Nathan has this Great Dane that’s real big, almost bigger than me. I’m taller than it now but not by much. The dog’s always out cause he’d burrow under the fence or just jump clean over it –you can’t keep a Great Dane fenced in, just try it, it won’t work. It bolts too, like lightening, just this pale streak shattering the horizon. You can’t chase after it either. Dogs like that are free. If it’s your dog it’s because it wants to be your dog.
We stood in the piss-yellow wheat field not far from the house. We liked to go in a little ways –not so far that we can’t hear Nate’s parents when they call but just far enough in that we can’t see them and they can’t see us. Nate wanted to show me what happens when you throw a stick just past the old water well.
He caught the dog’s attention with the stick. It stood there just stupid, looking at it like it’s fillet o’ cat. Nathan threw it hard and Dane bolted. The well was covered a little by the wheat but we knew where it was. I gave Nate a look like, I hope you know what you’re doing and he just gave me that jackass smile of his. The dog jumped like I’d never seen before. It was like something in the Olympics. I knew it landed on the ground cause I saw the wheat shake ahead of us and his big fat head peak through with the stick in his mouth. That well is a five-by-five hole in the ground. I couldn’t believe he cleared it.
Nathan punched me in the arm. “What the hell did you do that for?” I asked him, rubbing the sting out. Nate has these bony ass fists that hurt like hell.
“You didn’t believe me,” he smiled.
“You never even told me he could do that,” I told him.
The dog got tired and sat down in the piss-yellow wheat grass and we jumped on top of him, trying our best to ride him before he shot off too fast for us to hang on. We tumbled a little and got up. There’s parts of wheat that hurt when it gets you right. It’s not all soft like it seems.
Walking out of the wheat field we ran into Peter Jenkins. Jenks is a big fat kid Nate goes to school with. He always wears these striped collared t-shirts that are too small for him and he kind of waddles like an out-of-breath penguin when he walks. Jenks lives about a mile down the road.
“Hiya guys,” he gave us this big rainbow wave.
“You walked all the way down here Jenks? Jesus, look Clem, he looks like he’s about to pass out!” Nate laughed and slapped me on the shoulder. I laughed a little too.
“Shut up!” Peter shouted. He walked with us on the edge of the field. From where we were standing I could see this fort we built out in the woods one summer. It was a big project. It was me, Jenks, Nate, and Nate’s sister, Karen. We don’t play on it much anymore cause Nate says forts are for kids. I still want to play on it though. Maybe it’s cause I’m fourteen and Nate just turned fifteen. He told me that once you turn fifteen everything changes. I wish I could hurry up already. He caught a growth spurt too. I feel like he left me behind and we’re only eight-and-a-half months apart.
Nathan’s my cousin. My parents drop me off out here every summer. They say the country’s good for me. I think that’s all trash, cause really, we’re not even from the city. We live outside San Antonio, way outside, and in my mind that’s country enough. I don’t like when they tell me that, like we’re city people, cause when my friends here in Marion hear it they make fun of me. They say they’re tougher out here and that I’ve had it easy. That’s all nonsense though. Nate just acts tough. I could beat him up, I think, if I worked at it, like Rocky or Raging Bull or something.
“You guys hear? There’s a dead Mexican come up in the dirt.”
Nathan and I just looked at Jenks.
“You didn’t hear?” he said.
“What the hell are you talking about Jenks?” Nate asked him.
“My dad told me he was out plowing and found a skeleton with the clothes still on, all torn up. You know how my dad’s all into army stuff? He recognized the uniform. It’s a Mexican from…” Jenks paused and took the both of us by the arm and slowed us down, “Santa Anna’s army.”
Nate fell over laughing. He did an impression of Jenks, “It’s a Mexican from…Santa Anna’s army.” I laughed too. Jenks was unimpressed.
“I’m not kidding!”
“Your dad’s crazy as hell! There wasn’t even any fighting out here, and they didn’t even bury anybody,” Nate said.
Peter got all red faced and started huffing and puffing. The thing about Jenks is, his dad is crazy. He wears this confederate uniform he had inherited from some great grandfather or something. It’s all tattered and dirty. He wears it all the time. He drinks a bunch too, and does these flag ceremonies in the mornings. I know because Nate and I went out there one summer. We woke up early and went and saw him. Six a.m. he was out there with the uniform and sword all raised high in the air and everything with poor Peter Jenkins all groggy-eyed, still half asleep, pulling on the flag rope. When old man Jenks started blowing on the horn we had to go –we were laughing so hard we thought he’d hear us.
