Body and Bread

BODY

and

BREAD

Engine Books
PO Box 44167
Indianapolis, IN 46244
enginebooks.org

Copyright © 2013 by Nan Cuba

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

Every reasonable attempt has been made to identify owners of copyright. Errors or omissions will be corrected in subsequent editions.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are
either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

Epigraph used gratefully with the permission of Ian Johnston, who translated the story for a 2009 collection titled
The Metamorphosis, A Hunger Artist, In the Penal Colony, and Other Stories.

Also available in hardcover special edition and eBook formats from Engine Books.

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ISBN: 978-1-938126-06-2

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012945051

For Paul Barton Brindley, 1944-1970

“No one pushes his way through here, certainly not someone
with a message from a dead man. But you sit at your window
and dream of that message when evening comes.”

—
F
RANZ
K
AFKA, “
I
MPERIAL
M
ESSAGE”

P
ROLOGUE

Z
EUS OR
Y
AHWEH,
some metaphysical trickster, flipped a switch, and I stepped into
Yopico
, the fifteenth century
Tenochtitlan
temple. While I stood at its cave-like entrance to earth, agave cloth scraped my shoulder; the air reeked of copal, roasted corn. My feet, cloddish, reluctant, stepped around the sunken receptacle where supplicants left offerings to the soil. Inside the building’s packed dirt patio, I molded crushed amaranth (
huāuhtli
) and maize seeds, tepary beans, jicama, and blood into a figure bigger than any man:
Xīpe Totec
peering from beneath a flayed captive’s skin. The victim’s hands hung at the god’s wrists; the skin reached to
Xīpe’
s ankles. He wore a
quecholli
feather wig, golden ear plugs, and a skirt of
tzapotle
leaves. I tied a red bow at his forehead, a gold trinket in its center. The outer layer I painted yellow, the body underneath, red. The gummy dough smelled nutty, malt-like. I tasted that sweetness, heard fertility rattles at the end of a long staff, saw a shield with red and yellow feather spirals. His body was made to be broken apart: communion, transubstantiation.

The face was startled, as if privy to sudden insight at the moment of death: the inner force of
teōtl’s
ceaseless self-generation.

I waited.

C
HAPTER 1

1958

P
LEASE HELP ME SAY THE UNSAYABLE:
My first life ended when my brother Sam committed suicide.

Before that, when he was thirteen and I was nine, he taught me his version of truth. We attended church services that May Sunday, ate lunch at my grandparents’ house, took a nap. Around three o’clock, we drove in two cars through the farm gate, past the tenants’ clapboard house, past the barn and slatted animal pens and patch-bald corral, toward our shaded table by the creek. Low-lying limestone cliffs bordered with cattle trails banked the water’s edge. Farther out, seasonal rains brought out bluebonnet clusters radiant as lakes, alongside prickly pear and bull nettle, whose thorns left stinging wounds.

Freight trains, their whistles catastrophic, sad, slid like snaky sun gods across our property. Nugent had once been Texas’ central connection for the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railway. The ornate station house stood three blocks from the municipal auditorium. Each Sunday afternoon I checked for evidence of stowaway campers near our picnic table, hoping an engine would barrel past, freight cars slinking behind.

My father parked the station wagon parallel to the tracks. They ran along a mesa that wound across our fields. I found a torn cotton shirt and a tiny pyramid of white pebbles. My legs stretched at awkward angles, beggar’s lice already dotting my socks, my tennis shoes pressed into ashes and dirt. Kneeling, I imagined a bare-chest man juggling the stones, then balancing them, one by one.

My mother, whose name was Norine, moved close. “Look, Mama.” I pointed, then chewed a fingernail. “What is it, you think?”

“Here, give me that,” she said, reaching for the bundled shirt, “and take your fingers out of your mouth.” Her brow pinched. “Look at this.” She tapped her loafer at burned branches, snatched a Snickers wrapper. She glared, bit her pouty lip.

“But, Mama—” I pointed at the pyramid again. Still she didn’t see. I wouldn’t learn about hobos marking camping spots until years later.

