The Water Museum Page 10

  After the street vanished, my view of El Yauco was clear and unobstructed. El Yauco is the mountain that stands across the Baluarte from Rosario. The top of it looks like the profile of John F. Kennedy in repose. The only flaw in this geographic wonder is that the nose is upside down.

  Once, when Jaime and I had painfully struggled to the summit to investigate the nose, we found this message:

  MOTHER NATURE HAS NO RESPECT FOR YANQUI

  PRESIDENTS EITHER!

  Nothing, though, could prepare us for the furor over his next series of messages. It began with a piglet running through town one Sunday. On its flanks, in perfect cursive script:

  MENDOZA GOES TO HEAVEN ON TUESDAY

  On a fence:

  MENDOZA ESCAPES THIS HELLHOLE

  On my father’s car:

  I’VE HAD ENOUGH!

  I’M LEAVING!

  Rumors flew. For some reason, the arguments were fierce, impassioned, and there were any number of fistfights over Mr. Mendoza’s latest. Was he going to kill himself? Was he dying? Was he to be abducted by flying saucers or carried aloft by angels? The people who were convinced the old MENDOZA NEVER SLEPT HERE was a strictly philosophical text were convinced he was indeed going to commit suicide. There was a secret that showed in their faces—they were actually hoping he’d kill himself, just to maintain the status quo, just to ensure that everyone died.

  Rumors about Mendoza’s health washed through town: cancer, madness (well, we all knew that), demonic possession, the evil eye, a black magic curse that included love potions and slow-acting poisons, and the dreaded syphilis. Some of the local smart alecks called the whorehouse “Heaven,” but Mr. Mendoza was far too moral to even go in there, much less advertise it all over town.

  I worked in Crispin’s bar, taking orders and carrying trays of beer bottles. I heard every theory. The syphilis one really appealed to me because young fellows always love the gruesome and lurid, and it sounded so nasty, having to do, as it did, with the nether regions.

  “Syphilis makes it fall off,” Jaime explained.

  I didn’t want him to know I wasn’t sure which “it” fell off, if it was it, or some other “it.” To be macho, you must already know everything, know it so well that you’re already bored by the knowledge.

  “Yes,” I said, wearily, “it certainly does.”

  “Right off,” he marveled.

  “To the street,” I concluded.

  Well, that very night, that night of the Heavenly Theories, Mr. Mendoza came into the bar. The men stopped all their arguing and immediately taunted him: “Oh look! Saint Mendoza is here!” “Hey, Mendoza! Seen any angels lately?” He only smirked. Then, squaring his slender shoulders, he walked, erect, to the bar.

  “Boy,” he said to me. “A beer.”

  As I handed him the bottle, I wanted to confess: I will change my ways! I will never peep at girls again!

  He turned and faced the crowd and gulped down his beer, emptying the entire bottle without coming up for air. When the last of the foam ran from its mouth, he slammed the bottle on the counter and said, “Ah!” Then he belched. Loudly. This greatly offended the gathered men, and they admonished him. But he ignored them, crying out, “What do you think of that! Eh? The belch is the cry of the water buffalo, the hog. I give it to you because it is the only philosophy you can understand!”

  More offended still, the crowd began to mumble.

  Mr. Mendoza turned to me and said, “I see there are many wiggly feet present.”

  “The man’s insane,” said Crispin.

  Mr. Mendoza continued: “Social change and the nipping at complacent buttocks was my calling on earth. Who among you can deny that I and my brush are a perfect marriage? Who among you can hope to do more with a brush than I?”

  He pulled the brush from under his coat. Several men shied away.

  “I tell you now,” he said. “Here is the key to Heaven.”

  He nodded to me once, and strode toward the door. Just before he passed into the night he said, “My work is finished.”

  * * *

  Tuesday morning we were up at dawn. Jaime had discovered a chink in fat Antonia’s new roof. Through it, we could look down into her bedroom. We watched her dress. She moved in billows, like a meaty raincloud. “In a way,” I whispered, “it has its charm.”

  “A bountiful harvest,” Jaime said condescendingly.

