He pulled the truck to a screeching halt by the side of the road, not far from where he and Carolina had stopped that first night on the way to the homecoming dance. Slamming his fist against the flimsy plastic steering wheel, he cracked it into pieces. He tore at the sun-bleached vinyl that had once been navy blue. He pulled at his wavy black hair. He climbed out, slammed the door shut, and left the old pickup idling behind him. In the dim glow of the headlights, he kicked at the dirt and litter gathered by the curb. He turned his eyes and arms to the heavens. “Why?” he yelled, a murder of crows rustling from the trees. “¿Porque?” he implored the invisible force above and beyond. “All for nothing. I was wrong! I was wrong! My anger! My rage! It was all for nothing! God forgive me . . .” He fell to his knees as a car whizzed by. “Forgive me for this sin. Carolina, forgive me! What have I done?” He lay in ruins, sobbing on the ground, reduced to nothing by the folly and irony of his own grandiose error.
Cipriano always told him, “El que se enoja pierde.” He who gets angry loses. Boy, how he had lost. Lost it all. Lost years he could never get back. Lost love he could only dream of rediscovering before the end drew near. And he figured now, it might as well. “Que se acabe, ay Gran Dios . . . Let it end, oh great God! Let it end!” He buried his face in the dirt, tasted the bitter chalk of defeat. Sweat and tears stung his eyes as he sat on the curb in the flickering glow of the pale headlights, his voice fighting through the sobs:
Oh gran Dios
(O great God)
Como sufro en la vida
(How I suffer in life)
Por no querer ser menos que nadie
(Not wanting to be less than anyone)
En esta vida todo se acaba
(In this life everything ends)
Por eso quiero esta vida terminar
(That’s why I want to end this life)
Ay, cuanto diera por la vida de antes
(What I’d give for the old days)
En cuanto amores a mi no me faltarón
(Loves never failed me)
En este mundo mi Dios todo se acaba
(In this world, my God, everything ends)
Por eso quiero esta vida terminar.
(That’s why I wish to end this life.)
Poor Carolina Mendelssohn. How could he have been such a fool? How could he have been so blind to his own flaw, the burden he had secretly, unknowingly, brought with him from Mexico like a smuggler unwittingly sneaking in deadly contraband? He stood up, his tired frame barely able to maintain its balance. His eyes squinted in the face of the pickup’s lights. He had worked tirelessly all these waiting years—since unraveling the nature of his spiritual malady—to overcome that fated past, encoded and programmed within him for the sole purpose of bringing about his own ruination. But now he wondered if it would make any difference at all. Just because he was now more capable of controlling his emotions, it did not mean that he could control Carolina’s. Nor did he wish to anymore. He desired her love and forgiveness, but it had to flow freely from her heart. He could not blame her for wanting nothing to do with him. And what would she think if he told her the whole truth behind his bizarre, misguided, and hurtful actions? Would she deem him completely crazy loco? Exhausted, he dragged his feet back toward the truck. He doubted whether he could even go on. And—before he could reach the door—the truck sputtered and choked. Dead. Out of gas.
Twenty-One
1961
The pickup that hauled him to Austin on that bleak Christmas Day in 1961 pulled to a stop in front of a dark and empty Buzzy’s Diner. Beneath a weeping night sky, Fulgencio fumbled with the keys to the alleyway entrance and stumbled sopping wet into the storage room he called home. The scent of gardenias still clung to the air. Her perfume. His heart swam but failed to stay afloat. Her picture, smeared with dry blood, lay next to the shattered frame of the Sagrado Corazón. He sat on the floor in the corner of the room, amidst the fragments of Buzzy’s dismantled cot. He stared long and hard at the Sagrado Corazón. He just hadn’t had the heart to go out to El Dos de Copas and see his grandfather and the Virgencita, disappoint them with his fiasco. He couldn’t face Brother William. He felt like burrowing beneath a rock like a snake and hiding for a thousand years until some paleontologist or archaeologist dug him up, little more than a dust-laden fossil from a distant, faded time.
The Sagrado Corazón, the image of Jesus, seemed sadder than usual. If anyone knew the sting of betrayal, it was Him. Fulgencio stared long and hard at Jesus, wondering how He could bring Himself to forgive. Forgiveness—Fulgencio knew from the brothers’ teachings at San Juan del Atole—was the most sacred of Catholic actions. But still, forgiveness was far from his heart that night on the floor in Buzzy’s storage room. His heart froze solid that night. But the hardened look in his eyes still betrayed a fire beneath.
Business resumed, and life went on all around him, and Fulgencio Ramirez pledged himself to getting on with it. He dated a string of women whose names he quickly forgot. He made Buzzy countless dollars by running the tightest ship in town. And he got his degree with the surety of an unstoppable army marching homeward after vanquishing its enemies on the front.
Days turned to weeks, and weeks to months. Stringing them together with little care, Fulgencio felt a hollow in his heart as he packed his grandfather’s leather bag for his final trip home. He placed the Sagrado Corazón—wrapped tightly within one of his shirts—squarely in the center of the bag. Carolina Mendelssohn’s picture now survived hidden behind Christ’s inside the frame. He couldn’t part with it, but he could not bear to look at it either, for surely, her absence from his life would drive him insane. His diploma—also framed—he wrapped and placed securely next to the sacred images of his youth.
Buzzy watched with a heavy heart as the typewriter case clicked shut, and Fulgencio stood before him a final time beneath the barren bulb. The old floor fan was neatly stashed away in a corner. Fulgencio had replaced the broken cot with a comfortable new bed for when Buzzy was too tired to go home.
“I wish there was something I could give ya,” Buzzy growled.
“Just give me a hug, old man,” Fulgencio said, wrapping his arms tightly around the diminutive sailor dressed in white. Buzzy’s cheek felt like sandpaper against his.
He stood back and extended the white sailor’s cap to Buzzy. “I’m all done, boss.”
“Keep it as a souvenir.”
Fulgencio’s head turned to either side, surveying the tiny room that had served as his shelter for four long years. “Thank you, Buzzy, for giving me a home.”