Arcadio

by William Goyen

  For the wine for Hombre, said she hid behind the factory on the bayou at lunchtime and took the men quick for a quarter. Back in the back, she told me, in the dark, the men from the factory got what they had to have, said. Go for a few days and then have to have it again. Tis a good business, can always count on it, can always count on men having to have it every few days, or for some every day. Like a máquina, I said. Guess everthing’s got a máquina machine in it except God and Jesucristo. Whenever Johna went there to the factory, back in the back, no matter what time, day shift or night shift, when the wine money was needed, back in the back she would wait and always somebody would come, they would know she was there, they had to have it every few days, some of em every day. Men got to have it, said Johna. I did it is all I know. And then went with the money—proceeds is the gringo word, I says—and then went with the proceeds to Sweeny Mack’s for the Red. For Hombre. Sometimes Sweeny Mack bought me the wine. How’s that? I asked. With what I give him, Johna said. Oh I see, I said. Twas a direct change of the máquina for the wine. No money changed hands, she said. Why didn’t you just stay at Sweeny Mack’s and make the eschange I asked Johna, woulda been simpler wouldn’t it, all in one place. Sweeny Mack, said Johna, liked to change money for what he got. Sweeny Mack wanted to see money. Didn’t want to take the price of a shortdog of wine out in pussy. Máquina I said. I did it is all I know, said Johna. You could see that Johna didn’t have many espressions.

  And then I said Johna I got to go on, wherever I go you can’t go with me. Where is that Johna said. I got to go on, I said. All right, go on, said Johna, but I hope you will remember me. I will, I says, you are the first one and the last. We had some times, said Johna. We had some times, said Johna, including the last one, Johna said; and I went on.

  I felt so lonesome, now, Señor, Señorita, more lonesome than ever I have felt, ever in all my life of lonesomeness. Maybe because I had given the last of it to somebody, maybe because I had finalmente found my father, I don know. I felt many deep things as I went on, Señor, Señorita. I saw sights I wish I could sing to you, sometimes I felt my mejicanismo passing from me, I felt everbody, that I was todo, all, I felt great thoughts of the world, you wan hear? people fed me by the side of roads, I slept back in the fields and under the lonesome trees, I washed in rivers where there was some with water in em, and sometimes I walked all day in the dry rut of a river that used to be and felt the ghost of the waters sometimes could smell the vanished waters, that river-smell, nothing like a river’s smell, I have many a memoria of a river, of the presencia presence of it in some nighttimes that I remember, sleeping by a river and the great fuerza of it, its force moving through the ground and the river smell guess I am part river, Señor, Señorita, Corazón, you wan hear. And great trees, holding deep in the ground I knew whole places of great trees, and the great fuerza of woods and great trees in ‘em and their leaves, I love leaves, guess I am part tree, you wan hear? And I was movin along, I went on.

  But in a little while come the old máquina, the old adiós piece, Johna again, Johna was waiting for me under a tree. I been thinkin that you need the compañerismo of a woman and hope that have changed your mind and will let me go with you wherever you are going. You and Hombre was the only ones I ever felt it with. Women do not seem to understand about adiós pieces, you wan hear, and about swan songs and always want to believe that there can be some more and they will use their máquina for this. I know, compadre. If you have the máquina you will naturally begin to deal with it, make a deal with it. I know, Señor, Señorita. You wan hear. I do not speak through my hat, as the gringos say. I am hunting for my mother I says to Johna. Well I am not doing anything especially, Johna told me. Now that Hombre is gone I would be glad to go with you and work for you like I worked for your father. I don’t need no wine, I said. And no woman. Back there was our swan song, if that’s what you would be planning, Johna. Try then to think of something, said Johna. You and Hombre was the only ones I ever felt it with. I can think of nothing, answered I. And I do not want to ever feel it with you again. I become mean and I am not sure why, I should have had pity for Johna that had lived all her life on her máquina, just like my father Hombre on his member. But I felt mean toward Johna and wanted her to go away, you wan hear. What do you want me to do? said she. I don wan you to do anything I found myself saying. Look, Johna said, and I could see that she was going to try to deal with me, to try to make a deal, naturally it would be a máquina deal because that is a woman’s deal. Johna I said, don’t try to make some deal with me.

  Johna said saw very early about herself, that she had a máquinita little máquina and that if you had the máquina you would naturally begin to make a deal with it, said twas filled more often than her mouth but she never felt it much, said men filled her, taught her where she had what they wanted, taught her how to make a deal. Her mind was in her máquina from the early days, told me, her mind was on the deal. But she never felt it much, not until she was with Hombre and me. She come to the China Boy when she was sixteen years of age and had been there a long time when I got there, when Hombre brought me to old Shuang Boy Johna was already there. Said her name was Johna Katz and father’s name was Grady Katz, never heard of him, owned a dry-goods store over at Lufkin Texas, Katzes Emporium, in the old days. And Johna was the first woman to take me down, and then with Hombre, they both worked me at the same time, and taught me and crazed me and locked me into them like a part of them like a part of a máquina, an infernal máquina of three pieces, and taught me and crazed me. The three of us was an unholy figura I told you about, twas a fuerza piece of human flesh aworking when we put ourselves together like that, fitted together like that, aworking, twas a máquina, an infernal figura. But I got free of that now, I said to Johna Katz, my father Hombre is dead, the third one is forever gone, and I am part of the river and I am part of the trees, I am no longer damned by the infernal figura. I said to Johna here, here is a stone, set on it. Set on this stone and look the other way, for I am going down the road and we will never see each other again, the infernal figura is gone. Paz.

