Burro Genius

by Victor Villaseñor

  My sister Tencha and Joan washed the blood and dirt and gravel off my face. It hurt like hell when they took what was left of my T-shirt off of me. They had to work real carefully to get all the dirt and grime out of my back and shoulders and the back of my head. All this time my brother and Chemo watched. Joseph was in his pajamas and his dark maroon bathrobe.

  Finally, Tencha and her girlfriend Joan were done working on me. My brother asked them if he could talk to me alone. We sat down across from one another at the kitchen table. Chemo, Tencha, and Joan walked outside.

  “Tell me,” said my brother, once we were alone, “did you really mean to jump, or was it an accident?”

  “No,” I said, “it was no accident. I meant to jump.”

  “Out of a speeding car?”

  “Yes,” I said, flashing on Superman, “out of a speeding car.”

  “Mundo, do you realize that you could’ve been killed?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I think I was for a little while.”

  “You were what?”

  “I think that I did die,” I said.

  “You were killed?” he asked.

  “Yes, for a little while.”

  “What makes you think this?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know, except, well, it was like I wasn’t in my body. I was, instead, up above my body looking down. I think I even saw my own body hit the gravel and go rolling into a ditch.”

  Hearing this, my brother nodded, and just sat there looking at me, not saying anything for a long time. I said nothing, too, and looked back at my big brother. I’d never realized that Joseph’s eyelashes were as long and thick as our father’s. They fluttered like butterflies above his large dark eyes. My mother always said that our dad had eyelashes that any woman would die for.

  My brother still said nothing. His silence was beginning to make me a little bit nervous. My feet didn’t reach the floor when I sat back in my chair. I had to move forward in the chair so I could get my feet on the floor. Still my feet wouldn’t stop fidgeting.

  “Did you actually use the word ‘obey’ when you asked Chemo to slow down?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Yes,” I said. My feet stopped fidgeting. I, too, wondered why I’d used the word “obey.”

  “I see,” said my brother, pulling his chair around the table closer to me. “Do you have any idea what the word ‘obey’ implies?” he asked.

  “Implies?” I said.

  “Yes, what the word really means.”

  I nodded. “Yes, I think so.”

  “Tell me, what does it mean?”

  “It means,” I said, “I guess, like when God tells us that we must obey His Ten Commandments, or when people say that we must obey our parents or our teachers.”

  “Exactly,” he said. “Now can you see what it was that this word ‘obey’ caused?”

  I shook my head.

  “Think about it. You, a little kid, told Chemo, who’s older and bigger than you, and in front of his girlfriend, that he had to ‘obey’ you. So then, of course, he couldn’t do as you said, because he’d look bad.”

  “But José, you don’t understand,” I said with tears suddenly coming to my eyes. “I wasn’t joking! I really, really did see that red truck coming up the hill! I had to get them to slow down, or we would’ve all been killed!”

  Joseph reached out and gently touched me. “I’m not arguing that,” he said. “I’m sure you’re right and you saw that truck. That’s not the issue. Papa tells us how he can see the cards that are going to be dealt to him in poker hours before he goes to the game. Duel, his teacher up in Montana, taught our dad how to do this. This is why we know that papa will come home a winner from their trip to Las Vegas and the other people won’t.

  “So you see, the issue isn’t if you saw or didn’t see that truck coming up the hill. The real issue is, if in the future you are able to somehow see what’s going to happen around the next corner again, how can you get people to do as you need them to do, so that a fatal incident can be avoided? Do you see where I’m going?”

  My eyes got huge. I’d thought that I was going to get in trouble. Instead, I was being told by my brother how to get even better and stronger at working with these little flashing glimpses of the future, if this ever happened to me again.

  “So what word could you have used instead of ‘obey’?” asked my brother.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’d already said please, and told them about the coming truck, but they still wouldn’t take me seriously and slow down.”

  “You know what you could’ve said?” said my brother. “You could have said that you needed to pee real bad and asked them to please slow down.”

