Burro Genius

by Victor Villaseñor

  “But honey, you told me that—”

  “I’m Fred Noon, Salvador and Lupe’s attorney,” said Noon, coming up and introducing himself to John and the woman, whose name was Mary. “If you have any questions about Salvador and Lupe feel free to come to my office anytime.”

  John still couldn’t stop grinning ear to ear, he was so happy.

  “Damn you, Salvador!” he said to my father. “The only thing you didn’t lie about was your wife. She is more beautiful than any movie star I’ve ever hired.” And he bowed, taking our mother’s hand and kissing her fingertips. “You are a queen from head to toe, Lupe,” he said.

  “You never say that to me!” snapped Mary, laughing.

  “Of course not,” said John, turning to her. “That’s because you’re my gorgeous wildflower.”

  “I’ll settle for a wildflower any day of the week!” she said, grabbing him and kissing him hard on the mouth.

  Myself, I was standing back and watching all this and feeling pretty confused. It seemed like everyone knew about my dad being el capón and…and…they liked it. This was really confusing to me. How could people like a man who put such fear into people’s souls that their blood ran backwards from their heart? This made no sense. Did my dad then have monster frogs and lizards come up to him at night, too?

  It was now time to uncover the pit. This was the highlight of the whole celebration. And it was at this very moment that Harry and Bernice, my father and mother’s tailors, came driving up in their car. They were from Santa Ana and Harry had been the one who’d helped my father get my mother’s diamond engagement ring for him when he’d asked for our mother’s hand in marriage almost twenty years ago. Harry and his wife Bernice had the biggest, most beautifully wrapped housewarming present that I’d ever seen. It was huge! I could hardly wait to see what was in it.

  “From Harry and me,” said Bernice, handing the huge gift wrapped in silver paper to my mother, “for the two bravest, most loving young couple we ever met. Such struggles, and so much love. Harry and me saw these two fine people have during the Depression, and now look, a palace no less!”

  Bernice was crying and my mother was crying and so was Helen Huelster and my aunts Maria and Luisa, but my tía Tota, she wasn’t crying. In fact, she was poking Archie in the ribs and making a face at him like she was angry with jealousy.

  The Father Sun was finally setting, and now everyone was gathered at the pit. For our father, this was the most holy time of the whole fiesta. He took a shovel from one of the workmen, and carefully, he started helping the other men remove the last of the dirt. Then he helped them take off the corrugated metal sheets. An aroma suddenly filled the air straight from Heaven!

  People began oooing and oh-oh-ing, and then when the big bundles of meat and squash and corn and sweet potatoes were brought out of the hole and placed on the long and heavy wooden table, people were salivating—the smell was so powerful!

  “And now before we eat, my beautiful wife, Lupe, the treasure de mi corazón, is going to make a toast,” said our father.

  “Yes,” said my mother, stepping forward with grace and dignity, “we’re all going to be served champagne and give—”

  “Served in real crystal, a lo chingón!” said my father, cutting in.

  “Thank you, Salvador,” said my mother, refusing to be ruffled by our father’s interruption. “We’ll just wait for everyone to get their glass of champagne, then we’ll give our thanks.”

  I watched the people who my parents had hired for the day serve the champagne to everyone. It was a long process. Even my sister Tencha and our cousins Chemo, Loti, Andres, Vickie, Eva, Benjamin, and all the others were served, too. Quite a few of my male cousins were still overseas. One of them, my aunt Sophia’s son, had actually made the national headlines as a war hero when he and his lieutenant had single-handedly captured nearly a hundred Germans. But the newspaper article gave the credit to the young lieutenant, when it had actually been our cousin, a corporal, who’d come up with the idea and then handled the problema.

  “All right,” said my mother. I could see that mama was very nervous, but still she stepped forward with such calm elegance, as if she’d been doing this all her life. “I’d like to start, as I said, by giving thanks to God. But I’ve never spoken publicly like this before. I’m not educated, so please pardon my English if I…I…I make any mistakes.” She now raised her glass of champagne to the Heavens. “Thank You, God, thank You, Our Holy Creator, for giving my husband Salvador and I, Lupe, his wife, the opportunity to build this great home for our familia and our friends, new and old.”

