Tortuga

  Ronco tore into the rest of the jocks. He’d hit one then push him towards Mike, and Mike would clobber the poor bastard and trip him into the pile. And everytime the jock that Buck had lassoed regained his footing Buck would shout, “Yahoo! Ride ’em cowboy!” jerk the rope and send the bully crashing into the ice again.

  Those of us who couldn’t get into the middle of the brawl let loose with snowballs. The girls had jumped in to help Sandra, too. They grabbed the cheerleaders by the hair and spun them around the ice. It was a bloody, screaming free-for-all. Even Samson dipped into the pile and pulled two jocks off Ronco. He held them up by their collars, grinned, then slammed their heads together and tossed them aside. We cheered and he took a short bow, repeated his act then courteously helped the poor Nurse to her feet.

  “Everybody in the bus!” the Nurse shouted. We drew back and began to board reluctantly. The jocks had pulled back. They had been whipped, and now the manager ran around threatening everybody with the sheriff. The people who had gathered to watch the fight stood around laughing or looking dumbly with open mouths.

  “Get in the bus! Get in the bus!” the Nurse shouted. Mudo and Tuerto climbed down from the top of the bus which they had used as a good position to clobber the jocks with snowballs and ice chunks.

  “Dirty fighters,” the jocks called out.

  “We showed you!” Mike called back and raised a fist.

  “Hot dog, we got those sombitches!”

  “They can’t mess with us and get away with it!” Ronco laughed.

  Samson loaded the last chair and closed the door. The manager was having difficulty holding the jocks back. They realized they had been beaten and they were mad as the crazy hornets they had sewn on their jackets. They surrounded the bus and pounded furiously on it. Some of the kids pulled down their windows and spit on them.

  “We’ll get you the next time!” their leader swore.

  “Yeah! Don’t ever come back to town you damn freaks!” a girl added.

  They scooped up snow, packed it into hard snowballs and bombarded the bus. But Samson had already closed the door and started the bus. As it jerked away from the theatre the snowballs splattered harmlessly against its side. We threw fingers and waved.

  “You couldn’t fight your way out of a paper bag!” Ronco taunted them as we drove away. He turned to us and added, “Damn I wish I had a drink—” He grinned. One eye was red and his upper lip was cut and bleeding.

  “Pick on someone your own size next time!” Mike shouted.

  “Mike! Boys!” the Nurse tried to calm us down, “Everybody sit down! I have to count to see if anybody got left!” Her hat rested awkwardly on the side of her head, her hair was disarranged and she shouted for order, but she was smiling. It was the first time I had ever seen her smile.

  “Yah, yah, ’an don’ go-go mess wid us!” Mudo stuttered and we howled with laughter.

  “Sticks and stones may hurt my bones! But names will never hurt me!” Sandra yelled, but we were already out of reach of their snowballs and they couldn’t hear us.

  Samson turned the chugging bus up the hill into the bright afternoon sun. We settled down to lick our wounds and to recount the battle. The boys who had received cuts told how they got them and compared them, and they shyly let the girls fuss over them. Everybody was exhausted, but floating high with the excitement of the fight. The girls picked up the tune of our fight song and sang.

  Oh we’re the girls of the institute!

  We like to smoke and we like to chew

  And we love the boys that like to screw!

  Everybody joined them in a resounding, “One-two! One-two!”

  We laughed and cheered and filled the bus with thunder. We talked about the movie and about the fight and how great the adventure had been, and then we settled back into our seats and chairs and relaxed as the slow chugging bus made its way up the hill. Bobby Dee, a small kid who could really play the harmonica warbled a tune, and a long-haired girl next to him sang softly, the words from Cawliga, the Indian who never got a kiss, the man who was like Frankenstein in the movie, the man who was like all of us …

  Poooooooor ole Cawliga …

  He never got a kissss …

  Poooor ole Caaaaaaw-liga!

  He don’ know whaad he missed.