  “I did have to pee,” I said.

  “See, there you have it,” continued my brother. “Then I’m sure that Chemo would’ve immediately slowed down for you if you’d said that you were ready to pee, because he’d have sympathy for you and also because it didn’t make him look bad. Does this make sense?”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  “Good,” said my brother, “I’m glad, because you see, papa has explained this to me a million times: You never make a man look bad, especially in front of his woman, or you’ll always end up in a fight. Papa has also told me that many times, when he was a young man, he’d ask the driver to pull over because he had to pee. And once he was out of the car, he then told his friends to go on by themselves, that he had a life to live and he wasn’t going to risk it over such a stupid little thing as wild drunk driving. Once, three of his friends got killed. He, too, would’ve been killed, he told me, if he hadn’t gotten himself out of that car. So you see, I’m not saying that your intent was wrong, but how you went about it wasn’t very smart. You just can’t keep jumping out of speeding cars, even if you think you’re Superman,” he added, grinning.

  I laughed. He’d caught me. Boy, was he smart! This was exactly what I’d begun to think since I’d jumped out of the car, that maybe I was Superman.

  “It’s good to see you laugh,” said my brother. “Life, you know, is fun. But, you do need to learn how to choose your battles. This is what we’re taught at the Academy.”

  “To choose our battles?”

  “Yes, when you see something that other people don’t see, you have to think ahead and figure out how to get your way, and not waste valuable time.”

  I nodded.

  “Because,” he added, “I’m sure that this is going to happen to you again, Mundo. It was no accident what happened to you today, just as it was no accident that you were born two years to the day, to the hour that our grandmother Doña Margarita died. You are her, papa always says, so the next time you’re able to see around the bend in the road of life, you must be prepared to get your way, just as she did in the Revolution.”

  I nodded again. This I’d heard all my life about my being born two years after our grandmother Doña Margarita died to the day, to the hour. “Then you believe me that I really did see that truck and I had to get them to, well, not obey me, but do as I said?”

  “Yes,” he said. “You see, I, too, have been seeing a lot of things, now that I’ve been spending so much time at the hospital.” He took a deep breath. “One night I got up and went down the hallway to see this woman who was crying. She was an elderly woman and the doctors didn’t know what to do for her. She was dying. I held her hand and stroked her forehead like she was a child. She immediately calmed down and was able to pass over in her sleep so peacefully.

  “The night nurse was furious, and the next morning she told the doctors what I’d done. They, too, became upset, telling me I didn’t have the authority to visit other patients. That poor nurse and the doctors, they just weren’t prepared to accept the simple truth that they aren’t in control. No one is in control, Mundo. We’re all just God’s guests for a short time.”

  I don’t know why, but I now asked, “Joseph, are you dying?”

  He looked at me straight in the eyes. “Yes, Mundo,” he said, “I’m d
ying.”

  I began to cry. “But, Chavaboy, I don’t want you dying!”

  “Look, you asked, and I told you,” he said.

  “Yes,” I said. “But…but when I died, I could see that it was still up to me to stay dead or come back alive.”

  “Look,” said my brother, “I’m glad that you came back, but you see, my situation is very different than yours. Mine has been going on a long time. I’ve already used up my nine lives. You, on the other hand, have maybe used only one or two.”

  An icy cold chill went up and down my spine. “Then, it really is my fault that I didn’t ride my horse back and tell you not to cross at that place in the swamp, isn’t it?” My eyes were overflowing with tears.

  “No, Edmundo, it’s not your fault.”

  “Yes, it is, you just don’t want to tell me!”

  “Listen to me,” said my brother, “in the last few months of going back and forth to the hospital, I’ve learned a lot about life, and also about death. And what I’ve learned is simply this, that everything is already okay, Mundo, that qué será, será, con el favor de Dios.”

  “But, Chavaboy, if only I’d rode back, then everything—”

  “There are no ‘buts’ in life, our father always tells us, or then our aunt would have balls and she’d be our uncle.”

