Bottle in the Sea

Papa

2009-10-14T14:22:00.000-07:00

Papa was a small—not quite five feet tall—sweet, wiry, handsome, gentle, loving man, and sported a very full head of dark black thick wavy-kinky hair, and no wonder since two of the waves of invaders of the island of Sicily, where papa was born, were first the Carthaginians, of North East Africa, and later the Arabs—or moors from across the Medi-terranean. No wonder, then, that the patron saint of Agrigento, the city where papa was born is San Calogero, who is black.

Papa was the youngest of three sons. No sisters. Shortly after he was born, his father, Nico, where my name came from, died. His mother, Angela, the name my sister inherited, didn’t have enough money to feed the family so, since papa was the youngest of the boys, she brought him to Agrigento’ s orphanage. Papa grew up in the orphanage. He learned a trade: house-painting. He also learned carpentry, house building, plumbing, auto-mechanics, etc. In other words, he was handy with his hands, and had a practical way about him. He prided himself on being what is known as a fa tutto, one who does everything. When he was of age, which I guess was around sixteen or so, he was allowed to leave the orphanage and go back to his mother and brothers so that he could work and bring in some money. And papa did so. At the age of eighteen he served an obligatory two years in the army. I don’t know anything about his days in the military. Papa never talked about it, it was something he did, it was something all young men of Sicily did. Part of a rite of passage.

Papa met Carlo Lucchese, another kid from Agrigento, in the Army. Carlo was from a family of nine sons—some of them famous. One of them, Giulio, was a very important crime fighter high up in the police department. And another, Giovanni, was high up in the mafia. Later on, one of the grandchildren, Roberto, became the Prime Minister of Italy. There was no fame to Carlo—and he had no skills and a mean and nasty streak. He like to think of himself as a Cavaliero, a gentleman squire on a horse, and to make fun of him, everybody call him Cavaliero. But he was no squire and no gentleman—mostly he was loud, coarse, self-centered, vile, and semi-violent, which means he never killed anybody. And yet, he and papa were friends. Eventually Carlo went with Constanza Lo Cascio, mama’s older sister. Pietro and Maria, Constanza’s mother and father didn’t like Carlo, but they knew the Lucchese family was an important family and since one of Carlo’s brother’s was high up in the police they thought that their business, they had a dance hall, would be safe. So they let Carlo become fidanzata, engaged, with Constanza. And through Carlo way papa eventually met Ignazia, or Gnazì, who was to become my mother. Mama says that Carlo was jealous of his position in mama’s family and tried to stop papa and mama’s relationship. Papa would send her notes that she would hide in her stockings. Her sister, Constanza, would tell Carlo that mama was receiving notes and he told Don Pietro who would make mama give him the notes and then she would be punished. Mama then hated Carlo. Eventually, Carlo and Constanza married and they went to America. Why did they go to America? Because anybody who was somebody went to America. And since Carlo really knew that he was nobody he wanted to become somebody and in America you could work and you could become rich and you could then become somebody. You could own your own apartment. And someday you could even own your own house. And you could even become famous. Like some Italians became famous in America like Frank Sinatra. But the most famous Italians in America were the mafiusi like Al Capone and Lucky Luciano. And they were all Sicilians like Carlo, and his brother, Giovanni, who was a mafiuso. But his older brother was Giulio the terrible policeman who always captured his man. And Giulio once had to arrest his own mafiuso brother. But later he let him go.

Anyhow, getting back to papa. Papa wanted to marry mama but he had no money and mama’s father Don Pietro, said papa was too poor to marry mama how would he support her? Papa had no job. And there were no jobs in Agrigento for someone who was poor and an orphan. In fact there were no jobs. Sure some people worked in the bank, but you had to know someone related to the owner of the bank in order to get into the bank. First came the family then the friends of the family if any jobs were left. And usually there weren’t. and that’s how it was with whatever jobs there were when there were job anywhere. And anyhow the mafia controlled everything and papa didn’t know the mafia and didn’t want to know the mafia so he couldn’t really find a steady job. So sometimes he could paint a house or a few rooms. That was about all and it brought little money. But papa wanted mama and mama wanted papa so they decided to secretly pledge themselves to one another and were in this way fidanzati, engaged. Papa then decided he had to go to America to make money, enough money, so that he can come back and marry mama.

There were Barragatos living in Rochester, New York. Papa had an uncle there. Uncle Roberto Barragato. So papa wrote to his uncle telling him, I want to come to America but I need a sponsor and would you, dear Honored, Uncle Roberto, please be my sponsor so that I can come to America because I want to get married here in Agrigento but I don’t have enough money to get married and if I came to America where everybody could get a job I could work and earn enough money to go back to Sicily and get married and so would you, dear Honored, Uncle Roberto, please help me? And so papa and Gnazì waited for Uncle Roberto’s letter. And, believe it or not, two months after papa wrote his letter he received a letter from the United States. And it was from Rochester, New York. Papa and mama were very excited. He carefully opened the letter, after carefully studying the envelope and carefully removing the stamp, that of course was special since he had never seen such a stamp before in his life and he put the stamp in a clean piece of paper and carefully folded the paper and put the paper with the prize stamp in a drawer where he kept his underwear and handkerchiefs. Then he turned to the letter itself and carefully peeled back the flap of the envelope careful not to tear the envelope or the letter that was inside the envelope. And he carefully removed the folded piece of paper, unfolded it and to his amazement and joy it was written in his own dialect of Sicilian. Uncle Roberto said he would be honored to sponsor such an outstanding nipote, nephew, as papa was, and that papa should get ready and come to America and send him, Uncle Roberto, another letter telling him what ship he would take to come to America and when he would be leaving Palermo, because all the ships that come from Sicily leave from Palermo because Palermo is the capital and it is the biggest seaport of Sicily. Then, continued Uncle Roberto, he would meet papa on Ellis Island, which is an island just off the great port of New York City where all immigrants from all over the world go and have to be checked in before they could actually get to go to the interior of the United States itself. And there, on Ellis Island, the immigrants would be met by their sponsors like he was the sponsor of papa and would meet papa and then take him to the interior to the great city everybody comes to when they come to America, New York City. And from there they would take a train to go to his own city which is a good four hours north, Rochester. And then Uncle Roberto said papa could get settled.

Papa and mama were very excited. Mama wanted to come with papa but of course her father would never allow it and she knew it and so papa made himself ready. The first problem was the money for the ticket. The cheapest fare was steerage, where you slept down below in the bottom of the ship together with your luggage and you were not allowed to go up on deck to get some fresh air. But it was worth it. It cost thirty dollars. And then papa needed to have enough money to live on until he could get a job. So he thought another fifteen dollars should do it. So he had to find forty-five dollars before he could go to America. His mother, nonna Angelina gave him ten dollars. Papa then went around to all the businesses in Agrigento and offered himself as a painter to paint whatever needed to be painted—inside or outside, walls, rooms, entire buildings, whatever was needed he would do it. In this way over a period of several months papa earned the rest of the money he needed. He then went to the agencia of the ships that sailed to America, and they had one in Agrigento, and papa bought a ticket. He was so proud and happy when he returned home with that ticket in his hands. First thing he did was run to see mama and show her the magic ticket. She held it in her hand like she was holding a precious jewel. She held it up to her nose and smelled it. She brought it up to her breasts and rubbed it between them, and then reverently handed the ticket back to papa and said, “allora bona fortuna,” and now good luck.

Papa then wrote to Uncle Roberto in Rochester and told him the date he would leave Palermo for America. He told him the name of the ship and that it would probably arrive in America in about seven or eight days after the ship left Palermo. It would land in Nova Yoka, New York.

But instead of landing in Nova Yoka the ship dropped anchor in the harbor and all the passengers in steerage were told to pack up their belonging and go up on deck. Then they had to go down a gangplank to a waiting ferry boat that took them to Ellis Island. While sailing in steerage the passengers talked a lot about Ellis Island. Many of the passengers had horror stories about Ellis Island. If you had anything wrong with you, if you were lame, or had eye trouble, or if they thought you were an anarchist, or if you were pregnant, or if you didn’t answer the questions right they that asked you, or if you didn’t have somebody there to sponsor for you and take responsibility for you, they would send you back. But papa knew he was all right because Uncle Roberto would be there waiting for him. Papa had a place to go. To Rochester. And he would be OK.

So papa went through the process of Ellis Island, looking around all the time at everybody to see if he could find Uncle Roberto. The trouble was that he didn’t know what Uncle Roberto looked like. And, of course, Uncle Roberto didn’t know what papa looked like. But he saw that there were many people who met the new immigrants. And they had lists of names in their hands. And they kept shouting out names to the immigrants who passed them and then when someone responded to a name he or she went wild with jubilation and the caller and the new immigrant would exuberantly embrace and kiss and everything would be OK. Papa waited for his turn to come.

There was a group of people called runners, who were from the various races, Jewish, Hassidim, Italian, Sicilian, Irish, German, and some or all of the middle European races. These runners all spoke the language of the immigrants. They looked for immigrants who were stranded, had no one to meet them, and for a price, that usually was paid later, they offered to get the immigrants out of Ellis Island, on to the mainland of the States, find them a place to stay, and a job. In return they exacted a fee from the salaries the new immigrants earned. Of course many of the immigrants were taken advantage of, and the runners morphed into padrones or “owners” or even “master’s” of the immigrants and it took many years to pay off the money they had to pay their padrones in order to become free of them.

The mafia had their runners too. One of them, Franco, was the mafioso runner from Little Italy in downtown New York City. He had a list of the immigrants and when he came to papa’s name, Emanuele Barragato, he knew by the name that this one came from Agrigento, and that he was amenable to the mafia, because Agrigento, in those days was controlled by the mafia. What specially interested the runner in papa was the fact that papa was very short. Shorter than the usual short Italian male. Probably even shorter than four feet. He also saw that papa was also well built, not stocky, but wiry and tight. That he had energy, strength, and sharp eyes. The runner saw a potential jockey in papa who would ride the mafia’s horses. He also saw that papa was the type of Sicilian who practices omertà, which means he would never reveal any secrets or confidences he was privy to. So the runner approached papa.

Hi, my name is Franco, I see your name is Emmanuele Barragato.

Yes, said papa, but they call me Nenè.

Chi si dice, Nenè, wattya say, said the mafioso runner.

What I say is that there’s nobody here to meet me.

Who were you expecting?

My uncle from Rochester.

O. Rochester. Well Rochester is a long way up north. Sometimes it’s hard to get down here. So watta you do now?

I don’t know. My future brother-in-law lives in a place called Brukulinu, Brooklyn, but I don’t know how to get to him. He doesn’t know I’m here and besides I don’t want to stay with him.

Do you wanna get out of this place and come on with me to New York?

Sure I do. What’ll it cost me?

We’ll talk about that later, first thing is to get you outta here.

OK said, papa, let’s go.

So Franco, who of course, was well known to the officials on the island, as well as to all the custom officials, very quickly and neatly. got papa off the island.

A car and driver was waiting for them. They got in and in a matter of about twenty minutes arrived at their destination, a store-front with curtains on the large store windows on a street called Mott Street. There was a sign hanging on a post outside the store. It read, Club Fratelli. Brothers Club.

The car parked in front of the club. They got out and entered the club.

What is this place, asked papa?

It’s a social club for friends. There’s a couple of single apartments in back. I have one, and you can have the other one.

Great, said, papa. Now what do I have to do to pay you? Papa was beginning to worry, because he could smell mafia.

Don’t worry about it. We’ll talk about it later. In the meantime, just keep yourself busy. Sweep the floor, bring coffee and beer and whiskey to the people who come to play cards and since you're from ‘Girgenti, I know you know how to keep your mouth shut.

Sure, said papa.

So papa was in the United States, on Mott Street, in a social club, owned and operated by the mafia. Now what? He wondered.

Franco was very smart. After a few days he saw that this skinny ked from ‘Girgenti wasn’t mafia stuff. He saw that Nenè was a nice kid and wasn’t looking for trouble. So he spoke to papa and said, Nenè, you're a good kid, but you're not good to do what we do. So, stick around and make yourself useful like you have been. OK? Just keep your mouth shut and your eyes closed and everything will go all right.

Then Franco sat papa down with a map on the table. The map was of the streets of downtown New York City. Franco drew a line around one of the streets that looked like a long sausage on the map. And he put an X near the middle of the sausage line. OK, Nenè, this is downtown New York where were are. This sausage line is around Mott Street. The X I put down on Mott Street is at a cross-street called Broome Street. And that’s where we are. So if ever you get lost going around the city find Broome Street at Mott Street and you'll find the club.

Now you can see that we are in the heart of what they call here Little Italy and just a few blocks east you have Chinatown. You can go anywhere you want in Little Italy where everybody speaks Italian, and you can even go to Chinatown because we got a lot of Chinese guys working for us, that’s how close we are. So everywhere you go you'll be safe.

And so papa explored the streets of Little Italy and Chinatown whenever he didn’t have to do anything for the members who came to the club. Usually he swept the floors, delivered messages, probably numbers, brought coffee to the members who came into the club, and kept himself busy. The other members of the club treated papa as a sort of mascot and all of them were kind to him and often gave him big tips for bringing them coffee or pizza or sandwiches when they wanted them while they were playing trisetti, three sevens, a Sicilian card game. They also spoke to papa about becoming a jockey. Papa said, No way, or in Sicilian, Ma chi fa scherzi? Are you kidding? He told them he came from the city, namely Agrigento, which is one of the biggest and most important cities of all Sicily. There was the Greek Temple of the Acropolis on the shoreline high up on a cliff. And people came from all over Europe to see it, that’s how important Agrigento is. He proudly told them that he was not a cafùne, a peasant, from the country, and had never even seen a horse much less ride one. They laughed with papa and dropped the jockey thing. They all liked papa and didn’t involve papa in any of their business. Of course from time to time out of necessity they would ask him to run a few numbers for them down the street. They knew he was a good kid and treated him like one.

One day Franco asked papa if he wanted to see his relatives in Rochester. Papa said, Yes. So Franco got papa a train ticket to Rochester and told him how to get there. Papa wrote to his uncle and told him he was coming and would he please meet him at the station. And so papa went to Rochester to meet his relatives. When he got to the Rochester station there waiting for him were zio Rosario, zia Domenica, and his cucina, cousin, Cristina. They took him home with them, gave him a room for himself, and after he was settled in they all sat down to eat the big meal zia Domenica had prepared. Of course, pasta ca sassa, pasta and tomato sauce, with meatballs, followed by cutlets, followed by calimari in tomato sauce, followed by coffee, and cannoli, and sfogliatelli, pastry. While they were eating they went over everything: how zio wasn’t able to come to Ellis Island because he was sick and how were papa’s mother and other brothers? Zio wasn’t a first degree uncle but the cousin of one of papa’s mother’s brothers. But still he was family and in family an uncle is an uncle. So Cristina wasn’t really a cousin but she was family and so she was a cousin to him. It turned out that she was around twenty years old, so just a little bit younger than papa. And she was a little plain looking, but she had big tits, and she took a liking to papa right away. And zio and zia also took a liking to papa and you could have seen their minds working if you were there, how they worked and how they looked at papa and thought now here was a good match for Christina, especially since not only was he family because his name was the same as theirs, Barragato, but also he wasn’t first degree family so it would be all right for Nenè and Cristina to get married so it was settled in their minds but it was better not to be in a hurry but also not to wait too long either. So after they had their coffee and pastry zio took papa outside for a little camminata, a walk, and slowly he got around to the subject of papa and Christina and he asked papa what he thought about Cristina. Papa said, certo, sure she was a nice girl. And zio got around to saying, It would be wonderful if you and Cristina would get along because then you could live in Rochester and get a job and then someday you and Cristina could maybe even get married if everything turned out to be OK and then we could all be one big happy family and wouldnt that then be a wonderful thing for everybody?

Papa said, I am sorry, that can't be because you see I’m already fidanzato, engaged, to a girl in Sicily. And besides Cristina is my cousin so even if it were possible for me to do it I couldn’t because she is my cousin.

Ahh, that’s not a problem, said zio, because Cristina’s not even a first or second degree cousin, maybe even further than that.

Yes, said papa, but you see there still is the problem as I have already said that I am already compromised because I am fidanzato, and of course I could not break my word.

Yes, said zio, but you know how things are—things change and you're here in America and Sicily is a long way away and Cristina is here and Cristina is a nice beautiful girl who would make you a good wife and everything else.

Papa saw that he was in trouble so he said again, I’m sorry zio it cannot be because once you're fidanzato it would be a great vergogna, a great dishonor, to break my promise.

So zio just said, Well we’ll see what happens, you never know.

