by R. L. Fox
The tiny store is lined with wood shelves stocked with canned goods, boxes of cereal, rice, brown bottles of vanilla extract, chocolate candy bars and chewing gum. Bins of bananas, avocados, tomatoes and carrots adjoin the checkout table. I don’t see a cash register.
Josie grabs my hand, and with the awkward tread of a large, ungainly bird, she leads me to the back of the store. Mike and Norma follow. The place seems insidious somehow, with its stale smell of spilled beer and undone laundry, its peeling stucco walls, slimy windows and soiled shades.
We enter a small kitchen where an ancient stove and refrigerator stand to one side, across from a threadbare sofa. Josie opens a cabinet over the stove and brings out a bottle of tequila. She hands it to Mike. He turns off the kitchen light. Norma is sitting on the sofa.
In the semi-darkness Josie steers me down a short hallway to a room with no door that is dimly lighted by a red bulb. Inside is a single bed, propped against the wall.
Josie goes in, sits ponderously on the bed. I remain standing in the fuzzy light. If I could only run to my cave on Rattlesnake Mountain, I am thinking, where I wouldn’t be found.
Josie gazes at me with her unrestrained smiling brown eyes. I stare outside through the window high above the bed, at the stars that glow like candles in some celestial synagogue. I sigh, and then sit down next to Josie, with the hope that I can get by with only a kiss or two.
From the kitchen comes the noise of the sofa, creaking with the movements of Mike and Norma, along with the sweet music of Norma’s voice, emitting moans of pleasure like the notes of a melodic phrase in a familiar blues tune, repeating themselves over and over: “ooh, ooh, ooh ...”
I’m embarrassed, and at the same time aroused. Visions of Norma, in an ecstasy of passion, steal into my mind.
Josie puts her head on my shoulder. I turn my head and attempt to kiss her, gently on the lips, but her tongue gets in the way. She laughs softly and I kiss her again, with some tenderness. We kiss for a few minutes (I am still listening to Norma) and then Josie places her hand on my crotch and massages me through the fabric of my jeans. I feel an obligation to move my hand to her breast. The firmness of her bountiful bosom surprises me. I begin to imagine that I’m fondling Norma.
With Josie’s touch and my whims of Norma, I am ready, but not willing. Josie unzips my pants. She grasps me delicately, yet with a subtle, knowing firmness. A small thrill of pleasure tickles my neurons. Josie lies back on the bed and pulls up her dress.
Fresh images of Norma are bouncing about in my head and Josie is moaning just like her. But at that point, I know I must stop.
“Dunny?”
“I don’t ... want to continue,” I whisper, as I roll away from Josie.
In the kitchen the frequency and volume of Norma’s moans reach a crescendo, becoming vociferous: “Oh yes, Mike, yes, oh yes ...”
Then, abruptly, silence.
I stand and zip my jeans. Josie smiles stoically. Without taking her eyes off me, she sits up slowly and straightens her dress. In her best English, she says, “Joo ees me fren, Dunny.”
I sit beside Josie and kiss her softly, without passion. We sink back on the bed and kiss for a long while, until she falls asleep. Then I close my eyes and fall asleep next to her.
***
I wake with a start, open my eyes. Brilliant white light has eradicated the darkness. I hear a gruff masculine voice angrily spewing Spanish words.
“Danny, let’s go brother, we gotta get the hell outa here!”
Ironically, Josie stands over me, smiling, calmly tugging at my arm, but she can’t mask the worry in her eyes.
I spring from the bed and rush out of the room and into the kitchen. Norma sits on the couch, getting dressed in a hurry. Mike takes off running. I bolt after him, through the store. An old mustachioed man stands behind the checkout table, sorting paperwork. A short woman of middling age is stocking the shelves. Neither of them seems to notice Mike or me. The cluster of tiny bells on the door sounds as we stumble outside.
“That was Josie’s ma and pa,” Mike says. “They don’t like it when guys hang around the store.”
“Can you blame them?”
“Maybe not. Let’s grab a taxi.”
“What time is it? I ask.” If only Mr. Christie, or better yet, Liz, could see me now, I tell myself sarcastically.
