Burro Genius

by Victor Villaseñor

  All that afternoon, my little sister drew stars with me, and all this time we could hear our parents arguing downstairs. Our mother was crying and saying that she was sure that God was punishing her and our father for something that they’d done, and so she was asking God to please take her and not our brother.

  “Please, dear Papito, our son Joseph is innocent,” she was saying to God. “No child should be held responsible for their parents’ sins.”

  “Lupe, why do you talk like this,” said our father. “God doesn’t punish children for their parents’ mistakes. Come on, Lupe, we just need to find the right doctor. Dr. Pace says that there’s still hope.”

  “Salvador, this is what Original Sin is all about. God passing the sins of the parents on to the children.”

  “But didn’t Jesus come to get rid of all those pendejadas?”

  “Well, yes, that’s why I’m praying.”

  “Well, then, pray for Chavaboy,” said our dad, “to get well, not for you to die instead of him. I love you, Lupe,” added our father, “and the kids need you. Don’t pray for shit like that!”

  “But what if God has already decided to take Joseph. Then I’d rather go instead of him,” said our mother.

  “Lupe, DAMNIT!” bellowed our dad. “You will not be praying like this in our home!”

  “You can’t tell me how to pray or not pray, Salvador, here in our home or anywhere else,” said our mother. “This is between me and God!”

  “Then I’ll KICK GOD’S ASS if he listens to you when you pray like this!” he yelled. “I’m not Adam! I’m not afraid of God or His threats of hell! I’M UN MEXICANO DE LOS BUENOS, and nobody is leaving, do you hear me! Nobody is getting punished! Shit, we just moved into our new home, for God’s sake!”

  “Salvador, I will not permit you to talk to God like this!”

  “Oh, I can’t tell you how to pray, but you can tell me how to talk to God, eh?”

  “But you talk vulgar!”

  “And you talk stupid! God don’t punish nobody! That’s all just a bunch of bullshit from the Church to scare us! And if anyone is gonna be punished, I’ll take it! Not you, not Chavaboy! Me! Here, CHEST FIRST! I’m not running out on my familia like that chickenshit Adam who blamed his wife Eva.

  “YOU HEAR ME, GOD! I’m talking to You, man to man, a lo MACHO CHINGÓN! It’s between YOU AND ME!”

  “Salvador, you can’t be ordering God around! Talk nice!”

  “BULLSHIT! Nice never gets us nowhere, and you know it, especially with God!”

  Hearing all this, I continued drawing stars as fast as I could, then coloring them, but now I wasn’t jumping inside them so they could take me away. No, I could now see very clearly that I needed to stay here on Earth to help mi familia.

  My parents’ shouting continued. My mother was crying and so was my father, but for some reason, it didn’t frighten me anymore. No, now those little quiet vibrations had once more began humming behind my left ear. I continued drawing stars, and the humming behind my left ear began to spread across the back of my head. Then, suddenly, I felt safe here on Earth, too. I didn’t have to go away. Papito Dios was also here with me.

  This was when I realized what this humming really was: God was massaging the back of my head with His fingertips. I smiled, feeling so good, and just kept drawing stars as fast as I could while my parents kept yelling and arguing downstairs.

  Later that same night, I went outside after dinner so I could be alone and look up at the stars in the heavens. I just didn’t want to hear my parents arguing anymore. Hell, I agreed with my father—no one from our familia was going to be taken away or punished. But if someone had to be taken away, then I’d be the one to be taken and punished.

  After all, it only made sense. My brother was smart and was needed here. And my father and mother, they were our parents and so they were both needed, too. But me, I was stupid, so I wasn’t needed. Hell, every day at school, I was getting stupider. Now most of the new third graders could also read better than me. I was going to flunk the third grade again. I began to cry. The way I saw it, I was probably going to be kept in the third grade for the rest of my life. I’d be old and have all white hair and no teeth and still be in the third grade. And the kids, they kept telling me that this was because I was a Mexican, and Mexicans were only good for washing dishes or working in the fields like stupid animals.

