BRED IN THE BONE

Cory Zimmerman

Sunday—dedicated to the Holy Trinity—2:26 p.m.

The florist drops a handful of coins in your palm. You skip across the square, dodging Henry’s Ford for Kimbell’s Hardware and his display of buckets, pans, and brooms, where you buy a new basket for a dime—woven willow. It reminds you of Mamá. Next, to the bakery, where a loaf of day-old bread costs 3 cents. You buy a hog neck for a nickel from the butcher—who sells rows of pork, beef, tripe, pig’s feet, and rabbits—and he throws in a pound of mutton for only 10 cents more. A quart of milk from the dairy, 9 cents. The poulter charges an arm and a leg for his chickens, ducks, and geese hanging out front by the feet, so you make your way on for the greengrocer and pickily choose a few onions, potatoes, and sack of chiles from amongst the slopes of ripe produce. At Anderson’s mom and pop grocer, you cozy up to the counter. Anderson’s Grocer is a small shop, long and narrow, where past a few wooden crates of wormy cider apples, a dented wood stove sits against the back wall, its pipe disappearing into the brick. Above, a variety of deer antlers and a boar’s head. And a bare bulb hangs from the ceiling, along with a dozen oil lamps that line the wall. A row of tip-top-of-they-line baskets catches your attention—12 cents. You don’t have 12 cents, and a large sign hanging from a chain reads:

NO CREDIT!!

Anderson, the grocer, standing stiff and lanky behind the long counter stretching the length of the store, holds his hands on his hips, wears a starched apron double wrapped tightly about the waist, sports an English mustache, vest, bowtie, and pocket watch, with fine, shiny, flat hair parted perfectly down the middle, not a hair out of place. Behind him, shelves of bottles and cans rising to the ceiling, where above a large Campbell’s sign reads:

Conscience in every can!

On the counter to your left, a case of cigars:

Fine Quality Mild, 5¢.

Your think how Papá might like one someday, and put in your order as you fumble with your braids, and Anderson scribbles it down, longhand:

12 Egg

4 Peach

2 Tomato

4 Bean

4 Mutton broth

Corn flour

Salt

Lard

Coffee

Tobacco

“And a can of Campbell’s tomato soup,” you say, “got it?” Giving him attitude. You like to give him a hard time. And you let your eye linger on him as you slowly tiptoe away for a display of Theilmann’s Garden Seeds. Again, you see a sign that reads:

NO CREDIT

You click your cheek as Anderson sets four cans of peaches on the counter, and you scan the mosaic of items lining the walls, studying the selection of colorful merchandise:

Zud Rust

Butchers Wax

Crystal White Soap Suds

Coon Chicken Soap

...its label featuring the cocked head of a jolly Black man with swollen red lips. He is winking at you, and grinning under his red porter’s cap. A tin-lady on the wall donning a white silk gown casually lies back in a chair, leg extended outward; her hair, long and sexful, and she too, stares right at you lustfully with a Coca-Cola in hand. But the clopping of Puritan soles draws your attention elsewhere, away from sin, toward a more properly dressed woman in a modest dark-blue neck-to-floor dress with ruffled sleeves to the wrists, hat trimmed with the plumage of endangered wading birds, hurrying right for the toilet soap.

Meanwhile, you continue to twirl your braid, making eyes with Anderson before he climbs back onto the ladder, this time reaching for the Campbell’s tomato soup. He is so tall, you think, he might snap in two if he falls from that ladder, and turn away, and spin twice, afraid you’d have made him collapse with your mind, otherwise. He climbs down carefully and makes his way past the pancake flour, a stack of Arnett’s biscuits, a pyramid of Negro Head oysters, and settles behind a large brass cash register where you dump your handful of coins onto the counter. Anderson jabs down on the clunky keys, figuring the total in his head as you ramble off random numbers to confuse him as you always do, “Twelve, seventeen, twenty-two, three-thousand, four-hundred, sixty-six, one, two, three, four—” as his eyeballs bounce back and forth in their socket. You catch the tip of your tongue in your teeth with a wide grin and a giggle, butyou couldn’t fool him, lest you tried. He cranks down on the handle, and the cash drawer pops open with a brassy CHA-CHING!

