Toby Olson - Tampico

She coated his hips and that too, then reached back into the bucket. Then her hands were sliding down between his legs and she was twisting through the roots, greasing the backs of his knees and his calves. Then she was pulling his shoes and socks off, and Larry saw her greasy fingers sliding over his ankles and between his toes, and before long they were covered with grease, their hands stroking the roots, and Larry slid his chest over Matthew’s hip and Sister Theresa’s arm was between them, and he pushed up, bowing his back, and the root gave a little, ripples of the shock wave of its movement radiating out to the basket’s edges, and Matthew’s leg came free. Then they worked together near his neck, both leaning against the bowed taproot, until his head could move, and then his extended arms were twisting in the lubrication, his wrists slipping free of the bondage, and they were out of the root matrix and standing in the pit, pulling him, naked and slick as a newborn, until he was free of the basket and was lying on the ground.

Larry bent over and covered Matthew’s delicate groin with his shirt, and when he looked up the sister was wild, beautiful in her soiled binding, her soft white shoulders, and her grease-crazed hair. Her hands were together and she was praying, smiling beatifically, “and I knew right then there was no hope for her, but that there was for me.”

It had grown dark in the room, and Larry picked up the cards and leaned back, his face in shadow. Then Gino lit his pipe again and the match flared, and the tip of the cigarette in John’s throat lit his chin, the jaw of a skeleton, and Frank coughed and reached for the tubing and adjusted it. Then John coughed and ashes fell and sparkled in the moonlight.

“Everything came out fine then,” Frank said, and Larry laughed lightly.

“You could say that.”

“Back to the nunnery,” said John.

“It was just a school, but that’s right enough. It was Matthew’s school, not mine. We left the next day, and I never saw her again, him either.”

“That’s too bad,” said Gino.

“Not really. Maybe it was just adolescence, for him I mean.”

“True, very true.”

“What would you know about that?” Frank said.

“I know a few things.”

“Easy now, boys,” said John.

“Do you know where the light is?”

“I do, indeed, and if you’ll hold your horses for a fucking second or two I’ll turn it on.”

“Not the bright one,” Frank said, and Gino got up from his chair, stretched and shook his lean body, then shuffled to the far wall and threw the switch. It was night-lights in the baseboard and a small lamp on a table.

“Thanks,” Frank said, and Gino nodded as he passed him and headed back to his seat. He settled in and lifted his pipe from the radiator, then tamped it down and lit it and blew smoke at the ceiling. Then it was later, and Carolyn brought in their dinners on metal trays.

“You’d think we’d have gotten at least this far from the war,” Frank said, pushing his fork around in the chipped beef.

“You’d think,” Gino said.

“With the microwave,” said Larry.

“They could do better than this shit,” said John.

“At least a TV dinner,” Frank said.

But they ate it, and when they were done Gino farted and then lit his pipe, and Frank groaned, and John lit a cigarette and so did Larry and both of them coughed.

“That’ll kill you,” Frank said.

“I know, I know,” John said. “But at this point it’s a race.”

“Who’s winning?” Gino said.

“Certainly not me,” said Larry.

“Chemo?”

“Right. I’m heading out tomorrow.”

“I told ’em to fuck it,” Gino said.

“I wasn’t sure,” said Larry. “I haven’t tried it yet.”

“It’s an experience,” said Frank.

“And what else have we got?” Larry said.

“Memory,” said John.

“It could be a long story,” Gino said.

“About your daughter, I bet.”

“That’s right. A story about a lost daughter, found again in betrayal.”

We took a slow boat down the Panuco River from Tampico and headed in mild anxiety toward the sea. I remember my mother standing at the rail clutching her purse, so full of pesos, watching refineries pass by, stillstacks and agitators, the ruined loading dock at the Alianza station, and when I was beside her in my linen jacket, flying fish flew up to startle us and I thought I saw stains on their bodies. There’d been an oil fire, and black smoke had drifted over the city, and when we passed the fire’s source at Aguila Petroleum there was blue oil in the water at the river’s edge and burning wood, and I saw a rat on a timber, flames rising at the end and smoke and hissing when it moved away and the fire touched the river, at least I think it was a rat. Aguila was devastated, and the fire had blossomed to the paraffin plant beside it, and we smelled a giant candle in the charred rubble. Then we came to a bend in the river and a sea breeze and left the influence of a smoky Tampico behind us, and we could see the Gulf and the hill at Chorreras, boats in the water, nets hanging in sunlight from their riggings.

Empty of Spanish and subtlety, of all but a few names and money, empty of the continuity of our historical past now in my father’s revealed lies, we moved slowly along, my fingers brushing the sleeve of my mother’s cotton dress as we climbed the dusty road, then came in sight of the town, a small village of winding dirt streets, ramshackle houses, and the flat-roofed structures for net mending and boat repair at the water’s edge, where I saw women working and dinghies and a tilted fishing boat at dry dock on the sand and men scraping at barnacles. We were above the town, and we could see far out over the Gulf to the remnants of oil stations, a few active ones, pipelines suspended on wood structures running out from shore, and the misty shadow of a tanker at horizon.

We walked down the road and into the town’s central square, just a few stores, cantina and church, a dribbling stone fountain at the center, and what looked like a public building off to the side, and my mother demurred, and it was up to me to go in with the names.

The old man at the desk wore a wrinkled summer suit the same yellow as my jacket, and he shook his head, considered the hammered tin ceiling for a moment, then dragged the information up from dim memory and looked at me with bright eyes. He gave me the street name, then repeated himself, then counted the numbers out on his fingers. “ Último ,“ he said.

It was midday and humid after rain, and by the time we’d trudged up into the foothills a little and found the street and the house at the end of it, we were sweaty and our shoes were coated with dust and my mother’s permanent had fallen in limp curls to her cheeks and my own hair was wet and straightened, and we stood in the dirt road before the house like immigrants.

It seemed an ancient place, weathered wood and moss on the wood roof and cloth hanging in window frames, and a front door at the end of a stone pathway, a hatch of slats woven together with twine or wire, standing open, and at the house side, where the hill ascended, flowers and thick vines had crept down to it and climbed up over its walls and halfway across the roof, and there were flowers growing around a crude skylight, its door pushed up into them, a screen of vines over the opening. And there were flowers in the yard, roses and blooming cactus in clay pots, and bougainvillea ran blood red on a trellis surrounding the doorway, bleeding up into the eaves above it. The sea lifted a gust of perfume and the vines shook and petals blew, and one landed on my cheek, a touch of velvet, and I lifted it away and looked down in my palm, a translucent purple crescent, and I wanted to eat it. Then I heard a creaking, and when I looked up a woman stood in the doorway, tall and very thin, a loose dress hanging from the points of her shoulders, sleeves falling around bony arms, as old as my grandmother would have been, had I had one.