Guillermo Rosales - Leapfrog and Other Stories

He started to walk, pressing his butt together, holding in his breath.

“The delivery boy, look at him. there he goes!”

“Dude, bring me a packet of crackers. would you?”

“Dude, in my house they’re looking for a head maid. The pay is good and includes lots of food.”

Laughter.

“Dude, is it true that in your house they tie you to the table leg?”

Something got stuck in his throat. Agar felt his penis shriveling.

“Hey, dude. we’re going to swim in the Cantarranas River! Are you coming?”

Laughter.

Agar turned around. He was angry, but he tried to appear calm.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay. I’ll come right back. And then my hands will be empty.”

“Oh what a good-looking dude! With his little bottle and everything.”

Laughter.

“I bet I can break the bottle!”

“I bet you can’t!”

“I bet I can!”

“Bet you can, go, go!”

“I bet you’re not man enough!”

A chorus of angry voices. A drop of sweat slid down Agar’s forehead and hung from his nose. Silence.

“Dude, what you said. ”

“Men kill each other over lesser things, dude.”

“Holy shiiiiiiit!”

Danger. He knew he had said something serious. Irreparable. He remembered Papa Lorenzo’s order that day he came back with his face smashed up and his eye busted by a punch.

An eye for an eye .

Bones walked over to him. Agar’s legs were shaking and he thought of breaking into a run. But he immediately understood that then he would never look the West Side Boys in the face. If he contradicted himself, he would also have to withstand their mocking laughter forever. Mocking laughter that he would hear at night, wrapped in a sheet in a pool of sweat.

If a fight started, he was going to lose. He knew he was going to lose.

“What did you say, dude?” Bones wanted to know, walking toward him. He spoke calmly, like one who is used to danger.

“I didn’t. I didn’t say,” Agar stuttered.

“So now it turns out he didn’t say!” Bones exclaimed. “Come here, dude. Have you ever gotten a good correction?”

And he grabbed the collar of Agar’s shirt.

Just then, Mama Pepita’s voice could be heard from the door.

“What are you doing?” she yelled. “I told you to go straight there!”

“Leave him alone, Bones!” the chorus said. “Leave the boy alone. ”

“I’ll get you when you come back, boy,” Bones warned. “Get ready.”

“Let go of me.”

Mama Pepita’s voice had saved him. He straightened out his collar.

“You think you’re so hot, don’t you? Because I’m going on an errand, right?”

He continued on his way. The sun was beating down hard on his head. From the park bench, the West Side Boys yelled at him again: “Cinderella!”

“Sons of bitches!” He muttered, swallowing the snot and salty water running down his cheeks.

Hubert’s wife yelled at him from the gate again: “Lift up your head! Do you want to be a hunchback when you’re older?”

Go to hell! He yelled in his head. He kicked a stone hard.

Then he remembered John Wayne’s movie “The Quiet Man.” Everyone mocked him because he was a quiet man. They mocked him. They mocked him. They mocked him. Until one day, John Wayne punched someone, just one punch, and he killed a guy. He had a forbidding right-hand.

Agar got to the corner store and leaned his elbows on the counter.

“A bottle of oil,” he said.

“Look who’s here!” The shopkeeper exclaimed. “The pyromaniac. Is it true that you burned down the Páez house?”

“Sensat,” he said. “Sensat oil.”

The shopkeeper went to get his order. Agar looked at him hatefully.

I hate everyone , he thought. I’m against the Indians, but also against the Cowboys. I don’t have a mother or a father. An Indian named Pocahontas found me in the woods and raised me.

“That’s seventeen cents,” the shopkeeper said.

He paid. He took the bottle of Sensat oil.

For all your meals, Sensat .

But there was also Oliveite oil.

And he remembered the slogan: Oliveite tastes so great .

Tongolele announced it. A television star. With glorious tits.

“My God, those tits! Those tits!”

And they shook.

“They’re not real,” Mama Pepita maintained during the shows.

Papa Lorenzo looked at her out of the corner of his eye and said: “Ha!”

There were three cents left. He thought he should buy cigarettes.

“I know you smoke,” Grandma Hazel would say. “I know you smoke with those little devils in the park. And there’s more I know. I know sometimes you steal them from the Mini Max.”

“Whoever doesn’t smoke is a fag,” Agar said.

“You wretch! You’re going to bring your father down even lower than he is. You’re going to send away your paralytic mother with a coronary thrombosis. You’re going to bury us all. And you’re going to end up a gangster. Gangster. Gangster.”

I like the idea. I’d like to be someone like Splinter Weevil. The meanest man in the world. Everyone beat him as a child. He grew up amid blows. And rolling and rolling, he became a man. And one day he was picking apples in his father’s orchard.

“Pick them up!”

“I can’t. I don’t feel well. Ohhh. ”

“Pick them up!”

“I can’t. I don’t feel well. Ohhh. ”

“Pick them up!”

And that was the end. Splinter sunk his hoe into his father’s chest and then kicked his mother in the head, and stole the money that was under a bush. Then he got his ticket to Chicago.

Then came what happened with the bank. There was nothing easier for him than a good hold-up! First you disconnect the wires and then you calmly ask them to put everything in the sacks.

“The pigs!” Bones suddenly shouted. “We’re dead!”

Splinter looked at him in disgust. He slowly put out his cigarette with his foot.

“Are you nervous, Bones? You’re a chicken. I don’t want pansies in my group, Bones — ”

“No, Splinter, no!”

“I’m sorry, Bones. ”

KAPOW! KAPOW! KAPOW! KAPOW!

The sun was beating hard. Bones was dead. The pigs evaporated into thin air.

With the change he bought three Royal cigarettes. He would save them for later, when he was in the park enjoying the scent of the rosemary, looking at the clouds and imagining new ways of revenge.

On the way back he decided on a shortcut through Hunchback Alley to avoid the circle of West Side Boys.

At Six, Breadsticks

“Hey, dude!”

The voice of evil called to him as he passed through Hunchback Alley.

“Over here!” The voice said.

He thought it must be one of those closed circles that the West Side Boys made to read pornographic books.

“What’s up, dudes?”

He saw familiar faces, but they were a little worked up.

“Dude, we have to show you something,” Henry said.

Agar saw some of them smoking and lit up one of his cigarettes. He inhaled the smoke until he felt his lungs fill up. Seeing them smoke, some of them even smoking three cigarettes at a time, reminded him of Mama Pepita’s indignant lamentations.

“It’s not worth your time,” Papa Lorenzo would say. “They are the ‘Very Embodiment of Bad Ideas.’ They all do it to go against the grain. But ahhhh,” he warned, narrowing his eyes, “If I catch you playing that game, forget it. I’ll kill you right then.”

“Let’s go over there,” Agar said, letting the smoke go out through his nose. “I hope it’s not something moronic.”

“Come on, dude,” Henry said, putting aside all bad intentions. “Don’t you smell that, dude?”