Guillermo Rosales - Leapfrog and Other Stories

“ Long live communism, long live friendship, and if you have two dollars, give me one .”

And she laughed, surrounded by the smoke from her cauldrons. Like that witch in “Macabre Stories” who flew toward the belfry on a broomstick.

Communist! Agar thought. I don’t want my father to be a communist. “The Cobra King” is also a communist and flies in a communist-propelled airplane, and has his base on Red Island, from where he attacks the Black Falcons. Chuck, Olaf, Endrickson, Stanislaus, André the Frenchman, and Chop Chop the Chinaman.

Holy moly! I’d liked to be in that group. And I’d pass through the circle of West Side Boys with the falcon engraved on my shirt. And Papa Lorenzo would come, without whistling at me, and would ask me in all humility to come back home.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“It will weigh on you,” Papa Lorenzo said.

And later he returned in “The Infernal Circle” and tried to pass over us.

“Die, capitalist pigs!” Papa Lorenzo would shout, and our bullets would crash against the tracks of his wheels.

He opened his eyes. Sergeant York appeared on the bathroom wall again. He remembered that he had also fought in the “War Fronts.” Like that day on which the two of them were wrapped up in combat smoke.

“Giddy up, kid!” Sergeant York said. He was sweating copiously and crushing a piece of paper in his hand.

“Once and for all, kid — jump! It’s the Chinese people who are asking for your help against the Reds.”

Agar got ready to jump.

“Wait!” York said. He held onto his shoulder, holding something out to him.

“Take this, kid. It’s a five dollar bill. It’s a little wrinkled, but still good. When this hell is over, son. have yourself a tall beer and toast to the health of your old Sergeant York. Will you do it?”

“York!” Agar yelled.”Sergeant York!”

York had died.

Agar looked at the battlefield and understood that the battle was being decided there, at that exact moment. And, without thinking about it, he threw himself furiously on the enemy. On the red Chinese and the yellow men from Korea.

No. He definitely did not like Communists.

The falcon, Sergeant York and all the others were handsome, and the Communists are bald and toothless.

“All of them with their asses patched up,” Grandma Hazel would say. “All of them smelling like a bike shop.”

At Fifteen, I’ll Get Your Spleen

The afternoon went by. In his room, he felt the heavy air, weighed down with drowsiness.

The afternoon went by and he had spent almost the whole day punished. Summer vacation was going by and he had spent almost his entire vacation being punished.

He would have given his right hand to go outside. He would have placed it on Odin’s pyre and would have said to the God of the Vikings:

“Burn! But let me out.”

He peeked through the door jamb. On the sofa, Papa Lorenzo was writing a long speech in the air. He thought he could ask for his permission. Although later he thought that if he asked him, Papa Lorenzo could turn his back to him and pretend he was asleep. Or he may just say:

“Go ask your mother!”

And then he’d go to Mama Pepita and she’d say:

“Me? Go ask your father!”

And so he would go in circles from one side to the other until he burst out crying in rage.

Nonetheless, his Interior Voice suggested this time:

“ Ask him for it. what do you have to lose? ”

“I could end up with a mule kick,” he reconsidered.

So he decided to appeal to Imaginary Fate and conceived of the formula to make a decision once and for all.

Papa Lorenzo was writing in the air with his back to him. If he turned around, he would give him what he asked for.

He waited.

He waited.

He waited.

Papa Lorenzo started turning around slowly. Agar’s heart beat quickly.

He reached the sofa. Papa Lorenzo picked the newspaper off the floor and opened it again to the comic pages.

“I’m going to the movies,” Agar stammered.

Papa Lorenzo commented:

“Did Little Orphan Annie die after all?”

“I’m going to the movies. ”

“What’s that?” Papa Lorenzo pretended to listen for the first time.

“I’m going to the movies,” Agar repeated.

“If you have the money, I’m not opposed,” Papa Lorenzo said.

“Papa, everyone is going to the movies today. They’re showing a Red Ryder film.”

“There’s no money,” Papa Lorenzo said without looking up from his newspaper.

Agar knew he was running a risk if he persisted. Nonetheless, he tried again: “Papa. don’t you have seventy cents? That’s all a movie costs.”

Papa Lorenzo looked at him, irritated. Then he turned around on the sofa, showing him his back.

“Don’t go.,” he said from there. “The Siboney Indians never went to the movies, and they were happy.”

Mama Pepita dropped the pots and pans and came out of the kitchen.

“You’re a monster!” She yelled. “Your answer to everything is the Indians. I haven’t worn a new dress for five years, simply because the Indians walked around naked — and they were happy! And for six months I’ve been walking around with this horrible rat’s nest on my head, simply because the Indians didn’t get permanents — and they were happy! Everything goes back to the Indians. But the Indians are kaput!”

She was yelling.

Papa Lorenzo, his face buried in the back of the sofa, pretended he was asleep. In the end, he opened his eyes, feigned a TV commercial smile, and said: “There’s no money.”

Mama Pepita grumbled again and began to circle the sofa, looking for Papa Lorenzo’s eyes to throw his indolence in his face. She finally managed to irritate him. So Papa Lorenzo leapt from the sofa and ran around the room and started to turn everything over shrieking:

“THERE ISN’T ANY!”

And then, he pulled the drawers from the closet, and started to empty the Closet of Souvenirs, screaming:

“THERE ISN’T ANY!” and throwing Bukharin and Kropotkin’s books.

“THERE ISN’T ANY!” he said, throwing Stalin’s photos against the walls.

“THERE ISN’T ANY!” he said, tossing up the old communist newspapers.

“THERE ISN’T ANY. THERE ISN’T ANY. THERE ISN’T ANY. THERE ISN’T ANY!”

And at last exhausted, he fell over the mess of clothing and red books, huffing.

“I’m disgusted,” Papa Lorenzo then said. “My life is a real son of a bitch.”

At Sixteen, Run from that Ox So Lean!

Agar took advantage of the confusion and slipped out to the yard; Papa Lorenzo’s screams could still be heard from inside the house. He lay down at last, behind Mama Pepita’s wash tub. From there, he contemplated an incredibly blue sky with some incredibly white clouds.

I’ll play the cloud game, he thought.

It wasn’t hard for him to find Sergeant York, with his helmet and backpack, firing from the sky.

The cloud, in its turtle-pace path, fell apart and later became an angry Apache. And then it became Tonka: the wild horse. And later it was a spider in a circle of rocks. In the end, it took on the shape of a large rabbit. It was Bugs Bunny, “the Lucky Wabbit.”

“So long, folks!” Bugs Bunny said, lifting a hand made of white smoke. “We’re going to the land of giant carrots. ”

Papa Lorenzo went by too, followed by Agrispina Pérez Pérez and the witch from “Macabre Stories” and the bicephalous man from Finstown.

He caressed his penis. Now he could take it out without any problem. There, at the end of the yard, Mama Pepita would never be able to surprise him and he would be able to put it away before she could see him.