As he shuffled up the walkway to the front door, Fulgencio admired the fleet of gleaming cars parked in the driveway, one for each member of the family.
When Bobby’s mom opened the door and witnessed his gruesome state, she seemed to understand his plight without posing any questions. He wondered if perhaps his family’s reputation had preceded him.
“You poor boy,” she soothed, taking his bag and guiding him gently to Bobby’s bedroom in the back of the spacious home. “Let’s get you cleaned up and tend to those cuts.”
That night, he slept on a blanket on the hardwood floor. The next day, Bobby and his dad brought another bed from his grandmother’s house down the street.
Now his father could not knock him down from his place atop the world, Fulgencio thought lying in the darkness of Bobby Balmori’s bedroom. He listened to the whir of the metal fan by the window, the rhythmic song of the cicadas oscillating outside. He felt the beads of sweat trickle down his face, onto his shoulders and back. He gazed at the distant stars and wished he could be out at El Dos de Copas singing a song with his grandfather. Practicing like he used to, sitting on the roof of the adobe hut and singing at the top of his lungs. This is how his grandfather had trained him to develop such a powerful vocal instrument. So strong had his voice become that people on neighboring ranches and farms would drag their rocking chairs onto their patios on the nights they knew he was visiting and listen to the corridos he and Fernando Cisneros sang, their voices carried on the gentle breezes of the Gulf for miles on end.
But now those days seemed long gone, as distant as the feeble stars dimmed by the growing lights of the city. And although his father would assault him no further with his fists or with his belt, a lonesome wrath twisted through him like a venomous knife, like the hunger he had known as a child, eating the thrice-
refried beans that tasted like the dirt that mingled with the tears on the floor beneath the kitchen table. Maybe he had been given a chance at this Sueño Americano, but he felt inexplicably robbed of something greater.
Lying restlessly in the dark, Fulgencio was consumed by longing. And then rage. It made him angry to want for so much and yet have nothing at all. For the first time, he felt overwhelmed by intense impatience. He yearned to belong to this world in which he did not even possess a dignified home. He desperately craved Carolina Mendelssohn’s sanctifying love the way a pirate greedily thirsted for treasure to alter his position in the social order.
With the new school year approaching, he felt a sense of urgency to finally make his move. He would be a junior. Girls from both sides of the river were talking about him, flocking to parties and dances for a chance to hear him sing. Fulgencio determined it was time to reach for the ultimate prize. He resolved to invite Carolina to the homecoming dance as soon as the new school year commenced.
He caught her by surprise one evening amidst the towering pharmacy fixtures. He had just returned from delivering medicines on the store bicycle, and she was absorbed in restocking the shelves, teetering precariously two feet above the ground. Startled by his footsteps, she slipped and nearly crashed to the floor, only to be caught by his sturdy arms and eased gently down, like a feather gracefully floating.
As he held her close, their eyes locked. There was nowhere to turn, no way to avert each other’s gaze. A wave rippled between them, like heat rising from a scalding highway. He asked her in a flurry of impromptu bravado.
“Yes, of course,” she answered, her breath agitated. “I’d be delighted to be your date.”
And now here he was, praying to his dead grandfather on the steps to Mr. Arthur Mendelssohn’s well-appointed house on homecoming night, clad in a borrowed black tuxedo, white rose trembling in sweaty Vaseline hand, as the door swung open, bathing him in a warm and otherworldly golden light.
He was greeted by Carolina’s mother, whose watery gray eyes scanned him skeptically as she motioned for him to enter the foyer. He’d never been in a foyer before, he thought. Rich white people had space to spare.
Frail by nature and rendered pale by chronic illness, Mrs. Mendelssohn radiated a gentle—if brittle—beauty. She guided Fulgencio to the plastic-shrouded sofa in the formal living room. His eyes wandered over crystal knickknacks and porcelain figurines and dowdy paintings bought in the town’s uppity furniture store, Mr. Egglestein’s Town & Country. Everything appeared so perfect to him, so otherworldy. This was a lady’s room. A room for sitting with other ladies, eating finger sandwiches and drinking from teacups resting on doilies. He had never seen these kinds of things in person until he’d moved into Bobby Balmori’s house. He’d only heard mention of them on TV shows glimpsed at the Sears & Roebuck, flickering in black and white on vacuum tubes encased in wooden consoles. But thanks to Bobby Balmori’s family, he’d picked up knowledge to survive in this alien world, at least for a night.
Sitting on the edge of the sofa in Carolina Mendelssohn’s formal living room, witnessing her float down the stairs like an angel in white, he also knew he would do whatever it took to learn what was required to qualify for permanent admission into her world.
Rising to his feet, the rose fell from his hands. Rushing to recover it from the red carpet, he pricked his thumb on a thorn. With the faintest of grimaces for all his awkwardness, his hazel eyes met her golden. Her lips unfurled into a conquering smile, “Be careful. You might hurt yourself.”
He felt himself tumbling, lost in a tide of golden curls. He searched for words he’d never find because they’d never been invented. “You’re beautiful,” he whispered, drowning in the equally golden sea of her eyes as the white rose passed from his numbed fingers into her wispy white hands.
She leaned in as if to share a naughty secret with him, her face alive with mischief. He felt her sweet breath upon his lips as she mouthed the words slowly, “I know.”
Five
Nobody liked a funeral, even if it belonged to someone they utterly despised. Not even Fulgencio Ramirez in his black Western suit and matching Stetson hat with the gun lurking beneath the jacket and the white rose firmly in hand. No señor. Death to him was not a welcome sensation. But, unfortunately, it was one that had seeped into his bones long ago. Therefore, he found the ceremony surrounding death to be a cumbersome custom. After all, he thought, you could dress up death any way you like, but in the end it would still stink.
Vultures circled over the small but obligatory gathering of perturbed relatives, weeping mothers, and black-veiled abuelitas who shuffled from gravesite to gravesite, arranging their funereal schedule in accordance with the timing of the shadows afforded by the clumps of trees scattered throughout the cemetery. Even on these wintry days, the sun worked its wondrous damage if one stood still too long. But beneath his broad-rimmed hat, Fulgencio was safe from the savagery of the light as well as from the vituperations of the vultures, which were renowned for vindictively directing their discharge at mourners concealing ulterior motives. He didn’t doubt this local legend. Maybe a vulture could aim at those it discerned to be of its own kind. Maybe these women’s mournful cries could blend with the vultures’ shrieks into a final farewell song for the dead. Regardless, he was certain the vultures would not be shitting on anyone that day. This was a surety because the twenty-two lettered man had nothing to leave behind except a sour taste in the mouths of all whose lives he’d marred with his presence. There would be no anticipated reading of the will. No fighting amongst his heirs for coveted bounties and the spoils of a prosperous life. No señor. None of that on the campo santo today. Padre Juan Bacalao could pray all he wanted, but the church wasn’t getting a penny from this worthless bastard’s estate. The bishop would have to look elsewhere. The feast put on hold. And as for plotting to pilfer Carolina’s heart, Fulgencio could not be blamed for reclaiming something that had been given to him in the first place, at least until Miguelito and Mexican black magic had meddled, muddled, and made a mess of their lives.