I smoothed things over, “so have you seen the body, Peter?” I called him Peter. You call him Peter when he gets to a point like his head is gonna explode. Calling him Peter kinda turns the heat down.
He softened up. “No, but my dad has, and he didn’t even touch it. He just left it there and started making phone calls. That’s why I came over here, to tell you guys so we can go together?”
Nate gave me this long smirk. “I’ll tell you what, Clem, if there is a dead Mexican out there, I bet he has a sword or something we can sell.”
I thought about it. I’ve never seen a dead body before. And I can’t be sure I want to. But if I act all wuss like to Nathan he’s going to hound me about it for weeks. “Sounds cool,” I said.
“Lunch time! Lunch time! Let’s go boys! Hurry the hell up!” We could make out Nathan senior hollering in the air out by the house. He had his stick out, which meant if we didn’t go to him he was gonna come to us, which is basically the worst thing ever.
“You guys have to go?” Jenks looked all disappointed.
“Why don’t you go look at the Mexican for us and tell us about it. And if it’s there we’ll go look,” Nate told him.
“I don’t want to go alone…and anyway, if we wait too long my dad’ll have taken it out. He says he wants to have it stuffed or something, I dunno.”
“We’ll go later, come on Clem, he’s got the stick.” Nathan signaled towards the house.
Nate Sr. was banging it up against the wall now, red faced as hell.
“Seeya Peter!” I waved as we walked away. Peter was already walking along the field line back to his house. It would take him over an hour to get home the way he walks. He was already soaked through with sweat.
“Dead Mexican my ass,” Nate murmured.
I turned and followed Nate back to the house with Dane noiselessly trailing behind.
Truth is, I don’t really like it out here. Nathan senior works us half to death on weird projects he doesn’t even know what to make of. Like fixing the fence or moving bricks from one place to another. Half the time we just work and don’t ask any questions. Last summer I came back home with blisters and scratches and my back hurt like hell. My mom said I wouldn’t have to come out here anymore if I didn’t want to but my dad butted in and said the work was good for me. I don’t know what he was talking about. First of all, he works in an office and mom tells him all the time he doesn’t know the first thing about work. Second, how can work be good for anybody? It’s terrible. If you work too much you wind up looking like Nathan senior (mom calls him the Marlboro man.)
Aunt Ellie is crazier than Nathan senior, but in a different way. She sits on the couch all day long watching Days of Our Lives drinking wine with ice in it. Sometimes she mixes it with Diet Pepsi. It smells the whole house up, especially when it’s four-hundred degrees outside. She keeps her Pepsi and ice in a little cooler by the couch, and when she doesn’t, she makes us get it for her. Every two minutes I have to come up and fill her glass with ice and get the Franzia out of the fridge. She told me I have to bring her the box cause if I fill it in the fridge I’ll spill it everywhere (which I did, once). I hate the smell of that boxed wine. It smells like cardboard and vinegar. She gets it all over the place, too.
Aunt Ellie calls us the empty pail kids. She says it’s like we’re waiting for something that never comes. She says it will never come, and not to get our hopes up. I have no idea what the hell she was talking about.
Lunch is that tuna out of the can stuff on grilled cheese sandwiches. It’s not bad, especially if you pour ketchup on it.
Nathan senior needed us to fix the latch on the fence again cause when we let Dane out we broke it somehow –which isn’t true at all. That stupid fence latch was so rotten it probably fell off on its own. So Nate and I went into the storage shed and got the screwdriver and hammer. We took a hook down from the wall Nate sr. was using to hang one of his drills.
Easiest solution: screw an open and closed hook that latch together right into the gate. Nate Sr. had some elaborate thing planned out for us. This project would take us ten minutes.
It took two hours. Nate couldn’t figure out where to put the hook and neither of us could guess how we were supposed to open it from inside. So we just did two hooks, one on both sides. And if you needed to undo both hooks, we had a thin piece of sheet metal by the gate you would use to slide through the crack and lift the other hook up. Problem solved.
Uncle Nathan came out to have a look at our work. This look of despair just kind of crawled all over his face. “What’s the problem?” Nate Jr. asked. “It’s a latch. That’s what you wanted, right? Problem solved.”
Uncle Nathan just shook his head at us. “You boys have some kind of plans today?”
We both nodded our heads.
“Well you can cancel them,” he smiled.
