Rust

by Julie Mars

  She would ask Rico, she thought, as her salad was deposited on her table by a waitress with at least four rings in her lips and tattoos that formed permanent long sleeves, complete with a little rickrack border at her wrist. Her discomfort regarding Rico and his notoriety had vanished, and the part of her that felt like withdrawing from him, had withered away almost without her noticing. Maybe it was the blazing New Mexico sun, which made shadows form and disappear with such rapidity that becoming lost in one, or attached to the darkness, was essentially a short-lived endeavor.

  Margaret ate her dinner and then went home. When it cooled off, she and Magpie walked around the neighborhood, pausing to watch a pickup football game in the grassy yard by the zoo entrance, in which all the players were women—most of them hefty—which probably came in handy in such a rough game, Margaret thought.

  AFTER MARGARET’S lesson, Rico focused on his work obligations, just as he did every day of his life. One time, years before, a new neighbor, a grown man from Mexico who was renting a room down the block, had identified himself as a “bus burro” in a local restaurant. Rico had laughed and so had the man, but the truth was that Rico was feeling more and more like a bus burro in his own life. He needed pleasure. He needed time off. He needed a Sunday without church and a Saturday without work, and a few days here and there when he didn’t have to scrub his hands and fingernails with gritty orange cleaner before he could feel good about picking up a knife and fork at the dinner table.

  His mind drifted back to the cylinder of Rescue Remedy that had rolled out of Margaret’s bag toward his feet. What was Rescue Remedy, he wondered. Did it work, and if so, how? In his whole life, Rico had never felt rescued by anything other than his own willpower, the mighty force that stood between him and the many faces of trouble. It was willpower and nothing else that propelled him to place one foot in front of the other every day and just keep going. He never had the illusion he was working toward some specific end where life as he knew it would transform into something new and better, where he could lock up the garage and get on a plane for parts unknown with his pocket full of cash. No. For Rico, it was the beaten path, and that was that.

  It had occurred to him, when Margaret mentioned that her schedule was wide open, that she didn’t have a job, and he wondered how she pulled that off. She wasn’t rich, obviously, with that disgraceful old car and that ancient adobe rental that, he had noticed, had duct tape stretched across a baseball-sized hole high up in the front window. Yet she had time to mosey to the library for the afternoon, to learn to weld, to move to New Mexico from New York, and who knew what else. From his observation, she only had herself to think about, which made a big difference. He himself had people coming out of the woodwork, and so did everyone he knew, most of whom, or perhaps all of whom, were chicanos from the South Valley.

  Rico was squatting down in front of his tool cabinet, collecting a timing light from the second to bottom drawer, when he sat back on his heels for a moment to reflect on this. Was it true that he didn’t have even one Anglo friend or even friendly acquaintance to his name? He’d known a few in school, but that was more than twenty-five years ago. He had a few Anglo customers and several new Anglo neighbors and they were cordial enough, but he didn’t know them personally. He had noticed, though, that they didn’t come in packs, big families that included several generations all under one roof. They were more solitary as a rule. More disconnected, it seemed, though another way of looking at it was more unencumbered. More free.

  Margaret seemed free for sure, but what did he really know about her? He knew nothing. Whatever was happening between them, whatever kind of friendship was brewing—if there was one brewing at all—had begun in the moment when he rerouted his embarrassment and shame into an apology, showed up at her door and, without saying the exact words, asked for forgiveness. It was a strange place to start. It was as if they had to start over before they had even started the first time. But having started at a low point, maybe even the bottom, they couldn’t go anywhere but up. There was more to it than all of that, too. It had to do with the belief that he really did deserve a second chance, and she deserved a second chance to get to know him, too. It had to do with standing up and saying no to the force that wanted to mow things down before they even had a chance to grow.

  He straightened up and returned his attention to the engine he was in the process of tuning up. He still did his tune-ups primarily by sound, which was possible because most of his customers drove older cars, the kind they loved and wanted to keep alive no matter what. These cars whispered and sang in Rico’s ear when he worked on them. They complained, confided secrets, and sometimes asked for help. He knew they were just machines, but Rico felt that each one had a personality, a presence like no other, and by the time he closed the hood and sent them on their way, he always knew them a little bit better than he had on their last visit, something he certainly didn’t feel about their owners, who all seemed to have much the same concerns: “Oh no, how much will that cost me, Rico?” and “Is that the very best you can do, Rico?” and “Could I pay you half next week, Rico?” Over the years, he had learned how to say yes and how to say no, whom to trust and whom to doubt, and how to make it clear that he was not a man to fuck around with, should that particular message be called for. In that, he had advanced much farther than his own father, who got screwed left and right because he was too nice a guy; or else, perhaps, because he just didn’t have it in him to protest, having used up all his energy trying to control and then reject Fernando.

