by Achy Obejas
“The good stuff, goddamnit, since everything’s going so well.”
We hear a man’s voice and a boy’s crying coming from the back room.
Yuri, Héctor, the sergeant, and the animals laugh.
And I laugh too, and go out under the pouring rain to get the bottles, because, truth be told, as often happens when there are men around who know what they’re doing, everything’s going so well.
Translation by Achy Obejas
THE RED BRIDGE
BY YOSS
Lawton
For Jorge, who knows the red bridge,
both ends of it, and how it feels.
For Angelito, for the story “La Puerca.”
From the moment Humbertico the Piranha staggered into the courtyard, Yako knew he’d come for him, cuz of Petra, and that he’d hafta decide once and for all whether to cross the red bridge. Yako glances at me sideways, as if looking for support, or a laugh, a nod, a joke, an I told you so, for being such a trouser snake. But I don’t say anything, and that’s worse. It’s like saying, Go on, this is your battle.
Humbertico: mulatto, skinny, and sinewy, with a toothless smile that makes him look like a carnivorous flsh, the scar on his shoulder carved by a machete boasting a crude tattoo, But I Killed Him. For that, he served six years in the tank and he just got out. He’s still got a jailhouse wariness about him though, instinctively walking glued to the walls so as not to ever leave his back exposed, or give his ass away inadvertently. He’s carrying a bottle in his right hand and a stream of curse words on his ragged tongue. He’s looking for that big ol’ useless white s.o.b., so I can cut his balls off for being a dick.
As soon as he walks in, the whole courtyard freezes, everybody well aware of the whole story with Yako and Petra, Humbertico’s sister, cuz in Cuba everybody knows everything, and more so here: The domino pieces fall silent, just like the jokes about how Big-Assed Berta, Dagoberto’s woman, is cheating on him with Yepo’s son, Manolito the Tripod. Everybody folds and swallows dryly.
Nobody knows how Humbertico found out, if somebody snitched or what. That’ll matter later…if it matters at all. The fact is, now he knows and he’s come looking for answers. Blood’ll wash this mulatto convict’s honor clean, defiled when Yako broke his little whore sister’s hymen. An eye for an eye…
When a man comes to force somebody across that red bridge or to drown him in shit, you can smell it in the air. It’s a cold, salty tang, like dried sweat and old pee on dirty fabric. It’s a smell that announces blood without being blood.
Yako and I thought differently about a lot of things. But we grew up together, like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, or Batman and Robin, but without all that faggot crap, watching each others’ backs, the way white boys hafta if they wanna survive in a neighborhood like El Patio. Especially if you’re a scrawny white boy and not a huge mothafucka since you were a kid, like Yako. Yako’s mother baptized him Jacobo but it’s a name he’s always hated cuz it sounds kitschy and stupid. It sounds like shit on a stick, he always said. Together we learned to be men, to fight without backing down, even with guys so big we never knew what was best, to just jump them or run, but in the end we always had to swallow our fears and fight, even if they killed us afterwards, cuz you’ve gotta be a man, and real men don’t chicken out. Not in El Patio, or else you’re a dead fish, a worthless whore, meat for bait, forced to put up with everything. We were so afraid of being afraid, we became men that way, and like it or not, that’s gotta count for something.
Yako was always one step ahead of me, since we were kids. He played ball better than me, he had more luck with the babes; even playing Parcheesi it seemed like the dice smiled up at him while they stuck their tongue out at me. He was destined to win, the bastard. It looked like he was gonna be president of something, everything came so easily to him, effortlessly—while I was always runner-up. Later, I went to college and served my year of compulsory military service in advance, while Yako just did his military tour, tough and pure, and each of us found our path and matured. Or we just got old and started to rot, who knows. Everything was different then. His star dimmed, he stayed in El Patio. The elders say luck gets tired of not being taken advantage of.
Yako knew from the start that this one wasn’t gonna be taken care of with a couple of slaps and yo-mama-you-fuckinfaggot-I-let-you-live-cuz-they-held-me-down, in the old El Patio tradition, playing at big man, being cool and pretending nothing’s happened. This one had come thumbs up or down, blood and balls. He’s probably remembering what we talked about three days before, how only imbeciles fight without being afraid, cuz the smart ones know just how much there is to lose in death and how painful pain really is, and they take care of themselves. But if you take too much care, no matter how smart you are, then you’re a pussy, and there’s nothing worse than that in El Patio. He may even have wondered if Humbertico the Piranha was carrying anything, cuz he was searching his back pocket, where those of us from El Patio carry a blade and our bad intentions.
