The Almanac of the Dead: A Novel

by Leslie Marmon Silko

  “You can be with me or you can be with them,” Sonny had said to his brother, and even as he spoke, he could see fear in Bingo’s eyes. Without Sonny, Bingo had no one but the housekeepers or gardeners, who did not last more than a year or two. Sonny had taught Bingo to call her Leah and not Mama or Mother. Whiney babies called for their mommies.

  Sonny Blue could not wait to see the expression of shock, the stunned look, of Max when he found out Sonny had got his own business rolling with the Mexicans. Sonny didn’t need any major as a go-between. Sonny wasn’t worried; his “business partner,” Menardo, owned something called Universal Insurance. As Menardo had explained it, the company was far more than a mere insurance company. For your money, you not only got insurance from tidal waves, fires, earthquakes, and hurricanes; Menardo had waved a thick contract in front of Sonny’s face. At Universal Insurance, for only a few thousand dollars or a few million pesos more, a businessman such as Sonny Blue could be protected against uprisings, riots, unrest, and even mutiny by government forces. Universal Insurance maintained its own highly trained, well-armed security forces for land, sea, and air. As governments went bankrupt and no longer paid police or armies, the services of private police and private army units became more important.

  Menardo had talked at length about the federal troops and the police, who were in the pay of everyone (including Universal Insurance). Menardo did not think bribes alone were reliable any longer. In the end Sonny agreed to purchase the “foreign businessman’s protection package”; the package had been expensive, but had included everything. “Everything” included the use of Universal Insurance’s “air force,” and in the event of emergencies, one of General J.’s Learjets. Sonny Blue had savored the feeling of power and satisfaction that had spread over him like good wine; he gunned the Porsche and pulled away from the traffic on I-10. He would show Max.

  Max had not been the same since the shooting. How many times had Sonny heard his uncles and aunts whisper about his father, about the changes in Max Blue that caused them to shake their heads. Sonny did not exactly blame Max; it wasn’t his fault he got shot. Max must be unlucky because he had got hurt in a plane crash in the army. Sonny couldn’t blame his old man for bad luck. What irritated Sonny was Max Blue’s assumption that Sonny and Bingo would be satisfied with some chicken-shit pinball games and sandwich machines in Tucson and El Paso while everyone else was getting rich running dope or guns across the border. Something was wrong with Max since the shooting. Max wasn’t interested anymore in women or money; Max might as well be dead. All Max did was play golf; all day, weather permitting, seven days a week, for fifty-two weeks.

  Sonny had only heard rumors. He had not been able to bring himself to ask. Max would have told Sonny if Max had wanted Sonny to know. Killing was cheap, and getting cheaper every day. Sonny could make more on one big truckload of cocaine than Max Blue could make whacking a dozen bastards. Max must have done it for kicks. Sonny didn’t blame his old man. If sex didn’t work any longer, there had to be substitutes. Sonny could remember that when he was in grade school, Max had worked in his office all night even on Sunday and at Christmas.

  Sonny knew his father did not like to be touched or to touch others. Sonny tried to imagine what the thrill was. Max didn’t even get the satisfaction of squeezing the trigger. He must have been excited by the planning and the step-by-step preparations for an execution. Sonny had not seen his father excited or happy when the family was together. Sunday dinners had been for the benefit of the grandparents, even if they only came to Tucson in the winter. Otherwise, they themselves seemed to know it wasn’t a real family, that the boys were separate parts of the lives of Max and Leah; small parts, pushed aside by bigger plans and greater schemes.

  Sonny’s way was to be one of the cool ones—the kind girls went after. Sonny had made a study. A guy did not have to be much in the looks department as long as he had great-looking clothes and a great-looking car; women were looking for status, not good looks; good looks didn’t buy them champagne and strings of pearls. Sonny kept all his fraternity-alumnus dues and fees current so he could drop by the “house” whenever he wanted to pick up some nice fresh coed. Sonny had got used to dating college women, and after he had graduated, Sonny discovered he was attracted only to the coeds. Working women were a turnoff; they were always calculating what a man’s salary added to their salary might buy for them. The coeds lived on their family trusts or their papas’ monthly checks. Coeds had flexible schedules, so Sonny could screw them all afternoon if he felt like it.

