by Gary Soto
Only after baby brother messed his plastic pants, and Debra and I yanked together on Frank's hair so that a muscle in his neck popped, did we return to our street and the sound of hissing sprinklers in the summer dark. We slammed the car door, cussed, and stomped into the house with a smirking Frank offering apologies. We changed baby brother, who squealed and bit more holes into his rubber rattler. Debra and I picked up a bundle of crayons and sat down at the kitchen table. Frank shuffled the cards, played game after game of solitaire, cheating each time, and then asked as he got up to fix a pitcher of purple Kool-Aid, “Whatta you guys wanna do?”
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The Stray
S TRAY DOGS came with the rain. I found them at the garbage can, paws up, lapping egg shells and milk cartons, chomping yellow rinds of fat. When I whistled “Here boy” and snapped a finger, they turned to look at me. Their eyes were the eyes of sad mules. Their lolling tongues were barely pink. They looked thin in a coat of rain on bony shoulders. The rain came and went, and the dogs followed through the puddles.
Dogs of childhood. Once, after a scolding from my mother, I walked down an alley stomping rain puddles and kicking rickety fences. No one understood me. I turned over a garbage can and brooded until I was a mile from home and the sun, yellow as a vase of flowers, broke through the clouds. Slim fingers of steam wavered off the fences. Puddles reflected the rush of white clouds and the wind picked up the scent of washed blossoms. Some old mother taking out the garbage waved at me, and I waved back stiffly. Still, I was lonely. I wanted to run away, but didn't know how. Should I return home for my toothbrush and a change of clothes? Should I steal a dollar from Mom's purse and take a bus to the outskirts of town?
A stray dog looked up from feasting on the guts of a swollen garbage can. His tail wagged twice, and he rolled a tongue over shiny teeth. When I called him, he joined my side, his paws clicking against the ground, our breaths white in the cold.
We walked for a good mile, each of us dragging a sled of loneliness. We walked through a puddle, breaking the mirror of its surface. When the dog barked at a squirrel clawing up a tree, I barked too, and felt better. I helped the dog climb onto the hood of an abandoned car and told him about myself. I told him that my father was dead, that I didn't like home, that I was terrible at numbers. I told him that I had seen the sea once and loved it more than snow. I wanted to live near the coast, I told him. The trees were bent from wind, but the people walked straight up, happy to be near the crash of gray-white waves. I told him I thought about God, and that the statue of the Lord in our bedroom glowed when the lights went out.
But I could only say so much to a dog. It was better to touch. I ran a hand through his damp fur and scratched him behind his neck until he nearly fell asleep. His body was warm, and his shoulders stuck through his fur like wings. He breathed in hard puffs through a black, Tinkertoy nose. His ears were as soft as worn wallets.
I felt better. The sun slid behind a cloud, chilling the autumn air. I shivered and jumped from the car. The dog followed me up the alley, my strides now longer and my face open to wind and a silver mist. I tugged three oranges from a rain-glistening tree. Two went into the pocket of my jacket, and the other one I peeled, offering a slice to the dog, who snapped at it gently and held it in his mouth like a fang. He let it drop to the muddy ground, and I knew that this dog lived for meat. At a garbage can, I picked through soggy paper bags for bones and leftovers, any treasure I could spill into a pie tin. I dug past the light bulbs and egg cartons, past tuna cans and a mountain of coffee grinds. I flicked ants from my hands. I dug until I found a ham bone nearly the size of a baseball bat.
Stray dogs should live with human names. That day, I called him Charlie, but I could have called him Sam or Pete. I said, “Charlie,” and he looked up from his bone, a shred of meat hanging from his mouth. He licked his lips and lowered his face. His teeth clacked, and his tongue rolled over the best parts.
“Charlie,” I said, and he looked up. “Charlie,” I called once more. He looked up, this time whining and pumping his wet paws.
I dug my fingers into another orange and unraveled the skin in one piece. I ate standing in a rain puddle that reflected the bunched clouds and a tangle of telephone wires. It showed me, too, or most of me. My face was round, and my teeth were like long candles when I smiled. I smiled and picked at a piece of orange wedged between my front teeth.