Nate and I looked at each other. “But we were going to see the Mexi…”
Nate cut himself short knowing full well what his dad’s reaction to digging up the alleged dead Mexican would be.
“Go take a bath!” He told us.
It was only three o’ clock. Taking a bath would mean we were in for the night, which would be terrible. And anyway, taking baths is the worst thing ever. They made us take baths together to save water. My parents would never in a million years make us do that. The first time Nathan stayed at our house it was hilarious. I was getting into the bathtub by myself, when all of a sudden, the door swings open and there’s Nathan, half naked, about to climb in with me. Right then my dad happened to be walking down the hallway and he just stops, looks at Nathan and at me, and all loud like, he says, “What the fuck is this?” Nathan was so embarrassed he almost cried.
We took a bath. Nathan made fun of me cause, and this isn’t even true, his dick’s bigger than mine, which, again, just isn’t true at all. It’s the same thing every evening, too. Anyway I got Nathan to play boats with me in the water. He doesn’t do it as much anymore but he still secretly likes it. Nathan has over twenty of these plastic boats.
Boats works like this: the ships are split up and dealt out to one another based on size and shape. You then choose a boat at random and pit it against the other sailor’s boat. The way you fight is, get on opposite sides of the tub and sail them at one another. Whichever one careens off course after it’s hit, is the loser. The game’s a lot of luck cause the person with the biggest boat usually wins. But you can only play one boat once, so you have to hope yours is bigger. It’s kinda dumb though cause we always play our biggest boats first anyway, and then wind up just getting tired of the game and getting out. When you’re in a bathtub for too long it gets awkward when the water goes cold.
We walked through the field in our pajamas. Four in the afternoon and we were in our pajamas. Why? Cause Nathan sr. basically told us we couldn’t leave the house for the rest of the evening and made us put them on. Once we were in the kitchen, both wearing pajamas and sandals, we couldn’t go back to Nate’s room to change, cause if we did that his dad would see us (the living room’s right near Nate’s room.) So if we were going to make the slip, we’d have to go through the kitchen window without them hearing us, and then into the backyard, and out the gate.
We really did a shoddy job with that gate latch, no kidding. It took us ten minutes just to get it open. We let Dane out too. Dane’s never seen a half buried Mexican, either.
On our way past the field, careful not to hit the main road, we ran into Bobby Fisher. Bobby Fisher, not Bobby Fischer like the chess player (I know how his name is spelled cause my dad’s really into him, also, Searching for Bobby Fischer is the coolest movie ever). Bobby was older than us by about two years and he was dating, or so rumor has it, Nate’s sister. Nate didn’t like it but there wasn’t anything he could do about it.
“Hey kiddos,” he said, passing us and trotting into the greenbelt. We cringed a little. He always acts way older than us, calling us names like squirts and sports. If you ask me, he’s a real asshole.
We followed him in the greenbelt. “Where you headin’?” Nate asked him. Nate acts all cool when Bobby’s around.
“I’m meeting a friend,” Bobby said.
“Which…” Nate had his answer before he finished his question. Bobby was meeting Sally Brooke –basically one of the hottest girls in Nate’s grade. She was sitting on a rock right before the part where the greenbelt gets heavy.
Nate looked a little put off by the whole thing. True, he’s not into the idea of Bobby dating Karen, but even worse is the idea that Bobby’s playing footsy with the whole neighborhood while Karen’s in summer school.
“Hey, you guys smoke…” Bobby paused by the rock Sally was sitting on and looked around to see if anyone was eavesdropping, “grass?”
I looked down at the ground, I didn’t see him but I was sure Nate nodded at Bobby and gave him some stupid coolly high-five or something.
“Rad!” Said Bobby.
Truth is, Nate’s never smoked, I’ve never smoked, plain and simple.
Bobby said, “You want a dime bag?”
“Sure,” Nate looked at me. “How much is that?”
Bobby looked at Sally, who smiled at him. Sally’s got the biggest chest I’ve ever seen. It was like someone smaller was gonna crawl out of there, like those clowns in the little car we saw at the circus this one time.
“Eight bucks?”
“Eight bucks?!” Nate hollered. He hesitated a little and looked at me. I saw him out of the corner of my eye but I wasn’t paying any attention. I couldn’t take my eyes off Sally’s chest. “Shouldn’t a dime bag be a dime?” Nate asked.
Bobby laughed. “I don’t know why they call it that. You want it or not?”
