Oscar Casares (5 page)

Most afternoons Bony sat on the tailgate of his dark blue troquita, the sound system cranked up to some Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd. He'd been listening to the same music since high school and said he would change if another band ever came out with anything better. That afternoon was different, though. He forgot about the music and sat in a lawn chair on the grass. The shade from the fresno tree covered most of the yard. The wind was blowing some, but it was a warm breeze that made him feel like he was sitting in a Laundromat waiting for his pants to dry. He stayed cool in his chanclas, baggy blue jean shorts, and San Antonio Spurs jersey. Across the street, a crow walked in circles in front of Mando Gomez's house. Bony cracked open his first beer. The palm tree stood between him and the street. He liked being the only one who could see the monkey as people walked by that afternoon. He stared at the monkey and the monkey stared back at him.

The first ones to pass by were the chavalones walking home from school with their mommies. A few of the mommies were young and fine, but they never looked Bony's way. Next were the older kids from the junior high who lived in the neighborhood and knew better than to walk by without saying hello. “Ese Bony,” they said. He pitched his head back slightly, just to let them know he'd heard them and he was cool with them.

Later, people in the neighborhood drove home from work. Some of them waved hello, some didn't. Mrs. Rivas, who lived at the other end of the street, waved only because she was friends with his mother. The old lady worked part-time in the church office and led the Rosary whenever anybody from the neighborhood died. Every Christmas, for as long as Bony could remember, she added a new animal to her Baby Jesus setting. A few years ago they sent a guy from the newspaper to take her picture surrounded by all the plastic sheep and cows in the manger. Bony did his best to avoid Mrs. Rivas, but one time she stopped her car in front of the house and invited him to a prayer group for men who were having trouble finding God. He said he wasn't having any trouble. Mrs. Rivas told him he wasn't going to find Nuestro Señor, Jesucristo, inside a can of beer. She got back in her car when Bony looked inside the can he was drinking from and said, “Hey, anybody in there?”

Domingo, the old guy who cleaned yards, usually walked by in the late afternoon and waved. Bony figured he had to be at least eighty or ninety. He'd been old like forever. Every time Bony saw Domingo he was working in people's yards and only getting older and darker. He wasn't getting rich pushing a lawn mower, that was for sure.

If it was the weekend, Ruben Ortiz might drive by. He grew up on this same street and now he was a teacher. The guy drove a nice car, wore nice clothes, even had a good-looking wife. He lived on the other side of town and came over to visit his parents. Bony could tell the guy had changed since he left the neighborhood. He'd stay in his car and wave like he was passing by in a parade. Bony thought it looked like a good life, but it wasn't for everybody, not for him anyway.

His friend Mando had big plans and look what happened to him. He was working full-time and taking drafting classes at the college. The army paid for the classes, but he needed extra money because his girlfriend was about to have a baby. He wanted to marry her after the baby was born and buy a house, maybe a trailer to get started. Mando worked for a shuttle service that took businessmen into Matamoros. It was his job to drive them to their offices at the maquiladoras, unload any extra packages from the van, drive back across the bridge, and then pick up the same businessmen later that day. So he was driving back alone one morning, right? It was foggy on this narrow road and a truck hit him head-on. Mando died instantly, at least that's what his family hoped. Because if he didn't, it meant he was still alive when somebody stole his wallet, his gold chain with the cross, and his favorite pair of boots right off his feet. The owner of the shuttle service said the company would pay for the funeral and set aside $5,000 to give Mando's kid when he turned eighteen, but nothing more for the family. Nada más, the owner was nice enough to translate for Mando's father. The family hired a lawyer to represent them, but he was young and inexperienced and the company's lawyers weren't. Nada más ended up being all the family got. Mando's girlfriend and the baby moved in with his parents.