“It’s after six a.m. We’ll be home by eight.”
The streets are deserted, except for a few drunken swabees tramping along on the sidewalk behind us.
A yellow taxi comes into view. Mike waves his arm and the driver slows the cab and pulls to the curb.
“Let’s go, Danny.”
I look over my shoulder and see the Navy men approaching, on the run. Just as Mike opens the car door they draw close, and one of them, a big yellow-haired brute with massive hands and bovine face, a Swede perhaps, grabs Mike’s arm from behind. The Swede turns Mike around and gives him a shove. Mike, still a little drunk, stumbles backwards and falls into a sitting position on the pavement behind the cab. I back away from the taxi.
“That’s our cab,” the Swede roars, his voice deep and husky. He is drunk, like the others.
As the Swede moves towards him, Mike rises in a sneering rage, with a grin for the imminence of combat, his fists cocked confidently in boxing form, the sweat bursting forth from his brow in droplets of quicksilver. It seems he has been jolted out of his drunken state.
Mike hops menacingly towards the Swede and executes a fine roundhouse punch to the big guy’s face. His fist glances off the man’s cheek. The Swede rocks backwards, wavers momentarily, falls to his knees, and then gets up again.
The cab speeds away. “Run, Danny, run,” Mike yells feverishly. “I’ll be all right.”
I can’t help thinking that my brother is as fearless as Doc McCoy, played by Alec Baldwin in the remake of The Getaway.
I had already backed off the street, onto the sidewalk. Now two of the three other Navy men approach me with battle-ready scorn in their eyes. I feel the cold sweat of fear clammy beneath my arms. The third guy has circled around behind Mike, apparently intending to jump him if he makes a mistake with the Swede, who’s trying to put Mike in a chokehold.
Mike takes hold of the Swede’s arm and gives a ferocious twist, sending the Swede reeling. He closes in and lands a kick squarely against the Swede’s soft middle. The Swede bends over, gasping for air. The fourth guy comes at Mike from behind with fists raised. Mike turns just in time to strike him in the face with a straight-armed punch.
I’m forced to make a quick decision: take on the other two guys, or run for help.
I run, with the canter of a horse at first, and then I’m flying up the sidewalk, like Jacoby Ellsbury of the Yankees rounding the bases for an inside-the-park homerun. I slow down just enough to look back and see that the swabees aren’t chasing me any longer.
I stop and turn around. Mike, backing away from the four Navy men, trips and falls to the pavement. The Swede moves over him with fists cocked. Mike seems to have lost his fighting edge.
Just then I see another taxi approaching, and I sprint into the street, towards the yellow blur, frantically waving my arms. The driver stops the car short of hitting me, but I slam into the hood and roll off, still on my feet. I open the front passenger door and jump inside.
“¿Qué es la problema?” the driver asks. His florid face holds a polite, amiable smile.
I point a shaking finger up the street, and the driver sees the action in the middle of the road. He guns the engine and lays rubber as his cab kicks forward and moves down the street.
Strangely, from the backseat of the cab, I hear, or think I hear, my mother’s voice, in a hushed tone, although her words are enunciated clearly enough: “You shouldn’t have run away when your brother needed help, Danny Boy.” I turn and look behind me, half expecting to see my mother’s liberated spirit. There’s nothing.
The four Navy dudes have surrounded Mike. They encircle his prostra
te form like squawking buzzards. But at the approach of the speeding car they scatter, leaving Mike on the pavement with his face bloodied. I jump out of the cab and run to him.
“I’m okay,” Mike says, angrily. “Shit, if I hadn’t stumbled, I would’ve kicked all their asses. But what good is a victory over cowards?” His face glimmers with mawkish pride.
I master an impulse to hug my brother.
The Mexican driver offers his handkerchief. Mike flinches as I press the cloth against a deep gash on his upper lip. I help Mike to his feet and walk him to the cab. He lays prone across the back seat, holding the handkerchief over his wound.
The sense of guilt I feel after having abandoned my brother weighs heavily on my heart. I didn’t run because my brother had suggested I run, but because I was afraid. That failure was only a continuance of the unraveling of what little bit of virility I thought I possessed before I joined the Army.
