Guillermo Rosales - Leapfrog and Other Stories

“I don’t know!” you yelled at last. “Don’t ask me!”

“Fucking kid,” Papa Lorenzo grumbled, tired of beating him. “Prison fodder.”

And he stayed like that for a while, looking at Agar bitterly, but then later it seemed as if he were remembering something similar, from many years before. And he looked at Agar again, surprised.

And he smelled himself under his arms. And he slowly went back to his newspaper, scratching the back of his head.

At Nine, You’ll Be Fine

The sun was beating down hard.

The mare’s skin was stretched under the rays. Tin Marbán commented on it, looking at her: “She can’t complain. She has a well-attended wake.”

Figure out this riddle: it’s not a cow, but it gives milk. It’s not a submarine but it’s down below. It’s not a communist, but it leans to the left. And it’s brave because it lives among pricks.

Who is it?

Laughter.

Everyone knew who it was. The joke was old.

“Well, dudes,” Liborio said. “I’m going to make an announcement: I’ve been letting out the sweet stuff since last Saturday. I, Liborio!”

In chorus: Prove it! Prove it! It’s so easy to talk the talk.

Liborio hushed the voices with his hands.

“Take a look at Mandrake the Magician,” he said. “Nothing there and suddenly. plop!”

And he took out his penis.

Agar looked at it, and was relieved to confirm that it was more or less like his.

“Hit it hard, dude!” The chorus said. “Henry will entertain you by reading something.”

“Chased to her Bed ,” Bones said, offering up a small, wrinkled book. “One shot!” he assured. “The dude’s name is Quasimodo. And his instrument comes down to his knees.”

Laughter.

Liborio rolled his eyes and lay down on the grass.

When there was silence, Henry started reading.

“ In the town of Quivicán, where sin flourished, Quasimodo Pomarrosa was a women’s masseuse. How many buttocks had passed through his hands! How many sighs of pleasure! How many lives.! ”

Liborio stopped rubbing himself and Henry stopped reading.

“What’s wrong, dude?” the chorus said.

“Dudes.,” Liborio confessed, annoyed. “I don’t want you to see my thing. That’s what’s wrong.”

The West Side Boys let out a sigh of disappointment.

“It’s better if you leave me alone.” Liborio proposed. “I’ll let you know right away.”

So they left Liborio masturbating alone amid the pines and went back to the House of Broken Windows. To sit in a circle on the grass. In the middle of the rosemary. Under the sun’s rays.

“Bones is giving it to Tubby.” Kiko Palacios commented.

“How’s that?” Speedy wanted to know.

“Easy!” Bones said. And then he explained, “You wait until the mother is sleeping. Around two. Then you go and, as if you didn’t care, you say, Tubby, would you change two hooks for me? That’s the password. He made it up himself.”

“Two hooks.,” Speedy murmured.

“Two. And then, you end up getting it on with him easy.”

Agar knew Tubby. He was the son of a family of silent Spaniards who walked around in espadrilles. He had a nine-year-old sister who spent her days sucking lollipops: Little Lulu.

He remembered the day that Tin Marbán came by telling one of his stories. He said he had found Tubby playing with dolls at the Cobas’ house. But he said he had long suspected as much, because he could smell it.

“I have a nose for fairies,” he explained.

So they all went to Tubby’s house that afternoon. And his mother came out to welcome them and said, surprised: “Oh. but today isn’t his birthday!”

She seemed happy about the sudden friendship between the West Side Boys and her son.

“I didn’t know Tubby had so many friends,” she commented, smiling.

“We’ve always loved him!” Bones said, hiding a lightning conductor in his hands behind his back.

Fine. Tubby had gone out. Mrs. Cobas lent out her garage and the West Side Boys pretended to play at being a music band.

“Noise,” Bones directed them. “Lots of noise, dudes. ”

Fine. After they drew sticks the ones who were lucky went in. Agar was happy enough to watch Tubby’s white buttocks and to be making a ruckus to throw off Mrs. Cobas.

Fine. Fat Tubby knocked on Little Lulu’s door. The West Side Boys knocked louder on some cardboard boxes.

“What do you want me for?” Lulu wanted to know, once in the circle.

“You know why,” Tubby said. “Let’s go.”

“It’s done.,” Bones said afterwards. “When she started to cry it was already over.”

Laughter.

From the pines, they heard Liborio’s voice.

“Hey dudes. you can come.” He was smug.

The West Side Boys went one by one to confirm the news.

“But, you can barely see it,” Agar complained.

“Well, old man, I’m not a factory. ”

Laughter.

“So what did you feel, dude?” Agar asked. He knew he was giving himself away, making his curiosity known. Tin Marbán had once come around saying he felt a great tickle, and Agar wanted to trick them, saying he had felt that. But the West Side Boys’ chorus was implacable again: “Prove it! Prove it!”

And he couldn’t prove what couldn’t be proven.

“A huge tickling feeling, man,” Liborio said, buttoning his fly. “And then you’re just a ragdoll. All loose, like this. ”

And he fell down on the grass dramatically.

“The first time, I passed out for an hour,” Tin Marbán said, with a certain air of superiority. “It really hit me hard. Although in any event, I was already a man,” he added, putting a hand on Liborio’s shoulder.

The West Side Boys smiled, satisfied. They patted Liborio’s wet back and yelled and cheered into the air, howling wildly. Agar envied them deeply.

The sun beat down on his skull and he wiped the sweat away from his brow with his hand.

Amid the ruckus, Kiko Ribs had the idea of hunting spiders and making them fight each other. They immediately looked for lizards. Alex hunted one down and then tied it to a spinning top. Then he looked for a hole in the earth and put the animal in it with a pine stick. Agar seconded it with a stake, that he would have to bury at the exactly right moment to cut off the spider’s retreat. It was like fishing in the earth.

The spider bit, and Alex expertly started to bring it in. At the designated moment, Agar fit in the stake and the spider flowered amid the dry earth.

“Grab it!” Bones said. “Dare to grab it, come on. ”

Agar looked at it, undecided.

“Like this!” Bones said. He put his finger on its hairy abdomen and grabbed its back legs. “Okay?” And made as if he were going to throw it at the group.

The day was very clear. The grass was extraordinarily green and the spiders were intensely black on the grass. The West Side Boys were making a coliseum out of paving stones. At last, they threw the spiders inside.

The two beasts tried to escape from the stone circle, but it was useless. Bones put them back in the middle just when they’d almost made it out.

“Fight, bitches,” Bones said.

“I think it’s a male and a female,” Kiko Ribs pointed out.

“They should fuck then!” Bones decreed.

They all laughed.

The small spider began attacking and soon the two were in a furious embrace. The West Side Boys screamed loudly trying to cheer on the scrawniest one. Agar wanted the little one to win. After all, he felt like a sort of small spider in the middle of another grand coliseum surrounded by water on all sides.

“Bite!” Agar yelled in solidarity.

Just then Hubert’s wife showed up, making her way through the rosemary. Apparently, she happened to be going by Hunchback Alley and the screams got her attention. She made a gesture of disgust and, noticing the mare, covered her nose.