Nate slapped me on the back of the head, “Wake up!” I snapped out of it and the two of us searched ourselves for money. The pajamas didn’t have any pockets.
“No money batman?” Sally was talking to me. My pajamas had the bat symbol on the chest and a Velcro utility belt. Pretty ace if you ask me. But girls don’t understand stuff like that, so I just shrugged all embarrassed and everything.
“Can we pay you tomorrow?” Nate asked.
Bobby looked like he was pretending to think it over. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it was all secrets or something, cause when he looked at Sally she just laughed and said, “Sure, tomorrow.” The whole thing seemed mysterious.
He left and made us wait there with Sally, who just looked around like she was bored or something. I hate girls, really. They don’t know how to do anything. Well, Karen’s nice, and she did good on the fort. I thought she was gonna hang drapes and stuff on it but she didn’t. She made this swing that was really cool. My swing was crappy so we took it down.
I played with Dane a little while. If you hold the stick high over your head he’ll put his paws on your shoulders and jump up at it.
After about ten minutes or so Bobby came back with the bag and this huge smile on his face. He held it up to us. His fingers were all muddy. “Here you go kiddies, pure St. Augustine.”
Nate and I looked at one another. “Is that a good one?” Nate asked.
Bobby just laughed and nodded his head. He threw us the bag. Nate asked what else we needed and Bobby gave us a lighter and a look like we should get out of there now. We both looked at Sally, who was rearranging her chest or something.
Once we got a safe distance from the greenbelt we walked into the wheat brush and inspected the contents of the bag. Nate acted like he knew what he was doing. He smelled it and smiled, “That’s the real stuff, boy.”
I smelled it too. It smelled like lawn fertilizer. I thought maybe Nate doesn’t know what lawn fertilizer smells like cause he’s never had a lawn, just gravel and wheat. “Is it supposed to smell like that?”
“Of course! Idiot!” Nate hollered.
He said you needed paper or something to smoke it with. This much I knew. We couldn’t find any paper. There was just a cardboard box we found lying near the greenbelt.
Nate picked it up and started shredding it. “This will have to do.”
We rolled the grass up in the cardboard into this huge cigarette deal. It was massive. It looked like we were gonna blow darts out of it like these bushmen do in the nature videos.
Nathan lit up and coughed his ass off and handed it to me. I took a long puff and coughed too. “Jesus!” I shouted.
“It’s supposed to be like that, you gotta stay with it, I think.” Nathan sucked on it some more and handed it back to me.
Nate’s dad burns scrap wood and stuff in the backyard sometimes. It tasted just like that. Like hot paint. My arms felt like jelly.
“This is the life man…” Nate lay down in a patch of straw and looked up at the sky. I did too.
We passed the cardboard cigarette back and forth, watching the birds swoop from the greenbelt into the wheat field and disappear.
“What’s that?” I opened my eyes and saw the silhouette of Peter Jenkins blotting out the sun. His belly hung over his waist just slightly uncovered by that crusty t-shirt he wears all the time. He hung over me like that awhile, like I was Japanese and he was Godzilla.
I sat up and looked over at Nathan, who had the cardboard smoked down to almost nothing. He looked like something I’ve never seen before.
“Forget it Jenks, you’re not cool enough,” Nate said.
I had a headache the size of an anvil. “How long was I out? Is it supposed to be like this?” I felt like I wanted to puke.
Jenks bent down and picked up the bag and took some of the grass out. “Grass?” he said.
“Duh,” said Nate.
“No. Grass grass, not grass. You guys are smoking lawn grass. Why you smoking lawn grass?”
Nate and I stood up and looked at the bag. I couldn’t figure out how I didn’t recognize it before. Bobby had it all twirled up to make it look different, but I shoulda caught it. Jenks was dead right, we were smoking lawn grass.
Nate must have realized it the same time I did, cause this look just came over him like he was gonna flip. “But, why do I feel all strange then?”
“Cause you were smoking cardboard!” Jenks doubled over in laughter. Watching him I couldn’t take it anymore and started laughing myself. Bobby really ran one over us. Bobby Fisher. Not like Bobby Fischer. Bobby Fischer wouldn’t sell us lawn grass. He’d tell us to keep our money and disappear.
“Where’s Dane?” Nate asked, looking around.
We called his name out and he came running. Dane always comes when you call him.
Jenks got up and dried the funny-tears from his eyes. Nate punched him in the arm and he just winced a little and laughed some more. Jenks has big wobbly arms, and he takes a punch like a champ. Not like me.
