Toby Olson: Tampico

Alma stood at the tripod, waiting, long hair glistening in the sinking sun, the black hood hanging, graceful as a veil on a mannequin, ready to be lifted up and put on, and when I looked back to the man in the stretcher, I saw the others gathering around him, getting ready for the picture.

John stood beside his wheelchair, fingers touching the handle above the leather back, his scar an emblem of that sweet, youthful impetuosity below his bushy brow, and Carlos had climbed into the chair, switching generations. He’d tilted his fedora back so that his broad forehead was a stone slab in the sun, and Kelly stood to the other side of him, hand on his shoulder in certain possessiveness, looking down at his profile, face expressive in the grin of a lover who has found a good cowboy or politician. The man in the stretcher was flanked on the other side by Frank in his white shirt, his bulldog face fixed in formal expression reminiscent of a general standing for a portrait to be hung in some official place, and Erica stood at his elbow, the light frosting her blond hair and casting shadows that looked like heavy makeup into her angular features. It was as if she were posing in a parody of her former self, that beleaguered woman dragged by the hair to a toilet, and her broad smile was making a proper joke out of it.

Gino was beside her, at the tableau’s perimeter, shorter even than she was, but taller in the broad sombrero he’d donned for this occasion, a miniature revolutionary in a cartoon etching of Zapata’s army, and I saw the V shape of Ramona’s fingers above his hat’s crown for a moment, then saw her nudge into Manuel beside her, laughing and shaking her loose hair. Then her fingers were gone, and she had settled in against her husband, behind her father, and was looking out at the camera smiling, one in a satisfied family at the end of reunion, waiting for the commemorative moment. Carolyn, in her little white hat, stood behind Carlos in the wheelchair, the nun beside her, and beside the nun was Larry in his African skullcap, and I thought he was looking over at me and not at the camera. The three were those maskers once again, this time the resurrected after the magic pills, ready for a curtain call. Then there was Arthur, in his dark chauffeur’s uniform, his look hid under his hat brim, standing at the stretcher’s head, the skull face of the citizen who had saved the Manor below the shadow of his chin.

Still, the man’s eyes were closed, that skull shadowless and without particular expression, and I knew his was the eventual face of all of us approaching our final repose, and I thought of the Mexican etchings and engraved prints Carlos had displayed for me on my coffee table close to a year ago.

The sun disappeared behind the Manor completely, just as Alma crawled under the black hood. He raised the metal T holding the explosive up above the camera at arm’s end. Then he said something, in Spanish or another language, that I didn’t understand, though the others did.

They moved in their bodies for a moment, adjusting their bones under their skins. Then they stood perfectly still in the picture that was the picture before it was taken. The last rays of the sun faded from their attentive faces, shadows falling in complex patterns among their gestures and expressions, and I could read parodies of stories and engagements in their postures, the way they touched and turned toward each other. Only Arthur, the chauffeur, stood alone and uninvolved. Then I saw the eyes in the skull face opening below his chin, the last remnants of lips pulled back from the white teeth, and I wasn’t sure whether this was the man still alive or the calavera awakening for the dance.

I saw the yellow chihuahua, stretching in the man’s lap, and I thought I saw the bare finger bones of a skeletal hand, stroking her vibrant body as she turned and settled down on her haunches on the soft white sheet and faced the camera. A dull thud of explosive then and a brief white light, and for a moment all their faces were illuminated skulls, eyes empty in dark sockets, but their teeth in those perpetual and wise grins. They had joined the vibrancy of the living to the dead’s parody, as if the photographic image were an etching, or an engraving, and was fashioned in homage to the great Mexican artist José Guadalupe Posada.