Later after they got home they sat down to listen to the radio and zio spoke to Cristina and she left the room. Later when it got dark and late zio said they better go to bed and told papa good night and tomorrow we’ll see what it brings. So papa said good night and went to his room.

Papa didn’t like anything about his relatives and his stay here. He knew he had to get away quick. He didn’t like zio Rosario and zia Domenica. He didn’t like cousin Cristina. And he especially didn’t like getting married to her. He liked mama. He told her that when he had saved up enough money he would return to Sicily and they would get married and that’s what was going to happen. None of this zio and zia and Cristina crap. But he had to get away. So he entered his room with all these thoughts. He opened the door and shut it behind him. As soon as the door shut he heard the door lock go click. He tried to open the door. It was locked. Now what’s going on, he thought. He turned on the light and there in the room was Cristina, sitting in a chair. And papa knew what was going on. He was trapped. They would keep him locked up in this room with Cristina. And next morning he would be compromised and would have to marry her because he spent the night with her. Papa told Cristina he knew what was happening and that there was nothing he could do about it. But he said he would still respect her and that she should sleep in the bed and he would sleep in the chair. Cristina was very happy that it was so easy and she was very very happy that papa would respect her. He really was a good man and she told him and she thanked him for respecting her. Papa said sure, that that’s the way he was. He was taught to respect. And so she went to bed and papa sat up in the chair.

And so the night continued. Later when papa was sure Cristina was asleep he slowly went to the window and opened it. He looked down. The room was on the second floor. He carefully and silently climbed down the side of the house, got to the ground and ran for his life. He managed to get to the station and took the next train to New York City. And that was the end of papa and his relatives in Rochester.

Well, papa got back to Mott Street and to the club-house. And he continued his usual chores of sweeping, serving coffee, bringing sandwiches and pizza to the club members.

One day, Franco sat papa at a table before him. Franco said to papa, Nenè, you're a good kid, but something’s come up and you gotta go and you gotta go today. But don’t worry I’ve set you up. He handed papa a slip of paper with a name and address on it. Mr. Katz. 163 Lorimer Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York. Mr. Katz, said Franco, is a friend of mine. He has an apartment for you at this address. Go see him and he’ll take care of you. And you don’t have to worry about the rent for a while either. Franco then told papa how to get to Williamsburg by subway and which station to get off of and how to get to Lorimer Street from there. It was easy, he said.

After you get settled in your apartment, Franco said, then I want you to go to this address, and Franco handed papa another slip of papa with a name and address. Mr Aiello, Painter’s Union Local 44, 186 Marcy Avenue, Brooklyn, New York. Go see Mr Aiello. He’s also a friend of mine and he knows you’ll be coming. I told him you're a great painter and that he can trust you to do a good job for him. Franco then explained that in America the most important thing was to be in the union. Then you’ll always have work, he said. Franco then said that Mr Katz could tell him how to get to Marcy Avenue. It’s easy to get there from Lorimer Street, he said. Then Franco took out ten ten dollar bills and put them on the table in front of papa. Here, he said, take these and put them in your pocket. This should carry you until you start work.

But, said papa, why are you doing this to me? Why are you sending me away? What have I don’t wrong? Haven’t I don’t good? I thought everybody liked me and that they liked my work? Is it because I wouldn’t be a jockey? What is it?

Naw, said Franco, it’s none of that. It’s just that something’s come up and you just can't be here no more. You understand how things go. And so you have to leave and you have to leave now. Listen Nenè, haven’t I always been good to you? Haven’t I always told it to you straight? So you’ve gotta trust me on this and you’ve gotta go. So go, pack up your things and go see Mr Katz and Mr Aiello.

Ok said papa. He packed the clothes and other things he had collected and everything that was given to him by Franco, his benefactor, and the other men who came to the club, and he left the club and Mott Street. He took the elevated train like Franco told me to and got to Williamsburg. When he got to 163 Lorimer Street, he knocked on the door and Mr Katz opened the door. Papa told him who he was, and Mr Katz welcomed papa like he was a long close friend. He told papa that he had a good apartment for him and that he needn’t worry about the rent because it was paid for, for six months.

That evening papa went to a diner to eat. While there the radio on the counter tells of a big shoot-out in Greenwich Village. It was in English so papa couldn’t understand what was said. He only heard a few words that he was able to make out like shoot and killed and mafia.

Next morning papa bought a copy of the Progresso, the New York City Italian newspaper. He went to a coffee shop, ordered a cup of coffee, and began to read his newspaper. It was all there on the front page. The big shoot-out in Greenwich Village, on Mott Street, at the Club Fratelli, that the Progresso said was a well-known mafia hangout. The shootout was between rival factions of the mob. It was about territory and money and prostitution and gambling and horse racing and death. It seems one of the mobsters of the Village mob crossed the territorial line and went above 34^th Street, where the Mid-City mob did their mafia work, and started a numbers game up there. One thing led to another and there were minor shootings of one another, which means no one was ever killed, just warning nicks. Then came the Mid-City mob raid on Club Fratelli. The big shoot-out. And one of the victims was papa’s Franco.

Papa then understood. Franco knew what was coming and he wanted to save papa. And he did. Papa drank his coffee, folded his newspaper, stuck it under his arm, rose from the chair, went outside the coffee shop, walked to his apartment, entered, lit a cigarette, and sat on the side of the bed, and was quiet.

From that day papa had no more contact with any mafiuso. It was as if a great door had been slammed shut.

Next morning papa went to the union. He found Mr Aiello. Mr Aiello was also Siciliano, so talking together was easy. Mr Aiello told papa he was waiting for him that a friend of both of them had highly recommended papa. Now all he had to do was join the union and the union will get you a job. Once you're in the union you'll be OK. What do I have to do to join the union, papa asked? You gotta pay dues—five dollars a month. OK said papa, I’ve got five dollars. Good old Franco, thought papa. So Mr Aiello told papa now that he was in the union he could give papa a union badge, which soon will have his picture on it, and a union book so that every month you pull out one of the pages with the month of the year written on the top page of the book and bring it here with your five dollars. Then you gotta start taking naturalization classes and begin studying to become a United States citizen. Then after you become a citizen everything will be easy for you. Why even if you have a girlfriend back in Sicily, you can go back there marry her, and bring her back here free because now she’s your wife. So you see how easy it is. And it only takes five years to become a citizen.

Next day papa went to the union office to get his first job. He began by painting houses. He was quick, thorough, and very careful and his bosses liked him. After a few weeks they began to give papa the most delicate work like door frames and wall papering. Papa soon became an expert, almost even an artist, at hanging paper. He also was totally unafraid to mount a scaffold and paint the outside of a five storey building up there way up on the fifth floor of the building. So papa was well liked by everybody, even by his co-workers, who knew that they could always count on him to do the hard jobs and the most delicate work. With papa on the team the other men felt that they could do any job no matter how hard or complicated or difficult.

Then came the big job. One day after a job was finished, he went to the union office for the next one, and was told to go to La Guardia Field and there to go to the foreman. And papa went. He showed the foreman, who was also Sicilian, his union badge, now with his picture on it, and the foreman put papa to work. And papa began painting the newly constructed La Guardia Field inside and out.

And papa began going to naturalization classes. The other people in the class were Siciliani and Yudissha people mostly. And they all got along. Although the Siciliani stuck together and the Yudissha stuck together. But there never was no trouble. They all began learning to speak English together. And they all learned to know all about America and about voting and about the President and about the Congress and about the Senate and about the Bill of Rights and about the Constitution and about the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag.

Papa wrote to mama and told her everything was OK. Already he had his own one bedroom apartment on Lorimer Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. He told her he was only a few blocks away from Carlo and Constanza who had an apartment on Marcy Avenue and went there to eat every Sunday. He told mama that already he was saving money for the boat trip back to Italy. And he was saving money for their marriage. And he was saving money for their trip back together to America. Soon, in five years, it will all come true. Papa was happy. And mama was happy to receive papa’s letters. And with every letter papa wrapped the letter around a dollar bill and put it in the envelope and in the letter papa told mama to buy something nice for herself. And papa wrote to mama every week for the five years of their separation, so mama had many dollar bills.

Papa worked most of the time at La Guardia Field. Then he got other jobs through the union. And he never missed a monthly union dues payment. And then came the day when he became an American citizen. And then they told him at the union that now that he was a citizen he should vote and they told him that he had to do two things. Look at the list of people who were running for office and vote for the ones who were either Democrats, or who had Italian names. But most important was to vote for the Democrats because they were the ones who made the unions and without them the bosses would take at least half of the pay away from them so they had to vote Democrats solid with all the unions in America. And papa did just that. First Democrats, then Italians. But there never was an Italian on the list of those who were running for politics no matter how hard papa looked at the list. Maybe someday, he thought.

So papa returned to Italy his pockets full of money and his heart full of hope for a grand future.

October 14, 2009

Eating Rice Pudding

2009-06-11T03:49:00.000-07:00

Nico was sitting in a booth at a diner with his friends, Frank and Tony and Bobby. They loved to walk the streets of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and talk. They walked for miles it seemed. They especially loved to walk in the rain. The sound of the raindrops pattering on their umbrellas felt good. Their clothes were the uniforms of what they believed the wannabe Writer (with a capital W) wore—the literary intellectual: corduroy jackets over white T-shirts and blue jeans, and of course they sported pipes. When not smoking they placed their pipes in the upper left side pocket of their jackets. Placing the pipe is an art form. Some place the pipe stem down, barrel up; some barrel down, stem up. Nico preferred it barrel down, stem up. This way the nicotine didn’t drip into the stem and give a terrible mouth later when he lit up. They always ended up in Joe’s Diner on Knickerbocker Avenue, and would continue talking and horsing around and eat rice pudding. Sweet.

They thought they knew what was what. They were already reading the New Yorker. Frank even had a subscription. He was the smart one and the real talker. They were all into reading and were would-be writers but the only one who wrote anything was Frank. He already had published in the school paper. And he talked about who he thought was the best of the contemporary writers, Howard Fast. And of course the others had to read Fast in order to keep up with Frank. But he was always ahead of them. Nico thought, but never said, that Fast was great, sure, especially his stories about Washington and Hamilton and the other early founders of the USA, but he really thought Fast was lightweight. Frank said, Sure, Fast was underrated but that’s because he was so easy to read.

When Nico discovered T.S. Eliot and Hemingway and Dostoevsky, Fast was gone for him. And when he tried to speak about them on their walks, Frank would pontificate saying, “Maybe Hemingway was just about OK, but the others—like James Joyce, and Sam Beckett, and everybody else who tries to write like them are the best-unread modern writers of all time, like Shakespeare and Chaucer; and Milton, of course, was the worst.” He said, “When my uncle was in graduate school in a class on Shakespeare, the professor asked all the students in the class, ‘Who’s read the entire works of Shakespeare?’ and nobody raised their hand. ‘How come?’ asked the professor, ‘Shakespeare is the greatest English writer of them all and yet not one of you has read all of his works.’ And Frank said, “So much for the great Shakespeare.”

And Frank was the great chess player. He beat them all. He even beat them together in what he called blitz chess. He’d walk from one board to another and beat them—all. He was smart. And he worked out. He was a short guy, but stubby, a little like a small wine barrel. And he had iron muscles. They all deferred to Frank.

Soon they would graduate, soon go to college, soon they would separate and live different lives. Frank, Tony, and Bobby got into NYU. Nico didn’t have the grades to get into college, and papa, Nico’s father, put it to him straight, “Go to college or go to work.” So he applied to the CCNY extension night classes where those kids who didn’t have the 3.0 average were able to get in. And if they got their grades up they could “matriculate” into the regular day college.

So Nico went to CCNY and to a different world. Now, he rarely saw Frank, Tony, or Bobby. Nico took the subway from Lorimer Street all the way up to the Bronx. The subway car went past the famous 125^th Street. He stared at the station when he got there. Stared at the black people who got on and off. He was dying to get off and wander up and down the street. But he didn’t dare. It would be like entering a strange foreign country. His would be the only white face. He knew about the jazz clubs. About the Apollo Theatre, and the Cotton Club. And the train went by and on to the CCNY stop.

The first day at CCNY Nico just strolled around to see what was what. He went to the lounge to get a cup of coffee and saw the chess tables and players. He sat down when a game opened up and played and beat a kid he didn’t know. It felt so good. So from that day, first thing he did when he went to school was to go to the lounge and play chess. Some-times the game was so hot that when his class started he went on with the game and missed the class. He got better and better at chess. And worse and worse at class. He began reading the chess books and working out the puzzles and working out the different openings. He enjoyed chess more than he enjoyed classes. And he wondered if he could now beat Frank.

Then Robbie sat in the empty chair, across the chess table, after Nico won a game. Robbie was black. They were pretty equal. Robbie maybe a little better than Nico. After playing they talked about 125^th Street and about jazz. Robbie said he would take Nico to the Apollo. His uncle worked backstage, he said, and they could see everything close. They talked about their neighborhoods. About their girls. About their gangs. About the fights they had. They became friends. Robbie told Nico once in a very serious quiet voice that was almost a whisper that he stabbed another kid. And the kid died. He told Nico no one else knew he had done it. He told Nico he never told anybody about this. Now there were best friends. Now they were brothers. Nico was thrilled with fear, and proud to be the brother of a tough black guy.

Robbie did take Nico to the Apollo. And they did go backstage and watched the performances from the wings of the curtain. What a dream. It was wonderful. There were all the black people. Everybody was happy. Everybody sang with the band. Some people danced in the aisles. When an act was booed by the audience a loud siren like the ones on fire trucks would burst into sound and a long hook would reach out from the side of the stage and yank the poor performer off the stage and the audience would whoop and holler and laugh and clap and have a wonderful time. Nico’s was the only white face. He felt yes, he really was in another country. But he was with Robbie and it was OK. Nobody bothered him. Nobody minded him. And the band and the music and the singers and the dancers excited him.

Robbie introduced Nico to 52^nd Street. They went there after their night classes. The Three Deuces, the Front Door, Birdland, and all the other jazz clubs. There were about a dozen or so little clubs on both sides of the street. You could hear the music as you got to the corner. On the south side, it was Dixieland. On the North side, it was modern jazz.

The way it worked was easy. They would enter and go straight to the bar that was always at the far end of the club near the door. And they would order a glass of beer that cost only seventy-five cents. They were able to nurse that one glass through an entire set. The bartenders knew they were kids, and they also knew that they loved jazz and what harm could they do with a measly glass of seventy-five cent beer, when the place wasn’t crowded? After hearing one set, Nico and Robbie would go out to another club and do another set with another seventy-five cent beer. It was wonderful. But on weekends the bartenders kept the bars free for older and higher paying drinkers.

Nico got to hear all the great musicians, like Coleman Hawkins, Charlie Parker, Dizzie Gillespie, Lester Young, and Billie Holiday. He fell in love with Billie—Lady Day. He first saw her and Lester at the Three Deuces. There was a piano player, a drummer, a bassist, and Lester, on this little platform that was supposed to be a stage. Then Billie walked on and stood before the mike. The musicians started playing. Billie began to slowly and quietly swing her body with the music. Then when it was time, when she was ready, when it felt right, she began to sing. Lester followed her with a solo on his tenor sax that was as sweet and mournful and lovely as her singing. Then another chorus from Billie, while Lester would rif behind and in-between her words, and it was as if they were one body, one sound, one marriage of song. Then each player took a solo, the pianist, and the drummer, even the bass player.

Billie’s singing wasn’t separate from the rest of the musicians. It was one sound. They were musicians and together they made music. It wasn’t like the singer singing the song and the band just backed her up. And Billie listened to the solos of the other musicians and swung with them and smiled and even clapped or put her hands together when someone made a good lick, especially Lester.

There was gentleness and sadness and acceptance and defiance all together in her voice. Her singing proclaimed, “This is me, Billie Holliday and I know who I am!” And Nico loved her.

One night Robbie said “Let’s go up to her dressing room after the set and ask for her autograph,” And they did. They got to her dressing room door and Nico bravely knocked on the door and then they heard that wonderful raspy voice say, "Come on in.” They opened the door and Billie probably was surprised to see two college kids, or maybe they were even high school, because Nico was so small. But, she smiled broadly.

Nico timidly said, “Miss Holliday, we love your singing. Can we have your autograph?”

“Why sure,” she said, “come on over, honey.” And they each handed her one of their school notebooks in which she wrote down her blessed name.

Going home back to Brooklyn that night on the subway was like flying through the air.

