The Infinite Plan (7 page)

Charles Reeves went back to earning a living by painting. Working from a photograph, he could produce a quite faithful image of a man; when it came to the ladies, the representation was enhanced: he erased signs of age, modulated Indian or African features, lightened skin and hair tones, and gowned his subjects with elegance. As soon as he had the strength, he also returned to his preaching and to writing books, which he himself printed. Despite the financial strain of keeping
The Infinite Plan
afloat, he staggered on tenaciously. His audiences were composed principally of laborers and their families, many of whom barely understood English, but he learned several key words in Spanish, and when his vocabulary failed he turned to the blackboard and sketched his ideas. At first only friends and relatives of the Moraleses attended, more interested in getting a close look at the boa than they were in the philosophical aspects of the lecture, but soon they learned that the Doctor in Divine Sciences was very eloquent and that fast as lightning he could draw wonderful cartoons—Imagine, you have to come see how he does it, quick as a wink, almost without looking!—and soon Morales did not have to exert pressure on anyone in order to fill the hall. When Reeves learned of the precarious conditions in which his neighbors lived, he spent weeks in the library studying the laws, and thus in addition to spiritual aid could offer his listeners counsel on how to navigate the unknown seas of the system. Through him, immigrants learned that even though they were illegal aliens they had certain civil rights: they could go to the hospital, bury their dead in the county cemetery—although they preferred to take them back to their home village—and claim countless other privileges they had previously been ignorant of. In that barrio,
The Infinite Plan
had to compete with the pageantry of the Catholic ceremony, the drums and tambourines of the Salvation Army, the novel polygamy of the Mormons, and the rites of seven Protestant churches, including the Baptists, who submersed their fully clothed converts in the river, the Adventists, who served lemon pie on Sundays, and the Pentecostals, who went about with hands uplifted in order to receive the Holy Spirit. Since Charles Reeves's course accommodated all doctrines and it was not necessary for followers to renounce their own religion, Padre Larraguibel of the Church of Our Lady of Lourdes and the pastors of the other affiliations could not object—although for once they were in accord, and each from his own pulpit accused the preacher of being an unprincipled charlatan.

From their first meeting, when the Reeveses' truck had disgorged its contents onto the Moraleses' patio, Gregory and Carmen, the Moraleses' youngest daughter, had been fast friends. One look was enough to establish the complicity that was to last throughout their lifetimes. The girl was a year younger, but in practical matters she was much better informed; it was she who would reveal to him the tricks to surviving in the barrio. Gregory was tall, thin, and very blond, and she was small, plump, and the color of golden brown sugar. The boy's knowledge was out of the ordinary: he could recount the plots of operas, describe landscapes from the
National Geographic,
and recite Byron's verses; he knew how to bag a duck, gut a fish, and in an instant could calculate how far a truck would travel in forty-five minutes if it was moving at thirty miles per hour—none of which had much application in his new situation. He knew how to get the boa into a sack but could not go to the corner to buy bread; he had never lived among other children or been inside a classroom; he knew nothing of children's cruelty or of impassable racial barriers, because Nora had drummed into him that people are good—anything else was an abomination of nature—and all people are equal. Until he went to school, Gregory believed her. The color of his skin and his absolute lack of malice irritated the other boys, who jumped him whenever they could, usually in the bathroom, and pummeled him until he was half stupefied. Not always the innocent one, he often provoked confrontations. With Juan José and Carmen Morales, he invented gross practical jokes, such as using a syringe to remove the mint from chocolate bonbons and then to fill them with the hottest salsa from Inmaculada's kitchen; they then offered these treats to the Martínez gang: Let's smoke the peace pipe and be friends, OK? After that trick, they had to hide for a week.

