Sonoran Ruminations

Sonoran Ruminations

by Gerald R. Stanek

Copyright Gerald R. Stanek 1998

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Contents:

Assemblages

Blue Kosina

X-Capes

Commencement

Mr. Frick

The Alchemist

Assemblages

Terra cotta suns with vacant eyes came ghoulishly to life in the flood of the motion-sensitive carport lights as Ruben passed slowly by. They smiled fatuously at him from their place on the wall. He smiled back and slowly followed the tremulous dance of his flashlight toward the next house. Nearly every house on his block had one or two of the decorative faces, posted by the front door or in the carport; not so much as sentries, but as talismans applying constant invocations like the prayer wheels of a Buddhist shrine − as if three hundred and twenty some days of sunshine were not enough. The next house had no lights on, automatic or otherwise. He turned his flashlight to the darkened entry; there they were, three small ones, impishly beaming in the shadows.

Ruben smiled again. After all, he was responsible for them, or most of them. For the past twenty-five years, he had given the clay faces to every newcomer in the neighborhood as house warming gifts. Anglos, most of them. Sometimes, if the suns failed to appear on the wall after they’d been received, he would knock on the door and explain how it was an ancient Mayan custom which the Missionary fathers had been unable to exorcise. Now the suns were only made during holy week by orphans and were sure to bring good luck to those who displayed them. They usually fell for that, and put them out where he could see them.

Ruben Ramirez was born in the United States, and had only been to Mexico once, long ago, to meet his grandmother before she died; he knew no more of ancient Mayan or Mexican customs than his neighbors, probably less. He did not even celebrate Cinco de Mayo; his father had forbidden it because they were Americans now. The first time he noticed a sun face made of clay, it was on a card table in Mrs.

Anderson’s driveway over on Seneca St., in between a green glass ash tray and a stack of baby blue plates. That was one morning thirty years ago; it was marked twenty-five cents. He gave her a nickel and took it home. That was what started it. The whole problem he had with his son, and the house.

The very next week, on a similar table in Mrs. Lopez’ driveway, he saw a tin motorcycle, about six inches long; the paint worn off from two generations of small hands. It was exactly like the one Paul Kelly had when Ruben was a boy. Ruben’s mother cleaned the Kelly’s house, and watched the Kelly children. He and Paul were friends, sometimes. Paul said he could play with any of his toys, except his shiny tin motorcycle. Ruben gave a dime for it. How many dimes ago that was, he could not say. And all because the clay sun smiled at him from the card table. He smiled back at the suns that never slept, as he made his way to the next house.

That was when he had the idea. It filled his head with a rush, like the hot night breeze that surged into his nose with each breath. The day’s heat engulfed him as it streamed from the sidewalk, the garden walls, the rock yards; it saturated his every fiber. Though the word ‘oven’ fell contemptuously from many sputtering lips in the city, it never entered Ruben’s mind. He wasn’t one to complain of the heat; even when he was young, it hadn’t bothered him. Now, in his final decade, it was like a soothing bath. Though he might sweat, and his heart might pound, he didn’t ache. The summer was an ally in his daily battle against disintegration, and night was the best time to be out. It was quiet, and he didn’t have to worry about wearing a hat, or a shirt for that matter. He had only to slip on his sandals, pick up his cane and light, and submerge himself in the unconditioned world. It was a good time to consider his schedule for the following day; how to fill the hours between naps, which things were already scheduled by default and which time slots required an invention of necessity to be filled.