3:53 p.m.

Beyond a barren tree, the porch creaks, though you seem weightless as you lug the loaded crate effortlessly in your arms through the screen door. Inside, a toasted-skinned man in a Henley undershirt looks up from his empty mug, and the scent hits you, sweet maíz.

“Buenas tardes,” he says.

“Papá, I got the cans from the grocer.”

“Gracias—” he says, standing from his chair.

“Papá,” you say, seemingly annoyed, widening your eyes, “I got it,” as you drop the crate on the floor.

“Coffee?” he asks as you stand up on the crate, stacking cans on a tall shelf covered in oilcloth. You step down and grab a large knife and stab it violently into a can of instant coffee and fill a kettle with water from a pitcher and place it on the stove without saying a word, except—

“Sit!” And he does, onto a round stool.

The kitchen: A denim coat and hat hang on a nail; laundry on a cord stretching from wall to wall—whitewashed but blackened with soot; window frame chipped and flaking, lined with empty coffee cans.

“Arturo?” you ask, and Papá nods past the leafless tree just outside the window, to somewhere on down the way. Your eyes wander back to the task at hand, emptying a dwindling coal bucket with a small metal shovel into a potbelly stove. Beneath your feet flower petals, tiny leaves, and stems are strewn about. A mirror hangs above a bathtub with a clothes wringer and washboard, and in the corner leans a stiff-grass broom. Empty milk bottles collect on the plank near a wash bin. Pots and pans hang. And on the shelves of the wooden cupboard, a few mismatched dishes and an oil lamp sat amongst the stacked cans. A yellowed image of the Virgin Mary hangs on the wall above by the door, its rough-hewn frame, crooked on its nail.

Sipping coffee, you take a load off, swinging your feet anxiously beneath your chair, as you ease they silence with your humming. Papá takes a small sip but spits it back in the cup with a terrible grimace. Giggling, “What,” you ask. “What, you never drank coffee before?” you laugh.

“Too strong, Palomita,” he says. “Leche, por favor.” And you stand to grab a bottle of milk, and the leche helps him swallow it down. “Palomita—” he says as you swing your feet beneath your chair, his thumb rubbing the rim of his mug anxiously.

“Miguel,” you say with mischievous intent. He has let you behave this way ever since Mamá died.

“What’s my name?” He feigns to scold you.

“Papá—King Papá,” you say as your eyes widen, head shifting back on your shoulders like a deer caught in headlights before royalty—as you love to tease him, more than Anderson, but you feel wrong for it ever since Mamá died. And you rub his arm to soothe him, saying, “Papá, you know I love you.”

“Palomita, trae mi guitarra, por favor,” he says, and you quickly retrieve an old beat-up six-string guitar from a far corner. Papá’s fingers twist and turn to tune the keys, and you watch as his nails pick at the strings, making a scratchy mess—a catfight even. But as he slides his fingers up and down the frets, a wavering glissando fills the air, and a steady tempo is born. Strumming a graceful, elegant tune—a lovely, deeply soulful, haunting melody resonates. Sipping your coffee to the rhythm, Papá bounces his knee, and your feet swing and hurl back and forth—caffeine shooting through your young veins.

“¡Adelante, Palomita, enséñales lo que tienes!” says Papá.

“Papá, no,” you say stubbornly, but Papá insists with a single nod, in that way he does, that way that nudges you on as he strums away his dreamy-eyed waltz. So, you shut your eyes, clear your throat, and throw back your head, young, angelic face toward the heavens, toward Mamá. And you lighten and glow as your brow softens, and below the slouching rafters in the low part of town—a corrido—dazzling words flow from the depths of the river that is your soul:

“Al empezar mi corrido / No sé si con alegría / Se trata de un individuo / Que nació en la serranía / Como no bajaba al pueblo / Ni los carros conocía

“Quiso conocer el mundo / Y emprendió la retirada / Practicando tiro al blanco / Su mano se acostumbraba / Y utilizando el revolver / Mataba por una paga

