by T. C. Boyle
Rudy was helping him lift the mower down from the back of the truck, so he couldn’t avoid his eyes. He just nodded.
“Youth,” Rudy said, shaking his head as they set the mower down in the driveway of a little mustard-colored house with a patch of lawn in front and back and a towering hedge all the way round that had to be clipped every other week, and this was that week, which meant hauling out the ladder too. “I used to be like that, burn the candle at both ends, drink till they closed the bars and get up for work three hours later.” Rudy sighed, paused to give him a look. “But no more. Now I’m in bed before the ten o’clock news on the TV—and Norma’s already snoring.”
He’d heard all this before, twenty times already, and he didn’t say anything, just leaned into the mower to push it up the driveway, but the mower didn’t seem to want to budge because he felt weak all of a sudden, weak and sick, and here came the cough, right on cue. He really hacked this time, hacked till he doubled over and tears came to his eyes. When he straightened up, Rudy was watching him and his smile was gone.
“That doesn’t sound too good,” he said. “You ever go to the clinic like I told you?”
“Yes,” he said. “Or no, not really—”
“What do you mean, not really? You sound like your lungs are shot.”
He paused to catch his breath, because he couldn’t really cough and talk at the same time, could he? Not even Rudy would have expected that of him. He lifted one hand and let it drop. “It’s just a cold,” he said, then turned and pushed the mower up the drive.
They were waiting for him when he got home, a cop in uniform and Rosa Hinojosa, who looked so fierce and grim she might have been wearing somebody else’s face. He’d run into her at the clinic the day before and she’d asked him if he was sticking to the regimen and he told her he was and she flashed a smile so luminous it made him feel unmoored. Good, she said, good. Do it for me, okay? But now, here she was, and at first he didn’t understand what was happening, and he saw her before he saw the cop, the crisp line her skirt cut just above her knees, her pretty legs, the heels she wore to work, and for the briefest flash of a second he wondered what she was doing there and then he saw the cop and he knew. Rudy had just dropped him off, already pulling away from the curb, and Marciano wanted desperately to climb back into the pickup and go wherever Rudy would take him, but everything was in slow motion now like in the outer space movies where the astronauts are just floating there on their tethers and the ship slides away from them in a long smear of light and shadow.
Before he decided to run, he pulled a mask from his pocket—a dirty one, to show it had been used—looped it over his ears and snapped it in place, as if that would make him look better in Rosa Hinojosa’s eyes, but her face showed only disappointment and something else too, anger. He’d let her down. He’d had his warning, his final warning, and he’d been caught out, but how had she known? Had somebody informed on him? Some sneak? Some enemy he didn’t even know he had?
The cop, he could see at a glance, wasn’t a real cop, more some sort of health services mule, and he was old and slow and his head was like a big calabaza propped up on his shoulders, and Rosa Hinojosa, for all her youth, was no runner, not in those shoes. So he ran. Not like in the track meets at school when he was a boy, because his lungs were like wet clay and he was weak, but still he put one foot in front of the other, hustling down the alley between his house and the one next door, to where the fence out back opened onto the dry streambed and the path through the weeds he sometimes used as a shortcut to the corner store. He got as far as the fence before he gave out, and, he had to admit, both Rosa Hinojosa and the calabaza-head were quicker than he would have thought. He was just lying there, pathetic, humiliated in front of this woman he wanted to prove himself to, and he watched them pause to snap on their own masks before the cop bent to him and encircled his wrists with the handcuffs.
The next sight he saw was the hospital, a big clean white stucco box of a building that had secondary boxes attached to it, a succession of them lined up like children’s blocks all the way out into the parking lot in back. He’d been here once before, to the emergency room, when he’d nearly severed the little finger of his left hand with the blade of the hedge trimmer, and they’d spoken Spanish to him, sewed and bandaged the wound and sent him on his way. That wasn’t how it was this time. This time he was wearing a mask and so was Rosa Hinojosa and so was the mule, who kept guiding him down the corridors with a stiff forefinger till they went through a door and briefly out into the sunlight before entering an outbuilding that looked like one of the temporary classrooms you saw when you went by the high school. What was funny about it, or maybe not so funny, was the way people made room for them in the corridors, shrinking into the walls as they passed by in their masks.
