Gloria and Paco turn as Máximo comes up behind them. “Later on, I will buy you each a ride,” he says.
Gloria is leaning back against a folded ladder. Her half-unbuttoned sweater gapes between young breasts that are still no more than promises.
“Your mother wants you,” the uncle tells his niece at last. “There are clothes to wash.” Then he calls her back as she starts away. “But meet me here at five o’clock. For your ride.”
At the same time, Paco leaves the plaza to engage in business. He will spend the afternoon searching El Nopal for empty bottles and, later on, collect from the grocer the refunds due. In this way he can pay for a ticket or two on the carnival rides. Even if his father remembers the ticket he promised, Paco already knows that one will not be enough.
So until dusk, Paco, dragging a sack and tagged by La Loba, walks the stony streets of the town as if he were a stranger here, with his head down, looking from left to right, moving from dusty lane to dusty lane and circling back again. Three times he rounds the post office and three times the house of the widow Ortega, who sells goat’s milk. He hunts bottles as far as the thatched lean-to of old Josefina, who performs cures, and as far as the baseball field. La Loba is at his heels.
Paco is about to return to the plaza with eighteen bottles for refunds, when La Loba suddenly yelps in pain. But it is more than a yelp. It is a sustained howl, carried on a single high note that paralyzes time and makes the air too cold to breathe. Paco turns to see his father looming tall behind him. Máximo holds a second stone in his good hand. La Loba, dragging one of her hind legs, has crawled to the protection of the thorned mesquite bush. Her moans diminish.
“Your dog was after that hen,” Máximo says, and points to a stringy pullet, cackling and running in maddened zigzags from one side of the road to the other. “I can’t afford to pay the owner for a dead chicken.” Now he notices Paco’s sack. “But perhaps you can.” He counts the bottles.
He fingers the stone in his hand, then tosses it away, allowing it to fall short of La Loba. He feels regret for the second time that day.
“She should have died with the rest of the litter,” he says.
Paco remembers the occasion well. This litter, of which La Loba is the sole survivor, perished at Máximo’s hand two years before. Paco was six then, and his mother, a frail, fearful woman, was still alive. She lived in grief, orphaned as she was by the deaths of the three children who had followed Paco. On the day of the killing, Paco, as soon as he perceived his father’s intentions, had run to his mother for help. She neither looked at him nor moved from where she sat on the edge of the bed, her elbows on her knees, her thin fingers pressed to her eyes, rocking back and forth, as if the rocking itself might serve for something. As if it, more than tears, might speak for her.
So Paco by himself attempted to stay his father’s arm as Máximo carried the five young animals into the corner of the corral. Here he took them, one after another, by their hind legs, which had bones no bigger than a quail’s, swung them high, and brought their heads down sharp and hard against the wall.
Paco watched the blood splatter and screamed so loud that old Walterio, who lived next door and was eighty-seven, put his head over the wall, regarded the scene, and said, “Wait.”
Four of the litter already lay dead in the dirt, and the fifth was shivering and dripping in Máximo’s hand, when old Walterio said, “Stop. What is the matter with him?” And he pointed to Paco, who clung with such determination to his father’s arm that he was lifted, still weeping, off his feet and into the air.
Receiving no answer, Walterio exercised the authority of his years and said to Máximo, “Give that animal to the child, and let us put an end to the disturbance.”
Máximo, reflecting that Walterio was his mother’s cousin and that the dog might develop a nose for game and be of some use, shrugged and handed La Loba to Paco.
Then Walterio said, “Peace is God’s gift to the aged. Remember that,” and disappeared.
Now, on the saint’s day of El Nopal, with the church bells about to ring for vespers and La Loba fully grown, Paco decides to stop at old Walterio’s house to show him the dog.
Old Walterio has forgotten everything. “Whose animal is that?” he says, and to Paco, “What’s your name?”
When Paco explains, “I am the son of Máximo,” all old Walterio says is, “Who?”
