They were also happy injecting formaldehyde into frogs and watching them get thinner, eaten away by the poison.
“But the one who’s breaking the record is the lizard I have at home,” Tin Marbán said. “I’ve had it for eleven days in a matchbox without any food and it still sticks out its tongue when I pinch it. I want to see how long it lasts. There are camels that go five years without drinking any water.”
Alex went over to the weeds and bent down to fix himself.
“All eyes on him,” Bones alerted.
So they stayed still, watching Alex, waiting in silence.
“Your thing isn’t coming out today,” Claudio observed.
“Wait a little bit,” Alex said. He moaned forcefully and finally the thing came out. A long organ that hung between his smooth, dark buttocks.
Agar turned his face and felt his insides turning.
“My mom says I have to get operated on,” Alex said. “But with everything she has going on, she always forgets.”
And he shook his organ from one side to another.
“My horse tail,” he said. “My little lizard tail.”
Laughter. Laughter. Laughter.
Agar silently begged for it to be over. It had been a long time since he had left on the olive oil errand and they might be looking for him already. He was afraid that Mrs. Hubert might have gone house to house telling a new tale about the West Side Boys, and that she would get to Papa Lorenzo with the story.
Like the time they urinated on the park benches and Hubert’s wife had foolishly sat on one.
“Do you know what those little animals are doing?” she said, going from house to house. “Urinating on the benches! Where decent people sit down.” And she snorted, furious.
“Don’t worry, Mrs. Hubert,” Papa Lorenzo said then. “If I see mine playing that little game, I’ll take a gun and wham! Right down.”
“Animal!” Mama Pepita reproached him later, from behind the pots and pans in the kitchen. “How can you talk that way about your own son?”
“Okay, okay . . . I didn’t mean to say it like that. Not that way.”
Alex had finished. He put his organ back and cleaned himself up expertly with a malanga leaf.
Kiko Ribs went up to the mare and said: “Hey, dudes . . . the skin is cracking.”
Bones appeared amid the rosemary with a bunch of dried leaves in his hands. He went up to the animal and placed them around it.
“A crown and everything,” he said. “Dudes . . . who has a match?”
Excited by the idea, the West Side Boys covered the beast with all the leaves they could find.
“Odin’s pyre,” Speedy said.
“Odin . . . ,” Bones pretended to pray. “God of all that’s broken and of all we have to break in to ‘get in.’ Fire to the can!” he yelled, lighting a match.
“Until the bottom comes out!” The West Side Boys yelled in chorus.
They laughed and howled around the pyre. They listened to the cracking of the mare’s skin and they jumped amid the smoke. Later, their spirits lowered for a moment. Kiko Ribs fell down in exhaustion on the grass.
“On Friday, I’m going to confession,” he said, putting his hand up as a visor. “I’m going to have to tell the priest all about this.”
Agar said: “I get the giggles when I’m in church.”
“The same thing happens to me, dudes,” Bones said, flopping down. “The day Little Mute Guy died. Do you all remember Little Mute Guy?”
The flames grew. Agar watched them, entranced, and remembered Little Mute Guy, sitting in silence on a park bench, wringing his hands until someone called him into the circle.
“Take good care of him for me,” Mrs. Caritina said. “He wants to be one of you.”
Later, in the circle, Bones explained the rules to him.
“To be like us,” he said, “you have to be fearless, mute kid.”
And they all laughed.
“You have to burn down houses, climb trees, piss far and wide and read the Count of Eros and see what you can get away with. Let’s start: do you know how to climb trees?”
“Climb!” The Chorus said. “Make him climb!”
The boy went over to one of the trees in the park and began to climb, holding on to the thick knots. Agar saw him going up and heard behind him: “Go up, mutey, go up, mutey!” And he envied the affection they all felt for Caritina’s little mute guy.
“He’s not mute at all,” Bones said. “He climbs like a chameleon and smokes like a bat. I don’t see anything mute about him.”
The little mute guy reached the top of the tree. From there, he seemed to make an attempt at a pirouette and suddenly they all saw him fall to the ground like a stone.