  Just then, my brother came walking up and he signaled for me and Tencha and our little sister Linda to come with him, up close to our parents. I was worried that our cousins would feel left out, but when I saw our mother’s whole face light up with such joy, as we four children came up to her and our father, I knew that my brother had done the right thing once again.

  “This is our familia,” said our mother to everyone. “Our two sons and our two daughters. Joseph, Tencha, Edmundo, and our newest child Linda.”

  I took my sister Tencha’s hand. I could see that she was all embarrassed, too. My brother Joseph and my little sister Linda, on the other hand, didn’t seem embarrassed at all. They were just glowing con gusto like our mother and father.

  “As you go inside of the gates of our front patio,” continued my mother, “you will see that we had a little glassed-in shelf built into the pillars, so we could house the statues of Joseph and Mary and Jesus. So, in the name of the Earthly Holy Family of Our Lord God, I invite everyone to now help us celebrate nuestra casa in peace and love and prosperity forever! Toast!” added our mother, touching her glass to my father’s, then my brother and Tencha’s glasses.

  My little sister Linda and I had no glasses. I felt so left out. I could see that some people were actually wiping tears from their eyes as they lifted up their glasses to drink. Then my dad spoke up.

  “This toast,” he said in a loud voice, “that my wonderful wife Lupe just made is fine for her and I agree with her completely. Yes, amor and peace and prosperity are what we need here in this great nation of ours after that terrible Depression, and then this huge, long, awful World War Two.

  “But, I’d also like to add that I, personally, didn’t build this house just in honor of Joseph and Mary and Jesus. No, when we made plans to build this house, I immediately sent our architect to Hollywood to find how big Tom Mix’s house was. Because when I first come to this country from Mexico, we see these Tom Mix movies in Arizona, with the gringos on the right side of the theater and the Mexicans and Blacks on the left side. And we see that no-good, fake son-of-a-bitch Tom Mix knock down five Mexicanos with one punch! And one Sunday in Douglas, Arizona—I’ll never forget, I was just a kid—this big, handsome Mexicano from Los Altos de Jalisco got mad and jumped up on the stage in front of the movie and yelled, ‘Come on, you gringo bastards! See if one of you can knock me down with one punch! And I’ll give you the first punch free, a lo chingón!’ And he ripped his shirt open and pounded his chest!

  “And so—well, yes, of course, a fight got started. Two men were killed and ten more hospitalized. So I tell you, when we started to build this house, I told our architect, GO up to Hollywood and find out how big Tom Mix’s house is, so we could build OUR CASA BIGGER AND BETTER! So I now say to all of you that I didn’t have this house built just for peace and love, but to also tell every DAMN HUMAN BEING ON ALL THE EARTH that here in Oceanside, California, stands UN MEXICANO DE LOS BUENOS CON SUS TANATES IN HAND, free to work or fight with both hands, whichever way the DEVIL WANTS TO PAINT IT! And this is MY TOAST A LO CHINGÓN! SALUD!”

  SHOUTS ERUPTED!

  A GUN WAS FIRED—once, twice, three times!

  And all the Mexicanos present went wild CON GRITOS DE GUSTO!

  Instantly, the man who’d fired his revolver was roped and taken off through the orchard. The mariachi started playing. People drank thei
r champagne, were served more, and they began to line up to get their food.

  At the main table, the mayor and his wife sat down with our mother, Hans and Helen, Noon and his wife, and half a dozen other people. Then here came my father carrying the huge platter covered with a white cloth. It smelled of Heaven! He set it down in front of our mother and the mayor’s wife, pulling off the cloth.

  This was an honor, the highlight of the whole barbacoa. The skinned out steer’s head with the horns, eyes bulging, and the mouth open with the tongue sticking out, surrounded with chiles and other colorful spices. It was a delicious, mouthwatering, beautiful sight. But the mayor’s wife let out a SCREAMING screech of pure terror, and fell over backwards along with her chair.

  I couldn’t figure out what was going on. Hell, my father hadn’t even taken a tortilla to scoop the brains out of the huge skull to pass around as a kind of Mexican caviar to be eaten with the champagne, yet.