When they’d arrived, when he’d had a chance to take in the barred windows and the heavy steel door that pulled shut behind them with a whoosh of compression, Rosa Hinojosa, cold as a fish, explained to him that he was being remanded to custody as a threat to public safety under the provisions of the statutory code of the state of California, and that he would be confined here temporarily before he could be moved to the Men’s Colony in the next county, which was equipped with a special ward for prisoners with medical conditions. He felt sick, sicker than ever, and what made it worse was that there was no smell to that room, which might as well have been on the moon for all it seemed to be attached to this earth. He saw a sterile white counter and a man in thick-framed glasses and some sort of hospital scrubs stationed behind it. Rosa Hinojosa was doing all the talking. She had a sheaf of papers in one hand and she turned away from him to lay them on the counter. There was a flag of the U.S. in the corner. A drinking fountain. Black-and-white tiles on the floor. “I didn’t do anything,” Marciano protested.
Rosa Hinojosa, who was conferring with the man behind the counter, gave him a sharp glance. “You were warned.”
“What do you mean? I took my medicine. You saw me—”
“Don’t even give me that. We have you on the feed from the security camera at the 7-Eleven making a purchase without your mask on—and there was testimony from the bartender at Herlihy’s that you were in there without a mask, drinking, and on the very day you gave me your promise, so don’t tell me. And don’t tell me you weren’t warned.”
“I’m an American citizen.”
She shrugged.
“Look it up.” This was true. He’d been born in San Diego, two years old when his parents were deported, and so he’d never had a chance to learn English or go to school here or anything else, but he had his rights, he knew that—they couldn’t just lock him up. That was against the constitution.
Rosa Hinojosa had turned back to the counter, riffling through the stack of forms, but now she swung angrily round on him, a crease of irritation between her eyes. She wasn’t pretty anymore, not even remotely, and all he felt for her was hate because no matter what she said, when it came down to it she was part of the system and the system was against him. “I don’t care if you’re the president,” she snapped, “because you’re irresponsible, because we bent over backwards and now you’ve left us no choice. Don’t you understand? The order’s been signed.”
“I want a lawyer.”
He saw that she had a little dollop of flesh under her chin—fat, she was already going to fat—and he realized she was nothing to him, and worse, that he was nothing to her but one more charity case, and what he did next was born of the sadness of that realization. He wasn’t a violent person, just the opposite—he was shy and he went out of his way to avoid confrontation. But they were the ones confronting him—Rosa Hinojosa and the whole Health Services Department, the big stupid-looking mule who’d clamped the handcuffs on him and had made the mistake of removing them after they stepped through the door, and the man behind the desk too. Marciano took as deep a breath as he could manage and felt the mucus rattling in his throat, the bad stuff he kept dredging up all day and s
pitting into a handkerchief until the handkerchief went stiff with it. What he was about to do was wrong, he knew that, and he regretted it the instant he saw it before him, but he wasn’t going to any prison, no way. That just wasn’t in the cards.
So he was running again, only this time they weren’t chasing him, or not yet, because mask or no mask they were all three of them frantically trying to wipe his living death off their faces—and good, good, see how they like it, see how they like being condemned and ostracized and locked up without a trial or lawyer or anything—and he didn’t stop spitting till he had the door open and was back out in the sunlight, dodging round the cars in the lot and heading for the street and the cover of the trees there. His heart was pounding and his lungs felt as if they’d been turned inside out, but he kept going, slowing to a stiff-kneed walk now, down one street, then another, the windshields of the parked cars pooling in the light like puddles after a storm, birds chattering in the trees, the smell of the earth and the grass so intense it was intoxicating. He patted down his pockets: wallet, house key, the little vial of pills. And where was he going? What was he doing? He didn’t have any money—no more than maybe ten or fifteen dollars in his wallet—and there was nobody he could turn to, not really. There was Sergio, the only one of the other roomers he was close to, and Sergio would loan him money, he was sure of it, but Sergio probably didn’t have much more than he did. The only thing that was for certain was that he couldn’t stay around here anymore.
