Toby Olson: Tampico

The building had no solid door, just a piece of heavy fabric that had been hooked to the side to allow passage, and once they were all inside, crowded together in a dim foyer, Alma went ahead with the three attendants, and the old men touched the cool stone walls and leaned against them. And in moments light flooded into the foyer from beyond, and when they stepped in they saw the blond man pull aside the last cloth window covering, and they found themselves in a large open room with a low ceiling, square window openings lining the back wall. The light brought shadow figures into the room, patterns of leafy branches that danced over the dark dirt floor and shimmered near the mouths of interior entrances to other rooms beyond. A low wooden table sat at the room’s center, ceramic bowls containing fruit upon it, and there were twisted wicker chairs surrounding the table, four of them, and a few wooden stools against the wall below the windows.

The men had sat too long, and now they hesitated, though Carlos could see they were still wobbly on their legs. “Fruit,” Gino said. He still wore his sombrero, and his face was lost under the brim. Larry held his straw hat in his hand, no hair at all visible now, and just as Frank crossed to the table for a fat orange, they heard a creak of metal at the house front. Then the man who had taken away the horses returned, wheeling John’s chair through the doorway and into the room. John turned and saw it, and when the man had pushed it close enough, he backed into it, then sat down with a deep sigh. “Just like home,” he said.

Then the two men came in from another room, their chests dark now in the shadows, and moved to where Larry stood. Carlos had thought them younger than they now appeared, shadows accentuating age lines in their flat faces. They were as old as the old men themselves, almost that, and Carlos saw that the formal stiffness in their gestures came as much from a carefulness with sinew and bone as it did from occasion. They look like me, he thought, and when they reached Larry’s side, the blond one turned and stared at him, as if in recognition of some brotherhood, and Carlos could see the light downy patch of hair running from his navel to disappear under his garment above his crotch, and he wondered if that too was the product of some dye or was natural. Each touched Larry lightly on the shoulder, beckoning, then led him through a doorway to another place. The men were gone for a few moments only, then came back with the woman, and soon all were led away, Manuel and Ramona together beside one of the men, the three old men with the woman, and Carlos, alone now, by the blond man. Alma had left quietly, and no one had noticed his going.

The room the man led him into was a small bedroom, a table holding a fruit basket, oranges and bananas, and a narrow cot against the wall. There were two windows in the back wall, and a stone stairway leading down a few steps at the room’s side. Carlos could see the still pool there, a few leafy shadows on the water’s surface. The man saw him looking and lifted his hands and touched his bare breast and shoulder in a gesture of bathing, then moved to the cot and pulled the light woven coverlet to the side. Then he moved to one of the windows and lifted the hooked-up blanket and let it fall across the opening. He gestured toward the stack of rough towels on a shelf beside the stone stairway leading to the bath and nodded to Carlos and smiled a little coyly and turned, his blond ringlets bobbing at his shoulders and his necklace clacking softly and brushing his nipple, and left the room.

He awoke to the faint sound of laughter and splashing and turned his head on the pillow, still half asleep, and thought there might be someone in the bath off in the dark, but the sounds were more distant than that, and as he returned to wakefulness he knew they were coming through the rock that formed the bath’s far wall and from another bath beyond. He rose and sat at the bed’s edge and rubbed his eyes. He could feel grit in the creases, and when he lifted his head again and gazed into the room, he saw that it was darker now, not night yet, but surely dusk. The silhouettes were gone from the floor, but he could see the descending steps that led down into the bath, the towels on the shelf, and the table to his right. The fruit basket was gone, and in its place someone had set a pitcher and a mug. He rose and stretched, then moved to the table and poured from the pitcher and drank deeply, cool water, then filled the mug and drank again. Then he was peeling his clothes away and dropping them to the floor, and once he was naked he moved to the bath’s descending steps. He saw his pack and the cloth satchel he had brought along, off in a corner as he stepped down, his feet entering the water, and in a moment he had sunk in up to his neck and could hear the faint splashing and a few satisfied groans through the thick stone wall.

It was dark by the time he had dressed again, in clean clothing, light khaki pants and shirt, and had stepped out through the building’s open doorway and onto the walk that edged the square. He found they were all there waiting, even Alma, in shorts like the bare-chested men had worn, but in a loose white shirt with beaded piping at the pockets. His father stood beside Ramona, who had traded her western costume for a long dress. She wore a silver necklace, but no makeup now, and Carlos thought she looked her age and might even be comfortable in it. Gino stood beside them, dark splotches on his bare legs that looked like thin sticks below his baggy shorts. Larry stood off to the side a little, looking toward the square’s center in the distance. He was wearing his loose, pajama-like outfit once again and his tennis shoes, and he’d replaced his cowboy hat with that beaded skullcap. Carlos could see lights where he gazed, around the dark shadow shapes of the low fountain, torches he thought, their flames dancing in the soft cool breeze he felt at his collar. Figures moved at the fountain’s edges, and some seemed to be carrying and adjusting things around it.

“The bath was very good,” Frank said. His clothes were almost formal, a pair of cotton slacks and a black belt and white dress shirt, tucked in at the waist and bulging over his thick chest, and black tennis shoes. It was too dark now to see clearly under the shadow cast by the building, though the last remnants of sun, those final geometric figures, covered the square, starting beyond the walkway and the planters lining it, an enigmatic pattern that moved down its length to the fountain and beyond.

John stood beside his wheelchair, the bright feather dusty in the brim of his derby hat now, in pants reminiscent of the ones Alma had worn on the trail and a similar woven shirt. His hand gripped the sidebar, and Carlos waved him off and lifted the chair down the few steps to ground at the square’s edge, and once John was seated and settled in, they started their slow procession, heading for the fountain. John lit a cigarette, as Carlos walked behind him and pushed him, and smoke flooded from his tracheotomy tube, to rise and disappear above them.

There were lights in the huts along the hill, a shimmering in doorways like vacant movie screens, and the light seeped up into their roofs, leaking through the thatching, and the roofs seemed to be levitating. The flames off in the distance at the fountain had steadied, breeze rising from the square and leaving, and Carlos could hear it going in faint rustling in leaves and branches high above the huts where the hill peaked, and he thought he could see light in the sky there, though there was no moon. And he saw a glow of light too at the glass house.

“Oil,” John said, a faint creak in the mechanism as Carlos pushed him, “all that dust and sand along the way.” His voice was creaky too, a deep exhaustion in it, but it held some energy as well, and the others seemed expectant also. He thought he could see it in their shuffling gait and even in Ramona, his father at her side, in the way she shook her loose hair that fell gracefully to her shoulders. Then, in a while, they were moving out of the darkness, coming into the edge of light cast by the torches at the fountain’s sides.