This thing with Mando happened a few years ago. Bony had an okay job around that time. He worked for the city, in the Parks Division, where his job was to open one of the gyms in the afternoon, hand out basketballs, break up any fights before they started, and make sure nobody stuffed anything down the toilets. He played ball if a team needed an extra player, and he had a killer jump shot from the baseline, three-point range. Nothing but net.
Swoosh!!!
Then one night he sneaks inside the gym with a girl he met at a party. She's a gordita who weighs almost twice as much as Bony, but she wants it and he has a set of gym keys that are burning a hole in his pocket. And they're having a good time, when all of a sudden the security guard pops the lights on and catches Bony and the girl rolling around at center court like they're wrestling for a loose ball. The guard is an old guy who's serious about his job. He walks into the Parks Division office the next morning and reports Bony. By the end of the week, the dude's at home without a job.

Now Bony made his money installing car stereos on the side. People paid him what they could—twenty or thirty dollars was the usual—but if he knew them, he might let them slide with a case of Corona or Negra Modelo. He also helped out his mom with her Avon deliveries. She paid him a few dollars for this. At first he thought there might be some nice-looking women buying perfume, but they all turned out to be as old or older than his mom, viejitas like Mrs. Rivas. Some of the women would tip him a couple of dollars, which was better than nothing. He was getting by, and except for his parents hassling him about finding a real job, he didn't have any complaints.

It was dark when his father came home with dinner. He'd picked up a family box from Kentucky Fried Chicken. Bony liked the chicken at Church's better, liked those papitas they

served, but the manager at KFC gave his dad a discount for being a police officer, and that was that. If Bony wanted Church's, he'd have to buy it with Bony's money.

His mother set the table with paper plates and napkins. Bony sat by the open blinds so he could keep an eye on the monkey. He served himself a chicken breast and some mashed potatoes. His father served himself two legs and a roll. His mother liked the wings and coleslaw. They ate without talking. The opening and closing of the red and white box was the only sound in the room. Bony's mother stood up once to find the salt. His father was scooping up the last of his mashed potatoes when he finally spoke.

“Did you know that Colonel Sanders, the man who invented Kentucky Fried Chicken, tried one hundred and twenty-four recipes before he made the perfect one? One hundred and twenty-four. What does that tell you, Bony?”

“That he should've gone to Church's.”

“Why do I even try to talk sense to you?” His father shook his head and looked at Bony's mother, who stared back like she was waiting for the answer. He bit another piece off his roll, chewed it, swallowed, and spoke again.

“The Colonel, he didn't give up because he didn't get it right the first time. That's what I'm trying to say here.”

“What was he a colonel of?” Bony asked.

“¿Pues, quién sabe? He was just a colonel, of the army, of the marines, of all the chickens and roosters. It doesn't matter, Bony. The point is, the man didn't give up and you shouldn't, either. You can't stay home the rest of your life because a job didn't work out. Look at the Colonel. Let him be your example.”

“I'm not going to wear one of those uniforms they wear at Kentucky Fried Chicken, no way.”

“Bony, all I'm saying is, there are people I can call. People who know the name Sergeant Timo Hinojosa and could help you.”

“What's wrong with that?” his mother asked. “What's wrong with accepting some help from your father? That's what parents are for.”

“Nothing.” Bony glanced out the window.

“Don't be thinking you're going to keep that chango,” his father said.

“Why not?”

“It's a dead chango,” his mother said. “Do you need another reason?”

Bony walked outside and sat in the lawn chair. The porch light was on and he could see the monkey watching him. There were only three cans left in his twelve-pack. In an hour, the beer would be gone. He was about to walk to the Jiffy-Mart again, but instead he decided to hang out in the yard with the monkey. Back when Mando was around, the two of them partied all night. One time they stayed up until five in the morning, taking hits off some hash, drinking beer, and eating Doritos. Bony had heard that a volcano erupted in Mexico and was going to turn the moon a different color. And sure enough, the moon turned a dark red like there was a heart inside of it pumping blood. Mando called it the werewolf moon.

Bony stood in the middle of the street and howled as loud as he could. He howled like he'd been bitten and he was turning into a werewolf, growing fur and fangs and claws and a tail. He howled until his father opened the window and told him to shut the hell up.

