Читать книгу The Long Shadows - Andrew Boone's Erlich - Страница 7

It was the kind of scene I might have easily missed looking out from the open vestibule on Car 96 of Ringling Bros fast-moving train. But as I’ve come to understand, in dreamtime everything is slowed down, so I could see the weathered wooden horse in detail. The faded shades of red, black, and orange made it look like a circus relic, abandoned long ago. This strange sight made me sad at its neglect, and curious as to how and why he was left there. It appeared awkward, discarded in dry, yellow grass on a high cliff overlooking the ocean.

That refugee from a midway merry-go-round was lifeless. I was surprised when the inert object stirred. First I saw the vitality in the deep-blue eyes that flashed, then in the thick, black mane, which wafted in the morning breeze.

I was awestruck at his resurrection from dead wood to breathing steed. The cedar stallion took two steps toward the cliff. Not hesitating, he stepped into the abyss. I was frightened for him.

I wanted to scream, “Stop!” but the word was frozen in my throat. Before gravity grabbed and hurled him downward to the pounding surf and jagged boulders, he unfolded powerful, feathery wings. Transformed into Pegasus, he flew across the cobalt sea and white caps far below. Overwhelmed, tears welled up in my eyes. I strained to see where he went. Almost as much as I needed to breath, I knew I must find out what happened to him next . . . but—a loud jangle from the telephone jarred me back to my bed.

I was half-awake, disoriented from my dream and hungover after too little sleep. I realized that awful noise was the wake-up call I’d requested when I finally made it back to The Algonquin from my late-night walk.

XXXX

By the time I got out of the cab at Madison Square Garden it was already mid-morning. I was worried and scared. There would be hell to pay for leveling that rube the night before. I really hurt him, I thought. Maybe I killed him.

As I made my way into the performers’ entrance at the rear of the building, there was, as always, a great deal of hubbub. Vendors’ trucks were competing for places to unload their wares: stocks of food for the troopers, animals, and fans; boxes full of balloons, candy, pendants; and lizards to re-supply the butchers. Everywhere there were people: troopers, some in costume, some in civilian dress; hard-working roustabouts carrying crates of this and that to repair and replace whatever that well-oiled machine had broken the night before. There was even an Indian elephant sunning himself, tied to the loading dock.

Surrounded by all of that commotion, I fearfully scanned the crowd and visualized a swarm of G-men waiting to haul me away in handcuffs. And if the cops didn’t get involved, I was sure the circus would can me. I wonder why I hadn’t run away and avoided that mess or just holed-up in my hotel room. But at some deep level I knew I didn’t have any choice but to come back. Though I felt somehow imprisoned by my job in the circus, the ritual and responsibility of predictable, daily work had always soothed me. There was no place else I could or would go. The only way I will ever leave Ringling Bros is boots-first. Over my years in the sideshow that was a frequent thought.

“Good morning, Jake.” A roustabout with a worn, gray knit hat pulled down around his ears, a cigarette clinched tightly between his yellow teeth, and a coil of frayed rope around his shoulder, stopped to chat with me. His easy demeanor let me know he knew nothing about what had happened the night before; I hoped no one else knew.

“Good morning, Hank,” I said, hurrying past.

He looked surprised. Typically I would have stopped, but not that day. Because of my recent outburst and the crappy way I felt, I was in no mood to talk to anyone. I quickly made my way to the dressing room that the freaks shared in the Garden. At two hours before the matinee I hoped I was early enough to avoid seeing any of the other sideshow performers who typically didn’t arrive that early. Even though we were a tight-knit group, a family so to speak, lately being around them made me anxious. At that point, I wasn’t really sure why.

I was relieved that the dressing area was empty. So as quickly as I could, I got in the cowboy costume I would wear for the matinee’s opening spec. While using the mirror to tie my blue calico bandana, I heard someone behind me. I scanned the mirror to see who it was but there was no one. I gazed into the mirror once again.

“Congratulations! I hear you’re a cross between Max Schmeling and Joe Stydahar. Score one for the freaks.”

