t tell. At the zoo, he could always tell dead from asleep, but now he’s lost the talent. If the man is dead, someone other than Bing should clean him. He glances around for a person to inform of the dead or sleeping man, but others passing by don’t look at him or the man. They part like buffalo circling a stump. Bing steps over the man and continues deeper into the city.

  He is hot, tired, hungry. Lost. This is becoming unpleasant and Bing can’t find a place to go. A boy — 11, maybe — in shorts and a t-shirt with a photo of Bart Simpson on the front falls in next to Bing. The boy looks friendly. Bing nods at him.

  The boy says, “Chick-lay.”

  Bing says, “You will have to pardon me. I do not fathom.”

  The boy holds out his palm to reveal two dirty squares of white. “You want gum, mister? Chick-lay.”

  Bing stops walking, grateful for the kindness. “Yes, thank you.” He takes the gum and puts it into his mouth. It is sweet and soft and causes salivation.

  The boy says, “Fifty cents.”

  “Why do you say such a thing?”

  “Fifty cents for the gum. Pay me.”

  “You did not inform me it was for sale. You gifted it.”

  The boy scowls, which changes his whole face. Adds years to his assumed age. Makes him look less waif and more threat. “Everything is for sale. Where do you think you are?”

  Bing takes the gum from his mouth and holds it out for the boy. “Here.”

  Hands splayed on hips, the boy howls. “It’s chewed!”

  “Yes.”

  “You chewed the gum and now you think you can weasel out of paying!”

  Bing doesn’t know what is expected. His hand is out. He’s willing to give up the gum. He doesn’t have money. He sees no choices.

  “Thief! Bad man! Child molester!” The kid is screaming, tearing at his hair. Shapes materialize from the darkness to form a circle around Bing and the boy. Most are nothing but curious at the noise, but some are enraged that a rich white man would steal gum from a poor boy of the streets.

  One incredibly overweight woman in a Mexican blouse steps forward and lets Bing have it in a string of Spanish invective. Bing looks from her to the boy to his hand.

  The kid translates. “She says you cheat me.”

  “Tell the woman I didn’t mean to cheat you. You gifted me the gum and then demanded money. I offered it back. It still tastes nice.”

  The boy translates Bing’s offer to return the used gum. This incenses the woman so much she slaps Bing and the gum goes flying.

  Amongst the Spanish outcry from the crowd, Bing hears a single voice in English. “Beat the snot from the rich asshole.”

  There’s that word again. He still doesn’t understand it. You wouldn’t call a person an elbow or a foot. Why call them an asshole.

  By now, the crowd is large and boisterous and tears stream down the boy’s face. Bing searches for the gum. He finds several pieces stuck to the concrete sidewalk, but none are fresh enough to be his wad.

  “Let me pass.” The crowd parts for a tall brute of a man. Mustache, neck scar, lost tip of the index finger, aluminum baseball bat clutched in both hands — your basic paranoid Anglo nightmare.

  He snarls. “Give my brother his money.”

  The boys sniffs tears. “Fifty cents.”

  Bing holds his hands out, away from his body. “I have no fifty cents. I have no money.”

  The man swings the bat into Bing’s thigh. Bing goes down like a chainsawed pine tree.

  “Turn out your pockets.”

  Bing is crying now. The boy isn’t and Bing is. He makes it to his knees and looks up at the man with bat cocked over his right shoulder. Behind
the man, the fat woman is shouting words that Bing knows mean Hit him again.

  Bing turns out his pants pockets. They’re both clean and empty, not even pocket lint.

  The brute man swings the aluminum bat into Bing’s ear. Blood spatters the side of his face and onto the sidewalk. He lands with his nose and right cheek against the hard concrete. He can see snakeskin cowboy boots as the brute shifts his weight from leg to leg in preparation for another blow.

  “He can give me his pants.”

  Bing turns his head to look up at the boy who is running the back of his hand across his leaky nose. Something has gone wrong with Bing’s ability to hear. Behind the boy’s voice flows the sound of running water.

  The brute says, “You heard the child. In place of the money you owe, he will take your trousers.”

  Bing twists about so he is lying on his back where he arches up on his shoulders to pull off the Armani pants. The crowd snickers at Bing’s tighty whitey underwear. Bing hands the pants to the kid who measures them against his own legs — six inches too long, three inches too wide.

  “Pants aren’t worth much without the jacket,” the boys says.

  The crowd looks at Bing, waiting. The brute raises the bat. Bing’s leg hurts. The side of his head hurts. He can’t understand why the pain was inflicted. Punishment should be connected to wrongdoing and Bing can’t see what he did wrong.

  The man with the bat says, “Now.”

  “That’s enough.” Rosemary walks into the circle. Due to a combination of back lighting and blood in his eyes, Bing can only see the outline of her hair. He can’t see her face, but he knows her voice. Her voice is the sound of wonder.

  “How much does he owe?”

  “Fifty cents,” says the brute.

  “A dollar,” says the boy. “There’s interest.”

  The brute pops the boy a tap to the head. “Fifty cents. The gringo cheating you doesn’t make it okay to cheat the lady.”