Walking Alone

by Bentley Little

  Three more kids came walking up the sidewalk toward them, dressed in church clothes.

  Why couldn’t he have stayed overnight on Friday?

  There was no way to avoid this, and when Roberto led his brother, sister and the other kids into the house, Johnny accompanied them.

  The first thing he noticed when he walked through the open doorway into the darkened front room was the smell. It was obnoxious and nearly overpowering, sickening and sweet at the same time. His Abuela had fruit trees in her back yard—most of the houses in the neighborhood did—and he recognized the scent as that of overripe loquats. He knew that sometimes losers in his grandmother’s neighborhood hopped over her back fence to steal fruit from her trees (her guayabas were always in particularly high demand), and he thought that maybe someone was doing that around here and storing the stolen fruit in the empty house in hopes of selling it later on a street corner or a freeway offramp.

  They walked into the next room. Johnny expected to see boxes of rotting fruit, but that was not the sight that greeted him. Instead, a small figure stood alone in the center of a black burnt floor. Outside light from a halfway boarded-up window showed it to be a crude humanoid form made from squashed loquats, molded together. A basic round head sat atop a rudimentary body where slight indentations marked the location of primitive arms and legs. The entire thing was no more than two feet high.

  Johnny had seen that shape before, though he could not remember where, and it jogged an emotional sense memory. Something about the figure frightened him, and suddenly he wished he had gone back to Abuela’s—bad neighborhood or not—and had turned in the Orozco kids to their parents.

  “Let us sit,” Roberto said.

  Angelina had gone into one of the corners of the room and brought out a stack of newspapers. She began spreading them out in a circle around the loquat figure, on the burnt floor, and one-by-one the other kids sat down cross-legged on the paper. When Miguel, next to him, did the same, Johnny followed suit.

  “Who is coming today?” Roberto asked, once they were all seated. His speech had taken on a more formal, churchy tone.

  One of the new kids, a chubby boy whose pantlegs were too short, said, “My sister. She should be here anytime.”

  They waited in silence.

  Outside, Johnny could hear the sounds of the neighborhood: cars going by, an angry man screaming in Spanish, dogs barking. Inside, there was nothing but their own breathing.

  “Arturo?” a girl’s voice called from the front of the house. “Are you in there?”

  “Back here!” the chubby kid shouted.

  A teenage girl wearing a peach dress and too much makeup stepped hesitantly into the room. “Arturo?”

  “Over here,” the boy said.

  As her eyes adjusted, she saw the circle of kids sitting around the loquat figure. Roberto stood, formally took her hand as she approached, and led her into the center of the circle. “So, what am I supposed to do?” she asked, addressing her brother.

  It was Roberto who answered. “When I sit back down, stand over it.”

  “That little orange guy?”

  “Our god,” Roberto told her.

  The girl shrugged. “Okay.”

  Roberto took his seat again. He nodded, and the teenager stood over the small form. A swarm of gnats suddenly rose up from the molded fruit, flying up her dress, which billowed out as though pumped full of air. The girl began to laugh joyously. The room seemed brighter than it had, though there’d been no appreciable increase in light.

  Everything was now clearer. Johnny could see everything. Gnats continued to fly upward from the loquat form between the teenage girl’s legs and under her billowing dress. Her laughter did not abate, and to Johnny it no longer sounded happy—it sounded crazy. He looked around at the faces of the other kids, staring raptly at the spectacle. He wanted nothing more than to be as far away from here as possible.

  He felt an elbow prod his side and turned to Miguel, sitting next to him. “Ask for something,” Miguel suggested. “Our god will give it to you.”

  He was completely at a loss. “Like what?” Johnny asked.

  “Here. Watch.” Miguel stood, facing Arturo’s sister. “God, please give me an A in math.”

  The girl continued laughing, but underneath the laughter, or out of the laughter, came a deeper, more inhuman voice, a voice that shaped and twisted the random sounds of her hilarity into syllables, into words.

  “It is done.”

  A shadow passed over the room. The thing made out of loquats shifted. For a brief second, the gnats flew down, out of the girl’s dress, touching base with the small figure before swarming upward again.

  “See?” Miguel said, sitting down.

  Johnny wasn’t sure he liked this. No, he was sure. He didn’t like it. But, one by one, the Orozcos and the other kids who’d come in here with them stood and addressed their god, requesting victory in ball games, comeuppance against bullies, a new bike, parents who got along better. Each time, a shadow passed over the room, the girl’s laughter transformed into words—

  “It is done.”

  —and the gnats flew down from between her legs, touching base with the loquat figure before swarming upward again.

  Finally, everyone had gone except Johnny.

  All eyes turned to him.

  His mouth was dry, and he had never been so frightened in his life. There was power here, he could feel it, but he could not shake the certainty that it was evil power. This was a god that had been created against God. It was wrong by its definition, its very existence an offense against the real God, who would probably damn all of these kids to hell. He couldn’t participate. He had to leave, to run out of this room and this house and get as far away from here as fast as possible.

  He stood.

  Feeling the pressure of all those eyes on him, he went over a list in his mind, trying to find the smallest, most trivial thing that he truly wanted. “Please give Abuela cable TV,” Johnny said.