Bony was sitting in the lawn chair when his father turned off the porch light. It was almost eleven o'clock. He sat in the dark staring at the monkey and barely making out the shape of its head. Usually there would've been more light in the yard, but some pendejo had busted out the streetlight again. Bony finished his last beer and closed his eyes. When he woke up a few minutes later, a cat was sniffing the monkey. “¡Pinche gato!” Bony yelled and threw a rock at it. He pegged the cat on its backside right as it was starting to lick the monkey's ear. Bony went over to make sure the monkey was all right. He cleared the dirt around the palm tree so there wouldn't be any bugs crawling on the head.

It was time to go to sleep, but he couldn't leave the monkey outside. Not if he wanted to see it again. If you left anything in the yard overnight, it was as good as gone. People chained their barbecue pits to trees. Unless you drove some cucaracha, your car better have an alarm on it. Most of the neighbors who could afford them had steel bars installed on the windows and doors of their houses, and even that didn't always keep the cabrones out if they thought there was something worth stealing. The Sanchez family had a full-grown chow in their backyard, and one day it disappeared forever. No way was he leaving the monkey in the yard.

Bony found a plastic trash bag on the porch, but he wasn't sure how to put the monkey's head inside it. He hadn't really touched the monkey, and the truth was that actually putting his hands on it was kind of freaky to him. He told himself it wasn't because he was afraid—he just didn't want to mess up its hair. If he were a monkey, he wouldn't want some guy grabbing him by the head. He wrapped his hand inside the white bag and held the head against the palm tree until he could scoop it up. When he walked into his room, Bony could see the monkey's black face pressed against the white plastic.

Where to put the monkey was the next question. There was room on the dresser if he moved his boom box, except he liked having it right under his team poster of the Dallas Cowboys. He also had a poster of the cheerleaders hanging on the back of the door, where nobody could see it and his mother wouldn't complain every time people came to the house. Two leather basketballs were sitting on the recliner he didn't use anymore. He tossed the basketballs in the closet and placed the monkey's head on the recliner. The monkey looked sharp, looked like a king sitting on his throne.

Bony turned off the lights and climbed into bed. It was pitch-black in the room except for the eyes and shiny white teeth that he swore he could see on the chair. Bony turned towards the wall, but he kept seeing the smile in his mind. He imagined what would happen if the monkey grew back its body in the middle of the night. Hairy arms and legs, long skinny tail, sharp pointy teeth, hands that looked like feet, feet that looked like hands. And what if this new monkey was out for revenge against the people who had cut off its head, but since it was a monkey, it didn't know any better and attacked the first person it saw? It started by ripping out the person's eyes so he couldn't fight back and then it chomped on his face and neck, eating up his cheeks and tongue, gnawing on the bones and cartilage, until the whole room was covered with blood. Bony folded the pillow around his head and tried to make himself fall asleep. After a while, he stood up and put the monkey in the closet and pushed the chair against the door.

He woke up earlier than usual the next morning. His parents were sitting at the kitchen table when he walked in holding the plastic bag. The monkey was pressed against the white plastic, staring at the chorizo con huevo on the table.

“¡Ay, Bony!” his mother said, “No me digas que you brought that chango inside my house.”

“I didn't want somebody to steal him.”

“Who's going to steal a monkey head?” his father said.

“You never know.”

“Take him outside, ahorita mero!” his mother said. “I will not have a dead chango inside my house. No señor, you're going to ruin my business.”

“You heard your mother. You better get that chango out of here.”

Bony walked outside and placed the monkey back in the same spot where it had been the day before. This time he went ahead and held the monkey in his hands. Its fur was soft and its ears felt like human ears, kind of. His parents, as usual, were freaking out about nothing. The fur around the monkey's left ear was messed up from being inside the bag. Bony licked his palm and smoothed down the fur.

The sun was already up and it was getting warm in the neighborhood. Bony grabbed a can of Coke from the refrigerator and sat in the lawn chair. The
Herald
was lying next to the fresno tree. He opened the paper and checked out the local news, halfway expecting to see an article about somebody finding a monkey's body without a head. There was news about two Canadians getting busted at the International Bridge with heroin sealed inside cans of tuna, news about even more Border Patrol agents being hired, news about the farmers needing rain, news about the effects of the peso devaluation on downtown, news about the owner of El Chueco Bar on Fourteenth Street being attacked with a machete and surviving, but nothing about the monkey.