Nico learned something very important on 52^nd Street. He learned what it meant to swing. It was something that Miles Davis said. The story goes that Miles was standing at a bar and the group playing was the Dave Brubeck quartet. After the set, Brubeck went to the bar and asked Miles what he thought of his group. Miles said, “It’s all head music, man. You play the notes and you play them fast. But the group doesn’t swing. You're the only one in the group that has some swing in you. But not much.” And Nico realized that there was a great divide between white and black jazz musicians. The white musicians made the money and got the biggest gigs. But they didn’t swing. The black musicians swung but they didn’t make the money. Yes, there were great white bands like Woody Herman and Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw and such. And they played great numbers and had great hits. But compared with the bands of Count Basie and Duke Ellington, you could hear the difference. White bands couldnt swing like the black bands. The great Benny Goodman who, at his best with his small groups, could swing a little, but that was because the heart of his early small groups were black—the great Lionel Hampton on vibes, the majestic Teddy (Theodosius, they called him) Wilson on piano, and the genius, Charlie Christian on guitar. They swung. Listen to the early Goodman groups with Hampton and Wilson and Christian and then listen to the later groups without them. Listen to the rhythm sections of the Count Basie orchestra and stack it up against any white band. Glen Miller, for instance, had the most famous and the best-paid band in the country. The story goes that once when he went up the Harlem, to the Savoy ballroom, to hear Count Basie’s band, he shook his head and said, “Why can't my band ever swing like that?”

Nico figured out that swing was heart and guts and soul all wrapped up together. It was something that came from deep inside. Something that was there that nobody put there. Something that you were born with. Something that you can't create and make happen. Something you can’t find and yet it was there, everywhere, and it was everything—everything that mattered.

Nico decided that whatever he was to do with his life it had to swing! Whatever act he did, unless it swung—it wasn’t worth it. His relationships with others had to swing otherwise they weren’t worth it. The guiding inner light for him was to swing. That’s what was great about his friendship with Robbie. It swung. And that’s why when one night Robbie wasn’t in the lounge where Nico and he used to meet, Nico was most distressed. He looked for him all over. He searched the cafeterias. He went to all of the classes he knew of that Robbie took. But Robbie wasn’t there. Nico asked around and nobody knew. What happened? He wondered maybe Robbie got into some kind of trouble and had to cool it for a while? Nico went to the Apollo to Robbie’s uncle. He didn’t know anything. Or if he did he wasn’t saying. Nico went to 52^nd Street to the clubs they went to together. But Robbie was never there. Some of the bartenders got to know Robbie, and Nico asked if they had seen Robbie but they all said no, they hadn’t. He just disappeared. Nico waited for Robbie to find him, Nico. Robbie never did. It was strange. It was weird. Like Dante losing his Virgil.

Nico felt lost. Almost betrayed. Without Robbie he slowly slipped away from chess and from 52^nd Street. He began going to his classes. And his grades went up, and he matriculated and eventually graduated in English. He went on to take get a Teaching Credential and a Master’s and landed a job teaching English at Clinton High School in Williamsburg. And he went back to walking the streets of Brooklyn with Frank and Tony and Bobby whenever they could.

Now they no longer were kids but adults, and they would still get together every so often. When one of them had the yen he would call up the others and say, “Hey let’s go walking.” And they would meet and walk and talk and end up at Joe’s and eat rice pudding like they used to.

Nico looked at Frank and Tony and Bobby and felt inferior to them, like he used to feel when they were kids. They all had their success stories and told them to one another. Frank got his Ph. D, and taught English Lit at NYU. His major subject was the works and life of Howard Fast. He even knew Fast personally and was a frequent guest in Fast’s home in upstate New York. Tony got his Master’s in Business Administration and had a power job with the City of New York. He met with important people and he’d tell everybody about his meetings. And he’d tell about the pressures of his job and his meetings with the Mayor and even sometimes the Governor. Bobby went to med school in Italy. He came back, a doctor, and developed a thriving practice in Scarsdale. He became fat and rich. He married a woman from Scarsdale, not an Italian, and had a big house, and drove a Mercedes. Nico could only boast that he taught English at Clinton High School in a low-income neighborhood in Williamsburg and that he still lived in the same apartment on Lorimer Street where he was born. Some success story. Not only did he feel inferior—he was inferior!

Now, many years later—Nico had retired from teaching and still lived on Lorimer Street. But there were changes. Lorimer Street was now in a preferred upper-scale area populated by yuppies and stockbrokers and all sorts of artists who couldn’t afford to live in Greenwich Village.

Now, Nico was once again at Joe’s Diner. He sat in a booth—one of the booths where he used to sit together with Frank and Tony and Bobby. But they weren’t there. Frank died several years ago after having one massive heart attack after another. Bobby also died of a heart attack—probably from sheer obesity. Tony was still alive, but long retired, living in Naples, Florida, blind, and maybe a little confused. Robbie? Where is he? Is he alive? Does he remember Billie? Is he swinging somewhere? Is he dead? Nico wondered. Then he wondered about himself. What happened? Where is everybody? Am I swinging, he wondered? He placed his spoon into the rice pudding, brought it to his mouth, and began eating. Sweet.

June 10, 2009

Confession

2009-05-27T12:01:00.000-07:00

This is Brooklyn of the 1940s, when Saturday is Hassidic shops close, and Catholics go to confession. St. Leonard’s, Hank’s church, is dark inside. Just the sides of the church are lighted where the three-part confession boxes are. The priest sits in the middle and there is a wooden screen door that he slides open and shut on either side of him. When he finishes with one confession he slides the screen shut, turns to the other side, and slides that screen open, and another confession begins.

There were lines of around ten on each side. Hank dreaded what he had to confess. He chose Father Murphy because he was the easiest of the priests. Still he was scared. How could he tell Father Murphy? What could he say? Hank said ten Hail Marys, so he could confess it right. Maybe he could be forgiven without having to go into the box and tell him? Hank moved closer to the head of the line and wondered what the people were confessing. Their sins couldn’t be as bad as his. He watched them as they got out of the box and went to the altar to kneel and say their penance, trying to figure out how many Our Fathers and Hail Marys they had to say. How many would he get? Or maybe his penance would be worse? But the worst thing was what Father Murphy would say to him. Sometimes the priests talked loud and everybody could hear. Then everybody would look at Hank as he came out. It would kill him. Maybe they’ll kick him out of the church? Maybe he should beat it and come back another Saturday? But he knew he was in a state of mortal sin, and that if he should die he would go straight down to hell. So he had to stay in line. Maybe he should go to another church where they didn’t know him? Confess there and come back and confess a few venial sins to Father Murphy? But if he went to another church the priest would then know why he hadn’t confessed in his own church. Maybe he wouldn’t give Hank absolution and maybe he’d him to go to his own church and his own priest? Then when he’d go back to Father Murphy and told him he’d be madder than hell. There is a long confession going on inside. Good. But next one is already him. Oh my God!

Hank likes being a Catholic. He’s a good Catholic—an altar boy. He serves Mass, often with Father Murphy even. He goes to St Leonard’s Catholic School. He’s in the fourth grade. He loves getting up early in the morning and walking to church for the six-o-clock mass. The morning streets are different streets. The sweepers are out and they wash the streets with those big circular brushes under the body of their trucks. And everything is fresh and wet and clean. Why did he have to ruin everything with his lousy sins?

Maybe they won’t let him have Holy Communion anymore? That would be terrible. He loves Holy Communion. To have u Signuruzzu (an affectionate Sicilian term for the baby Lord Jesus) enter his body and then he would become completely pure. He loved putting on his surplice before serving at Mass. He loved ringing the little bells when Father Murphy raised the host. He loved Passion Week when all the saints were hidden behind purple cloths. He loved the quiet of the church and the smell of the incense in the early morning. His house was always busy and loud and smelled of garlic. Nobody shouted at him in Church. Nobody hit him in church. Nobody knocked him on the ground and rubbed his knuckles against the sidewalk until they bled. Nobody made him take back a rejected loaf of bread to the grocery store. How many times had he served Mass for Father Murphy! Now he has to tell him. It’s his turn. He has to go in. He can still leave. Too late. He enters the box. He’s stuck. Now Father Murphy is hearing the confession of the person on the other side. Then when he finishes he’ll slide the wooden window and he’s next. O God, Let me have more time, he prayed. The window swishes open.

“Bless me Father for I have sinned. I haven’t been to confession for a month or so.”

“Why so long,” said Father Murphy’s kind voice. Yes, it was kind. Does he know it’s Hank? Hank’s voice? Does he know who’s confessing?

“I couldn’t.”

“Why not?” Hank had no answer. His tongue jammed in his dry mouth. He couldn’t open it. Maybe it was stuck? Maybe he wouldn’t be able to talk? Maybe? “Tell me son. Is it so bad?” Father Murphy-kindness again.

“Yes, Father, real bad.”

“It can’t ever be bad enough for Christ’s love,” said Father. “You know that don’t you?”

“Yes, Father.”

“So whatever it is, if you are truly sorry, Christ will forgive.”

“O yes, Father. I’m sorry. Very very sorry.” Silence. Father Murphy waited.

“Father,” he said, “I did acts of impurity.” It started to come out.

“Yes son. How many times?”

“A lot Father. I cant remember how many. A lot.”

“Every day?”

“Oh yes, Father, every day. Sometimes, two or three times a day—maybe some days not so much.”

“Anything else?” said Father Murphy.

“I did impure things with my friends.”

“Are your friends boys or a girls?”

“Both, Father.”

“What did you do?”

“I can't, Father. It’s too awful. I don’t know how to say it.”

“Just take your time,” said Father, “and tell me everything.”

“Everything?”

“Yes, everything. Don’t leave anything out.”

And then it came out. Hank told Father Murphy, “Sex happened when I wasn’t expecting it. Like that afternoon when Tony and I were walking together after school. Tony said, “Let’s go visit some new friends of mine.”

“O.K. I said. Who are they?”

“A couple of girls and boy are they great.”

“O.K., I said again, then let’s go!”

“So we went a few blocks up Lorimer Street to a house I didn’t know. We rang the door buzzer and the buzzer buzzed back and the door opened. And we went upstairs. We climbed up two flights of stairs and Tony knocked on a door and a girl opened it. And there was another girl inside. And we were all alone in the house and we sat on the floor and began playing spin the bottle and we kissed a lot whenever the bottle stopped and pointed at two of us, the nearest boy and the nearest girl. And we did lots of kissing. And then we played strip poker. We played until we were all naked.”

Then Hank told Father Murphy all about the sexual explorations and discoveries they made. The touching and feeling and playing with one another. About how the boys explored the bodies of the girls and touched them all over and how the girls explored their bodies and touched them all over.

Hank said, “And that was all of it, Father. There’s nothing more.”

Father Murphy felt an arousal. He couldn’t believe it. Why was this happening to me? He knew there were priests who struggled with their bursting sexuality and that some of them had sex with little boys. But he shrank from such acts. It can’t happen to me he said to himself. It won’t happen to me he said to himself.

“Are you sure there’s nothing more to tell me?” There was an edge to Father Murphy’s voice.

“No, Father.” Hank felt he was in deep trouble.

A long pause. A deep sigh came from Father Murphy. Then he said, “Son you’ve committed many grave mortal sins. Not only have you sinned against your own body but also you’ve sinned against the bodies of others. You’ve abused yourself and you’ve abused others. And you have to stop it. Right now your soul is in such a dangerous state that you could go straight to Hell. The things you’ve done are the works of the Devil himself. Do you know that abusing yourself will affect you for the rest of your life? You can permanently injure yourself if you don’t stop. So you must stop. You can’t be a good Catholic and do these things.”

“Yes, Father.”

“Are you sorry for all the things you have done?”

“Oh yes, Father, it’s killing me.”

“You must come to confession every Saturday from now on. You must come to me and to me only. You must go to mass every day for a month. You must say the Stations of the Cross once every week. And right now you must go up to the altar and say fifty Our Fathers and fifty Hail Marys.”

“Yes Father. Thank you Father.” Father Murphy then raised his hands and said the magic Latin words.

Hank was so relieved when he left the confession box. He went straight to the altar and with tears of joy began his grateful recitation of the Our Fathers and Hail Marys. He now had a clean slate. His heart and soul were pure again. He was so happy to be forgiven that he even threw in a few extra Our Fathers and Hail Marys.

Father Murphy heard confessions until eight o clock. And ninety-five percent of them were about sex. Hank’s confession hit him the most. Of course he knew it was Hank. He knew by the voice and the way he talked. Hank had served mass for him many times. How was he going to face Hank now after he had heard all this? What was more disturbing was his arousal while Hank was describing the sex explorations with the girls. It reminded him so much of his own childhood. Now it was happening again. Now Hank was reliving and reviving Father Murphy’s sexual life when he was a kid. And now Father Murphy was erecting again with the memory of the story Hank had told him and of his own childhood and of his own confused present state. This is crazy, thought Father Murphy.

He walked down to the altar. The church was empty. At last alone. He knelt at the altar and looked up at the huge crucifix hanging on the wall behind the altar. He looked at the bleeding, dying Christ, and prayed for his forgiveness. He decided to do the same penance he gave Hank and said fifty Our Fathers and fifty Hail Marys. Then he threw in a few extra. He made the sign of the cross, rose and went into one of the side rooms. He took off his habit and put on his civilian clothes. Of course, all black, with the usual starched white rolled collar.

He slowly walked out of the church, locked up, and headed for the nearest diner and cup of coffee. He sat down, drinking his coffee, took out his breviary and mentally recited the evening office. But his mind was not on the prayers in the book. He thought of King Claudius who tried to pray but couldn’t saying, “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: words without thoughts never to heaven go.” How often, Father Murphy sadly thought have I said these words? He gave a deep sigh, paid for his coffee, rose and went to the rectory of the church where he had a small apartment. He was tired. He was weary. He wanted to go straight to bed and just sleep sleep sleep. But sleep wouldn’t come. He tossed and turned. He reached down but pulled his hand back. What was he doing he thought? He always had a hard time after hearing confessions. He realized that he hated hearing confessions. He loved being a priest. He loved everything about it, except the hearing of confessions. He loved the singing of the old Latin hymns. He especially loved “Tantum Ergo,” and “Panis Angelicum.” He loved the lifting up of the host when Christ entered into it. He loved the holidays, especially Easter and Christmas. Maybe he could find another post? Maybe he could do something that didn’t have confessions? Like a desk job in the Diocese office. But then that wouldn’t be being a priest. That would be being a clerk. And he was a priest.

He knew there was trouble with priests. It began in the Seminary even on the first day when all those young men, many of whom weren’t even shaving their faces yet, arrived. He was one of them. And he saw how some of the men were looking at each other flirtatiously, as one would look at a girl. And he didn’t understand quite what was going on. He asked one of his friends about it. His friend smirked, “They're queers.”

“Queers? What’s that?”

“They do it with boys. Where have you been?”

Then it hit him. Then he saw that there was a lot of it going on in the Seminary. He saw that even some of the older Priests, who taught at the Seminary, had a special relationship with some of the younger boys.

And then when they graduated and became priests and were assigned to a parish it would continue. Confession was usually the way it started. The priests easily got to know which boys or girls were ripe. And once it started some

priests even made sex slaves of children like Hank and Tony. He knew he could easily turn Hank’s confession to feed his own sexual needs. Father Murphy tossed and turned. He got out of bed, knelt beside it and prayed long into the night. One Our Father after the other. Over and Over again. But nothing happened. Once again like Claudius. Finally, tired, he got into bed again. And sleep came.

Next morning his bed and pajamas were wet. The same morning, a few blocks away, in another house, Hank’s bed and pajamas were dry.

May 27, 2009

Prison Escape

2009-05-04T12:27:00.001-07:00

Louie and the Greek were cumbares, which to those who don’t know mafia talk means something like cousins. They both felt they had been put in the wrong prison. They weren’t the murderers or rapists or hopheads.

Greek was auto-theft. But not just any heap. He specialized in Cadillacs. The way it worked was you got the client say in New York and took his or her order; say for a spiffed ‘50 Cad. You get the specs, down to the color. Then you find the car in Miami. You collect it and make all the necessary adjustments down to the stamped registration on the motor. You then deliver the car to your customer, the new owner. It works both ways. New York cars for Miami, Miami cars for New York. You never made a switch in the same city. That was too sloppy. This is the kind of high-class crime Greek was into.

Louie was embezzlement. He doctored books clean and tidy. Nobody ever got hurt. Maybe a little dry and thirsty sometimes. But nobody got hurt. Greek and Louie had never had a gun in their hands. Not a knife or even a blackjack. And they counted on some time behind bars as part of the cost of business. They accepted that as their dues.

