Amigoland Page 2

  When he turned around, the other men at the table were staring at him. The One With The Worried Face shook his head in a disillusioned sort of way; The Gringo With The Ugly Finger looked as dazed as if something had just happened to one of his other fingers.

  “What?” Don Fidencio said to both of them. “What are you looking at, eh?”

  The One With The Worried Face turned his attention toward the vase of plastic flowers on the table. The Gringo With The Ugly Finger stroked the frayed edge of his bib.

  Don Fidencio tugged a couple of times on the paper napkin, making sure it was secure. He knew what he was doing; he didn’t need some young girl telling him things. She must have been blind to think he needed one of those towels hanging from his neck. Maybe from now on he would call her The One With The Flat Face Who Is Also Blind.

  He sulked back in his chair. His stomach growled as if he hadn’t eaten in days. The memory he felt churning inside his belly had taken place in those early days of the Depression. He had found work close to the river, picking tomatoes with some other men, including a couple of hoboes from up north who spent their time complaining that it was too damn hot for a man to be working so hard. They were making so much noise that no one heard when the agents drove up. Before he knew it, they were rounding everyone up but the hoboes, who by then had put down their bushels and were taking a cigarette break. It didn’t matter where he lived or for how many years. “Looks Mexican to me,” the agent said when he protested. And how was he supposed to explain to the agent that because his parents had crossed over to look for work, he was born in Reynosa, just on the other side of the river, but almost all his life he had spent on this side? Another week and he would have been born in the U.S., same as the rest of his family. Yes, even if he had relatives on both sides, really he was American now and had been for many, many years. Later that same night he was crammed into a boxcar with the others — some Mexican citizens, some just unlucky enough to look it — until the train arrived down in Veracruz. It was his first time so far beyond the other side of the border. He and a few of the men stuck together as they traveled the more than six hundred miles back to Texas. None of them had much money. Over the next two weeks they walked and asked for rides when they could, but mainly walked. And if he could recall any more of this, he would probably say it was the hungriest he had ever been.

  The metal doors to the kitchen swung open and two dining room attendants rolled out the food carts, starting at the far end of the room, where most of The Turtles gathered. Of the eighty or so residents eating in the dining room today, only two had guests. One was a tall man with a long stringy ponytail who was sitting with his mother while she chewed her fried fish. The second guest was a woman in her early fifties with slightly tinted hair and a pair of gold-lined teeth. She sat with her much-older husband at almost every meal, sometimes ordering a tray of food for herself.

  Alongside the window that looked onto the patio, one of the aides stood in the center of a U-shaped table and uncovered trays for three residents, all of them twitching in their reclining wheelchairs that were more like upright gurneys. She took a spoonful from the first tray and fed a dark-haired woman not more than sixty, and then a second later the aide had to recover the yellowish dollop that had seeped onto the woman’s chin.

  Don Fidencio tried not to look around the room as much as he had his first two months. For what? He hadn’t seen anyone he remembered or who might remember him, which seemed odd given that he had lived and worked in the same town for most of his life. Where the hell is everyone? he kept asking himself. Strangers, all strangers, they had taken everyone he knew and replaced them with strangers. This is where they had sent him to die, with strangers. The gray-haired daughter of one of The Turtles had said she recognized him as the man who used to bring the mail to her mother’s house, a white one with light-blue trim that had a large banana tree in the front yard and that stood on the corner near the entrance to the compress. Don Fidencio didn’t recall the house, though he remembered a chow biting him near the train tracks, leaving him with a dozen or so stitches on his backside. When the woman said it wasn’t their dog, he lost interest in whatever else she had to say.

  The other reason he preferred to not look around was that he didn’t like thinking about his life, how it used to be, how it was now, and what it would likely become, if God didn’t do him the good favor of taking him soon. No matter how much he had lost, or they thought he had lost, he was still alert and understood what was happening to him. How long could it be before they moved him over to the U-shaped table where the aides would be feeding him? When would he not be able to dress himself anymore and have to wear his pajamas all day? One of these nights would there really be a need for them to keep the plastic lining on his mattress?