Immediately recognizing the telltale German accent, I turned around and looked down. There he stood, all twenty-four inches of him. Harry Doll, the famous circus personality and pater familias of the Dancing Dolls family of little people, was my closest friend in Ringling Bros. He approached me and put his tiny right hand on my knee.

“You’re a regular monster of the midway; a protector of damsels in distress, midgets, and now, menagerie monkeys.”

I looked away. His attempt at humor embarrassed and irritated me. Normally Harry would make me laugh, but that day I didn’t even want to see him.

“What’s wrong, Jakey? You don’t seem like yourself.” Harry was typically very perceptive.

“Ah, it’s nothing.” I briefly glanced at him and quickly shifted my gaze to the mirror. In retrospect, I think it would have been good for me to unburden my self. I wanted to tell him; I really did. I wanted to come clean about how I was thinking of leaving the circus; to report about Gargantua and the rube; and about how I almost jumped out of a twelfth-story window the night before; I wanted to tell him about everything but I just couldn’t.

“By the way, I have a message for you from the boss,” Harry said, interrupting my thoughts. “Ingalls wants to see you before the show today. Is it about the rube? What got into you?”

I realized that Harry wasn’t going to back off. When he was curious about something he was like a bulldog that smells meat.

“I gotta go now, Harry. There’s no time. We’ll catch up later,” I said, too anxious to stay there a second longer.

“Whatever you like, Jake,” Harry said with resignation.

I just didn’t want to get into things with Harry or anyone else, for that matter. As a kid, I learned “La ropa sucia se lava en casa.” It’s an old Spanish saying: “Dirty laundry should be washed at home.”

I learned that proverb from Kika, the maid who helped Mama with our house. That old woman had been around for as long as I can remember. The last time I saw her I was fifteen. She was smiling with her toothless grin, standing at the threshold to my room, holding a breakfast tray she made up especially for me.

Kika was born and raised on a ranchito in the hardscrabble mountains outside Chihuahua City. She walked with a limp, dragging her left foot behind her. Her lifeless leg was the result of some childhood fever that had gone untreated for lack of a doctor and the funds to pay one if he’d miraculously materialized. As I recall, Kika’s gray hair was drawn back tightly in a bow, which accentuated both her round face—an artifact of her mestizo heritage—and the quarter-sized mole on her left check.

“Señora, tal vez le hicieron mal de ojo,” Kika had said to my mother some years before at the outset of my horrendous growth.

I remember how Mama listened intensely to her, nodded and responded: “Yes! Yes! Perhaps it was a Kina Hora (evil eye),” she said, referring to an identical Jewish version of that Mexican belief.

Mama and Kika subscribed to the same superstition. One originated with white and blue gauze-covered Bedouins huddled in an ancient date palm oasis, the other among Mayans clad in scarlet macaw feathers crouched in an emerald jungle. Both Mayans and Bedouins, like Mama and Kika, had strained to explain the inexplicable. My father, the rational one, called these explanations buba misas: a grandmother’s foolishness. At first, so did I. But I felt so bad in those days that I wondered if there was something to that “evil eye” business. Perhaps someone had put a spell on me.

I recalled the tray that Kika balanced on her belly that morning when I was fifteen. It was a loving attempt to get me to eat. The azafata was laden with a special breakfast I normally loved: steaming Mexican hot chocolate that smelled of cinnamon, almonds, and cocoa and handmade flour tortillas so fresh they melted the marigold butter she had slathered onto them into shiny riverlets.

When I turned my head away in disgust, Kika looked hurt. She was doing her best to make sense of the mean mask I wore over my adolescent sadness: “Ay mijo, tal vez tu tristeza nació de un susto (Oh, sweetheart, maybe your melancholy was born from a great fright you suffered),” she said.

“Tal vez,” I replied, my anger only slightly diminished by guilt. When she put the tray down on my dresser, I angrily motioned for her to take it away. She stepped closer to hug me but I moved back, afraid that if I let Kika get close I would start to weep and never stop. My tears would wash her, my parents, our meager belongings, and every house in Sunset Heights away in a flash flood of pent-up sorrow. Kika looked at me once again. Slowly, like in my dream, she stretched her right palm up to caress my cheek but she couldn’t reach it.