I hop into the front seat of the taxi, recline and close my eyes. As the cab moves on, I begin to worry about the loaded pistol in Mike’s Ranger. I fear that Mike will kill someone with it, or end up getting himself killed.
Mike mutters something in Spanish.
“Amerhican Bordher” the driver says. “Jess, Jess.”
11
Sarah
Sunday afternoon, August 3
El Cajon Valley
“That’s a cool tree house,” I say. My throat is parched and my heart is almost too big for my chest. As it beats out of control, sweat breaks out all over me. I seem to have two lives now, two selves, the normal one with my mother, and this one, full of unknown possibilities, with Daniel.
I am gazing up at the plywood structure nestled high between two branches of the enormous pepper tree, in the backyard of Daniel’s house, The Gables. Mike and Julie aren’t home. Inside the house, at the kitchen table, my mother is talking with Frank about the moon problem, and about political stuff. Mom, a speaker on women’s issues with the League of Women Voters of San Diego, has a big meeting coming up next week.
“It’s no longer my hiding place,” Daniel says. “My brother built it years ago, when I was a kid like you.” He laughs gently.
“Real funny, Daniel.” I smile thinly.
We’re standing in the shade of the diffuse evergreen. Save for a few wispy clouds, the skies are clear. Rattlesnake Mountain stands out black and harsh against the pale blue heavens.
I’m wearing a green cotton blouse, sleeveless, with my denim shorts and white sneakers. Daniel has on a tee shirt and blue jeans. I adore his brown moccasins.
An old car tire, fastened with rope to the lowermost branch of the tree, hangs motionless two feet above the graveled earth. A metal bucket filled with baseballs topped by a tan baseball glove stands near the tree. Daniel’s dog, Wags, on a long leash tied to the back porch, is yapping and moving about friskily. It’s uncanny how Wags looks just like the dog in those old black and white reruns on TV, The Little Rascals.
“Would you like to see my secret hiding place?” asks Daniel. “It’s batshit wonderful.”
“Sure, but please don’t curse. It’s not a nice way of expressing yourself.”
“Oh, hell. C’mon, let’s go.”
Daniel takes off, sprinting towards Rattlesnake Mountain. I dash after him. The dog’s insistent barking is in my ear as I run, and then the noise dwindles, replaced by “Catch Us If You Can,” a classic rock song by The Dave Clark Five that my dad used to love.
I race as fast as I can, through the low weeds at the base of the mountain, my eyes fixed on Daniel thirty yards ahead. He’s moving so fast he seems whisked forward like a sail on the wind. I feel my lungs crying out for a great mouthful of oxygen. I am losing ground, until somehow I manage a burst of speed, taking longer strides and flailing the air with my arms.
Finally, Daniel slows his pace, and then halts abruptly. I pull up quickly. Daniel almost touches my bare shoulder with his hand, but draws back when I stop. Without a word, he begins to ascend the mountain on a narrow footpath. I fall into step with him, keeping close. The sun is hot on my body, the wind so still I can smell my own skin. My attention is focused on a winding rocky pathway that runs up a low hillside to our right, towards the top of the mountain.
I climb with strong sure steps. Daniel walks very near to me, and at times his arm touches mine. Clods of dried earth crunch under my feet. After a while we reach the crest of the hill, about halfway up the mountain. We travel down a narrow path on the other side of the hill, and suddenly there’s a ledge before us, a deadfall, which overlooks a deep and somewhat narrow canyon or ravine.
We turn north, stepping carefully along the path as we move up the mountain, parallel to the ravine. I can see, below, the desiccated creek bottom with cracks and dry sticks and stones where once there had probably been clear running water, cool and pleasing, the creek bottom smooth and full of life.
“I’m thirsty,” I call out. I wipe the sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand. We’ve climbed for more than a half-hour, it seems.
Daniel stops, letting me catch up. The path opens up into a level tract of dirt and weeds, framed on the north and west by a low escarpment of huge boulders and thickly grown sage bushes, and on the east by the ravine.