They were in a high-class prison, Danbury, where they expected to be, up in Connecticut. The Country Club of the Federal Prison System. It is a minimum-security prison—a prison you can be proud of. A prison you could boast about to your friends. A prison everybody would be jealous about. But Louie and Greek had gotten a little careless when they were on parole in New York City. And Danbury was crowded so they were sent upstate to a nowhere place called Napanoch, Eastern Correctional Institution. It was a maxi. Why put them in a maxi? Their crimes were nonviolent. Sure but they had long records. Greek since he was fifteen and Louie just about the same. And for that they had to go to a crummy State maxi? To a nowhere place in the mountains and forests with the crazy name of Napanoch? It wasn’t right.

At least they weren’t afraid of the hophead prisoners. Greek was big. Great upper body. V shaped. Strong like the ox, they all said. His skin was dark olive. He liked to go around bareback to show it off. His biceps like small bowling balls. His shoulders could smash down four inch-thick wooden doors. He was about five-feet-ten. And he was a ham. He would swing into a pose at any minute. And everybody feared and liked him all at the same time. And he wrote poetry all the time. His favorite poems came from the Reader’s Digest. But he knew his were better. His poems were the awfullest mush and they were long. He loved his own writing and he would corner anyone in sight, and his catch felt forced to painfully listen to Greek dramatically recite his poem. He would enjoy his poems so much and everybody enjoyed his enjoyment. Especially his crazy lines that he would take seriously. Lines like “the tickle of grass as it tickles your ass” and he would look up at you so dramatic-like that you didn’t know if he was serious or just giving you one.

He loved to corner a holy dude. Someone who made a big deal about going to church every Sunday and always receiving communion, like the holy chaplain clerks. (Louie was the head clerk of the office.) Greek would read his tickle-grass-poem and try to wheedle a smile out of the victim clerk’s holy face. And the victim knew it and tried to keep the smile back but sooner or later he broke down. And when he did Greek would shout, “You see, you smile. It’s true! It’s true! It does tickle your ass! It does! Hey everybody!” he says, calling everybody to tell them all about his amazing victory, “listen, the grass does tickle his holy ass. Look. Show them your ass. Show them your holy ass. Show them the tickle.” And he would walk away triumphantly.

Louie was different. He was a wop. He was small. Wiry. Strong. Smart. He was jovial, engaging, warmhearted, open, and trusting to his friends. He was a “good” Catholic. He was the one to round up all the “Eastside mobsters” he called them, for the choir on Sundays. Louie came from a tough section of Brooklyn: Williamsburg. He enjoyed telling everybody how he used to enjoy walking up the street to go to church and kick the little kids in the ass off of the sidewalk into the streets as he sauntered along, just to show them their place. He said nothing good ever came out of his neighborhood except for him. The rest were all thugs and mobsters. He used to tell about the graduating class of PS 54 where most of the kids played handball. So and so was knocked off. Shot with ten bullet holes in the streets. So and so is pulling fifty years in Leavenworth. So and so burned in the chair. So and so is pulling forty-five for kidnapping. So and so this and so and so that.

And Louie loved to argue. He loved to argue for the sport of it. He called himself the black Jesuit. He would argue about anything with anybody. And especially if he could get them mad. He liked to knock you down with his words. It was the volume and persistence that won out.

Louie was a bruglione. He loved to get people into an argument and mix them up so that they didn’t know what was up—a bruglione. Like take Slats. Slats was one of Louie’s pigeons. Slats was six-foot-three and stupid. So he was perfect for Louie. Louie would pick an argument with Slats about anything that happened to be floating around at the time. Then Louie would up the pace. He would look around and see if anybody else was listening and he would drag whoever was, by asking for their opinion. Then he would find the newcomer’s opinion worthless so he could set him straight. Now he had two people arguing with him. He would then turn and see if anybody else was there, listening. Most guys were wise to Louie and his ways and usually would flee for their lives when he got started.

But most of the guys fell into Louie’s traps because of pulling time. Everybody just everybody in prison no matter what the crime, no matter if they were set up as they usually claimed—everybody had the impossible job of pulling time. Of making time go by. Of making the years shrink into months. The months into days. Because most of the inmates in a maxi had long pulls—twenty or twenty-five or thirty-five years to life. And these years were long. And one of the most valuable things Louie’s crazy embroiled arguments did was kill time. And everybody knew it. And Louie knew it. Louie thought in a way he doing the other prisoners a service. And everybody happily bit the bullet. And Louie had them. And when they were all frothing he would quietly step back and admire his creation as an artist would. And he would end it all with a, “You bunch of shitheads arguing about nothing!” and happily walk away.

So everybody at Eastern liked Louie and Greek and everybody at Eastern feared Louie and Greek because they palled together. When the inmates saw Louie and Greek together they thought mafia. They looked mafia. Greek looked like Louie’s enforcer and so the inmates feared and respected Louie and Greek.

Louie and Greek basically despised the inmates at Eastern. They treated them as inferiors and the inmates acted as if they were when they were around Louie and Greek. All of this told them that Eastern was not the place for them. They should’ve been sent to Danbury. They applied for one transfer after another but were told that transfers across systems were not allowed. Once in the State Prison System there you stayed. You can’t move from State to Federal or Federal to State. But we were in Federal they argued. It’s only because there wasn’t space at Danbury that the Judge put us here. Our crimes are Federal. No matter. You're in the State system and that’s where you stay.

So the idea was born in the minds of Louie and Greek that they had to escape. After studying the place Louie thought that it was easy. So Louie began to make all the preparations for their escape.

The plan Louie came up with was simple. Every two months, like clockwork, the Ellenville Elks Club sent a group to the prison. About thirty people, all men of course. They came to visit to give gifts to provide a meal to go to church to show a movie to picnic. It was the Elk’s good deed and display of civic spirit. Louie said that it would be a simple thing just to waylay two of the Elks who were more or less their size. Take their clothes, take their place, and just walk out with the rest of them. What was in their favor was that the day officer who was in charge of security at the admission desk was Officer Robert Pistol. And Officer Pistol was not a pistol. He was a Councilman for the City of Ellenville. But being a Councilman didn’t pay anything so he also had a job working in the prison, like a third of the men and women of Napanoch. Ellenville, Warwarsing, and Kerhonkson, the four towns that surrounded the prison. Pistol loved being a politician, a Democrat no less, in a Republican town. He loved playing politician. Loved talking to everybody about the major achievement of his last year of service as councilman that was to put in a traffic light at a busy intersection. He managed to get the bill to the Council and the council agreed and there was the Pistol traffic light. The good thing for Louie was that Pistol was lame brained and easily distracted. True he had all incoming people to the prison go through the metal detector portals and he checked their IDs. And he stamped their wrists with invisible ink. But everything was done with sort of an air of distraction. When you looked at him while your were talking to him his eyes told you he was someplace else. And Louie liked that and thought Pistol was just perfect. Pistol was gold.

Louie managed to get to the front area quite a bit because he was the chief clerk of the Catholic Chaplain who had the best office after the Muslim Chaplain. So he had to come up front to deliver messages, to go to the zerox machine, to make copies of whatever was needed for church services, to go to the business office to order supplies for the Chaplain’s office.

Just as Louie expected, the Elks came. When the Elks tour took them to the church, Louie and Greek selected their prospects. Louie approached the two Elks and sheepishly told them the Catholic Chaplain asked if they would please join him in his office for some special gifts. The Elks gladly came. Once inside the office Louie and Greek subdued them, exchanged clothes, went through their pockets, found the keys to the locker units in the front where they had placed their valuables, and most importantly for Louie and Greek, their wallets, for they needed cash. They tied the two Elks up, stuffed handkerchiefs in their mouths, and sealed them with duct tape. It was now two thirty pm. The next count would take place at 4 pm. The Elks had to leave the prison by 3 pm. Louie then picked up the chaplain’s phone, dialed 009 and then the Chaplain’s special code number, to get an outside line and phoned Dick’s Taxi. He informed Dick’s that he was one of two Elks visiting the prison but they had another appointment and couldn’t get back on the bus so could a taxi please meet them in front of the visiting room of the prison at exactly 3 pm? Yessirree. And then seeing that the rest of the Elks had left the church, Louie and Greek carried the two Elks to an old fashioned confessional where the priest would be in the middle with a confessor on each side. The Elks were placed on each side.

At around 2:50 pm Louie and Greek joined the group in the front. They went to the lockers and opened their lockers and bless those Elks they left their wallets. Louie and Greek being high class crooks only took the cash the wallets had and left the rest of the contents: photos, and such.

Officer Pistol, standing on tiptoe, counted the Elks who were noisily swarming all over the front area and said, “OK guys see you in two months and don’t forget to vote Pistol.” And out they went including Louie and Greek. The taxi was there. They got in and Louie told the taxi to take them to the Kerhonkson Post Office. It was now 3:10 pm.

The next part of the plan was to get a car. Again Louie’s plan was simple. They had to get to the Kerhonkson Post Office. The Napanoch Post Office was closer, in fact it was just across the road from the prison, but it was in a shopping center complex and too dangerous for them. The Kerhonkson Post Office was perfect. It was on a cul-de-sac. And the cul-de-sac part was wooded with a trail that led into the woods. Louie figured that the best way to steal a car and the best place to steal a car was in front of a post office because a lot of daffy people would leave their car running, dash into the post office, pick up their mail from their PO box, or do their business, dash back to the car, and off they would go again. The idea was pure poetry. And Kerhonkson was a sleepy town and everybody felt safe. And that’s what Louie counted on. They waited and watched and bingo. The car offered to them was a Honda Pilot station wagon. Louie and Greek agreed this car would be perfect. They could drive all the way down to New Jersey in no time at all. They could even go as far down as Miami and disappear.

The woman who left the Pilot shut the door leaving the motor running. As soon as she entered the door of the post office Louie and Greek, who were talking together, as normal people do when they meet at the Post Office, got into the car and drove off. It was now 3:45 pm. Count would take place in fifteen minutes.

The entrance to the freeway highway 87 was close and easy. They got on it and headed south. Greek was ecstatic. He kept pumping his arm. You did it Louie! You did it Louie! You're a fuckin genius Louie! You're a fuckin genius Louie! And they laughed and laughed. Louie looked at the clock on the dash: 4 pm. Count time. Then they heard a wail.

“What’s that,” Louie asked? Greek turned around and looked in the back seat and saw a baby strapped in a seat-harness wailing away.

“Shit!” he said. “It’s a fuckin baby!”

“What” said Louie?

“A fuckin baby! A fuckin baby’s what I said. It’s a fuckin baby! Now what the hell do we do?”

To emphasize his point the baby obliged by raising the decibel level of wail to ear piercing levels.

“Jesus Christ!” said Louie, “What kind of a mother would leave her baby alone in a running car?”

“How do you know it was the mother?” said Greek.

“Of course it was the mother. No broad would do that to a baby that wasn’t hers.”

“So now we’re in for kidnapping,” said Greek.

“We’re no fucking kidnappers,” said Louie and he drove the Pilot off the next ramp off of the freeway. He parked. Greek found the registration in the glove compartment and with the maps there as well they found out where the owner of the car lived and how to get there.

The count, of course, was off. The prison was shut down and an intense search was made. The two bound Elks were found and Louie and Greek now were subject to a mandatory six-year stay in the hole or in a super-max once they were captured.

The alarm was sounded, search officers were sent into the woods with bloodhounds. But Louie and Greek were not to be found.

The house they were looking for was in Poughkeepsie on a street called Academy Street. They drove there. It was an old neighborhood that had received extensive urban renewal. The homes were old Victorian mansions. The gardens were all well kept up. They found the address, parked the car in front of the house and took the baby with them and rang the bell. No answer. So Greek, who was the expert here, picked the lock and they entered. First thing they did was find a bathroom and relieve themselves. Then they made a search for a baby room and found it. It even had a sink and a baby table with all the necessary tools hanging on side pockets of the table: powder, diapers, Vaseline, baby bottles, towels, and changes of baby clothes.

Louie got right down to business and unpacked the smelly baby. It was necessary. He dumped the dirty diaper into a hamper at the foot of the table and expertly washed the baby’s ass not forgetting all the necessary amenities like powder and Vaseline and such. He then took a bottle went to the enormous kitchen with an equally enormous frig took out a bottle of milk and filled the baby bottle. He then put some water into a small pot that was hanging over the stove on hooks, lit the burner under that pot, and placed the baby bottle in it to warm up the milk a little. He then removed the bottle, tested the warmth of the milk on his wrist, went over to the baby, picked her (for she was a she), handed her over to Greek with the bottle and said, “Here, feed her.”

Greek took the baby in his arms, took the bottle, sat down in a comfortable large sofa and began feeding the baby. And he loved it. He ooed and cooed while Louie looked at him in disgust and told him to shut the fuck up and just feed the baby and don’t drool on it.

“Now watta we do?” Asked Greek.

“Watta we do?” responded Louie, “We wait for the mother to get home. We give her hell, we give her the baby, we get something to eat, and we get outta here.”

“Wattaya mean we wait? What if she calls the cops?”

“She doesn’t cause we’ve got the baby.”

“What if the cops come with her after she reports the stolen car.”

“No cops in the world are that quick. The best she could do is call a friend or her husband to pick her up come straight home and then call the cops. But we’ll be waiting.”

Not for long. They heard the door open. Two women entered, just as Louie said.

They went into the living room and saw Louie standing looking at them and Greek with the baby holding a baby bottle of milk in its mouth.

“Nellie!” screamed one of the women.

“Who are you, the mother?” said Louie.

“Yes,” she said, “Nellie, Nellie. Is she all right?”

“What the fuck do you mean leaving that kid alone with the car running? Do you know I could make a citizen’s arrest on you for endangering the life of a baby not to mention criminal neglect? Do you realize what the fuck you did? Not only do you leave the car for anyone to steal you leave your fuckin baby in it so it can be kidnapped. Are you out of your fuckin mind?”

The mother was stunned. She looked at Louie and asked, “Who are you?”

“I’m the guy that stole your fuckin car and I didn’t appreciate finding a baby in it.”

“You stole the car and the baby and you're here with the car and the baby?”

“Yeah,” said Louie “but not for long. We’re hungry so whip up a couple sandwiches and coffee for us.”

“Yes sir,” said the other woman who went to the frig.

Louie and Greek, and the mother, who now held her baby, all sat at the kitchen table. Still in astonishment she said, “You stole the car and the baby and you’re here with the car and the baby? You brought back my baby! My little baby! And you took care of the baby? She has a fresh diaper on. Who changed the baby?”

“I did,” said Louie.

“You did?” said the mother. “You changed my baby?”

“Sandy,” said the other woman, “where are the cold cuts?”

“There’s a meat drawer on the top left of the frig, Roz.”

“And do you have any cheese, lettuce, tomato? I found the bread.”

“Lettuce, tomato in the drawer on the bottom left. Cheese on the top left in the meat drawer.”

“Got it,” said Roz.

Turning again to Louie and Greek, Sandy asked, “Who are you?”

“I’m Louie and this is Greek. We escaped from the prison at Napanoch and if we don’t get outta here soon we’ve got a six year date in the hole for the escape.”

“You mean they put you in solitary confinement for six years just for escaping?”

“That’s how they do it in New York. Have you called the cops yet?”

“No, I just called my husband, but he’s in court, he’s a lawyer, and couldn’t come so I called Roz and she came and he told me to call the police but I was so worried and so upset I just had to get back home first and we come and find the Pilot parked out in front, and you Greek and Nellie and—“clutching her breasts with the terrifying thought, “what are you going to do to us?”

“Shit!” said Louie, “Do we look like sex fiends?”

“Well you are criminals aren’t you? You just told us you escaped from Eastern. That’s a maximum security prison where they put all the hardened dangerous criminals.”

“Nawww,” said Louie. And Roz brought the sandwiches and coffee to the table and sat down joining the others. And Louie and Greek went on to explain how they were sent to Eastern because of overcrowding at Danbury where they should have gone and that they had to get out of Eastern because it would spoil their reputation and that they couldn’t get transferred because of the red tape and that they had to get outta here soon because there wasn’t much time.

“But you have time,” said Sandy. “Who knows you're here?”

“Naww, it’s too risky,” said Louie. “You phoned your husband. He’s a lawyer. That’s trouble. We’ve gotta go.”

So Greek and Louie finished their sandwiches, rose, said good buy to the ladies, went over to Nellie said good by to her, and Louie turned to Sandy and told her she’d better take good care of Nellie otherwise he’d be back, and they left.

Sandy and Roz went to the door saw Louie and Greek get into the car and waved as they drove off. Roz rushed back into the house and went to the phone. Sandy, after her shouted, “What are you doing”

“Doing,” said Roz, “I’m calling the police so they can stop them.”

“No,” said Sandy. “Put down that phone”

“Whattaya mean put down the phone? Watta you crazy or something?”

“No,” repeated Sandy. “Put down that phone. Don’t call the police.”

“Whattya mean? Why not call the police?”

“My baby,” said Sandy. “They brought me my baby, they took care of my baby.”