“Queriendo saber más cosas / Lo hizo seguir Adelante / Era tanta su avaricia / Que se volvió traficante / Y cuando le echaban mano / Se fugaba de la cárcel

“Con la sonrisa en los labios / Y su mano bien armada / Con un rehén por delante / Los otros presos sacaba / Cuando ya no lo seguían / En la sierra se ocultaba

“De muy nobles sentimientos / Siempre ayuda al desvalido / Calzaba sus botas blancas / Eran su gusto y delirio / Pero otra vez al fugarse / Dicen que fue muerto a tiros

“Por señas las botas blancas / Las calza un hombre caído / Que fue muerto con la gente / Que se fugó del presidio / Lo inexplicable del caso / Es que el hombre sigue vivo”

5:15 p.m.

A gravel alleyway lined with lean-to sheds and overflowing trash cans runs down the block behind your humble home. You tend to the chickens in your huaraches, scattering leftover rice on the ground, before sitting with your basket on the step. You fiddle with an arrowhead you found in a field one summer, working the crops for Mr. Avery. Mr. Avery, you chose to forget, but his wife brought you lemonade when you passed out in the heat. You rub your thumb against its chiseled edge and jump to your feet, circling about the weed-filled lawn, seeming lost in thought. You spin your braids around twice and plop back down, resting your chin on your knee. Restless, you grasp onto your anxious legs, catching your tongue between your teeth. You look at the sky above, eyes wide upon the horizon, unblinking, gleaming, as the back door creaks open.

“Hola, Arturo,” you say, looking up at your brother who wears a crinkled brow.

“Agua,” he says, handing you a pitcher, seemingly annoyed.

“Want a bowl of tomato soup?” you ask.

“Guácala,” he grimaces, as you knew he would.

“Don’t be such a grump,” you say, snagging the pitcher from his hand, as he disappears back inside, letting the screen slam shut in the breeze. “Grump! Grump, grump, grump!”

Monday—the day in which we remember the angels—5 a.m.

Al que madruga Dios lo ayuda, Papá reminds himself as the first rooster out of the coop wakes the others in the low part of town. Pulling his suspenders over his shoulders, he makes his way to the outhouse; the SLAP of the screen door wakes you. Your palms had been snug under your cheek as you had dreamed of Mamá and camp in El Paso. It was not a nightmare like they others, but a remembrance of a day she took you into the desert to pick wildflowers, and together you sang, and little white butterflies were fluttering about. Now, the tired springs of the metal bed whine and cry over every little thing as you sit up and stretch about the lumpy mattress in your ruffled gown. You yawn loudly. And grunt too colorfully for your age as you slumber to your tiny feet. Your long, jet-black hair falls well below your waistline as you make your way to the kitchen with a second lingering yawn. With the stroke of a match, orange umber illuminates the contour of your high cheekbones, as Arturo enters the front door, again letting it SLAP. He carries a metal bucket brimmed with coal, and the two of you make eyes but say nothing. Using the small shovel, he fills the potbelly stove, his own chiseled face—partially hidden behind long, greasy bangs—brightening with a licking flame, angular nose casting a shadow upon his deep-set cheeks. As the flames eliminate the grays in the air, you fill the pot with water and place it on the stove. You step up on the crate for a bundle high on the shelf, and, unwrapping a cloth, you remove a small loaf of bread, resembling a badly raised biscuit. With another slap of the door, “Buenos días,” says Papá, stepping into the noir.

“Buenos días, Papá,” you say, flipping tortillas on the smoking hot stovetop with quick fingers—the sweet scent of maíz enrichening the air. Eggs sizzle in hot lard, as Arturo, a broth of a boy, respects the sacred hour and pulls out a chair for Papá. And breaking the bread in two, Papá hands a piece back to his boy.

“Buen provecho,” you say, which means “bon appetite”.