  I do not know whether Johna turned into the stone or not, but when I looked back I did not see Johna and the stone looked like twas shape of Johna. And so I went on.

  15

  Just a Little More Before I Say So Long

  BUT JUST A LITTLE more. I heard tell of them finding in the deep swamp-woods of the Looshiana bayou in the rainy season a dark woman half eaten up by what was probably a great big night hawk—some said a great big vicious owl would do the same, that is attack and bite and claw to pieces a person so that you could not even tell of a face or of any part of them much. Some bird aficionados that’d come in there to the swampwoods to help wild birds brought this news and said it could be the deed of some such bird feroz, I don know. Of course I was ascared it might be Chupa mi madre and remembered her all night, wherever I was at the time I don know the name of the town. But then they said again it could have been a man. Or could have been the work of a devilish wild hog, or of a demonio coyote pack, or some wild swamp beast ascared of a person suddenly appearing in the wild swampwoods. So I did not pursue the thought that it might have been Chupa, my mother, and hung my tears out to dry. I let her go.

  But why did not the noticias let me alone because then there was some news of a woman fantástica that was putting on a big show in a filthy city in the East. She was sweetly dressed like a white angel and was walking a rope on her tiptoes across a grande dumpyard of garbage and did not fall or falter once and was called the Angel of the Dumpyards and was famous and was wanted by other cities and by Shows, yet she was not found again. She run away. Was that mi madre? You wan hear? And there was another runaway woman answering to the description I would give of Chupa run away with the richest young swindler in one part of the North and when they caught the young swindler with a million swindled dollars, the woman was gone and was not found again, bringing back to me familiar memories of Chupa my runaway mother. And a
woman in a holy trance saw a picture of the Cross of Jesucristo on her screendoor and because of that begun to be able to heal people and to get presents from half the counties of Texas for a while; said the field in front of her house was crowded with cripples from half the counties of Texas. Until she run away and was not found again. Shades of Chupita, my fugitiva mother.

  Yet I begun to hear tell of an old saint woman lived out in the bitterweed prairie back of the town that’s over yonder, there in the prairie, and could tell the fortunes of people, past and ahead. I went back there and saw in the weeds of the prairie a little shotgun house settin under one shade tree, twas a big liveoak I believe. I knocked on the door that looked like hadn’t been opened to anybody in a long time twas brambled over by vines that locked it. An old voice called me to come around to the front, and an old woman opened the front door and at first glance I thought twas surely Chupita. And then I wasn’t sure. From time to time I thought the old saint woman recognized me, a look in her eye at me. Yet then I saw I was mistaken.

  Where did you come from I asked her, where have you been? My past is forgotten, the old woman said, it has been wiped out of my mind. Then you yourself need a person who can tell the fortunes of others, past and ahead, I said to her. Cobblers’ children need shoes, she answered in a riddle. Is your name Chupa, I said. Tell me are you Chupa and were you once beautiful in a green dress of sparkled fringe? I was once beautiful the old santa answered me but I never to my memory owned a green dress, never wore that color. But said few come out here in the bitterweed prairie, who has given you noticias of me, and I said but everywhere it is said you are una santa that has an eye into the lives of others and does holy deeds of telling other people’s fortunes. I have no such eye and I have never done no holy deed of fortunes, I live a ermitaña in this prairie of bitterweeds how could a hermit do a holy deed, the old saint woman said, since no one would ever know about it, the old woman saint said. You must have the wrong person. But I had such a hunch Señor that this was my mother and that if she could only remember, if I could only tell her her own fortunes she would recognize me her firstborn, Arcadio, the one she herself had told her own fortunes to, and I could come home, at last, and live in this house out in the prairie with my mother. That is, it seemed to me pretty sure that this woman of holy fortunes was mi madre. The thought to reveal my nakedness to her as once I did of yore years ago the night of my excape come feroz over me. But I did not, you wan hear, I did not reveal myself.

  And so I give up again and let my mother-searching go and went on my way towards God, looking for God, which don’t need no help from anybody, nothing but yourself, don even have to take a step can do it setting down or laying down, that is the kind of journey looking for God is. This is what I begun to see. I hope He will show up soon. Meantime canto. I forgot to say don know why I have forgotten to say it or didn’t remember to say it to you until now that the old saint woman in a moment of meanness looking at me with the feroz eye of a demonio threw me out of her shotgun house, turned me out with a strong arm, was unhospitable to me, showed me mean inhospitalidad. But I know that I myself have been a person of inhospitalidad many times back there in the Show, setting there still and without welcome, without hospitalidad to those standing before me and wanting to reach out to me—all but the unknown hand that reached out the White Bible to me, at which time I remember whispering in a voice that did not seem like my own, Gracias.

