One time, I sat with him at Mass. He untied his shoelaces and took off his shoes right there in the pew. I sort of gave him this look. He rolled his eyes and pointed at the crucifix and whispered, “Jesus isn’t wearing shoes.”
We both sat there and laughed.
When he came to my house, Dante would place his shoes on the front porch before he came inside. “The Japanese do that,” he said. “They don’t bring the dirt of the world into another person’s house.”
“Yeah,” I said, “but we’re not Japanese. We’re Mexican.”
“We’re not really Mexicans. Do we live in Mexico?”
“But that’s where our grandparents came from.”
“Okay, okay. But do we actually know anything about Mexico?”
“We speak Spanish.”
“Not that good.”
“Speak for yourself, Dante. You’re such a pocho.”
“What’s a pocho?”
“A half-assed Mexican.”
“Okay, so maybe I’m a pocho. But the point I’m making here is that we can adopt other cultures.”
I don’t know why but I just started laughing. The truth is that I got to like the war Dante was having with shoes. One day, I just broke down and asked him. “So how come you have this thing with shoes?”
“I don’t like them. That’s it. That’s all. There’s no big secret here. I was born not liking them. There’s nothing complicated about the whole thing. Well, except there’s this thing called my mom. And she makes me wear them. She says there are laws. And then she talks about the diseases I could get. And then she says that people will think I’m just another poor Mexican. She says there are boys in Mexican villages who would die for a pair of shoes. ‘You can afford shoes, Dante.’ That’s what she says. And you know what I always tell her? ‘No, I can’t afford shoes. Do I have a job? No. I can’t afford anything.’ That’s usually the part of the conversation where she pulls her hair back. She hates that people might mistake me for another poor Mexican. And then she says: ‘Being Mexican doesn’t have to mean you’re poor.’ And I just want to tell her: ‘Mom, this isn’t about poor. And it isn’t about being Mexican. I just don’t like shoes.’ But I know the whole thing about shoes has to do with the way she grew up. So I just wind up nodding when she repeats herself: ‘Dante, we can afford shoes.’ I know the whole thing has nothing to with the word ‘afford.’ But, you know, she always gives me this look. And then I give her the same look back—and that’s how it goes. Look, me and my mom and shoes, it’s not a good discussion.” He stared out into the hot afternoon sky—a habit of his. It meant he was thinking. “You know, wearing shoes is an unnatural act. That’s my basic premise.”
“Your basic premise?” Sometimes he talked like a scientist or a philosopher.
“You know, the founding principle.”
“The founding principle?”
“You’re looking at me like you think I’m nuts.”
“You are nuts, Dante.”
“I’m not,” he said. And then he repeated it, “I’m not.” He seemed almost upset.
“Okay,” I said, “You’re not. You’re not nuts and you’re not Japanese.”
He reached over and unlaced my tennis shoes as he talked. “Take off your shoes, Ari. Live a little.”
We went out into the street and played a game that Dante made up on the spot. It was a contest to see who could throw their tennis shoes the farthest. Dante was very systematic about the way he made up the game. Three rounds—which meant six throws. We both got a piece of chalk and we marked where the shoe landed. He borrowed his father’s tape measure that could measure up to thirty feet. Not that it was long enough.
“Why do we have to measure the feet?” I asked, “Can’t we just throw the shoe and mark it with the piece of chalk? The farthest chalk mark is the winner. Simple.”
“We have to know the exact distance,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because when you do something, you have to know exactly what you’re doing.”
“No one knows exactly what they’re doing,” I said.
“That’s because people are lazy and undisciplined.”
“Did anybody ever tell you that sometimes you talk like a lunatic who speaks perfect English?”
“That’s my father’s fault,” he said.
“The lunatic part or the perfect English part?” I shook my head. “It’s a game, Dante.”
“So? When you play a game, Ari, you have to know what you’re doing.”
“I do know what we’re doing, Dante. We’re making up a game. We’re throwing our tennis shoes on the street to see which one of us can throw his shoe the farthest. That’s what we’re doing.”
“It’s a version of throwing the javelin, right?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“They measure the distance when they throw the javelin, don’t they?”
“Yeah, but that’s a real sport, Dante. This isn’t.”
“It is too a real sport. I’m real. You’re real. The tennis shoes are real. The street is real. And the rules we establish—they’re real too. What more do you want?”
“But you’re making this too much work. After every toss, we have to measure. What fun is that? The fun is in the throwing.”
“No,” Dante said, “the fun is in the game. It’s everywhere.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Throwing a shoe is fun. I get that. But taking out your father’s tape measure and rolling it out across the street seems like work. What’s so fun about that? And not only that—what if a car comes along?”
“We move out of the way. And besides, we could play in the park.”
“The street’s more fun,” I said.
“Yeah, the street’s more fun.” We agreed on something.
Dante looked at me.