“So you guys want to see the Mexican?” Jenks asked.
Nate and I suddenly remembered why the hell we came out here in the first place.
“I haven’t seen it yet but dad still has it out there in the dirt I think.”
We walked down by the pond between Jenks’s house and Nate’s house. Nate wanted to dunk his head in water cause the cardboard gave him a headache, too. The whole time walking down there he was going on about how he’d like to show Bobby Fisher a piece of his mind, which is really all just garbage cause Nate’s fond of Bobby and we all knew it. I asked him to just forget about it and Jenks changed the subject back to the Mexican, and when he did that, I felt like I was getting hit with something all at once. I had this feeling like we were gonna go take a look and I’d bend down and the bones will just claw up at me and pull me deep into the ground. I saw Evil Dead, too, so I know how that goes.
That well Dane jumped over, I thought about that. One summer we threw rocks down there trying to measure how deep it goes. We never heard the clunk. It was like they just kept falling. I think that’s what it’s like to die, like you’re a rock just hurling through darkness.
When we got to the pond Nate just rope swung straight in, pajamas and all. It looked ace. He let go of the rope and did this back flip thing in the air. I couldn’t do that. Maybe they had something with this country/city thing. Nate’s got this way of unknowingly doing things real tough like. Nonchalant. That’s the word. I know that cause I misspelled it in this year’s spelling bee. I didn’t even make round two.
I swung on the rope but I did it real easy. I can’t do that diving stuff. I worry about rocks.
Jenks just stood in the leafs watching us. We had our pajamas on and we got to that point where we knew when we got home we’d catch hell but right now it didn’t matter.
Dane backed up a little and ran head first towards the water. He jumped in hard and swam in circles.
“I bet that Mexican has gold or something!” Nate yelled, splashing water all around him.
I dunked my head underwater and swam around looking for fish. People say they stock this pond, but I haven’t seen one fish in all the time I’ve swam here. I open my eyes under water, too.
“Come on guys!” Jenks did that big rainbow wave he does and we sauntered out of the water. Even half past six it’s hot as hell. We figured the clothes would dry on our way back.
“I bet if we dug underneath him we’ll find a treasure chest,” Jenks said, picking his nose and wiping snot all over his shirt.
I tried riding Dane again but he just shot out underneath me.
“They didn’t even have much gold…hey wait a minute! I bet he was a deserter or something, why else would he be all the way out here?” Nate said.
I thought about that. In Texas history class all they ever talked about was the Alamo. There was this General Wool or something that marched from San Antonio to Chihuahua. And then there was this Taylor. Anyway, what I remember for sure was that the Americans were driving them deeper into Mexico, and there was nothing resembling a battle in East Texas. Especially Marion of all places. So how the hell did he get out here?
By the time we reached Jenks’s farm our clothes were nearly dry and Nate and I gave a sigh of relief. Now we’d only have to explain the sneak out (if they hadn’t already gone to bed and didn’t notice we were missing).
“Hey, my dad’s out there!” Jenks hollered.
Sure enough, there was a tractor plow out on the field and two people sitting next to it in lawn chairs drinking beer out of a cooler. We weren’t close enough to see the Mexican yet but from where we were standing I could make out old man Jenks’s confederate uniform clear as day. He was tossing back a beer and listening to oldies with his buddy, Jim Fisher –that rat Bobby’s dad.
I felt that heaviness again and wanted to turn back.
“Don’t be a wuss.” Nate sped up a little and I followed after him. “Man…I bet crazy old Jenks probably already took our gold!” He broke into a run.
We, all three of us, ran up to the plow. It was there, just like Jenks said. The skeleton of a man. It wasn’t entirely uncovered but you could see the hand gripping out at the sky and the open mouth of the skull. It was as if he were clutching out at the sun, one last time before being dragged back down into the ground. We fell silent.
“That there’s a real bo-ner-fied Mexican,” old man Jenks smiled at us and rocked back a little in his lawn chair.
The man in the dirt had bits of tattered jacket hanging off him, and bits of metal shone through what was left of the ribcage. You could see the butt of a sword sticking out a little from the ground.
“We’re waitin’ for the Ar-che-o-ology Society to come out here and dig his ass up,” said Bobby sr., a big half-toothless smile on his face.
Nate turned to me and said, “Let’s go.” He was all red and I thought I was too. I didn’t look at him too hard cause he looked away like he didn’t want me to see him.
It really was like the Mexican was reaching for something.