Agar now remembered the story and thought he saw Caritina’s face bathed in tears. She was there, in the park, surrounded by the crowd, while Dr. Miranda took the boy’s pulse and shook his head.
“He burst a vein in his neck,” Dr. Miranda said. “He made too much effort to climb this damned tree.”
“Always up in the trees!” Mrs. Hubert then said. “Like animals . . .”
Caritina didn’t speak. She stood up and looked over at the group of West Side Boys.
That night, they saw her again during the wake. That was where Bones began to laugh, swearing that the Mute Guy had winked at him from his coffin.
“May you be damned a thousand times!” Caritina exploded when she heard them laughing and charged the West Side Boys furiously, issuing curses. Then they really did run away, frightened.
“Do you know what those little animals did at Caritina’s wake?” Aunt Dorita came in saying that night.
“What now?” Mama Pepita listlessly asked. So Aunt Dorita told the story and looked at Agar with her eyes on fire, as if to say: And you know you were a part of it.
Aunt Dorita, Aunt Dorita . . . why do you hate me?
“The children of the tropics are a bunch of delinquents,” Aunt Dorita insisted. “Cruel and disgusting. You pass through a decent place all relaxed, and there they are laughing under their breaths. You go to a wake and there they are laughing at the deceased. You want to play the piano and there they are saying filthy things. Asses and tits. That’s the only thing they think about! And you can’t have any friends because straightaway they come up with some perverse story about you. And you pretend to ignore it! And you pretend you can’t hear it! And you pretend you can’t see it!”
Agar knew the origins of Aunt Dorita’s hate. It came from the night on which Tin Marbán had come up with the story that she and Poupett had left the rosemary field together.
“That’s enough,” Bones had said. “Can we allow that on a decent beach?”
Amid the laughter, they all wagged condemning fingers.
“Today, we avenge our stained honor,” Bones said.
So they bought eggs and peas at the corner store.
Núñez the Spaniard filled the bags and asked, amazed,
“Who is the party for? Why do you want so much?”
Without getting any response.
Later, they made the trek to Aunt Dorita’s house, assigning positions beforehand. When they were already on her block, Agar heard the keys of her piano and Poupett’s broken voice singing “Quiéreme Mucho.”
“The two of them together . . . ,” Bones said, rubbing his hands together. “One aims and the other shoots.”
And the shooting began. Eggs and peas. They all heard Poupett’s voice go up a key while the shots increased in intensity. “Quiéreme Mucho,” as the eggs went crashing on the walls.
They were bombarding the house for a long while, and in the end had to stop for lack of further projectiles.
Then only Poupett’s voice remained. Poupett’s hoarse voice singing “Quiéreme Mucho,” and Aunt Dorita’s piano in somber accompaniment.
Agar had fired hidden in the bushes. He would have died of shame if Aunt Dorita had discovered him amid the West Side Boys, with his pockets full of eggs and the
peashooter under his arm. But Aunt Dorita didn’t come out. Not even later, when the projectiles ran out and the insults began. At the top of their lungs, the West Side Boys vituperated against Poupett and Aunt Dorita. They expected them to come out and respond, but they only heard the piano and could see through the blinds their shadows lengthened by the flame of an oil lamp. The screams died out. Amid the music, the West Side Boys fell discouraged to the sidewalk.
“Let’s get going,” Bones ordered. They began their silent retreat through the rosemary. And that’s how they left: beaten down, dissatisfied, disconcerted. Listening to Aunt Dorita’s piano slowly grow quieter as they got deeper into the rosemary, along with Poupett’s already tired voice, singing “Quiéreme Mucho” as if it were now a requiem.
That’s how it went. He remembered it now as the mare went up in flames and they sat in the circle, with the sun beating down on their shaved heads. The fire was languishing.
Agar took the bottle of olive oil and got up. He sensed from one minute to the next, that the West Side Boys would begin to play rough. Jokingly at first, hard and serious later.
