The Infinite Plan (15 page)

By the appointed Sunday, the word had spread throughout the school, and by six-thirty there was a string of cars, motorcycles, and bicycles parked at the empty lot and about fifty of my schoolmates sitting on the ground near the track, waiting for the show to begin. The tire factory was closed, but the sickening smell of hot raw latex lingered on the air. There was a party atmosphere; some people had brought snacks, some were downing whiskey or gin disguised in soft-drink bottles, some had even brought cameras. Carmen avoided the general hubbub; she stood apart from the rest, praying. She had begged me not to do it: It's better to have people think you're a coward than to lose your life in the blink of an eye; after all, Martínez didn't do anything to me, this duel of yours is crazy, it's a sin, God will punish us all. I explained that this had nothing to do with what happened at school, that she wasn't the cause but only the pretext—this confrontation sprang from old debts too numerous to tell, something about manhood. She hung a small rectangle of embroidered cloth around my neck:

“It's the scapulary of the Virgin of Guadalupe my mother wore when she came here from Zacatecas. It can work miracles. . . .”

At seven o'clock exactly, four beat-up cars painted the bright purple of Los Carniceros appeared, carrying the gang members who had come to back up Martínez. They drove through the crowd, making the sign of the hooked hand before their faces and grabbing their crotches as an act of provocation. I had a vision of how there would be a battle royal if things did not turn out well and how even though there were more of my friends, they were no match for the Carniceros, who were armed and were experienced in turf wars. I had to look twice to tell which was Martínez; they all looked alike: the same Vaselined hair, leather jackets, studs and chains, and cocky walk. Martínez had not changed one iota of his gang uniform, not even the stacked heels; I, on the other hand, was comfortably dressed—I could only afford clothes I bought in rummage sales at church bazaars—and was wearing gym shoes. I reviewed my advantages: I was lighter, and faster; in fact, in any head-to-head contest he could never defeat me, but this was a duel to the death, and at the moment of truth, daring would count for more than agility. In grade school Martínez had been a good athlete, whereas I was only mediocre in sports—but I tried not to think about that.

“At exactly seven-fifteen the express will go by. We will start at the same time, separated by the width of three paces, so you don't have a chance to push me, you shit.” I was shouting loud enough for everyone to hear me. “I'll take the position closest to the train; I'll give you that on a platter.”

“Don't do me any favors, you little gringo flit!”

“Choose, then: the position nearer the train or starting farther away.”

“I'll start farther away.”

With a stick I drew two lines in the dirt, while three gang members and some of my buddies, headed by Juan José Morales, went to the other side of the track to monitor the duel from that vantage.

“So close? You 'fraid, queer?” Martínez sneered.

I had anticipated his reaction; I scuffed out the lines with my foot and drew them farther away. Juan José Morales and one Carnicero measured the distance between us, and at that moment we heard the whistle of the train. The spectators surged forward, the gang to the left in a tight bunch, my friends to the right. Carmen gave me a last encouraging look, but I could tell she was near collapse. We took our places on the marks; surreptitiously I touched the scapular, and then I blocked out everything around me, concentrating on myself and that mass of iron racing toward me, counting the seconds, muscles tensed, attuned to the increasing clamor, alone against the train as I had been so many times before. Three, two, one—now! and with no conscious thought of what I was doing I felt a savage roar rise from my belly, as my legs rocketed forward of their own volition, an electrifying charge shot through my body, my muscles strained, and terror blinded my eyes with a veil of blood. The racketing of the train and my howl sank into my pores, filled my body until I became a single terrible bellow. I saw the gargantuan light bearing down on me, my skin burned from the heat of the engine and the air was riven by that gigantic arrow, sparks from steel wheels against rail showered upon my face. There was an instant that lasted a millennium, a fraction of time congealed for an eternity, and I was suspended above a bottomless abyss, floating in front of the locomotive, a bird petrified in mid-flight, every particle of my body straining in the last leap forward, my mind focused on the certainty of death.

I have no idea what happened next. All I remember is coming to on the far side of the track, nauseated, drained, gasping in the smell of hot metal, dazed by the furious snortings of the enormous beast clacking by, clacking, clacking interminably, and when finally it was gone I heard an abnormal silence, a soundless void, and I was in total darkness. A century later, Carmen and Juan José took my arms to help me to my feet.

“Get up, Gregory. Let's get out of here before the police come. . . .”

Only then did I have a flash of lucidity; through the darkness I could see people running for the road. The purple cars of the Carniceros were streaking away, and there was no one there but Carmen, Juan José, and myself, splashed with blood. Pieces of Martínez were scattered across the landscape.