I made a move to grab Peter but his arm was frozen stiff.
“Just leave him, Clem.”
We left Jenks standing there like that, just starring at the skeleton, paralyzed.
Nate and I followed the barbed wire fence line towards his house. It used to have electrical wire to keep cattle in but there’s no cattle here anymore.
We didn’t say anything for a while. I just kept my eyes fixed on the gravel road and picked out at the wire here and there. All I could think about was the image of that skeleton with its bony hand clutched out at the sky, and I remembered what Aunt Ellie said, It will never come.
The little gravel road opened up to Nate’s field and Dane trotted up ahead of us close to the field line. I walked in and Nate followed behind me like he knew where I was going. When we got to the well the both of us just kind of hung there on the rim and looked in. Nate took out that lighter Bobby Fisher gave him and dropped it in. Not a sound.
We stood in the piss-yellow wheat field not far from the house. We liked to go in a little ways –not so far that we can’t hear Nate’s parents when they call but just far enough in that we can’t see them and they can’t see us. Nate wanted to show me what happens when you throw a stick just past the old water well.
He caught the dog’s attention with the stick. It stood there just stupid, looking at it like it’s fillet o’ cat. Nathan threw it hard and Dane bolted. The well was covered a little by the wheat but we knew where it was. I gave Nate a look like, I hope you know what you’re doing and he just gave me that jackass smile of his. The dog jumped like I’d never seen before. It was like something in the Olympics. I knew it landed on the ground cause I saw the wheat shake ahead of us and his big fat head peak through with the stick in his mouth. That well is a five-by-five hole in the ground. I couldn’t believe he cleared it.
Nathan punched me in the arm. “What the hell did you do that for?” I asked him, rubbing the sting out. Nate has these bony ass fists that hurt like hell.
“You didn’t believe me,” he smiled.
“You never even told me he could do that,” I told him.
The dog got tired and sat down in the piss-yellow wheat grass and we jumped on top of him, trying our best to ride him before he shot off too fast for us to hang on. We tumbled a little and got up. There’s parts of wheat that hurt when it gets you right. It’s not all soft like it seems.
Walking out of the wheat field we ran into Peter Jenkins. Jenks is a big fat kid Nate goes to school with. He always wears these striped collared t-shirts that are too small for him and he kind of waddles like an out-of-breath penguin when he walks. Jenks lives about a mile down the road.
“Hiya guys,” he gave us this big rainbow wave.
“You walked all the way down here Jenks? Jesus, look Clem, he looks like he’s about to pass out!” Nate laughed and slapped me on the shoulder. I laughed a little too.
“Shut up!” Peter shouted. He walked with us on the edge of the field. From where we were standing I could see this fort we built out in the woods one summer. It was a big project. It was me, Jenks, Nate, and Nate’s sister, Karen. We don’t play on it much anymore cause Nate says forts are for kids. I still want to play on it though. Maybe it’s cause I’m fourteen and Nate just turned fifteen. He told me that once you turn fifteen everything changes. I wish I could hurry up already. He caught a growth spurt too. I feel like he left me behind and we’re only eight-and-a-half months apart.
Nathan’s my cousin. My parents drop me off out here every summer. They say the country’s good for me. I think that’s all trash, cause really, we’re not even from the city. We live outside San Antonio, way outside, and in my mind that’s country enough. I don’t like when they tell me that, like we’re city people, cause when my friends here in Marion hear it they make fun of me. They say they’re tougher out here and that I’ve had it easy. That’s all nonsense though. Nate just acts tough. I could beat him up, I think, if I worked at it, like Rocky or Raging Bull or something.
“You guys hear? There’s a dead Mexican come up in the dirt.”
Nathan and I just looked at Jenks.
“You didn’t hear?” he said.
“What the hell are you talking about Jenks?” Nate asked him.
“My dad told me he was out plowing and found a skeleton with the clothes still on, all torn up. You know how my dad’s all into army stuff? He recognized the uniform. It’s a Mexican from…” Jenks paused and took the both of us by the arm and slowed us down, “Santa Anna’s army.”
Nate fell over laughing. He did an impression of Jenks, “It’s a Mexican from…Santa Anna’s army.” I laughed too. Jenks was unimpressed.
“I’m not kidding!”
“Your dad’s crazy as hell! There wasn’t even any fighting out here, and they didn’t even bury anybody,” Nate said.