  I laughed. My brother had mixed up the saying. “No, José,” I said, “our dad says that for the word ‘if,’ not ‘but.’”

  “I think, you’re right,” he said, also laughing. “I’m glad to see that you’ve been paying attention, because when it’s all said and done, it all comes down to the same thing: There are no ‘ifs,’ ‘shoulds,’ ‘tries,’ ‘buts,’ or ‘maybes’ in life. All these are weak words that cause us to remain doubtful and not live to our fullest. At Scripps, over the doctors’ protests, I was able to help a lot of people to calm down and gracefully accept their fate.”

  “So, then, you didn’t pay attention to the doctors telling you not to see the other patients?”

  “No, I didn’t,” he said.

  I couldn’t stop crying. I loved my brother. I just wished that he hadn’t told me the truth when I’d asked him if he was dying.

  “Look,” he said, “who do you think it was that helped you see that red truck coming up the hill? Who do you think helped our two grandmothers through all that starvation and war? Who do you think has been helping the whole of humanity since ever? What do you think ‘con el favor de Dios’ really means? It’s about asking God to help us with daily miracles.”

  “Then you think that there really are miracles?”

  “Of course, everywhere, everyday. It’s just that we close our eyes and don’t see these ‘red trucks’ anymore.”

  “Well, then,” I said, wiping my eyes, “why can’t we just ask for a miracle right now and not have you die?”

  He looked me in the eyes very quietly, then reached out and took my hand. “Mundo, it wasn’t your fault,” he said. “Can you understand that? It’s not anyone’s fault, and also, it’s not for you or for me or anyone to question.” He breathed. “Lying in that hospital, I had a lot of time to think. I began to see little by little that there’s a much larger, grander plan going on that we can’t see, much less ever understand. Poor mama and papa, they still think that with their money and modern medicine, they can step in and change the course of my destiny, and sometimes people can, but then, there are other times when we must just relax, let go, and trust la Mano de Dios.”

  Hearing these words, “the Hand of God,” an icy cold chill went up and down my spine, and then, strangely enough, once again that soft humming began to vibrate behind my left ear. I didn’t understand what my brother was telling me. I really didn’t. But the quiet humming got stronger, soothing me like a warm, gentle hand.

  “Chavaboy,” I said, “do you ever feel a purring right here, behind your left ear?”

  “A purring?”

  “Yes, like a cat purring or a little massage like when mama rubs our forehead when we don’t feel well.”

  “Do you feel this?”

  “Sometimes,” I said.

  “You know, I’d forgotten,” he said, smiling. “But now that I think about it, I remember something like that happening to me when I was young. It’s a little vibrating behind one of our ears, right? Then it goes across the back of your head to the other ear.”

  “Yes, exactly!” I said excitedly.

  “Then yes, I do remember that happening to me.”

  “Well, you know what I think that this humming is,” I said. “I think that it’s the Hand of God massaging us.”

  He smiled a beautiful smile. “Absolutely. Why not? The more and more that I learn the more and more I realize that God is always with us. It’s just that we’re too busy to notice.” He breathed. “You did nothing wrong,” he said once again. “Do you understand, you did nothing wrong. You’re just a little kid who was so fascinated by the adventure in that beautiful marsh that you forgot about me, and that’s the way it should be. Live, Mundo, live, that’s what we are all here to do.”

  Tears were rolling down my face. I had to work hard to not make any crying sounds. I didn’t want my brother worrying about me.

  “Do you understand?” he asked again.

  I couldn’t talk, but finally I was able to say, “Yes, I think so.”

  “Good,” he said, “because what I’ve come to understand lately is that it’s not control or money or new inventions that are needed in this world. What is really needed is so simple. It’s patience,” he said, taking a deep breath. “Patience, compassion, love, forgiveness, and understanding, so don’t you dare blame yourself or anyone else for anything,” he added.