Every day, as soon as the last bell rang, Gregory ran home like a streak, chased by a pack of boys ready to slaughter him. He was so fast that he often stopped in midcourse to yell insults at his enemies. As long as his family was camping in the Morales patio, he had no fear, because the house was close to the school; Juan José ran with him, and no one could catch him in such a short distance. When they moved to their new house, however, the distance was ten times greater, and the possibilities of reaching his goal in safety were diminished by alarming proportions. He changed his route, learned different shortcuts, and found hiding places where he could crouch and wait until his pursuers tired of hunting for him. Once, he slipped into the parish church, because in the Padre's religion class he had been told that since the Middle Ages the church had traditionally served as a place of asylum; the Martínez gang nonetheless followed him inside and after a horrendous chase across the pews caught him before the main altar and kicked and beat him beneath the indifferent gaze of plaster saints wearing gilt brass halos. The energetic priest had come running at Gregory's cries and lifted his enemies off him by the hair of their heads.

“God didn't save me!” the boy yelped, more humiliated than hurt, pointing to the bloodied Christ presiding over the altar.

“What do you mean, he didn't save you?” roared the priest. “Didn't I come help you, you ingrate?”

“Too late! Look what they did to me,” Gregory howled, displaying his bruises.

“God has no time for such harebrained feuds. Get up and blow your nose,” the Padre commanded.

“You said it was safe here….”

“It is, if the enemy knows it's a holy place; those blockheads don't even realize the sacrilege they committed.”

“Your lousy church isn't worth a damn!”

“You watch what you say, or you'll be missing your teeth, you young runt!” The Padre's uplifted hand underlined the threat.

“Sacrilege! Sacrilege!” Gregory remembered just in time, a ploy that had the virtue of cooling the Basque blood of the priest, who took a deep breath to compose himself and attempted to speak in tones more appropriate to his holy vestments.

“Look here, son, you need to learn to defend yourself. God helps those who help themselves, as the old saying goes.”

That very day, the priest, who in his youth had been a belligerent peasant boy, shut himself in the courtyard of the sacristy with Gregory and began teaching him to box—without regard for the Marquis of Queensberry. The first lesson consisted of three inviolable principles: the only thing that matters is to win; the one who strikes first strikes twice; and go straight for the balls, son, and may God forgive us. In any case, Gregory decided that the house of God was less secure than the firm bosom of Inmaculada Morales; his confidence in his fists grew in direct proportion to his flagging faith in divine intervention. From then on, if he was in trouble he ran to his friends' home, leapt over the patio wall, and ran into the kitchen, where he waited for Judy to come to his rescue. He was safe with his sister because she was the prettiest girl in the school; all the boys were in love with her, and none would have been so stupid as to do anything to Gregory in her presence. Carmen and Juan José Morales tried to serve as liaison between their new friend and the rest of their schoolmates, but they did not always succeed; it was not only Gregory's coloring that made him stand out: he was also proud, stubborn, and crafty. His head was filled with stories of Indians, wild animals, characters in operas, theories of souls in floating oranges, Logi, and Master Functionaries, none of which either the Padre or his teachers wanted to learn more about. In addition, he lost his head at the least provocation and lashed out with eyes closed and fists flailing; he fought blindly, and he almost always lost: he was the whipping boy for the entire school. Everyone laughed at him and at his dog—a mongrel with short legs and an ugly head—and even at how his mother looked: she wore old-fashioned dresses and was always handing out brochures on the Bahai religion or
The Infinite Plan.
They saved their greatest scorn for his sentimentality. All the other boys had absorbed the macho teachings of their world: men should be merciless, brave, dominant, loners, fast with a weapon, and superior to women in every sense. The two basic rules, learned by boys in the cradle, were never to trust anyone and never to cry—whatever the reason. Gregory, however, would listen to the teacher telling how seals in Canada were clubbed by fur hunters, or to the Padre recounting the woes of lepers in Calcutta, and with tears in his eyes determine to go north immediately to defend the baby seals or to the Far East to be a missionary. On the other hand, they could beat him silly and he would never shed a tear; his pride was so fierce they could have skinned him alive before he would ask for mercy. That was the only reason the other boys did not consider him a hopeless pansy. Despite everything, he was a happy young boy, with an infallible memory for jokes and the ability to coax music from any instrument—the favorite of the girls at recess time.

