The Brick People

by Alejandro Morales

  Nana cleared her eyes and again looked toward where Maximiliano lay sleeping. She would send him some soup later. She breathed deeply and wondered when Malaquías would move to Norwalk. Octavio had told her that he had talked to one of Nana’s younger brothers and that he mentioned July.

  In the direction of where her parents lived there suddenly appeared uncommon lights. Staring at the strangely-moving illumination she experienced a chill and felt her hair electrify. A fear overtook her, and at five-thirty she quickly went inside to her children and the safety of her home.

  Javier cried, Micaela called, Arturo yelled.

  “¡Ahí voy!” Nana shouted, running to Javier’s crib. She picked up the baby, and when she left the bedroom she stood still and saw strange colors dancing on the falling night. As she locked the front door she glanced at the street. No one was out there where stone silence vibrated in space. Birds, cars, people seemed to have ceased functioning.

  Nana walked rapidly to the kitchen. She placed Javier in a large basket on the kitchen table where Micaela and Arturo waited. She listened to the deep silence and with a smile reassured the children, reached for the plates and made noise as she set the table. Nana dipped a spoon and tasted the soup. She picked the pot up with her right hand and turned carefully toward the table. Her eyes looked at her children’s faces as they were raised above her. She felt herself pushed and stretched onto the floor. A string of blood ran down her chin. Her knees collided with her mouth and separated. Nana, elongated on the floor, searched for the hot pot of soup. At a distance of five feet with not a drop spilled, the pot of hot soup rested on the floor. Unsure of up or down, Nana attempted to stand. Micaela and Arturo remained seated. Javier still lay in his basket on top of the table, but now he was in a different part of the kitchen. The house moved as if being rowed on the sea. Nana gathered the children and went to the back door. A deep constant hum filled the silence that had bothered her only moments ago. As she looked out over the brickyard she saw waves move through the surface of the earth.

  “An earthquake!” Nana was overwhelmed at the energy that moved through everything she saw.

  “Mama?” Micaela questioned Nana’s fearful tone.

  Nana did not want to panic the children. The rumble from deep within the earth became stronger. She watched the walls to see if they would crack, to stop the debris from falling on her beautiful babies. She could not go outside; the earth undulated and opened. Nana would take her chances inside, in the center of the kitchen, around the sturdy table that served her well.

  She placed Javier underneath the table and sat down to watch the walls and ceiling. In the living room lamps fell, furniture moved; in the bedrooms photos fell to the floor, windows broke. The hot stove danced but held together. Nana found herself with her children underneath the table staring at the hot pot of albóndiga soup that miraculously did not move while objects around it were made to dance by powerful telluric forces. She snuggled Javier in her arms while Micaela and Arturo embraced her.

  “I think that in a little while we will eat those albóndigas,” Nana laughed. A loud sound and terrible jolt hit the house, but the pot of soup still did not move.

  The massive blow of the Long Beach earthquake caused men, women and children in the Southern California area to experience strange physical and mental occurrences. Some people fifty miles away from Long Beach instantaneously blacked out. Others reported that they had experienced the quake approach like a wave of earth which grew over their heads. Suddenly they rode the top of the crest, and as fast as it came, it shot out from under and left them behind to flatten out miles away. One man reported that he had stood in the living room when the quake hit, but found himself relocated in the kitchen at the opposite end of the house when the quake was over. His neighbors had gathered and walked around his curious house. He went out to discover to his amazement and pocketbook grief that his house had moved one-hundred-and-eighty degrees. The house had been ripped from and made to straddle the foundation. In other places, all sorts of strange lights and illuminations were reported. People saw lightning bolts, fiery showers, blurred explosions and falling stars dance and die like a Fourth of July sparkler.

  The earth moved around dinner time, and the reaction of many people was to rush outside where the kinetic energies were just as terrorizing as inside. Brick buildings buckled and collapsed; brick chimneys snapped at the top; high posts swayed and fell; telephone and electrical cables swung, sparkled and snapped. The rumble of the uncomfortable earth was constant, like the unbearable shrill of howling dogs.

  Nana moved from under the table and placed the soup pot back on the hot stove. She sat the children at the table and caressed Javier sleeping in the basket. Milagros and Maximiliano came to mind. She hoped that Octavio would come home immediately. She wanted him now to help pick up the fallen objects, to check the doors, windows, walls and roof. Nana needed a guarantee that the house was safe for her children. She searched for soup bowls, found one and dropped it. The bowl shattered. The uncomfortable stillness and the silence had been invaded and made to retreat by the shaking earth and a broken kitchen, too. She served the albóndigas in two large cups. Micaela and Arturo were satisfied. They ate slowly, tentatively. With every noise they stopped and waited. Outside, the wind returned to play with the trees. A muggy and silent evening covered Simons.

  For hours parts of Southern California were cut off from outside areas. To some people Southern California had suddenly vanished, prompting the explanation blurred in small town newspapers across the country: “California Falls Into Pacific.” The Long Beach earthquake measured 6.3 on the logarithmic scale. The possibility of a higher magnitude quake lessened because the epicenter was offshore. Notwithstanding, terrible damage occurred throughout the Los Angeles basin. Property destruction was great and millions of Depression dollars were lost. One hundred and fifty-three people perished in the earthquake.

