Tony, in a white T-shirt, gray sweat shorts, white socks, yellow shoes, with hairy legs and arms and white skin and long brown hair, came over to us with his Frisbee. Tony said, Hi, I’m Tony. Happy Fourth! Tony said, Would you like to help me run Lewis? That’s Lewis, my dog. And Tony gave me the blue Frisbee and let me and Emilio throw it. Once, Lewis ran after it and then ran not back to us but under a tree at the edge of the field, and Tony laughed and said, Darn dog, he doesn’t always bring it back.
Tony said, I like your bikes, and Tony said, Look how far I can throw it! and he threw the Frisbee all the way across the fútbol field. Tony said, Are you coming back tonight, for the fireworks? We told him Mami and Papi said we were, but we didn’t know now. Tony asked Emilio and me, Do you think you can run as fast as Lewis? We called Lewis over and Tony said, Go! and Emilio and Lewis and I ran all the way across the field, and Lewis won.
Tony said, Let’s send Lewis on a hunt, and Tony threw the Frisbee into the little woods, those trees, those trees, and Tony said, Lewis! Lewis! Go get it, boy! But Lewis didn’t go. Go ahead, Lewis! Go on, boy! But Lewis didn’t move. Tony asked would we want to help him look for the Frisbee. I asked, What about poison ivy? Tony laughed and said, I’ll carry you if we see any. Let’s go!
12
The small woods behind Heth’s Park crowded around us, and, looking up through the trees, you saw the white and blue and yellow, the shapes and colors of daylight, and you saw the green tops of trees in the wind like fingers that close together. All kinds of sounds, small noises, our shoes on the ground, crunch, crunch, Lewis sniffing around, birds moving, squirrels crawling, and, far far off, people’s voices in their backyards and driveways, came to my ears. Lewis went off to sniff stuff while Tony showed us his privates, touching his thing, making it bigger, it moving up, up, up, big like the men in the magazine, except hairy, and smelly. He said to touch it, and I did, he said to tickle it, and I did, he told Emilio and me to kiss it, and we did. He leaned against a tree and Emilio and I kept kissing his thing, and he said, Now lick it, and we did.
Even though I did not want to, I got hard down there. Tony said, Open your mouth, wider, use your tongue, and I liked it and I did not like it. Tony said, I’m going to — and he didn’t finish his words. And he said, You are — and he stopped saying stuff again. My eyes were open, my hands were touching his thing, my breath puffed out between licks, my thing was very hard, and my stomach, burning, afraid, happy, became a wide heavy stone no one can find, buried far beneath the earth.
13
But in the nighttime, Papi, Mami, Emilio, and I have gathered the quilt, three or four pillows, and a basket with snacks, Papi and Mami quiet, standing next to one another, and we’ve met everyone in front of our house, Garrett and Molly and their parents, Luci and Mary-Beth and Elsie, everybody holding their own blankets and pillows and snacks, everyone saying, Happy Fourth! and we walk to Heth’s to watch fireworks, loud and bright and big when they come, filling up the dark, boom! boom! boom! boom! Heth’s has filled with people, has filled with their blankets and chairs, their flashlights and laughter, their sounds and movements of all kinds, these people everywhere on the field, women, men, kids, everywhere everyone’s eyes looking up — you can see them when the lights of the fireworks flash. Far away on the other side of the field I see Tony and Lewis, Tony looking up too, Lewis sitting next to him, afraid of the boom! boom! Tony is wearing the same white T-shirt but now red shorts instead of gray — he does not see me watching him. I point to him, showing Emilio.
In the tippy-top tonight, when we are in our own beds, we hear the sounds of more fireworks all across Pittsburgh, hear kids run and yell, hear them chase and tell jokes, hear boom! boom! boom! I hear the TV downstairs and I hear Mami and Papi talking loudly, not screaming. My eyes have stayed open a long time and I see Tony in my brain, see him take off his shorts, see the hair on his legs like a thousand black wires, see the way he smiles and says, Come on, I’ll show you, and I see those men from the magazine, and Emilio, and — what do I know? I know I do not want to say, I like it. I know it feels strange and scary to say, I want more. And I know I am afraid when I am feeling happy. What do I know? I know about the darkness, and I like the darkness, like how it surrounds me. I know I like to make bodies change, like how the men make my body change, like how I move next to Emilio to make his body like my body, softly in the dark, at first feeling shy, and after a long time still we do not say words, just breathe, and fear, and touch. My stomach rises, falls, will rise again, and my thighs will burn, and everywhere my body will fill, fill up, and — what, what next, what comes next? I will cover him and desire him and seek to touch him everywhere.
Part IV
Neighbors Who Care
At the Buena Vista
by Hilary Masters
Mexican War Streets
At the Buena Vista, we had almost what you might call a private club, what with Malcolm keeping an eye out through the front window blinds for people off the street, black people and such who didn’t quite fit. They wouldn’t be happy in the place.
“Here comes one,” Malcolm might say. “Quick, lock the door.”
And Jerry Warner would put down his Rolling Rock and turn the latch on the front door and we’d just sit quiet, only the phony laughter on the TV show going on, as we listened to the footsteps outside pass by. They never once hesitated and we could hear them while they just kept walking, as I guess Malcolm’s attitude was well known in the neighborhood, and we didn’t about it much.
Jerry always took the stool next to the door so that if his coughing got the best of him he could whip outside in a hurry to right himself and not disturb the rest of us. The VA told him his lungs were a fucking wonder considering the shit he got into in ’Nam, but he would have his moments hacking like he might be coming apart. And he was always so apologetic, how could you be annoyed with him, and besides, anybody complaining would have to answer to one or two of us who were also vets of that war.
But that wouldn’t be the case anyways, for like I said, it was a cozy place and we had everything right there that we needed. Within reach. The cooler packed with beer; Malcolm would also put in some I.C. Light so as to offer a choice, and the different chips in their bright packages in front of the mirror gave off a warmth. Whoever ate any of the pickled eggs was a mystery to me, for there always seemed to be the same four of them resting in their juice at the bottom of the jar. Sometimes when Malcolm opened the cooler to serve one of us, all those cans of beer neatly racked reminded me of shells waiting to be loaded into a battery’s magazines. And he had a microwave to heat up the packages of dehydrated soup he’d mix up with water on order. Chicken noodle was the favorite and so we wanted for very little.
It was also a kind of haven for some of us who hadn’t quite learned how to get used to the neighborhood as new people began to fix up some of the old houses, sometimes ripping out the whole inners and putting in real fancy fittings, and repainting the fronts, new stones in the stoops — and I had a hand in some of them. You could hardly recognize a street and almost get lost going home from the Buena Vista, like the houses might have grew different while you were sipping your beer inside the bar. You’d meet some of these new people, all young and bright eyed as they came into the bar, and Malcolm would tell them what was on hand, so they never stayed long, never came back.