  We listened quietly to the sad song. Even Samson, squinting into the light, hummed the tune. The Nurse straightened her cap and sighed relief. The words of the song drifted out the open windows to mix with the warm spring air which had come to melt the snow. Somewhere a meadowlark sang. The air was full of love and strange longings. I looked across the aisle at Cynthia and she smiled and blushed. She smoothed her skirt around her lap and sat quietly. I smiled and turned to look across the valley at Tortuga. There was a trace of spring green on his sides. Beneath him the river was a sheen of silver light in the setting sun. The glaring light flashed across my window, and I strained to look at the budding cottonwood trees which lined the river … smiled, looked and saw the circle of white beneath the trees, my first communion girls dancing in a ring … holding hands and dancing in a wide circle, a dance of spring … and I remembered it was almost Easter. They turned and looked at me as the bus climbed the hill, and I thought I recognized them, knew them all … Ida and June and Agnes and Rita … innocent faces taken from the angels of limbo, the babes of the Virgin in the picture at church … and dancing with them for the first time was Cynthia. The light filled the bus, filled it with spring’s song, glowed white as it envoloped us, filtered through the bare spring trees and danced off the white dresses of the dancing girls … reflected from the windows of the bus and swirled like a kaleidoscope as the bus turned and turned, climbing the hill, becoming the end of a bright dream, the kind one has on summer days … and they had smiled and waved, out of that time so far away, so much a part of my memory, they had waved and welcomed me … they were waiting for me to return, crippled lizard that I was, I would find peace in their arms, I would shine like a new mystery in their hearts …

  The bus floated in the strong, white light of spring. Overcome with joy and love I closed my eyes and listened to the song forming in my dreams.…

  20

  I returned to therapy every day. After a workout with KC, I sat in the whirlpool bath and felt the stiffness in the muscles drain away as Tortuga’s waters massaged me with their magic. Since the incident at the pool Danny had stayed close to me. He was always near-by. When I looked at him and let him know I was aware of him he would look startled, as if he had been caught staring, then he would move away. Otherwise, he stuck close to me, watching me, closely following my progress.

  Once he gathered enough nerve to draw close to me and whisper his anguish. “What do they look like?” he asked, and before I could answer he was gone. His entire side was withered now, and his arm bent him over until he shuffled like an old man weighted down by the hump of age settling on his back. The next time he drew close he almost cried as he hoarsely whispered, “W-Why are they being kept alive? Why?” I felt his pain and I was filled with pity for him.

  I knew he was afraid, afraid he would wind up like one of the vegetables in Salomón’s ward. His uncurable disease was drying him up and pulling him into their world. Sometimes he whispered that he heard them calling him, and he cursed them. They had become his only obsession, that’s all he wanted to talk about, and so everybody had deserted him, even his two friends Mudo and Tuerto. They were still playing their pranks and practical jokes, but Danny had withdrawn from everybody. When he wasn’t following me he wandered the halls alone, muttering to himself, rubbing his withered arm, and cautiously working his way to the door which led to the vegetable patch and the other wards. They told me he spent a lot of time looking at the door, as if he was building up the courage to enter the dark hall, and instead he always turned away in a fit of anguish.

  He was suffering all right, and I felt sorry for him. Sometimes he would look at me and curse me, and it was because I had been to see them
and he couldn’t.

  “You could’ve drowned in the pool!” he hissed at me, reminding me of my torment, trying to draw me out.

  “It didn’t matter then,” I said.

  “And now?”

  “Now it matters,” I shrugged. “I couldn’t face death alone … I found that out. And now life is important to me, even Salomón’s vegetables are important—” I paused. “In fact, they might be the reason I’m alive. Don’t you see that?” I asked and reached out to touch him, but he drew back and snapped at me.

  “Even after you saw them? You still think life is important after you saw them? Well what about them? What about them being there to rot the rest of their lives, not being able to move a finger! Not being able to feed themselves or wipe themselves! What about them?”

  “I don’t know,” I shook my head.

  “You don’t know anything!” he shouted. “And you still believe what Salomón says about singing. You’re crazy, you can’t even sing!” he sneered. “How can you believe that creep after what he pulled on you, huh?”