  The 1906 San Francisco earthquake had revealed the importance of the availability of excellent fire-fighting equipment. The Long Beach tremor provided a lesson in how not to construct in earthquake country. Nana remembered hearing about the San Francisco earthquake and how the workers of Simons had produced the material to rebuild practically the entire city. She also recalled the great Tokyo jolt in 1923 and how the men worked double shifts to produce the bricks needed by the Japanese to reconstruct Tokyo. Simons Brickyard and the workers were important to the world, she thought.

  Nana moved Javier over to her right hip and took Arturo by the hand. Micaela sat down on the porch. Residents began to come out of their houses. Milagros opened the door and waved.

  “Are you all right? The children? Oh, what a scare!” Milagros motioned that she would return in a minute to talk more.

  Nana imagined that soon all the machines in the brickyard would start to operate. The demand for brick to repair the damage caused by the quake would be great. Considering the power of the quake, Nana concluded that the damage had been extensive. She moved about in silence and thought about the importance that Octavio had given the establishment of a union for the workers.

  Milagros fanned herself with a white handkerchief which contrasted with her black dress. She had gone to check on Maximiliano. “I don’t know how he slept through the earthquake,” she said and made the sign of the cross.

  The quake made the priests of Mount Carmel Catholic Church come to the forefront to help. Mount Carmel was a strong edifice. Most of the other brick churches in the devastated areas of Los Angeles had disintegrated. Their brick exterior walls had crumbled, leaving the roofs to fill the void below. In many cities, two and three-story buildings stood naked. Their interior walls were exposed because the outer walls had tumbled down into a pile of rubble. The brick veneer in thousands of buildings had failed miserably. Simons had suffered no major destruction. A few cracks here and there, and broken objects that might have caused a tear, but Simons stood solid like a fortress.

  The earth had attempted to violently t
ear itself apart. The aftershocks of this internal vehemence continued to jolt the surface and terrify dwellers well into the night and dawn. By eight o’clock in the morning children played in the streets. Some families, fearing the collapse of their homes, slept outside; others had taken a stoic attitude to the shaking earth and like Nana and her children, had slept in their beds. When Octavio arrived at three o’clock in the morning, Nana did not speak to him.

  “We could not arrive sooner. The roads are blocked,” Octavio explained and checked the four members of his family huddled together in Nana’s bed. He slept on the couch.

  The morning paper had been delivered late to the general store. Simons workers had been coming and going, buying extra canned food, warm clothing, blankets, tools for survival in case the earth shook again. Octavio read through La Opinión slowly while he drank coffee. Nana focused on an article which described the heavy damage suffered by the school buildings.

  “Imagine, Octavio. What would have happened if the school had been in session?” she asked and continued to read next to him.

  The newspaper reported that the earthquake had struck at five fifty-four in the afternoon. If it had hit during school hours, thousands of children would have been killed. Elementary, junior and high schools were badly damaged; many were complete losses. Geologists and architects reported that school buildings were particularly vulnerable because of the manner and material of construction. School boards had ordered educational structures to be built with brick because it was considered the cheapest and most durable material. Only until March 10, 1933 did school boards throughout Southern California consider brick construction to be safe. Now, as people of Southern California observed the thousands of mounds of brick rubble, it struck them that perhaps brick was not the material to construct the buildings that held important documentation, that provided essential physical and spiritual services, and most important, that housed their children.

  After the earth had almost shaken itself apart, the fear of a natural disaster of this magnitude occurring again faded and became unimportant to the people. The earthquake did not eliminate the long bread lines, nor the thirteen million jobless men and women. The earthquake, in fact, closed down businesses and put more people out of work. Ruin, hunger, and illness still lurked in the shacks of homeless city workers and farmers; they remained in the eyes of children playing on the back streets of the big cities or the dusty rural areas; they rub bed elbows with professional classes as well as the rich living on the grand avenues in the nation’s great cities.

  In Simons there was always food; no one starved. If Walter Simons did not provide credit, which he almost always did, a neighbor would offer food, or the church would donate a basket. Octavio made sure that there was never a lack of food, clothing, medicine, blankets or shelter in his family’s life. But good health he could not guarantee.

  Months had passed since the quake. The big rush for brick that Walter had predicted had not yet hit the brickyard. And it seemed as if the patron worried little about the lack of work. He and his wife had traveled to Europe on a musical tour organized by Edit for the members of the Los Angeles Music Guild.

  In the middle of June, Octavio and Nana visited Milagros and Damian who were sitting in the back garden of their home thinking of Maximiliano’s suffering. As the warm caressing wind played across their faces, the four talked about Maximiliano and reached the same terrifying conclusion.

  “We have to take him to the hospital. They will give him blood. His body needs oxygen,” Octavio said.

  “The general hospital is far,” Damian commented.

  “Jose will take us,” Octavio spoke directly to his mother.