A few days later, Sandy got a letter. It was a plain envelope with no return address. It contained a ticket stub from Amos’s Parking Lot in Newark, New Jersey.

February 27, 2009

Muy Lejo

2009-05-04T12:23:00.001-07:00

Sam is a member of Highland, located in the heart of the jungles of Paraguay, more or less right in the middle of the country. There are some four hundred people who live together sharing all possessions, modeling their lives on the Early Christians lived immediately following the death of Jesus Christ.

Sam is excited, for he is going to the United States to help pave the way for the establishment of a new community. Sam has been with Highland for six years and is happy to return to the States, to his home, and he is proud to bring the vision and witness of the radical Christianity of Highland to the States. He thinks of himself as a missionary, in much the same way as the early first Apostles of Jesus were. After many years of searching he found the truth, and the word of God, and the word of Christ, and the Way Christ. And Sam is extremely happy to have found the way. Happy to have found the Christianity that Jesus and the early disciples created: a community in which they all lived together sharing all goods and sharing all funds. The Highlanders look upon themselves as one-body much in the way Paul described it in one of his letters. And they speak with one voice, which means they work at it until they can.

What a privilege! What a joy for Sam to be chosen to go back to the States to help establish community in the wilderness of the commercialization and heathenism and rampant secularity of the United States. Yes, he is an Apostle and proud to be one.

The first leg of the long voyage home is to get on the back of a truck that is going to take him to the river port of the village of Villa de Rosario, where he would board a small wood-powered steamship for an overnight sail down the Rio Paraguay to Asuncion, the capital city of Paraguay. From there, after a few days, he would board a plane and after a thirteen-hour flight is back home in the United States, home being Boston.

The truck trip to Rosario would take about eight hours from Highland. Eight hours to do around sixty miles. That gives you some idea of the condition of the road. Very slow and very rough. Fortunately, it had not rained for several weeks, otherwise the road would have been muddy and probably the trip would have had to be with a wagon and a pair of horses. That trip would take something like two days of sloshing through mud. So Sam feels lucky to be on the bed of a truck.

The truck begins its journey in the village of Carolina, next stop is Vaca Jhu, and Highland follows, then, Santa Ni, Itacurubì, and finally, Rosario. The highlight of the trip is the stop at Itacurubì for the great almaçen of Salomòn Portòn is there. There is a two-hour stop there for food, beer, matè, caña, (the whiskey of Paraguay, made from sugar cane and at about 150 proof, it seemed!) and other delightful necessities. There were two benches along both sides of the truck on which people sat down. Of course by the time Sam got on the truck the seats were already all filled up with men, women, and children, for naturally, the first on the truck get the best seats, which are near the front, closest to the cab. The bumps of the road vigorously toss one around in the back of the bus. Passengers include children, chickens, and small pigs. After the seats are all taken, people pile in the center of the truck, standing, sitting on the bed, and using makeshift pillows of blankets, ponchos, wooden carts, and boxes. It is a hot day and people are already drinking tererè, the hot weather cold drink of yerba matè. It is drunk with a silver straw, called a bombilla. The yerba is usually placed in a cowhorn which has been cut near the tip and sealed to make a drinking vessel and is called a guampa. Most people use plain water to drink tererè, but when you want to be fancy you use sparkling water. At Solomon’s almaçen it is always sparkling water.

So, in a way, this truck ride is an adventure for Sam and he boards the truck with such expectancy. He squirms his way to the front with his suitcase and stands facing and leaning on the cab of the truck and places his suitcase in front of him. A Paraguayan man is standing next to him. Sam speaks a little Spanish de la calle, (of the streets), and knows one or two Guaranì words, so he turns to the man and proudly says, in Guaranì, the universal greeting of all Paraguayans, “eM-ba-ee-ja-pà?” Or, “How you doin’?” To which the equally universal response is given, “ee-po-nà,” Or, “Great! How are you?” And thus the ice is broken and conversation begins. The conversation, of course, is conducted in Sam’s street Spanish with a dribble of Guaranì, and of course, again, all in a local campaña-Spanish, on the part of Wencelao. A loose translation of Sam and Wencelao’s conversation throughout the rest of this story follows, hopefully, with a feel of some of the local idioms and language conventions of the campaña. A few Spanish phrases will be thrown in to pepper the feel of their talk.

Sam, brimming with the excitement of his journey, looks at his Paraguayan companion and says, “Great day for travelling isn’t it?’

Wencelao, for that is his name, says, “Yeah, it sure is, especially since it hasn’t rained for over two weeks.”

Sam, “Yeah, now at least we know we won't get stuck and have to push this truck out of the mud.”

Wencelao, “I just hate that. I make this trip once a month and have pushed the damn truck many times out of the mud. Sometimes, more than once on a trip.”

Sam, “Well we’re in luck this time. How come you do this every month?”

Wencelao, “I go to Solomon’s almaçen, in Itacurubì, to buy supplies. You know things you can't grow or pick off trees like soap and grain and yerba matè and caña, and stuff and tools and things. And also to have a good meal. Solomon makes a great “bif a caballo.”

Sam, “Bif a caballo, what’s that?”

Wencelao, “Aii, ee-po-nà, (meaning here, something like, “fabulous!”). It’s something to die for. First he makes a nice asado (roast) of the steak over an open fire-pit. Then he puts two eggs with their yolks staring you in the face, on top of the steak, and the steak is surrounded with thin slices of fried mandioca (a root plant, comparable to potato) and the steaks are served with a tall glass of cerveza—Ahhh, I can just taste it. It makes this long trip more than worth it.”

Saliva flows in Sam’s mouth, for the food of Highland is rather plain and basically tasteless. Usually, the fare is thin soup, with small squares of vastly overcooked meat floating on top, along with a piece of mandioca, usually over-boiled, and tasting like cardboard. Whenever any of the members of Highland manage to get out to go on a trip, of course, one of the first things they do is have a smacking meal, and now Sam is looking forward to one, saying, “You’re sure making me taste it. I can't wait to get to Solomon’s.”

Wencelao, “It’ll take many hours before we get there. Would you like to have some tererè?”

Sam, “Thanks, I sure would.”

Wencelao opens his maleta, a simple sack with a hole in the middle, useful to sling over the neck of a horse when riding, or over one’s shoulder when not on a horse. The usual contents of a maleta are yerba matè on one side, and matè, (gourd), or guampa (cowhorn) one uses to drink from, and a bombilla, a silver straw-like tube. The other side of the maleta invariably contains mandioca. This is the basic diet of the Paraguayan campesino, without which he or she would die. But instead of mandioca, Wencelao has a plastic bottle of sparkling water for the tererè. In this way he treats himself for the arduous trip he has to make. Usually one uses plain water of any description to drink mate or tererè. In fact many a Paraguayan scoops up water from any stream or puddle, during rainy season without any ill effect. So powerful, say the Paraguayans, is yerba matè.

Unlike other cultures, Paraguayans don’t talk when they are sipping matè. Two to four to six people may be sitting by a fire sipping. Usually, either the female compañera of the man of the rancho, or the youngest of the family would prepare the matè, which involves boiling the water, placing yerba into the gourd or matè, placing a bombilla into the matè, pouring the boiling water into the matè then giving it first to the oldest of the group, or the guest, or the man of the rancho. That person sips the matè dry and hands it back to the server who refills it and hands it to the person sitting to the right of the first one. And in this fashion the matè goes around the circle. This continues until one of the circle says “Gracias,” after sucking his matè dry. Next time around, the one who says gracias is skipped. And so it goes until each person says gracias, and the matè ceremony is finished. Then they talk.

Sam knew about this strict matè protocol and kept a respectful silence until he broke it with the word, “Gracias.” Wencelao, who is serving, takes another drink. Then he puts away the mineral water, and the guampa, and begins the conversation.

“So,” he said, “You're with the barbudos, the bearded ones.”

“Si,” says Sam, “I am.”

“Ah,” says Wencelao. “I see many barbudos in the campaña. Especially the vaqueros (cowboys) who work on the estancia, when they drive their cattle they sometimes go through Carolina.”

“Is that where you live, Carolina?”

“Si.”

“And your family?”

“Si, mi compañera, and six children, four girls and two boys.”

Some words about the use of the word compañera. In the campaña of Paraguay, which means way off the beaten track, away from the major cities of the country, the institution of marriage is rare and casual. This is not because people don’t want to get married, but because priests are hard to come by. Yes, there is usually a church, an almaçen, and a one-room schoolhouse in most villages. The almaçen usually doubles as a bar. The larger villages have their own bar. But having a church in a village doesn’t mean there is a priest. Priests may be in charge of ten to twenty churches and they travel around to them every so often. And when the priest is sick he may stay in the village he’s at and rest. The chief work of the priest when he comes is first of all to baptize all the children who had been born since his last visit. Then he may perform a marriage or two. He hears confessions, and next morning would say mass, usually to a small group, usually female. Then, his work completed, he rests for a day or two, visits the local almaçen or bar, maybe drink matè with some of the people of the village, and eventually, drive off, usually on horseback; or if he’s a priest with enough money, he may have a small wagon with a horse.

The society of the campaña is matriarchal. This means the woman of the house stays put and the man roams about. So a man may have more than one compañera at a time. But usually, a woman has only one compañero at a time. The man goes from one rancho to another. He would also have children, usually several, in each of the ranchos where he has a compañera. This gets complicated because all relationships are tenuous and change. A man and a woman may get into a fight and separate. This means that the woman stays in the rancho and the man takes what he claims is his, a horse and wagon, if he’s lucky enough to own them, maybe some livestock, his knives, clothes, and maybe he may have a gun, and off he goes to another rancho where there is probably another compañera waiting for him. Or he may have met a woman at one of the weekend dances in the plaza, who agreed with him that they become compañeros. Then another family begins. At the same time, another man may take the place vacated, and a new compañero relationship begins, this means, more children. So there is a household of several children of different fathers but a common mother. For this reason, one does not ask a child about the details of his or her parentage.

“And so you’re off to Itacurubì.”

“Si,” says Wencelao, “and you, where are you going?”

“I’m going all the way, to Rosario.”

“Ah, si, Rosario.” says Wencelao, “Es muy lejo.” (It is very far.) “I’ve never been there.”

“What,” says Sam, “you’ve never been to Rosario?”

“No,” says Wencelao, “es muy lejo.”

“But it isn’t that far, only about a legua or two beyond Itacurubì.” (A legua is about as much a healthy, strong man, can walk in a day.) “Anyhow,” continued Sam, “how do you like Carolina?”

“Is a nice village. It has an almaçen and a school and a church.”

“And what do you do for work?”

“I have a horse and sometimes I work on a nearby estancia in Vaja Jhu. When there are a lot of cattle it is easy for me to get work at rodeo where the branding and castrations are done. I’m a good rodeo vaquero.”

“And do you drive cattle also?”

“No, I can't do that because the horse I have is too small and too weak and too old for such work.”

“So then what do you do?”

“Then I am home with my compañera and children. I plant mandioca and beans, and there are many citrus trees in the nearby woods, and bananas and guavas and papaya, and I have two goats for milk, and chickens for eggs, and pigs for meat. And I go hunting once a month and usually get a small boar or a tapir, and that is enough meat for some time, and so the time goes, and the time comes when I need to go to the almaçen in Itacaurbì, and so I go and here I am now with you. And what will you do in Rosario?”

Sam says, “There I catch a steamer, and go down to Asuncion.”

“Ahh,” says Wencelao, “Asuncion. Es muy lejo. And what work do you do?”

“Well, as you can see from my beard, I am a barbudo. I come from Highland where our religious community all live together.”

“Ahh, si,” says Wencelao, “Highland. And why is it you don’t shave your faces?”

“Well, you see, it’s sort of part of our religion.”

“Ahh, your religion. And what religion is that?”

“Well, it’s Christian, naturally.”

“Christian?” says, Wencelao, “With Jesùs and Marìa?”

“Yes,” says Sam. “But it’s more than that, you see, because we all live together, we all have everything together, I mean we don’t actually own anything. Everybody owns everything together.”

“Ah, si. But what about Jesùs and Marìa? Where do they come in?”

“Well, they don’t really come in because, you see, we don’t have to think about them because they’re there already.”

“Are they in the church?”

“Well we don’t really have a church, you see, we meet in the dining room where we all eat together. We meet there every Sunday and the dining room becomes our church.”

“Ah, so Jesùs and Marìa are in the dining room where you eat.”

“Well, no. You see it’s not like we have statues like you do you in your churches and put them on shelves. We have Jesus and Maria in our hearts.”

“Ah, si, el corazón. And what about the priests? Where do you keep the priests if you have no church?”

“Well, we don’t have priests.”

“Ahh,” says Wencelao, “no priests. Then how do you have religion?”

“We have religion without priests and we have people who do what priests do for you, only we don’t call them priests. Do you understand?”

Wencelao says, “Ahh, si, pero, es muy lejo.”

And with that Wencelao slumped down, and with his back to the cab of the truck, shut his eyes and took a rest. Sam did likewise. But he is distraught. Here he is, an Apostle, talking to his first potential convert and he cant get anywhere with him. He realizes what he was saying was indeed muy lejo for Wencelao. And what is worse is that Sam didn’t know words that Wencelao could understand, about what community is all about, what the Early Christians were all about, what one body is all about, what unity is all about. He didn’t get to say anything about that and these are the most important things. He felt he was failing as an Apostle. He wondered if the Apostle Paul had it so bad? Did Paul have such a hard time speaking to people from different countries? He realized that the distance between Wencelao and himself is indeed muy lejo. And he also realized that muy lejo is not merely on Wencelao’s part but also on Sam’s part. Sam is muy lejo from Wencelao as much as Wencelao is muy lejo from Sam. And Sam slept a sleep of doubt. Doubting himself and depressed because of his inability to communicate with his first potential convert. His inability to reach him, make him understand. Muy lejo.

Wencelao shook Sam, “Despertarsi, llegamos a Itacurubi.” (Wake up; we’ve arrived at Itacurubì.) Sam opened his eyes, and rose to his feet. They were in a village. It is rather large as far as Paraguayan villages of the campaña go. The truck is parked in front of a huge storefront. On the front white stucco wall is painted in large letters, “Almaçen di Solomon.” Wencelao told Sam that there is enough time to buy supplies and get something to eat and drink.

Sam got off the truck and followed Wencelao. Right outside the door, perched on a block of wood is a vulture, holding a raw chunk of meat with his claws. It swooped down with its sharp beak ripping apart the meat and thrust it into its mouth. It gave Sam the chills to see this. “Eso es don Pedro,” says Wencelao to Sam. He says, that don Pedro is a pet vulture of Solomon. They go into the almaçen. It is amazing. It is comparable to a department store like Macy’s up in the States, in that it has just about everything. Not only food of every description: beans, tacos, meats, all sorts of provisions, live animals like pigs and chicken and even snakes and birds. All the fruits found in the campaña, like banana, mango, papaya, guava, grapes, oranges, grapefruits, lemons. The almaçen also has clothing that a vaquero would wear—bombachas, the long trousers that balloon at the bottom, straw hats, leather hats, all sorts of sombreros, leather aprons, worn by the vaqueros in rodeo, umbrellas, boots, all sorts of leather goods, saddles, ponchos, maletas, knives, sharpening stones, sharpening steels, guns, rifles, ammunition, leather holsters, light bulbs, candles, oil and hurricane lamps, and of course, yerba mate, guampas, bombillas of every description, made out of pure silver, bamboo, tin, made especially for mate, or tererè, and all sorts of gourds for the mate with burned-in decorative designs of every description.

The king of this domain is Solomon. When Sam sees him he is startled. Solomon looks exactly like the double of Sidney Greenstreet, of the Maltese Falcon. He has the same crusty voice, the same mannerisms, the same laughter, the same smile, and the same almost threatening geniality.

And then there is the restaurant. There are tables inside the almaçen as well as outside. Sam and Wencelao choose a table outside; so they can see the steaks roast on the open fire pit. They have their bif a caballo. They eat, and drink their beer, and finally it is time to board the truck again to continue the journey to Rosario. Wencelao asks Sam, “And what will you do in Asuncion?”

“There I’ll catch a plane and fly back to my home in the Estados Unidos.”

“Ahh,” says Wencelao, “los Estados Unidos. Es muy lejo.”

Sam says, “Adios,” to Wencelao. Wencelao says, “tal luego.” And Sam climbs up the back of the truck. The truck takes off. Sam waves to Wencelao. Wencelao waves back. And Sam wonders. The total ken, the total range of knowledge and experience of this wonderful simple man is narrowly confined to less than sixty miles.