“At one, Leapfrog!” Kiko Palacios yelled suddenly, jumping over his head.
“I’m first!” Bones yelled before anyone else. He looked for a stone that was small enough to fit in his fist without being noticeable and crossed his arms to confuse things: Where do I have it?
The stone went around, alternating from hand to hand. The one who had it in the end had to be the mule and allow himself to be jumped over.
“Leapfrog” had once been played very nicely.
Mr. Hubert said that in his time, they had played it at school, and that even seminarians lifted their soutaines to jump. Then it was no more than simply leaping over a hunched-over kid’s back, singing out the number of each leap. But with time, the West Side Boys had turned it into a macabre and painful game.
“Do you know how they play Leapfrog in the Santa Ana neighborhood?” Tin Marbán said that day. And then he explained the game just as they had all played it since.
The stone went through all of the hands until it reached Agar. When he looked back, he confirmed there was no one else left. So, he would be the mule and would withstand the leaps, hiding his head well between his shoulders, because Bones had already warned very loudly: “The head’s for the Devil! And if my foot runs into your head, it’s not my fault.”
“At one, leapfrog!” Bones yelled, jumping over him and delivering a tremendous kick to his behind.
“At two, my shoe!” Kiko Ribs yelled, saying, “Gong!” and letting a big stone fall on his back.
“At three, my coffee!” Tin Marbán yelled, spitting a mouthful of water on Agar’s neck that ran down his shirt to his underwear.
“At four, hit the floor!” Kiko Palacios said, digging his nails into his bony shoulder blades.
“At five, I’ll dive!” Lefty yelled, pinching his back hard.
“At six, breadsticks!” Speedy said. And since breadsticks don’t cause any pain, he threw a handful of mud on Agar’s clean shirt.
“At seven, the razor’s edge!” Liborio yelled, smacking his sides with the back of his hands.
Agar sinks his head. He lowers his back. He clenches his buttocks. He remembers Grandma Hazel the day she went by the circle of West Side Boys, stayed watching them play for a moment, and then said: “Children . . . why do you hate each other?”
“We’re just playing!” they all exclaimed.
“No, no. You want to destroy each other. Do any of you know what a lung is? A lung is a very delicate things. As is the brain. A small nothing that can break at the slightest blow.”
You spit on the grass. Your lungs hurt terribly and you thought you would spit a reddish drool. But no. White saliva. Thick paste like a horse’s drool.
“At eight, I’ll beat you straight!” Claudio yelled, whacking a spiny branch on his back.
You closed your eyes. You thought that by then, Papa Lorenzo would be looking for you because of the delay. Mama Pepita might have received a visit from Mingo, the corner store vendor, and would have put some money on number eight, saying, “Yesterday, I had a revealing dream: three dead men.”
“Oh yeah?” Papa Lorenzo would say, pretending to pay attention.
“Yes,” Mama Pepita would say. “Three dead men hanging from a guásima tree.”
“So play 888,” Papa Lorenzo would say, reviewing the comic pages.
The kids flew over his back again. They leapt at nine and at ten.
“At eleven, get in on the action!”
“At twelve, an old lady snivels!” And this time, Kiko Ribs coughed on his head and Agar felt the kid’s saliva in his ear.
“At thirteen, a midget can be seen!”
“At fourteen, an old man is clean!”
“At fifteen, I’ll get your spleen!”
Agar was worked-up. He was waiting for the last leap to start off a long run after the West Side Boys and grab one of them forcefully and beat any part of his body. Until it became nighttime.
“At sixteen, run from that ox so lean!” Bones yelled, leaping over him without putting his hands on his back.
They ran.
When he got close to Lefty, Agar punched his ears hard. Both rolled around the grass, embracing furiously. Lefty’s hand took hold of his throat and Agar felt blood beating at his temples and his eyes popping out of their sockets. He had the kid’s ear gripped tightly and tried unsuccessfully to get his teeth near it and to sink them into the ear lobe.
“Stop that!” It was Mr. Hubert. He had come with his dogs, certainly because of his wife. He approached with his bulldogs and brusquely separated them.