  Sometimes Rico thought he got his tough streak from his older brother, that it was developed and tempered like steel under fire. The extreme duress of Fernando’s presence, like a whip delivering a never ending series of lashes, created in Rico a kind of endurance and strength, but also a cut-off point, one that could not be safely passed by anyone. If he got pushed, he retaliated, pushed back with all the pent-up fury of never having stood up to his brother, not to the day he died. How could he? Fernando was a force of nature, like a tornado intent on leveling whatever crossed its path, like a fire intent on consuming the houses of the rich who dared build on the edges of the forest. Rico was helpless before his older brother, but through the years—exactly ten from the time Fernando changed until they laid him in his grave by the Big I—he grew harder inside, as if his arteries and veins were lined with lead and his nerves with carbon steel. It gave him a place to stand up straight in this world. In fact, Rico, in his generous moments, considered it a gift, the one and only, from his brother, and even felt grateful. All he had to do was look out the doors of his garage to see men so beaten down by life that they did nothing but wander around, wearing filthy army jackets that no longer zipped closed and carrying dirty bedrolls strapped to their backs. The Albuquerque Rescue Mission was just a few blocks north. Rico was one of the local business owners to whom Father John made a personal visit every Thanksgiving, asking for a contribution toward the annual dinner at the mission, and Rico always handed over fifty dollars cash.

  Speaking of cash, he now had thirty-five unexpected dollars in his pocket and the promise of more. He wanted this money, which Margaret would hand him hour by hour, to be just his. It probably wouldn’t add up to any more than a few hundred bucks all told, but he wanted to keep it apart from household finances and the demands of his flock of girls. He didn’t want to waste it on some new tool or some operating expense for the garage either. He wanted to stash it somewhere and wait until the precise minute that it became clear to him how to spend it, and then he wanted to slap it down and walk away with whatever it was he wanted. For the first time ever, he needed a hiding place, and he looked around the garage with a sharp eye, noticing his city business license, which was, according to the instructions, prominently displayed in the work area. He took it down off the wall, pried the piece of cardboard backing out of the cheap frame, and pressed the bills inside. It made him feel good to know it was there.

  Driving home that evening, waitin
g to make a left onto La Vega Drive, Rico happened to notice Wilfredo coming up the acequia, the irrigation ditch, on his old nag Negrita, and he made a split-second decision to make a U-turn when the light changed, park in the dirt lot at the head of the trail by the river, meet up with Wilfredo, and go along for the ride. This was an unusual, but not a rare occurrence. Rico felt a small sense of responsibility for his young neighbor, who lived alone with his mother, Dora, and seemed to crave some man-to-man contact. They had done building projects together, played one-on-one basketball in Wilfredo’s driveway, and attempted to keep Dora’s Chevy Cavalier in running order through routine maintenance.

  He had already parked the truck and was waiting when Wilfredo crossed the ditch and arrived at the entrance to the trail. “Yo, Wilfredo,” Rico called, trying out a genuine New York vocabulary word, “you got room for two on that stallion?”

  Wilfredo broke into a grin that stretched from ear to ear as Rico came toward him. Wilfredo rode bareback, probably because there was no money for a saddle. There wasn’t really money for a horse either, but Dora had inherited this one as part of the deal when she bought the property. It wasn’t so easy for Rico to swing up behind Wilfredo, but he would never tell him that.

  “Take care of your cojones,” Wilfredo advised as Rico got situated, and they both laughed.

  “You take care of yours. You might need them some day.” It was a thing they always said when they got on the horse.

  Wilfredo made a clicking sound, and Negrita headed for the dirt path to the Rio. It was dusk, and the cottonwoods along the riverbank were filled with huge black crows. They squawked up a storm, making such a terrible racket that once in a while Rico felt an uneasiness about moving past them deeper into the bosque. There were so many of them—thousands and maybe tens of thousands—and if they should take it into their heads to dive-bomb intruders on their home turf, there’d be nothing left but bloody pulp. Rico had never heard of such a thing happening, but he knew that nature was unpredictable, and all the flying, walking, and creeping beings who lived by the Rio, whose environment was getting destroyed, were getting desperate. Anything could happen.

  Still, Rico enjoyed these rides with Wilfredo. He could sense how important it made the young boy feel to be in charge, to hold the reins and control the speed of the animal. And just riding along the river was soothing. The bouncing of the horse seemed to jar loose the tensions of the day, and the little breeze created by the forward movement blew them away.

  “¿Qué pasa contigo?” Rico asked after a while. “Anything new?”

  “I have a novia,” Wilfredo responded. “I think.”

  “No shit,” said Rico. “Aren’t you a little young?” And then, before Wilfredo could even answer, he added, “Stay out of that game, hombre. Once you get in it, you never get out again.”

  “I haven’t really been in it,” Wilfredo said, with great emphasis on the word in, and Rico laughed and replied, “Are you talking dirty, Wilfredo?”

  “No, Rico. I’m just telling you,” he said.

  They slid off Negrita, and Wilfredo led her down the bank to a place where the water formed a good drinking puddle.

  “How old were you when you had your first novia?” Wilfredo asked.

  “At least twenty. Maybe thirty,” Rico responded.

  “Come on, Rico, tell me the truth.”