  As I was standing by myself in the front patio and looking up at the stars, something real strange happened. Suddenly, this little goldfish leaped out of the water in the fountain beside me, and I swear that he smiled at me.

  I laughed, wiping the tears out of my eyes. Now I remembered that when I’d been little and my mamagrande had rocked me to sleep by the water fountain at our home in Carlsbad, I’d also seen goldfish smile at me.

  “How are you doing, mijito?” asked my father. He’d just come outside and joined me in the front patio.

  “Good, papa,” I said, lying. The tears were still running down my face.

  He was smoking his cigar. My mother was inside praying at her little altar to the Virgin Mary in the hallway outside our parents’ bedroom. My little sister Linda was praying with her. I felt sorry for my little sister. I sure as hell didn’t like it when my mother caught me and had me kneel down with her and do all that praying to her candles and altar.

  Carefully, my father turned his big cigar about in his mouth as he continued smoking. I kept looking down at the fish in our fountain in the front patio. I wondered if fish ever slept, or did they just keep swimming around and around all day and night.

  “Do fish ever sleep, papa?” I asked.

  “Do what?”

  “Do fish ever sleep? And if they do, do they lie down at the bottom of the fountain to sleep?”

  “Hell, I don’t know,” said my dad. “I guess they do. Why wouldn’t they sleep?”

  “That’s what I was thinking, and I bet that they dream, too. But at school they tell us that only humans are evolved enough to dream or think.”

  And saying this, I don’t know why, but my eyes again filled with tears.

  “What is it, mijito?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I said, realizing that my parents had so much to worry about with my brother Joseph that I didn’t want to add to their worries. No, I had to be strong and keep still. “I’m okay.”

  “Is it school?”

  I nodded.

  “What is it?”

  “Well, the kids, they laugh at me, papa. And the teacher does, too. You see, the other day I told them that animals dream and that they know how to think, too. Because, papa, you and I have both seen our horses jerk in their sleep, and also I’ve seen them think and figure things out, like how to open gates and get into the grain room. I’ve also seen dogs toss in their sleep, and whimper like they’re having bad dreams.” The tears wouldn’t stop. “They just kept laughing at me, papa,” I added. “Especially when I told them, as you’ve told me, that there are some horses that are so smart that they can out-think most humans.”

  I didn’t say what this one kid had said. “Sure, your horses can outthink you Mexicans, because you’re all so stupid, you flunked the third grade!”

  “So school still isn’t going so good for you, eh?” asked my father.

  “No, papa,” I said, wiping my tears. “I’m not learning to read any better than last year.”

  He put both of his hands in his front pockets and rocked back and forth on the balls of his boots. My father’s boots were beautiful. He always had to have them custom-made or had to have a zipper put in on one side, because his arch was so high that he couldn’t slip his foot into a regular size slip-on cowboy boot.

  “I don’t know what to tell you, mijito,” he said, still smoking. “I don’t know how to read so good myself.”

  “Papa,” I said, “did you used to sometimes come home from the poolhall in Carlsbad so drunk that you were stumbling and yelling and mama got so scared that she’d take me and Joseph and Tench
a to hide out by the clothesline?”

  “Who told you that one?”

  “No one. I remember it. The white sheets would flap in the wind like great big birds trying to fly.”

  “I don’t know,” said my dad. “But it could be, I guess, true. Some nights it really got bad in the poolhall. A liquor store is a much better business. Here, the people buy their liquor and go home to drink and pick their fights. They don’t all try to take their shit out on the bartender.”

  “Why do you sell liquor, if it’s so bad?” I asked. “Maybe this is why mama thinks that God is punishing you two.”

  My dad took a big breath. “God isn’t punishing anybody,” he said to me. “It’s us, humans, who punish each other left and right, and have screwed up this whole wonderful world of ours. Take us, the people, off this planeta, mijito, and the whole world has not one problema. Nothing wrong with liquor,” he added. “It’s here in each man’s heart, what he brings to his drink that turns everything into something terrible. Remember the old Mexican saying, ‘In the first half of the bottle we find God, then in the second half is where we find the Devil.’”

  “Oh,” I said, “then we should throw out all the bottles after you drink the first half.”

