The Brave, page 10
“In this strong light?”
“Well, he’s not after us,” his father said. “Who cares what we take out of the dump? It’s all stuff people don’t want.”
Rafael, too, was puzzled why anyone dressed in khaki would be prowling the dump carrying two guns.
His father said, “We needn’t fear him.”
His father moved into the shade of a high hill of used tires.
Rafael asked, “What do you want to show me?”
In the shade, Rafael’s father looked at his son a long moment. There seemed to be more of a question in his eyes than an answer.
“Where is it?” Rafael looked around the piles of refuse.
“Right here.”
His father undid his belt. He unbuttoned the top of his fly and pulled aside the flaps. He pulled up his shirt.
Near the base of his stomach, below his belt line, was a large growth.
Rafael’s father put his fingers and thumb around the lump. He held the lump to show his son it was something new to his stomach, an entity separate from his body, what had always been his body.
Rafael touched the lump on his father’s stomach with his index finger. “It’s hard.”
“Yes.”
Rafael cupped his hand, fingers spread, at the base of his own flat stomach. “I thought it was the beer finally getting to you. That you had been eating better somehow.”
“How?” his father asked. “My teeth…”
“I know.”
“Now this.” His father looked down at the lump at the bottom of his stomach he held in his hand. “Eat?” he asked.
“You’ve only mentioned the teeth.”
“Sometimes you say one thing…” His father fastened his fly and belt and tucked in his shirt. “… when there is too much to say. Who wants to hear grief?”
“Why are you telling me now? Because I have a job?”
“Nothing can be done,” his father said. “I know that. Your mother had such a lump. I recognize it.”
“I remember.”
Rafael’s father looked around the dump. “So many here.”
“Cancer, I think,” Rafael said. “It is cancer?”
His father shrugged. “So you will not worry about my teeth. So you will not think there is anything you or anyone else should do about them. It’s not worth doing anything about my teeth, you see. So when I get drunk and cry about my teeth you will know I am not crying about my teeth.”
“Do others know? Luis? Nito?”
“No.”
“Why me? Why are you telling me now?”
“I worry about what you’ve done, Rafael.”
“What have I done?”
“I don’t know. You’ve bought your wife two new dresses. Your daughter a piano. That turkey.
You’re telling everybody you bought these things from a job you haven’t worked at yet.”
Rafael’s father waited for a response, but Rafael said nothing.
His father finally said, “I need to sit for a moment.”
They both sat on tires.
Still, Rafael said nothing.
After a few minutes, Heyman came along the dirt road between the hills of refuse. In each hand he carried a car bumper. Under each arm he carried a few hubcaps. Around his neck was a coil of rusted wire. The car bumpers and hubcaps, if in good shape cleaned up, sometimes could be sold in Big Dry Lake as used car parts. Everything Heyman carried could be sold as scrap metal.
“Hey, man,” Heyman said.
Holding everything, he stood in the shade of the hill of tires to visit with Rafael and his father.
Heyman held up one car bumper. “Ford.” He held up the other. “Chevrolet.” He laughed.
“There’s a man over there carrying two guns.” Rafael jerked his thumb over his shoulder.
Heyman said, “Naw.”
“It’s true,” Rafael said.
“I was just over there,” Heyman said. “There’s nobody.”
“The manager, I think,” Rafael said. “He carries guns.”
“He fixed the fence,” his father said.
“They always fix the fence.” Heyman smiled.
“They’ve never carried guns before,” Rafael said.
“I tell you, I was just over there,” Heyman said.
“I saw him. From up there.” Rafael pointed above, behind him to the top of the hill of loose metal.
Rafael’s father said, “I don’t believe him, either. There are too many rats to shoot. They are not worth the bullets.”
“Okay,” Rafael said.
“See you.” Heyman carried his junk metal in the direction of the gap in the fence.
“Okay,” Rafael said. “Be careful.”
There was more silence between Rafael and his father after Heyman left.
Finally, his father said to Rafael, “I am sorry if I made you sad.”
And, finally, Rafael said, “We all have to die.”
Looking at his son from under his lowered eyelids, his father said, “You are not that hard, Rafael. You are protecting yourself.”
Rafael said, “Mama took a long time to die. She suffered a long time.”
“Yes.”
“That’s what matters, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“And what do you get for your death? For your suffering?”
“What good am I? I have never known.”
“What good is your death?”
“You’re crying, Rafael.” His father put his hand on Rafael’s hand. “That’s all right.”
“What am I crying for?” Abruptly, Rafael stood up.
“It’s all right to cry, Rafael. That is not what I meant. I just want you to be careful. There is Rita. The children…”
“Yes,” Rafael said.
A loud shot startled them both.
His father said, “A gun?”
There was a second shot.
A boy’s voice was crying loudly something incomprehensible.
Rafael began running toward the sound of the voice.
“Rafael!” his father shouted.
Ninja was slipping and sliding down a high hill of garbage. One of his arms was flailing, his hand grabbing for the calf of his right leg. Rafael saw the boy’s blood gushing down his bare leg. Ninja’s other hand clutched a plastic table radio.