  Quickly, my mother and Helen took the screaming mayor’s wife inside the house to calm her down.

  My father, feeling pretty insulted by her outburst, said, “To hell with it! Let’s switch from champagne to TEQUILA!”

  The mayor, trying his best to keep calm and go along with everything, accepted a big shot of tequila from Los Altos de Jalisco from where comes all the best tequila!

  And our great big housewarming celebration now became a real pachanga!

  CHAPTER eleven

  Two weeks after the party, a car full of hombres drove up to our new house late one afternoon, honking their horn. They were from our old barrio of Carlsbad. I knew two of them. It was obvious that they were drunk and mad as hell. They just kept honking until we finally came out of the house.

  “YOU’RE A TURNCOAT, GRINGO-LOVING, son-of-a-bitch cabrón!” one of them shouted at my father as we came outside to see what it was that they wanted. “You’ve forsaken your own people and gone over to the gringos like a cheap puta-whore!”

  “You’re all just drunk,” said my father, “so I’m going to ignore what you say, but you better turn your car around and leave before you get me mad.”

  “¿Y que? Eh, what will you do?” said the biggest man in the front passenger’s seat, opening his door. “You’re not so tough anymore!” The man was so big that when he got out, the springs of the car rose up. “I alone can kick your ass, Salvador!”

  My brother and I were behind our dad inside the gates of the front patio of our new home. The statue of the Blessed Mother was in the pillar to the left of us and the statue of Saint Joseph holding baby Jesus in his arms was to the right of us. I didn’t know what to do. There were four of them, and the one who’d got out of the car looked so much bigger and stronger and younger than our father that I was ready to pee in my pants. I thought of going inside to get a gun. But not my BB gun. I’d get my dad’s .12 gauge shotgun, but I didn’t know how to shoot it. And if I did, it would probably knock me over backwards.

  “Don’t move,” said my brother to me under his breath, as if reading my thoughts. “Papa knows what he’s doing.”

  I swallowed, hoping to God that my brother knew what he was talking about. Because, my God, I had no idea what our poor, old papa could do against this giant.

  “I said,” said my father, as if he had all the time in the world, “we’re amigos, and you’re all just drunk, so I’ll ignore these insults that you tell me here at my home, in front of my two sons, but just this one time, so you better now turn around and get out of here. Mijito!” he said, turning to me, “get me a bottle of whiskey so that these fine gentlemen can enjoy a drink on their drive home.”

  “Órale!” said the one who was driving. “Now you’re talking, compa!”

  The giant grinned and licked his lips, salivating at the thought of another drink. Quickly, I ran into the house. But in our bar, I discovered that most of our liquor was gone. So I just grabbed a big bottle of something almost full, I didn’t know what, and came racing back out. I was really terrified for our father.

  “Here,” I said to my dad, handing him the big bottle.

  My father took the bottle and started to hand it to the huge man who was standing in front of him. But swaying back and forth on his feet, the gigantic man took a closer look at the bottle that my father was handing him, and he ROARED!

  “THIS IS SHIT, Salvador! That ain’t a man’s drink! It’s that SWEET GREEN SHIT FOR WOMEN! Who do you think we are, you son-of-a-bitch, cabrón!”

  Without a moment’s hesitation, our father leaped at him, smashing the bottle across his face! The huge man dropped to the blacktop like our thousand-pound steer had dropped under the pepper tree when the little .22 bullet hit him between the eyes. Our dad then broke the liquor bottle across the open door of their car, holding the bottle out like a weapon towards them, with all its broken, ugly razor sharp edges. Suddenly, my brother had a snub-nose .38 in his hand. It was our father’s gun. Joseph had been inside in bed when the car had first driven up. But he didn’t need to do anything with the snub-nose. Three of our vaqueros now came running up and they had a crowbar, a lariat, and Emilio, our new foreman, had my dad’s shotgun.

  “Put him in his car,” said my father to our cowboys, “and make sure these damn fools never come through our gates again! Why do you think I didn’t invite you, cabrones? It’s because of this, you stupid sons of bitches!”

  “It’s not over, Salvador!” yelled the driver.

  “Of course not, as long as you breathe, you’ll be a damn fool who can’t open his eyes and see what’s going on!”