But this evening something weightier was on Ruben’s mind. Something that absorbed his time and attention by its own merits. His boy Miguel had called again. He called every month or so, when the guilt had festered long enough or when he had heard some report of an old man or woman who lay dead in their own house until they became foul enough to compel their discovery − he would call, and say I think you should move up to Trinidad where I can keep an eye on you, Pop! or I’m coming down in a few weeks to help you clean out some of that junk, Pop! and You shouldn’t be driving anymore, Pop, or You know, with the money you could get for the house, you can get a real nice apartment up here. To which Ruben would invariably respond, It’s too cold in Colorado! and I’m too old to move, or, as a last resort, I’ll think about it. Delay was a tactic Ruben had learned long ago, when his beloved Mercedes passed away, and Miguel pestered him, trying to set him up with strange women and planning outings for them together. It didn’t last long. He knew his son was really a lazy man at heart; put him off for a while and he would forget about it. So for ten years, every time Miguel said he was too old to live alone, Ruben changed the subject, and Miguel, true to his nature, did nothing. Until now.

This time the report he had seen on the news was not about a man who had died, it was worse. It was about the way a man was living, it was about the rats the neighbors had seen, it was about the bags of food the man had brought home from the store and left lying about in the thicket of weeds in the yard, it was about the mounds of papers and ‘other refuse’ and that had built up in the rooms, it was about the ‘fecal matter’ and the ant colonies and the biohazard. Obviously that man was not right in the head, living in filth that way; it was ridiculous such a report would make Miguel think of him. Ruben’s mind was still sharp, though his body was frail. Maybe he had a mouse now and then, but he was in no danger of forgetting to wash the dishes before using them, let alone confusing food and feces. Yet this report about some other man in some other city had frightened Miguel. He called to say he had quit his job, packed his things, and was moving back home.

Ruben knew there was no putting him off this time. That was why he went for a walk instead of to bed. That was why he breathed deep of the burning air and absorbed the energy rising from the sidewalk, and looked to the smiling suns. That was why the idea came.

Ruben turned and walked back to his house. Inside, after an amount of time which escaped him, he managed to find a piece of paper and a pen which wrote, and he wrote, and he signed his name, folded the paper, and after searching unsuccessfully for an envelope, he set the paper on the bills and sweepstakes offers waiting to be mailed, which were stacked on the little table by the door. Then he went to bed, where he lay for a time which again had no measure, thinking of his idea, and the paper he had written it on, wondering what would come of it, and smiling. He could not know exactly what would happen, but he knew it was a good idea.

Ruben slept late. When he woke, he looked at the calendar beside his bed (as he did every morning, to see what he had prearranged to keep himself occupied), and saw that it was the day of the new promotion! In his rush to wash, dress, and get out of the house, he forgot to mail his bills, and so didn’t see the paper on which he had written his idea, which sleep had expunged from his mind.

He got into his car, laid his cane beside the empty little ice chest which perpetually occupied the passenger seat, and backed out of the driveway. First, he drove to #121, at Indian School Road and 17th St., because the manager was new and Ruben didn’t know him. There he went through the drive through, ordering the child’s Meal Deal, telling the girl at the window:

It’s for my grandson. After receiving his order, he parked, and carefully removed from the bag the cookie, and the cellophane packet containing a purple plastic figure resembling a kangaroo. The cookie he stuck in his mouth, the kangaroo, he set in a disintegrating cardboard box on the back seat. The bag, still containing a child’s size hamburger and french fries, he closed and placed in the ice chest, to keep warm.

Next Ruben drove to #104, at Silverlake and Mountain, where he knew the manager, Celeste. He parked and went in, a process taking several minutes, involving cane, car door, step, removal of hat, etc. Celeste saw him coming before he made it in.

Good morning, Mr. Ramirez, she called loudly and cheerfully, I thought I might be seeing you today.

Good morning, dear, he replied, leaning on the counter, breathing heavily. Celeste brought two cellophane packets out from under the counter and displayed them.

I have Snortle the Kangaroo, and Wally Wombat, she announced, though in a quieter voice than she had greeted him with. Ruben sensed a slight self-consciousness in her manner. That was to be expected, even from a friend.

I would like the wombat, please.

Carol, Mr. Ramirez needs a kid’s meal, she ordered an underling, then softly, And put this in it, okay? Thanks.

When do you expect the others? Ruben asked.

