“Yes,” Mama Pepita would say. “Three dead men hanging from a guásima tree.”
“So play 888,” Papa Lorenzo would say, reviewing the comic pages.
The kids flew over his back again. They leapt at nine and at ten.
“At eleven, get in on the action!”
“At twelve, an old lady snivels!” And this time, Kiko Ribs coughed on his head and Agar felt the kid’s saliva in his ear.
“At thirteen, a midget can be seen!”
“At fourteen, an old man is clean!”
“At fifteen, I’ll get your spleen!”
Agar was worked-up. He was waiting for the last leap to start off a long run after the West Side Boys and grab one of them forcefully and beat any part of his body. Until it became nighttime.
“At sixteen, run from that ox so lean!” Bones yelled, leaping over him without putting his hands on his back.
They ran.
When he got close to Lefty, Agar punched his ears hard. Both rolled around the grass, embracing furiously. Lefty’s hand took hold of his throat and Agar felt blood beating at his temples and his eyes popping out of their sockets. He had the kid’s ear gripped tightly and tried unsuccessfully to get his teeth near it and to sink them into the ear lobe.
“Stop that!” It was Mr. Hubert. He had come with his dogs, certainly because of his wife. He approached with his bulldogs and brusquely separated them.
Lefty and Agar looked at each other with hate for a moment. Huffing, dragging the backs of their wrists across their saliva-filled mouths, muttering indecencies. A minute later, Lefty crouched down and patted one of the dogs’ backs. Agar went over to the bushes and urinated, then went back to the group.
Everything was over.
It was always like that: they beat each other with a blind fury and then forgot about it. Blows in the heat of the moment. Letting it all out in the heat of the moment. Against any face, anybody, anything.
Mr. Hubert looked at them in surprise. He looked around and discovered the mare covered in ash and dry leaves.
“Sons.,” he tried to say. “There are games that are a lot more fun. Less dangerous. The quimbumbia, for example, is a very animated game.”
He took two sticks and banged them forcefully.
“Come?” he said then.
While he beat the “quimbumbia” stick, Agar remembered Papa Lorenzo saying about Hubert: “Hubert!” Papa Lorenzo would say. “He’s just like Hubert, the fat guy from the comics! The same idiot face. Always taking his dogs out for a piss.”
“Leave the man alone!” Mama Pepita would yell.
Hubert then said, “I brought you something.” And taking a ball out of his pocket dramatically, he dropped it in the middle of the circle of kids and said, smiling: “Try to play peacefully, huh?” And, after winking first at them mischievously, he turned around.
The West Side Boys watched him go in silence. When he was far away, someone threw the ball up in the air. Agar understood that now dodgeball would begin. Throwing the ball hard as anything against anyone.
He tried to get away from the group, but it was already too late.
They were throwing it against him. Bones didn’t throw it against Alex and Alex didn’t throw it against Kiko Ribs either, and Kiko Ribs didn’t throw it against Claudio, either.
They were throwing it at him. He was the chosen target.
“An eye for an eye,” Papa Lorenzo had said that day Agar came home full of bite marks and pine-needle scratches.
“He’s skittish.,” Mama Pepita said, sadly, “like a horse.”
Later, Agar knew all too well, time would pass and the wounds would turn into hardened scabs, and he would pull them off, curious to see his own blood run.
“Well,” Bones announced. “You’ve got three strikes. We’re going to execute you now.”
For the execution, they chose a chopped-off palm near the House of the Broken Windows. Now he had to put his arms around it and expose his back to the ball.
“And go!”
The ball missed. He heard Kiko Ribs regret his bad aim and give Bones a turn.
“Strike!” Bones said. And the ball hit his kidneys and he felt his skin burning under his shirt.
“Don’t start crying, dude.,” Bones warned him. “That was just practice. That’s all.”
“Take a good shot,” Kiko Ribs said. “The Núñez girls are coming down the alley. Make it good, Bones!”
This time, the ball hit the back of his neck. The girls went by the alley and saw him hugging the palm tree. With his face hidden he heard them laughing.
“Why don’t you talk to those girls?” Papa Lorenzo would say, pointing far away. “Look at their asses, kid. Look how they’re moving it. They like to show it off. At your age, I was devouring them all.”
So Papa Lorenzo would tell about his Don Juan life in the village of Candelaria, where he had had a catalog of girlfriends.
“One day you spoke to them,” The Voice of Memory said. “Don’t you remember anymore?”
“Yes. one day I went over to them.”
“Of course!” The Voice said. “You did well. You took out a bottle of cognac and discovered the very taste of life.”
Not just anyone can take a drink of cognac! Not just anyone can bear feeling their insides moving around! Not just anyone can keep from vomiting! But you withstood it. And your head was spinning. And you were able to talk to one of them.
“One, yes. Yes, that’s right. One is the one that matters to me. Just one and no other. ”
But Papa Lorenzo was waiting for you that night with his arms crossed.
“Drunk again?” He said undramatically. And he beat you silently, drily, like never before.
“That’s not how you do it!” Mama Pepita protested from the kitchen.
“And how do you do it? Tell me! Do you know?”
He left and came back later with the Court of Patriots.
“Take a good look at them!” He said. “I want you to solemnly swear that this is the last time in your life that. ”
The patriots stared at him indignantly.
“Swear!”
The ball beat down on his back again.
Fine.
He wasn’t crying. The girls had passed and were now far away. He felt the drops of sweat running down his thighs like lizards. Then he heard Papa Lorenzo’s whistling. Papa Lorenzo’s unmistakable whistling coming from Hunchback Alley.
“I’m dead meat,” Agar thought.
He tried to run.
“You can’t leave now, dude.” Bones said, blocking his way. “You’re paying your dues.”
The West Side Boys had already made a circle around him. There was a circle for everything. For the spiders. To tell jokes. To take out their members and rub them madly waiting for a finale that never came. To smoke, to play, to piss, to fight.
“Stay still, dude,” Bones said. Agar felt a swift kick and fell to the ground.
Papa Lorenzo whistled again from the Alley while Agar cried on the ground, with a powerful knee on his chest and a tough hand around his neck.
“Look at him crying!” Kiko Ribs said in a fag’s voice.
“Leave him alone, dude. here comes his father!”
Agar stood up, wiping his tears quickly away. Papa Lorenzo crossed the field of rosemary and went up to him.
“Who hit you?” he wanted to know.
“It was a game.”
“Who was it?”
Agar looked at Bones without answering. The kid bent over, pretending he had a pain in his ribs.
“Hit him!” Papa Lorenzo ordered drily.
“We were playing. ”
“Hit him!” Papa Lorenzo insisted. “I want you to fight him, you son of a bitch! Hit him!”
So they started hitting each other. Lightly at first. Hard and silently afterwards. Agar felt the rain of blows fall on his face and clenched his jaw without saying a word. He swept blindly at Bones’ face, and sometimes felt that his blows managed to do damage. He cried silently. Without moving an inch of his face. When it was over, after insulting the West Side Boys, Papa Lorenzo grabbed him by the scruff of his neck.