Tijuana Book of the Dead Read online

  Vicious Wetbacks would rise and the army would hand out arms

  at Wabash

  & Imperial and say boys do your best for your wives and

  your God!

  The whole shitball would go up and no more taxes, man, no

  more gas bill, no more

  little bitty drinking problem, no more lump in the

  breast, no more supervisor

  (The Snoopervisor), no more fat son failing Math, no

  more angry tv dinners

  where you can’t look your wife in the eye and she has prayed

  for absolution

  for praying that today your truck will meet a semi head-on

  and you will burn. No more hoping. Al will say

  something nice

  when you rent the ball & the hours will pass & you don’t look

  up in the corner where the old Charlies with their baggy old

  man pants, their

  fedoras even though fedoras are square baby, with their fat

  drooping guts,

  with their hairy old ears their bleary old eyes, their bad old

  breath, their huge

  bobbling old man balls hanging in brown lumps between their

  splayed legs

  as they smoke and sleep and watch you. What

  are they nodding about? What

  do those old men know?

  Those old men know everything

  about nothing.

  It could have been a factory. A place for eaters of government

  cheese. A place

  for high-haired women w/ aluminum five pound can of welfare

  peanut butter

  on their breath. The holy old Charlies come from their sagging

  roominghouse beds

  whose grandfathers fought in the Civil War, whose fathers fell

  into the thresher

  near Fargo and had their left legs plucked free like chaff, whose

  mothers remembered

  Apaches in the hills and the poor Mexicans they

  roasted alive.

  Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver, It’s A Beautiful Day,

  Blue Cheer.

  And there goes Al on his lunch break, throwing a few frames on

  lane 6.

  He doesn’t go for that sky blue ball, that’s for goddamn queers:

  his ball’s

  a heavy black & he keeps it polished like a mirrored skull: he

  rolls a pure wad

  of midnight, cabrones! That man can roll him a friggin’ strike,

  the Charlies say:

  he shoots that bitch right down the off-side arrow etched in

  the wood he

  himself polishes three times a day, and that ball

  goes like a rocket right at the #2 pin in the formation

  & they scatter like phone poles in a twister. Gone.

  Wasn’t a split made that man couldn’t score.

  Overhead, the chart always said: X X X XXXX.

  3.

  The grimy glass doors part and the sunsplash makes the

  hungover guys

  hunched over their chili bowls at the formica counter

  squint: red

  stools squeal as they pivot away from the light: & here

  she comes,

  that gas station cowgirl, & she has Nancy Sinatra’s hairdo & she

  has white

  go-go boots & Deep Purple is singing “Hush” and she has

  a checked

  mini skirt & a Tootsie Roll Pop in her mouth & Al smiles

  when she

  moves it to one side of her grin w/ her tongue & wiggles

  three fingers

  at him & I’m looking at her

  from the seats above lane 3. Big dark eyelashes glued on &

  turquoise eyelids.

  And she has pink lipstick & pink nails & pink tights & pink

  cheeks flushing when

  my old man lights her cigarette (sucker now on the counter

  stuck to the glass

  w/ her sweet spit) & pink nipples under her pink bra & pink

  blouse & she’s

  all the way pink & he puts a pair of 4’s on the deck and locks

  down the register

  & waltzes her down to the lane. Her ball bag is customized w/

  her name in

  plastic gems.

  She needs to lose ten pounds.

  No no, he says. Ah, God, you’re perfect.

  I’m not.

  You’re sweet as peaches he says, taking her ball out for her,

  thinking

  about what James Bond could do w/ this girl. Sherbet, she says

  (that’s her

  husband) tells me I’m fat—I hate to look at your ass, he says, and

  she ducks her head.

  Well, he’s crazy. And anyone who would call that beauty (little

  pat on the rump) such a

  crude name is a fool. And

  he

  deserves

  what

  he gets.

  Oh Al.

  • • •

  Take the ball firmly in hand. Here, like this. That’s right.

  Now hold it right in front, elevate a little, closer to your . . . bust.

  Al!

  Now, let me get in tight behind you.

  Yes?

  Settle back into me.

  Yes.

  Let’s take our strides and let the ball go. Aim it . . .

  there.