At the base of the hill of garbage, Ninja fell face down on the dirt road.
By the time Rafael reached him, Ninja had rolled onto his back. He was holding his bleeding calf in the grip of one hand. His other hand still held onto the plastic radio tightly.
Ninja saw Rafael.
“Shit, it hurts!” Ninja’s lips were bubbling saliva.
Rafael pulled Ninja’s fingers from the wound. Through a little blood, Rafael could see the smooth, indented entry wound of the bullet on the inside of Ninja’s leg. Through much more blood, he could see the bigger exit wound on the outside of his leg. The skin around the exit wound was shredded.
“Yeow!” Ninja howled.
Rafael said, “Shut up!”
His father knelt beside Rafael. He wrapped his belt around Ninja’s leg above his knee.
“The bullet went clean through,” Rafael said.
Now Ninja was crying. His deep, dark eyes glistened in the bright sunlight. He sucked in breath through his nose and blew bubbles through his lips making a noise Rafael had never heard before.
Divested of all the scrap metal that had been hanging from him, Heyman stood over Ninja. His hands were on his knees. He was a little out of breath.
He said, “Hey, man,” to the boy writhing on the ground.
“The bullet went clean through,” Rafael said.
His father was trying to make his narrow belt hold a knot above the boy’s knee. “Let’s get him out of here.”
“Hey, look,” Heyman said.
At the place that stretch of dirt road curved between two hills of rubbish, in the shade stood the man dressed in khaki. His rifle was in the crook of his arm. Beneath the wide brim of his hat, standing still, the man watched them.
Rafael jumped up. “You son of a bitch!” He yelled at the man. “You shot a boy!”
The man remained perfectly still.
Rafael grabbed a handful of dirt off the road and threw it toward the man. Some of the dirt went in Rafael’s own eyes.
Still the man did not move, or speak.
“Bastard!” Rafael yelled.
“Yeow, shit, fuck,” the boy said quietly.
Rafael’s father was trying to help Heyman lift Ninja from the ground.
Pushing his father aside, Rafael grabbed Ninja’s shoulders. His hands were in the boy’s arm pits.
“Goddamn it, Ninja,” Rafael said. “Drop the damned radio!”
As they walked, Rafael’s father forced the radio out of the tight grip of the boy’s hand. He tossed it to the side of the road.
Carrying Ninja’s feet, Heyman looked back over his shoulder at the man carrying the rifle.
Then, as they went along, Rafael’s father tried to keep his belt tight around the boy’s leg. He pressed his thumb into the exit wound.
Still, as Rafael carried Ninja’s shoulders, the boy’s head propped against his stomach, Rafael saw plenty of blood splattering the ground.
By the time they had carried Ninja through the gap in the fence across the stream and into the store and laid him on the counter, all the boy’s skin, especially his face, had whitened. His eyelids were fluttering.
As they had passed the window of Mama’s crate, she had begun screaming out the news of Ninja’s being hurt, being shot, bleeding. Everyone must have heard the two loud shots.
Rafael noticed Father Stratton’s black Buick parked in the shade of the hillside below the highway.
Shortly after they laid Ninja on the counter, almost everyone in the community was in the store or standing just outside.
Rafael had to dodge his way through the people to get out of the store.
Father Stratton grabbed his arm. “Where are you going, Rafael?”
“The man shot him. He just shot him. Shot Ninja’s leg.”
Still holding tightly onto Rafael’s arm, Father Stratton said, “I want you to come to confession, Rafael.”
The smell of alcohol came from the priest’s mouth. The priest was liked and respected by everyone Rafael knew because he was a drinker, too. It was what the priest had in common with these people.
“Yes, Father.”
“I mean, this afternoon.” The priest’s eyes seemed fierce with seriousness.
Rafael jerked his arm free. “Yes, Father. All right!”
“Rafael! Aren’t you helping?”
From the sunlight outside the store, Rafael looked at the crowd of people in the store hovering around Ninja.
“No,” Rafael said. “There are enough people helping. I do not need… I do not want…”
“You hate to see suffering, don’t you, Rafael?” Rafael began coughing into his hands.
Within seconds, he was on his knees not far from the priest’s feet vomiting.
m
“BLESS ME, Father, for I have sinned,” Rafael said into the grille of the cool, dark confessional box.
And then he stopped.
“How long since your last confession, Rafael?”
“I don’t know. Do you remember? Have I stopped when I was coming home from the city drunk and confessed?”
“Yes.”
“When was the last time I did that?”
Father Stratton said, “I don’t remember, either.” “Well, that was the last time then,” Rafael said. “Do you remember the last time you came to confession sober?”
“God, no.”
“Because there’s always the question whether doing penance when you are drunk works.”
“You shouldn’t pray when you’re drunk?”
Father Stratton sighed.
“Because I’ve always done penance,” Rafael said.
Through the grille came the smell of stale liquor from the priest’s mouth. For the first time, Rafael wondered if he was smelling the priest’s rotting liver.
After leaving Ninja on the store counter in the care of other people, Rafael had gone to his travel trailer. He poured himself five or six ounces of liquor from the big vodka bottle.