PART TWO

Chapter Two

The
story of the duel of the train was repeated so many times, and embroidered to such fantastic proportions, that Gregory Reeves became a hero among his classmates. Something fundamental changed at that point: he shot up overnight and lost his naiveté, the source of so many misadventures and fistfights; he was more assured and for the first time in years felt good about himself and finally stopped wishing he were dark-skinned like everyone else in the barrio—in fact, he began to evaluate the advantages of not being like them. There were nearly four thousand students, from different sectors of the city, in his high school—almost all middle-class whites. Girls wore their hair in a ponytail, never said bad words or painted their fingernails, went to church, and some already had the immutable matronly air of their mothers. They lost no opportunity to neck with the latest boyfriend in the last row of the movie theater or back seat of a car, but they preferred not to talk about it. They dreamed of a diamond on their ring finger, and in the meantime their boyfriends took as much liberty as they were allowed before being domesticated by the blinding flash of love. They were living their last chance for fun, for games and contact sports, for drinking themselves blind, for drag racing—a time of boyish mischief, some of it innocent, such as stealing the bust of Lincoln from the principal's office, some not so innocent, such as trapping a black or a Mexican or a homosexual and smearing him with excrement. They made fun of romance but used it when they wanted to get a girl. Among themselves they spoke of little but sex, but very few had the opportunity to practice it. Gregory Reeves was too discreet to mention Olga among his friends. He felt entirely at ease in school; he was not segregated by color anymore, and no one knew anything about his home or his family, especially that his mother was on relief. He was one of the poorest students, but he always had money in his pocket because he worked; he could invite a girl to the movies, he had enough to buy a round of beers or make a bet, and during his senior year his earnings stretched far enough to buy a car that looked like a rattletrap but had a good motor. That he was poor was noticeable only in his shiny pants, threadbare shirts, and lack of free time. He looked older than he was, and was slim, agile, and as strong as his father before him; he thought he was handsome and acted as if he was. For the next few years he took advantage of the Martínez legend and of his knowledge of the two cultures in which he had grown up. The intellectual oddities of his family and his friendship with the library elevator operator had stimulated his curiosity; in an atmosphere where men barely read the sports page and women preferred gossip magazines about Hollywood stars, he had read, in alphabetical order, the world's major thinkers from Aristotle to Zoroaster. He had a skewed vision of the world, but in any case it was broader than that of the other students, even of some teachers. He was dazzled by each new idea, believing he had discovered something unique, and felt duty bound to reveal it to the rest of humanity; he quickly learned, however, that a display of knowledge was about as welcome among his friends as a kick in the ass. As a result, he was cautious before them, but with the girls he could not avoid the temptation to show off his act: walking the high wire of words. Endless discussions with Cyrus had taught him to defend his ideas with passion, although his teacher had frustrated any attempt to dizzy him with his eloquence. More foundation and less rhetoric, son, he would say, but Gregory found that his oratorical bombast impressed other people. He knew how to work his way to the head of any group, and his classmates grew accustomed to deferring to him. As modesty was not one of his virtues, he naturally imagined himself on his way to a political career.

“That's not a bad idea. In a few years, socialism will have triumphed in the world, and you can be the first Communist senator in the nation.” This was but one of Cyrus's enthusiastic ideas, expressed during their whispered conferences in the basement of the library, where for years he had tried, without great success, to sow in his disciple's mind the seeds of his burning passion for Marx and Lenin. Gregory found his theories inarguable from the point of view of justice and logic, but intuitively he knew they had no chance of succeeding, at least in his half of the planet. Besides, he found the idea of making a fortune more seductive than owning an equal share of poverty, though he never dared confess such mean thoughts.

“I'm not sure I want to be a Communist,” was always his prudent rejoinder.

“Well, what will you be, then?”

“Maybe a Democrat. . . .”

“There's no difference between Democrats and Republicans—how many times do I have to tell you? At any rate, if you're going to make it to the Senate, you need to start right now. The early bird catches the worm. You need to be elected student body president.”

“You're crazy, Cyrus. I'm the poorest boy in the class, and I speak English like a Chicano. Who'd vote for me? I'm not a gringo and not a Latino; I don't represent anyone.”

“That's the very reason you can represent everyone,” and his aged friend lent him a copy of
The Prince,
along with other works by Niccolò Machiavelli, so he could learn about human nature. After three weeks of superficial reading, Gregory Reeves returned, confused.

“This isn't any help, Cyrus. What do fifteenth-century Italians have to do with the loafers in my school?”

“Is that all you have to say about Machiavelli? You've missed the whole point; you're a dunce. You don't deserve to be secretary at a preschool, much less president of the student body.”

So Gregory put his nose in the books again, this time with greater dedication, and gradually the illumination of the Florentine statesman shone through five centuries of history, the distance of half the globe, cultural barriers, and the fog of a youthful brain, to reveal the art of power. Gregory took notes in a notebook he modestly titled “President Reeves,” which turned out to be prophetic because, using the strategies of Machiavelli, the advice of his mentor, and manipulations of his own inspiration, he was elected president by a crushing majority. It was the first year the school was free of racial problems, because students and teachers worked together, convinced by Reeves that they were all in the same boat and nothing was to be gained by rowing in opposite directions. He also organized the first sock hop—to the scandalized dismay of the school board, which considered the dance a definitive step toward a Roman orgy. Nothing sinful occurred, however; it was an innocent party at which shoes were all the celebrants removed. The new president was determined to leave a spotless record behind him and thus start himself down the road to the White House, but the task was more arduous than he had calculated. Not only was he saddled by the responsibilities of his office; he worked in the kitchen of a taco stand until late at night, on weekends he repaired tires in Pedro Morales's garage, and summers he worked as a
bracero,
picking fruit. He kept himself so busy that he was spared the vices of the alcohol, drugs, betting, and drag races in which several of his friends lost a large part of their innocence, when not their health or even their lives.