Papá, a quiet man with a severe crease dividing his eyes that speaking volumes in the low-key light, is reedy, with arms muscular from working at the foundry. His irises, a blackness beyond Paris Brun—his own downward gaze, split by a crisp diagonal darkness. As he sips from his chipped enamel mug, his pointy elbows jab into the tabletop like knife blades. His lip, glistens with steam, a lip quivering for caffeine. Ladling the last of the Chilayo—a traditional bone stew—from a terracotta pot, you fill two heavy-duty, round tin pails. Setting a plate of eggs between them, you cozy up in a chair, your own mug between your palms—praying silently over the steam. But you jump to your feet again, using the crate—as you are only but four-foot-two—and retrieve a small can of peaches from the shelf you’d forgotten. You place it with a stack of warm tortillas wrapped in a damp cloth into an old yellow tobacco box. Not a lazy bone in your body, you are quick to top off Papá’s mug as he sprinkles a bit of tobacco into a corn husk, as Arturo holds out a match ablaze—dilated pupils’ shimmering. Papá clears his throat, smoke rolling from his nostrils as a lone bird perched in the leafless tree sings out a lonely tune.

“Al que madruga Dios lo ayuda,” he says.

And you roughly correct him in English, “Early bird gets the worm, Papá!”

He grunts, “¡Ayy, Josefina!” and Arturo cracks the window, and the song rings in your ears, as above, Our Lady of Guadalupe, ever looming—ever in perpetual sorrow.

Papá and Arturo put on Norfolk jackets over threadbare overalls cuffed at the heels and grab two newsboy caps off rusty nails and their pails from the table. You hold out a dented thermos of coffee, nudging, “Arturo—”

Arturo gives a pleasant nod, and Papá, with a gentle grasp at your chin, rubs his calloused thumb on her cheek, saying silently, what’s bred in the bone will come out in the flesh, kissing you on the forehead, yet somewhere about your heart. You follow to the door, where they position their caps on their heads as the breeze catches the door with yet, another SLAP. You watch the peas in a pod stroll off for the nearby train yard, same step, same stride, same blood running through their veins, disappearing into a dense fog settled so low that it sits right on the tracks.

8 a.m.

Over two thousand men and boys have lined up—most of the town’s male population— smoking and gibbering about this and that, sipping their thermoses along East Elm. A mural on a brick wall reads in large white letters:

P & O And below:

The largest and oldest permanently established plow factory on earth.

Before the rising sun on the eastern front, the factory whistle, known as “Big Toot,” cries out a shrill across the rooftops at eight o’clock sharp. A guard rolls open the gate, and Papá and Arturo step forward amongst the laborers filing in toe-to-heel, head-to-toe in denim, for a twelve-hour work shift of blacksmithing for Mr. Parlin and Mr. Orendorff—who have arrived at their own private entrance in their fancy cars. Giving Papá a good shove, a scruffy man with a jaundiced complexion steps on his heels and tells him to “Move it along” and calls him a “Spic.”

Arturo, scowls over his shoulder, “Cabrón!”

And the man lashes out, “I’ll cut your goddamn tongue out and feed it to you—you little shit.” “You speakin’ beaner to me,” and so on, as Arturo steps out of line and turns to face him squarely head on. The man, towering over him, is furrowed in the brow, lip quivering, hidebound teeth, waiting to pounce, chomping at the bit, just starving for an excuse.

“Arturo,” says Papá, giving him that look Arturo knows all too well—count your blessings, with the slightest fluctuation of the eye.

8:18 a.m.

Hammers in hand—a dozen boys and men ride a large freight elevator. With a creak and a pop it jerks to a stop before a man with broad shoulders in a black suit and bowler hat overlooking the foundry floor—a sprawling, monochromatic room of harsh shadows of Dantean darkness where dangling bulbs burn the silhouettes of countless curve-spines givin’ hell to iron deeply into the retina. The forty-five-foot walls are covered in an endless array of spare parts and tools, all about strewn with coats and hats. As looming supervisor strolls down a row of downward tilted heads, heads swiveling upon swollen shoulders—every man to his trade. Cranking, scraping, chiseling, filing, hammering—CLANK—BANG—CLANK—BANG—reverberating the bones, liquefies the marrow; jarring the jaw; shattering the teeth. The hammering: Arrhythmical and deafening—boxing the brain. With ears in a constant ring, Arturo joins the other young boys sweeping and scurrying after hollered shouts, running about like headless chickens amongst heaps of scrap iron and char, chasing endless errands of an infinite kind from sunup until sundown. Papá and the Jaundiced man head on to the far end of the floor where a bubbling furnace—molten iron at its volcanic center—blinds the eye as mighty as God. Only a thin layer of rawhide shields Papá’s mortal flesh from this blistering heat of hell.

