Going Away
By José Rodríguez
Copyright 2012 José R. Rodríguez
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"Caaaaarlooooos!" The hoarse scream flew across the yard and held for a moment the attention of the chickens pecking and digging on the barren plot. "Where's that damned kid?" Aunt Clara asked herself in a throaty voice made raspier by the cheap, unfiltered cigarettes that always hung from her lips and brought the only trace of whiteness to her nicotine-tinted complexion.
Aunt Clara yelled Carlos’ name again, another cry that fell on chicken ears. She looked around pivoting her scrawny, turtle-like neck, but no sight of Carlos anywhere. Cussing, she went back into her house, an unpainted cinder block structure with a roof of wavy, reddish asbestos planks weighed down by old tires and assorted junk.
"The sea breeze is strong today," Carlos thought; but not strong enough for his liking because he had heard his aunt calling him far off in the distance, her voice pushing against the wind to reach and annoy him at his hideout under the big tree. "Let her scream if that makes her happy." Carlos knew he was going to catch hell.
The town where he lived with his aunt stood on the bottom of a canyon flanked by cliffs on three sides. One side, the side he was looking at now, separated it from the sea; the opposite side, to his back, was the piedmont to the green mountains shrouded in an enduring pall of purple-bluish mist. The only way out was the road lying beside the dirty river that meandered through the canyon's heart; it was a bad road and it took almost two hours by car to reach the coastline. Carlos knew that the sea hid on the other side of the cliff because a salty smell always bathed his face when facing windward.
His keen eyes studied the cliff's face. It was brick brown, a slate and clay giant that wore a mantle of sparse vegetation like the rest of the canyon. It was not a smooth, wall like cliff; instead, big mounds of dirt protruded from its face giving it a corrugated texture. It reminded Carlos of his aunt's face, rich with crevasses and pockmarked by a childhood bout with smallpox and teenage years of festering acne. Both his aunt's and the cliff's face became one entity in Carlos' mind, tanned, dirty, incapable of holding life, horribly pockmarked, and an obstacle to better things.
"Where in hell have you been?" Aunt Clara's expression was one of anger but it did not bother Carlos; the ritual of punishment had started again.
"There is enough to do in this house for you to disappear on me like this! I'm getting tired of your laziness!"
A sardonic smile came to Carlos' lips, and Aunt Clara wiped it out with a slap. Carlos did not complain or show any discomfort, and this made Aunt Clara angrier, just what Carlos wanted. She grabbed her broomstick always kept close by and started to beat Carlos with it. By crouching and by blocking the blows with his arms as he had seen boxers do, Carlos escaped to the yard creating a frenzied flight of hens and roosters as he came running upon them. Aunt Clara had stopped by the door with the broom handle still on her long hands and her unshaven gossamer legs jutting out of her flowered and dirty gown. Her body had no femininity, no curves, no bulges; it was as if somebody, for a joke, had hung the robe on an ugly scarecrow. Carlos saw her boniness writhing underneath the gown, and he left out a hearty laugh that made her madder. She came chasing after him, yelling and waving her broomstick above her head.
"You bastard! I'm gonna get you!"
A pandemonium of poultry, aunt and kid shrouded in a brouhaha of insults, laughs and chicken crows whirled in crazy circles around the backyard. From inside the house, a fat man - a round shape of human grease and hair - stepped into the yard; thick frame glasses rested over his pudgy nose and over inflated cheeks. "What in hell . . .?"
As Carlos went by, Belisario - which was the fat man's name, the latest on the long dynasty of Aunt Clara's men, who were here today and gone tomorrow, never to be missed - reached for Carlos surprisingly fast and got a hold of his neck.
"Come here you little shit," Belisario held Carlos' head clamped under his sweaty armpit. Aunt Clara caught up with both and proceeded to beat on Carlos' rear and back with the stick.
"Fourteen years old and acting like a little kid! I will teach you!" Aunt Clara’s blows came down on Carlos' back. "I will teach you!" The sea breeze kept on blowing and carried Aunt Clara's screams and Carlos' laugh downwind into town where nobody, as usual, seemed to care.