  For a moment as the woman was throwing me out in her inhospitalidad, I wanted to turn and kill her—with a knife I do not know why I brought along for that possibility. I say surprisingly because as I tell this I am surprised that I would have such intentions and make such plans for madre-muider, knowing about the knocking, like it tells me—you know, to be still, to make paz. I only wanted to reconcile. But I saw how close reconciliación and violencia are to each other, compadre, those same feelings that are always in me, living together in my double person. The inhospitalidad of a woman who might be my mother was the grief I could not hardly stand no more, no lo comprendió, I did not know what to think, you’d have thought I was over those feelings now that I was seventy years of age—creo que sí, I believe—and had me some wisdom that come into me from the Show, from my mother’s life and some from my father’s, from the China Boy, from my long excaped life on the road living along the river in the earlier days and in the riverwoods where God fed me with a bird, a fish, a leaf, a berry, and slept on the ground or in trees. I did not see nobody for many days and many nights and then I was full of reconciliation and of hospitalidad. Or living outside of towns and cities sometimes going as a cowboy, sometimes in my uniform from some war I do not know what one, quizás a Mescan war perhaps, I do not know. Nor care. I came to doors and stood at back steps and asked for something to eat. Oh I have some wisdom of this life to give, compadre, Oyente. I have some opinions and some ideas. I am therefore surprised that I would have intentions to strike down a woman maybe was my mother. When she run away I understood, a little, you wan hear, porque I myself am a runaway and feel those feelings too; but to turn me out, to be turned away, was feelings only Jesucristo would accept from his own mother if he had had to but he did not; yet I had to, from a woman that might be my own mother, be turned back and I could not, I become feroz. I wanted very much to put the knife into this woman there in that place my mother one time showed me where my father Hombre once had printed on her estómago stomach underneath her how you say ombligo, navel, the little flower in the middle of the stomach: CHUPA with the letters wound in a little flowering vine. But I probably would not have found the CHUPA because the printing would have probably been rubbed off by all the years of rubbing that my mother put her estómago through, God knows. But Señor I did not put the knife.

  You will say that quizás perhaps they would be looking again for me, if I had put the knife. As they did so long ago in the days of yore when I excaped the Show, under the invitation of my mother. I am sure those ones would not be hunting again for me, the old ones that old ridiculous posse. Then it would be the policía who would be looking for me, that is if the absence of the old saint woman was found out, if there was noticias of it in the town, I did not see any neighbors, only the old woman’s house in a long field of blooming bitterweeds setting under the one tree, a live oak, I guess. And I would be at large again, excaped this time from la ley the law. Double at large, if I had put the knife, excaped from the Show and the Law.

  And if they would be looking again for me then I could put on the woman’s clothing and be there when they come for the unknown knifer and they would find the milagro miracle of the resurrected santa sitting in her bitterweed house. And no one would know that I had become my mother, mi madre Chupa. In this way, Señor, she could never run away from me again. And in this way would I find home and God and the end of all my hunting—for my mother, for my half brother Tomasso and for my dick-struck father. Do you say I should have done this, Señor? For if you would think that they would be looking for me I would not wait but go myself looking for them who was looking for me, to tell them of my deed and to ask forgiveness like la Biblia dice que sí, like the Bible says. That is, if it would be my mother. If twas not then I am sure that they would let me go in paz. And since there would be no way of finding out who was this woman that had had the knife put in her since the little flower would have had the little winding vine rubbed long ago away from it.

  The fume of the dirty mill, my mother, my father, my brother Tomasso, all gone—asunder as it is the word in La Biblia Blanca, what, Oyente, would you now do? Would you go on down the road? Would you believe the newspaper story of Fred Shanks? Would you go on looking for the Show again, would you go asking people in the towns you passed if they had seen the Show, if’d been there, if there was any posters showing Heracles the lion feroz? Would you go back to the Show if you found it, back in the jewel wagon, back in the gilded chair before the silent gazers, still and silent evermore? Would you?

  You, the listener of the si
nger’s song, Oyente, who are you anyway? Why have you come this way and why have you stayed so long? I hardly see you now. Oyente! It gets dark and many stars come out in the Texas sky that my old ancestors Mescan and Texan saw, same sky same stars I do believe. And if you were to sing my song to another listener when my voice has stopped, how would you sing it to your listener, Oyente, would you be true to what I’ve sung to you, would you be careful not to add some of your own song to it what would be your song, your song, who are you? When I am silent. When I am gone into the night, into the darkness that has fallen all around us. I have seen that nothing lasts everything slips through your fingers, which is an espression. San Pablo said so. La Biblia tells me so, dice que sí on many pages. For, Oyente, if you will look you will see how the little white dog slipped through my fingers, how Chupa and Tomasso and Hondo and Hombre slipped through my fingers. Even the Show slipped through my fingers. El Mundo pasa. The world slips through your fingers. This leaves only God and Jesucristo.