“Ay, Dios mío,” she called out, shaking her head with a smile that was equal parts grief and wonder. Then Kika picked up the tray with my uneaten breakfast, slowly turned around, and walked out of my room. I watched her limp away. The sound of her dragging foot echoed in my mind as I climbed back into bed to hide from the day.

Most people, besides my family, have no idea that I spent a lot of my life hiding. I was feeling down then, too. So down I was barely eating. As a matter of fact, I hadn’t eaten much since that whole awful incident down by the river. I mentioned the river before; this is as good a time as any to tell you what happened.

It was 1921. I was just fifteen years old, already seven and a half feet tall and still growing. Summer’s blast furnace had really begun to scorch El Paso and business was slow, so Papa gave Ben and me time off from working at the store. Mama had taken Myer, who was seven, with her to the synagogue where she and some other ladies from the Sisterhood were cooking a community meal to welcome Philip Roth, our new rabbi. She left Ben in charge. It didn’t take him long to realize that was a perfect opportunity to get a break from the monotony and heat.

“Come on, don’t be a pill. I’m so bored,” Ben pleaded.

“Mom and Dad told us it’s too dangerous,” I resisted.

“If you don’t come along I can’t go. I promised I’d keep an eye on you.”

“I don’t wanna go,” I insisted.

“Are you becoming a hermit like one of those weirdoes who live in caves in the Sierra Madres?” Ben taunted me.

“We swore we wouldn’t go. Don’t you remember?”

As I saw things, I wasn’t a goody-two-shoes; more than anything, I just wanted to stay home and avoid people. It seemed that everywhere I went in those days, kids and adults teased me. Sometimes their taunts were downright cruel and insulting. They’d play mean tricks; even trip me. So whenever possible I preferred to stay home and keep to myself.

“I know. I know,” Ben replied. “But what Mama and Papa don’t know won’t hurt them. Come on, Jake, you know how much fun it is and how pretty it is down there. Please, I beg you.”

I looked up to my “big” brother. I liked his company and wanted to please him, so reluctantly, I let him talk me into it. If I knew what would soon transpire, I never would have gone.

Within the hour, Ben and I had made our way through the neighborhood. We walked by Vilas Elementary School, passed the Schroeder’s corner grocery and the Chaldean’s barber shop, and descended two flights of rickety wooden steps that led to a rocky mesa. After we hiked down it, we hurried passed the railroad siding next to the icehouse and found ourselves on the well-worn path to the Rio Grande.

The desert foliage dramatically changed as we approached the river. As if by magic, stands of Desert Willows, Salt Cedars, and Russian Olive trees appeared. Ben and I scrambled through the reeds, red flowers, and honeysuckle. We saw multicolored hawks, falcons, and cranes, not ordinarily spotted in town. As we got closer to the water, I could smell the river and the scarce moisture it gifted to the dry desert air. Just the fragrance had a cooling effect.

When we got to the water’s edge, we both peeled down to our rough, cotton summer underwear. Ben didn’t hesitate. He jumped from the saw grass on the edge into the stream, laughing and splashing as he landed in the brown water. Then he stood up and plodded downstream, almost knocked over by the current. Fifty yards down river, he joined two boys he recognized from school. Growing up, I often wished I had as many friends as my brother.

I sat down on the bank. A few seconds later I shooed a horsefly from my nose and wanted to be somewhere else. While I determined what to do next, the words “Rio Grande” rhythmically repeated in my mind.

Throughout my life, when anything was labeled big, like that river, it immediately tugged at my attention. On the Mexican side they called the same stream Rio Bravo: the fierce river. On opposite banks of the river with two names, sometimes children would fire rocks from homemade slingshots and catapult insults in English and Spanish, but not that day.

Sometimes the river was full and fast-moving. But at other times it seemed to dry up. When it almost dried up, as it had the winter before, I imagined that its life had moved underground, its spirit descending to where no one could see it. I liked the fact that the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo didn’t always match its name. Just like me, the river did not fit with the names people called it—whatever language they spoke.