  “Is there a problem, Mr. Rosales?” The One With The Big Ones was standing next to the table. The One With The Flat Face lingered to one side of his wide frame.

  “Yes, there is,” Don Fidencio said, cocking back his head. “I’m hungry already. Tell them to hurry it up with the trays.”

  “The food is almost here, sir, but Miss Saldana tells me that today you don’t feel you have to wear your bib like everyone else.” The One With The Big Ones crossed his arms, which in his yellow polo shirt only formed a deeper cleavage. “This isn’t true, is it?”

  “For what?” he said, and then lifted his napkin. “Look!”

  “That paper napkin is not going to be sufficient, Mr. Rosales.”

  “How do you mean, not sufficient?”

  “We have rules and procedures here, sir. And the rules and procedures state that every resident must wear a bib during mealtime.”

  “Look what I have here,” he said, holding up the napkin again. “Are you blind, like the girl?”

  The One With The Big Ones glanced back at The One With The Flat Face, who only raised her eyebrows as she waited to see how he might respond to the comment. The dining room attendant, a younger man with homemade tattoos on his knuckles and forearms, had just rolled the serving cart up to the table. The One With The Big Ones signaled for him to hold off and then turned back to continue his conversation.

  “There’s no reason to be belligerent, Mr. Rosales.”

  “Don’t you be calling me names.”

  “Belligerent means to be hostile, to be insulting, like saying someone is blind because they don’t agree with you. Miss Saldana is only trying to do her job and follow the rules and procedures. Don’t you want to follow the rules and procedures?”

  Don Fidencio waited for him to finish. Not only was he forced to argue with the man about his bib but he had to do this in English, which for him meant stopping to think of the right words before he could open his mouth. A building full of old people who spoke mainly Spanish and no longer had any use for English, if they ever had, and this was the one they had sent to run the place.

  “I’m just saying the truth. This is a napkin and it works just the same as that horse blanket she wants to put on me. Look at it, and if you don’t see it, then maybe you both need to go have your eyes checked. Get in the van and go together if you want. What’s so insulting about that?”

  The One With The Big Ones squatted by holding on to the edge of the table and the handlebar on the walker.

  “Mr. Rosales, the rule is that everyone has to wear a bib.” He was now eye-to-eye with the old man. “What you have there is a paper napkin, not a bib.”

  “And who made the stupid rule?”

  “Those are just the rules. It was like this before I started working at Amigoland. I’m just following the rules. Don’t you want to follow the rules?” He motioned with his head, stretching his jowls to glance over his shoulder. “Look at how Mr. Phillips and Mr. Gomez are cooperating.”

  The Gringo With The Ugly Finger sat up when he heard his name. The One With The Worried Face shook his head as if he couldn’t believe the misfortune Don Fidencio was tempting.

  “Why do you want to cause such problems?” He
dropped his forehead into the palms of his hands. He looked up a few seconds later. “Why?”

  “I used to pack a lunch pail back when I was with Pan Am.”

  “Not now, Mr. Phillips,” The One With The Big Ones said, keeping his eyes fixed on Don Fidencio. Then he told the attendant to go ahead and serve the two other men at the table.

  “And me?”

  “I want to give you your food, so does Miss Saldana, but first you need a bib, sir.” The One With The Big Ones leaned on the edge of the table in order to stand up again. “I can’t serve you until you cooperate.”

  “I have one.”

  “Sir, I’m not going to argue with you about your paper napkin. If you want to eat, you have to follow the rules.” The One With The Big Ones glanced over at The One With The Flat Face, who nodded back at him.

  The attendant was waiting with his last tray of food; after a while he stuck one of his tattooed fingers under the plastic covering and touched the mashed potatoes, just to make sure the food was still warm.