At this same time Máximo is calling at his sister’s house. They talk in the doorway. Over Catalina’s shoulder, Máximo can see Gloria, in her open pink sweater, ironing the boarders’ shirts.
“Come outside,” Máximo tells his sister. Catalina already knows that he is going to ask for money, and that she will give him some, even if he intends to cheat her, even if he lies. Even if, so early in the evening, he smells of mescal.
Máximo is stringing together his fictions.
“A friend of mine is here today,” he says, and speaks a name. “He is offering me work on a ranch he owns, fifty kilometers to the south.” And Catalina regards him silently, watching him invent.
Máximo goes on. “The property is modest in size, the work is light.” He pauses, and they both wait to find out what he will say next. “There is a spring of pure water located a shadow’s length from the house.”
Catalina believes in neither the friend nor the ranch, and least of all in the pure spring water, but the fact that her brother has dared to present this dream to her, the fact that he can fabricate a tale of such good luck, revives memories of him as a child. In those days he boasted of a future when he would fight bulls, race cars, and be paid to dive from cliffs into the sea.
Observing him on this feast day of the Virgin of Help in the town of El Nopal, Catalina recognizes in her brother the thwarted, sullen boy he used to be. For an instant and against her will, she pities him.
Then she brings fifty pesos from her house, hands the money to Máximo, and watches his anger mount. He hurls the bills to the ground.
When Catalina says, “I can give you no more,” she expects him to strike her, but he only pockets the bills, turns his back, and walks off without a word. Catalina contemplates him. Perhaps the problem is only a woman. Perhaps all he wants is money to pay a woman for the night.
On his way home, Máximo stops at a carnival booth that displays dolls and toy guns, straw hats and tooled belts, jewelry and perfume. He buys a rhinestone necklace and carries it away in a twist of pink tissue paper.
At five o’clock he meets Paco and Gloria in the plaza. La Loba, exhilarated by the crowds, reconnoiters in all directions, her tail curled tight. The three carnival rides are strung with bulbs of all colors, and waltzes swing and dip from the calliope at the center of the carousel. The Ferris wheel, the swans, and the horses have been revolving since midafternoon, but now, at dusk, before the children’s eyes, they take on the aspect of magic.
Máximo buys two tickets for the swans and from the sidelines watches Gloria and Paco soar and sink and soar again. Then they go on to the Ferris wheel, where they have to wait for places. Paco’s hand is in his pocket, guarding the two pesos he collected for the empty bottles. Máximo buys three tickets and, when they are allowed to board, he sits with Gloria, while Paco finds a place next to a fat man in the car behind. When Paco’s car has to wait at the top for passengers to get in at the bottom, he sees the whole town of El Nopal, its church, its square, its post office and school. As they descend, he looks into the car ahead, where his father’s right arm is around Gloria’s shoulder and his left holds both of hers between his knees. Gloria sits still as a statue. Paco understands that she is frightened of the wheel.
When the ride is over, Máximo says, “Once again,” to the ticket taker, but he buys only two tickets, so Paco must dig into his pocket for one of the pesos he is saving for the carousel. The ride is the same this time. The fat man rocks the car, the operator shouts, Máximo’s arm by now completely encircles Gloria, and the music of the carousel absorbs all other sounds.
&
nbsp; Their ride is over and the wheel stops, but Máximo says, “One more time,” and again buys two tickets. Paco thinks of the carousel and hesitates, but as the wheel begins to turn, he pays with his last peso for the ride.
Five minutes later Máximo and the children are in the square again, back of the bandstand, away from the crowd. Paco’s father tells him, “Wait here. Gloria wants to go home.” When Paco and La Loba still trail him, he waves them back.
“Will you buy tickets for the carousel?” Paco asks, and his father turns to say, “Why not? Trust me.” The two start off in the direction of Catalina’s house. Paco and La Loba immediately rejoin the crowd.