9:16 a.m.

Humming—you divide your hair into three equal sections at the nape of your neck and secure the braid with a length of green ribbon, leaving a tail at each end to form a bow—all the while making a low, steady, continuous hum like that of a bee. Your eyes are kept downward within the melody of thoughtful absorption as you strap on your huaraches and grab your basket weaved of willow. You throw a lime-green rebozo over your shoulders—the long, wool garment you’ll wear on your head to block the sun—the way Mamá did. You often use it to alleviate headaches by tying it tightly around your head when you think too hard on the camp back in El Paso. You hurry out the door, running away from your thoughts, and with a SLAP, Our Lady of Guadalupe, is left crooked on her nail. The Virgin, not too unlike yourself—delicate features, but straight, unbraided hair that is simple and parted down the middle, framing her face. She stands in contemplative prayer with hands joined, little finger separated. Head, slightly inclined, she gazes with heavy-lidded eyes at where the door has just slammed shut. Clothed with the sun and moon under her feet, upon her head she wears a crown of twelve stars. A figure reflects in her eyes; not a single figure, but a small family; mother, father, son, and daughter—all in the center of the Virgin’s eyes.

10:04 a.m.

You scurry along the tracks past P&O for the junction, where you head west to where the tracks cross Main, and you continue on for two long miles for the train bridge on the western edge of town. Crossing high over Big Creek, you meditate on the tips of your toes, tiptoeing about the high trusses. Back on land, you run down the steep hillside into a vast prairie where you are swallowed by towering pony grass—burgundy seed heads swaying in the breeze. Deep in the sea of fauna, your young, almond-skinned radiates, as does your lime-green dress glow like a rice-paper lantern in the light of day. Your silken braids bob about, turquoise rebozo draped about, and you gather daisies into your basket, which hangs upon your arm. A loose strand of hair curls about your cheekbone; and with one eyebrow raised, you grin, the tip of your tongue caught in your teeth as you remember Mamá. You slice through stems with Papá’s knife as delicate petals fall free to the earth like tears, and so your thought follow. And as from your lips, as you sing the sweetest song that rises to the heavens above like the feathers of a pure white dove:

“Palomita vamos a mi tierra / Y seremos felices los dos / Gozaremos lo que un alma encierra / Y estaremos en gracia de Dios / ¿Por que quiero de ti separarme? / Tengo otros amores, tengo / otros consuelos / Palomita, vamos a mi tierra / Y seremos felices los dos—”

And you remember. You remember living with your abuelo in Mexico—your grandfather. You remember he was a judge. You remember one Christmas Eve, there was a knock at the door. You remember when your grandfather answered joyously. You remember a man stabbing your grandfather in the chest. You remember they blood. You remember the screams. You remember him dying. You remember leaving in the middle of the night. You remember traveled by foot. You remember it took many, many days. You remember arriving at the migrant camp. You remember all the other children. You remember Papá working in the mine. You remember Mamá watching over you and Arturo during the day. You remember Chylado. You remember they smell of sweet maiz. You remember songs around the fire. You remember people sneaking into the camp to scare you. You remember running off into the desert to hide. You remember retuning to find everything be broken. You remember building new tents. You remember when those bad men returned. You remember bouncing in Papá’s arms. You remember when you slept under the stars. You remember the stars in the desert were beautiful. You remember the chill in the night in the arroyo with no blankets nor fire. You remember Mamá singing quietly in your ear. You remember your tummy rumbling. You remember returning to find everything burnt. You remember when they opened fire. You don’t remember their faces, but you remember the way their badges shined in the light. You remember so many screams and banging of guns. You remember they smell of sulfur. You remember again, bouncing in Papá’s arm. You remember the desert was safe. You remember Papá said the arroyo is safe. You remember they look on Arturo’s face as Mamá tripped and fell on to the ground. You remember Papá pulling Mamá’s rebozo over your face. You remember Mamá telling him to take you and run. You remember when Papá finally took the rebozo off your face. You remember not seeing Mamá anywhere. You remember crying silently for her. You remember later going back for her. You remember where she was lying on the ground. You remember where she had fallen. You remember the buzzards tugging at her guts. You remember her where her eyes once were. You remember Arturo and Papá burying her under stone. You remember the sunset. You remember a lone bird sing too late into the night. You remember her bones lie alone under those beautiful desert stars.