He hadn’t seen his mother in two years, hadn’t really given her a thought, but he thought of her now, saw her face as vividly as if she were that woman right there slipping into the front seat of her car—she’d nursed him through the measles, whooping cough and the flu and whatever else had come along to disrupt his childhood, and why couldn’t she nurse him through this too? She could, if he was careful and took his pills and wore the mask every single minute of every day because he wouldn’t want to infect her—that would be the worst thing a son could do. No matter what the doctors said, his mother would save him, protect him, do anything for him. But how was he going to get to her? They’d be watching for him at the bus station and at the train depot and the airport too, even if he could scrape up enough for a ticket, which he couldn’t . . . But what about Rudy? Maybe he could get Rudy to drive him as far as Tijuana—or no, he’d tell Rudy he needed to borrow the truck to help one of his roommates move a refrigerator, or something big anyway, a couch, and then he’d do the driving himself and get somebody to bring the truck back, pay somebody, make promises, whatever it took. That was a plan, wasn’t it? He had to have a plan. Without a plan he was lost.
He kept moving, breathing hard now, the sidewalk like a treadmill rolling under him, but he had to fight it, had to be quick because they’d have the cops after him in their patrol cars, all-points bulletin like on TV, and they weren’t going to be gentle with him either. Up ahead, at the end of the street, was a park he’d gone to once or twice with Sergio to drink beer and throw horseshoes, and there were bushes there, weren’t there, along the streambed?
Pushing through the park gate—kids, mothers, swings, a couple of bums laid out on the grass as if they’d been installed there along with the green wooden benches—he tried to look casual, even as the sirens began to scream in the distance and he told himself it was only just ambulances bringing people to the emergency room. He went straight across the lawn, looking at nobody, and if he had to pause twice to let the cough have its way with him, there was nothing he could do about that, but then he was in the bushes and out of sight and he dropped to the ground and just lay there till his heart stopped hammering and the burning in his lungs began to subside. It would be dark soon and then he could make his way back to the house, borrow somebody’s phone, call Rudy, pack a few things and be gone before anybody could do anything about it.
Paranoia was when you felt everybody was after you even if they weren’t, but what would you call this? Common sense? Vigilance? Wariness? They’d come to his house and handcuffed him and put him in that white room and he hadn’t done anything. Now they’d charge him with escaping or resisting arrest or whatever they wanted to call it—and assault too, assault with the deadly weapon that was his own spit. It didn’t matter—the result would be the same, thirty months in a sterile room with the fans sucking in and the warders wearing masks and gloves and pushing a tray of what passed for food through a slot in the door and coming in twice a day to stick the intravenous in him. He’d rather be dead. Rather be in Mexico. Rather take his chances with his mother and the clinic in Ensenada where at least they spoke his language and wouldn’t look at him like he was a cockroach.
He was thirsty, crazy thirsty, but he forced himself to stay where he was till it was dark, then slipped back into the park to get a drink at the faucet in the restroom. Only problem was, the door was locked. He stood there a long moment, rattling the doorknob, feeling disoriented. There was the steady hiss of cars from the freeway that was somewhere behind him in the intermediate distance. The trees were shrouds. The sky was black overhead and painted with stars and it had never seemed so close. Or so heavy. He could almost feel the weight of it, all the weight of the sky that went on and on to infinity, outer space, the planets, the stars, all of it pressing down on him till he could barely breathe. Desperate, he went down on his knees in the grass and felt around till he located one of the sprinkler heads. At first it wouldn’t budge, but he kept at it till the seal gave and he was able to unscrew it and put his mouth to the warm gurgling flow there, and that made him feel better and pushed the vagueness into another corner of his mind. After a while he got to his feet, eased himself down into the streambed and began working his way back in the direction of the house.