  Sonny had dated a few women who had good bankrolls or were hotshot businesswomen. But he had not felt comfortable talking with them about hydraulic lifts on trucks delivering video arcade games. Sonny took the precaution of announcing he did not wish to discuss business on a date, and the women had quickly agreed.

  Sonny had never been serious about any of the coeds he had dated; he had no desire to see the same ass and same tits over and over 365 days a year. Sonny had never dated the same woman two nights in a row; that had been one of his frat-house trademarks. Fresh pussy every night. Of course he had dated a couple of the “better” girls more than once. Sonny had also dated not two but three coeds who had gone on to become Miss Arizonas; but they had been no different. Once Sonny got them in bed, he could begin to see things close up; sometimes he switched off the lights so he would not see the freckles or moles; Sonny did not watch them walk naked across the hotel room because he knew he would notice something—one tit larger than the other, dimpled cellulite on the thighs or the ass—even on the skinny ones.

  Sonny had a secret that always worked. Once he got the girl in his Porsche, he poured out fat lines of coke on the dashboard and handed her a gold straw. Liquor might work quicker than candy, but nothing beat good cocaine for getting the panties off sorority girls. Sonny could take coke or leave it; he had watched Bingo stumble around half-blind from the drug, still searching for more.

  Sonny and Bingo had started dealing a little while they were at the university. Everyone knew hometown boys had access to any drug you wanted—name it and Tucson had it, and at the lowest price. Now that Sonny had hooked up with Menardo, he and Bingo would have cocaine by the kilos. Mr. B. had only vague plans for Leah’s warehouses. Sonny had pegged the retired major right away as an arms dealer. Mr. B. wore a khaki safari jacket and matching pants and fussed a great deal with the chin strap of his broad-brim canvas safari hat.

  Sonny had talked to Bingo about the possibility of expanding their enterprise in three or four years to include guns, but Bingo had not sounded interested in anything but the kilos of coke coming out of Mexico. Bingo had wanted to know what market there was for guns in Mexico. “Guns and dynamite,” Sonny had added, to see the expression on Bingo’s face. But Sonny could tell that Bingo’s mind was on the kilo packages.

  BROTHER’S KEEPER

  BINGO HAD ALWAYS WAITED for Sonny to tell him what he should do. Bingo didn’t care if the idea was not his own; Bingo never had any good ideas of his own anyway. There were leaders and there were followers, and Bingo knew what he was. He had always looked for Sonny during lunch or study hall when they were in school. Bingo had pledged the same fraternity; he had even graduated with the same 2.0 grade average.

  Bingo had been known as the quiet one, who was shy with girls. But Bingo had changed all that when he had got his big house in the sand dunes outside El Paso. Sonny had given him pep talks; let the big Lincoln and the Olympic-size pool work their magic. “Linen suits and cashmere overcoats speak louder than words,” Sonny said.

  Bingo had always had violent nightmares that woke him crying and sweating with terror. Sonny had been the one who had turned on the light and gone to the far end of the house to the master bedroom for Leah. Max Blue had just returned home from the hospital, and Leah did not let the boys in their bed. Bingo had cried and begged his mother to force Sonny to let him sleep in Sonny’s bed. Sonny demanded payment, although Bingo seldom wet the bed anymore.
Bingo had to do whatever Sonny told him. Whatever Sonny said, Bingo was his slave; otherwise, some night when Bingo’s nightmare of the exploding gas furnace had woken him screaming, Sonny might refuse to let Bingo get into bed with him. Sonny had demanded to know what was so scary about the exploding furnace. Did Bingo see himself blowing up or burning? Bingo had not seen any of that; Bingo had only dreamed the furnace and then its explosion as if he had been blown to bits but was still able to describe the fiery clouds of debris and butane gas.