SNAP!

A rustle startles you. You quiet and look back over your shoulder at the tree line, your thick, heavy brows slanted deeply inward like a raven’s wings—intensifying the severity of your gaze. Your doe eyes now piercing. Sable brown with a circling tinge of old-world blue, glossy saucers that shimmer and shine, reflecting the darkness of the thicket back at itself.

“I see you,” you holler.

Unexpectedly, you smile and giggle. And a lump forms in your throat. Hot damn, he’d forgotten his knickers on a branch, you think, as boy about your age steps out of the thicket in the nude. You giggle on as he quickly covers his boyhood with his hands. Idiot, he shouts. Are you acting your age? You ask as you snigger again, batting your long, dark lashes. But you turn, though your body ahead of your gaze, and you walk away with that everlasting grin. With one hand, you wave goodbye, ear to ear grin, praying you’ll see him again. And like water off a duck’s bill, a red fox darts over the horizon.

Climbing the hillside to the tracks above, you skip across the bridge, losing sight—you are a good fortune in the air. Eyes reflecting the sky, high in its glory, darting toes carelessly across the trusses—carefree, without worry or doubt, you slip on a pebble and trip forth— fluttering on edge like a helpless baby bird about to fall from its nest. Flailing your wings in large circles, you try not to plummet, half your bundle scattering, feathers falling gracefully below, where they are swept away by the steady stream. Slowly, you steady yourself and step back from the edge. Closing your eyes, you take a deep breath and remember your place here about the earth—counting your blessings just as Papá tells you.

11:37 a.m.

Cooking up Mamá’s stew just the way she used to, you know surely, Papá remembers its taste, yet you also know he will mention a word but simply lick his plate clean. You drop a neck bone into a terra cotta pot, add a pinch of salt, and toss your long braids out of the way as you remove the stalks from enough dried chiles for a copper-plated belly. You slit them open, scrape out the veins and seeds, and toss them in the burbling broth. Crushing cumin with a slam of your fist to the side of the knife, you drive your frustrations out into the tabletop, rattling chipped China and the teeth alike. You chop cloves of garlic and onion, remembering Mamá’s eyes and how they once sparkled, as your own well up in sulfuric fumes. You quarter eight tomate verde, leaving the husks intact. And recall the scent—subtle and rare. Mixing the Chilayo with a wooden spoon, you take a breath of steam in through the nose, out through the nose in audible pain. And you plop down with a small pair of shears, trim at tiny leaves from your bundle of daisies, and softly sing your favorite tune—a tale of a cat, a cat in love, and so it goes:

“Estaba el señor, Don Gato / Sentadito en su tejado / Maramiau, miau, miau, miau /

Sentadito en su tejado—”

As the meat cooks, the fat floats to the surface, and you dip the wooden spoon once more to see if it coats, to see if it sticks—as it had for Mamá upon her spoon. Chopping the stems evenly across the bottom of the daisies, you remember picking wildflowers back in El Paso, and you sing:

“Ha recibido una carta / Que si quiere ser Casado / Maramiau, miau, miau, miau / Que si quiere ser Casado—”

You stop and wince—sometimes it hurts—sometimes it stings. You stand from your stool and remove a small pot from a shelf lined with tar cloth. You place it on the table and, stepping up on the crate, you grab a can of Campbell’s tomato soup. Picking up the knife and clenching it in your fist, you gaze empty-eyed past the leafless tree just outside. Slowly, you raise the knife high, high above your head. And with a swift jab, you stab the blade deep into the lid—red sauce oozing. And you carry on:

“Con una gatita parda / Sobrina de un gato pardo / Maramiau, miau, miau, miau /

Sobrina de un gato pardo—”