Peter got all red faced and started huffing and puffing. The thing about Jenks is, his dad is crazy. He wears this confederate uniform he had inherited from some great grandfather or something. It’s all tattered and dirty. He wears it all the time. He drinks a bunch too, and does these flag ceremonies in the mornings. I know because Nate and I went out there one summer. We woke up early and went and saw him. Six a.m. he was out there with the uniform and sword all raised high in the air and everything with poor Peter Jenkins all groggy-eyed, still half asleep, pulling on the flag rope. When old man Jenks started blowing on the horn we had to go –we were laughing so hard we thought he’d hear us.
I smoothed things over, “so have you seen the body, Peter?” I called him Peter. You call him Peter when he gets to a point like his head is gonna explode. Calling him Peter kinda turns the heat down.
He softened up. “No, but my dad has, and he didn’t even touch it. He just left it there and started making phone calls. That’s why I came over here, to tell you guys so we can go together?”
Nate gave me this long smirk. “I’ll tell you what, Clem, if there is a dead Mexican out there, I bet he has a sword or something we can sell.”
I thought about it. I’ve never seen a dead body before. And I can’t be sure I want to. But if I act all wuss like to Nathan he’s going to hound me about it for weeks. “Sounds cool,” I said.
“Lunch time! Lunch time! Let’s go boys! Hurry the hell up!” We could make out Nathan senior hollering in the air out by the house. He had his stick out, which meant if we didn’t go to him he was gonna come to us, which is basically the worst thing ever.
“You guys have to go?” Jenks looked all disappointed.
“Why don’t you go look at the Mexican for us and tell us about it. And if it’s there we’ll go look,” Nate told him.
“I don’t want to go alone…and anyway, if we wait too long my dad’ll have taken it out. He says he wants to have it stuffed or something, I dunno.”
“We’ll go later, come on Clem, he’s got the stick.” Nathan signaled towards the house.
Nate Sr. was banging it up against the wall now, red faced as hell.
“Seeya Peter!” I waved as we walked away. Peter was already walking along the field line back to his house. It would take him over an hour to get home the way he walks. He was already soaked through with sweat.
“Dead Mexican my ass,” Nate murmured.
I turned and followed Nate back to the house with Dane noiselessly trailing behind.
Truth is, I don’t really like it out here. Nathan senior works us half to death on weird projects he doesn’t even know what to make of. Like fixing the fence or moving bricks from one place to another. Half the time we just work and don’t ask any questions. Last summer I came back home with blisters and scratches and my back hurt like hell. My mom said I wouldn’t have to come out here anymore if I didn’t want to but my dad butted in and said the work was good for me. I don’t know what he was talking about. First of all, he works in an office and mom tells him all the time he doesn’t know the first thing about work. Second, how can work be good for anybody? It’s terrible. If you work too much you wind up looking like Nathan senior (mom calls him the Marlboro man.)
Aunt Ellie is crazier than Nathan senior, but in a different way. She sits on the couch all day long watching Days of Our Lives drinking wine with ice in it. Sometimes she mixes it with Diet Pepsi. It smells the whole house up, especially when it’s four-hundred degrees outside. She keeps her Pepsi and ice in a little cooler by the couch, and when she doesn’t, she makes us get it for her. Every two minutes I have to come up and fill her glass with ice and get the Franzia out of the fridge. She told me I have to bring her the box cause if I fill it in the fridge I’ll spill it everywhere (which I did, once). I hate the smell of that boxed wine. It smells like cardboard and vinegar. She gets it all over the place, too.
Aunt Ellie calls us the empty pail kids. She says it’s like we’re waiting for something that never comes. She says it will never come, and not to get our hopes up. I have no idea what the hell she was talking about.
Lunch is that tuna out of the can stuff on grilled cheese sandwiches. It’s not bad, especially if you pour ketchup on it.
Nathan senior needed us to fix the latch on the fence again cause when we let Dane out we broke it somehow –which isn’t true at all. That stupid fence latch was so rotten it probably fell off on its own. So Nate and I went into the storage shed and got the screwdriver and hammer. We took a hook down from the wall Nate sr. was using to hang one of his drills.
Easiest solution: screw an open and closed hook that latch together right into the gate. Nate Sr. had some elaborate thing planned out for us. This project would take us ten minutes.
It took two hours. Nate couldn’t figure out where to put the hook and neither of us could guess how we were supposed to open it from inside. So we just did two hooks, one on both sides. And if you needed to undo both hooks, we had a thin piece of sheet metal by the gate you would use to slide through the crack and lift the other hook up. Problem solved.