And he, Sam, boasts a ken of many thousands of miles. And Sam wonders who knows more about life, he with the larger macroscopic ken or Wencelao, with the microscopic ken? Who gets more out of life, he, Sam, who has travelled to Europe, Italy, Sicily, Africa, Nigeria, Switzerland, and now South America, Brazil, Peru, Argentina, Cuba, Corumbà on the southern edge of the Mato Grosso? Or is it Wencelao who has travelled to Santi Ni, Vaca Jhu, and Itacurubì, where there is the great almaçen of Solomon? Wencelao has not even gone to Rosàrio. Rosario is muy lejo. Does Wencelao find everything he needs in Solomon’s almaçen? In Carolina? Does Sam find what he needs to find in the almaçens of all the cities of the world he visits? Does he find it in Highland?

And from there to where? To muy lejo? And Sam wonders who is further away or muy lejo from life? He or Wencelao?

May 3, 2009

Shopping at Hannaford's

2009-05-04T12:21:00.000-07:00

Margaret and I were driving down the Kennedy Memorial Drive in Waterville, Maine, to do a bit of shopping at Hannaford’s. This was the day after President Obama gave his first press conference. We were both excited about his speech and his responses to the press corps’ questions. For once, we thought, we have a President who not only is literate, but intelligent, quick, honest in his responses, and actually thinks before he speaks. In fact he thinks so much that Jon Stewart, on the Daily Show, in one of his spoofs, spoofed the amount of time Obama spent thinking before answering a question.

We did all the shopping we needed to do. I should mention that I have a bit of a lung problem and carry a backpack oxygen tank. There’s a cannula, or plastic tube, wrapped around my ears that ends up sticking into my nose. I feel that wearing the cannula and O2tank arouses not exactly pity, but definitely friendliness and kindness in people I run into. At Hannaford’s, this especially happens at the checkout counter. People usually offer to help me out with my bags, or do something that would help the old fart.

I also find that people, especially, the checkout people, easily talk to me because an elderly man with a tube in his nose and an oxygen tank on his back seems somewhat helpless. Nothing threatening here. I remember one of the inmates I used to work with when I was a volunteer Zen-Buddhist Chaplain in the prisons of New York. He was a great Zen student and really took to the practice. He even became a Buddhist. Before doing so, he had to study the Precepts, which are ethical guidelines Buddhists follow in their daily lives. He had a violent past life. But now centered his life on helping others and nonviolence. He was transferred to one prison after another. And in each place he taught the Quaker-run Alternatives to Violence programs.

Anyhow, one day, while he was in a prison infamous for the mistreatment the guards gave to the inmates, he was going to the yard and was accompanied by two guards. They swung their batons, or wooden clubs, by their leather straps as they were walking down the hallway. Then two other guards joined them. Then two more, and the inmate knew he was the choice of the day. Sure enough, they began to taunt him. “Hey, tell us all about this alternatives to violence program? How does it work?” Swinging their batons. He knew what they were after: retaliation, so that they could legitimately pounce on him and beat him. But he would not submit to their taunts. He was working on a particular Zen practice that consisted of the repetition of a special Japanese word: Mu. He mentally repeated that word over and over again. He achieved an inner quiet. And somehow the guards felt this quiet. The inmate told me he felt like a frightened mouse. And who’s afraid of a frightened mouse? And the guards stopped molesting him and let him go without beating him. So hurray for the frightened mouse!

I like to think the picture I sometimes present to the people who see me festooned with tank and plastic tube is like that frightened mouse. Nobody fears such a ridiculously clad mouse. And it frees up people’s reserve and inhibitions. They become friendly to the little mouse. They talk to him. Carry out the heavy bags or parcels. It makes them kind. And I think to myself, Hurray for frightened mice!

So it was not a surprise to me that at the checkout counter, when the total of the groceries was reached, Margaret commented something like, “Boy I sure could use Obama’s stimulus package now.” And the lady who was packing up the groceries said,

“You and me both, honey.”

And the cashier said, “Did you see Obama last night?”

“Yeah,” said the packer, “I thought he was terrific.”

“So did I,” said I joining in. “I sure hope it works.”

“Well at least,” said the packer, “we’ve finally got someone there who knows what he’s doing. I mean did you hear his speech? And the way he answered the questions they put to him? He was just awesome. He really has brains.”

“And how he does!” said the cashier, who had finished checking the groceries and was now helping the packer pack them, “and I didn’t even vote for him. But I’m sure with him now.”

Margaret said, “Let’s hope for the best.”

“OK!” said the packer, then, turning to me, “You gonna need help with these to your car?”

“Naw,” I said, “I can manage, but thanks for offering.”

“Sure honey,” She said. “Have a great day.”

March 13, 2009

Escape from Heaven

2009-05-04T12:16:00.002-07:00

John ran straight to the fence that divided the lawn of his house from the camp. He was running away from Highland.

Highland had built their commune in Paraguay. The country is divided by a river, which runs north and south. And the two sides, east and west of the river are starkly different. The east is basically tropical jungle and the west is known as chaco, or camp, or desert. One side is lush; the other side is barren. And yet there are vast stretches of chaco even on the jungle side. On the east there would be a vast stretch of chaco dotted with islands of tropical forests that were called wood islands. Sometimes these wood islands were many hundreds of hectares in size.

Highland was located near the middle of the country, on the jungle side of the river, about thirty miles west of a small river village called Rosario.

Highland. But really Heaven on earth. John and his wife basically had hiked the four thousand miles from Boston to Highland. It took them around two months. John, a pacifist during the Vietnam War, needed to get out of his war-hysterical country. He’d discovered Highland at a meeting of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. One of the Highlanders was giving a talk. He was in the States to raise money. John and Molly spoke to the speaker and told him about their desire to go to Paraguay. Of course he told them to reconsider and yet encouraged them at the same time, thinking he would never see them again. He was wrong. John and Molly went to Paraguay.

And it was wonderful. The group had been isolated for so long that John and Molly were greeted like heroes. Molly and John were very happy to be at Highland. The people were so nice. Everybody was happy. Everybody helped one another. Everybody told the truth. Everybody sang. Everybody played some musical instrument or other. Everybody spoke in Highland meetings. Everybody had a voice, even women. And all decisions were made unanimously. They were truly a united group. Unity was the thing. If they felt any hesitation they simply didn’t make the decision, but waited until everyone agreed. It was in many ways heaven on earth.

John had long ago adopted the view that life, like a marriage, was a package deal. When you choose a wife, the family went with her. Same thing here. Highland practiced a radical form of Christianity, which involved living in a commune. The people looked and dressed like the Amish of Pennsylvania. He loved that part. He loved the naïve simple outlook of the Highlanders. Only their religious belief system was also simplistic and that bothered him. Their Christianity was primitive and fundamentalist. They had baptisms and all that. They married and had children. Unfortunately, thought John, they didn’t practice birth control and so had enormous families. Another part of the package.

And John loved the country of Paraguay. He loved the fruit trees. Right outside the door of their adobe hut there were grapefruit, orange, and mandarin trees. Nearby there were guava bushes, papaya trees, figs, and grapes. He loved the jungles. He loved walking in the jungles collecting exotic orchids of every description. He took them and hung them in a ring around the tree outside the hut. He loved collecting wild mushrooms. He even loved the snakes and pirañas and alligators in the rivers and the howling monkeys in the distance who announced the mornings with their screams. He loved the screeching families of colorful blue and red-feathered parrots that flew overhead daily.

He especially loved the Paraguayan people of the campaña. He knew enough Spanish to engage more or less intelligently. And the fact that his Spanish was imperfect made him all the more acceptable to the Paraguayans. He didn’t speak the highfalutin Castellano of Asuncion, where their ç’s were pronounced as the’ees. Instead of Asuncion, it would be Athunthee-on, the height of pretension to the campasino of Paraguay. He even picked up some Guaraní, the original language of Paraguay. And in the campaña, everybody spoke Guarani. In fact, the further away from the cities one gets the more one hears Guarani and not Spanish.

He often, during one of his jobs as Homeland's storekeeper, had good reason to go to the nearby villages of Itacurubì, and Santa Ni, and Vaca-Jhu, to go to the almaçens—the general stores to buy supplies for Highland and for his storehouse. Often he went on horseback and carried back the supplies he bought in saddlebags. He loved riding especially on the flat camp. He loved to slowly increase his speed from walk to trot to canter then finally to the smooth swing of the gallop. This is the life he thought, when galloping.

Most of all, he loved the music of Paraguay. The king of instruments in Paraguay is the harp. In the hands of a Paraguayan harpist the harp became an instrument of sensual passion. The music is striking, exciting, joyous, and passionate. The beat and rhythm of the music is a distinctive five beat, maintained by guitars. Those of you reading this story, please go to You Tube and search for Paraguayan music and you’ll hear what I’m trying to express and you’ll understand one of the reasons John loved Paraguay.

In order to become complete members they had to go through a period of what was called the novitiate, then they had to go through baptism classes, and eventually they were baptized—that made them complete members. Molly bought it all with enthusiasm and became a true believer and faithful Highlander. John continued in his package-deal mentality, still thinking it was worth it.

There was a structure and hierarchy. The top was called the Keeper of the Word. There were two Keepers. The Keepers would lead the Highland Business meetings, as well as religious prayer meetings. They were like priests, but more than priests. They were the ultimate spiritual and practical authorities over every aspect of the communal life. The second layer of authority was called Helpers of the Keepers. There were about a dozen of these. They met with the Keepers when called and discussed issues and problems Highlanders may be having. Usually the problems involved sex. Helpers, also led prayer meetings, read religious books in the dining room during the communal meals, and provided counseling to Highlanders upon request.

Then the day came when John realized everything was wrong.

What happened, John wondered? I was so happy. It was so good. What went wrong? When did it go wrong? What happened to Molly and me? John couldn’t believe eight years had gone by, and they went by so swiftly. Where did they go?

The day would begin every weekday morning at 6 am. Molly and John would have breakfast together at 7 am. Work then began at 8 am. Molly taught art in the highland school, and John went to the turning shop. Everybody worked until 10 am, when there was a break that Highlanders called second breakfast—tea and usually toast and jam or cookies. This lasted for about a half hour. Then work resumed until shortly before noon. At noon, lunch was served in the communal dining room. Adults all ate together. Children had their own dining room. After lunch there was a siesta until 2 p.m. Afternoon tea until 2:30 p.m. and work resumed at 3 p.m. John, turning. Molly, teaching. Work ended at 5 p.m. and everybody went high. This was followed by another communal meal, dinner, at 6 p.m. Dinner was followed by a communal meeting, also held in the dining room. These meetings usually lasted until around 10 p.m., sometimes longer. Then back again to sleep and in the morning, the next day began. John and Mary did not have much time together. One hour at breakfast, when they actually sat down and were able to talk. Another half hour at afternoon teatime. And another hour between the end of work and dinner. But these were usually rush rush hours. The only, more or less, leisure hour was breakfast. And that’s because they didn’t have children. They tried to have children but Molly couldn’t get pregnant. She had two miscarriages. Most families had many children, usually up to a dozen. And so the private time of the family was extremely frenetic in the so-called free family time slots. Getting up to a dozen or so children washed, dressed, feeding them, and sending them off to the Highland school was always a mad rush.

The major commitment of each person was to the community. It was as if John was married to the community rather than to Molly. That Molly was married to the community rather than to John. This became explicit after baptism. The baptismal rite was considered to be more important than the marriage rite. Commitment to the Highland was more important than the marriage commitment to each other. There was no “ownership” of one another in a Highland marriage. But there was ”ownership” of each person by Highland.

So the work was hard, and the rest periods, siesta and night sleep were needed. Yet, in a way it was wonderful. Everybody belonged. Everybody had his or her place. John’s first job was in the wood turning shop. He loved woodturning. The work was hard but he was young and had the stamina it took to stand by a lathe for hours at a time. Living in the jungles, the turning shop had scores of very hard woods available. Many of the woods were beautiful. John learned to be a turner. He loved creating a beautiful object, like a simple salad bowl, or a plate, or candlestick, or wooden cups, out of rough blocks of wood. Turning was truly an art craft. This was a very happy time for him that lasted for two years. Jobs shifted at Highland.

His next job was to be the cook of the village. This was strenuous work. And this assignment lasted another two years. The kitchen is the hub of the community. Everything and everybody went through the kitchen. Work was long and hard. There was no refrigeration; so dealing with food was difficult. Many a night John was awakened by the night watchman to come quick to the kitchen, for a cow had broken it’s leg, and was slaughtered. The carcass was brought to the kitchen, and John had to butcher it, salt the large chunks of meat, and hang them in a meat closet for the night. These nocturnal interruptions lasted several hours. And so John usually crashed hard at siesta and bedtime. He would often nod away during meetings.

His next job was storekeeper. This also lasted two years. As storekeeper he ordered food supplies for the community. Distributed canned food, marmalade, butter, eggs, for family breakfast and afternoon tea. He worked with the cook to supply the kitchen with needed foods like flour, bread, oils, etc. and together they planned the daily menus. The best part of this job was that John was alone. He loved to putter about and make things like jams and marmalade. He made a great lemon curd! He even learned how to mix liquors and distributed these little delicacies to families, much to their delight. He enjoyed making people happy. He dabbled in wine making and even made beer. John was very happy during these two years. And it was during these years that the brotherhood elected him to become a Keeper’s Helper. As Helper he led religious meetings and did the readings during meals in the dining room. John very much enjoyed this. He searched about for interesting stuff and hit upon C. S. Lewis’ Narnia Chronicles that became a big hit with the community.

So in many ways there was fulfillment in John’s life. But it was during his years as a Keeper’s helper that he began to see Highland from the inside, to see the seamy stuff. Twisted sexuality was a major problem. He had a hard time with just about every decision on sex the Keepers and their Helpers made. He found he was agreeing to things because to disagree would be to align himself with the sexuality being condemned and even worse to obstruct the unity of the group and he would be in trouble. Slowly, the idea developed in his mind that the driving force of Highland was not Jesus, or even Christianity, but Unity. Of course they would say unity in Christ. But it was unity pure and simple. With or without Christ. Christ had nothing to say about masturbation or any of the sexual deviations engaged in by some of the Highlanders. And any sexual deviation was punished severely. Punishment usually consisted of banishment from the group.

The ones who suffered most were the children when they began to explore their budding sexuality. The line was that sex in all of its forms was evil. Even sex between married couples was suspect if the stated object was not to create children. And so married couples had to pretend that the natural orgasms that celebrated their sexuality were repulsive to them. John found this pious hypocrisy corrosive and ridiculous.

Then there was his marriage. John and Molly led parallel lives at Highland. He went his way. She went her way. They had breakfast together, slept together, when not too tired, had sex together. But they were not together. Molly was an artist. She painted and did sculpture. She never really got far with her art in the States. Here, she was successful. Here, she was needed. Here, the children loved her. She was inspired by their enthusiasm. She taught them to paint, to sculpt, to work with paper maché. Molly was happy. She loved the community. She saw that everybody was happy. She loved the evening meetings, the open discussions, and the Quaker-like silence before making decisions that were always and only made when everybody agreed. Unity was wonderful. And she and all the women of the community had an equal voice in the meetings. Molly had found herself at Highland. She was accepted in a way she had never been before in her life. She completely adopted the garb, the dress, the style, and the religion of Highland. She became a different person—pious, loyal, and had all the marks of a new convert, which included intolerance for anything or anybody who deviated or was different. And so tension between John and Molly slowly and silently grew and was fueled by their inability to have children, and be like the other normal Highland families.

Then there was the problem that John was not able to share what went on in Keeper’s meetings where personal problems of Highlanders were discussed. He was dying to tell her about his anger at the hypocrisy of the ridiculous righteous attitude on sexuality on the part of all the Keepers and their so-called Helpers. But he couldn’t. John and Molly lived separate lives.

The package was beginning to build up pressure inside of John’s heart and mind. Two incidents caused the explosion. First was when one of the Keepers privately confided that he was having a hard time dealing with erections while he showered and washed his genitals. And he asked John for advice on how to the deal with this. John knew that if he answered honestly, the Keeper would be shocked and declare John to be in a state of sin. So John advised the Keeper to just wash and not think about it and consider it a form of purifying temptation. It went over big. The second was when one of the Highlanders, a simple guy, came to John to talk with him. He said he lived in fear and terror all the time. Especially during Highland business meetings. He was afraid to express what he really thought about anything. He feared that if he differed openly he would be accused of disunity and one thing would lead to another, he would be accused of all sorts of sins that ultimately would lead to accusations of sexual deviations, and therefore banishment.

From this point on John saw the look in people’s eyes. He saw the fear. He saw the unconscious enforced compliance. Unity at all costs.

