by Jon Pineda
“I love eggs.”
“Well, we don’t have any eggs.”
Exequiel laughed.
“Do you like cereal?” the boy said.
“No,” Exequiel said. “I don’t.”
“Well, that’s too bad. That’s all we have.”
“How long have you been playing?” Exequiel said, sliding the rook across the chessboard.
Wendell took his pawn and moved it five spaces. Exequiel could see rules meant nothing to this boy.
“I haven’t been playing long, just my whole life,” the boy yawned.
“Well, I can tell,” Exequiel said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Without waiting for Exequiel to make a next move, the boy picked up his king and slid the piece five spaces. He placed the king alongside the pawn he had just moved.
“That’s his dad,” Wendell said. “They go everywhere together.”
“Oh,” Exequiel said. He nodded, a serious expression.
The boy told him that the chess set had belonged to his grandfather, who had been a firefighter and had died. He was quick to explain that his grandfather didn’t die being a smoke jumper.
“He was lucky,” the boy said. “He died from being old.”
Exequiel didn’t know what a smoke jumper was, but thought perhaps it had to do with the circus. As the boy spoke, Exequiel’s mind wandered to a time when he had seen one. He had been amazed to watch a woman swallow swords. A bald, heavyset man had danced around the ring and breathed fire. The air in front of the audience filled with white plumes of smoke.
Maybe this man had been a smoke jumper?
“What’s that anyway?” Exequiel said.
“What?”
“Smoke jumper.”
“I don’t really know,” the boy said without looking up. He put his finger on top of another pawn’s helmet and didn’t take it off.
“Maybe your mom knows?” Exequiel said.
“I should hope so,” the boy said. “It was her father after all.”
“We should ask her.”
“Good luck,” the boy said. “She’s secretive.”
“What does that mean? Secretive.”
“I don’t know,” the boy said. “Grandmarsha likes to use that word.”
The boy spoke with a trained solemnity, but then couldn’t hold back any longer. He started laughing, baring his smile. Exequiel could see the teeth were coming in crooked.
“There’s another way you can play this game, but you can’t move the pieces around so much. Did you know that?” Exequiel said.
The boy stopped smiling.
“I didn’t mean to offend you,” Exequiel said.
“You didn’t offend me,” the boy said.
“I think I did.”
“No.”
Wendell called for his mother, who was in the back of the house. She yelled back, asking him what he wanted. He wanted to tell her this man could leave their house now. How long was he going to stay anyway?
He was angry at his mother and at himself.
Did this man think for one minute he was going to come in here and change the rules of this game? Did he not realize that the chessboard had been a gift from his grandfather?
Was this man, whatever his stupid name meant, so stupid that he didn’t understand how things worked around here? Was he really that stupid?
When Exequiel returned to the house, it was early evening. The day still clung to his clothes. Sweat and sawdust and plaster mix. He could taste the chemical tinge on the back of his tongue. He couldn’t help thinking there was something about this work, after all was said and done, that was bad for the body. He’d give it a few more weeks, tops.
Wendell was in the front yard throwing a baseball in the air. A bat lay on the ground next to him. His grandmother sat in a busted chair on the front porch and leaned over and tapped her ashes into an empty glass. She cut her eyes at Exequiel as he approached.
“Would you like some tea?” she said. “I just made some.”
“Thank you,” he said.
He had almost said it in Spanish. Not that it would have been bad to have done so. Elle’s mother had told him, on numerous occasions, that he reminded her of the actor Ricardo Montalban. He never admitted he didn’t know who that was.
“Wend, would you want some tea?” she said to the boy.
Wendell nodded, watching the ball fall down from the sky. It went through his hands and bounced on the ground. She didn’t say anything else and went inside.
“You want me to throw some to you,” Exequiel said, “so you can hit?”
“Sure,” Wendell said.
Exequiel was surprised.
“Make sure you put some pepper on it,” the boy said as he picked up the ball and tossed it to him.
Exequiel caught the ball and stared at it.
“Where do I put this pepper?” he said.
The boy laughed.
“Are you kidding me?” he said. “Really?”
Exequiel smiled. “I got you.”
“Actually, it’s just gotcha,” the boy said.
“Okay,” Exequiel said. “Gotcha.”
“See?” the boy said. “Doesn’t that just sound right?”
When they fought, Exequiel became silent. He had figured out early that she had been used to men who made a habit of yelling at her and making her feel stupid. Exequiel didn’t want to be that kind of person for her. So he listened. When she got frustrated, she said, “Oh, for fuck’s sake, would you please just say something?”
It would be as if he had been waiting his entire life to be told to speak. He would try to fill the spaces of silence with every word in this language that he was still learning. He would try not to think about the boy Wendell in the room down the hall, who was probably pressing his ear to the door so he could hear anything, something, and Exequiel knew that whatever he said would be heard by both of them, Wendell and Marsha, and so he tried to say things that could have multiple meanings, multiple lives.
