Arcadio (9 page)

So that is how we all went off together in the same direction, Tomasso and Hondo Holloway and me. I was sure there was a posse out ahuntin for Hondo so we kept out an eye.
Jesucristo
always something to keep out an eye for, either for somethin you're ahuntin or for something huntin you, my God what is this life what is this world? You wan hear? But somewhere on the way, in some town, Hondo pointed to a sign that read
GLORIA OX
MEDIUM
GET A
MESSAGE
FROM
THOSE
GONE
BEFORE
YOU
. That would be Sweet Janine I says to Hondo, gone before you. And with some help from you, I says to myself but not so's Hondo could hear. If you could speak to Sweet Janine through Gloria Ox the Medium then you would no longer have to hunt for her sister but could make amends direct to Sweet Janine, I told Hondo. Or through Gloria Ox, said Hondo. Already I see that you have your mind quite a bit on the Medium more than the message, I said to Hondo. I am somewhat acquainted with these Mediums because of esperiences in the past, I was remembering of course Orisana in the Show, under twenty-seven veils. Sometimes they look so pretty with the veils that a customer would seek the message of the Medium and forget, until later, what was the real message that he had come for—of those gone before you,
los muertos
. Until afterwards when
La Médium
had satisfied the customer's lonesomeness and vanished. You mean fucked the customer instead of putting the customer in touch with
los muertos
the deceased? asked Hondo.
Sí
, I says. And rolled him. I am very lonely and have not put it into a woman for some time, Hondo told me. Well I hope the Medium Gloria Ox is not going to look too pretty, you might get the messages mixed up, I said. Well, if the Medium was pretty I would have to think twice, said Hondo to me, because I badly need both messages. Well pay some attention to the veils, the veils can hide an old trout, I says to Hondo. My God and
Jesucristo
you should have seen what was revealed when Orisana lifted some of her twenty-seven veils. What was it? asked Hondo. An old trout—
una trucha vieja
. Well, answered Hondo, in my condition an old trout don't sound too bad. If that's what you want, I told him. An old trout.

Well, Hondo was so
loco
for
noticias
of Sweet Janine—and for some lifting of the veils, too, that he right away showed his Savings and Loan to Gloria Ox or what I believe is that Gloria Ox right away detected it hidden in his groins and Gloria Ox told Hondo that to get the message he would have to leave us and stay alone with her for seven days then maybe seven more; and so we said
adiós
to Hondo and Tomasso cried to lose his old jail friend and how he would miss touching the curl of little hair but I esplained the best I could; but pore little Tomasso cried that he could not
comprende
the ways of men about a woman and I said
cállate muñeco
quieten yourself little doll one day you will. Never mind, I said, as on we wandered, we will meet up again with Hondo Holloway when God and
Jesucristo
—and Gloria Ox—wants to bring us back together again; but that day never come which is what I soon will have to sing you, oh is it all sorrow that I have to sing? All losing and ahunting? No because you will remember that you've heard the joy part of my song, remember? How much joy part would there be in your song,
Señor, Señorita, Oyente
, if you was to sing your song to me? You wan hear.

But oh my God and
Jesucristo
my brother was not ever going to see his old jail friend again my brother was not long for me to keep as I will now begin to sing to you. You wan hear? For on one night of darkest darkness, not one moon above, I woke up and I felt a cold against me and twas Tomasso cold against me, ‘gainst my breast, and did not speak and did not move. And then I run in the night with Tomasso cold to a hospital of a town had a red cross and when they took him from my arms they said who are you who is this child and took him from me. O
Oyente
I fell down on my knees and begged do not take Tomasso from me and cried to God and
Jesucristo
where are you? and O
Oyente
I am cryin now to still remember it do not take away Tomasso oh God heal him
Jesucristo
reach to him Tomasso touch him like you touched all those others that I read in the White Bible
los ciegos y los sordos y los cojos
the blind boy and the deaf boy and the lame and the even dead man that you brought up again, restore Tomasso! But the people took Tomasso and they would not let me in I do not know why. I slept on the doorstep all that night awaiting for the morning and for the people to come give me back Tomasso. And then they come and said who are you do you have any identification and I said I am this boy's half brother our mother was the same her name is Chupa and we have been huntin for her. Where did you find the boy they said and I said at Deliverance Church asingin. What is wrong with him I asked and they said he is dead,
muerto muerto;
and I cried oh my God what from, dead? From a disease the people said and I said what was his disease. And they said hunger.
Hunger
they said: O do not cry
Oyente
oh I hear you cry. I did not know,
Oyente
, that sweet Tomasso was so hungry that he died. I called out to the people he did not have the hunger he sung. But the people closed the door and would not give Tomasso back to me. And I laid all day back of a shed in the bushes and could not lift up my head and could not see I had fallen down blind and could not speak a word I had been struck down
mudo
.