  My father laughed. “No, it just means that too much of anything is never a good thing. So yes, that was probably me coming home drunk after a terrible night of breaking up fights. You see, there was no law in the barrio, except me, so every son of a bitch who had an argument with his wife or boss would come and try to take it out on me. Being a cop, especially without a badge or the jailhouse to back you, is hell! No wonder Archie sold me the place so damn cheap. He was tired. And after ten years, with no days off, I began to get ugly, too. Your mother was probably right to get you kids and run and hide. Hell, it must’ve been like the whole damn Revolution for her all over again.”

  “Why didn’t you just quit?” I asked.

  “Because, mijito, a married man with children never quits his job. No matter what, a married man with children bites the bullet and just keeps going day in and day out to work. These are the real heroes of life, men who bring home the bacon. Do you know what it means to be a burro macho?”

  “No, I don’t,” I said.

  “Well, then listen, and listen closely, because this might just be the most important thing you’ll even learn about becoming a man.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “You see, back in the old days all supplies were transported by horses with wagons in the valley and by a string of burros up in the mountains. And back then, one day’s travel was about twenty to twenty-five miles, the same distance as the padres built the Missions here in California. And a burro macho means, that when the burro driver comes to his regular watering place at the end of a long day and he finds no water or food, his burro machos don’t break down. No, these fine, strong animals just pull in their guts and go right on to the next water hole—another twenty or twenty-five miles—without arching their back or trying to dump their load. You see, the other animals, who aren’t burro machos, don’t want to go on, so they arch their backs and try to dump their load, or worse, they start twisting and make welts on their backs, preferring to get sick and break down, than go on. It’s no accident when a workman breaks his leg or his shovel on the job. Accidents happen when a man doesn’t have the tanates to pull in his guts and go on with the heart of a burro macho.

  “You see, over and over I’ve seen men at the end of a tough job get tired, start complaining, get impatient and break their leg or shovel because they’d quit in their hearts, but wanted to pretend in their heads that they’re strong and had worked hard to their last. The head is weak, mijito. Always remember this, it is in our hearts that we men are strong. So now, do you see why the highest compliment that any man can give to another workman is to call him a burro macho? A burro macho never quits or breaks down, no matter what!”

  I nodded. “I got it, papa,” I said. “Then a man’s real power comes from the heart, just as it does for a woman?”

  “Exactly! Now you got it!”

  “All right, I’m glad that I now got it, but still, shouldn’t a man be very careful to decide at what he’s going to work at so hard?” I asked. “I mean, couldn’t it still be…that all those bad things that happened at the poolhall are the things that mama was talking about God maybe punishing Joseph, instead of you and—”

  My father EXPLODED, screaming so loud that he scared the pee out of me. “I WILL LISTEN TO NONE OF THIS BULLSHIT!” he roared. “Chavaboy is going to BE ALL RIGHT! We don’t need God to punish us for NOTHING! Don’t you understand! We do a DAMN GOOD ENOUGH JOB OF PUNISHING OURSELVES ALREADY, especially if we’re good people like your mother!

  “Hell, the bastards of the world do horrible, monstrous things, then live their whole lives happy, all the way to their old age! It’s the saints that suffer, the good people like your mother that got this whole damn thing ass-backwards, ever since we got our asses kicked out of Paraíso!

  “WE DON’T KNOW SHIT about living life with God anymore, I tell you! My mother, Margarita, nothing but a bag of skinny Indian bones, she didn’t let herself get fooled into all this hocus-pocus bullshit of the Church! She told us all, ever since I can remember, ‘They came to teach us with a Holy Book that only talks about life after people lost their way of living in the Grace of God. Why listen to that?’ she’d say to us. ‘I want to learn from a book that tells us about the millions of years that people lived in the Graces of Papito back in the Holy Garden. To listen to anything less is an insult to our Immortal Souls!’

  “God is Love, mijito, NOT REVENGE!” my dad now told me with tears coming to his eyes. “You hear me, my mother taught us that God is Amor, and Jesus said, ‘Forgive them for they don’t know’ on the cross as they were pounding nails into him. Well, I forgive them all, and I forgive myself first of all, and that’s how it is, and all the rest is caca de un toro muy viejo, y PENDEJO!”