It happened early at around four in the morning. His heart was heavy. His mind was exploding. He woke up in a sweat. Bolt upright in his bed, he inwardly screamed. Molly was lying beside him, so he dared not make a sound. He dared not tell her what he was feeling—what he was dreading, and that he was bursting. If he did he knew she would run to a Keeper and report his apostasy. So he quietly slipped out of bed not waking her. He dressed, filled his pockets with Paraguayan cigaros and his Zippo cigarette lighter, and he put on his wristwatch. He took a maleta, an elongated sack-like bag with a slit in the middle, off the wall and filled it. On one side he stuffed it with galletas, the hard rolls of the campaña. On the other side he poured some yerba mate tea and put a gourd and bombilla, a silver straw-like tube to sip tea, for hot mate and a guampa or cow-horn for terèrè—cold mate. He reached for his straw hat, hanging on the wall, and quietly left the house. The house he and Molly lived in was one of the preferred houses on Highland. It was located on the edge of the village bordering the camp. A barbed wire fence separated the property of Highland from the camp. He ran to the fence. He lifted one of the barbed wire strands and made his way through, careful not to get stuck and cut by the sharp metal thorns. Successful, and now outside of the Highland property, he ran to the road which led to the nearby villages of Santa Ni and Vaca-Jhu. He turned and looked back at his house while running. Saw it slowly receding as he continued. Then he felt the burst of the cold air of freedom. And he ran and ran and ran.

Trying to believe. Living in the heavenly realms of a new social order. Believing he knew what was what and what he knew he knew to be right. Believing that he was living Christ’s way of life. He had been living the Kingdom of Heaven, in the jungles of Paraguay. And he was running away from it. Running away from God’s Kingdom. Running. Running.

Running. Where to? The road led to the canal where the animals drank and refreshed themselves and where he looked forward to doing the same—then to Santa Ni, then to Vaca-Jhu, and further on to Curuguaty. Santa Ni is the larger of the cities. Cities of the campaña usually are a row of houses on each side of an unpaved road. In the winter the road is hard and more or less usable. In the summer during the rainy season the road is a sea of maybe several inches of mud. Chickens and pigs crisscross the road more than people do. Santa Ni boasts a bank, a church, an almaçen, or general store, and a one-room schoolhouse. Vaca-Jhu only has an almaçen, but at least you can buy some groceries, some meat, and most importantly, caña, the alcoholic whiskey of Paraguay made from sugar cane.

Santa Ni won't work because the Highlanders are well known there. Especially the vaquero Highlanders who work cattle on the estançia. The vaqueros, cowboys, were the easiest to get along with because they mixed with the outside world of the campaña of Paraguay. They often had to herd Highland cattle through villages such as Santa Ni and were well known. First, because they are gringos and second, because they grow beards. And the Paraguayans, thinking it funny to wear beards in a subtropical climate, with a twinkle in their eyes, called them barbudos, the bearded ones. In all other ways the Highland vaqueros were the same as Paraguayan vaqueros. They dressed the same: bombachas, full blown trousers which gathered at the ankles, an open shirt, a wide brimmed straw hat, and a faja, or sash, or cummerbund, worn around the middle which held their pants up, with shirts tucked n their pants. In the back, stuck between the faja and the body, was a long thin-bladed knife bundled with a sharpening steel, encased in a leather holster. And of course, high boots decorated with spurs. This is a vaquero. And the vaquero Highlanders found release from the piety of fundamentalist belief in their vaquero persona.

Unfortunately, Tom had a beard on his face and the Paraguayans would stigmatize him as another barbudo. But he thought he could show he was different. He could speak Spanish and knew a few words of Guaranì, the language of the campaña.

And so armed with his Spanish and little Guaranì John thought he had a chance to make it. He would go on and on until he found a rancho. He knew he would be offered matè to drink. He’d tell them he no longer was a barbudo and drink their matè and say his few words of Guaranì and maybe they would put him up for the night. Then next morning he would continue and go deeper into the interior of the campaña—so deep and so far, nobody would ever find him again. Maybe he’d go as far as Curuguaty. Maybe, one of the many smaller villages around there. Maybe somewhere between Curuguaty and further south to San Estanislao, where they hadn’t heard of the barbudos. Without a beard he really wouldn’t look like a gringo for he was dark-skinned and maybe could be taken for a Paraguayan—at best an Asunceno. But he didn’t know what was worse in the campaña, to be a barbudo, a gringo, or an Asunceno.

He looked back and no longer saw Highland. There was only the camp and the high grass. Before him was the camp and the wood-islands which dotted the camp. And a telegraph line and poles that led further east to Santa Ni. John knew the poles even went beyond, to the triangle border between Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil at the magnificent waterfalls: Foz do Iguaçu.

So he couldn’t go wrong following the telegraph poles. The further he went the more likely it would be that he would not be known. But he should have thought of bringing his razor so they wouldn’t immediately label him barbudo. Why didn’t he think of a razor? But he dashed away impulsively. He got to the point were it was break or break. So he broke. What would happen to Molly? Molly believed with the Highlanders that he had been infected by the Devil. She believed God had vested his Kingdom in the community—the Highland. She took the side of the Highland against him. But she thought she really was taking his side for she was sticking to God. She knew in her heart that the devil would eventually lose and God would win. John would then thank her and love her for not deserting God for she was not really deserting him, John, for she would be there for him ready to fold him in her embrace together in the arms of Christ.

So he made the break. Molly once had told him to do it after a nap-less siesta talk they had about his feelings. She’d told him to go out into the wilderness and think things over. Get closer to God in the desert. Go out into the steaming camp like the Desert Fathers did, like John the Baptist did, and find yourself. And then he felt the hot sand of the camp-desert dance along the sides of his sandals stinging his feet.

He thought about St Francis. Maybe that was the way. The true Christian way. Without purpose. Without plan. To wander the countryside preaching. Then he looked at his watch and smirked. St Francis with an Omega wristwatch, cigaros in his pocket, and a Zippo cigarette lighter. He took out a cigaro and lit it. Some Saint Francis. Some Desert Father. Some John the Baptist.

He reached the branding corral of the Kelly Estançia of Texas, North America. This was by far the largest estançia in Paraguay covering thousands of hectares. Nobody really knew how much. The Kelly Estançia was one of the largest employers of vaqueros in Paraguay. John thought he had a good chance to get a job. First of all, he could speak English and that was always a plus with the gringo Americano owners. Second, several times, because he was such a good horseman, he was asked to go on trips with the vaqueros to buy cattle from other estançias and herd the cattle back to the community. Also he had done several rodeos that involved branding and castrating male cows, turning them into oxen, with his sharp knife. And most of all he knew horses well and was sensitive to their gait. As he neared the corral he stopped short for there, near the entrance to the corral, were three men on horseback. Barbudos. Must be vaqueros inspecting the cattle of the corral, probably out to buy.

He tried walking slow so he wouldn’t be seen then tried walking fast so he wouldn't be seen. But this was dumb. He turned and went back to the road. Still unseen by the vaqueros he thought. He got to the telegraph poles and followed them again to the east. It was getting towards midday. The sun was bright in the sky. And it was getting hotter and hotter. But his thirst for freedom was greater and he rushed on. He was on rough camp now. Soon, lower down, it would be muddy. Walking would be difficult. He wondered what sort of ground John the Baptist walked and whether he really did live on wild honey and locusts. Honey he could understand but locusts—ugh! That was something else that used to get him into trouble: not believing the Bible literally. Yes he had a hard time with the locusts. He wondered if John found a way of making them taste good. Perhaps if you fried them up a little with a little bit of salt and stripped the wings and no—he couldn’t work up an appetite for locusts.

This reminded him he was hungry. He reached in the galleta side of the maleta, pulled one out and began to eat. There was a touch of sweetness to the hard biscuit. Much better than locusts. He ate another one and thought that was enough. Later when he got to the canal he could drink terèrè from the cold running stream. For now, he smoked a cigaro. He rolled up his pants for the camp was getting swampy. And it was rutted. You had to walk very carefully. Hot stagnant water streamed at the bottom of the ruts. He had to walk on the unrutted strips of land that broke up the camp. He tried to make a game of it. The ruts were in most cases about a foot deep and when he missed a strip the miss would jerk him off balance and flop him and splash him all over and the sun was hotter than ever and he jerked and hopped and flopped forward thinking of St Francis, John the Baptist, the fucken locusts and what he wouldn’t give to be back in a New York City Sixth Avenue bar once again drinking a cold beer when he turned.

There, not far behind, was someone on a horse, following very carefully, because of the ruts. This was one of the worst kinds of riding. The rider was bearded, one of the vaqueros. So they had seen him after all. Should he wait for him or should he go on? If he went on he would look guilty and ridiculous. It was so hot. And stopping encouraged the mosquitoes. He turned around and there was Peter.

“Hi,” said Peter “What you doing?”

“Walking,” said John.

“Hot time of day for a walk,” said Peter. Then he looked grave and said, “Anybody know you're going on a walk?” He meant, Have you received official permission to leave the Highland?

Ignoring the translation, John said, “Nope.”

“Humph,” grunted Peter. “How far you going?”

“Dunno. Maybe the canal. Get myself a cool dip.”

“Going to think things over?” again with gravity in Peter’s voice.

Christ! Here they go again. They all must know about him. But he felt a freedom in Peter’s question. So they know. And they must also know that he no longer was one of them. One of the Highlanders. One of the barbudos. There must have been a meeting of the Keepers and the Helpers. They must have discussed him. His heresy. His apostasy.

“Yes,” he lied.

“Well,” and now with heart-felt gravity “think it over positive brother.” Highlight on the brother. Peter leaned over from his saddle and extended his hand to John. John accepted the hand. They shook. Peter added extra pressure being a vaquero. He turned his horse and carefully rode away.

John watched Peter ride. He felt tight. Crammed in. Now they would know where he was, where he was going. They could find him. He continued his way to the canal.

But a little of his enthusiasm was gone. He followed the telegraph poles. He had never made this journey alone and it was hot and the way got more and more muddy and his pants were soaked and his mouth was dry.

The way Peter said, “Think it over positive brother.” Just like a true Highlander. He thought of Roberta, Peter’s just married wife and how happy everybody was that finally Berta made it. He thought of how often he erected at the sight of Berta’s swinging full breasts as she bounded across the square of the village running to the kitchen, skirts held high in her hands, exposing her shapely legs that everyone furtively stared at and dwelled upon in their secret desires. Berta worked the sick kitchen and favored and pampered and teased him as well as all of the young men on the square of the village where the kitchen was located. Especially the vaqueros who dropped by for the drink of water Berta was always pleased to give them. Peter came often. Berta had gone through an emotional crisis whenever one of her old school boy or girl Keepers got engaged. All the engagements and marriages on the Highland were arranged. Arranged by the Keepers and the parents. Why didn’t anyone ever arrange anything for her, she wondered? But finally it happened. And John thought back at how happy, especially happy; everybody was about Berta and Peter’s engagement. The air in the village snapped with frivolity when they were married. He remembered old Maraia, one of the older pioneer women of Highland, naughtily saying, “Now poor Berta may lay in peace.”

These thoughts peppered his mind as he approached the canal. And there it was: the canal. The water was hot. The sun was smack in the middle of the sky. The heat gripped him. He was trapped by it. Trapped by an earthly Heaven and now trapped by a heavenly Hell. He went into the water and walked down the canal looking for a place on the bank where there were some bushes and some shade where he might lie down. He remembered there were high guava bushes along the bank and went looking for them. It took about fifteen minutes to find them. He stretched out under the bushes and rested.

With a start and pain in the back of his neck John woke up. The hot rays of the sun were burning. He was sweating and aching and still tired. He looked at his watch and figured he slept for not more than half an hour. He had to find a cooler place on the canal. He rose and walked down the canal again. Walked a good stretch but it was miserable. Maybe it would be better to go back. Back the way he came. But he was far down the canal. So now he had to keep walking until he found those damn telegraph poles. Probably a good hour or so away. So to the poles.

The sun wouldn’t release him until late in the afternoon. He dipped his head in the canal, took off his shirt, soaked it in the water, and put it on hoping it would cool his burning skin. It didn’t.

He found the poles. They paraded in giant steps across the swamp-camp. He followed their steps. Maybe there would be a rancho somewhere on the way. Maybe with a deep cold well. With lots of water. Maybe.

Walking was hard. He stumbled and flopped and continued across the hot camp. Then he heard a loud screech and a swooping and swooshing of wings. A huge condor flew down and up to the top of the pole nearest to him. He looked up at the savage bird. He remembered once, outside an almaçen, perched on a fence, seeing a condor gripping a chunk of raw meat in its talons, snapping down with his razor-sharp pointed beak, and ripping apart the meat. And he was scared. He continued walking toward the next pole. The condor swooped ahead of him and reached the next pole and landed on top. As if waiting for him. The swooping scared him. But condors eat carrion. And I’m not dead yet, he thought. But who knows? What if this condor is hungry? Who really knows what it’ll do? What he did know is that he shouldn’t stop. He should go on. He looked for rocks or a limb of a tree or something to throw. But there was nothing. It was a naked camp. He remembered his Zippo lighter. He reached in his pocket and gripped it hard. What a beast! What a weapon! And then he remembered his knife. He let go of the lighter and pulled the knife out of its sheath and held it blade up, ready to swing if he needed to. He looked hard at the bird. The poles began to wend their way into the forest. The condor flew with them into the forest, and John felt safe.

Then John saw a rancho at the edge of the woods. Maybe there was a well. And he ran. He saw it. A large box covered the hole in the ground that was the well. The box was meant to prevent animals and people from falling into it. He lifted the lid, stripped naked, and lowered himself into the well feet first, holding on to the ladder on the side of the well hole. He reached the water and continued down until the water reached his neck. He loved the thrilling cold of the water. He thrust his face full in the water and drank drank drank. He then climbed out. Refreshed. He took his clothes and went down the well again with them. He rinsed them soaked them and wore them soaking wet and icy cold. He got out of the well and to his surprise saw that he was being watched. An enormous Paraguayan woman and two men had been lying on leather-thonged beds looking at John in amusement and amazement. John approached them. Their smirky stares made him realize what a strange sight he must be dripping all over the place.

“Em-ba-ì-japà,” the older of the men greeted.

“I-va ì,” Not too well, responded John, “hace mucho calor.” It’s very hot.

“Si,” he said. “Toma siento,” Take a seat, he said pointing to a nearby chair. He turned to the woman and said something to her in Guaranì that included the wonderful word “terèrè” and John knew he would soon be drinking a cold matè. She nodded in response, disappeared into one of the rooms of the rancho, and returned bearing a pitcher of cold water in one hand and a guampa with a bombilla sticking out if it. She poured the water into the guampa and offered it to John. John took it and drank. The cold bitterness of the drink refreshed his dry mouth and he felt wonderful. He sucked the guampa dry, returned it to the woman who refilled it and gave it the older man who was now sitting upright on his bed. He drank the guampa dry. The woman gave the next drink to the younger man. Then back to John. This continued until each of them said gracias. The drinking over, now the talking can begin.

“Fuiste a visitar Domingo?” asked the older man. Apparently, Domingo lived nearby.

“No,” said John. “I don’t know Domingo. I was walking along the canal.”

“Ah, si,” said the younger man. After a moment, he said, “Porqué?” Why?

“Estavo buscando algo,” he said. Looking for something.

“Ah si,” said the younger man, looking strangely at John. There was another quiet moment.

Then the older man asked, “Que classe de algo?” What kind of something? He said this seriously at first, and then his face broke into a broad smile.

John rose, said “Algo muy importante.” He rose, said, Gracias for the drink, and “’Ta-luego,” See you, turned and began walking away.

Both men rose and watched him. When he was far away but still in hearing distance they laughed and shouted, “Adios loco barbudo. Adios barbudo loco.” And they slapped their thighs, pointed at him, and laughed.

John turned and saw their swaying and laughing and heard their loco barbudo, loco barbudo. He turned again in the direction of God’s Kingdom. He saw the camp and the telegraph poles. He saw, in the distance, the condor on top of a pole. And then he heard Loco. Loco. Loco.

March 10, 2009

Back

2009-05-04T12:16:00.001-07:00

In the campaña—the backcountry—of Paraguay distance is calculated in leguas. A legua is about as much distance as a man would walk in a day. Juan Blas was on horseback. Juan was an estançero, a cowhand. He was riding along the Santa Ni road. Juan Blas had two leguas to ride before he would get to Santa Ni. He was going to join the big estançia in Santa Ni. His mare Tyta was a good horse. She had a quick step. Juan calculated another three, possibly four, hours before they would see the first lights of the fires that warmed the ranchos of Santa Ni. They had another village to go through—Carolina—where they could rest and eat. It was already dark and the moon would not rise until after midnight. It would be a good time to rest. They would be in Carolina in about an hour. Tyta was tired. Juan was hungry.