  Don Fidencio felt weak; his head was beginning to hurt. They had strayed off the main road and gotten lost in some dense scrubland. By now it had been more than a day or two since their last meal. Close to dusk he spotted something scurrying under a huisache. Before they could surround the shrub, the armadillo bolted out into the clearing and found cover somewhere else. Each time they thought they had it cornered, the animal would rush off past them because nobody had anything to hit it with. They started throwing stones, but most of these missed or ricocheted off the animal’s shell. Half an hour went by this way. It was getting dark and they were about to give up on catching it when the armadillo stopped suddenly and dropped dead from exhaustion. One of the men who knew how to cook prepared the meat on a spit over an open fire. Don Fidencio had eaten without thinking of what he was eating or why he was eating it or how gamy it tasted or how tough it was to chew or how the meat was getting stuck between his teeth or if the memory of any of this would stay with him. He just ate.

  The One With The Worried Face was working on cutting his corn bread with the edge of his spoon. He scooped up the first piece, but it kept toppling over to one side. After the fourth or fifth time, it was clear to him that he had cut too big a piece. So he worked on it until he had whittled it down to three smaller chunks. In between he stopped to take a sip of his iced tea with the bendable straw. Then he stared at the spoon, as if unsure where it had come from, and a few seconds later switched over to the vanilla pudding.

  The Gringo With The Ugly Finger stirred a second packet of Sweet’N Low into his coffee. “Really it wasn’t much of a lunchroom, just some metal chairs and an old Coca-Cola-bottle machine, so I usually ate my sandwich out in the hangar somewhere.”

  “Please, Mr. Phillips, I’m talking to Mr. Rosales right now.”

  The One With The Big Ones turned back to Don Fidencio. “Well, sir, what’s it going to be? Dinner or no dinner?”

  “You can’t tell me when I can eat,” said the old man. “I’m not even supposed to be here. Against my will they brought me to this place.”

  “You’re here for your own good, Mr. Rosales. So we can take care of you.”

  “This is how you take care of people?”

  “Miss Saldana says you skipped your lunch so you could smoke outside. Is that true?”

  Don Fidencio shook his head but without looking at the man.

  “How can we take care of you, Mr. Rosales, if you won’t let us take care of you?”

  “I don’t need you or anybody taking care of me.”

  “Your daughter thinks you do.”

  “And what does she know? If you people let me, I could do everything like I used to. One day you’ll see.”

  “See what?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “Just give me my food.”

  The One With The White Pants came around to the table with his own cart. His was bigger than the food cart or The One With The Flat Face’s cart. To begin with, the wheels didn’t rattle or get stuck, so it was hard to know when he was getting close to your table. One minute you were eating your carrot cake and the next second there he was, standing next to you, dressed in his white pants and shirt, smiling like he knew you were expecting him and here he was with his tiny paper cup full of goodies.

  The One With The Worried Face took the cup and steadily raised it toward his mouth until he was able to tip a purple pill onto his tongue, which was now chalk-colored from the milky supplement he drank with his meal.

  “Water?” asked The One With The White Pants.

  But The One With The Worried Face already had some and raised his glass as if he were about to toast the beginning of another miserable year. Then he took a swig of the water, cocked back his head, and swallowed. The One With The White Pants gazed up at the ceiling while the old man took eight more pills this way.

  “Not yet for Mr. Rosales,” The One With The Big Ones said when The One With The White Pants came around the table. “Take care of Mr. Phillips, someone who likes to follow the rules and procedures.”

  “Now I sure as heck do,” The Gringo With The Ugly Finger said and then held it up for everyone to see.

  Don Fidencio could feel his stomach grumbling. The One With The Big Ones thought he was making him suffer by not letting him have his paper cup, as if he looked forward to taking so many damn pills. He was doing him a favor. Thank you very much, he wanted to say. A cupful of pills was the last thing he wanted. If he even thought he could find some crackers in one of his shoe boxes, he would have grabbed the walker and headed back to his room. A man who looked like he needed to wear a brassiere shouldn’t be talking to him in this way, telling him what to do, when he could and couldn’t eat. Only a few years earlier he would have laid him out flat on the floor, made him regret having spoken to him in that way. He didn’t know who he was dealing with, what Don Fidencio had lived through in his life.