He did it to be an asshole, to mindfuck, to distract and impress the Piranha. Cuz in fact he doesn’t have shit. He’s never carried a blade. A big guy who carries a blade is just asking to be hunted down, taken by surprise, so they can slice him with a machete, and then he can look like a fool in front of everybody. It’s not a matter of playing clean; it’s about risk, going naked, giving the other guy the blade’s advantage if you’ve got him on size. El Patio’s ethics.
My pal Yako is just over six feet, like a basketball player, pure muscle like tightened cords under milky skin, frecklefaced, blond naps, and sly blue eyes. I’m always telling him he needs to get it together to do weights, to drink less beer and homemade champagne, and to harden the muscles on all that height he won in the lottery of genetics, cuz with a little dedication he could be another Mr. Olympia, like Arnold in his better days. But he’d rather play hoops and spend the day hanging out on the curb talking shit, drinking bad rum, and trying to hit on any stick in a skirt that strolls through El Patio. He laughs and says he can’t get into that whole queer thing with the muscles and the poses, that he doesn’t need to sweat it out on weights or get all purple from taking hits learning karate—he doesn’t need that shit cuz nobody fucks with the big guys, and then he shows me his hands, each one as thick as my two put together.
Those same hands are now tangled nervously behind his back; everybody in El Patio’s looking at him, knowing he’s gotta do something, better just to face the music before Humbertico sees him and there’s no turning back. Maybe better to step up and not look like he’s been corralled, like the orca and the whale in that movie they just showed, the little fish showing balls to the big one. Even if the orca and the whale are both mammals, it’s the same thing: The fish with the biggest balls will eat the more cowardly one, no matter the size. That way, no one can say, He chickened out; or, I can’t believe it, who would have imagined Cachita’s boy coming on so tough and then he turns out to be such a wimp…
You do or don’t cross the red bridge, but nobody does it cuz they wanna. Nobody thinks about it too much, you just fall into it and that’s that. No matter how stupid you are, when you think you can kill you also hafta think you can die. But everybody wants to believe it’s his own decision, and nobody can take away anybody else’s right to play dumb. Yako likes that definition of free will: to pretend to choose what you know is inevitable, to try to think and reflect on what is actually imposed by your own instincts and the moment.
Yako did a pretty comfy military tour: He didn’t go to Angola, he wasn’t part of the Special Forces. We’re a fortunate generation, after all, except for the Special Period. Cuz he’s tall and handsome, Cachita’s lucky son got his fate as palace guard handed to him from heaven. A total breeze, every night spent partying; sometimes during the evening’s firing of the cannons, he’d be playing toy soldier next to Eusebio Leal and foreign girls in shorts who’d get their picture taken with him, pressing tight against him. Now that’s the life. That�
�s how he met Silvia, who went by La Cabaña with some Italians. Me, I had to wait a whole year before I could get into the CUJAE, with scarcities, hunger, marches, and guard duty even on holidays. And without a girlfriend other than Manita and her five little ones, guarding my ass like a fine rooster. Sometimes military units can be like prisons, but with different sentences.
Finally, Humbertico the Piranha spies his prey in the group and smashes a bottle against the wall. He advances and waves that glass flower like death’s hand. But Yako and everybody else in El Patio know the real danger’s in the other hand, which hangs practically down to his knee, as if it’s not doing anything. Humbertico’s a leftie, and no matter how drunk he may be, he knows the whole world knows that, though he tries to hide it to his advantage even if he knows it’s not gonna do him any good. In the end he’s gonna hafta use his left upfront to whack the fucking whitey who did his fourteenyear-old sister, even though he was trying to protect her like a dog with a bone.
To have females in the family is a trip in El Patio, where every male’s all over anybody who slips. The worst part is that there’s always something, then you’ve gotta sound off, have balls, and, if it comes down to it, kill. A man can’t let anybody step all over his word, especially if he just got outta the tank, where if you lift your legs once, it’s forever.