Later, Carlos sat under his tree, leaning against it, nursing his bruises while looking at the cliff that kept him away from the sea. The tree blocked the searing sun; it was one of the few honest trees in town that was not an overgrown, thorny shrub.
"People in this place are stupid," mumbled Carlos to himself. "Bushes are trees; a creek is a river; a shack is a house, and a pile of shacks is a town.” He knew better; he had seen magazines with color pictures that showed pretty houses and trees and towns, and the pictures could not lie, how could they? And the movies showing broad rivers with boats on them, and places called theaters that were built to show pictures, they couldn't lie either. But in his town they had to watch their movies sitting among junked engine blocks at the bus garage. Often the movies lost their sound, which was not so bad with Gringo movies because he still could read the subtitles in Spanish, but it was a nuisance with Pedro Infante's movies, the man who could walk everywhere dressed as a charro while everybody else wore business suits.
Carlos ran his eyes over the cliff's facade, studying its features one more time. The lure of the clean ocean came strong in the midst of the sea breeze, bringing images of foamy waters and soft sands. He stood and looked around him: an ocher and dilapidated landscape dotted by clumps of shrubbery pregnant with hard and sharp thorns surrounded him. The village showed itself as a haphazard collection of cinder, red clay blocks, cardboard and tin shanties sprawled between both cliffs and parted by the shallow stream - the river.
The idea of a father was so far removed from Carlos' world that not having one was not a problem, “how can you miss what you never had?" The only men who came into his life were Aunt Clara's live-ins and none of them ever had any fatherly thoughts towards Carlos, and Carlos had reciprocated that same love back to them. He knew that those men were leeches living off Aunt Clara's sewing. Why did she put up with them? The reason showed itself to Carlos after his puberty came along, when the moans and husked voices coming from her bedroom became self-evident. She put up with her lovers as long as they shared her bed, and it took a desperate man, usually more desperate for money than for flesh, to sleep with her. He felt sorry for her, too homely to get a good man, she had to settle for whoever, or whatever, was willing to give her a few moments of pleasure, an almost forgotten sensation in her sad life. Furthermore, she also had to settle for him, not a real son, but her pretty sister's son, from the sister who had gone to the big city to neither come back nor remember those left behind. How could he hate the poor woman? But how could he love her?
The beatings and screams from Aunt Clara continued unabated, and Carlos lived with it, in the same way he had learnt to live with everything else. Aunt Clara and her men were the epitome of what he did not want to be in his later years, and he observed them with both attention and amusement, like watching monkeys at the zoo or clowns in a circus. Carlos had never been to either place, but he knew about them because of magazines and movies, and he compared his elders to the creatures inhabiting such places. Where was his life going? He did not know; he had nothing to exercise his ambition on. He knew one day he may take the road to the coast and never come back; he would go to a real town with trees and theaters and pretty people like the ones he had seen in the pictures.
The old magazines scrounged from the trash and from Jacinto's barbershop were his key to faraway places where life marched to the beat of a different drum, a more pleasant, precise and elegant beat. From one of such magazines one day he got a full page color picture; it depicted a man wearing a strange helmet and climbing the side of a rocky cliff with his bared hands: no ropes, no picks, no shoes with nails on their soles, just his bared hands and sneakers and that funny looking helmet. Carlos studied the picture without missing any details. He placed the picture in front of him, at the end of his extended arms and juxtaposed it against the real cliff that separated him from his sea.
That was it.
From that moment on Carlos' life took a new meaning; he had a goal and an ambition: he would climb his cliff like the man in the picture and would conquer the sea on the other side like a Spaniard called Balboa had done long time ago, so long ago that the pages where he read about him had been parched by time.