  And they step off, he’s right behind her, and she swings

  her arm back

  & she lets the ball go, & her thumb makes a loud suction POP! as

  it comes loose

  & the ball hits the deck like a shotput: BANG!

  but it rolls, it rolls, and she cries

  bad at this, Al & he says: Don’t worry my dear there’s a first time

  for all of us

  so let’s gather ourselves & roll another ball & this time let’s

  pay attention

  to the little arrow painted on the lane & to our follow-through

  & don’t

  bend your wrist to the left like that & the whole time

  he’s thinking about getting close to her pinkness

  again.

  My mother never saw the Hillcrest Bowl.

  4.

  Mr. Clean said One thing you never run shy of is stupid sons

  of bitches.

  He was the day manager. First shaved head I ever saw. And

  the first

  man named Wally. And there’s a damn sight too many dumb fucks

  rat cheer at the Bowl.

  Steve Miller Band, Amboy Dukes, Sons of Champlin,

  Cold Blood.

  • • •

  My old man learned English from these sons.

  He learned a Pall Mall was a smoke, a coffin nail, a cancer stick.

  Or was it a coughin’ nail? The hex of the lexicon for the

  Mexican, vexed.

  On the rocks.

  How’s it hangin’.

  Hardly workin’!

  What can I do you for?

  I’m good. You?

  Look at the ass on that.

  Can’t complain.

  My achin’ feet.

  I could eat a horse.

  Making love.

  Hard-on.

  Make that a double.

  Easy rider.

  Got a light?

  The hell you say!

  Swordsman.

  • • •

  Easy ice.

  5.

  My old man never said “groovy.”

  No one who ever entered the Hillcrest Bowl

  ever said a word like that.

  As an auxiliary text

  they called him wetback. Har

  hardee. That’s not

  funny, jack, calling

  a man that. Oh don’t

  go getting your panties

  in a bunch, said
<
br />   Shitkick Sherbet

  doing a Saturday night

  away from his Shell,

  watching his gal

  roll gutter balls &

  doing Southern

  Comfort & Coke

  w/ three cherries &

  a pair of skinny

  straws: you can’t take things

  so hard, you Mexicans! And

  call me Tex. Tex Sherbet.

  That’s as good

  a name as any w/ which

  to betray his small cancer ghost

  smoked out to 90 pounds of bones

  & coughing, a name

  my old man could betray

  w/ Mrs. Sherbet because he

  hated Texas.

  Texas

  &

  Taxes!

  Al, that’s rich.

  She was probably at my house

  while I was at school & my mom

  was at work & Tex Sherbet, black

  oil half moons etched under nails, pores

  grimed up w/ STP & Camel smoke,

  fingers sliced on fans & belts & nails

  split on sonsabitching lugnuts

  lay back coughing black breath

  into a sunny San Diego ward

  w/ tubes up his nose & in

  his jugular & a bad

  flipperty b&w tv mounted

  on a bracket—the old

  guys watching Bob Dale’s

  Million Dollar Movie on

  channel 8—ol’ Shitkick wishing

  for another smoke as

  he died.

  Her panties smelled

  like flowers

  as they peeled down

  to slow dance in the shower.

  Got to be out

  by quarter

  to three.

  6.

  Everyone feared LBJ.

  Who was the Boss.

  Who wore the same glasses even

  & had the president’s ears, the president’s

  Texan nose & the president’s

  rage.

  You better believe when LBJ was in the Bowl the gang stepped

  lively & got cracking.

  Mr. Clean hit the lanes w/ the long shammy-mop. Norma,

  the Queen

  of Cheeseburgers, took a spatula to the day-old grease / onion /

  cheese melt

  on the griddle & dropped her cigarette in a wax paper cup of flat

  Dr. Pepper. Al

  swamped the urinal trough, dropped cakes in there that smelled

  like Beeman’s gum,

  carried ice cubes from Norma’s machine in white buckets &

  scattered them,

  60 hollow targets in the pisser so the guys could aim for the little

  holes & keep

  their streams in the porcelain & their pens in their

  pockets , those pockets w/ their endless

  storehouse of sketches: giant penises, drooping nipples,

  the round W of the human ass, the blue ink wobbly Y of the

  thighs and vagina,

  the ten thousand Bic crotches of the Hillcrest, my teachers

  of science,

  of love.