  Bingo awoke sobbing because the explosion had been the end of all of them—Mother and Father as well as Sonny and himself. The effects of the dream, the grief, did not end once Bingo had awakened. Bingo could not stop himself from grieving for hours after he woke from the nightmare. Sonny had pointed out that once you were dead, love didn’t matter. Bingo had loved Sonny so much, but that day, Bingo had detected Sonny’s pleasure at seeing him cry. When Sonny wanted Bingo to shut up, he would threaten to push Bingo out of his bed. Lying next to Sonny was all that soothed the terrible feelings of grief and loss in the nightmare.

  Bingo had always loved Sonny more than anyone. Sonny had whispered they were not wanted by their mother and father; Bingo started to cry when Sonny teased him. Or Sonny had been “wanted,” but Bingo had been an “accident” and had spoiled everything. Bingo had been a crybaby who had driven Max out of the house the morning he got shot. Sonny had told Bingo a number of lies, claiming they were true stories. Their parents weren’t like other kids’ parents. Bingo believed Sonny because Sonny talked to him, for hours and hours in the dark. Other kids’ parents didn’t get shot. Other kids’ parents came to their bedrooms if they got scared at night. Later Sonny told Bingo that he had lied; Sonny said he had been afraid to go all the way through the house in the dark to the master bedroom. So Sonny had only pretended to go tell their mother Bingo was calling for her. Sonny used to lie and say Leah was coming; then Bingo had waited hours and hours until he knew his mother would not come. “She never did come,” Bingo used to complain to Sonny. Sonny used to shrug his shoulders as if it were none of his concern.

  “You know I would come running in a minute if I knew you were crying and wanted me!” Leah had said years later when they talked, but Bingo had not quite believed her; or he had believed Sonny more.

  Sonny had been the only one Bingo had ever been able to talk to, but even in high school, there had been certain things Bingo had not been able to tell Sonny. The things Bingo wasn’t able to tell Sonny were things so weird Bingo didn’t dare tell them at confession. They were just dreams or strange ideas that had come to Bingo suddenly. He had imagined his homeroom teacher and the entire class sitting at their desks naked. When Bingo had told Sonny, Sonny had asked if Bingo was seeing Sister Thomas Mary naked at her desk; what about the guys in homeroom, was Bingo seeing them nude also? When Bingo had nodded, Sonny had become very animated; Sonny had begun laughing and dancing around the room.

  “You’re a queer, Bingo-Boy! That’s what it means! Queers like to see old nuns and young guys naked!” Bingo had imagined far worse, far stranger scenes, but he could never tell Sonny.

  Bingo often found himself daydreaming that Max and Leah and Sonny had all been killed in a plane crash or a car wreck. The daydreams left Bingo very sad; he felt as if he had really lost them. The move to El Paso had not helped, except in the beginning when the big house and the car and the expense account had all been new. Whatever money Bingo had, he always spent, and now that he was closer to the border, he could get all the good tequila and scotch he wanted and all the good pills and pharmaceutical cocaine. The Mexican maids had been the frosting on the cake. Bingo had been warned not to let the maids see him use cocaine; but Bingo had developed a taste for cocaine on damp flesh, and he found he enjoyed two women at a time more than one woman who expected all his attention.

  The first mess Sonny had had to save Bingo from was the two coke-hungry Mexican maids. Sonny had driven the new Porsche from Tucson to El Paso to check on Bingo. Reports from the office in El Paso had been that Bingo was seldom seen except to sign paychecks on Thursday afternoons and to write himself $3,500 checks to cash for the weekend. Bingo had been glad to see Sonny climb out of the black Porsche; the two women had been fighting all night. Bingo had admired how Sonny knew exactly what to do: one call to Immigration and the women would disappear into the vast deportation process. Employers in El Paso and Tucson preferred illegal aliens because they worked so cheaply and they were afraid to make trouble. The cocaine and wild sex with Bingo had caused the maids to forget their manners. Sonny teased Bingo about sex. Bingo had learned his lesson with the maids; from now on, he would simply go back to telephone escort services. What had worked for Bingo in Tucson would have to work for him again in El Paso.

