Luis Alberto Urrea - The Water Museum

Girls. We had discovered girls. And a group of these recently discovered creatures was going from the preparatory school’s sweltering rooms to the river for a bath. They had their spot, a shielded kink in the river that had a natural screen of trees and reeds and a sloping sandy bank. Jaime and I knew that we were about to make one of the greatest discoveries in recent history, and we’d be able to report to the men what we’d found out.

“Wait until they hear about this,” I whispered.

“It’s a new world,” he replied.

We inserted ourselves in the reeds, ignoring the mud soaking our knees. We could barely contain our longing and emotion. When the girls began to strip off their uniforms, revealing slips, then bright white bras and big cotton underpants, I thought I would sob.

“I can’t,” I said, “believe it.”

“History in the making,” he said.

The bras came off. They dove in.

“Before us is everything we’ve always wanted,” I said.

“Life itself,” he said.

“Oh you beautiful girls!” I whispered.

“Oh you girls of my dreams!” said he, and Mr. Mendoza’s claws sank into our shoulders.

We were dragged a hundred meters upriver, all the while being berated without mercy. “Tartars!” he shouted. “Peeping Toms! Flesh chasers! Disrespecters of privacy!”

I would have laughed if I had not seen Mr. Mendoza’s awful paintbrush standing in a freshly opened can of black paint.

“Uh-oh,” I said.

“We’re finished,” said Jaime.

Mr. Mendoza threw me down and sat on me. The man was skinny. He was bony, yet I could not buck him off. I bounced like one of those thunderstruck burros, and he rode me with aplomb.

He attacked Jaime’s face, painting:

I AM FILTHY

He then peeled off Jaime’s shirt and adorned his chest with:

I LIVE FOR SEX AND THRILLS

He then yanked off Jaime’s pants and decorated his rump with:

KICK ME HARD

I was next.

On my face:

PERVERT

On my chest:

MOTHER IS BLUE WITH SHAME

On my rump:

THIS IS WHAT I AM

I suddenly realized that the girls from the river had quickly dressed themselves and were giggling at me as I jumped around naked. It was unfair! Then, to make matters worse, Mr. Mendoza proceeded to chase us through town while people laughed at us and called out embarrassing weights and measures.

We plotted our revenge for two weeks, then forgot about it. In fact, Jaime’s I LIVE FOR SEX made him somewhat of a celebrity, that phrase being very macho. He was often known after that day as “El Sexi.” In fact, years later, he would marry one of the very girls we had been spying on.

There was only one satisfaction for me in the whole sad affair: the utter disappearance of the street of my naked humiliation.

* * *

Years after Bonifacio built his church in Rosario, and after he had died and was safely tucked away in the church walls (until 1958, when he fell out on my uncle Jorge), the mines got established as a going concern. Each vein of silver seemed to lead to another. The whole area was a network of ore-bearing arteries.

Tunnels were dug and forgotten as each vein played out and forked off. Often, miners would break through a wall of rock only to find themselves in an abandoned mineshaft going in the other direction. Sometimes they’d find skeletons. Once they swore they’d encountered a giant spider that caught bats in its vast web. Many of these mine shafts filled with seepage from the river, forming underground lagoons that had fat white frogs in them and an albino alligator that floated in the dark water waiting for helpless miners to stumble and fall in.

Some of these tunnels snaked under the village. At times, with a whump, sections of Rosario vanished. Happily, I watched the street Mr. Mendoza had chased me down drop from sight after a quick shudder. A store and six houses dropped as one. I was particularly glad to see Antonia Barrego vanish with a startled look while sitting on her porch yelling insults at me. Her voice rose to a horrified screech that echoed loudly underground as she went down. When she was finally pulled out (by block and tackle, the sow), she was all wrinkled from the smelly water, and her hair was alive with squirming white pollywogs.

After the street vanished, my view of El Yauco was clear and unobstructed. El Yauco is the mountain that stands across the Baluarte from Rosario. The top of it looks like the profile of John F. Kennedy in repose. The only flaw in this geographic wonder is that the nose is upside down.

Once, when Jaime and I had painfully struggled to the summit to investigate the nose, we found this message:

MOTHER NATURE HAS NO RESPECT FOR YANQUI

PRESIDENTS EITHER!

Nothing, though, could prepare us for the furor over his next series of messages. It began with a piglet running through town one Sunday. On its flanks, in perfect cursive script:

MENDOZA GOES TO HEAVEN ON TUESDAY

On a fence:

MENDOZA ESCAPES THIS HELLHOLE

On my father’s car:

I’VE HAD ENOUGH!

I’M LEAVING!

Rumors flew. For some reason, the arguments were fierce, impassioned, and there were any number of fistfights over Mr. Mendoza’s latest. Was he going to kill himself? Was he dying? Was he to be abducted by flying saucers or carried aloft by angels? The people who were convinced the old MENDOZA NEVER SLEPT HERE was a strictly philosophical text were convinced he was indeed going to commit suicide. There was a secret that showed in their faces — they were actually hoping he’d kill himself, just to maintain the status quo, just to ensure that everyone died.

Rumors about Mendoza’s health washed through town: cancer, madness (well, we all knew that), demonic possession, the evil eye, a black magic curse that included love potions and slow-acting poisons, and the dreaded syphilis. Some of the local smart alecks called the whorehouse “Heaven,” but Mr. Mendoza was far too moral to even go in there, much less advertise it all over town.

I worked in Crispin’s bar, taking orders and carrying trays of beer bottles. I heard every theory. The syphilis one really appealed to me because young fellows always love the gruesome and lurid, and it sounded so nasty, having to do, as it did, with the nether regions.

“Syphilis makes it fall off,” Jaime explained.

I didn’t want him to know I wasn’t sure which “it” fell off, if it was it, or some other “it.” To be macho, you must already know everything, know it so well that you’re already bored by the knowledge.

“Yes,” I said, wearily, “it certainly does.”

“Right off,” he marveled.

“To the street,” I concluded.

Well, that very night, that night of the Heavenly Theories, Mr. Mendoza came into the bar. The men stopped all their arguing and immediately taunted him: “Oh look! Saint Mendoza is here!” “Hey, Mendoza! Seen any angels lately?” He only smirked. Then, squaring his slender shoulders, he walked, erect, to the bar.

“Boy,” he said to me. “A beer.”

As I handed him the bottle, I wanted to confess: I will change my ways! I will never peep at girls again!

He turned and faced the crowd and gulped down his beer, emptying the entire bottle without coming up for air. When the last of the foam ran from its mouth, he slammed the bottle on the counter and said, “Ah!” Then he belched. Loudly. This greatly offended the gathered men, and they admonished him. But he ignored them, crying out, “What do you think of that! Eh? The belch is the cry of the water buffalo, the hog. I give it to you because it is the only philosophy you can understand!”