He sat on the single bed he and Rita shared, his back against the wall, his knees up.
He gulped most of his drink and felt instantly ill. Tightening his jaw, his stomach muscles, he finished the drink.
The only effect it had upon him was to make his stomach churn.
His father had a lump in his stomach similar to the lump that had killed his mother. She suffered greatly, for a long time. There could never be enough money for doctors or the comfort they could bring. There never had been.
Rafael was glad he would not live to see his father suffer so, and for so long.
People sneaking into the dump now to take things out of it, to eat, to live, were liable to be shot. The authorities did not want them taking things no one else wanted from the dump. The dump manager had shot Ninja, a boy, in the leg. Rafael remembered Ninja’s tight grip on the old, broken, plastic radio.
No doctor would see to Ninja, either.
Rafael put his empty cup on the floor. To some of this, he had the solution. He needed to stay sober, awake, work on his own future, his own salvation, the future and salvation of many.
He wandered back outside into the sunlight. People were still milling around the store, talking in shock and worry and anger about what had happened to Ninja, to all of them. Rafael did not look into the cooler darkness of the store.
Father Stratton’s black Buick was gone. Maybe Rafael could have ridden to the church with him.
Carrying his shirt, Rafael walked up to the highway and down along its shoulder to where it flattened outside the dump entrance. He turned to face the traffic. Walking backward, he put out his thumb. He had discovered drivers were quicker to pick him up, if at all, if he was not wearing a shirt. This afternoon one of the first vehicles to pass him stopped to give him a ride.
He had put on his shirt before entering the cool of the church in Big Dry Lake.
“All right, Rafael,” Father Stratton said through the grille in the confession box. “Tell me your sins.”
“Drunkenness,” Rafael said.
“Yes,” Father Stratton said. “How many times?”
“Whenever.”
“Whenever you can, is that right?”
“Yes. But I haven’t felt much like a drink lately, when I’ve had it to drink.”
“Since when?”
“Yesterday afternoon.”
“Are you telling me you’ve had nothing to drink since yesterday afternoon?”
“No.”
“You just haven’t been drunk—”
“When I could have been.”
“It won’t do any good to talk to you about drinking, will it?”
“No.”
“You’re young, Rafael. Very young. You have your whole life ahead of you.” / have tomorrow, and Thursday morning, Rafael thought. “You have Rita and the children.” That’s too true, Rafael thought, too true. “Oh, well… Are you faithful to Rita, Rafael?”
“Yes.”
“You have had sex with no one else?”
“Who?”
“Anyone. Such as, anyone in the city.”
“No.”
“All right, Rafael, tell me your other sins.”
Rafael hesitated. “I don’t always know what I do when I’m drunk. I might sin then, and not know it. I don’t remember.”
“You say you were not drunk yesterday afternoon?”
“Not really drunk.”
“You remember clearly everything you did yesterday afternoon?”
Larry, the fat uncle, the barbershop, the bank, the woman there, the big store where he went shopping, the things he bought, the two men, the woman who helped Rafael, the cashier, wheeling his presents down the street in the shopping cart, Freedo, the big bottle of vodka, the bus ride, getting off the bus, Rita climbing up to the road to meet him, her face as she saw the two new dresses, Lina tumbling down the slope, his giving the presents to the children, buying drinks for everyone at the store, his climbing the knoll with Rita, the sun, the moon, Rafael remembered it all with more clarity than he remembered most times of his life. “Yes, Father.”
“Rafael, where did you get so much money?” Rafael did not answer. “Do not lie in the confessional box, Rafael.”
“I got a job, Father.”
“From what I hear, you did not do a job, Rafael. You just got money. You bought dresses for your wife, presents for your children, a big turkey.”
“I have the right to do that.”
“If you have the money.”
“I had the money.”
“New clothes for yourself. Where did you get the money, Rafael?”
“I did some of the job yesterday.”
“Rafael, what did you do for so much money?” “I took my clothes off. This fat, old man…” “Did he touch you?”
“Yes. He touched himself more. He did not touch me in the way you mean.”
“What did he do?”
“He just talked crazy. He excited himself. He described crazy things.” Rafael was surprised to hear himself saying these things. Was he lying in the confessional? How could he explain to the priest, how could he tell him more, the whole truth? He could not explain about the contract, and the bank account, and the card the woman in the bank wanted Rita to sign so she could get the money, later. “The fat old man just got excited as he talked and waved his arms around, and smelled worse.”
“You said you did part of the job yesterday.”
“Yes.”
“Does this man expect you to come back?”
“Yes.”
“Do not go back to him, Rafael.”
Rafael thought. “I cannot steal, Father.”
“We are not talking about stealing. You cannot get money this way, Rafael, and you cannot steal it, either. Do not go back to this man, Rafael.”
“You saw that the man in the dump shot Ninja.”
“Yes. I saw that.”
“The children are sick and hungry. We are all sick. My father will die from a lump in his stomach, the way my mother did.”
“Rafael, do not go back to this man.”
“I am not committing the crime, Father.”