In exchange for the boxing lessons, the Padre required Gregory to assist him at Sunday masses. When Gregory told that to the Moraleses, he suffered a barrage of jokes from Juan José and his brothers—until Inmaculada intervened and said that because they were making fun, Juan José must serve as altar boy himself, and be proud of the honor, praise our blessed Lord. The two friends spent grudging hours in the church, swinging incense, tinkling the altar bells, and reciting parts of the Latin mass under the attentive eye of the priest, who even in his most intense moments watched them with his famed third eye—the one people said he had in the back of his head to see his parishioners' sins. The priest liked it that one of his assistants was dark-haired and the other blond; he thought such racial integration must please the Creator. Before mass the boys prepared the altar and afterward they cleaned the sacristy; when they left they received an anise bun as a reward, but the true prize was a surreptitious swig of ceremonial wine, aged, sweet, and strong as sherry. One morning their enthusiasm got out of hand and they polished off the bottle, leaving them short of wine for the last mass. Gregory, inspired, suggested that they pilfer a few coins from the collection plate and rush out and buy some Coca-Cola. They shook the bottle to kill the fizz and then poured the liquid into the cruet. During the mass they cut up like clowns, and not even murderous looks from the priest could affect the whispering, giggling, stumbling, and bells rung in the wrong sequence. When the Padre raised the goblet to consecrate the Coca-Cola, the boys collapsed on the altar steps, laughing so hard they could not stand up. Minutes later the priest reverently touched the liquid to his lips, absorbed in the words of the liturgy, but with the first sip realized that the devil had had his hand in the chalice—unless consecration had produced a verifiable change in the molecules of the wine, a possibility his practical mind immediately rejected. The Padre had undergone a long training in life's vicissitudes, and he continued the mass serenely; nothing in his demeanor hinted that anything was amiss. Unhurried, he completed the ritual and left the altar with great dignity, followed by his two staggering altar boys, but once in the sacristy he removed one of his heavy leather sandals and gave them a thrashing they would not soon forget.

That was the first of many difficult years for Gregory Reeves; it was a time of insecurity and fears, during which many things changed, but it was also a time of mischief, friendship, surprises, and discoveries.

As soon as my family settled into the new routine and my father started feeling stronger, we began improving the cottage. Because of the efforts of the Moraleses and their friends, it was no longer falling down, but it still lacked essential comforts. My father installed basic wiring, built a privy, and between us we cleared the yard of stones and weeds so my mother could plant the vegetable and flower gardens she had always wanted. He also constructed a small shed at the very edge of the ravine that bordered our property, to store his tools and gear for traveling: he still hoped someday to get a new truck and go back on the road. Then he told me to dig a hole; he said that he agreed with a Greek philosopher who had said that before he died every man should father a child, write a book, build a house, and plant a tree, and that he had done the first three. I dug where he told me, not very enthusiastically, since I had no wish to contribute to his death, but I would not have dreamed of refusing him or of leaving the job half done. “Once when I was traveling on the astral plane, I was led to a very large room, like a room in a factory,” Charles Reeves would expound to his listeners. “There I saw many interesting machines. Some were unfinished and others absurd; the mechanical principles were incorrect; it was clear they would never work. I asked a Logo whom they belonged to. ‘These are your unfinished works,' he explained. I remembered that in my youth my ambition had been to be an inventor. Those grotesque machines were products of that stage of my life and ever since had been there waiting for me to dispose of them. Thoughts take form—the more defined the idea, the more concrete the form. You must not leave ideas or projects unfinished; they must be terminated. If not, energy is wasted that could be better employed in other matters. You must think in a constructive way, but be careful of what you think.” I had heard that story many times and was highly irritated by the obsession to complete every act and to give each object and each thought its precise place, because to judge by what I saw around me, the world was pure chaos.