  He’d refused to call it “God” but that didn’t seem to matter. There was the same shadow, the same words swirling out of the laughter—

  “It is done.”

  —the same migration of the gnats. He was suddenly filled with a euphoric sensation, the feeling that all of his problems had been solved, that the future was bright and clean and perfect, and that nothing bad would ever happen to him again. The feeling faded after a few moments, but it did not go away entirely, and he was still feeling good when Roberto stood, thanked their god and took Arturo’s sister’s hand, pulling her out of the circle. She stopped laughing, her dress fell and flattened, and all of the gnats returned to the surface of squished loquats.

  They broke up after that. Arturo left with his sister, and Roberto stood by the door of the room like a priest after mass, thanking everyone for coming.

  None of them spoke on the walk back.

  Johnny saw his parents’ car in his grandmother’s driveway when he returned. They’d come early to pick him up, and for that he was grateful.

  “We’re late because we stayed after mass,” Roberto told them as they neared the houses. “Remember.”

  “Late?” Johnny said, frowning. He’d been wondering how they were going to explain returning so early. They’d only been gone for fifteen minutes or so.

  “It’s been about two hours,” Roberto said, as if reading his thoughts. “Our god doesn’t pay attention to our time.”

  They split up without saying goodbye, Johnny walking past his parents’ car up his Abuela’s driveway, the Orozcos continuing on to their house next door.

  Inside, his parents were waiting for him on the living room couch with big smiles on their faces. “We got Abuela a present,” his mom said. “Look.”

  A cable box sat atop the TV set.

  “Please give Abuela cable TV.”

  Maybe it was a god.

  He took the remote control his dad handed to him and flipped through channels, seeing movies, cartoon
s and television shows flash by.

  He smiled.

  ****

  Johnny actually started asking if he could stay overnight at Abuela’s. His parents thought it was because she now had cable—and that was definitely part of the reason, since she had a better package than they did. But what he really wanted was to see the neighborhood kids’ god again. And ask it for things.

  Over the next two months, he stayed overnight at his grandmother’s house three times. Once, the Orozcos’ parents were busy or incapacitated or something—Johnny never did get the story straight, although he was pretty sure Roberto and Miguel had something to do with it—and they met the other local kids in the abandoned house for their own ceremony. But the other two Sundays, he went with the entire Orozco family to mass. Afterward, he and the Orozco kids changed into play clothes and pretended that they were going to play basketball on the school playground. Instead, they gathered on the burnt floor around the loquat figure. There were other kids here with them this time, and Johnny wondered if different shifts of children came in and out all day.

  The god gave him a Sonic the Hedgehog videogame, straight As on his report card and his own TV and VCR for his bedroom.

  It was another month before he could go back again, and this time, the decaying figure was covered with fuzzy gray mold and had lost most of its shape. It looked like a mound of rotting garbage. The overpowering stench was more putrid than sweet now.

  “His season’s almost done,” Roberto said sadly as they entered the dark room.

  Johnny was confused. “So…your god’s dead?”

  “He’ll be back next year,” Miguel promised. “When the loquats are ripe.”

  It was true. They made their last requests of this season’s god, with a girl named Maria’s youngish aunt standing over the moldy form wearing a billowy skirt. The gnats swarmed up between her legs, she started laughing, and their wishes were granted. Next year, there was another loquat figure in place. Johnny had no idea who made it—and he never bothered to ask—but one Sunday morning, the Orozcos’ parents were sick again, and Roberto led them all to the house.

  There, in the center of the burnt floor, was the god.

  It was different this year. The shadow passing over the room was darker and brought with it the chill of winter. There was a manic edge to the laughter of the older girls who stood above the god and translated its words, a hint of desperation rather than joy in the sound. The granting of wishes no longer brought with it a sense of euphoria, but instead inspired a dull feeling of dread that the bill was going to come due for these acts of generosity and that its cost was going to be personal.

  Still, he continued to sit in the circle on the burnt floor, continued to ask the god for favors and presents. It was not that he wanted to—in fact there was a part of him that definitely did not want to—but visits to the god were what he did now, part of his life, and he saw no way of getting out of it.

  The god gave him a new bicycle, a trip to Disneyland.

  ****

  They moved away when he was in eighth grade.

  He thought of asking the god to let him stay, to not make his family move to Phoenix, but he was afraid to do so. There were glitches now in the way things worked, side-effects, and he was afraid that if he made that wish, the god would have his dad killed or something, that they would stay in Southern California but it would be because they had to stay, because some tragedy had befallen their family.

  Besides, even though he’d miss his school and his friends, part of him wanted to leave. It would give him a reason for getting away from the god, an excuse that was not his fault.

  So, he would not be punished.

  He was not sure when he had developed the certainty that the god would punish him for not attending its services when he stayed overnight at his grandmother’s, but it had been growing for some time, and Johnny had even hoped that there would be a blight on the loquat trees so the fruit would not grow this year, so the god could not be made.

  There’d been plenty of loquats, however, and even though he still had no idea who actually crafted the figure, the small form was in its usual place in the center of the burnt floor.