  After this ritual, we climbed down to the street. We heard the voices, saw people heading for the town square. Suddenly, we remembered. “Today!” we cried in unison.

  The ever-growing throng was following Mr. Mendoza. His startling shock of white hair was bright against his dark skin. He wore a dusty black suit, his funeral suit. He walked into a corner of the square, knelt down, and pried the lid off a fresh can of paint. He produced the paintbrush with a flourish and held it up for all to see. There was an appreciative mumble from the crowd, a smattering of applause. He turned to the can, dipped the brush in the paint. There was a hush. Mr. Mendoza painted a black swirl on the flagstones. He went around and around with the legendary brush, filling in the swirl until it was a solid black O. Then with a grin, with a virtuoso’s mastery, he jerked his brush straight up, leaving a solid, glistening pole of wet paint standing in the air. We gasped. We clapped. Mr. Mendoza painted a horizontal line, connected to the first at a ninety-degree angle. We cheered. We whistled. He painted up, across, up, across, until he was reaching over his head. It was obvious soon enough. We applauded again, this time with feeling. Mr. Mendoza turned to look at us and waved once—whether in farewell or terse dismissal we’ll never know—then raised one foot and placed it on the first horizontal. No, we said. He stepped up. Fat Antonia fainted. The boys all tried to look up her dress when she fell, but Jaime and I were very macho because we’d seen it already. Still, Mr. Mendoza rose. He painted his way up, the angle of the stairway carrying him out of the plazuela and across town, over Bonifacio’s crumbling church, over the cemetery where he had never slept and would apparently never sleep. Crispin did good business selling beers to the crowd. Mr. Mendoza, now small as a high-flying crow, climbed higher, over the Baluarte and its deadly bridge, over El Yauco and Kennedy’s inverted nose, almost out of sight. The stairway wavered like smoke in the breeze. People were getting bored, and they began to wander off, back to work, back to the rumors. That evening, Jamie and I went back to fat Antonia’s roof.

  It happened on June fifth of that year. That night, at midnight, the rains came. By morning, the paint had washed away.

  Eight

  The White Girl

  2 Short was a tagger from down around 24th Street. He hung with the Locos de Veinte set, though he freelanced as much as he banged. His tag was a cloudy blue-silver goth II-SHT, and it went out on freight trains and trucks all over the fucking place. His tag was, like, sailing through Nebraska and some shit like that. Out there, famous, large.

  2 Short lived with his pops in that rundown house on W. 20th. That one with the black iron spears for a fence. The old-timer feeds shorties sometimes when they don’t have anywhere to go—kids like Li’l Wino and Jetson. 2 Short’s pops is a veterano. Been in jail a few times, been on the street, knows what it’s like. He wants 2 Short to stay in school, but hey, what you gonna do? The vatos do what they got to do.

  2 Short sometimes hangs in the backyard. He’s not some nature pussy or nothing, but he likes the yard. Likes the old orange tree. The nopal cactus his pops cuts up and fries with eggs. 2 Short studies shit like birds and butterflies, tries to get their shapes and their colors in his tag book. Hummingbirds.

  Out behind their yard is that little scrapyard on 23rd. That one that takes up a block one way and about two blocks the other. Old, too. Cars in there been rusting out since ’68. Gutierrez, the old dude runs the place, he’s been scrapping the same hulks forever. Chasing kids out of there with a BB gun. Ping! Right in the ass!

  2 Short always had too much imagination. He was scared to death of Gutiérrez’
s little kingdom behind the fence. All’s you could see was the big tractor G used to drag wrecks around. The black oily crane stuck up like the stinger of the monsters in the sci-fi movies on channel 10. The Black Scorpion and shit.

  The fence was ten feet tall, slats. Had some discolored rubber stuff woven in, like pieces of lawn furniture or something. 2 Short could only see little bits of the scary wrecks in there if he pressed his eye to the fence and squinted.

  One day he just ran into the fence with his bike and one of those rotten old slats fell out and there it was—a passageway into the yard. He looked around, made sure Pops wasn’t watching, listened to make sure G wasn’t over there, and he slipped through.