For days Carlos struggled with his ambition; on one hand was that cliff barring him from the sea, and the man in the picture showing the way. Carlos knew that it was the only way; but on the other hand, gravity was a powerful factor in his plans; a fall from that cliff could be fatal. Death or triumph, or don't try and Aunt Clara would be the everlasting reward. Every day, in slow steps, Carlos walked on the cliff's base and looked upward studying his nemesis of dirt and slate. From a close distance the protrusions seemed bigger, and so did the top of the cliff towering high and unreachable as the sky. Carlos lay supine, facing the cliff while watching puffy clouds show their faces at the edge of the cliff and then continue moving across the canyon towards the great blue mountains where they gathered in huge balls of whiteness that hid the mountain peaks. He imagined himself climbing the cliff, reaching for the edge above, looking as good as the man in the picture but without the funny helmet. He would never wear a thing like that.
Life continued as a stale amalgamate of trite rituals, parched dreams, dusty and dirty streets and unemotional living and the curse of a short tempered aunt. He didn't love Aunt Clara, didn't hate her either, and he knew (what else?) that Aunt Clara felt the same way towards him. He had no real friends; the town's boys were boorish and destined to grow into Belisarios sooner than later. But the clean and fresh sea awaited for him just on the other side of the cliff where life seemed brighter and prettier. Being young and alone on the other side did not bother him; things would, somehow, take care of themselves.
Days went by and the beatings and fights continued as a part of Carlos' life as elementary as his breathing, and the staleness and the drudgery and the meaningless of life at the bottom of the canyon became almost suffocating, enervating and more chaotic every day. It was very easy to trip his aunt's temper, and Carlos made sure he never obeyed her as a way of establishing his own independence and uniqueness in the scheme of a life without purpose. The man in the picture, funny helmet or not, showed the way, and Carlos knew it, and Carlos also knew about falling from great heights; it did not take a rocket scientist to figure that one out. Every day Carlos watched the cliff and studied its features looking for the easiest path, for the safest route, but death would also sit by his side to remind him of his mortality, blowing her rotten breath on his face, and Carlos would sigh deep and long, "If I could fly like a buzzard."
Belisario and Carlos sat at the table waiting for Aunt Clara to serve supper. She brought a bowl of steaming chicken soup from which she fished out a serving for Carlos. Half submerged in the oily liquid were chunks of chicken boiled to a sickening white: meat, bone and skin. Carlos looked at his meal with a frowning grimace that became more accentuated when not-so-pleasant whiffs reached his nostrils. Belisario's big hand struck Carlos on the back of his head with a whacking sound, and Carlos almost ended with his face in the bowl.
"I can't believe this shit," growled Belisario. "The little prick is making faces at your food. What's the matter? It's not good enough for you?"
Carlos still felt the powerful slap ringing inside his head.
"You know what's the problem with these kids?" Belisario talked with his mouth open, pieces of boiled chicken showing between his yellowed teeth. "They get pampered too much. In my house we ate dog if dog was on the table." Carlos could see Belisario's mouth opening and closing and the chicken chunks rolling inside, bouncing from cheek to cheek.
"A real man will eat anything!" said Belisario with a portentous voice full of macho bravado.
"Then why don't you eat shit?" Retorted Carlos.
Belisario stopped chewing and breathing. Aunt Clara froze in her place, and Carlos remained motionless, too shaken by belisario's blow to fully understand what was happening. The only element still in motion was the steam coming out of the pot, curly flumes of steam that evaporated above the table. Belisario's hand struck Carlos on the side of his head and knocked him down onto the concrete floor. It had been a solid hit, and Carlos could not get up. Belisario's huge frame rose in all its great roundness and advanced upon Carlos who was still lying on the floor trying to get up.
Next morning Carlos woke up in much pain. He did not remember too many details. To his mind came memories of his aunt screaming something about "you're going to kill him," and of Belisario's thick arms bouncing him against the walls as if he were a basketball. Bruises and purple spots covered his body. His lips were fat and felt numb. He could not fully open his right eye, and all his body ached.
"You should watch your big mouth," were Aunt Clara's first words. Her voice was scratchy as usual but this time Carlos perceived something else in it: fear. Fear of what? She served him breakfast without saying a word. Carlos ate in silence and in pain, slowly chewing his food and his thoughts, trying to make sense of what had happened. Every time he tried to make eye contact with his aunt, she looked the other way. That was unusual because in the mornings she always was all over his case, hollering and shaking fingers at him, but today she kept to herself and her stillness reminded Carlos of the lizards he used to watch basking on the rocks, becoming as still as the rocks themselves when a hawk flew overhead.
After breakfast Aunt Clara went to her medicine box and came back with her unguents. Neither one said a word as she applied her remedies on his beaten body, as if they were two strangers who happened to find themselves in the same room by chance.
Her bony hands gently rubbed his bruises, first time ever. The mentholated odor of her ointments overpowered other smells. "Why is she doing this?" Carlos asked himself. "Maybe she feels guilty for last night's beating." He didn't blame her for anything; in fact, he remembered her trying to stop Belisario. One thing is Aunt Clara beating him; she couldn't hurt a mouse with those scrawny arms of hers; but Belisario, he could kill him with his bare hands.
Belisario's behavior grew more despotic everyday; he found great enjoyment in taunting and insulting Carlos and threatened him with beatings every day. His biggest pleasure was to throw a jab to Carlos' face, then stop short of hitting him. His greasy laugh would slither out between his stained teeth and to Carlos that slovenly laugh was worst than if the actual blow had occurred. Carlos held his temper and took the abuse with a taciturn demeanor that hid his hatred, (the man in the picture showed the way, and Carlos knew it, and the picture showed a grid of deep creases because of the many times he had unfolded it and folded it back, to look at it as spinsters look at religious pictures).
When Belisario was gone to his work at the butcher shop, his aunt would turn into the screaming old hag she used to be, but she had ceased beating him with the broomstick. Carlos found her stick inside the chicken coop while looking for eggs, standing horizontal as a new perch. In Belisario's presence Aunt Clara now would abstain from yelling at Carlos as if she were afraid of instigating a new beating. Carlos noticed this but didn’t know what to make out of it other than he felt that for the first time he didn’t have a reason to complain about or make fun of his aunt.
It happened without much thinking or planning. He was walking along the cliff that morning, and he reached the spot where he had determined the easiest path to the top would be. His hands were in his khaki pants' pockets and a forlorn look was on his face. Turning his back to the cliff, he took a broad look at the town and its surroundings. The town protruded from the sparse shrubbery as a random conglomerate of garbage, worn out buildings and power poles with the skeletons of kites entangled in their wires, always weltering in the wind like dying fish at the end of a hook line. He felt nauseated for what he saw and for what he knew would be the rest of his future: growing old, fat and hairy, growing to be like Belisario to marry or shackle up with a woman like Aunt Clara; his bowels turned heavy and tense. Magazines and movies showed a world on the other side of the cliff and today he was ready to meet that world. He spat on the ground and turned around to face the cliff; his stomach grew heavier and butterflies danced in it, but this was the time as the man in the picture had showed it, and he knew it.
After a deep breath, Carlos walked towards the cliff with determination. One foot up, then the other one; hands and feet moving in a coordinated fashion; his torso clung to the face of the cliff and his eyes searched for handholds and footholds, for places strong enough to support his weight, and he rose from the bottom of the canyon, his body moving across the face of the cliff like an iguana, slow and steady.
After climbing for a while he became tired and thirsty. With every step upwards he had felt the strain on his miserable bondage reaching the breaking point, stretching farther and farther as a rubber band ready to snap at the cliff's top. He rested by clinging to the wall like a fly, his face against the wall, too close for him to see all the way up. He looked down and swallowed hard. He wondered about the man in the picture (maybe it was done with mirrors).
The dusty smell of dirt came into his nostrils. He imagined himself as a dot on one of the cliff's pockmarks when seen from a distance, an insignificant point in the vastness of the cliff's face. Looking up, he saw a potential handhold and reached for it, and he was climbing again. Now and then his feet would kick debris and it would roll down the cliff, and Carlos would stop to hear the fainting noise of the rocks and pebbles dying away in the vertical distance, becoming fainter until swallowed by the breeze, and he would continue climbing, heading for a top that was nowhere in sight.
"Caaaaarlooooos!" Aunt Clara's yell fell on chicken ears again. She looked towards the cliff, no looking for anything in particular. Her eyes caught a yellow dot smudged against the cliff's face but it did not catch her attention. She turned around. Turning and remembering that Carlos was wearing a yellow shirt became the same act. Remembering Carlos' picture of a man climbing a cliff became an immediate extension of that act, and all these put together made her turn her eyes back to the yellow point against the cliff.
Voices in the distance reached Carlos' ears. The voices were many and all talked at the same time and he could not make out what they were saying, and he kept on climbing. He heard his name being called and thought how amazing it was that Aunt Clara's voice could be heard that far away from the house; then he realized she had to be at the bottom of the cliff. He breathed fast and deep; his fingernails were packed with dirt; his sweat and the dust had become one thing smudged all over his face and body, a patina of clay which he could feel, smell and taste. Carlos looked down to where people had gathered and met with all faces turned upwards and looking at him, and he realized how high he was above the ground because the people below resembled toy soldiers at his feet.
His hands gripped the cliff with more determination and his face buried itself against the dirt. In this position he remained for a long while, waiting for his strength and valor to come back. Looking sideways gave him vertigo as he could not see ground below his feet, only the canyon disappearing in the distance. Going downward was out of the question; he could not see the path he had taken, and the height made him aware of his mortality and of how delicate his balance between life and death was, all sustained by clumps of dirt at the end of his toes and fingernails.
Aunt Clara had not given up on calling him, pleading to him to be careful, and he felt sorry for her, and that amazed him to no end. Why should he feel sorry for the old witch? With eyes closed, his body soothed by the fresh air descending from the cliff, he tried to solve the puzzle his aunt was turning out to be. She was as much as prisoner as he had been, and now he was escaping but she was staying behind, alone. Carlos laughed; he did not know why or at what, but he laughed. He had taken this path now and there was only one way, and that was straight up; the edge of the cliff was not in sight yet, and he had no idea of how far it would be. Being so close to the cliff’s face distorted his view of things, but one thing was sure: it was straight up and in that direction Carlos continued his slow climb.
An edge would show itself straight ahead and Carlos would reach it, to face another one, and he would reach that one too, and another would be waiting for him. Carlos' legs and arms ached beyond anything he had felt before; not even Belisario's beating gave so much pain. His tongue was swollen, and he could taste the sand as if he had been licking the dirt.
Fatigue and pain slowed him down but the worst part was not knowing for how long he would have to keep on climbing. Those infinite edges kept on rising in front of him, and he felt he would never reach the last one, the top. He stopped looking any farther than his hands could reach and his feet only moved when his hands had a strong grip on the dirt. He did not know how far he needed to go; he did not remember how long he had been climbing, and he forgot the people below him, and the man in the picture with his funny helmet, and the canyon and everything, except climbing. Climb, rest, climb and rest and climb, that was all that mattered, and so he did with purpose, and climb he did until the sun approached the bluish mountains at his back.
Carlos reached the top but he did not notice it; he kept on dragging his exhausted body on level ground until he realized that he was not going up. He smiled as he rolled on his back. He wanted to jump in celebration but his body would not respond so he lay motionless, feeling the swift sea breeze blow pass him. He tried to stand, but his legs failed him. He crawled on his fours towards the edge and looked down upon the town; it looked small and far away, not much to look at. He saw a group of people gathered below, and they were looking and pointing at him.
Carlos waved and some of them waved back, and he was surprised when he saw Aunt Clara waving at him with both of her scrawny arms, jumping up and down like she was happy for him having escaped. He took a last look at the life left at the bottom of the canyon, at the prisoners waving at him, and then he faced the sea blue and immense where water and sky melted into one over the horizon. The breeze kissed his tired face, cleansing it of its tiredness.
From where Carlos stood the terrain sloped into the surf. He looked at both ends of the beach and was met by virgin coast lines and unobstructed horizons. His mouth and throat were as dry as bones bleaching in the desert and hunger had started to grow in his stomach. He was free at last, and alone with only the clothes on his back. With trembling steps Carlos walked towards the water, a good distance away, ready for a new life where sunshine, breeze and ocean played with each other under the immense expanse of an open sky.
He walked among the hard shrubs, against the wind, and down to the surf. The waves crashed onto the sand and for the first time Carlos heard them. It was a majestic sound as old as God and likely to outlast humanity. The wet sand soothed his aching feet. He walked waist deep into the ocean, not daring to go further because he didn’t know how to swim. His town’s creek only grew in winter with swift and muddy waters; the rest of the year it was just a pathetic shallow stream.
Thirst had a grip on this throat; all that water, so much water, and none to be had. He dunked under the waves to remove his sweat and dust. Like a baptism, he rose from the surf a cleansed soul.
Standing on the beach dripping wet, he looked on both directions along the beach and decided to go east, or was that west? Whatever, he started walking, free and alone, liberated and hungry and thirsty, loaded with his youth and empty stomach.
He walked into the night. A silver moon rose above the waves and cast a glimmer over the waters that followed him on his trek. He found coconuts under a palm tree. He knew how to open them with a machete but he had none. Angry, he threw them into the water where they bobbed and mucked him.
He laid down to sleep under a coconut palm but remembered that falling fruit could kill a man. He moved a few yards away and fell asleep, tired and hungry but hopeful that life would get better; after all, he had escaped a miserable life. He realized though that if he didn’t find nourishment soon, he would start craving the amenities of his old life, Belisarios included.
The morning sunshine woke him up. He walked to the surf and took a leak. He heard noise to his left. Looking on that direction he saw a small wooden boat on its side, the waves frothing around his colorful, paint chipped hull. The noise was machete thuds. A stocky dark man atop a coconut palm cut coconuts with his machete, the coconuts falling onto the sand. He wore a burlap sack tied between his bare ankles and with dexterity and confidence, he started to come down the palm’s long trunk, crawling like a human worm, machete dangling from his short pant’s belt.
“Good morning,” said Carlos looking up. He had walked to the palm to observe the man. The man, a Negro as dark as coal, stopped, surprised that anybody would be so far from any town. He looked down and saw skinny Carlos. He smiled, perfect ivory that matched his cotton white hair.
“Morning,” the tree man said. He landed on the sand. Now that Carlos saw him in front of him, he realized the man was old. Looking at him crawling down the palm with his lean and hard muscles, Carlos could not tell he was looking at an old man. His white and wiry hair didn’t seem real.
“Fishing?” The old man asked.
“No. Walking.”
“Going somewhere?”
Carlos looked around. “Nowhere.”
The old man could tell by Carlos’ light skin that he was no fisherman. Carlos and the old man stared at each other.
“Hungry?”
Carlos nodded.
The old man split a coconut open with his machete and gave it to Carlos who drank its waters and buried his face into the coconut’s innards.
“Boy,” the old man said. “If you want a ride to my town you can help me load the coconuts and then push the boat back into the water.”
Carlos stopped to look at the old man, coconut juice dripping down his chin, coconut meat stuck on his teeth.
“Never been on a boat,” said Carlos. “But I sure would appreciate a ride.”
They loaded the coconuts into the boat and pushed it back into the water. It was heavy, so heavy that Carlos wondered how the old Negro could do it alone. The old man took the oars and pointed the bow towards the breaking waves. The boat jumped through the waves and sea spray covered Carlo’s face. The old man’s broad shoulders flexed with power and the boat made it into the sea.
The old man was no Belisario.
He was a fisherman, and Carlos admired him. No shoes, no shirt, no watch, just a pair of faded shorts, a rope for a belt, a machete and fishing tackle, a boat, and the whole sea.
“Can I be a fisherman?” Asked Carlos, almost yelling over the sound of the ocean.
The old man smiled from ear to ear, that ivory smile of movie stars under his creased face and white hair.
“Son,” he said. “You can be anything you want.”
And Carlos wanted to be a fisherman.