Oscar Casares Read online

  “That’s a joke, son—laugh. I thought you were going to smile more.”

  Diego gave him a half smile, but Mr. Z only turned his back and walked to the truck. Ricky was quiet, and Diego felt bad for even trying to smile. He didn’t understand why Mr. Z was talking about Ricky’s mom. At school you didn’t talk about anybody’s mother or sister. There was a boy in class who wrote some bad words in the rest room about a girl named Letty, and her four brothers jumped him on the way home, near the canal by the church. The brothers took turns kicking him in the stomach and head.

  Later in the afternoon, Mr. Z bought a family box of fried chicken and biscuits.

  “Is your mother a good cook, Ricky?” the old man asked.

  “I guess so.”

  “Nothing like a beautiful woman who can cook.”

  “My father barbecues in the backyard,” Diego said. “My tío Lalo, he’s my uncle who was in the navy, he comes over and they make chicken and fajitas, and sometimes they throw beer on the fire to make it…” He stopped when he saw the old man glare at him as if he had a piece of food hanging out of his mouth. He realized that Mr. Z didn’t want to be interrupted. No one said anything. They ate the rest of the chicken and listened to the passing cars on the highway.

  On the ride home, Mr. Z opened a new bottle of whiskey and turned the radio to a Tejano station. The old man knew the song and was swaying a little in his seat. Ricky looked out the window. Diego watched the hula girl’s skirt. When they were in front of his apartment, Ricky swung the truck door open.

  “Tell your mother good night for me, eh, Ricky?”

  The boy just walked away. The old man drove to Diego’s house.

  “What do you think, Diego?” he said.

  “About what, sir?”

  “Is she a good-looking woman, or is a she good-looking woman?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “That wasn’t one of the choices, son.”

  They stopped in front of Diego’s house.

  “Thank you for the ride, Mr. Z.”

  The old man gunned the engine and took off.

  The next day, Diego and his father drove by Ricky’s apartment and gave him a ride to work. Mr. Z looked surprised to see both boys getting out of the car.

  “Eh, Ricky, why didn’t you tell me you needed a ride?” the old man said. “I would’ve stopped by your house.”

  “It’s okay, Diego said his father could give me a ride.”

  “And who the hell is his father? You don’t work for his father.” The old man stared at the boys until they looked away.

  Diego thought he was helping out by giving Ricky a ride to work. Now he felt sorry that he had somehow made things worse.

  The boys restocked the displays. They placed everything in the same position it had been in the past two days, the bestsellers in the front and the less-popular fireworks on either side of them. An hour passed before the old man stood in front of the stand to watch the boys work. Ricky was helping Diego sell more fireworks to a man who had driven up alone.

  “The best one for little kids are the Black Snakes,” Ricky said. “They’re safe because there’s no popping and that way there’s no chance of getting hurt. All you do is light the fuse and a little snake comes out.”

  “Yeah, they come out like the rattlesnakes do on the King Ranch,” Diego said. He thought it was a clever way to explain what they actually did.

  The man added two packages of Black Snakes to the fireworks he was buying.

  Mr. Z walked inside the stand after the customer left.

  “Diego, how come you told that man a lie?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Rattlesnakes,” the old man said. “There no rattlesnakes on the King Ranch. I’ve hunted there, lots of times. I’ve never seen rattlesnakes.”

  “My father told me there was.”

  “Then your father lied. Your father told you some bullshit.”

  “He’s never lied to me.”

  “You’re calling me a liar?”

  “No, sir.”

  “¿Entonces?”

  “Nothing, sir.”

  “Bueno, you better watch what you say to people or you’re going to turn out the same as your father, a bullshitter.”

  Diego didn’t know what to say. He wanted to be angry with Mr. Z, but he also wondered if he should apologize for arguing with him about the snakes.

  Mr. Z walked back to the truck. He stayed there for the rest of the afternoon. When he left to buy dinner, the boys stood in front of the fireworks stand and threw pebbles into the ditch.

