Toby Olson: Tampico

The fountain was made of heavy slabs of dark stone that had been fashioned into rectangles to form a low wall that contained it. The wall was broad, at least a yard wide, and the lanterns rested on it, three on each side of the roughly rectangular shape, the contained pool rising up almost to the edge and lapping there. What had been a small animal figure stood up at the center, worn away over time, and a broad cylinder of water climbed up in the air above it, just a few inches, to form a mushroom head that spilled down, causing a turgid bubbling at its base, then changed to quieter ripples that dissipated into that lapping when it reached the walls.

Carlos heard Ramona laugh lightly, then laugh again through a quiet sneeze, and when he looked beyond where she stood beside his father and Gino, he saw two women at a table on the far side of the fountain. He heard a click on glass, then saw the light flame at the fat candle wick as one of them lit it, and in that light a flag of white fabric floated on the night air for a moment, then fell to cover the wooden table, upon which the woman placed the candle and covered the flame with a glass chimney.

There was another table beside it, set slightly askew as in some Paris café, and the women prepared it and more candles were lit and men came out of the darkness with more lanterns and yet another table. Soon light bathed the entire area, and Carlos could see the food in the wooden boats the men carried, those two that had met them earlier in shorts only, but now wore fabric smocks that hung down below their knees, brushing at their legs. They still wore their earrings and the blond one wore a beaded bracelet, and Carlos thought he could see a hint of color on their cheeks and noses, and he saw that Larry was watching them as well. They set the bowls down on the tables, then turned and walked back into the darkness at the lights’ periphery, only to appear again, carrying pitchers and baskets piled high with tortillas and a kind of cakey bread.

The women held dishes then and wooden utensils, and they all watched as the tables were set for dinner and mugs were placed to the right of large pottery plates. Then Alma raised his hand again in that now familiar gesture, and the old men shuffled toward the tables, speaking softly, negotiating a proper seating, and Carlos and his father and Ramona followed after. Gino joined them, and so did Frank, and John and Larry sat with Alma at the other table, which was slightly smaller and edged out into the darkness a little where the lantern light failed. Then the wooden boats were lifted by the two men and the women and were brought to their sides and offered up so they could serve themselves.

The food was similar to the stew Alma had served on the trail, but thicker and fresher, and they could smell sweet spices in the steam that rose above their full plates. The drink was water only, laced with mint, but spring water and delicious, and they lifted their mugs to toast each other and dipped tortillas and hunks of bread in the juices. The napkins were made from pieces of old clothing, large squares that had been cut and stitched by hand, and they used them sparingly to dab the brown juice away from their lips and chins, and their utensils clicked against their plates with dull sounds, wood against ceramic, and there was little talk, but only light laughter and a few whispered comments as they ate.

When they were finished and their plates had been cleared away, the two men produced tobacco in a small wooden bowl and clay pipes and the women arrived again with a plate of candy balls with colorful veins running through them, some pasty substance, sweet, but with a tang that bit lightly at the tips of their tongues.

Carlos could see beyond the other table now to where the legs of a row of straight-back chairs poked out of the darkness and into candlelight. There were five of them, and in four he could see the shadow figures of those who had served them. They must have sat there, attentively, all the while the company had eaten, then brought the tobacco and the pipes and candy and then retired there again. They sat there now, as pipes were lit and the rich scent of smoke drifted away over the tables, and he could see the crossed legs of the men, the women’s dark hands in their laps.

The talk was quiet and subdued among them. Frank was at his side. He’d leaned back in his chair, moving out of elements of conversation, but for the whispered wonder talk of the here and now, he had no real part in. Ramona leaned against Manuel, and both were turned slightly, their heads in profile, looking down at Gino, his elbows on the table, who was telling them something Carlos couldn’t quite hear. Just a few words drifted across the table, borne on some insistence: smoke, hydrotherapy, skin. Frank’s hands were on his ample stomach, the pipe in his teeth. He was looking up to where the stars might be, but when Carlos glanced above he could see nothing in the darkness, and he wondered, just briefly, where his mind might be. He could hear Larry’s voice from the other table, something about flowers and air, and when he looked there he saw that John had pushed his wheelchair back a little from the table’s edge and had turned it. He’d given up on the pipe and had lit a cigarette, and he was watching Larry’s hands as they moved in tight, delicate gestures, forming things he was speaking of.

The cigarette stood in John’s throat, a glow at its tip expanding as he puffed and smoke rose to his face, then drifted away behind him. Even Alma was watching, intent on Larry’s hands also, some possibility of understanding there, and beyond the three of them and the larger, ragged circle of the torch and candlelight were only the chairs and shadow figures of their hosts, though a faint glow was seeping down over them now, and when Carlos looked above them and toward the place of the glass house in the distant darkness, he saw the full moon had risen and was clear of any earthly structures, though low at night’s horizon, an unnatural glow in the sky behind it, almost artificial. Clouds drifted across its face, or maybe it was ground mist, expelled in the earth’s cooling in sun’s absence. But it wasn’t cool, just a mild cleansing breeze flickering the candles in soft warm air, carrying pine scent and the sweetness of roses.

He looked down again and saw his father, older now, but the same gringo face, though absent of that desperation he remembered. It had gotten lost in age lines and a sagging of skin at his neck, been replaced with something Carlos thought might well be character, though he couldn’t be sure yet of that. Then he was thinking of his mother, really no more than a shadow presence, possibly constructed only from imagined images and through a filter of dead rage he had put aside long ago. He tried to find a way to hate his father once again, but he couldn’t accomplish that, and he could find no proper posture either that could bring him to forgiveness. There seemed nothing much to forgive. It seemed only a story.

And he was thinking these things, then was looking at Frank, his white shirt like a broad sail over his chest, who was thinking his own private thoughts, and when he turned slightly, he could see the cigarette glowing in John’s throat and the way the bones of his face came back into hard distinction under his straw derby and bushy brows, his scar a routed groove, as the smoky veil drifted away after each puff, then clouded that skull again with the next. Then he looked beyond him toward the edge of darkness where the chairs sat in the square’s hard earth. All four were still there, the women and the two men, and beside them, in the chair that had been empty, was now a figure, slightly smaller than the others, but not much different in clothing and stolid demeanor, another woman he thought, then was sure of it when she leaned forward a little and her face came into the candlelight. Gino had pulled his chair up closer and was intent on something, and Ramona and Manuel had leaned toward him and were listening. Carlos thought to reach out and touch Frank on the arm, but he couldn’t bring himself to interrupt his reverie. He looked over at the other table and saw Larry’s hands, both John and Alma watching them, and beyond them he saw the woman rise from her chair.