I left Charlie and walked in the direction of kids playing front-yard football. They grunted to take each other down, fumbled catches, and snapped the ball on the wrong count. I watched them argue over a catch, then watched a player fall and shout that the other team was cheating.
I returned home to find my mother at the kitchen table bending over the sewing machine, her mouth shut tight on three needles. A bell of warmth rose from the floor furnace. I sat near the front window, tired but happier than when I left the house.
The next morning I found a stray near our garbage can. I called, “Hey, Charlie,” and he looked up with rain on his face.
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The Weather
JANUARY DOESN'T SHOW its true face until you can scratch a cold window with a finger. As a kid I drew faces and looked out to the street through the eyeholes. I saw cars shrouded white with frost, gray gutters, and trees stiff with brown sparrows huddled on black boughs. I didn't like the cold much. It kept me inside, bored in every bone, because Mother believed that a cold or a flu lurked in the wind. Sometimes when we were outside and a wind was passing, she would make us stop in our tracks and tell us to hold our breath. Wind carried pollen and disease, a whip of dust that could hurt an eye. Wind carried omens and rumor, insects with multiple pincers, and chemical smells of faraway dumps.
Wind was one thing, frost another. I walked on hard lawns and looked back, happy that my shoe prints were visible, that a dog would stop and sniff them. I followed bike tracks and got nowhere. I followed clouds as well, the heavy machinery of rain that did more than keep me inside. It made my brother and me fight a lot, made my mother sit at the table stirring black-black coffee, the worry of bills resting on a sharp elbow. On those days I tried to stay quiet by rearranging my sock drawer. I owned a lot of mismatched socks, but blue was almost like black, and I figured with long pants no one would know the difference. With my gym socks, all white, it was an easy task, but more difficult to juggle. Three in the air, and every one of them coming down like snowballs.
Rain weeped on the kitchen window. Rain dripped like tears in our almond and plum trees. Spider skeins glistened and stray dogs working on three legs and two bitten ears showed up at the garbage cans. After the rain, puddles marked the world's dents. I enjoyed jumping puddles and riding a slow bike through deep puddles that welled at the end of our block. The gutters carried silt and gum wrappers, but when the sun came out, the rivers slowed and eventually came to a muddy stop. The fences steamed and an armada of snails, antennae up, crawled across the cement walk.
Hail spooked me. Just as I was ready to bite into a peanut butter sandwich, hail ticked the front window. I put the sandwich aside, and all of us poked our faces at the window. Hail bounced like popcorn on the lawn, and my brother, a big fool who would try anything, ran outside and danced under the hail, mouth open but eyes closed. The hail tasted faintly of metal when I licked a handful, and the pellets dissolved like a squashed bug between my thumb and index finger.
Hail wasn't much good for show-and-tell, but a branch struck by lightning made some of the students perk up when I told my class, “This branch got it, and if I was in the tree I would have got it, too.” I dragged it back home afterwards and let it fall in the backyard. Three foolish sparrows immediately jumped on and fluttered their wings.
Snow didn't come our way. We lived in a valley, but if I stood on a fence I could see the Sierras, their caps tipped white. Once, though, snow, like torn-up homework, fell and made everyone come outside to hold out their hands and tongues. The town was happy for ten minutes, and when the snow stopp
ed and the white dissolved into the lawns, we all went inside.
Tornados were just pictures in a book, a disaster headline in the newspaper, or scenes in the movie The Wizard of Oz. But once, a tall, elevator shaft of dust whirls passed through our playground. My friend Victor tried to jump inside it, and was momentarily blinded by dust. We cheered for more destruction. The chewing gum was ripped from my sister's mouth. Cut grass crowned our hair and stuck to the back of our sticky necks. The dust whirl cut through a chain link fence, carrying away leaves, candy wrappers and kids who followed it for miles.
The sun gave us another kind of weather. In summer, the heat made you think twice about going outside. The asphalt softened, the lawns grew spidery brown, and the dogs crept like shadows. Chickens sometimes fell over, and June bugs hissed on the screen door, wanting in. A girl on our block had a three-foot pool, and although she wouldn't let boys swim, we were permitted to watch her and her girlfriends churn the water white and chant, “We're the queen of the surfers.” We sat in the mulberry tree, hot in the face and wet in every crevice.