  That was the chief disadvantage of Bingo’s big hacienda that was so far from downtown; escorts had cost more, and the better services did not allow their employees to leave the El Paso city limits. Bingo had not wanted to mention to Sonny that he was lonely at his house, and the Mexican maids were the only ones he had for company. Escorts were only good for part of the night; Bingo needed more. “Maybe you should get married,” Sonny had said as he was starting up the Porsche for the trip back to Tucson. Sonny had felt full of mischief that morning because Bingo looked so lost and sad to see Sonny go.

  “Hire a live-in companion,” Sonny said as he wiped off his blue-mirror sunglasses. “I don’t care. Only next time don’t fall in love with two Mexican lesbians.”

  Bingo had been uneasy when Sonny had showed up a few months later with Angelo. Bingo had let the general manager run the day-today business; how much intelligence did it take to refill candy machines? Bingo wasn’t going to waste his time pretending to be busy. Bingo was not as anxious as Sonny was to expand the business. Bingo did not like the fact the retired major knew so much about Angelo’s old girlfriend, Marilyn. Bingo did not believe this was mere coincidence. Bingo did not trust the phone calls from the senator. Bingo was the stupid one, but still he had been able to figure out the connection between the retired major and the pilots smuggling cocaine.

  Bingo was reluctant to get involved; he shrugged his shoulders. “How about Angelo?”

  “What about him?”

  “I was only wondering.” Bingo had avoided Sonny’s eyes.

  “Christ, Bingo! Just tell me! What? What is it this time?”

  “Fuck you, Sonny! Never mind. Forget it! Do what you want! I don’t care! But I’m not fucking around with your fucking Mr. B.!”

  Bingo did not care if Angelo took over everything in El Paso. Bingo did not want to be bothered with anyone, and he sure didn’t want to get involved with the government. Max Blue hinted he and others had performed special “services” for the U.S. government at home and abroad. Bingo didn’t give a shit about “rendering service” to his country. He didn’t trust the government, especially not if that government had got favors from Max Blue in the past. Because Bingo knew exactly what Max did. Bingo’s roommate had left a Time magazine open on Bingo’s bed. Bingo had felt a cold chill sweep over him when he saw his father’s name and the family name printed in a newsmagazine. The article concerned a big Mafia hit at an outdoor café in lower Manhattan. A gruesome photograph had showed one of the dead men still gripping a cigar in his teeth. When he found the magazine, Bingo had been on his way to a party. He had bought a fifth of tequila and a gram of cocaine, but he had not left the room that night. Bingo had stayed in the room sipping tequila and snorting coke as he read and reread the magazine article.

  The magazine article had contained speculations from prominent law enforcement officials concerning the source and the meaning of the gangland assassination. On the long list of possible explanations, the name Max Blue had appeared four times. One theory was Max had only pretended to be badly wounded, and Max had only pretended to retire to the golf course in Tucson. The most macabre speculation had been that Max had indeed almost died from gunshot wounds, but that close ca
ll with death had also changed Max Blue. Max Blue and death had made a deal, according to the magazine reporter.

  Bingo had never forgot that night. He had never snorted so much cocaine by himself before; he had never been so high or drunk so much tequila. Something about the cocaine had made Bingo read the article again and again; he thought it was quite funny to learn about his own father from the Crime section of Time magazine. All night Bingo had sat at his desk, snorting coke and sipping tequila with Pink Floyd tapes in the background while he brooded about himself and his family. Sonny had always tried to tell Bingo their parents didn’t want kids; but Bingo was not so sure. Everything had ended the morning Max had got shot and Uncle Mike had died.

  The roommate had been away for the weekend. When he returned, Bingo had not mentioned the magazine. The roommate had already arranged for a new room the following term. Bingo could trace his all-night affairs with booze and blow to that night he had spent reading family history in Time magazine. Bingo had seen no reason to change anything now that he was settled in El Paso. In a family of go-getters, Bingo was the flop. Bingo wanted nothing more than to stay high in his hacienda in the sand dunes.

  ORGAN DONORS

  ROY HAD MADE IT a practice always to refuse the cocaine Trigg offered him. Roy was aware Trigg was watching him walk. If Trigg had not watched Roy, the cocaine might have been nice. Trigg had made a point of bragging about its origin and quality. Always a rock as big as a fist; always pink flake.