  “I bet there are rattlesnakes at the King Ranch,” Ricky said.

  “That’s what my father says,” Diego said.

  “Don’t listen to the old man. He’s just mad because my mom didn’t bring me.”

  “My father doesn’t lie.”

  “I know. You don’t have to tell me.”

  Mr. Z brought fried chicken again. The boys each grabbed a piece with a paper napkin. They looked out at the cars driving past them. The sun was burning on the horizon and it would be dark soon.

  “How’s the chicken today, boys?”

  “It’s good,” Diego said.

  Ricky nodded.

  “You know, people tell me that snake tastes like chicken,” the old man said. “What do you think, Diego?”

  “Maybe.”

  “What do you think your father would say about that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Really? I thought your tío would come over to the house and barbecue snakes.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Ahh, I think you forgot, Diego,” the old man said. “Maybe I should ask your father myself. He probably has some good ways to barbecue a snake.”

  A family in a white van stopped next to the truck, and Diego put away his food to help them. He stayed in the stand for the rest of the night. They were busy that evening and the old man didn’t have time to say anything to him.

  After work he made sure to sit next to the passenger door, where he wouldn’t have to hear as much of Mr. Z talking. His father was watching the late news when Diego walked in and sat next to him on the sofa.

  “How was it today, mi’jo?” his father asked.

  “It was okay.”

  “Good. Are you paying attention to Mr. Zamarripa?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Are you going to college so you can study to be a businessman?”

  “Maybe,” Diego said. “But I’m kind of getting tired of selling fireworks.”

  “You been working three days, Diego. You don’t know what tired is.”

  “But we’re not even getting paid until the last day.”

  “It’s only one more week. Just be glad you have a job. ¿Me entiendes?” His father was serious now.

  “Yes, sir.”

  They watched the weather report for a few minutes. His father wanted to see if there was going to be a cold front.

  “Dad, remember last year when we drove by the King Ranch?”

  His father nodded.

  “And remember how you told me there were rattlesnakes all over the ranch?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Have you seen them?”

  “No, mi’jo, but I can imagine there are lots of them. Why?”

  “Mr. Z goes hunting there and he’s never seen one.”

  “Pues, maybe he’s right. I’m not a hunter.”

  Diego had trouble sleeping that night. What his father had said about the rattlesnakes didn’t sound like a lie, but it wasn’t exactly the truth, either. He thought about how it might be possible to imagine something and for it to be true. Diego wished there were an easy way of telling his father what had happened. Explaining it to his mother wouldn’t help. His father would find out and he’d have to tell him everything, straight to his face. Diego pictured himself trying to say what Mr. Z had said, and he knew he couldn’t embarrass his father that way. Even if he was only repeating the words, it was still an
insult. He hated the old man for saying his father was a liar. And he hated the fact that he couldn’t quit his job.

  Diego’s father dropped him and Ricky off at work. Mr. Z met the boys in front of the stand. They watched Diego’s father wave as he drove away.

  The old man was the first to wave back. “Come on, boys, say good-bye to the bullshitter.”

  The words stung Diego like a fresh scab being torn from his arm. The rest of the day was filled with Mr. Z making jokes about Diego’s father, about how he’d make a good politician, about how he could fool one of those lie-detector machines, about how he probably lied all the time, even to Diego’s mother.

  The old man left to buy dinner at the usual time. Diego told Ricky he was going to the rest room. Then he sat behind a mesquite and cried. He held the loose dirt in his hand and it slipped through his fingers. There was nothing he wanted more than to be older and be able to talk back to the old man. He didn’t know what he would say, but he wanted to hurt him. Maybe he could set the stand on fire and ruin his business. Diego could see himself going to jail for this, and he thought it would be worth it. If he were bigger, he would’ve fought him and knocked him to the ground. He’d hit the old man hard, maybe knock out a tooth. There would be tears in his eyes and blood dripping from his mouth. Diego would keep kicking him in the stomach until he begged him to stop. People passing by in cars would laugh. And he’d slap him with the back of his hand one more time, just to make sure the old man knew he had done wrong.