Now the clock in the church tower strikes seven, and Máximo has not returned. The bishop left in his big black car three hours ago, and the carnival will travel on tonight.
After fifteen minutes, Paco goes to the ticket seller in front of the carousel.
“How long will you operate the horses?”
“Until eight o’clock,” says the man. “The carnival closes at eight.”
Paco runs home, with La Loba panting behind. He opens the door into the first room, which is the sala, the kitchen, and his bedroom. It is dark, but there is a slit of light under the door to his father’s room. Paco listens at the threshold and hears nothing. He pushes the door ajar and sees by the low flame of an oil lamp that his father and Gloria are there.
Gloria lies quiet on the mattress, with her shoes and sweater off. Máximo is at her side, with the palm and two fingers of his right hand across her mouth. His left hand pulls at the buckle of his belt and the fastener of his denim pants. Máximo and Gloria do not see Paco. His father’s back is turned, and Gloria’s head is twisted so that she can look only at the ceiling, which is stained by last summer’s rains. There is a piece of pink paper on the floor.
Paco has silently closed the bedroom door and is crossing the outer room without a sound when he hears the ring of metal on the tile floor. When there is silence again, he enters that room and again is not seen. Máximo’s denim pants are on the floor, also a five-peso coin, escaped from a pocket and gleaming under the lamp. Paco does not look in the direction of the bed, from which the only sound is his father’s harsh breathing.
It is only when he reaches the outer door with the coin in his hand that he hears Gloria. He recognizes the sound she is making. La Loba made the same sound a few hours earlier, when Máximo stoned her. Fear, cold as a knife blade, slices into Paco’s heart.
But as soon as he starts toward the plaza, he hears only his own running feet and the panting of the dog behind.
The carousel is about to close. Leaving La Loba to prowl as she pleases, Paco buys five tickets at the booth and takes the reins of his coal-black, gold-shod steed. He breathes in cold night air, deafened by the calliope, blinded by the lights. He believes with each successive ride that he is making wider and wider turns. He swings away from the saddle dangerously, leaning into the dark. When he leans far enough, he sees La Loba looking up at him from under a sidewalk bench.
The hands of the clock are almost at eight when the conductor collects Paco’s last ticket and signals the operator. The motor starts, the calliope blares, the conductor slaps Paco’s black mount on its shiny rear and, when the turntable is already in motion, steps off it backward into the crowd.
Now, for five minutes, Paco is a child without a past. This interval contains his whole life. So his day ends almost as he had planned, riding a horse to music under stars.
Part IV
Memory
1
Please
If you see a pale-pink chiffon evening dress, circa 1928, the low waist caught at one side by full-blown pink silk roses, in the nostalgia department of wherever you shop, please let me know.
If you run across an original recording of Chaliapin singing “The Flea,” Galli-Curci singing “Caro Nome,” or Marion Harris singing “It Had to Be You,” please buy it for me. Also, anything played by Rachmaninoff or Gabrilowitsch.
In one of those catchall used-book stores, while looking for Updike and Salinger in hardback, you may uncover a collection of old theater programs. Please reserve the following for me: any performance of Max Reinhardt’s Miracle, and the Orpheum bill with either Houdini or Sarah Bernhardt in the main act. General deterioration of pages is not a consideration.
When you’re at the beach, hanging on to your board, your fins, your towel, your book, and your beer, as you make your way over a field of human flesh, please see the sand as empty, endless, silent, clean. Please notice eight gulls drilling for crabs in the shallow water. Please look beyond the unmolested surf to your vision’s final boundary, where the deepest and brightest blue runs into the lighter sky. There are two boats, a fishing launch in plain view and a freighter on the horizon. You presume it is a freighter. You presume it is the horizon.
Please drive from your house to the foot of the mountains. The only structures in sight are occasional white frame farm-houses set close to long red barns. Now leave your car and climb across the granite boulders of a dry arroyo. You walk toward an oak tree in an unplowed field and flush a quail. You part a knee-high sea of yellow, orange, and blue. Please don’t pick the flowers.