  Damn. There were wrecked cars piled on top of each other. It was eerie. Crumpled metal. Torn-off doors. Busted glass. He could see stars in the windshields where the heads had hit. Oh man—peeps died in here, homes.

  2 Short crept into musty dead cars and twisted the steering wheels.

  He came to a crunched ’71 Charger. The seats were twisted and the dash was ripped out. Was that blood? On the old seat? Oh man. He ran his hand over the faded stain. Blood.

  He found her bracelet under the seat. Her wrist must have been slender. It was a little gold chain with a little blue stone heart. He held it in his palm. Chick must have croaked right here.

  He stared at the starred windshield. The way it was pushed out around the terrible cracks. Still brown. More blood. And then the hair.

  Oh shit—there was hair in strands still stuck to the brown stains and the glass. Long blond strands of hair. They moved in the breeze. He touched them. He pulled them free. He wrapped them around his finger.

  That night, he rubbed the hairs over his lips. He couldn’t sleep. He kept thinking of the white girl. She was dead. How was that possible? How could she be dead?

  He held the bracelet against his face. He lay with the hair against his cheek.

  When he went out to tag two nights later, 2 Short aborted his own name. Die Hard and Arab said, “Yo, what’s wrong with you?”

  But he only said, “The white girl.”

  “What white girl, yo?”

  But he stayed silent. He uncapped the blue. He stood in front of the train car. THE WHITE GIRL. He wrote. It went out to New York. He sent it out to Mexico, to Japan on a container ship. THE WHITE GIRL.

  He wrote it and wrote it. He sent it out to the world. He prayed with his can. He could not stop.

  THE WHITE GIRL.

  THE WHITE GIRL.

  THE WHITE GIRL.

  Nine

  Young Man Blues

  It sounded like a vacation spot: Pelican Bay.

  But it was the opposite of that, and Joey’s dad was going to be spending the next thirty-five years there in a cage. He’d left all his shit behind, and Joey spent his free time in the garage, sorting it out. Free time—what a laugh. Most of his time was free. That was part of the problem, though Joey knew his real job was keeping Moms afloat. When his dad went down, Moms got a tattoo right on her collarbone: WYATT. She cried alone when she thought Joey wasn’t listening. Crying and the clinking of ice in her highball glass—Joey’s lullaby.

  Wyatt’s stuff, the detritus of a lifetime, musty cardboard and paper feeding silverfish in the garage. Records and a turntable. Who had record players anymore? But the old man had loved his Technics turntable and his Infinity speakers that were almost as tall as Joey. And his cassette deck with wack faders so you could make suave mixtapes where the tunes seemed to swell out of each other. Joey had the stereo stacked at the foot of his bed, and he dragged in records from the garage, where the old man kept them with his 1936 Indian Chief motorcycle. It leaned on its kickstand beneath the swastika flag—red and black and white and chrome under a couple of LED spotlights. The Indian-head light on the front fender was startling orange.

  Joey hated taking the bus everywhere, but he was still too scared to try the big bike. Pops used to tell him it was alive, the knucklehead motor super-tuned and possessed by a speed devil. He’d ridden on it tucked in behind the old man—the bitch seat, Pops called it, though it was Moms who rode there, and he’d take down any fool who called her that. The old man’s club colors would flap around in the wind and slap Joey in the face until he cried—the wind sucking his breath out from between his teeth, the whole world seeming to tip when Pops leaned into a curve, the roar moving up his ass into his gut and jetting up his spine till he thought he might lose the top of his head. It was a monster. Besides, it had a stick shift. Who’d ever seen a motorcycle with a stick shift?

  All these records nobody’d ever heard of. But Pops said this was real music. This was real soul right here, real class, and anybody worth a damn would spin these disks and see the light. The black light, ha, am I right, Jo-Jo? Right, Dad. Study this shit like literature: Mose Allison, Blue Cheer, Three Man Army, SRC, Doug Kershaw, Bo Diddley.

  I’m just twenty-two and I don’t mind dyin’.

  Muddy Waters, Electric Prunes, Aorta, Spirit, Crowbar.

  “Living in the past, son. I’m just living in the past.”

  “I hear ya, Pops,” Joey’d say.

  He knew that was just an old Jethro Tull song.