“These people are tramps. Don’t touch anything.” I nodded, and she talked on, more to herself than to me. “I’d call the police if it would do any good.” Her elegant, hook-nosed profile belonged on a nickel. “I hope Gran doesn’t notice,” she said, turning. “That’s
all
we need.”

I flinched whenever she spoke. Her Nile green eyes contrasted with my beady polka dots, and while I chose my shorts or skirts according to their buttons and snaps—the fewer the better—she stayed ahead of trends. Wearing her trademark silks, she applied face creams and liners in sponged and penciled stages, the whole job softened with a cosmetic brush. I’d never meet her standards for cultivated beauty. I hoped I wouldn’t be a disappointment.

My brothers—Kurt, who was fourteen, Hugh, who was five, and Sam—checked for iron pyrite around the murky creek. When our mother wandered from the campsite toward the picnic table a few yards away, I didn’t follow. I cupped one of the pyramid’s stones. Chalky, I thought, like those rocks by the creek. I counted twenty-four, mostly round, one thinner, heavier, maybe an arrowhead. Indians, I marveled, may have once touched it. I tried to imagine walking in buckskin moccasins through burrs and wild rye in search of cottontails for dinner.

I pitched up a small pebble then caught it with both hands. Some man maybe sat here waiting for a train, I thought, and he held this, probably rolling it in this way. I’d seen open boxcars passing through intersections, the bells clanging, a candy-striped arm blocking the street. Now I imagined bouncing on a smudged wooden floor, darkness split by threads of flashing light, wheel clicks, honking blasts. I pictured the stranger lounged on a cardboard cushion, his back pressing the corrugated metal wall, his sunburned ankles crossed. If I could sit beside him, he’d tell how he’d been to places beyond Nugent, how nobody could stop him even though he was illegally hopping trains; then he’d hand me a shelled pecan. Oh, I thought. His pyramid of stones had been a thank-you to my family, a gift he’d made. I balanced the pebble back on top.

My grandfather rode his horse down the road from the barn. The animal, a thoroughbred grandson of Man o’ War, pranced, angling sideways, the reins so taut the stallion sometimes bobbed its long head and snorted, its nostrils ruffling, its agitated lips showing yellowed teeth. My grandfather, not looking his seventy-four years, rode as if floating, directing the animal with his knees. His legs squeezed, pressing, and the horse whinnied, pumped its head. My grandfather kicked, yanking the reins to his chest. The horse lurched then reared, waving its front hooves, working its tongue at the metal bit.

I stepped back. My mother ambled toward the creek.

My grandfather jerked the reins harder, gave another kick. The horse bowed then quivered, stumbling, sullenly righting itself. Its eyes bulged; blood drooled from the split corners of its mouth. A moment later, it padded forward, ears pricked. As they approached the table, my grandfather waved his fedora, a one-man parade, his pedigreed mount subdued. All of us except my mother pointed, calling out as we hurried toward him.

He dismounted, and my father slapped the stallion’s neck. “You’ve been taking a few lessons?” he teased my grandfather. “Like a nice ride in the park,” he added, holding the reins, his grin a false note. I checked the tension around his eyes, thinking maybe I’d mistaken his irritation for teasing or that he’d somehow decided hurting a horse was okay. After all, his slap had been hard, even if it hadn’t drawn blood like my grandfather’s jerks at the reins did.

“Fine animal,” my grandfather said. He rubbed its rangy forehead then smacked its flank; the horse flinched, shifted its footing. “He’s spirited but manageable.”

“Yes, sir,” my father said, one hand behind his back, the other still holding the reins. His posture gave no indication of his feelings. Relaxed, his was the straightest back I’d seen. His flat expression and stiff back, though, made me sad.

“I expect you to show him a thing or two, boy.”

“Yes, sir,” my father answered, nodding in regimental rhythm, his gaze on the empty horizon.

That look reminded me of the times he’d playfully hung me or one of my brothers over our second-floor banister, or once, when he pretended to shut Sam in the car trunk. I thought my brother would suffocate and begged, “Daddy, don’t.” My father wasn’t being mean. In fact, we all laughed when Sam tumbled out, our father tickling us both. But we were never to show that we were frightened. There were rules. I was sure they were meant to teach some lesson, since, at other times, he would pull me close and explain one of his “points of philosophy”: