Guillermo Rosales - Leapfrog and Other Stories

He took two sticks and banged them forcefully.

“Come?” he said then.

While he beat the “ quimbumbia ” stick, Agar remembered Papa Lorenzo saying about Hubert: “Hubert!” Papa Lorenzo would say. “He’s just like Hubert, the fat guy from the comics! The same idiot face. Always taking his dogs out for a piss.”

“Leave the man alone!” Mama Pepita would yell.

Hubert then said, “I brought you something.” And taking a ball out of his pocket dramatically, he dropped it in the middle of the circle of kids and said, smiling: “Try to play peacefully, huh?” And, after winking first at them mischievously, he turned around.

The West Side Boys watched him go in silence. When he was far away, someone threw the ball up in the air. Agar understood that now dodgeball would begin. Throwing the ball hard as anything against anyone.

He tried to get away from the group, but it was already too late.

They were throwing it against him. Bones didn’t throw it against Alex and Alex didn’t throw it against Kiko Ribs either, and Kiko Ribs didn’t throw it against Claudio, either.

They were throwing it at him. He was the chosen target.

“An eye for an eye,” Papa Lorenzo had said that day Agar came home full of bite marks and pine-needle scratches.

“He’s skittish.,” Mama Pepita said, sadly, “like a horse.”

Later, Agar knew all too well, time would pass and the wounds would turn into hardened scabs, and he would pull them off, curious to see his own blood run.

“Well,” Bones announced. “You’ve got three strikes. We’re going to execute you now.”

For the execution, they chose a chopped-off palm near the House of the Broken Windows. Now he had to put his arms around it and expose his back to the ball.

“And go!”

The ball missed. He heard Kiko Ribs regret his bad aim and give Bones a turn.

“Strike!” Bones said. And the ball hit his kidneys and he felt his skin burning under his shirt.

“Don’t start crying, dude.,” Bones warned him. “That was just practice. That’s all.”

“Take a good shot,” Kiko Ribs said. “The Núñez girls are coming down the alley. Make it good, Bones!”

This time, the ball hit the back of his neck. The girls went by the alley and saw him hugging the palm tree. With his face hidden he heard them laughing.

“Why don’t you talk to those girls?” Papa Lorenzo would say, pointing far away. “Look at their asses, kid. Look how they’re moving it. They like to show it off. At your age, I was devouring them all.”

So Papa Lorenzo would tell about his Don Juan life in the village of Candelaria, where he had had a catalog of girlfriends.

“ One day you spoke to them ,” The Voice of Memory said. “ Don’t you remember anymore? ”

“Yes. one day I went over to them.”

“ Of course! ” The Voice said. “ You did well. You took out a bottle of cognac and discovered the very taste of life. ”

Not just anyone can take a drink of cognac! Not just anyone can bear feeling their insides moving around! Not just anyone can keep from vomiting! But you withstood it. And your head was spinning. And you were able to talk to one of them.

“One, yes. Yes, that’s right. One is the one that matters to me. Just one and no other. ”

But Papa Lorenzo was waiting for you that night with his arms crossed.

“Drunk again?” He said undramatically. And he beat you silently, drily, like never before.

“That’s not how you do it!” Mama Pepita protested from the kitchen.

“And how do you do it? Tell me! Do you know?”

He left and came back later with the Court of Patriots.

“Take a good look at them!” He said. “I want you to solemnly swear that this is the last time in your life that. ”

The patriots stared at him indignantly.

“Swear!”

The ball beat down on his back again.

Fine.

He wasn’t crying. The girls had passed and were now far away. He felt the drops of sweat running down his thighs like lizards. Then he heard Papa Lorenzo’s whistling. Papa Lorenzo’s unmistakable whistling coming from Hunchback Alley.

“I’m dead meat,” Agar thought.

He tried to run.

“You can’t leave now, dude.” Bones said, blocking his way. “You’re paying your dues.”

The West Side Boys had already made a circle around him. There was a circle for everything. For the spiders. To tell jokes. To take out their members and rub them madly waiting for a finale that never came. To smoke, to play, to piss, to fight.

“Stay still, dude,” Bones said. Agar felt a swift kick and fell to the ground.

Papa Lorenzo whistled again from the Alley while Agar cried on the ground, with a powerful knee on his chest and a tough hand around his neck.

“Look at him crying!” Kiko Ribs said in a fag’s voice.

“Leave him alone, dude. here comes his father!”

Agar stood up, wiping his tears quickly away. Papa Lorenzo crossed the field of rosemary and went up to him.

“Who hit you?” he wanted to know.

“It was a game.”

“Who was it?”

Agar looked at Bones without answering. The kid bent over, pretending he had a pain in his ribs.

“Hit him!” Papa Lorenzo ordered drily.

“We were playing. ”

“Hit him!” Papa Lorenzo insisted. “I want you to fight him, you son of a bitch! Hit him!”

So they started hitting each other. Lightly at first. Hard and silently afterwards. Agar felt the rain of blows fall on his face and clenched his jaw without saying a word. He swept blindly at Bones’ face, and sometimes felt that his blows managed to do damage. He cried silently. Without moving an inch of his face. When it was over, after insulting the West Side Boys, Papa Lorenzo grabbed him by the scruff of his neck.

“Go to bed, you son of a bitch!” Papa Lorenzo said once they were inside their house.

In his room, Agar heard Mama Pepita shuffling around the pots and pans in the kitchen, and from there came the unmistakable smell of chickpeas.

At Ten, Start Again

“ ‘We’re in the West, son,’ Old Jerome said. ‘And what you see here is none other than Tombstone: “The Two Who Refused to Die.” ’ ”

“You’ll stay in your room,” Mama Pepita said. Then she closed the door and left him alone in there.

Old Jerome started running to town. Agar turned over on the bed and thought that just about now, the West Side Boys would be running through Gómez Pass, hunting spiders or exploring the bushes.

His eyes scanned the room and he started to play with the gaps in the walls. Because, with the gaps in the wall and a little imagination, time flew.

The gap in the corner turned into Sergeant York, with his helmet and backpack. The peeling paint on the bathroom wall made up a legion of soldiers clearing the decks.

He would have liked to go to war. He would have liked to prove himself against bullets. He felt that only by turning into a hero could he free himself of his past. So sometimes he was Sergeant York, and other times he was Splinter Weevil, The Meanest Man in the World, and other times, he reappeared in Veracruz killing Indians with a revolver that never ran out of bullets. But that afternoon he was in Tombstone, Arizona.

He closed his eyes.

He tied his horse at the town’s gate and spit on the dry earth. He would walk.

He had waited for this moment for thirty years. He adjusted his guns and started walking slowly. Reverend Cunnings was the first to see him. He looked up at the heavens and rushed to shut the church doors. The church bells rang quickly and everyone in town ran to their windows.

“It’s Lorenz’s son!” They yelled from the Saloon. He heard the poker tables moving around loudly and the pianola waltz languish. He remained there, with his legs spread wide, standing in the center of the main street. Time seemed to stop in Tombstone. Tumbleweeds rolled by on the empty street.