Opening the stove, you poke at the hot ashes and add a scoop of coal. You dump the soup into the small pot, put it on the stove, and it quickly begins to burble. “¡Ayy!” you shout with a burn to the finger—and you kick the stove and shake off the pain and sing on in high tune:

“Al recibir la noticia / Se ha caído del tejado / Maramiau, miau, miau, miau / Se ha caído del tejado / Se ha roto siete costillas—El espinazo y el rabo—”

You pour water from the pitcher into the empty soup can, slide in the flowers and place the Bellis perennis—qualified as the common daisy—onto the table. You grin wide, the tip of your tongue caught in your teeth—your thoughts on a boy, a boy in the nude. And with a blush before the crooked Virgin, you throw your rebozo before your eyes and let out a giggling cry,

“¡Ay caramba! Don Gato!”

And the meat falls from the bone.

Noon

Big Toot cries out in hunger. The workers file out for cold lunches to be eaten alone and in small clusters about the warehouse yard—squat about hazardous materials, atop heaps of iron and bundles of wire. A few linger back and open their tin pails at their workshop desks with unwashed hands, as doing so would take a third of their lunchtime. Cold lunch is paired with hot coffee, leftover pie, and bread. Preserved meats, a wedge of cheese, a hard-boiled egg, and a handful of shelled hickory nuts. Leftovers from the night before, cooked potatoes, sweets, and traveling foods, as anything wet and sloppy is more bother than it’s worth. The Swedes eat pickled herring from tins, as a few yards off, beside a cistern of crude oil, the Italians chew on hunks of pastrami, cheese, and olives. A lot of fellows with shaky hands sneak off to the beerhall for a quick swig and an honest laugh. Arturo and Papá lean against a wall, eating tortillas with bone stew with hind ends in the dirt, when the man with the jaundiced face walks past, kicking over the pail. Arturo jumps to his feet and grabs the man by the collar.

“Go on spic, give it a shot!” “Arturo, Arturo,” begs Papá.

But Arturo pants, fist balled, knuckles white, as the vein in the man’s forehead pulsates. Switch—a blade appears at the boy’s throat, shimmering in the noon sun, glaring off the boy’s eye. “Split you open like a hog, boy,” the man foams with hate. The boy, but a boy, swallows hard, releases the man’s collar, and steps away. “That’s right, spic,” spits the man, running the blade across his own neck from ear to ear. And pointing the knife toward Papá, “Make a move,” with jaundiced, bloodthirsty eyes. But his eyelid twitches, and he switches the blade shut and walks on as stew seeps into the earth. Papá hands Arturo a tortilla with a quivering hand, saying, “Sit,” and Arturo sits.

1:49 p.m.

With your basket of daisies, you scurry in your huaraches down Cherry Lane, passing a few houses not too unlike your own. Humble homes with tar paper roofs. Ridges bowing under the weight of four seasons, shoddy construction, and poverty. Paint, the color of dirty washrags—the kind most mothers toss out at the end of the day. Paint, shredding and peeling to the ground, collecting like dried leaves in dirt lots. Your pass heaps of trash and strays licking long-licked tuna cans clean once again. At the end of short paths, porches sit but a foot off the ground, roofs supported by narrow beams harvested directly from the forest, sprouting the only greenery insight. Front doors sit ajar and cockeyed. Windows stuck open and shut. Sad, peering eyes of young faces with dirt crusted mouths and old and white, and vacant, and gray. Few eyes as dark as yours, and hardly any with your reflection—a black mirror that shimmers, a shine Mamá gave you, and so on as you approach the tracks separating, us and them. At Maple, you pass the first two-story home in sight. Giant oak limbs shade the effervescent lawn from the searing late July sun. The paint, of course, silk white. You cross Walnut, and on the left, the school—a four-story gothic building—where a chorus of children’s laughter pours out the many long rows of unbroken windows. You cross Pine. You pass Vic’s candy cane barber pole spinning endlessly. And now, so many Henry Fords—AHOOGA, AHOOGA—and so many colorful signs on the left and right and one that reads:

Drive Slow & See Town

Drive Fast & See Jail

And so on, and the most colorful place of all:

Gustine’s Drug Store

A place you’ve never stepped foot inside, but gaze through the glass at the curios and candies as you slowly pass the fantastic display of wonder. But you end up peering only back at your own face, at the bit of dirt on your cheek. And as the trolley and the Benington ice wagon—water drizzling out the back—pass by, you take a right at the First National Bank and enter the first door on your right, the flower shop.