I looked back at him. I knew I didn’t have a chance. I knew we were going to play the game according to his rules. But the truth is, it mattered to Dante. And to me, it didn’t matter so much. So we played the game with our tools: our tennis shoes, two pieces of chalk, and his father’s tape measure. We made up the rules as we went along—and they kept changing. In the end, there were three sets—like tennis. There were six tosses per set. Eighteen tosses to make a game. Dante won two out of the three sets. But I had the longest toss. Forty-seven feet, three and a quarter inches.
Dante’s father came out of the house and shook his head. “What are you guys doing?”
“We’re playing a game.”
“What did I tell you, Dante? About playing in the street? There’s a park right there.” He pointed his finger toward the park. “And what—” He stopped and studied the scene. “Are you throwing your tennis shoes around?”
Dante wasn’t afraid of his father. Not that his father was scary. But still, his father was a father and he was standing there, challenging us. Dante didn’t even flinch, certain that he could defend his position. “We’re not throwing our tennis shoes around, Dad. We’re playing a game. It’s the common man’s version of throwing the javelin. And we’re seeing who can throw his shoe the farthest.”
His father laughed. I mean he laughed. “You’re the only kid in the entire universe who could come up with a game as an excuse to beat the holy crap out of his tennis shoes.” He laughed again. “Your mother’s going to love this.”
“We don’t have to tell her.”
“Yes, we do.”
“Why?”
“The no-secrets rule.”
“We’re playing in the middle of the street. How can that be a secret?”
“It’s a secret if we don’t tell her.” He grinned at Dante, not mad—but like a father who was being a father. “Take it to the park, Dante.”
We found a good spot to set up the game at the park. I studied Dante’s face as he threw his tennis shoes with all his strength. His father was right. Dante had found a game as an excuse to beat the crap out of his tennis shoes.
Twelve
&nbs
p; ONE AFTERNOON, AFTER WE’D FINISHED SWIMMING, we were hanging out on his front porch.
Dante was staring at his feet. That made me smile.
He wanted to know what I was smiling at. “I was just smiling,” I said. “Can’t a guy smile?”
“You’re not telling me the truth,” he said. He had this thing about telling the truth. He was as bad as my dad. Except my dad kept the truth to himself. And Dante believed you had to tell the truth in words. Out loud. Tell someone.
I wasn’t like Dante. I was more like my dad.
“Okay,” I said. “I was smiling because you were looking at your feet.”
“That’s a funny thing to smile about,” he said.
“It’s weird,” I said. “Who does that—look at their feet? Except you?”
“It’s not a bad thing to study your own body,” he said.
“That’s a really weird thing to say, too,” I said. In our house, we just didn’t talk about our own bodies. That’s just not what we did in our house.
“Whatever,” he said.
“Whatever,” I said.
“Do you like dogs, Ari?”
“I love dogs.”
“Me too. They don’t have to wear shoes.”
I laughed. I got to thinking that one of my jobs in the world was to laugh at Dante’s jokes. Only Dante didn’t really say things to be funny. He was just being himself.
“I’m going to ask my dad if he’ll get me a dog.” He had this look on his face—a kind of fire. And I wondered about that fire.
“What kind of dog do you want?”
“I don’t know, Ari. One that comes from the shelter. You know, one of those dogs that someone’s thrown away.”
“Yeah,” I said. “But how will you know which one to pick? There’s a lot of dogs at the shelter. And they all want to be saved.”
“It’s because people are so mean. They throw dogs away like they’re trash. I hate that.”
As we sat there talking, we heard a noise, boys yelling across the street. Three of them, maybe a little younger than us. Two of them had BB guns and they were pointing at a bird they’d just shot. “We got one! We got one!” One of them was pointing his gun at a tree.
“Hey!” Dante yelled, “Stop that!” He was halfway across the street before I realized what was happening. I ran after him.
“Stop that! What the hell’s wrong with you!” Dante’s hand was out, signaling for them to stop. “Give me that gun.”
“My ass if I’m gonna give you my BB gun.”
“It’s against the law,” Dante said. He looked crazed. Really crazed.
“Second amendment,” the guy said.
“Yeah, second amendment,” the other guy said. He held on tight to his little rifle.
“The second amendment doesn’t apply to BB guns, you jerk. And anyway, guns aren’t allowed on city property.”
“What are you planning on doing about it, you piece of shit?”
“I’m going to make you stop,” he said.
“How?”
“By kicking your skinny little asses all the way to the Mexican border,” I said. I guess I was just afraid these guys were going to hurt Dante. I just said what I felt I had to say. They weren’t big guys and they weren’t smart either. They were mean and stupid boys and I’d seen what mean and stupid boys could do. Maybe Dante wasn’t mean enough for a fight. But I was. And I’d never felt bad for punching out a guy who needed punching out.
We stood there for a while, sizing each other up. I could tell Dante didn’t know what he was going to do next.
One of the guys looked like he was about to point his BB gun at me.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, you little piece of dog shit.” And just like that, I reached over and took his gun away. It happened fast and he hadn’t expected it. One thing I’d learned about getting into fights. Move fast, take the guy by surprise. It always worked. It was the first rule of fighting. And there I was with his BB gun in my hands. “You’re lucky I don’t shove this up your ass.”
