The Visiting Privilege

by Joy Williams

  It was almost noon. The boys continued to play Hacky Sack, thrusting out their long feet.

  “I’m going to wash the dog,” Caroline announced. “After which we shall remove the basket.” She produced some special soap she had bought at the market. It came in a small box that had the drawing of an insect on it.

  “It doesn’t really look like a flea, though,” Abby noted.

  “They intended it to look like a flea,” Caroline said confidently.

  They captured the dog and poured a bucket of water over his wiry coat. The soap made a quick brown lather and almost instantly, motionless black fleas appeared.

  “Look at those fleas,” Abby said. “They’re enormous.”

  “This soap must be lethal,” June said.

  The guardian and his family came out to watch the dog being bathed. The parrot watched, too, swaying excitedly. The dog stood passively, his head bent, the basket touching the ground.

  They rinsed and scrubbed, then rinsed again. There were fewer fleas at the end but there were never no fleas at all.

  “Shouldn’t we have gloves?” June asked.

  “The fortune dog,” Caroline said. “Divination by fleas.” She picked them off. “This is not good,” she said. “This is not good. This is not good either.”

  Then there was the ceremony of removing the basket, which was attached to the dog’s collar with thick, dirty tape. Finally the basket was wrenched off. The dog’s head looked somewhat smaller than anyone remembered.

  “He really is unsatisfactory, isn’t he?” Caroline said. “He needs something. What do you think, June?”

  “Maybe a bandanna,” June said.

  “Oh, I hate bandannas on dogs,” Caroline said. “The vet said he had too many teeth in his mouth. A couple of them should be pulled. And see all those warts on his head? They keep growing back.”

  The dog squatted on his haunches and stared at them. He had probably never been meant for this life. He was just not consubstantial with this life.

  One of the reasons Caroline had acquired the dog was to practice concern. They all felt that sometimes it was necessary to practice the more subtle emotions.

  The dog suddenly widened his eyes as though in delighted recall, shot up and sideways and danced away to his favorite spot in the compound, the smoldering refuse pile in one of the stalls that once stabled horses, rooting about for only an instant before finding something ragged and foul that he settled down to eat. At the same time, the owner of the fortune birds capped his pen, rose from his chair, rolled his shoulders, crouched slightly to fart and removed the cloth from the little birds’ cage. Immediately the birds began to sing.

  It was a lovely day. White clouds streamed past Agua, but so low that its dark cone was visible against the bright blue sky.

  “I want to do something today,” Abby said. “Don’t you?”

  From a distance Agua was magnificent, but they had all climbed it once and found it disappointing.

  Abby looked at her watch. She said, “If I got this wet, I’d die.”

  “Let’s climb Fuego,” Howard said, giving the Hacky Sack a final, unraveling kick.

  “It’s too late,” Abby said. “We’d have to start earlier than this.” Fuego, the live volcano, was no higher than Agua but the ascent was more difficult. The third volcano, Acatenango, commanded little interest though surely it had its dignity, dangers and charms.

  “Never too late to climb Fuego,” James said. “The hot one, the mean one.”

  “Oh, that damn Fuego,” Caroline said.

  They had never climbed it, although they had set out to do so more than once. They would stay up all night and dawn would bring with it the desire to climb Fuego. They would take a taxi to Alotenango, a poor town surrounded by dark coffee trees, from which the ascent began. They would climb for a while, floundering through the greasy ash. Rocky furrows ran alongside the trail like empty rivers and sometimes became the trail. The furrow would sometimes vanish and a faint path through the ash would begin again above them. Some paths were marked by rocks painted NO! for though they looked like a reasonable choice they were not. The rocks bore the name of a hiking club, the members of which they had never seen. They’d never seen anyone climbing, although once they saw a dead colt with a braided mane.

  They had always turned back after a few hours, because what was the point, really, of climbing Fuego?

  “I think nature’s kind of senseless, actually,” Caroline said. “I mean real nature. I don’t get it.”