When dark come I got up and knew what God and
Jesucristo
told me to do. I crawled to a window and saw through it under a light the pale brown body of Tomasso fair and beautiful in his blessed brownness that our mother give to him and I cried oh you Chupa
madre madre
where are you now? I stole with the help of God and
Jesucristo
the boy Tomasso's body from the place they had him and run all through the night aholdin him against my breast, aspeakin over and over to cold Tomasso but you was not hungry
no tenías hambre
you was not hungry tell me that you was not hungry. Cause I fed you and I watched you eat and I heard you sing you
sung;
run all night aholding to my breast the pure
Jesucristo cuerpo
body of Jesus Tomasso the pure body that
Jesucristo
lived in I am sure. Maybe it was
Jesucristo
himself come and walked awhile with me, all through Kansas Alabama and Wyoming and then departed from my sight. Maybe twas
Jesucristo
looking like a Mescan-Jewish boy of twelve. Because one time you know that a stranger walked along the road with the two disciples and talked with them and even sat and ate with them and they thought something was different about the stranger and then it dawned on them it was the very Lord Jesus
Jesucristo!
And oh they was so full of joy because they had been blue since
Jesucristo
had been gone. Tis in the
Biblia Blanca
you will find it there. Run all night to Deliverance Church in Norfork Virginia to the Reverence Carl C. Cane and delivered dead Tomasso to Deliverance Choir where first I found him singin and aclappin his brown hands. Oh God and
Jesucristo!
And oh that Choir sung, sung for the dead boy Tomasso come back home and oh they clapped their hands and wailed out and they wept like Jesuses friends wept at the foot of the cross and Deliverance Choir delivered sweet Tomasso up to Virgin's Heaven.

Deliverance Choir wanted me to stay and Reverence C. Carl Cane—just say C.C. says the Reverence, like many people do, then they don't have the problem of which comes first the C. or the Carl. Thank you C.C. I says. I only wish I had known this earlier. Anyways the Reverence C.C. Cane wanted me to stay at Deliverance Church in Norfork Virginia with all of the wonderful Choir and all of the wonderful Choir wanted me to, too. Can Deliverance Choir use a frenchharp I asked them? We could sure find a place for a mouth organ says Reverence C.C. Cane. I have never heard it called that, I says. My grandfather played one, says Reverence C.C. Cane. In the Blue Ridge. Twas strapped around his mouth while he played a fiddle. How would that work? I says. Wouldn't the sawing of his arm knock the frenchharp out of's mouth? This sometimes happened, says the Reverence.

But I went on, waving goodbye to all the wonderful Deliverance Choir of Tomasso that was asinging
I'll see you again one day, baby, O'er the crystal strand. Baby. When we will meet again. Baby. Do not cry for me
. I had delivered Tomasso back to Deliverance Choir and Deliverance Choir had delivered him into Virgin's Heaven. As far as I could go that night I heard their heavenly singin blowing over and around me on the wind, oh twas so sad.

And I wished again that I had never found Tomasso, never come upon him in Deliverance Choir, wished I'd never found him, he might still be live and singin with his blessed family of black brothers and sisters in Deliverance Church under the leadership of Carl C. Cane or was it C. Carl Cane cain't now remember exactly, C. C, that's right, C. C, aclappin his brown hands the way he did, asmilin, my jailboy, my
virgen
singer, my sweet brother, my mother Chupa's own son with a Jewish salesman.