  “I don’t remember, Wilfredo. Older than you, though.” He watched Negrita slurp up the muddy brown water of the Rio for a while, and then said, “What’s her name? This girl you like?”

  Wilfredo turned to him. The sun was heading for the horizon in the west, and one ray of it slanted across Wilfredo’s face, lighting up the sweat along his hairline and turning his skin a shade of gold. He looked so innocent, so childlike, so unequipped for what he was rushing toward that it was all Rico could do to keep a straight face. “Jennifer,” Wilfredo said, as if he expected all the angels in the celestial heavens to start strumming their lutes in her honor.

  “Jennifer,” Rico repeated, and out of respect for Wilfredo, he added, “that’s a beautiful name.”

  He said Jennifer, but in his mind he was thinking, Margaret.

  1980

  SOMETHING HAPPENS to time in here, Vincent muses. It loses its meaning. Next week, last week, next year, five years ago, ten years from now. They all melt together.

  Here you are, surrounded by a thousand guys, all in limbo.

  You disappear.

  You don’t even remember who you were.

  Years go by.

  Years and years and years.

  Go by.

  RICO AND Wilfredo rode Negrita a few miles along the river, past where the footpath was overgrown and, for a few hundred yards, became difficult to make headway. They pressed farther, knowing that it opened up again into a wonderland of sunflowers growing every which way. This was perhaps the most magical place in the world, Rico thought. Because of the lay of the land and the bend in the river, there was no sign of humans nor their habitat anywhere—just the river, the golden sunflowers, the blue sky, and the tops of the Manzano Mountains to the south, way off in the distance. Quiet and peaceful were words that should have described it, but they had lost their ability to capture this kind of beauty. Better to bring Margaret here than try to describe it to her.

  Rico had a temptation, passing but acute, to mention to Wilfredo that he had made a new friend himself—not a novia by any means, but a female through and through. He stopped himself because it seemed—and was—pitiful to confide in an eleven-year-old boy. He had never been the type of man to tell his secrets. What he did was nobody’s business, and how he felt, overall and moment-to-moment, was not for public consumption either. But suddenly he just wanted to have a reason to say her name out loud.

  When he arrived home just before dark, the whole house was deserted. Elena, Rosalita, Lucy, and Jessica were out having their pictures taken at some charity event sponsored by Elena’s church called, “Mothers Through the Generations”; Ana was taking a night class that didn’t release her until after nine; Maribel had a job at PetSmart and, though she got off work at seven, she rarely made it home before eleven. To be in the house all alone was a rare event, and Rico found himself wandering around, actually opening doors and peeking inside as if he had no idea who lived behind each one. They had a nice home here. They had furniture they had selected rather than inherited or collected out of junkshops as they did in the early days. The house was orderly, at least to the extent that it could be given the presence of a two year old. There were finishing touches, like a vase of fresh flowers on the kitchen table, collected from the garden outside, and seven little pots with cactuses growing in them on the window ledge. Photographs of the girls in various stages of development were framed and rested on several of the horizontal surfaces.

  He sat down on the couch. It was silent, with the radio off for once and no chatter, no TV blaring, no baby screeching for whatever reason. He folded his hands in his lap. What next, he thought. Twiddle his thumbs? Rustle up something to eat? Take a long, hot shower? Take a cold one? He unlaced his work boots and took them off, and then he stretched out on the couch, adjusting one throw pillow under his neck and another one under his knees. He could hear the ticking of the kitchen clock, the hum of the cool air coming through the swamp cooler vent in the ceiling, and the motor on the fridge turning on and off at intervals. It was almost like a musical concert, he thought—a buzz here, a tick tock there, a crescendo of noise rising and falling. Dogs were barking off in the distance too—which happened one hundred percent of the time in the South Valley—and cars whose mufflers needed replacement passed by on the street. He felt a sudden urge to listen even more closely, as if once he quieted down in a quiet place—which was unusual in itself—he couldn’t stop. He even became aware of the sound of his breathing, the way it whistled a little as it formed airstreams out of his nostrils.

  He listened even harder, feeling suddenly convinced that he was heading toward a p
lace he’d never really had the chance to visit before. He closed his eyes, and it felt like a thick curtain had fallen from the top of the window frame, blocking out the details of the trumpet vines that practically cascaded in thick vines into his living room. He felt completely alert, just lying there like a lump on the sofa, as if his senses had just awakened after a long, long nap. It seemed to Rico that a space had cleared in his head; he was moving through it with no particular goal in mind, but with the same kind of curiosity that might make him pick up a stone in the yard and turn it over in his hand for no reason.

  It was somewhere in this silence that he heard a message, though it didn’t come in the form of words and there was no voice attached to it. It came in the form of a certainty, a direction, a knowing that he could not escape or ignore, not if he wanted to have any respect for himself as a man and a husband. It had to do with Rosalita, with trying one more time to penetrate the shell she lived in. Because now Rico was wondering if she had somehow found for herself a place like the one he was in at this very moment. If she was so absorbed in some internal process, some way of being that had so little connection to the outer world that she had all but disappeared from it. If that was why she seemed like a ghost or a shadow.