  The hours passed. It was midafternoon when the cage holding the fortune birds was strapped to the motorbike for the trip to the plaza.

  “We should do those birds sometime,” Abby said. “I can’t believe they’re right here with us and we’ve never had them tell our fortune.”

  “I’d want Planeta to tell mine,” June said. “The one with the black eyes.”

  “They all have black eyes,” Caroline said.

  “I mean black rings around the eyes,” June said.

  “This earth is my home for life,” James said. “Do you ever think that?”

  “That is unacceptable,” Howard said.

  “I don’t think Profeta looks that well,” Caroline said. “She doesn’t look as yellow. Her beak looks like it’s peeling.”

  Caroline’s dog had danced over to the motorcycle and was nosing the cage.

  “Get that cur away from here or I’ll break its goddamn back,” the man with the remarkable vein said in startlingly clear English. The birds chirped on, hopping about in their tiny, airy cage, the bars of which were woven with pale, wilted flowers, the floor of which was covered with the shredded faces of movie stars from shiny magazines.

  Caroline hurried over and hauled the dog away. No one remarked on the outburst, recalling that it had happened before.

  Shortly after the birds’ departure on the black motorbike, Abby’s parents arrived at the gate with young Parker and two string bags filled with food.

  “Oh, I can’t believe it,” Abby murmured to Caroline. “So soon?”

  “I’m sorry we’re early,” Abby’s mother said, “but we went on a ruin run. We managed eight ruins today, which must be some sort of record, and when we got back to the room we discovered that we’d been robbed. Isn’t that something!”

  The three of them, even Parker, seemed almost enchanted that they’d been robbed, as if this were just another aspect of an exciting life. “They took nothing of real value,” Abby’s mother said. And that, too, added to the enjoyment of it all.

  There was a little something on Abby’s mother’s nose that perhaps had been in her nose and somehow gotten out and around onto the side of it. All of them looked at it politely. With a small adjustment in her gaze, June looked at Parker and the large white bandage he wore insouciantly on one knee. She narrowed her eyes and the child receded into some blurry future, permitting the present to be inhabited by herself and her friends, which was proper.

  Abby’s mother set down the bags. “There’s all kinds of stuff in here,” she said. “I thought you could have a picnic supper.”

  “That is so sweet!” Caroline said.

  “What did they take?” Abby asked.

  “It was so stupid of me,” her mother said. “I have so much trouble locking that door. I think it’s locked but it’s just stuck, so the room wasn’t even locked. They took this jade necklace I’d just bought. It was still wrapped in tissue. It wasn’t that expensive, but the thing was I’d bought it for you. Then I thought I’d keep it, because I didn’t think it was really you, and then it got stolen. It serves me right, doesn’t it?”

  “That’s really ironic, Mom,” Abby said.

  June asked Abby’s mother which of the ruins had been her favorite.

  “I loved the convent Las Capuchinas,” Abby’s mother said.

  “Oh, I love Las Capuchinas too!” June exclaimed, as though everyone didn’t say their favorite ruin was Las Capuchinas.

  “What do you think ac
tually went on there, on that subfloor?” Abby’s mother wondered. “I have three guidebooks and they all suggest something different. It was either a pantry, or for laundry, or for torture.”

  “You have four guidebooks,” Abby’s father said.

  “I think it’s all a matter of wild conjecture.” Abby’s mother raised her hand and brushed the inconsequential thing off her face. “There were twenty-five nuns, right? Twenty-four? And they were never allowed to leave except when there was an earthquake.”

  “I like those creepy mannequins at prayer in their cells,” Caroline said.

  “Don’t you just want to know everything?” Abby’s mother exclaimed suddenly. “Just think of all the information children Parker’s age will have access to, and so quickly!”

  “What’s your favorite ruin,” June asked Abby’s father.

  “I don’t have one,” he said. “My favorite meal was the steak at Las Antorchas.”

  “I can’t believe we’re going back to Las Antorchas,” Abby’s mother said. “Honey,” she said to Abby, “I’m sorry we’re so early but we’ll be back early. I just want to get this anniversary dinner over with.”