Spaces of silence became the spaces in the boy’s smile. The teeth coming in at last had forced others out of their way. He was a good kid. Exequiel felt that even though the father had not been a part of the boy’s life—Wendell confessing once to him that he wouldn’t know his father if the man fell from the sky and landed on the house—he would grow up to be good person. Already the boy would not speak ill of the man who had abandoned him and his mother. The man who, Elle later explained, had left in the middle of the night—going to the store for cigarettes and bacon, of all things—and never come back.
To her disgust, Joshua still called the house, but only to ask how the boy was doing. Marsha would speak with him. She was pleasant the entire time. Afterward Elle and her mother would argue. The boy knew each time that it was his father calling the house. It was his father who continued to cause trouble.
Arecent fight had come about because Exequiel had answered the phone. It was supposed to be a joke. He was trying to make Wendell laugh, especially with the way he spoke into the receiver, disguising his accent and sounding, he thought, like someone from England.
When the voice on the other end asked for Marsha, Exequiel paused.
Elle stood in front of him holding out her hand for the phone. He cupped it and told her the call was for her mother.
“Who is it?” Elle said. “Let me talk to him.”
“Hold on,” Exequiel said to her.
Wendell watched from the table. He started smirking and stabbing into the mound of macaroni and cheese on his plate.
“Who is it, do I say, is calling this house?” Exequiel said. He knew he was making a mess of this attempt.
“Who is this?” the voice said.
“Who is this?” Exequiel countered.
He didn’t like this person’s tone.
“Give me the phone,” Elle said. She reached for the phone, but Exequiel dodged her grasp. The voice said something that Exequiel couldn’t make out.
“I’m sorry
,” Exequiel said. “What did you say?”
“I said I’m your worst fucking nightmare, you spic motherfucker,” the voice said.
Wendell was laughing now. It was a funny expression on Exequiel’s face.
Elle looked at her son. She yelled for him to stop egging him on, as if Exequiel were a child. A boy again.
The voice on the other end only said, “I know you’re still there. I can hear you breathing.”
Months later, she wouldn’t tell him where she got the camera. A gift was all she said it was and played it off until he stopped inquiring. Some nights she had to get away, to get out of her head. She left him at the house with the boy and her mother, who stayed in the back room unless there was a show on that she liked and only then would she come out into the living room to talk with Exequiel, keeping her Bible close, tucked under her arm.
Days when Exequiel could sleep in, he didn’t. He would wake before they did and would walk outside and water the plants in the backyard. There were a few Elle kept in large terra-cotta pots.
Inside the kitchen, along the window where he had set aside a coffee can filled with dirt and planted coriander, he plucked fan-shaped leaves of cilantro and ran them under water and patted them dry. There were eggs in the refrigerator and a large overripe tomato on the counter that he would dice and mix along with the fresh herb for an omelet. He had lit the gas burner and was bringing a pan down onto the palm of blue flames when he felt a flash of light against the side of his face.
Elle stood there with the new camera. A small card of papered film started rolling out like a robotic tongue. She grabbed it by the bottom border and shook it out in front of him. She laughed when she looked at it. She said she had never seen a man cook for anyone other than himself.
“You think this is for you?” Exequiel joked.
She walked up close to him and set the camera and the picture down together and slipped her hands under his T-shirt and started rubbing him, making sure not to go anywhere near the smooth pits of flesh above his chest and behind the same shoulder. Making sure not to insinuate, with her fingertips, that direction in the least.
She had done so once by mistake and heard him gasp, but just barely.
She realized, when she had finally seen his body in the light, that his scars were old and long a part of him in the same way her father’s fingers had melted together, fused within her memory.
Exequiel reached for the camera. He asked her if she would smile for him. It was a question she found endearing, that he would put it this way, asking for permission. When she smiled, he hesitated, suddenly surprised. He slowly brought down the camera. There was her body in full view. And happiness that was wholly their own. He would take more pictures of her, of course, but it was this one moment that would never quite fade for him. The way her mouth eventually fell into an evenness. An expression between a kind of joy and regret.
He had kissed her fingertips and tried not to drag his foot as he walked over to the cupboard and took out some plates and spooned portions for the two of them, covering what was left in the pan for the boy and for the grandmother, both of them still asleep.
“I heard some guys at the store the other day,” she said between bites. “They were talking about an opening at the phone company. That’s rare, you know.”
“Doing what?” Exequiel said.
“Putting up cables, I think.”
“Cables?”
“The long phone lines.”
“Oh.”
He still looked confused.
“Haven’t you ever seen guys do that? Hanging up there on poles?” she said.
“I don’t know.”
“It would be something permanent,” she said.
He looked at her.
“Most people who get on with the company do pretty well for themselves.”
“I don’t know about that,” Exequiel said.
“I’d think you’d be good at it. You just have to be a good climber, I’m guessing.”
He took another bite of his food and then looked at her again, but differently, in a way that made her think that he had never seen her before in his life.
“What?” she said.
“Permanente.”
“Yes, permanent.”