  Mr. Z and Ricky were sitting on the tailgate. Diego wiped his eyes and runny nose on the inside of his shirt. He walked to the truck and started eating his cheeseburger. All the crying had left a funny taste in his mouth and he wasn’t that hungry.

  He was eating his french fries when two young boys came by on a bike, one of them sitting on the handlebars. Diego said he’d take care of them.

  The boys were brothers and their hair was cut the same way, in a straight line across their forehead. Diego brought out the sparklers and Black Snakes, but they weren’t interested in little-kid fireworks. One brother wanted bottle rockets and the other wanted Silver Jets.

  “Bottle rockets are stupid,” the younger one said.

  “No, they’re not,” the older one said.

  “I’m sick of bottle rockets.”

  “Stop being a llorón. Bottle rockets is all we got money for. The Silver Jets cost more.”

  “You’re the llorón. You’re the one that wants bottle rockets. Those are for stupid babies. Give me half the money.”

  They argued for several minutes, calling each other names. The younger one kicked dirt at his brother, which led to a shoving match the older one eventually won. In the end, they bought two packages of bottle rockets.

  The boys were still arguing when Diego dropped four Silver Jets in their paper bag without them noticing. He did it as if it were the most natural thing in the world to do, as if he were standing in the middle of the street lighting the fuse to a long pack of Black Cats.

  The brothers rode away with their fireworks, and Diego wished he could see their reaction when they found the Silver Jets. He felt himself kicking the old man in the gut.

  Later Diego helped a man wearing a black cowboy hat with a tiny horseshoe pin stuck to the front of it. The man bought Roman candles, bottle rockets, Silver Jets, and Black Cats. Diego put them all inside a paper bag and then slipped in two more Roman candles. If the man noticed, he didn’t say anything. Diego charged him only for the fireworks he had asked for. The man nodded and walked to his truck.

  Diego gave away fireworks every chance he had. The packages of Black Snakes, smoke bombs, bottle rockets, Black Cats, and sparklers tumbled to the bottom of the paper bags for the rest of the night. It became a game for him, a challenge, the same way learning how to sell Black Snakes and sparklers had been a challenge. The trick was to figure out what kind of firework the customer really wanted and to stick it in the bag without anyone noticing. A heavyset lady with three kids almost caught him putting some extra smoke bombs in her bag.

  “¿Y ésos, qué? Are you trying to trick me, make me buy more than I want?”

  “No, ma’am, these are two for one.”

  “¿Estás seguro? Because I don’t like tricks.”

  “Yes, ma’am, they’re on special.”

  “Pues, entonces let me buy two more de esos smoke bombs.”

  He had started by giving away the fireworks only when he was alone in the stand, but with the evening rush he became more daring. With Ricky working next to him and Mr. Z at the other end of the counter with a customer, he dropped the fireworks in a bag and then smiled at the old man as if he’d just made the biggest sale of the night.

  Mr. Z told more of his jokes on the ride home. The one he laughed at the most was about how Diego’s father probably never went to confession because it would take too long. Ricky ignored the old man and stared straight ahead as if he were on a long bus ride. Diego sat next to the door. It was colder now, but he rolled down the window because he didn’t want to hear the jokes. He wondered what would happen in a day or two when the old man did an inventory check. It was the first time he had thought about it all night. Each time he had added extra fireworks to a customer’s bag, he felt he was somehow covering up the last time he had done it, so that in the end it wouldn’t be dozens of fireworks that had been given away but only one or two packages that could easily be written off as a mistake. It became less of a bad thing the more he did it. Now he was getting nervous that one of his customers would come back to ask Mr. Z for free fireworks, telling him that one of his boys had been loading up bags the night before. He was afraid Ricky might get blamed, and then he would have to come forward and confess the whole thing. Given the choice, he would prefer to get fired and not have to confess. He didn’t feel bad about what he had done, because the old man deserved everything, maybe more. In the distance, fireworks lit up the dark sky, and Diego imagined they were the Roman candles he’d given away. He smiled as he watched the bright lights.