  “I don’t want to stay here,” Parker announced. “I want to stay with you.” His hair was firmly combed. He wore madras shorts and a short-sleeved button-down shirt, dressed in a manner that small children often are for an event they are not really going to attend.

  “Parker, look at that parrot!” Abby’s mother said.

  He studied the parrot, which was staggering across the grass to retrieve a bit of melon. “I don’t like it, there’s something wrong with it,” he said. “I don’t like that dog, either.” The dog had been straining toward them soundlessly on its rope all the while, panting wildly.

  “Well, just stay away from the dog,” Abby’s mother said. “Play with your trucks.” She whispered to Abby, “We’re just going to slip away now.” They left and Parker sat down on the grass, dropping his head rather dramatically into his hands.

  Howard went into his room and brought out an almost full bottle of Jägermeister. There was still the possibility, which they all embraced, that the liquor was made with opium. This had not been utterly discounted. “Hey, Parker,” he said. “Would you like a drink?”

  Parker raised his head. “I like iced tea,” he said. “The kind you get at home, at the store, in a bottle. My favorite is Best Health’s All Natural Gourmet Iced Tea with Lemon, and you wouldn’t have that in a million years.”

  “He’s into iced teas,” Caroline said. “Isn’t that scandalous.”

  “There’s one that tastes kind of like fish,” Parker said. “Sort of like rusty fish. But not right away. Just a little afterwards.”

  “They actually make an iced tea like that?” Howard said. “Cool.”

  “That is so radical,” Abby said.

  They drank the Jägermeister, ignoring Parker. The mosquitoes arrived. The parrot was coaxed onto a broom handle by the guardian’s wife and taken in. Howard lit the paper trash and scraps of wood in the fire pit, a short, shallow trench he tended every evening. He was a big, meticulous young man. Each day he would set off with a burlap bag and scavenge for his fire pit. He kept the fire calm, he was very particular about it.

  “What are you thinking, June,” James asked.

  “Do the Chinese really eat nests?” she said.

  “Just those of a certain bird, a kind of swift,” Howard said. “The swift builds the nests out of its own saliva and the stuff hardens.”

  “You’re kidding!” Caroline said. “Those damn Chinese.”

  June blushed.

  “Oh, what are you thinking now, June?” Abby said. “You’re so funny.”

  June had had a dream where a boy was kissing her by spitting in her mouth. He just didn’t know, she thought. It was awful, but in the dream she was unalarmed, as though this was the way it had to be done. “I was thinking about picnics. Didn’t you used to have the best picnics when you were little?”

  “You’re too nostalgic, June,” Caroline said. “Nostalgia nauseates me. I lack the nostalgic gene, thank god.”

  “Why do you ask her what she’s thinking?” Parker demanded.

  “Why, because it’s a game,” James said. “Because she’ll tell us and nobody else ever does.”

  “I wouldn’t tell my thoughts,” Parker said. “They’re mine.”

  “But you don’t have any thoughts,” James said. “You’re too little.”

  “I do too,” Parker said. He was angry. He had broken one of his trucks. It was not by accident that he’d broken it, but even so.

  “Well, what’s one of them?” James said.

  After a moment Parker said, “I like ants.”

  “Ants are great!” Howard said. “Ants live for a long time. I read about this guy, this ant specialist who kept this queen ant and watched her for twenty-nine years. She laid eggs until she died.”

  “Eggs?” Parker said.

  “Occasionally she allowed herself the luxury of eating one of them,” Howard said. “This guy just watched his ant. What do you think? You want to do stuff like that?”

  The sky was full of stars and they were beneath them, contained as if in a well.

  “I’m sleepy,” Parker said.

  “We should have the picnic,” June said. “What about the picnic?”

  “What’s it feel like to be adopted, Parker?” Howard asked. “You can hear me from over there, can’t you?” He sprinkled out the last of the Jägermeister into their glasses. The bottle’s arcane label had a stag’s head, over which there was a cross.