  It was late in the evening when they finally made it back to the river. What little money they had started with was gone now. Don Fidencio and the two other men walked along the dense riverbank, trying to figure out where exactly they could cross. The current seemed strong no matter where they looked. They finally spotted a bend where the river was narrower and it wouldn’t take but a minute or so to tread water and reach the other side. Don Fidencio stripped down and rolled his clothes and shoes into a tight ball. But when he looked around, only one of the men had undressed. I never learned to swim, the other one said. He was more boy than man, but he had worked hard to prove himself the last five days. You can hold on to us, Don Fidencio told him. But he refused and said he preferred to remain on this side. He claimed to have family he could stay with. But if he really had family here, then why come all the way to the river with them? They waited to see if he would change his mind and then went ahead and took their first steps into the river, making sure to keep their knotted-up clothes raised above their heads. The water wasn’t as high as they had imagined and they were able to stay on their feet most of the way. Don Fidencio wanted to tell the boy he could make it, he would go back for him, but when he turned around he had already lost him.

  He closed his eyes and tried to count the extra hours he might have to wait until breakfast. It was past five o’clock, which meant he had less than two hours before they started to turn off the lights. He couldn’t remember the last time he slept a whole night, so he would most likely wake up around four in the morning, not including however many times he was sure to wake up to go sit on the toilet. So the five hours since lunch, plus however many hours he said he needed before he fell asleep, was something like nine hours, maybe ten. Then he had to add in the hours since he had last eaten, however many he’d said it had been. If he could just write this down, he could figure it out, not let all these numbers get jumbled up inside his head. He reached for the ballpoint pen in his shirt pocket but then figured The One With The Big Ones would be rushing him as he wrote down the numbers, so instead he kept his eyes shut, left the p
en where it was, and pretended to have an itch at his armpit.

  No matter how long it was overnight, what he knew was that after he dressed in the morning he would have to wait until they unlocked the patio before he could go outside for a smoke and kill some of his hunger. It was brighter at the front of the building, but he didn’t want them coming to take him back inside by the elbow. The sun would hardly be out at that hour. The yardman didn’t let himself in through the back gate until later in the morning. If someone were to look outside, all they would see was the burning tip of a cigarette and the shape of an old man attached to the end of it. The package had seemed kind of flat when he was smoking at noon. He maybe had two cigarettes left. Two cigarettes wasn’t much after picking at his breakfast and not eating lunch and now dinner. If only his hands were still steady, he could roll his own, but he had given this up years ago when the cigarettes kept coming out looking like broken fingers.

  Then after going out to the patio, he would have to wait another hour before they opened the mess hall. That seemed like an extra long time to wait, however many hours that would end up being. He imagined arriving in the mess hall and waiting in one of the chairs closest to the kitchen. Maybe he could find a newspaper or a magazine to distract himself until they brought out the food. Maybe The One With The Net On His Head would do him the favor of serving him a little early. He would be willing to pass the man a small tip on the side, a few extra cigarettes when he had some, just so he wouldn’t have to wait any longer than he already had. He couldn’t say he even cared for the oatmeal breakfast they served. Every day the same thing, oatmeal and raisins. Monday, oatmeal and raisins. Tuesday, oatmeal and raisins. Wednesday, oatmeal and raisins. On and on that way. He usually spread sugar over the top of the oatmeal and then mixed it in with a little bit of milk until it got creamy, but he could see himself skipping this part of his routine just so he could start eating. The biscuit he would bite into while it was still hot (normally he liked to save it for later, sometimes taking extra care to wrap it up in a napkin, placing it in the center of the paper and folding the napkin end over end until it formed a small brick that he could stuff inside his shirt pocket). No, these people didn’t know who they were dealing with. He had been through much worse in his life. The One With The Big Ones actually thought he could keep him here.