2
Low Tide at Four
What I remember of those summers at the beach is that every afternoon there was a low tide at four.
I am wrong, of course. Memory has outstripped reality. But before me as I write, in all its original colors, is a scene I painted and framed and now, almost fifty years later, bring to light.
Here, then, is a California beach in summer, with children, surfers, fishermen, and gulls. The children are seven and three. We are on the sand, a whole family—father, mother, a boy and a girl. The year is 1939. It is noon. There will be a low tide at four.
Days at the beach are all the same. It is hard to tell one from another. We walk down from our house on the side of the hill and stop on the bluff to count the fishermen (five) on the pier and the surfers (three), riding the swells, waiting for their waves. We turn into Mrs. Tustin’s pergola restaurant for hamburgers. Though we recognize them as the best in the world, we never eat them under the matted honeysuckle of the pergola. Instead, we carry them, along with towels, buckets, shovels, books, and an umbrella, down the perilous, tilting wooden stairs to the beach. Later we go back to the pergola for chocolate and vanilla cones.
“Ice cream special, cherry mint ripple,” says Mrs. Tustin on this particular day, and we watch a fat man lick a scoop of it from his cone. We wait for him to say, “Not bad,” or “I’ll try anything once,” but he has no comment. A long freight train rattles by on the tracks behind the pergola.
As we turn away, Mrs. Tustin says, “The world’s in big trouble,” and the fat man says, “You can say that again. How about that paperhanger, Adolf?” But it is hard to hear because of the train.
Back on the beach, our heads under the umbrella, we lie at compass points like a four-pointed star. The sun hangs hot and high. Small gusts of wind lift the children’s corn-straw hair. We taste salt. Face down, arms wide, we cling to the revolving earth.
Now Mr. Bray, the station agent, a middle-aged Mercury in a shiny suit, crosses the dry sand in his brown oxford shoes. He is delivering a telegram. Everyone listens while I read the message from our best and oldest friends. Sorry, they can’t come next weekend after all. Good, we say to ourselves, without shame.
I invite Mr. Bray to join us under the umbrella. “Can’t you stay on the beach for a while?” He pauses with sand sifting into his shoes. Oh, no, he has to get back to his trains. He left his wife in charge, and the new diesel streamliner will be coming through.
At this moment a single-seated fighter plane from the navy base north of us bursts into sight along the shore, flying so low it has to climb to miss the pier. The children jump into the air and wave. The pilot, who looks too young for his job, waves back.
“Look at that,” says Mr. Bray. “He could get himself killed.”
Winesburg, Ohio; Sister Carrie; Absalom, Absalom; Ethan Frome; The Magic Mountain; Studs Lonigan; A Handful of Dust; A Room with a View. There are never books enough or days enough to read them.
I look up from my page. Here is old Mrs. Winfield’s car being parked at the top of the bluff. It must be almost four. Her combination driver, gardener, and general manager, Tom Yoshimura, helps her into a canvas chair he has set up in front of the view. His wife, Hatsu, new from Japan, is stringing beans for dinner in Mrs. Winfield’s shingled house on the hill. Hatsu can’t speak English. She bows good morning and good afternoon.
Mrs. Winfield has survived everything: her husband’s death and the death of a child, earthquakes, floods, and fires, surgical operations and dental work, the accidents and occasional arrests of her grandchildren. All these, as well as intervals of a joy so intense it can no longer be remembered. I watch Tom Yoshimura bring her an ice cream cone from the pergola.
It is four o’clock. We are standing in shallow water at low tide. The children dig with their toes and let the waves wash in and out over their feet. They are sinking deeper and deeper. During the summer, their skins have turned every shade of honey: wild-flower, orange, buckwheat, clover. Now they are sage. I look into my husband’s face. He reaches over their heads to touch my arm.
Harriet Doerr Page 10