Girls became Gregory's obsession, manifested sometimes as a euphoric bemusement capable of making him forget his own name but usually as a martyrdom of molten metal in his veins and well-worn obscenities in his mind. Delicately, because she was very fond of him, but with unyielding determination, Olga exiled him from her bed, using the pretext that it was time for him to find consolation from a different source. I'm too old for this, she told him, but the truth was that she had fallen in love with a truckdriver ten years her junior, who liked to visit her between runs. So for several years that once independent woman darned the socks and put up with the chicanery of a low-down lover—until on one of his long hauls he turned down a new road, to follow another love, and never returned. It was true, anyway, that Olga and Gregory's encounters had lost the allure of novelty and the thrill of secrecy and had degenerated into discreet gymnastics between a grandmother and grandson. Olga was replaced by Ernestina Pereda, Gregory's grade school classmate, who now worked in a restaurant. For a moment he imagined himself smitten with her, an illusion that dissipated almost immediately, leaving the bad taste of guilt. Of all Ernestina's lovers, he may have been the only one with such scruples, and to banish them he had to betray his romantic nature and the chivalry he had absorbed from his mother and his reading; he did not want to take advantage of Ernestina, as so many others had done, but neither could he lie about his feelings for her. The social climate that would view sex as a healthful exercise without risk of pregnancy or obstacle of guilt had not yet appeared on the horizon. Ernestina Pereda was one of those beings destined to explore the abyss of the senses, and it was her fate to have been born fifteen years too soon, at a time when women had to choose between decency and pleasure—and Ernestina lacked the courage to renounce either. As long as she could remember, she had lived in wonder of the potential of her body; at seven she had converted the school bathroom into her first laboratory and her schoolmates into guinea pigs with whom she conducted research, performed experiments, and reached astounding conclusions. Gregory had not escaped her scientific zeal; they sneaked off with high enthusiasm to the sordid intimacy of the bathroom for mutual exploration, a game that would have continued indefinitely had the brutish Martínez and his band not cut it short. At recess, the boys had climbed onto a large box to spy on the pair, had discovered them playing doctor, and had stirred up such a storm that Gregory was sick with shame for a week and never again attempted such diversions until the day Olga rescued him from his adolescent befuddlement. By the time Gregory returned to her, Ernestina Pereda was a veteran; there was scarcely a boy in the barrio who hadn't bragged about having her—some justifiably, many merely to boast. Gregory tried not to think about her promiscuity; their times together were free of any pretense of sentiment, and if love was never mentioned, kindness was never absent. Gregory's infatuations usually took the form of ephemeral passions for girls from better parts of town, with whom he could not practice the forbidden pirouettes from Olga's repertoire or Ernestina Pereda's frenetic caracoles. He had no difficulty finding sweethearts, but he never felt sufficiently loved: the affection he received was but a pale reflection of his consuming desire. He liked tall, slim girls but yielded to any temptress of the opposite sex, even the plumpest girls from the barrio. Only Carmen was exempt from his erotic delirium; he considered her his best friend, and their pure friendship was impervious to her feminine charms. They were, nonetheless, very different in temperament, and gradually an intellectual gap opened between them. Gregory shared confidences with Carmen, took her dancing and to the movies, but there was no point in discussing anything he had read with her, or any of the social and metaphysical questions Cyrus had sowed in his consciousness. When he journeyed down those paths, his friend did not even attempt to flatter him by feigning interest; she froze him with an icy stare and told him to cut the shit. He had no better intellectual communication with other girls; they were initially attracted because of his reputation for being wild and a good dancer, but they had little tolerance for his insistent urging and soon went their way, complaining that he was a conceited bookworm who could not keep his hands to himself. Watch out if he asks you to take a ride alone in that junk heap of his; first he'll bore you to death with some political jazz and then try to get you out of your bra. Even so, Reeves did not lack for amorous adventures. Juan José Morales thought it was not worth the effort to try to understand women; as the old Spanish song said—and Padre Larraguibel when he was inflamed with Catholic ardor—they were creatures of lust and damnation. For the machos of the barrio there were only two kinds of girls: those like Ernestina Pereda and the others, the ones who were untouchable, destined for motherhood and hearth. But a man should not fall in love with either of them; love made a man a slave or, worse, a poor deceived fool. Gregory never accepted those standards and for the next thirty years relentlessly pursued the chimera of perfect love, stumbling more times than he could count, falling and picking himself up, running an interminable obstacle course, until he gave up the search and learned to live in solitude. Then, in one of life's ironic surprises, he found love when he least expected it. But that is another story.