Sitting there with my knees folded up to my chest, I sensed that the river was alive, ever changing. At least for those few minutes, I felt at peace, calmed by the flowing water. Back then, peaceful times like that were islands in the stream for me; few and far between.

Somewhere up river, the last of the huge winter snow packs in the mountains of Colorado and New Mexico had melted. That, plus two weeks of strong, nightly summer monsoons made the water flow fast and free, almost flooding the banks. That day, it truly looked like a big, fierce river.

I turned my head to see that Ben and his friends had waded farther downstream to hunt for crawdads in the shade of an old oak whose branches hung out over the shallows. It was really hot. The water looked so inviting but it was too dangerous.

“Hey, Jake!” I turned and recognized a group of five boys and a girl from the neighborhood approaching. I stood up and cautiously walked toward them. You might say back then I was too trusting or pretty naive. But I think I was still innocent. Three of the boys were classmates from school. One was younger—about thirteen—as was the girl. When I got closer they began to run away.

“The giraffe, the giraffe!” the ragtag group of teenagers squealed as they galloped off in mock terror.

I think that whenever something like that happened—and it frequently did—it hurt like a punch in the gut, shattering the illusion I wanted to believe; that I might fit in with the others.

Caught up in the moment and wanting to be accepted in the new game, I chased them like a lion cub after blue wildebeest. I pursued my quarry in a gangly canter, feeling the afternoon breeze warm my face.

Winded, I finally cornered them about a hundred yards down river. They huddled under a Palo Verde tree on a bed of its fallen yellow flowers. It’s been so long, I cannot remember most of their names.

A skinny boy with patched overalls and buck teeth stepped forward and pointed. “Look! It’s Ichabod Crane.”

Then the girl—she had freckles and pigtails—jumped out from behind one of the boys and barked, “How’s the weather up there, Jake?”

Everyone laughed.

Emboldened, a chubby blond boy, a head shorter than everyone else, put his hands on his head. His outstretched fingers formed his unworldly idea of a jungle animal’s ears. Then he swaggered in front of the pack. “Is it a boy? Is it a girl? No! It’s a giraffe.”

Soon the others picked up the chant. “Giraffe . . . giraffe . . . giraffe!” they bellowed.

Frozen, unable to flee or fight as any animal would, I just stood there. Eisenbeis—I do remember his name—stepped out from behind the others and sized up the frenzy.

He was a sixteen-year-old bully and the biggest boy in the neighborhood besides me. I’d seen him beat a boy so bad it left him unconscious. Eisenbeis was the type I tried to steer clear of. He ran around wild because his father was a drunk and his mother left him when he was little. So when he approached me as if to help, I didn’t know what to make of it. But at that moment my hope for an ally made me too trusting. Against my better judgment, I hesitated.

When he got close enough, I saw a blank stare in his gray eyes, as if he was glaring at someone else. Isn’t it funny that I can still remember the color of that bastard’s eyes? When I realized what was happening, it was too late. Eisenbeis socked me in my groin. Then he shoved me. I was reeling from the pain and wanting to vomit. I had no idea that Tito, his henchman, was crouched on hands and knees behind me to ensure I would fall backward.

I tumbled, taking the brunt of that hard fall on my left hip. I crashed into the ground with a seismic thud. For the next six weeks I would carry a jagged purple, black, blue, and at times grotesque green bruise, the size of a small meteorite, on my hip; a memento of lost innocence—a tattooed reminder of just how malicious some kids can be.

I looked up from where I’d fallen to mean stares and crooked adolescent fingers that all pointed at me.

Don’t get the wrong idea; not all the kids in my school were cruel, some—many, in fact—were gentle and kind. But those jackals were as mean as they come and they’re the ones that fill this riverside memory.

I was all alone. Ben was nowhere in sight. He and his friends had wondered farther down river out of earshot. I couldn’t think. It felt like I had swallowed a volcano. If I breathed too deep it would erupt, sending a cloud of ash a hundred miles high, spewing shattered pieces of myself all the way to Santa Fe.