With nightfall came stars, and with the stars, the quiet of sitting on a front lawn. TVs showed through the windows, blue as heaven. From dark porches, cigarettes glowed. The littlest of the kids made sparks by scratching a screwdriver across the cement. Teenagers sat on car fenders, socking each other in the arm. I lay on my back, the coolness of the lawn pricking my neck and arms. Summer was like winter, only different in degrees.
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The Canal
THE CANAL raced out of town before us, green sparkling water with leaves carrying troubled ants and the microscopic makings of boredom. The sun flashed off the surface, and wind brushed tiers of weeds along the bank. My best friend and I sat at the bank, desperate because no girls bothered to turn red when we were around. They chewed gum and pressed transistor radios to their ears. They turned the pages of their magazines, brushing back their hair with hands that were white doves.
We poured sand through our fingers and wondered out loud how the first-period coach could get so mean by 8:30. We were no good at long-distance running and had to hold our sides when we ran laps. The coach's silver whistle filled with saliva, anger, and milkish hate.
“Hell's bells,” he yelled, clipboard in hand. His stomach was an imperfect ball, and his cap said “Coach.” Even in the morning, faint moons of sweat hung under his arms. We ran because we didn't know any better, and played volleyball because it was spring and it was all right to show our legs. We jumped a few times, but mostly we argued about the rules, then showered, left school by the south gate, and drove to the canal. We didn't know rivers or lakes, and the sea was a postcard that came our way now and then. The pond water at Roeding Park Zoo was dead to life, except mosquitoes gorged on the blood of dogs and half-naked kids.
The canal water was swift under the afternoon sun, but cold as a frozen spoon. We sat in loose sand and talked about the coach, our step-fathers slouching in their sour chairs in front of the TV, and (if we had the money) the record albums we would buy by T-Rex and Hendrix. Their music was spooky, especially T-Rex with their faraway planet music, and their album covers held a wisdom of psychedelic meaning that would render us intelligent if we looked at them long enough.
We tossed rocks into the water and thought about how earlier in the week we had parked in front of our teacher's house. We both loved Mrs. Tuttle, the blue of her inner thighs, her laugh, her hair teased by wind and hair spray. We knew it was wrong to look up her address at a filthy gas station and drive by, late, with only the parking lights on. We knew it was wrong to return the following night and park in front of her house and watch the bluish light of TV fill her drapes. We imagined her husband sitting in a La-Z-Boy recliner, and imagined Mrs. Tuttle's knitting needles clicking in her lap. We had wild thoughts about the two of them squeezed together as they sat side by side like pals. When we couldn't stand it any longer, we started the car and drove to the canal to watch the pulsating stars on the water. The radio grinned an orange light, and we tried our best to make out the words to a loud song.
We walked along the canal, shivering, until we came to a cluster of mobile homes. At one, the TV blared. Wind banged the gate, and a sickish porchlight outlined the frame of a swing set. A black rope hung from a tree. We climbed over a wire fence and hung on that rope, swung, and laughed because it was something to do. When a dog began to bark, we made our way back to the car where we sat waiting for the radio to play T-Rex. Mostly the radio sold cars and couches, but now and then a planet-music song would play and make us think that we were not going to live very long.
We drove to town, and for the rest of the night we took corners sharply, snickering when the tires squealed and sticky coke bottles rolled and clinked on the floorboard. At yellow-lights-going-red, we braked as hard as we could without dying.
That was earlier in the week. Now it was Friday, late afternoon, and we were so lonely we were talking about parents. We didn't understand them. They liked us best when we had rakes in our hands and a slave's smile as we hauled a burlap sack of grass clippings over our shoulders. Or when orange soap suds climbed our elbows as we scrubbed a pan of hardened macaroni and cheese. We talked about the coach, grades, and Mr. Moss, the biology teacher, and how he made the prettiest girl in class kiss a petri dish. Three days later, a horrible fungus had climbed up the sides, ready to spread into the hallway.