I threw the gun on the ground. I didn’t even have to tell them to get the hell out of there. They just left, mumbling obscenities under their breaths.
Dante and I looked at each other.
“I didn’t know you liked to fight,” Dante said.
“I don’t really. Not really,” I said.
“Yeah,” Dante said. “You like to fight.”
“Maybe I do.” I said. “And I didn’t know you were a pacifist.”
“Maybe I’m not a pacifist. Maybe I just think you need a good reason to go around killing birds.” He searched my face. I wasn’t sure what he was trying to find there. “You’re good at tossing around bad words too.”
“Yeah, well, Dante, let’s not tell your mom.”
“We won’t tell yours either.”
I looked at him. “I have a theory about why moms are so strict.”
Dante almost smiled. “It’s because they love us, Ari.”
“That’s part of it. The other part of it is that they want us to stay boys forever.”
“Yeah, I think that would make my mom happy—if I was a boy forever.” Dante looked down at the dead bird. A few minutes ago, he’d been mad as hell. Now, he looked like he was going to cry.
“I’ve never seen you that mad,” I said.
“I’ve never seen you that mad, either.”
We both knew that we were mad for different reasons.
For a moment, we just stood there looking down at the dead bird. “It’s just a little sparrow,” he said. And then he started to cry.
I didn’t know what to do. I just stood there and watched him.
We walked back across the street and sat on his front porch. He tossed his tennis shoes across the street with all his might and anger. He wiped the tears from his face.
“Were you scared?” he asked.
“No.”
“I was.”
“So?”
And then we were quiet again. I hated the quiet. Finally I just asked a stupid question, “Why do birds exist, anyway?”
He looked at me. “You don’t know?”
“I guess I don’t.”
“Birds exist to teach us things about the sky.”
“You believe that?”
“Yes.”
I wanted to tell him not to cry anymore, tell him that what those boys did to that bird didn’t matter. But I knew it did matter. It mattered to Dante. And, anyway, it didn’t do any good to tell him not to cry because he needed to cry. That’s the way he was.
And then he finally stopped. He took a deep breath and looked at me. “Will you help me bury the bird?”
“Sure.”
We got a shovel from his father’s garage and walked to the park where the dead bird was lying on the grass. I picked up the bird with the shovel and carried it across the street, into Dante’s backyard. I dug a hole underneath a big oleander.
We put the bird in the hole and buried it.
Neither of us said a word.
Dante was crying again. And I felt mean because I didn’t feel like crying. I didn’t really feel anything for the bird. It was a bird. Maybe the bird didn’t deserve to get shot by some stupid kid whose idea of fun was shooting at things. But it was still just a bird.
I was harder than Dante. I think I’d tried to hide that hardness from him because I’d wanted him to like me. But now he knew. That I was hard. And maybe that was okay. Maybe he could like the fact that I was hard just as I liked the fact that he wasn’t hard.
We both stared at the bird’s grave. “Thanks,” he said.
“Sure,” I said.
I knew he wanted to be alone.
“Hey,” I whispered, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“We’ll go swimming,” he said.
“Yeah, we’ll go swimming.”
There was a tear running down his cheek. It seemed like a river in the light of the setting sun.
I wondered what it was like, to be
the kind of guy that cried over the death of a bird.
I waved bye. He waved bye back.
As I walked home, I thought about birds and the meaning of their existence. Dante had an answer. I didn’t. I didn’t have any idea as to why birds existed. I’d never even asked myself the question.
Dante’s answer made sense to me. If we studied birds, maybe we could learn to be free. I think that’s what he was saying. I had a philosopher’s name. What was my answer? Why didn’t I have an answer?
And why was it that some guys had tears in them and some had no tears at all? Different boys lived by different rules.
When I got home, I sat on my front porch.
I watched the sun set.
I felt alone, but not in a bad way. I really liked being alone. Maybe I liked it too much. Maybe my father was like that too.
I thought of Dante and wondered about him.
And it seemed to me that Dante’s face was a map of the world. A world without any darkness.
Wow, a world without darkness. How beautiful was that?
Sparrows Falling from the Sky
When I was a boy, I used to wake up thinking that the world was ending.
One
THE MORNING AFTER WE BURIED THE SPARROW, I woke up on fire with a fever.
My muscles ached, my throat hurt, my head throbbed almost like a heart. I kept staring at my hands, almost believing they belonged to someone else. When I tried to get up, I had no balance, no equilibrium, and the room spun around and around. I tried to take a step, but my legs weren’t strong enough to carry my weight. I fell back on the bed, my clock radio crashing to the floor.
My mother appeared in my room and for some reason she didn’t seem real. “Mom? Mom? Is that you?” I think I was yelling.
She was holding a question in her eyes. “Yes,” she said. She seemed so serious.
“I fell,” I said.
She said something—but I couldn’t translate what she was saying. Everything was so strange and I thought maybe I was dreaming, but her hand on my arm felt like a real touch. “You’re burning up,” she said.
I felt her hands on my face.
I kept wondering where I was, so I asked her. “Where are we?”