  “I trust him,” I answered.

  “Trust him? Oh God, you can trust him!”

  “Talk to him,” I said in desperation, “go talk to him.”

  “It won’t do any good,” he moaned, “it’s no good … I’m being punished—you know what Salomón said about that …”

  No, Tortuga, Salomón had said, the garden of cripples is not a place of punishment. Don’t you see that punishment would give meaning to our existence. If we could say we’re being punished then it would follow that God is punishing us, and we would be worse off than we were before … we would go on fabricating lie upon lie … It’s very difficult to accept the fact that our existence has no meaning to the absent god. The only meaning it has is the meaning we give it … we can’t blame the gods. That’s too easy, but natural. Man has always taken his fear and pain and suffering and made strange gods from those shadows of his soul. Those gods are shadows, Tortuga, reflections of our weakness … I have read all the myths, and that’s how it has been … shadow upon dark shadow of the cave dancing to the light of the flickering fire, dancing itself into a form in the mind of fearful man … and none of those gods could return and say I do not exist, because once they were given the substance of thought they generated their own power, they grew stronger, they no longer needed man … Oh, there have been a few heroes who have tried to steal the light of the cosmos, the eternal light which burns away all shadows, but they were few … Prometheus, hero of the Greeks, petty thief of fire and light … fails to gain his own freedom and thus fails us because in the end he turns and blames his punishment on that sham jury on Olympus and the fornicator Zeus! Oh God, if only he had not needed to give meaning to his punishment … what a great hero he would have been. He peered into the light of heaven, he touched it! And then he cries to the gods of Olympus and begs their forgiveness! Oh what a waste … what a tragedy to us …

  Even Christ, in his triumphant hour upon the cross … at that moment when he can free himself from the darkness forever, when he can most be man and god at the same time … he fails us, he turns and blames his father who has forsaken him. So even the new myths are incomplete. Our heroes have not been able to suffer alone. In their last moment of anguish and pain they turn to the shadows dancing on the wall … turn to the past and the darkness … Even the modern Sisyphus cannot serve us. He is like us because he feels the interminable pain of that huge boulder he must push up the hill. He is a god crippled from that incessant labor. His spine is bent, his shoulder humped and cut to the bone, he knows pain and he knows the time of eternity which he will suffer … So in many ways he is like us, a poor vegetable pushing up against the boulder, reaching for the light, knowing he will never be free of that task … But he, too, fails the test. Because on his way down the hill he raises his fist and curses the gods who condemned him to eternal punishment! Don’t you see, his punishment would be complete if he did not curse the gods … if he could walk alone! Only then could he be free! Only then could he turn and look around and see that old friends from Corinth wander the valleys of Hades … and yes, he even has the pleasure of an occasional country woman …

  And is his torment as severe as that of my cripples? Monotonous, yes, and difficult. But think, on the way back down the hill he can feel the cool breeze on his sweaty body, and he can feel the fatigue of his labor drain away as he walks slowly down the hill … Ha! Sisyphus is a lucky king compared to us! Far in the distance someone plays a lyre, old melodies of home, and from time to time a friend comes by and they talk and drink wine and remember the days when Corinth was in its glory. Which one of us would not gladly exchange our place with him? No, Tortuga, we are beyond the last Greek hero … we are beyond all the heroes of the past … We have come to a new plane in the time of eternity … we have gone far beyond the punishment of the gods. We are beyond everything that we have ever known, and the past is useless to us. We must create out of our ashes. Our own hero must be born out of this wasteland, like the phoenix bird of the desert he must rise again from the ashes of our withered bodies … and he must not turn to the shadows of the past. He must walk in the path of the sun … and he shall sing the songs of the sun. It may be that we will find someone who crossed the desert in Filomón’s cart, someone who suffered like us as he felt the fire in his body go dry and the juices die in his bones … someone who has felt the paralysis of life, and walked in the garden with his brothers and sisters, and who will sing of his adventures …

  “Yes,” I nodded and looked at Danny, “I know what Salomón said.”