  Among the daggers and guns was some inexplicable stuff. Joey thought all of it was way-cool: cow skulls, a jackalope, a Mr. Bill bendable action figure, an eighteen-inch Alien figurine, a talking Pinhead doll from Hellraiser. He left the guns but put the toys in his room with the stereo.

  * * *

  Joey got up as usual at 6:30 and put on the coffeepot for his mom. She was dogged out every night from serving cocktails at the Catamaran. She had to step lively—the girls coming in behind her were young and hard and she was showing the miles, as she often said. She was still hot, his friends told him, which pretty much made him gag.

  He heated up the coffee and cooked up a pan of oatmeal. He watched her sleeping on the couch, the TV turned on—her plasma night-light. Joey snuck her pack of Newports off the table and took them out to the trash can in back and covered them with the newspaper. The morning was all yellow and blue—sea air snapped in cold and salty. A lone gull looking tragic hung above him as if on a wire. Doves screwed in the palm trees with ridiculous rattling. A mockingbird dive-bombed Hobbes the tomcat. Back inside, Joey emptied the ashtray and poured out her hooch bottle before waking her.

  He had work today. He was starting to like the job. It was at Mrs. Filgate’s house. The lady who used to work with Grandma at the Broadway. Nice lady—sold china. Little cups with pictures of German villages and shit on them.

  On Mondays she had late shift, so she had to stay at the store until 9:00. This was no big deal, except she was married to this ancient dude—Freddie Filgate. Like, fifty years older than her or something. So Joey went to the Filgate house on the edge of Tecolote Canyon and worked on the yard all day. Then he sat with Mr. Filgate at night, made him his hot dogs and beans and watched the news and stuff until Mrs. Filgate came home and paid him $30. He’d take his money and walk a mile or so to the Dunkin’ Donuts shop and visit with Sherri, the donut gal. Sooner or later he’d call one of his buds or Moms and they would drive by and pick him up.

  Here’s the great thing he loved about Freddie Filgate: he was so old he couldn’t remember anyone’s name, so he called everyone Willie. That cracked Joey up so bad: Willie. Reminded him of that record Pops had: Willy and the Poor Boys. It was hilarious. He liked being somebody else for a day.

  * * *

  Big Brother and the Holding Company, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Nazareth, Sabbath.

  He was gentle with his mother. He took her big toe in his fingers and shook her leg. Purple nail polish, toe rings, ankle bracelet. Freakin’ Moms thought she was still a cheerleader at Clairemont High. She had a butterfly tattooed on her ankle, too. In memory of the baby she’d miscarried after Joey was born. His phantom sister.

  “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, baby,” he sang. “Dontcha know I love you?”

  She stretched, yawne
d, opened her eyes. Put her hand over her mouth. Her eyes darted to the table, but her ciggies were gone. Bottle, too. Fleeting guilty smile.

  “Jo-Jo,” she said. “That was your dad’s favorite song.”

  Joey nodded. He knew all about the old man’s favorite songs. There were only about 1,347 of them.

  “Got your gruel on the stove,” he said. “Butter and syrup, right?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Raisins?”

  “Yum.”

  She propped herself up with pillows—there was a red crease down her cheek like a scar. Her makeup was smeared. Moms had smearing eyes.

  She turned up Matt Lauer with the remote as Joey brought her the steaming bowl and her coffee.

  “You’re a good boy.”

  “I know it.”

  “Got work today?”

  “Yup.”

  “You be polite to Mr. Filgate.”

  “I will.”

  “They’re good people.”

  Unlike us, he knew, was the hidden message in that particular comment. Well, he was cutting that happy crappy off at the pass. He thought they were all right. Not perfect, but fuck it.

  “For sure,” he said.

  He put on his army coat. He’d painted the RAF bull’s-eye on the back like The Who. He shoved his old man’s Walkman deep in the pocket. Mixtapes in his other pocket. At least it had earbuds. People would think it was an iPod. He wiggled his mom’s celly at her. She nodded. He slipped it in his back pocket. “Don’t booty-dial me this time,” she said.

  He gave Moms a quick smooch and headed for the door.

  “Honey?” she called.