  They drove off, tires spinning and fish-tailing up the driveway. I stood there transfixed, suddenly realizing that this was the same kind of action I’d seen in the barrio as a child behind our poolhall—I’d just forgotten. That good-looking young man’s story about my dad being “el capón” came flashing back to my mind. My God, it had to be true. It all had to be true. There just wasn’t any doubt about it in my mind anymore.

  I started crying. I’d caused this whole thing to happen. If I’d brought out a bottle of men’s drink instead of women’s, they would have driven off happy, and I would’ve never endangered mi familia.

  When my father saw me crying, he came over to me. My brother had already put his arm around me.

  “It’s okay, mijito,” said my dad to me. “You don’t have to be scared anymore.”

  “I’m not scared,” I said, shoving my brother’s arm away. “I’m mad! I brought out the wrong liquor, and that’s why all this…this happened!”

  The workmen laughed, saying that I looked cute being so angry. But my brother and father didn’t laugh.

  “Look, mijito,” said my dad, “no matter what kind of liquor you would have brought out, it would’ve still ended up in a fight. That’s what they came looking for—a fight. It couldn’t be no other way.”

  Emilio was nodding in agreement with my father. “That’s why I brought the shotgun,” he said. “I could smell their want of fight from way across the orchard.”

  “You can smell somebody wanting to fight from across an orchard?” I said, realizing that was one hell of a long way.

  “Sure. Why not? Bulls can smell a cow in heat when the wind is right, five miles away,” said Emilio. “Anger, fear, sex, these are strong smells.”

  “Exactly,” said my father, “just as every married man must know, or he’s gonna get hit in his tanates with things from his wife that he has no idea where they’re coming from. Smell, she is very important, mijito.”

  “Is that why you cooked that man’s tanates in salsa verde before you forced him to eat them, so he could smell them?” I asked. Ever since the housewarming celebration, I just hadn’t been able to get those two stories out of my head. One, my dad castrating a man and cooking up his balls in salsa verde; then, the other, killing a man in the alley behind our poolhall in Carlos Malo with his bare hands. Also, every time I remembered those two stories, I’d remember that night with the white sheets flapping on the clothesline.

&nbs
p; My dad was grinning. “Who told you that one?”

  I was shocked. My dad was grinning like he truly enjoyed the memory of that awful story. “A guy at the house celebration,” I said.

  “Yes, you’re right. I wanted that man to smell his own tanates cooking, because I needed to teach that bastard a lesson he’d never forget for the rest of all his pinche life!” said my father with sudden anger. But then he breathed, and breathed again, calming down. “You know,” he said to me, “I think the time has come where we maybe need to have a little talk.” And saying this, he took hold of me by the shoulders and turned me around. “You see, mijito, now that you are coming into manhood, you need to know what it is exactly that a man is and what it is that they do. Back home, at this time, was when my brother José, the Great, taught me how to shoot a gun, so no man, no matter how big, could ever walk on my shadow again without my permission.

  “José,” he said, turning to my brother, “give me that pistol you brought out, and go in and get the .22 rifle and a bunch of bullets so we can teach your little brother how to shoot. My father,” said my dad, turning back to me, “he never taught me nothing, but hate and anger and how abusive men can be with all their power. It was my mother and her side of the familia, los Indios, who taught me why it is that God made a man’s balls so sensitive and easy to hurt.”

  My father had his huge hand on my left shoulder as we walked around our new home. “You see, to be a good hombre a las todas is to be—just like a man’s balls—soft and tender inside your heart, and yes, easy to be hurt. This is why all good men need to be raised like a woman for the first seven years of their life. Those men, who came in that car all drunk, they just don’t know nothing about being soft and tender and honest, deep inside.”

  I nodded. This really made a whole lot of sense. “What men do know this, papa?” I asked.

  “Not many anymore,” he said. “Nowadays, even most women are raised up to only admire the male way of thinking. The respect for women was lost,” he added, “when people started saying that God is only male. You see, back at one time, all over the world, two stories of Creation were known. One for the women, with a Female God, so they could teach the young girls, and the other one for the men with a Male God, so they could teach the young boys.”