  “But what does it mean?” he pleaded.

  “I don’t know—”

  “But you should know!” he insisted and grew angry, “He made you walk in the garden! He made you see the vegetables! You should know why! No! You do know, but you’re just not telling me … that’s it! You and Salomón and all the rest know, but you’re not telling me! I see it now!” He trembled with anger. He grabbed me by the shoulders and shouted into my face, “You want me to go see for myself! That’s it! You want me to go into Salomón’s ward and crawl in one of those machines and stay there forever! You want me to become one of those rotten vegetables! I see it now! I see the plan now! To get me in there!” He laughed crazily and swore at me. “Well you’re not ever going to get me to go in there and become one of those vegetables! I’d rather die! You hear me you little bastard lizard! I’d rather die!”

  He pushed me away and stalked out of the room, shouting, “No! Never! Never!”

  21

  That same afternoon I stood and walked the parallel bars for the first time. The word had spread that KC had given me permission to walk by myself, so quite a few kids came to watch. Everybody knew that walking the bars meant real freedom, especially if one didn’t have to wait around for braces, and my legs didn’t need braces. I would need crutches for awhile, but no braces.

  The therapy room was crowded as KC pushed my chair to the end of the bars. “You’re on your own, honey,” she whispered. I looked down the long bars and at the full length mirror at the end. I nodded. I was ready.

  Ismelda stood by me. “A lizard that can stand up becomes a man,” she whispered. I smiled.

  “You can do it, honey,” KC said and helped me up from my chair. I gripped the bar with my right hand and pulled myself up. I felt the weight strain my trembling legs and locked my knees so I wouldn’t fall. My legs quivered, but they held.

  “Atta boy,” Mike nodded from the corner.

  “Do it!” Ronco smiled.

  “Hot dog, that dude’s ready for the round-up,” Buck drawled. They crossed their fingers and watched me carefully.

  I lifted my right leg and took the first step. My body moved stiffly over the fulcrum point, swayed momentarily, flushed hot with sweat, trembled like the earth trembled when Tortuga moved, then it settled down and I lifted my left leg. The kids cheered. Somewhere in the background Danny’s dark eyes bore into me, then he curse
d and hobbled away. At the door Dr. Steel paused to watch. He looked at me and smiled, then he nodded at the other doctors and they moved on to the surgery room.

  “How’s it feel, babe?” KC asked.

  “Okay,” I answered. She walked alongside me, watching carefully, ready to move if I toppled. Ismelda walked on the other side. The trembling was gone. With each step I took I felt stronger. I moved ahead, breathing hard and sweating. At the end of the bars I stopped to rest. I looked up and saw myself in the full length mirror. I didn’t recognize myself. I was skinny and stiff and twisted with the weight of the cast I had carried for so long. My hair hung nearly to my shoulders. I wasn’t the person I remembered from before the paralysis; I was a new man, a just-born man trying to coordinate my movements. Who was I, then, I asked and looked around the quiet room.

  Are you okay?

  Anything the matter?

  What’s happening? Whad he say?

  It’s okay, take a rest. You’ll be fine …

  Who am I? I asked. Who was born in that shell of plaster? Am I the same boy that went into the heart of the mountain and heard Salomón whisper the story of his butterflies? Was I the same man who walked through Salomón’s ward and suffered the pain of its existence? How long had I been in the hospital? And what did it all mean? I looked at myself in the mirror and saw the layers of my past fall away, like the sheaths of an onion strip away to expose the little green heart at the core.

  “Wanna try it again?” KC asked.

  “Sure … fine,” I answered. The faces in the room swam about me. They were here to celebrate one more step of my freedom. I smiled. I held back my tears. How could I ever take another step in my life without seeing them? Would I ever be free of them? Or was this my new weight? The memory of them would always come rushing down on me, whispering to me, forcing me to remember every incident, every detail, every crippled arm and leg, every twisted back, every scarred face, each breathing iron lung which guarded life in the dark wards …