It wasn’t easy. What would have taken him ten minutes out on the street took an hour at least, his feet unsteady in a slurry of mud and trash, stiff dead reeds knifing at him, dogs barking, the drift of people’s voices freezing him in place—and what if somebody sipping a beer on their back porch decided to shine a flashlight down into the streambed? What would they think? That he was a fugitive, a thief, a drunk, and before he could even open his mouth they’d be dialing the police. He was breathing hard. Sweating. His shirt was torn at the right elbow where he’d snagged it on something in the strange half-light of the gulley, and he was shivering too, sweating and shivering at the same time.
He didn’t really know how far he’d gone or where he was when he emerged, scrambling up a steep incline and into the yard of a house that was mercifully dark, not a light showing anywhere. There were lights on in the houses on both sides of it, though, and the black humped shape of an automobile parked in the driveway. He moved toward the car and then past it and if he was startled by a voice calling out behind him, a single syllable he would have recognized in any language—Hey!—he never hesitated or turned round or even looked over his shoulder, but just kept going, down the driveway and straight across the street to the sidewalk on the far side where he was just another pedestrian out for a stroll on a cool night in a quiet city.
When he got to his own street he made himself slow down and scan the cars parked on both sides of the road, looking for anything suspicious, the police or the health services, Rosa Hinojosa, though that was being paranoid—Rosa Hinojosa would be at home with her parents at this hour, or maybe her husband, if she had one, absorbed in her own life, not his. He took his time, though he was feeling worse by the minute, shivering so hard he had to wrap his arms around himself, his shirt sweated through and too thin against the night and the temperature that must have dropped into the mid-fifties by now. And then, steeling himself, he slipped across the street and into the dark yard of the rooming house where they’d come for him once and would come for him again.
He ducked in the back door, tentative, all the blood in his brain now, screaming at him, but there was nobody in the hall and in the next moment he was in his room, the familiar scent of his things—unwashed laundry, soap, shampoo, the foi
l-wrapped burrito he’d set aside to microwave for dinner—rising to his nostrils in the ordinary way, as if nothing had happened. The cough was right there waiting to erupt, but he fought it down, afraid even to make the slightest sound, and though he was tempted to turn the light on, he knew better—if anyone was out there, this was what they’d be watching for. He found his jacket thrown over the back of the chair where he’d left it that morning and wrapped himself in it, then went to the window and opened the blinds so that six thin stripes of illumination fell across the bed. That was when he remembered his pills—he had to take his pills no matter where he was or what happened, that was the truth of his life, whether he ever saw Rosa Hinojosa again or not.
He went to the sink for a glass of water, shook out two of the little white pills and swallowed them. Then—and he couldn’t help himself—he lay down on the bed and closed his eyes, just for a minute.
The knock startled him out of a dreamless sleep, the knock at the front door that thundered through the house as if the wrecking ball had come to reduce it all to splinters. But who would knock? Everybody who lived here had a key so there was no need for knocking, not unless you were immigration or the police. Or health services. For one fluttering instant he pictured Rosa Hinojosa in police blues with a cap cocked over her eye, a nightstick in one hand and a can of mace in the other, and then he was pulling the door softly shut and fastening the latch, as if that would save him—and what was he going to do, hide under the bed? Coughing now—he couldn’t help himself, really dredging it up, the weakness squeezing him like a fist, then letting go and squeezing again—he slammed round the darkened room in a panic, thinking only to get away, far away where they’d never find him, where there was sunshine and he could stretch out in the hot sand and bake the microbes out of him. He didn’t know much, but he knew they’d be at the back door too, just like in the movies when they nailed the gangsters and the pimps and the drug lords and the whole audience stood up and cheered . . .