I remember now what he said that when the person told him that he had a mother somewhere said that he run to Mr. and Mrs. Policheck the Bohunks, and asked them. But said that Mr. and Mrs. Sam Policheck would never tell him one thing about his mother and mine. Said he said why is it such a dark secret and said they said it is so dark that even we do not even know anything. Your mother was mum about herself, had sealed her own lips, they said (these are Anglo espressions we do not have any Mescan for them, to seal lips and to keep mum) so said he sealed his own lips too, Tomasso did and never again after he was seven years of age asked about his mother but vowed to one day excape and look for
noticias
of her in the world. So one night with the help of Hondo and Old John through the hole they dug, he run out into the night and was soon found by the Reverence…Carl…C…. Cane and was taken—I
think
the Carl comes first—he was twelve and joyous—into Deliverance Church. Instead of finding my mother, Tomasso said, in his Missoura accent, cain't say the way he said it in Missourian no matter what I say sounds Mescan Texas or out of
La Biblia
from learning to read by it and always reading from it and having its words; instead of finding my mother, Tomasso said, I found Deliverance Church and wonderful Brother C. Carl Cane. He convinced me to give up looking for my mother and to surrender her to Jesus, and to give myself to Deliverance Choir.

First about my life as a jailboy, Tomasso said, twas like a convict life. Mr. and Mrs Policheck seemed to forget that I was not a convict. They seemed to forget the same about each other, for they let each other in and out of the Missoura jail cells with big keys. They had, as Reverence…Carl…C…. Cane said, a prison mentality, Tomasso said. Said Mrs. Nan Policheck was his teacher and school was the jail cell and that when he was astudyin he often would look up through the little jail window and wish he could excape; and then the little window was filled up with Instant Cement so that he would not have daydreams of excaping and would study, Tomasso told me. But said Nan Policheck—that was her name, Nan—said Nan Policheck held a little Sunday School in the jail cell on Sundays and taught him
Biblia
lessons, said he wrote out on the wall sayings from
La Biblia, God Loves Me
and
Suffer the little children to come unto Me
, and said he asked Nan Policheck why did little children have to suffer and said Nan Policheck answered because they are little children and Tomasso said he thought to himself that don't make any sense I will ask Hondo later but when he later asked Hondo Hondo said he didn't know. Let's see where was I oh yes, somehow he said, Tomasso said, he felt he was apaying in the Missoura jail for the sins of his unknown mother. But she had committed the crime, not him, and he wondered many nights layin awake in his sad bed of an orphan and a prison what in the world his mother's crime could be. I says to myself I'll wait to tell him that she stole a green dress with sparkled fringe, that was her crime. And said that he ate meals at the long table with the convicts, Hondo and Old John, lousy jail grub, said. Who were the others? I asked, and Tomasso said no others, only Hondo and Old John, except for town drunks or burglars in for a few days but not to stay, somebody bought them, come with money, bailed them out was the espression. But nobody come with money for me, said Tomasso, and I used to pray that somebody, maybe my mother, would show up with some cash for me and bail me out. That is an espression I have never heard, I said. My mother did show up, showed up at the Show, I says, but not with money, I was not bailed out. I begun to get sick, Tomasso said, wonderin what I was in for, what my sentence was that I was imprisoned as a prisoner in a jail, why I could not go to school with other kids or go to town. What do you mean sentence I asked my brother and he said I cain't hardly esplain it to you. Well I says tis a
gringo
espression, we have no such Mescan espression. And Tomasso says sentence means like a fine or something, the number of time you have to pay for the crime you done. We have no such Mescan espression I told him. But go on about the jail I'm getting all mixed up with different things agoing in my mind, and different words and espressions, my God; it was a sad little life for a
niño
boy like you, I said. I could begin to have thoughts of blaming that
chalupa
Chupa our mother and to think that once again she's gone and hurt her sons, that she only give us hurt! God damn why did she do that, God damn, forgive me God and
Jesucristo
but here is another
ejemplo
example of that woman's hurt that she caused others. That's why we got to find our mother, so we can get over these feelings, especially so I can, I told Tomasso; to settle these hurts. And then to forgive her, said Tomasso. Reverence C. Carl Cane told me to forgive my mother. Reverence Carl C. Cane is right, I says, tis the very teachings of our Lord and Savior
Jesucristo
as tis told us in the White Bible. C. Carl Cane, said Tomasso. The C. is first. O.K. I says. Where is the
virgen's
hair? Here in my pocket in the little Bull Durham sack Hondo give me, says Tomasso. Let me see it, I says, and Tomasso took out the Bull Durham sack and took out the little soft hair and I touched it. A virgin's, Tomasso said.
Sí
, I said.
Una virgen
. He looked a look at me that was agoing to ask me the question and I says don't ask me that again,
muñeco
.