  Tears came to my eyes. “Then mama really isn’t going to have to leave us and go to Heaven instead of Joseph?”

  Hearing this, my father looked at me for a long time. “Is this what you’ve been thinking?” he asked. I nodded, with tears streaming down my face. “No, mijito, your mama isn’t going to leave us.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Good, because if anyone has to go, then…I…I want it to be me, papa. I’m the one who isn’t smart.”

  “Oh, my God,” said my father, taking me in his arms. “So this is why you were crying when I came out here. The things we put into children’s heads, damnit!” His whole chest expanded against me. “You are a very good, brave hombrecito a las todas,” he said. “I love you con todo mi corazón, mijito, and nobody is leaving. We’re all staying here together and working things out. We’re a familia,” he added. “Always remember that, we are una familia, and a familia always finds a way for things to work out, con el favor de Dios.”

  And so my father held me close and I cried and cried, feeling so much better. I’d thought that our mother was going to have to leave us for sure, and I didn’t want her going, or my brother, either.

  That night, I dreamed of Stars and being up in Heaven with Papito Dios. I was flying through the Heavens, and when I came to this Golden Eye, I shot through the Eye and here was my old dog Sam and my two mamagrandes. Sam came up and started licking my face and Doña Guadalupe and Doña Margarita had medicine bags with them, and they walked me through the Heavens, teaching me how to pick Stars and put them into my own medicine bag.

  And it was so easy, all I had to do was just walk up and take a Star in my hand, any Star, and then rub it between my palms until it was as warm as my hands. Then I smelled of it, and if it smelled all sweet to me, I was to put the Star into my medicine bag.

  Soon my whole medicine bag was glowing from all the Stars I’d picked. This was so much fun! Each Star I’d picked felt so warm and good and full of Love, just as mi papa had told me,
that Papito Dios was Amor!

  CHAPTER thirteen

  My dad was right! Nobody was going to have to leave nuestra familia! My mother’s prayers had been answered! My big brother was feeling much better. In fact, he felt so strong that he was back home with us, eating menudo, which a doctor from Mexico City had recommended. And now, after a week of homemade menudo—tripe soup cooked Mexican style—he wanted to go horseback riding.

  I ran to the stables to get Emilio to saddle up Midnight Duke for my brother. Joseph had his own horse, a beautiful sorrel-red stallion named Blue Eyes, a gorgeous quarterhorse that we kept at Jimmy Williams’s place over by Escondido, but he never rode Blue Eyes. He always preferred to ride Midnight Duke, who was a gelding.

  Myself, I saddled up my old mare Caroline, and then my brother and I went riding out of the corrals and down the hill towards the railroad tracks. I was all excited being with my brother, so I suggested that we ride inland, over towards Crouch Street where I’d recently found a herd of deer. But my brother told me that he wanted to go the other way, down the canyon to the ocean.

  “I want to ride along the seashore,” he said. “I don’t know why, but I’ve been having dreams of riding Duke in the surf. Do you know the best way to get passed the marshlands?” he asked.

  “Yeah, of course,” I said. “I do it all the time.”

  “Then lead the way,” said my brother.

  So I turned my old mare Caroline and started down the valley, going through the marshy part of our rancho grande on our way to the ocean. I knew every step of these marshes, but I could see that my brother didn’t quite know how to maneuver through the little waterways and keep up with me. Also, he just wasn’t as quick and agile with his horse as I was with mine.

  We could now hear the ocean in the distance. We were where the marsh grasses grew so thick, that they covered up some of the deep crevices the water had dug into the Earth after a hard rain. I wasn’t paying too much attention to my brother’s progress anymore. No, I was seeing new places where Shep and I could go hunting. Lately, Shep had started teaching me how to hunt ducks. I loved duck hunting with Shep. In fact, we’d gotten so good at hunting ducks, that they were now becoming my favorite thing to eat, cooked with fresh oranges and honey just like they did in a Chinese restaurant. My brother called out to me.