It was Yako who did Petra but it could have been anybody. What happened was gonna happen, and better sooner than later. A leopard never changes its spots and that half-breed girl was born with whoring in her hot blood, and with a body that even her mother Tomasa wished she’d had so she could have earned a few pennies with the guys instead of rotting her liver drinking bad rum. Maybe if she’d gotten outta El Patio, Petra could have been a model or a dancer at the Tropicana, who knows. But El Patio is a drain, a bloodsucker—whoever stays kicks out his or her future soaked in liters of ethyl; life is one long moment waiting for nothing, or everything, or Armageddon; no one knows or cares.
Ever since she was a kid, Petra liked to lean on her brother while he played dominoes, until she was a coupla feet off the floor and her ass started spilling from her shorts and her sweater started swelling from the push of her tits; by then she was already on a first-name basis with all the neighborhood thugs. So folks started taking bets that she’d wind up spending her nights hanging out in front of the Hotel Cohíba…It was a matter of time—and of getting her ass loose from her older brother and his menacing belt to discipline her with and his, If I ever catch you in any hanky panky I’ll kick your ass purple and kill the son of a bitch who’s burrowing into it. But somebody had to be first, and it only made sense that it be Yako, the pretty boy, the sexy white boy, the one who—to top it off—already had a superfuckingincredibly edible and hyperfuckable girl like Silvia. Women get into that shit too, so that before they get with hot guys, they actually prefer guys who get on with hot women. And that everybody know about it. Especially here in El Patio, where whoever’s not keeping an eye on her old man is busy doing somebody else’s lover.
Yako came outta military service drenched with an existential laziness: He didn’t wanna do anything, not studying or working, not even close to being bad or thinking big, robbing banks or lending dollars at twenty percent interest, or selling weed like we dreamed of doing as boys, living it up in Yepo’s little patch of dirt, smoking our first Populares and later our first joint, which is surely the most delightful ever. The boy came back defeated and philosophical: He just wanted to play basketball for hours and hours, to fuck Silvia and any other panties that passed by, and to talk about three things—the red bridge, Salieri, and the Theory of Shit. He didn’t wanna hear about getting a job, even in jest. Construction or hunting crocodiles? No way. Not that he had anything else happening. Yako, the neighborhood philosopher, lowering his lids over his crossed eyes from behind a bottle of firewater, laying it down for whomever wanted to hear, the days getting lost in the dribble of the basketballs with their NBA logos penned by hand, the basket on the corner zigzagged by ocuje roots; watching porno pictures with Alfredo, the ex—merchant marine who was the last to be with Tomasa, Petra’s old mama, and Silvia, though nobody got why she didn’t kick him out given that she knew all about his infidelities.
Humbertico the Piranha says he shits ever so sweetly on the midwife who washed the pubes on Yako the faggot’s motherfucking whore mother the day she was born, but knowing she’s dead, that faggot sure as hell isn’t gonna leap up to defend her. The stink of bad liquor adds fuel to his words. He should step up if he’s any kind of man, let’s see if he’s got the balls to take him—Humbertico—on, the way he had ’em taking advantage of an innocent girl. His little sister is innocent the same way El Patio is a wealthy suburb, but for a moment it sounds like truth on his tongue, what Yako did seems abusive and indecent. Fourteen years of age is fourteen years of age, even if she uses a 38 bra. Let’s see, let’s see how bad he is: Step up, let him try to take me, unless he’s just a cherry-buster, an ass-fucker. I’m gonna gut him like a fish, so he learns not to mess around with real men. Yako tries the thing with his back pocket again but the Piranha, fresh outta the tank, knows what’s up, doesn’t fall for it, sees the bluff, knows big guys never carry shit. He spits, his saliva thick with fear and shame spattering Yako’s new Nikes, Silvia’s most recent present. He’s just waiting now. The silence is so deep Babas’s gurgling sounds like a lion’s purr.
Then the crowd parts, opening up some space for whatever’s about to happen, cuz when things are fated and it’s not your turn, all that’s left is to watch. Yako—Caesar without too much desire to cross the Rubicon—bends and wipes the green phlegm from the tip of his shoe, but he’s already on the red bridge and he knows it and I know it and what nobody knows is which way he’s gonna go, if he’s gonna cross or run.