  Milagros nodded slowly. Her eyes glittered in the afternoon sun. She knew that another transfusion would prolong Maximiliano’s life but would not save him. Maximiliano had become so precious a person to her, the family and the people of Simons. Milagros rose from the straight-backed chair and headed into the room where Maximiliano lay. She sponge-bathed and dressed him. Maximiliano’s head bobbed from side to side as if his neck could not support the beautiful head. Milagros sobbed quietly. Her son could not hear her; her son could not see her. His eyes were always shut, his breathing labored. Milagros could not understand how Maximiliano had fallen victim to a disease that she never knew existed until now. Six, seven, eight months ago he was a healthy strong man. She held him in her arms and put her mouth next to his.

  “Give me the animals that eat my son’s blood. Allow me, oh God, to eat them. Let them eat me. Oh, blessed God!”

  “Mama, we must leave. They are expecting him at five,” Octavio’s voice called just outside the door.

  “Maximiliano is ready. Come for your brother,” Milagros replied.

  Maximiliano spent the last two weeks of June in the hospital. The family, with his consent, allowed experimental transfusions to which he responded positively, but the effects lasted for only a day or so. During the last week Maximiliano consented to experiments that had never been tested on humans. The first was extremely painful; the second put him in a coma for three days. When he awoke, his strength had miraculously returned. He felt cured and immediately requested that he be allowed to return home. The doctors told him that the euphoric state of strength was temporary and that the relapse would be severe or perhaps fatal if he were not in the hospital. Having been told the consequences, Maximiliano made his decision. On July 1, early in the morning, he signed the release papers and walked out of Los Angeles County General Hospital. In his mind, he was cured and was going home to his brothers, sisters, father and mother.

  By the end of the day Maximiliano felt cold. His fingers, toes, the tip of his nose, ears, and penis felt as if he lived in an ice cold climate, but he remembered it was July in Southern California and hot. I will leave this life. I don’t know for whom I lived it. I don’t know what it is all about now ... Maximiliano sat at the dinner table set in the backyard garden. He ate as if he had a hundred years to live. He found in his mother’s garden a beautiful red rose ... It will also disappear. While his brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, and other relatives and friends discussed Maximiliano’s miraculous recovery and drank to his health and future, Maximiliano went to his room, got into bed, and fell into a warm deep sleep.

  In the morning, light came to Simons. Poles and wires had been brought into the yard only six months ago. Today electricity was hooked up to the houses. With only one connection, residents wired an entire wood structure. Electrical cords ran over the walls and ceiling. It was not uncommon to see dozens of black electrical and white medical-tape balls covering the wire splices. Octavio tacked the white cord with the bulb socket and brass chain swinging freely from the center of the kitchen above the table. He had dedicated the morning to the arteries of power which now ran through every room of his parents’ house as well as his own. Octavio stood on a chair and held out the clear glass bulb for everyone to see.

  “From this little thing enough light will emerge to illuminate the kitchen?” Rogaciana asked skeptically.

  “How pretty!” Felicitas exclaimed.

  “Put it on, Octavio,” Damian ordered impatiently.

  Octavio smiled in agreement. He moved the bulb to the mouth of the socket. The fingers of his right hand slipped their position on the bulb. Everyone followed the bulb to the floor. The loud pop and flying thin glass caused the family to protect their eyes. Laughter filled the kitchen ... Damn scientists, why don’t they make things right? Octavio thought as he pointed out to Jose the package of bulbs on the sink counter. Jose handed another bulb to Octavio who connected it without further mishaps. Octavio made sure all eyes were on the bulb before pulling the golden chain. He pulled and light filled the room.

  “They are so expensive,” Milagros exclaimed as she swept the floor.

  “It’s about time Simons supplied electricity for the houses,” Octavio said, satisfied with his electrical work.

  By seven-thirty Octavio returned to his home. Nana had breakfa
st ready. The children were up and playing in the living room.

  “How did he awake?” Nana asked about Maximiliano.

  “He was still asleep. Mama said he slept through the night without awakening.”

  “Octavio, do you believe they cured him? People are beginning to talk about a miracle,” Nana said.

  “I don’t believe anything. Time will tell.” Octavio sat at the table to eat breakfast.

  Maximiliano, Federico, Jose, and Octavio walked into Acacio Newman Delgado’s grocery store on Date Street at one in the afternoon. Maximiliano had gotten up at nine and was delighted that his mother had electricity in the house. He ate well and at ten-thirty visited with neighbors who came to say hello and wish him well. Some of the folks seemed to be saying goodbye rather than welcoming him back. Maximiliano expected this reaction and understood, for after all, he had almost died from leukemia. He talked for an hour until his brothers picked him up to listen to Acacio’s radio, the first in Simons that was near enough so the people could listen to national news reports from the Spanish radio station. On the hour without fail, Acacio’s grocery store was filled to capacity. Few people bought groceries; most were there to say hello and listen to the radio.

  When Acacio saw Maximiliano come into the store, he whisked him over to the chair right next to the radio and brought him a cup of coffee.

  “How are you feeling, Maximiliano?” Acacio poured more coffee.

  “Just fine. I returned to remain at home forever.” Maximiliano paused and drank. Several people moved toward the radio.

  “What a beautiful radio.” One man leaned an ear closer.