  When Diego opened the front door, he saw his father drinking a glass of water in the kitchen. He had hoped that his parents might already be asleep. He wanted to go to bed without having to talk about his day, but as soon as he walked in, his father asked him to sit at the table.

  “How was work, mi’jo?”

  Diego hesitated for a moment. He stared at the salt and pepper shakers on the table, trying to find an answer in the grains.

  “It was good,” he said. “I think I sold more fireworks than anybody.”

  “That’s the kind of news I like to hear about my boy.”

  Diego smiled.

  “Then you’re going to keep working for Mr. Zamarripa?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Qué bueno,” his father said. “I knew everything would work out. Sometimes you just have to wait a little while for it to get better.”

  RG

  Isaw Bannert at the mall the other day. He was standing near the entrance eating a cone of pistachio ice cream. He pretended he didn’t see me, and I returned the favor. This is the same man who used to live across the street from us years ago. Our boys grew up together, played, got into fights. Bannert would wave hello if we happened to pull out of our driveways at the same time. He knows a little bit of Spanish, and sometimes when he came over to the house he tried to say a few words here and there. I appreciated the effort he made. If we saw each other at one of the high school football games, we might shake hands. We were never close friends, but there was a time when we talked in the way neighbors do. That was years ago, though. I couldn’t find anything to say to him that day at the mall. And I guess the same goes for him.

  Bannert probably thinks I’m crazy. But I’m not. I can tell you exactly when the trouble started—October 3, 1976. I know the date because I keep a record of things. It’s nothing fancy, not a diary or anything like that. I just write down what I do every day. It started when I was delivering bread and I had a problem wit
h my supervisor. One day I noticed he was following me on my route, checking to see that I wasn’t slacking off. The man had a problem trusting people. He wasn’t from around here—maybe that had something to do with it. Either way, I thought writing everything down on paper was a good way to defend myself if he ever said anything against me. I did this at the end of the day, right before I went to bed. Just a few short notes about what I did on my route, the people I spoke to, the mileage on the vehicle, and how long a lunch break I took. Then one night I was writing down all the things I’d done and I realized I hadn’t worked that day. This was a Sunday. It had become a habit after so many years, is what I’m trying to say. From then on I wrote in my notebook every night, even after I quit that job and found a better one.

  Don’t think that I spend a lot of time writing in it, because I don’t. Here’s what I wrote last Saturday:

  Breakfast at Reyna’s Cafe, rotated and balanced tires, bought a new ceiling fan, haircut at Treviño’s.

  If it’s a good haircut I might mention it, but usually it’s just a haircut. Sometimes I look back at the end of the year and see what I was doing. Or I’ll pull out a notebook and see what I was doing five years ago on that day. I have one for every year back to 1973. They’re small spiral notebooks, fifty pages, the same ones the kids use in school. I write the year on the cover.

  October 3, 1976—Mowed grass, front and back, trimmed weeds growing next to fence, loaned hammer to Bannert.

  So, you see, I have it in writing. I’m not crazy.

  My wife said Bannert probably just forgot. I don’t know how an honest man forgets for almost four years. I don’t know how he wakes up every morning, walks out his front door, looks across the street—straight at my house—and forgets he hasn’t returned my hammer.

  But she’s quick to defend other people, make excuses for them, especially if they happen to have blue eyes. Then they can’t go wrong. She thought I was exaggerating the time I told her about my supervisor following me. She claimed that the reason I was so upset was because this supervisor happened to be a gringo. That is her opinion. I’ve come to expect this from her. You should have seen her when we first moved here. There were only a few Anglo families, but she thought we were living at the country club. Over the years, most of them have moved across town or passed away, until it’s come to be almost all raza that live here. I’ve lived and worked with gringos my whole life. Gringos, mexicanos, negros, chinos. It makes no difference to me. I’ve always been more interested in living next to honest people than anything else. After that, they can be any color they want.