We huddled in our jackets. Our companions were bickering jays in the bush and a bloated frog flopping in the weeds. We looked east, where the Sierras were still white with snow, and west, where the wind peeled up dry earth from foreclosed farms. We could go only so far in our car but, while we sat, the canal water got the hell out of town.
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The Nile
BY SEVENTH GRADE I knew better than to spit while girls were around. I had started liking them and those little bumps behind their blouses. Their legs were still stork-thin, but they were looking better all the time.
I no longer acted dumb. I swallowed that lump of spit that formed in P.E., feigned a smile, and walked around looking troubled because everyone had begun to perceive me as a thinker. I looked moody, but inside I was wildly happy. I was getting good grades by simply sitting up in my chair and folding my hands on the desk. The nuns were right after all. Posture could get you anywhere. Now that I was going to public school, I was in the front row studying the Euphrates.
First impressions mattered a lot. My friend, Cesar, threw up eggs in civics, and because it smelled bad and lingered in the air like mustard gas, no one liked him for three years. I felt sorry for Cesar, and for nerdy classmates who didn't catch on that it was insane to drink at the water fountain near west hall. That was where stray dogs lapped water. Everyone knew that, even the teachers who drank from red thermos cups. Everyone except the dips and nerds.
When I was with a girl, say Rita Castro, who used to share her homework with me, I was always careful to close my mouth after I had said something. I thought it was impolite to let your mouth hang open. Who wanted to look at a tongue, or crooked teeth? I was also scared that a gnat might fly into my mouth and I would choke and throw up just as some good-looking girls came into the library. After that, I would have to hang out with Cesar, who spent his recess near the backstop with three fat boys.
I began to think that mother was right when she said good manners were important. I began to say “yes,” not “uh-huh,” and began to walk, not run when someone called. When my aunts kissed me on the cheek, I didn't turn away and make a sour face. When my uncles after a drinking binge dropped on the front lawn, I no longer rained flakes of grass on their heads. Instead, I peeled an orange and listened to them mumble about their lives.
One afternoon my friend Scott and I got it into our heads that girls liked having their pictures taken. With a borrowed camera, we went downtown. We didn't have film, but we thought we looked pretty smart kneeling, one eye squinted, before a rose bush and snapping the shutter a hundred times
. Rose bushes were one thing, girls another. When we clicked the camera at them, they hid their faces in sweaters, giggled, and ran. We enjoyed seeing them run, skirts jumping above their knees.
One time we ran after them, laughing with our mouths open. Then they stopped, and we freaked out. We had to say something, and I was so scared, so shy, that I blurted out that my pants cost $7.95. Red climbed to my face, and I ran away, thinking that maybe that's how Cesar felt when eggs exploded from his mouth.
Neither Scott nor I were good at math. The girls knew this, and fanned themselves with their B+ quizzes. I was good at geography, though. Mr. Johnson pointed to a map of Africa and baffled everyone by saying that the Nile flowed northward. It looked impossible because, according to the map, the river flowed up, and every other river in the world flowed down.
“Water can't do that,” a girl remarked. Some boys shook their heads. I raised a hand and explained that Africa was mostly rocks and sand and what looked like a flat surface on the map was really mountains. Of course, when I said this, my posture was straight and my hands were folded coolly on the desk. The teacher, Mr. Johnson, wiped his hands clean of chalk dust and smiled.
I was happy after figuring out the Nile River, and during lunch, Scott and I walked around the schoolyard taking pictures. We clicked some pigeons eating toast. We clicked a bicycle seat puddled with rain. The clouds, pulled thin above the trees, seemed interesting as well.
When three girls started following us, we pretended not to notice them. We busied our faces with deep thoughts and clicked a backstop scrawled with orange graffiti. The girls watched us a while, then left. We didn't see them again, up close that is, until we were at a ninth-grade dance. The one with piled hair now had short hair like a boy's. She and I danced and drank punch thick with round ice cubes. Toward the end of the evening we escaped to the parking lot. A sweep of headlights lit up her eyes. I kissed her and left moisture on her neck. She kissed me back, and told me about her family and her runaway brother. Her father was red-faced from welding, and her mother jittery from flailing her hands on a stenograph machine.