2:22 p.m.

Arturo sweeps debris around heaps of scrap metal that satiate the foundry floor. Papá mans the furnace, and the jaundiced man mans the material into the load bucket to be towed overhead to the furnace. There, Papá will spill the bucket into the furnace, and the material will melt down into lava to be formed into plow shields. Dropping his shovel, the man takes a quick break to scoop a cup of water from a nearby barrel. He takes a sip, and, with a quick look over his shoulder, he splashes the remnants of the cup onto the heap of scrap. Dipping the tin cup into the barrel again, he wets the metal more—all the while, all the banging and clanking in the world cannot dampen that belittling voice going round and round his head. That tic in his left shoulder, “You were a mistake, boy!” And the hitting, kicking, shoving, biting, hair pulling, and whipping. The whipping in the barn—if he hadn’t enraged his pa, if he had milked the cows fast enough, early enough, if his pa hadn’t pulled him out the bunk by his hair before dawn. That tic in his left shoulder. The shaking, the dropping, the striking, the biting, the burning, the cigarette butts that sear flesh, the scent, the pocks on his face, not all acne scars.

“You were a mistake, boy!”

It hurts when he tells his boy Jimmy the same. But hell, it’ll make him strong, he thinks. Like it did me, he believes. And my pa, and pa’s pa, as he grabs a bucket, wrists visibly scarred from rope burn. He tics and shakes off the feeling with a shake of the hands, hands tied around that pole, a pole in the barn, as he bathes the iron scrap—as he purifies his soul. And with his shovel, he fills the load bucket to the brim with the wetted material and gives Papá the whistle, and he tosses up his arm and offers Papá a grin. Papá nods and offers the chain with a good yank. The clatter of iron dissipates into the chaotic orchestra that has become these men’s lives. As the load bucket rises above their heads, sending the scrap metal closer to its fate. Papá pulls a rope that guides the material across the melt deck for the furnace before him. Positioning the load bucket, Papá pulls down on another chain, spilling its wetted guts into the molten pool as he has a million times before. But this time, the liquid-bearing material instantaneously turns to steam and—

BLAST!!!

A molten metal splash—a violent regurgitation of lava spews out of the furnace, swallowing Papá whole in a sudden blinding flash. With a crash to the floor, the giant wave of fire evaporates all in its wake—a tsunami of holy hell. And a burning blaze ignites. And the panicked workers try to flee, stampeding for their lives, trampling over one another, over Arturo, as smoke quickly cakes the windows black, as Arturo is engulfed, as any external light breaks. Flames blinding, licking bones clean of flesh like a hell hound, burning, burning. Melted flesh pooling, a molten pool of molten flesh, as thick smoke, chokes out any screams that try to cry out, as Arturo takes his last, dying breath.

“Go on spic, give it a shot!”

2:38 p.m.

Sitting out front of the beerhouse, the drunkard cradles a puppy in his arms as a man buys a paper off the newsboy. The drunkard forsakes asking the man for a dime, busy scratching the mutt behind the ears. Half the number of coins in your hand, as usual, you exit the flower shop, as the florist places your daisies in a brass urn just inside the window, when Big Toot cries out at an unexpected hour. You look up over your shoulder and gasp as a sky blackened by a plume of dark smoke swallowing the sun. Your heart skips a beat, and you step off they curb.

AHOOGA!

Henry’s Ford comes screeching to a halt, and coins jangle to your feet. Papers fly free from the newsboy’s hand, caught in a wicked breeze, as the birds flee from their perch. As men stagger out of the beerhall. As women clop out of Ms. Mallery’s dress shop. As Anderson steps down off his ladder. As the headlines circle back around, to where you now lie, as sorrowful as the Virgin crooked on your nail—and the meat falls from the bone.