  In the ladies room, secrets lay in bins: the night guy

  hurried out with them & kept run stockings for himself.

  And after the bins, the backroom. Far away from LBJ, who

  worked

  on counting machines & ledgers but never crawled the

  big iron shadows. That clanging cavern the only safe place

  if you didn’t want The Old Man (different, oh yeah, from my old

  man) to get in your

  business.

  I ran the catwalks over the big tenders,

  balls crashing a storm surf beneath me.

  Man from U.N.C.L.E. plastic guns: gears chewing the night like a

  ham sandwich:

  levers, delivery arms running the pins laid out reclining

  to drop

  into cantilevered slots: black, black, clotted black old

  grease, metal

  shavings, dust stuck to oil as if the Brunswicks grew a pelt

  of rat fur. And I

  balanced, hanging for a thrill

  a foot to brush the crushing

  metal, waiting,

  for the tenpins

  to shatter

  under my

  perch.

  Dad reading magazines under one hanging bulb. Too loud

  to hear the phone, to hear alarms, bells. A flasher

  whorehouse red

  above the drill-press and lathe. When a ball in lane 10 jammed

  the machine

  the bloody bulb blinked until he dropped his magazine and

  sighed as he bent

  to the black guts of the tender, his knees killing him, his feet

  peeling with fungus and grub-white from standing in hard shoes

  for 40 years

  sore all the time, his back shooting bolts down his left buttock

  into his thigh,

  his teeth broken in his mouth from grinding all night through

  his pitiless dreams.

  Dad on his knees reaching into the grinding engines of

  the tenders

  feeling in the dark for something black

  & unforgiving.

  7.

  Playboy, sure

  But also

  Pix, Knight, Norwegian

  Naturists.

  Gent, Adam, Saga, True.

  Popular

  Mechanics.

  8.

  Norma, Queen of Cheeseburgers, wore white stockings clipped

  to a white girdle. Panties stained yellow after years frying &

  coughing—those

  little slips when you cough too hard & scrub later & try to hide

  in bedside shadows or kick under the chair really fast though Al

  never seemed to mind the details, the embarrassing stains, even

  liked them, all of them, he wanted you, sweat & blood &

  all. Read

  you like tea leaves, read your shames and your cough when

  you spit

  into a tissue whispering sorry lover sorry sorry & he’d ease

  his hand

  down your sharp spine and light a cigarette for you. Or I would

  have—I saw

  it in movies every Friday night at the Tu-Vu, me and

  Dad &

  12 kraut-dogs & a blanket in the Rambler & Dad

  saying that’s

  the way you make love to a woman when Adam Roarke as

  the Hells

  Angel leader ran his hand down a bikermama’s back and lit

  a joint for her, but my old man said: not that marijuana, do you

  hear me,

  give her a glass of sherry or a little

  Thunderbird.

  I would have for Norma, I would have grown up for her if

  she’d waited,

  but didn’t know the words for I’d lick the back of your thigh, for

  I’ll climb under your skirt to smell you at the end of your shift.

  She would

  blush when I told her I loved her and her hamburgers and she’d

  say Al this is

  definitely your boy! and flutter her twin bird hands all over the

  counters, her cheeks,

  her hair held in the pale hairnet in a bun: the second hand

  uniform: the white

  nurse shoes w/ low socks & a pom-pom out the back of

  each: snags

  in her delicious ice cream stockings: her little apron with

  Norma! stitched

  above her left breast where Dad fed & I would have fed if I only

  knew the secrets

  those naked volleyball players in the magazines knew,

  those freaks

  caught in mid-air in full-page shots, their genitals levitating,

  their wives

  stra
nge pale ciphers laughing w/ darkness where I wanted to

  dream. Bird hands

  burst from Norma’s apron pockets and flew sad circuits of her

  throat and hips

  & landed on the square hamburger patties or the cigarettes or

  a rag

  that caught up the coffee rings of wanderers who looked like her

  high school love

  from Norman, Oklahoma, guys who dropped

  a 15 cent tip and shoved off shrugging into

  bomber jackets & oozing past the double doors

  in GTOs.

  Norma from Norman, she would laugh, her hands preening in

  the nest of her apron,

  her red lipped red fleck on the teeth smile begging someone

  to laugh

  w/ kindness.