Yako’s Theory of Shit is very simple: If we come from shit, we are shit, and will return to shit, then it makes no sense to lift one shitty finger to get outta the great universal shit. Shit on Einstein and Newton and the whole fucking shitty world, and shit on the progress of mankind, and fighting for a cause and all that other shit. It may sound dumb, but after the shivers that come from the third shot of Tiger’s Bone, which scalds your throat like a lash from the inside, everybody in El Patio stops thinking, That’s not so original, or whatever, and then Yako’s just right on, and even floating debris like Babas suddenly remembers thinking something like that at some point. Then it’s, Damn, white boy, you got it, you’re the man, and they pass around a fourth shot. Even before we knew each other…we drank together. Now that we know each other, we drink together. So to shit with it all, and let’s drink until we can’t recognize each other.
Humbertico the Piranha, a little rat since he was a kid, old-time hustler, jail meat, and brownnoser to every black section chief there ever was in La Cabaña, knows he has a chance when Yako bends over to wipe the spit off, but he seems afraid of the ballplayer’s big hands, and he hesitates. He may not be too smart or have much to lose after getting outta the tank, but he has doubts, he has to be afraid and have his doubts. You don’t dick around with death, and after all he’s said to Yako, it’s gotta be face to face, fuck or get fucked, no slapping, first blood, and they break them up, cuz in El Patio you can smell when it’s gotta go to the very end, and not even God’s gonna come between these two now. When there’s a little sister’s broken hymen on the table, honor demands death even more than blood. Now Humbertico the Piranha, drunk and all, realizes there’s no going back, and he’s probably cursing the moment he decided to deal with this…He may be gambling a shitty life, but it’s his and it’s the only one he has.
* * *
Sometimes Yako says, My second surname is Salieri. And then he goes off on this philosophical turn, very elegant, very erudite. For him, the great cosmic joke, the great fuck, is not being a genius, nor a fool, and knowing it or not knowing it, and living contentedly like Babas, with his idiocy, happily pushing his cart from one end of El Patio to the other all the live long
day, no matter who’s laughing at him. The chaos, the living end, the tragedy, is being in the middle: having the desire, knowing exactly what constitutes greatness, and not having any of it yourself. Salieri. Not the worst, just another good one. Not even among the best. Not the crackerjack, the number one, the top guy, the man, but maybe the guy who carries the main man’s bag. And that can be the same whether you make it to the palace guard or not, or whether you have a career, or whether you ever play in the NBA with Michael Jordan, or even Team Cuba. Or whether you were born in El Patio, feral Lawton, half alley, half tenement, instead of Haiti or Switzerland. It’s always being the midpoint, one more little mark among the statistics…and knowing it. Realizing it, that’s the hard part. Some people get it, some don’t, but everybody nods their heads and says, This white boy speaks from the soul, with power in his words, brains, yes siree. And then there’s another drink, to forget what shit we all are, and just in case that Salieri…
Humbertico the Piranha doesn’t have a piece, they’re fifty bucks each and he doesn’t have that kinda cash, he’s just gotten out and he hasn’t made his connections yet cuz Alfredo the ex-marine doesn’t want ex-cons near his video thing. Sorry bud, it’s not like before, now you’re branded. What the Piranha has is a sharp, filed-down spoon, strapped to his hairless ankle with a rubber band. Ever since he was in that brawl with that fat black guy at La Tropical and he got out by the skin of his teeth, when he had to cut the guy and the razorblade broke in his hand, he hasn’t had any confidence in switchblades. Or in any knife.
His hand knows by heart the sound of the filed-down spoon against the stone floor of the cell. Nobody knows how he got it out, maybe wrapped in brown paper stuffed up his big asshole, so used by the cellblock chief, or by dropping dimes on the guards, since that’ll make anything happen. It’s his treasure, and he doesn’t like to show it around too much. The spoon is Chinese, you can still see the letters on the handle, dull from so much handling. Sometimes he has to squeeze it to fall asleep, and he cries then, in his slumber, just like back then. The wiseguys say his little rosy asshole misses a certain big horse cock, that he wants to go back to being its mare, like the loyal wreck fish he is. The truth is that having it close gives him courage, helps him feel complete, and to remember he’s still a man and that he never actually gave his ass up to anyone in the tank, although the story goes that a coupla times he took advantage of Damián the Sewer from Cellblock 4. But that’s not too terrible, cuz being without females is tough, and you’ve gotta get what you can.