  There was no final encounter. He and his parents visited Abuela many times before they moved, but always together, and he did not stay overnight.

  When the movers had finally packed up and driven away with all of their furniture, and they were following in the car with the last and most personal of their belongings, heading across the desert to Arizona, Johnny actually experienced a sense of relief. Crossing the California border, he could almost feel the hold the god had over him waning. It was a small god after all, a local god, and its powers did not extend this far. Stopping for lunch at a hamburger joint, he smiled as he sat at the table eating with his parents, feeling free.

  He thought about it often, though, throughout high school, throughout college. Abuela died two years after they moved, and the trip back for her funeral was the one and only time he returned to East L.A. The Orozcos attended the funeral—they were her neighbors and her friends—but Johnny stuck close to his parents and other than a polite acceptance of condolences from Mr. and Mrs. Orozco, he avoided any contact with the family. Roberto, Miguel and Angelina all looked unhappy, he thought, and while most of that could probably be put down to the fact that they were attending their neighbor’s funeral, they also seemed thin and unhealthy, their faces drawn.

  He was glad his family had moved away.

  But he never stopped thinking of that small fruit figure in the abandoned house. Its bland blank form would occur to him at odd times, and he would remember the strange euphoria he’d initially felt upon having his wishes granted, and the way that feeling had gradually shifted to uneasy dread.

  The Bible was wrong, Johnny decided. It had it all backward. God hadn’t created people. People created God. Or gods. They came up with the ones they needed, and their need and belief gave those gods life. And power. It was the children of Abuela’s neighborhood, the ones offended by the Christian God’s cruelty to kids, who had come up with this alternative, this small handmade deity who granted their wishes. But something had happened somewhere along the line, and rather than just giving them what they wanted, it had begun taking from them. He had gotten out early and escaped, but he wondered what the ultimate effect had been on those kids who had continued to visit the burned room in that abandoned house.

  He did not do as well in college as he thought he would, and after graduation he ended up in a cubicle position rather than the job he really wanted. The ambitious girl he’d been dating dumped him, moving to Oregon to open a small business with a friend of hers. His parents were killed shortly after, faulty brakes on their car leading to a single-vehicle accident in the rain.

  It was a tough couple of years, but things eventually evened out. He didn’t love his job, but he got used to it, and he began going out with Susan, a data entry operator in his department. She was nice and kind, pleasant-tempered even if she wasn’t a great beauty, and they lived together for a few years before getting married. For the honeymoon, Susan wanted to go to California, to stay in a hotel by the beach and go to Disneyland and Universal Studios. They had coordinated their vacations so they could both have a week off, and he booked five nights at a hotel in Laguna Beach overlooking the ocean.

  In addition to doing touristy things, she wanted to see his childhood home, the place where he’d grown up, and he drove her down his old street in Orange, where new owners had let the lawn go and painted the house a hideous green.

  He stayed as far away as possible from East L.A.

  The honeymoon was fine, the marriage was fine. They bought a two-bedroom house in Mesa, and a few years later, they had a daughter. Susan wanted to name her Angelina. The name brought back bad memories for him—

  Angelina Orozco laying out a circle of newspapers on the burnt floor for them to sit upon

  —and he fought against it, but Angelina had been the name o
f Susan’s grandmother, and she felt so strongly about it that eventually he gave in.

  Angelina was a wonderful child. Smarter than both of them, more attractive than both of them, she was an enhanced combination of each of their very best qualities, and both Johnny and Susan loved her deeply and unconditionally.

  Which was why it was such a blow when they discovered that, at nine years old, she had somehow contracted a rare form of brain cancer.

  They had good health insurance, and there was a Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale that Angelina’s doctor referred them to, but the cancer she had was not one that responded easily to either chemo-therapy or radiation, and it was uncommon enough that there was no set course of treatment. The treatment she did undergo was aggressive and debilitating, and for two months after the diagnosis, she lived in the hospital. Sitting with her at night, after work, he would sometimes see stories on the news about sick children who raised money for the awareness of their disease by walking across country or opening a lemonade stand or collecting gifts for other sick children, and the stories always made him angry. Those feel-good puff pieces bore no relation to the reality of Angelina or the other kids on her ward, all of whom lay in bed day after day, suffering, while their parents tried to hold things together and go to work and keep their jobs and pay for the necessary treatment.

  Susan showed a heretofore unexpressed interest in religion, her sudden belief no doubt fostered by their circumstances. She started attending mass, not just on Sunday but every day, and she convinced Johnny to join her. He prayed with her, wished with all his heart that a cure would be found, that some miracle would reverse what was happening, but he had no faith that God would answer their pleas.

  This God.

  One night in the hospital chapel, looking up at a crucified Christ, a mother came in to pray, kneeling in the pew behind them. The perfume she wore was strong and somehow fruity, and it brought to mind the smell of another fruit, the scent of overripe loquats. He suddenly saw in his mind the small figure in the empty room, remembering the times it had granted his wishes, recalling the sense of power that had gone through him, gone through the room, accompanied by that elusive shadow. He heard the laughter of the teenage girls as they stood over the small god and gnats swarmed up their skirts.