Well you know how it is, whenever they send them to us. Probably in a couple of weeks. This is supposed to last till August.

I’ll see you next week, then, Ruben said.

I’ll be here! Celeste hollered on her way to the back. She had been called away on more important matters. In a moment his order was up; the underling handed him the bag, a smirk on her face.

It’s for my grandson, he told her.

Once back in his car, Ruben removed the wombat and placed it in the box with the kangaroo. The food he put in the ice chest, except for the cookie, which was on its way to his lips when he slumped over on the steering wheel, his shoulder activating the horn.

II

It was white − the poodle; not one of those pretentious little light-chasing yappers, but a big, beautiful, standard poodle such as one might see prancing gracefully around the ring at a dog show, clipped in the traditional way, shorn face, feet, legs, and hindquarters with the pompoms around the ankles and at the tail. Placidly it had sat beneath one of the decorative orange trees which separated the parking lot of Vicker’s Drugs from that of Plaza Adobe Shops. As though wearing an extravagent garment of such cunning design as demanded display, it had posed for all to witness and be moved. Majestic, Palmer had thought, divine, its coat so softly, yet radiantly white; and it was brought to mind now (two? three years later?) by the very blackness of the man’s shirt as his back receded from the door, or perhaps by the early morning light gleaming from the row of trees whose shape still echoed the dog’s pompom clip, or perhaps it was the car the man got int o− so much like that of the dog’s master, and parked in the same spot. Both cars had more hood than trunk; guzzling behemoths beyond their teens, (whether Cadillacs, Oldsmobiles, or Lincolns, Palmer would not have known, then or now), and both were a faded custard color, mottled with shades of bare steel on the hood and top − grey, not brown, for he had noticed that cars don’t rust in the desert as they did in Connecticut, they only blister and peel as the sun and dust pick away at wounds left by miscellaneous insects whose sizzling remains etch their way into the guaranteed factory finish in less time than it takes to drive across town.

Palmer stood just inside the door, watching and waiting for the man in the black shirt to drive away, secure in the knowledge that the man (young, well groomed, unusually tall for a Hispanic), could not see in past the glare of the shop windows.

It has to have been three years, Palmer thought, astounded that the time had passed so quickly; because no one was there to help. Three years ago Palmer’s partner had relinquished all claims on the business they had started together. There was no one there to consult with, no way to know what to do when he looked out the window and saw she was still there; that elderly woman with the snow white poodle, the two huddled together under the same tuft of greenery, attempting to share three feet of shade that midsummer morning. Even now he could recall the look in the dog’s eyes − regal composure bordering on sagacity; a quality which outweighed its ludicrous coiffure and was a stark contrast to the feeble, bewildered air of its ‘master’, who crouched squatting and hunched with disheveled hair, clutching her housecoat closed with one hand, and the dog’s collar with the other. Three years.

The man in the black shirt backed the mottled custard car out of the space and paused, staring back, Palmer couldn’t tell where; perhaps at the purple sign:

TRANQUILITY • BOOKS • GIFTS • GALLERY or perhaps he could see through the window after all. A slight compunction twinged Palmer’s mind − maybe he had been too abrupt. ‘We only show metaphysical art here,’ he had snapped, after one cursory glance at the amateurish snapshots the man had displayed. After all, if the man had never worked retail, he couldn’t know that there is no greater sin than to disturb the precious minutes between arriving at the store and opening for business, no more heinous crime than to lie in wait for some hapless merchant to unlock the door then spring from your car and accost them, especially if you have no intention of making a purchase. Certainly he could not have known that Palmer in particular had a habit every morning of entering the store from the rear, depositing his burdens and booting up all the circuits (the air conditioning, the lights, the ionizer, the computer, the CD player), then leaving immediately by the front door, and walking across Vicker’s parking lot and 5th St. to the convenience store on the corner.

That day, the day of the white dog, he had also been disturbed before he was actually open, also by someone not intending to buy. A matronly