Lefty and Agar looked at each other with hate for a moment. Huffing, dragging the backs of their wrists across their saliva-filled mouths, muttering indecencies. A minute later, Lefty crouched down and patted one of the dogs’ backs. Agar went over to the bushes and urinated, then went back to the group.
Everything was over.
It was always like that: they beat each other with a blind fury and then forgot about it. Blows in the heat of the moment. Letting it all out in the heat of the moment. Against any face, anybody, anything.
Mr. Hubert looked at them in surprise. He looked around and discovered the mare covered in ash and dry leaves.
“Sons . . . ,” he tried to say. “There are games that are a lot more fun. Less dangerous. The quimbumbia, for example, is a very animated game.”
He took two sticks and banged them forcefully.
“Come?” he said then.
While he beat the “quimbumbia” stick, Agar remembered Papa Lorenzo saying about Hubert: “Hubert!” Papa Lorenzo would say. “He’s just like Hubert, the fat guy from the comics! The same idiot face. Always taking his dogs out for a piss.”
“Leave the man alone!” Mama Pepita would yell.
Hubert then said, “I brought you something.” And taking a ball out of his pocket dramatically, he dropped it in the middle of the circle of kids and said, smiling: “Try to play peacefully, huh?” And, after winking first at them mischievously, he turned around.
The West Side Boys watched him go in silence. When he was far away, someone threw the ball up in the air. Agar understood that now dodgeball would begin. Throwing the ball hard as anything against anyone.
He tried to get away from the group, but it was already too late.
They were throwing it against him. Bones didn’t throw it against Alex and Alex didn’t throw it against Kiko Ribs either, and Kiko Ribs didn’t throw it against Claudio, either.
They were throwing it at him. He was the chosen target.
“An eye for an eye,” Papa Lorenzo had said that day Agar came home full of bite marks and pine-needle scratches.
“He’s skittish . . . ,” Mama Pepita said, sadly, “like a horse.”
Later, Agar knew all too well, time would pass and the wounds would turn into hardened scabs, and he would pull them off, curious to see his own blood run.
“Well,” Bones announced. “You’ve got three strikes. We’re going to execute you now.”
For the execution, they chose a chopped-off palm near the House of the Broken Windows. Now he had to put his arms around it and expose his back to the ball.
“And go!”
The ball missed. He heard Kiko Ribs regret his bad aim and give Bones a turn.
“Strike!” Bones said. And the ball hit his kidneys and he felt his skin burning under his shirt.
“Don’t start crying, dude . . . ,” Bones warned him. “That was just practice. That’s all.”
“Take a good shot,” Kiko Ribs said. “The Núñez girls are coming down the alley. Make it good, Bones!”
This time, the ball hit the back of his neck. The girls went by the alley and saw him hugging the palm tree. With his face hidden he heard them laughing.
“Why don’t you talk to those girls?” Papa Lorenzo would say, pointing far away. “Look at their asses, kid. Look how they’re moving it. They like to show it off. At your age, I was devouring them all.”
So Papa Lorenzo would tell about his Don Juan life in the village of Candelaria, where he had had a catalog of girlfriends.
“One day you spoke to them,” The Voice of Memory said. “Don’t you remember anymore?”
“Yes . . . one day I went over to them.”
“Of course!” The Voice said. “You did well. You took out a bottle of cognac and discovered the very taste of life.”
Not just anyone can take a drink of cognac! Not just anyone can bear feeling their insides moving around! Not just anyone can keep from vomiting! But you withstood it. And your head was spinning. And you were able to talk to one of them . . .
“One, yes. Yes, that’s right. One is the one that matters to me. Just one and no other . . .”
But Papa Lorenzo was waiting for you that night with his arms crossed.
“Drunk again?” He said undramatically. And he beat you silently, drily, like never before.
“That’s not how you do it!” Mama Pepita protested from the kitchen.
“And how do you do it? Tell me! Do you know?”
He left and came back later with the Court of Patriots.
Leapfrog Page 5