  “But Chavaboy,” I said, the stream of tears still running down my face, “I don’t want you dying! Papa told me that no one is leaving our familia!” I shouted.

  “And he’s right, no one is leaving,” he said. “Remember how you saw your own body rolling across the road into the ditch?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Well, like that, I’ll always be watching over you, hermanito. I’m not leaving. I’ll always be here, just above you, watching out for you.”

  “Really? You promise.”

  “Te juro,” said my brother.

  I drew close and hugged my big brother Joseph with all my heart and soul. Then I’ll never forget. After we were done hugging, he sat back and turned on the record player at his side. The song “Ghost Riders in the Sky” began to play. For over a month now, this was the song that my brother kept playing, over and over again.

  An old cowpoke went ridin’ out one dark and windy day,

  Upon a ridge he rested as he went along his way

  When all at once a mighty herd of red-eyed cows he saw

  A’ plowin’ through the ragged skies, and up a cloudy draw.

  Yippee-aye-aaa, Yippee aye-ooh

  Ghost Riders in the Sky

  Their brands were still on fire and their hooves were made of steel

  Their horns were black and shiny and their hot breath he could feel

  A bolt of fear went through him as they thundered through the sky

  He saw the riders comin’ hard…and he heard their mournful cry

  Yippee aye-aaa, Yippee aye-ooh

  Ghost Riders in the Sky

  Their faces gaunt their eyes were blurred their shirts all soaked with sweat

  They’re ridin’ hard to catch that herd but they aint

  caught ’em yet ’Cause they’ve got to ride forever in the range up in the sky

  On horses snorting fire as they ride on hear their awful cry

  Yippee aye-aaa, Yippee aye-ooh

  Ghost Riders in the Sky.

  The riders loped on by him he heard one call his name

  If you want to save your soul from hell a-riding on our range

  Then cowboy change your ways today or with us you will ride

  A-tryin’ to catch this devil herd across these endless skies.


  Yippee aye-aaa, Yippee aye-ooh,

  Ghost Riders in the Sky.

  Ghost Riders in the Sky.

  Ghost Riders in the Sky.

  CHAPTER fifteen

  The following day our parents returned from Las Vegas. My dad and mom wanted to know what had happened to me. My face and shoulder were all cut up. I didn’t know what to say. My brother told them that I’d just had a little accident and everything was okay.

  Our dad brought a big fat, heavy canvas bag into the house, and turned it upside down. Silver dollars spilled out all over the place! He’d won, and won big, and everyone else had lost!

  Archie and George helped themselves to the liquor in the bar. Everyone seemed to be having a great time, except tía Tota. She seemed upset about something. George and Vera went home to be with their kids. My father suggested that the rest of us go out for Chinese dinner.

  “Oh no, you don’t, Salvador!” shouted our tía Tota. “You’re just trying to trick me and poison me with fish again!”

  “Hell, I wasn’t even thinking about you, one way or the other. I was thinking of Lupe. I don’t want Lupe making dinner for all of us.”

  “Thinking of Lupe!” yelled our tía. “When you do you ever think of her! All you men ever think of is your liquor and gambling, and leave us women alone in our rooms!”

  “We took you to the shows,” said our dad.

  “Yes, to that show with naked-breasted women where you men all went crazy!”

  “But you and Lupe chose that show!” yelled our dad.

  And so it was another fight between my father and our aunt. Some things just never changed.

  Two days later, they took my brother Joseph to the hospital while I was at school. When I got home and found out, I was pissed! My brother had tried so hard to not give in to his sickness, but in the end, God had forsaken him!

  My dad kept saying it was all Dr. Hoskins’s fault. If the damn fool hadn’t been drinking all the time, he would’ve spotted Joseph’s condition months ago, and then none of this would have happened. But I knew that it wasn’t just Dr. Hoskins who’d failed my brother. I, too, had failed him when I hadn’t ridden back to help him cross the marshy inlet.