Wendell came walking into the kitchen. His hair was a mess of tangles. He’d had a fitful night of dreaming. He yawned and peered at the two of them staring back.
“I could use some coffee,” the boy said.
He laughed at his own joke.
“I’m sure you could,” Elle said looking away from her son. “You could use a lot of things.”
Before he could be made permanent, Exequiel had to prove himself on the job. There was other paperwork to clear, but first things first, they told him. They enrolled him in a class for pole climbing. They called it working aloft.
He didn’t think he would be able to do such a thing, but it turned out, so long as he took his time and was careful, his body would respond. It would allow him to ascend with each controlled step.
They trained him to use an extension ladder. The swiveled hooks on the top end held what was called the fly section of the ladder in place, along a strand of coiled metal wire. On either side of this strand were telephone poles. The training yard was filled with patches of mulch for cushion in case trainees fell. The poles weeping creosote and other carcinogens made the inside of Exequiel’s throat burn, but he didn’t want to say anything for fear of being ridiculed.
Once, placing the ladder midspan, he climbed as high as the ladder would go. There was nothing in front of him. Above, there were few clouds left, textured with distance. Exequiel tested the strand with the voltage meter, placing the sharp tip against the coiled wire. Then he went on to loop his leather harness belt through the side of the ladder. The strand wavered slightly. His body tensed.
“You’re doing fine,” his trainer yelled from the ground.
Exequiel exhaled slowly. He slipped the hook onto the metal D ring, there on the other side of the thick belt. Of all things to be in his mind, he was surprised he could hear the boy’s voice telling him it was all right. That yes, he knew he was afraid, but there was a reason he was doing all of this, and the boy was thankful for it. He understood that Exequiel had traded out one fear for another.
The boy was, he needed Exequiel to know, aware of such sacrifice.
Then he drew comparisons to the lessons Exequiel had already taught him. About the pawn and the knight and the bishop and the rook. The queen, the most powerful piece on the chessboard, could move endlessly in any direction, while the king, of course, was the vital piece that limped along one space at a time. Everything was a sequence that worked toward trapping the king.
To keep him from moving any further.
“Check yourself,” the trainer yelled from the ground.
Exequiel had belted in, but the ladder was starting to slide to the left. He leaned forward when he shouldn’t have. The ladder slid quickly to the right. His body seized up again. His legs were frozen near one of the top rungs. He suddenly grabbed hold of the strand with both hands and took another breath.
There was nothing in front of him.
That night, he lay in bed and Elle rubbed his legs.
“You can do this,” she said. “I know you can do it.”
She let go of his left leg and moved slowly up and down on the right one. He tried to breathe through it. He winced, forcing his head to stay on the pillow. Even though he had showered and brushed his teeth, in his mouth was a trace of creosote. He felt as if he had spent the day chewing on the tar-colored glaze.
“They tell me tomorrow we gaff,” he said.
“What is that?” she said. “What does that mean?”
“Something to do with hooks and braces.”
“Hooks?”
She placed her hands firmly on both of his legs. She wanted to keep them from moving.
“They have these metal things they strap to your legs,” he said. “I s
aw a man doing this before we left the yard. He scraped up the pole, sinking the hooks in with each step. I had never seen anyone do that in my life, not really climb like that.”
A knock came at the bedroom door. They could hear Wendell’s muffled voice asking if he could come in and see what they were doing. Elle laughed at her son’s candor. He went on to admit he was angry Grandmarsha wasn’t letting him watch The Love Boat.
“Do you mind if we let him in for a little while?” she said.
“Let me put on a shirt,” Exequiel said.
Before he could finish getting dressed, Elle opened the door. Exequiel stood there, bare-chested and in his thin boxers. Wendell looked at him with eyes swollen and red.
“What happened to your shoulder?” the boy said.
Exequiel glanced at Elle.
She quickly changed the subject. Exequiel pulled on a new T-shirt and started to leave the room. He could hear Elle telling Wendell it was time he started watching how he spoke to others, especially grown-ups. Exequiel could end up staying for good, and what did he think about that?
She brushed the bangs out of Wendell’s eyes. The boy still looked sad. She was whispering to him that if he wanted, he could call Exequiel Dad. She thought it might be nice if he did. She asked him what he thought of that.
Down the hall, Exequiel passed the boy’s room. There was the chessboard. All of its pieces in place. Between the two sides, a field of empty squares.
The telephone poles had been trees. He tried to imagine them rising out of dirt and bursting, their canopies green and lush. In the training yard, his group studied the class and sizing of each pole.
Elle had told him about her father’s stories. Mostly the times the man had parachuted into forests as they burned. Exequiel tried picturing how the trees filled the air with their burning. The smell of smoke cast out for miles on end.
During the middle of the final week, training had ended early, and he was looking forward to getting home and showering. Maybe nap before she finished her shift. One of the guys from the class had dropped him off on the main road, a few blocks from the neighborhood. Exequiel was grateful, though his legs were tired.