As I scanned my surroundings I felt almost numb. The light on the riverbank was unreal, dream-like. But the pain from the bone-dry stickers that had punctured the flesh of both of my hands when I’d fallen brought me back, making me remember that I was alive. For a kid, crying in front of your peers is never a good idea but at that moment I didn’t have any choice. My tears slowly started to flow. They must have stained my face a sandy brown as they merged with the dust that had come to rest on me.

Freed from my paralysis, I got to my feet and wiped my eyes. If only I could have gone back in time and helped myself through that turbulent time. I would have urged myself to punch and kick Eisenbeis before he got the drop on me. But it was too late for that.

“Never run from predators. It makes them think you’re prey.” I remembered the words of the old fireman that taught Ben and me to box on Sundays behind the firehouse. “Stand your ground!”

So I stood there facing them. But when a rock flew by my right ear I panicked, turned, and ran toward the river. I tripped in the reeds and scampered to my feet. A barrage of stones soon followed. Having to dodge rocks that were thrown at me when I was a kid would become all too common. Ugly scars on my right knee, chin, and in the small of my back were proof that sometimes, just like with Gargantua, the stones hit their mark.

I was trapped: on the one side, my rock-throwing tormentors, on the other the treacherous Rio Grande. A rock hit me hard on the back of my right shoulder. My only escape was the river.

Not even thinking of my parents’ admonition, I ran down the bank into the water. When I was only knee-deep I slipped on green moss. I fell forward. Rocks continued to land all around me. Luckily, the river was at its widest where I had entered. Soon I was out of the range of their rocks, but they continued to hurl insults.

“Kill the Kraken! Kill the Kraken!” They screamed.

I couldn’t believe what was happening. I couldn’t think. I needed to escape. I dove under the murky water, propelling my giant frame far from those verbal harpoons. All that swimming helped to dissolve my panic. Gradually I surfaced, with just my head, eyes, and nose above the surface. I felt like a storybook creature, a great white whale coming from the depths. As I swam, I treasured the feeling of the water containing my huge body. I stretched my long arms and legs in the river and thrust myself forward. I felt buoyed and weightless.

The water was warm but refreshing. It had a distinct smell and taste; not salty like the ocean, but slightly metallic, woody. After about two minutes, I had reached the middle of the stream. I couldn’t hear their insults any longer. I felt invigorated, reborn, and safe. Relieved to be free of danger, I finally relaxed.

Then a crocodile of an undertow took hold and dragged me down below the surface. I felt the river close its jaws around me. Desperate to free myself, I sank deeper and deeper into its belly. I swallowed water. I couldn’t breathe.

Then all at once, I felt my head jerk back and my hair yanked upward as if someone or something wrenched me between worlds.

XXXX

At first I couldn’t see anything. All I remember was the deafening sound of crickets. When I finally could focus, I saw Ben and his two friends looking down at me, outlined by a tapestry of topaz sky and billowy white clouds. I sat up and vomited ugly river water and bile.

“What happened?” I asked.

“You almost drowned. What the hell were you doing in the middle of the river? You know how dangerous it is out there,” Ben said. I was ashamed to tell my brother and his friends about my run-in with Eisenbeis and the others. “You’re damn lucky that mojado (wetback) came along and saved you,” Ben continued.

I pushed myself up to my hands and knees.

“What mojado? Where is he?” I asked.

“He’s gone,” Ben said.

A few minutes later, I learned that in payment for his good deed the angel who saved my life had stolen my shoes. I don’t know why he took them; they must have been too big for him. Maybe he just claimed the giant shoes as a memento. Maybe he’d try to sell them in the mercado (market). Maybe he kept them to pass on to his kids as a family heirloom.

I can laugh about it now but back then I was mostly ashamed. And I don’t know if I was more scared that I might easily have drowned or that my parents would find out what had happened. When we finally got home, the bruises where the rocks hit me started to hurt like crazy. Those bruises took a long time to heal but the depression that came on full force after that incident never has. In fits and starts it comes and goes, but like the river with two names it never really disappears.