“Soon my Tyta, we can stop and rest and eat. There is good grass for you in Carolina.” Tyta responded to Juan’s voice by shaking her head as if to say “No,” and with her “No” she stopped short, shied to the right and whinnied. Juan held the reins tight.

“What is it,” said Juan, “a snake?” A quick rustle of dry leaves confirmed his guess. Juan heard a scream. A woman’s. Short and sharp, it pierced the night air like the sharp point of a knife. Juan spurred Tyta into a trot. Another scream cut the air. As he got closer, he heard a moan follow the scream. Juan saw a small, shabby rancho off the road. Like all ranchos of the campaña it had a high peaked thatched roof. Underneath the roof the rancho was divided into two halves. One half was completely walled with the red-clay mud of the campaña, with no opening for a window on the three outside walls. The inside wall running across the rancho, beneath the roof had a small opening-doorway. The second half of the rancho was wall-less. The two posts that supported the roof were visible. The walled room was the bedroom. The wall-less room was kitchen and everything else. Pots and kettles were hung on a hooked wire hanging down from one of the roof beams. A wood fire was underneath. Juan saw two children crouched on their haunches huddled before the fire. A small, sootblackened kettle hung from the wire over the fire. That’s good, thought Juan, hot water for a maté. Juan swung off Tyta, tied her to one of the posts, and approached the children and the fire.

“Buenas tardes ijitas,” he said.

“Buenas tardes,” they responded.

Juan switched to Guaranì, the language of the people of Paraguay, the language of the campaña. “eM-ba-eh?” What’s wrong? He asked the children.

They responded in Guaranì. “My mother is sick.” Another scream came from the bedroom.

“Whose rancho is this?” asked Juan.

“Mama’s,” said the oldest, the girl.

“And your father.”

“Naipòri taita.” There is no father.

“And your mother’s name?” asked Juan.

The children seemed frightened now, and again the girl spoke, “Maria Leone,” she said, and cast her eyes as if to say, Now you know.

So that’s it, thought Juan. Maria Leone. She was in there. He was at her rancho. Maria Leone. La Puta. The hoo-er. He knew all about Maria Leone. He had listened to stories about her with disgust and interest and regret. What a pity such a woman existed. Some people said she was more than just simpleminded. She was akatavy, half-crazy. Of what good was she to anybody but the vilest who took her, slept with her when they couldn’t find anyone else and left children like these behind. Juan turned to the children. Pobresitas, he thought. What a life before them, trailing after their mad whore of a mother for the rest of their lives. Another scream snapped his attention to the room.

He said to the oldest child, “No tiene luz?” He asked for a light. She brought him a little tin can, filled with petrol, which had a tightly wrapped and twisted cloth stuck into it. She lit the cloth from the fire and handed the lamp to Juan. Juan entered the dark room. There she was, squirming in a leather-thonged mattress of a bed, big with another life inside her.

“Puta!” He spat on the floor. Another poor creatura—he asked himself, God, the swine who fucked her, the dark room?

“Help me,” she pleaded when she saw him. “Help me. I am dying.”

“You should,” he said.

“Please, please, help. I’ll do anything for you if you help. I’ll do anything. Please, whoever you are help me.”

“What can I do?” said Juan. “I only know about cows and horses. I know nothing about this. Isn’t there a woman who can come? Someone in Carolina?”

“No,” she said. “Nobody comes to Maria Leone. They all want me dead. I’m a disease to Carolina.” And she screamed at him. “You dirty bastard! What the hell are you doing here? Did you come here to fuck a dying whore? Fuck off! Fuck off! Let me die! Let me die!” She interrupted herself with another contracted scream and a twist.

Juan went to the bed and pulled down Maria’s skirt. It was bloody. He looked at her naked bulging belly and it seemed low enough. It may soon be time. Mi Diòs, he thought. Make it like a horse. He put his two hands on her belly and felt all over. He felt low for the head. He tried to feel for the legs. He bent his head to her belly and listened for the heart. He felt the kick but wasn’t sure of the heart. At least he felt the kick. He waited, standing over her, while she looked at him, madly, knowing and also praying mi Diòs make it like a horse. When the time came again and she screamed, he pushed on her belly but he was too late. She said, “You're killing me! You're killing me!” Juan stopped. He felt someone watching. He quickly turned around. The children like statues, were standing in the opening.

“Cherejàpe!” Go away! He angrily shouted and they quietly turned and went to the fire.

Juan leaned over Maria Leone’s body again and wondered if it was too soon. This time he thought, I would just feel it and know for sure. He waited again. His two hands cupped her belly firmly. When she screamed again he was sure.

Juan came out of the room and asked the oldest child what her name was.

“Pia.”

“Bueno” he said, “bring me a large tin if you have one and lots of paper.” Pia returned with both. Juan disappeared into the room and emerged again with the tin. Pia looked at Juan questioningly. “Don’t worry,” he said, “you won't understand about this, but your mother and the baby are all right. It’s a boy. Do you have a spade?”

“Yes.” Pia brought one.

“Gracias. I’ll be right back. Boil some water for maté.” He went off behind the rancho into the woods with the tin and the spade.

When he returned he found Pia had already prepared the maté—a gourd filled with yerba tea and a bombilla, a tin straw, inserted in the center of the tea. Pia poured boiling water into the gourd, handed Juan the gourd to drink. Juan slowly sipped the brew through the bombilla. He returned the maté to Pia who refilled the gourd. She continued serving Juan until he had enough to drink, which he indicated by saying Gracias. Then she stopped.

“Well,” Juan said to Pia and the other child. “You have a little brother now to join your family. I called him Cabalitto (because it was so much like a little horse, he thought). Do you have anything to eat?”

“We have a little rice and mandioca—a root like potato,” said Pia.

“And do you have any meat?” Pia shook her head.

“Bueno. There’s some dry meat in my maleta—a two-pocket bag strapped over the neck of a horse. Get it and make something to eat. Your mother needs something to eat now and I also am hungry.” Juan turned to the other child. “And you, little boy, what is your name?”

“His name is Eduardo,” said Pia.

Pia took the meat out of the maleta. It was wrapped in brown oily paper. It was dry, twisted in long strips. It was rich, aged. This meat would need no seasoning. She cut the long strips into small pieces, placed rice into a pot of water and mixed the meat with the rice. Juan went to Tyta. He unsaddled her. He rubbed her back with the sheepskin. He haltered her and led her around the house to the back where there was some grass. Juan took some dry mandioca out of his maleta and placed it on the grass. Tyta lowered her head and began to chew. Juan looked for the well, found it, drew water with the bucket and bought it to Tyta, who thirstily drank.

“We will rest here, Tyta, instead of Carolina, yes? Until the moon rises,” said Juan.

Tyta lowered her head and resumed her munching of mandioca and grass. Juan returned to the well, drew up more water. He took off his shirt, reached down to the mud about the base of the well, rubbed his hands and arms thoroughly with the soft mud and washed it off his hands with the cold well water and then washed his face. Juan dried himself with his shirt and put it on again.

He walked around the rancho. It was very rundown. There was a bit of chacra—farmland—but it was wild with weeds and cactus. The rancho had a good deep well, though with plenty of water, thought Juan. Someone could work the chacra and could grow maize, mandioca, tobacco, and peanuts. Juan knew the woods behind the rancho were probably full of orange, grapefruit, lemon, papaya trees, and bananas, plenty of guava bushes. There was no reason for them to starve. All they needed was a goat or a cow for milk, maybe a pig. Maybe a few bees for honey, some chickens or ducks for eggs and they would be all set.

He returned to the fire and sat down. He took out a small cigar. He had bought fifty of the cigaritos which the elderly women of the campaña made by spitting in the hand, placing a leaf of tobacco on the wet hand and rolling the tobacco leaf on their thighs. The Paraguayan cigar, because women made it, was small, four fingers long, bulged at the middle and tapered at each end. Sometimes one could get a good cigarito. Juan held the cigar to a hot ember till it burned and then he smoked.

“We’ll eat soon,” said Pia.

“Bueno,” said Juan. “I’m hungry. How old are you, Pia?”

“Twelve,” she said.

“And your little brother who doesn’t talk?”

“He’s not four yet and I think he’s a little scared.”

“Are you?” Pia stoked the fire and would not look up or answer. The fire made her face flush. Juan looked hard at Pia. Sure, she’s scared. Who wouldn’t be? Twelve. Soon she would be a woman. Already two little plums stuck out under her dress. They would become grapefruit soon and then what would Pia be? He wondered but did not ask if she knew her father. In the campaña one never asked a child who the father was, especially if a man was living in the house. Very probably the present compañero—partner—was not the father and the question would then be an insult to the mother’s honor, which would mean an insult to the present compañero, which would mean a fight.

Juan looked toward the room. He picked up the lamp and went in. Maria and Caballito were both asleep. The child had been sucking at Maria’s breast and had sucked himself and Maria to sleep. Poor Maria Leone, thought Juan. Her breasts were so small and hung like little bells. If she would only get something to eat and eat regular within two weeks her breasts would fill up with milk and Cabalitto would grow strong.

Maria’s eyes opened. She saw Juan. She smiled. She felt the baby and pressed him deeper and closer to her breast. She looked at Juan.

“How are you feeling now that the pain is gone?” asked Juan in Guarani.

“Y-ponà. Gracias.” Well. Thank you.

“Pia is making something to eat. It will be ready soon.”

“But there is nothing.”

“I have a little meat you have a little rice and mandioca and we eat.”

“You are very kind. Thank you. I’ll pay you back. You’ll see. I’m very strong. Soon I’ll be able to repay you.”

“I don’t want your payment, puta,” snapped Juan.

“It is all I have to give. I don’t understand why you are mad?”

“When will your compañero return?”

“Mi compañero?”

“Si, tu compañero.”

“I don’t know.”

“Why not? Where did he go? Is he working in Santa Ni? Is he with the estançia?”

“I don’t know if he’s working.”

“Well where is the bastard when you are having his baby?”

“He went away.”

“When?”

“Last month or so with his maleta and his horse.”

“Do you think he’ll come back?”

“No. Not Domingo.”

“Domingo he’s called?”

“Yes, Domingo Portòn.”

“Where can I find him?”

“Why?’

“I can talk to him. Make him come back. Help you and the children.”

“No, not Domingo. He won't come back.”

“Vamos a ver. Well see.”

“He may be in Carolina. Maybe someone at the almaçen—the general store—can tell you.”

“Good. Now, I go. Pia, is the rice ready yet?”

“Si, Señor Juan.”

“Good. Bring some in for your mother. Adios Maria. Bon provecho.”

“Adios Señor Juan. Mil gracias but he won't come back.”

Juan hurried out. Pia handed him a plate of rice and meat chunks. He quickly ate. Then he rose and went to Tyta. He saddled and mounted, said Adios to Pia and Eduardo and rode off.

Juan saw a light in the distance and thought that must be from the rancho they had described as Domingo Porton’s at the almaçen. He walked Tyta quickly anxious to get this over with. Why was he doing this, he wondered? Why didn’t he mind his own business? This was not his business. And what would this Domingo think of him messing with this? Why wasn’t he on his way to Santa Ni? To the estançia? He felt better and surer and safer with cattle and with horses than he did with people. He saw a man lying in a woven cord hammock. The figure sat up as the sounds of Tyta’s hoofs came closer to him.

“eMba-y-japà” greeted Juan. Hello.

“Y-ponà” responded the voice from the hammock, “adelante.” I’m well, come along.

“Domingo Portòn?” asked Juan.

“Si,” said Domingo.

“Juan Blas,” said Juan

“Toma siento.” Have a seat. He motioned to a chair.

“Gracias,” said Juan, who took off his hat and sat.

Domingo turned toward the rancho and shouted, “Rosa, bring some maté.”

Rosa came out of the house with the matè. Rosa was a small woman with a small head and long flowing black hair. Large full lips dominated her face. Her body was thin and wiry. She poured the water into the gourd and handed it to Juan. Juan took it and sipped it dry and returned the gourd to Rosa. Rosa filled it and handed it to Domingo. Domingo also sipped the gourd dry. They went back and forth several times. Rosa, of course, did not drink. The server only serves. When Juan said “Gracias,” the drinking stopped. Then talking began.

“Qué tal?” said Domingo. What’s up?

“I’ve come from the rancho of your compañera.”

“Mi compañera?” said Domingo who now swung up and sat upright in the middle of his hammock.

“Si,” said Juan. “Maria Leone. She is sick. She had a baby. Tonight.”

Domingo looked straight at Juan and said with an even tone in his voice, “Rosa is my compañera.”

Juan looked at Rosa and didn’t know what to say. So he said in a jumble, “Ah si. But Maria Leone is sick and she sent me. She needs someone to work the chacra. She said it is your baby—your son and someone must work and get food or the baby will die. And the other children Pia and Eduardo will die and Maria will die.”

Domingo said, “I know no Pia or Eduardo. And who knows who is the father of Maria’s baby? She’s has many compañeros.”

“She said you are the father.”

“If I was the last. Who knows who was the last? What about you? What were you doing at Maria’s?”

Juan bristled at the suggestion and said, “I don’t know Maria. I was riding to Santa Ni tonight when I heard her scream. I went to her rancho. It was the baby. I helped.”

“You helped?”

“Yes, I helped.”

“What do you mean you helped? What do you know about babies?”

“Nothing, I only know about horses and it was the same thing. But this is not good. Maria is sick. Maria needs you and wants you.”

“Maria didn’t send you and I don’t know why you came. And your Pia can work.”

“Pia is a child, and the baby—”

“What about the baby?

“The baby will die if someone doesn’t help.”

“Bueno,” Domingo smiled, “Since you helped already why don’t you help again?”

Juan rose to his feet and said, “Because it is your baby vurro!” *

Domingo leaped out of the hammock with his arms outstretched, fingers scratching for Juan’s throat. Juan stepped aside and smacked Domingo on the side of his head with clenched fists. Domingo, on one knee, reached for his knife in his belt. Juan already had his ready. Again Domingo leaped up towards Juan. Juan grabbed Domingo’s knife wrist with his left hand and spun Domingo around so that his back was before him. Juan kicked hard the back of Domingo’s knee joints, tripping him down, and with one motion Juan swung around with his knife and plunged deep into Domingo’s front right shoulder. Rosa screamed. Domingo twisting in pain, dropped to the ground dropping his knife. Juan stepped hard on Domingo’s neck keeping a firm base on the ground with his heel. Rosa continued screaming.

“Be quiet puta, or I‘ll kill him.” Juan looked down at the frightened, wounded, painfully suffering Domingo. “You scum. I could smash your life out now like an insect.” Instead with a wince of disgust he spat full into Domingo’s face. Juan stepped off Domingo’s neck, picked up Domingo’s knife, threw it into the woods, walked to his horse, mounted and rode away.

Juan soon reached the Santa Ni road. Tyta paused. To the right was back, back to Maria Leone’s. To the left was Santa Ni. Juan nudged Tyta to the left.

The moon was out and the night was bright and clear. He felt dirty. If she had regular food to eat she could feed her baby. What would become of Pia? Eduardo? Soon compañeros would come and go through Pia’s life and body. They started early in the campaña. Juan felt disgust for everything. With the human race. With the male race. With himself most of all. It was none of his business. He shouldn’t have gone to the rancho. He wanted to get the taste of all this dirt out of his mouth. He spat. He spurred Tyta into a slow canter and soon they were galloping hard along the road, which was dangerous at night. But he didn’t care. The fresh cold night air brushed swiftly against his face and felt good. Felt clean. He thirsted for more and more air and galloped harder and harder gulping air, forgetting, remembering mixing up his thoughts. Finally the road began to go upwards and he slowed Tyta to a canter then to a trot then to a walk. And they slowly walked up the hill. Soon he would be able to see the lights of Santa Ni. They reached the top and he looked at the lights.

In another hour he would be in Santa Ni. Away from Maria Leone, Pia, Eduardo, Caballito, Domingo, Rosa. Why did he fight Domingo? He didn’t know him. Tomorrow all of Carolina would know he found and beat Domingo. They would say he fought for Maria Leone. This sickened him. He did not fight for her. But why did he fight? Why did he go to Domingo? Why did he help Maria? What business was it of his? And now what would Domingo do? Probably come after him. He’d go to Maria Leone’s looking for him. Not finding him he would kill Maria. And Pia? And Eduardo? And the baby? Juan stopped Tyta. He looked at the lights of Santa Ni. Soy loco, he said to himself. He turned Tyta around and they carefully walked back down the hill.

January 10, 2009

* Note: vurro is a word in Paraguay most offensive similar in intensity to the word motherfucker.