  “I was chosen by Mommy and Ralph,” Parker said.

  “Ralph!” Abby laughed. “Why don’t you call him ‘Daddy’?”

  “Daddy,” Parker said reluctantly.

  “Why don’t you call Mommy ‘Joanne’?” Abby said.

  “They got to choose me,” Parker insisted.

  “When you take a dump, do you save it in the bowl for Ralph to see before you flush it down?” Howard asked. “That’s what I remember. The prominent throat specialist had to see mine and tell me it was good or it didn’t go away. It stayed until the prominent throat specialist came home.”

  “Poor Howard,” Caroline said. “That’s what you remember?”

  “Fondly,” Howard said.

  The guardian and his family were hammering away in the corrugated shed attached to their kitchen. Each night there was the sound of grinding and hammering. They made door knockers, June thought. But no one knew for certain. Those pretty door knockers in the shape of a lady’s hand.

  They began discussing, mostly for Parker’s benefit, the rumors of a gringo ring that trafficked in the organs of Guatemalan children. This rumor had been around for years.

  “There’s a factory where the organs are processed,” James said. “It’s behind the video bar in Panajachel. It’s just that everyone’s too stoned to see it.”

  The gringo entrepreneurs didn’t take the whole kid, they recounted loudly. Except in the beginning, of course. They took just a kidney or some tissue or an eye, which left the rest of the kid to get along as best he could, which usually wasn’t very well.

  “Parker,” Howard said, “I hope Mommy and Ralph were sincere tonight as to their whereabouts. I hope they’re not, in fact, kidnapping little Guatemalan children so they can have parts on hand for you, should any of your own parts fail. They could land in big trouble, Parker.”

  “I think he’s asleep,” James said.

  “Wake up!” Howard roared. But Parker slept. Howard moodily raked his fire and then announced he was leaving to get some beer.

  “I’ll go with you,” Abby said.

  June would never have gone off alone with Howard. There was something cold and clandestine about him.

  “What are you thinking, June?” James said after what seemed like a long while with Abby not yet back with Howard.

  “I was thinking about that great, swaying float and how quiet everyone was when i
t passed.”

  “The anda,” Caroline said. “The Anda de La Merced.”

  “That thing weighs three and a half tons,” James said.

  “It really was impressive, wasn’t it?” June said.

  “Well, duh,” Caroline said. But she smiled at June as she said this.

  “The drumrolls are still in my head,” James said. “They provide the necessary cadences. The men probably couldn’t bear it forward without those cadences being maintained.”

  “I can still hear the drumrolls too,” June said gratefully.

  “What’s the word for the men who carry it?” James wondered. “I should keep a glossary.”

  “Cucuruchos,” Caroline said. “One of them looked just like that cute dishwasher at the pizza place. I’m sure it was him.”

  “Look who we found!” Howard called from the gates.

  It was the bottle boy from that morning, the one who’d eaten June’s pancake.

  “He was just outside,” Abby said, “the beggar boy. Howard wanted him to share our picnic.”

  “He is not a beggar,” Howard said. “His eyes lack the proper cringe. He is my brother, come to visit. That Bailey brat you met before was the false son and brother. A substitute substituted. Soul and body alike are often substituted.” He was very drunk.

  The boy was shivering. His shirt was torn and he wore a small silver cross around his neck. The shirt had not been torn that morning, June didn’t think.

  “Where’s Parker’s sweater?” Abby demanded. “I’m giving it to this one, that’s what I’m going to do.” She dug a red cable-knit sweater from Parker’s bag and pulled it over the bottle boy’s dark head, then pushed his arms through the sleeves. “I hope I don’t get fleas now,” she said.

  Parker was sitting up and rubbing his eyes.

  “Give him a sandwich,” Caroline demanded.

  Abby gave the bottle boy a sandwich thick with ham and cheese. He ate it slowly, watching them. Howard smoothed his fire with a stick. They drank beer.