Daniel walks to the end of the promontory, quite near the cliff’s edge. “I have a canteen full of water in my hiding place,” he says. “But first, there’s something I want to show you.”
I step carefully forward until I’m standing beside Daniel. He takes my hand. “Don’t worry, I’ve got you.”
The canyon is spread out below our feet, the drop precipitate. A falling stone would likely come to rest at the creek bottom. In the middle distance The Valley lies before us like a huge greenish carpet peppered with buildings and etched with roads.
I look at Daniel and smile, gathering my hair, which has begun to blow in my face. All the words I can think of in this moment seem artificial and useless. The wind flutters Daniel’s shirt and the wisps of black hair on top of his head. I’m not afraid, with him.
“Look down there,” he says, pointing to a grassy ledge, outcropping from the face of the cliff, on which stands an enormous granite boulder and a tall cypress tree. A red-tailed hawk is perched majestically on a branch of the tree. Suddenly the great bird takes off and sails freely into the purity of the wide blue sky.
I notice a narrow footpath that leads down to the grassy shelf. “Is that the place you want to show me?”
“I want to tell you about the Kumeyaay Indian fertility stones.”
“You’re talking about the Indians who helped Father Serra build the San Diego Mission, in 1769.” I feel proud of myself. “I have a heritage of missionaries, you know. My father’s folk. My great grandmother Hartford had the second sight. She would predict that something was going to occur, like a death or whatever, then, unbelievably, it would happen.”
“I hope your ancestors didn’t trick any Indians, like the Spaniards did,” Daniel says. “Instead of baptizing them, the soldiers enslaved them and raped their women.”
“Gosh, I didn’t know. That’s terrible.” I fondle my hair and bite it with a saddened smile.
Daniel goes on, “The Indians lived in what is now called Mission Valley, until the Spanish arrived. Some of them fled to the El Cajon Valley. When a young girl acquired a man and she didn’t have any children right away, they would bring her here, to the mountain, and show her the magic stones.”
“What’s so magic about them?”
“Check out the sky.”
I look up and see the pale crescent moon that hangs low in the sky.
“The Kumeyaay believed that the eighth day of the moon, one day a month, is the interval of adolescence, of puberty. That’s when light dominates over darkness, and so the attitude of dependency has to be transformed into one of maturity and independence.”
I catch a slight lump of nervousness in my throat. “That’s ... well ... romantic, I guess.”
“The
y used the stones in fertility rituals. See that one down there?”
All I see is a great big rock, a boulder.
“That’s called a yoni stone, by anthropologists. If you look closely, you’ll notice, like the Indians did, that its natural features resemble a woman’s ... uh ... private parts, and the Kumeyaay thought the rock was imbued with special powers.”
I lean over and look more closely at the rock, which hugs the cliff-face. It doesn’t take long to figure out exactly what Daniel is talking about, because on the side of the rock there’s an almost perfect representation of female genitalia.
“That’s interesting,” I say, knowing my face has flushed tomato red. I laugh self-consciously.
Daniel smiles. “Let’s go.”
I follow him as we walk to the north end of the terrace and climb a short trail, which grows steeper as it ascends between boulders. Daniel turns and helps me scale the thorny path. The air smells of sage. Wild grape vines are plentiful.
Several yards up the path, Daniel stops. “If I ever have to hide, this is where I’ll come. I want to die here.”
“Where?” I ask.
“In my cave. Wait, while I check for rattlesnakes.” He pushes aside the undergrowth, crouches to his knees and disappears between the rocks.
A moment later he reappears and extends his hand. “C’mon in.”
I bend down and shuffle into the cave, a semi-dark, low-ceilinged, circular rock enclosure about fifteen by twenty by five feet, I estimate, width, length and height respectively. A narrow shaft of sunshine at the far end of the cave provides some light. The floor consists of packed brown earth. There’s a kerosene lantern in one corner, and red designs cover the walls, geometric paintings with mostly diamond-shaped elements.
Daniel sits on the dirt floor and I sit beside him. Without speaking, he hands me the canteen and I take a long drink of warm water. I make a sour face. I’m sitting with my legs extended, leaning on one elbow and looking at Daniel.