Uncle Nathan came out to have a look at our work. This look of despair just kind of crawled all over his face. “What’s the problem?” Nate Jr. asked. “It’s a latch. That’s what you wanted, right? Problem solved.”
Uncle Nathan just shook his head at us. “You boys have some kind of plans today?”
We both nodded our heads.
“Well you can cancel them,” he smiled.
Nate and I looked at each other. “But we were going to see the Mexi…”
Nate cut himself short knowing full well what his dad’s reaction to digging up the alleged dead Mexican would be.
“Go take a bath!” He told us.
It was only three o’ clock. Taking a bath would mean we were in for the night, which would be terrible. And anyway, taking baths is the worst thing ever. They made us take baths together to save water. My parents would never in a million years make us do that. The first time Nathan stayed at our house it was hilarious. I was getting into the bathtub by myself, when all of a sudden, the door swings open and there’s Nathan, half naked, about to climb in with me. Right then my dad happened to be walking down the hallway and he just stops, looks at Nathan and at me, and all loud like, he says, “What the fuck is this?” Nathan was so embarrassed he almost cried.
We took a bath. Nathan made fun of me cause, and this isn’t even true, his dick’s bigger than mine, which, again, just isn’t true at all. It’s the same thing every evening, too. Anyway I got Nathan to play boats with me in the water. He doesn’t do it as much anymore but he still secretly likes it. Nathan has over twenty of these plastic boats.
Boats works like this: the ships are split up and dealt out to one another based on size and shape. You then choose a boat at random and pit it against the other sailor’s boat. The way you fight is, get on opposite sides of the tub and sail them at one another. Whichever one careens off course after it’s hit, is the loser. The game’s a lot of luck cause the person with the biggest boat usually wins. But you can only play one boat once, so you have to hope yours is bigger. It’s kinda dumb though cause we always play our biggest boats first anyway, and then wind up just getting tired of the game and getting out. When you’re in a bathtub for too long it gets awkward when the water goes cold.
We walked through the field in our pajamas. Four in the afternoon and we were in our pajamas. Why? Cause Nathan sr. basically told us we couldn’t leave the house for the rest of the evening and made us put them on. Once we were in the kitchen, both wearing pajamas and sandals, we couldn’t go back to Nate’s room to change, cause if we did that his dad would see us (the living room’s right near Nate’s room.) So if we were going to make the slip, we’d have to go through the kitchen window without them hearing us, and then into the backyard, and out the gate.
We really did a shoddy job with that gate latch, no kidding. It took us ten minutes just to get it open. We let Dane out too. Dane’s never seen a half buried Mexican, either.
On our way past the field, careful not to hit the main road, we ran into Bobby Fisher. Bobby Fisher, not Bobby Fischer like the chess player (I know how his name is spelled cause my dad’s really into him, also, Searching for Bobby Fischer is the coolest movie ever). Bobby was older than us by about two years and he was dating, or so rumor has it, Nate’s sister. Nate didn’t like it but there wasn’t anything he could do about it.
“Hey kiddos,” he said, passing us and trotting into the greenbelt. We cringed a little. He always acts way older than us, calling us names like squirts and sports. If you ask me, he’s a real asshole.
We followed him in the greenbelt. “Where you headin’?” Nate asked him. Nate acts all cool when Bobby’s around.
“I’m meeting a friend,” Bobby said.
“Which…” Nate had his answer before he finished his question. Bobby was meeting Sally Brooke –basically one of the hottest girls in Nate’s grade. She was sitting on a rock right before the part where the greenbelt gets heavy.
Nate looked a little put off by the whole thing. True, he’s not into the idea of Bobby dating Karen, but even worse is the idea that Bobby’s playing footsy with the whole neighborhood while Karen’s in summer school.
“Hey, you guys smoke…” Bobby paused by the rock Sally was sitting on and looked around to see if anyone was eavesdropping, “grass?”
I looked down at the ground, I didn’t see him but I was sure Nate nodded at Bobby and gave him some stupid coolly high-five or something.
“Rad!” Said Bobby.
Truth is, Nate’s never smoked, I’ve never smoked, plain and simple.
Bobby said, “You want a dime bag?”
“Sure,” Nate looked at me. “How much is that?”
Bobby looked at Sally, who smiled at him. Sally’s got the biggest chest I’ve ever seen. It was like someone smaller was gonna crawl out of there, like those clowns in the little car we saw at the circus this one time.
“Eight bucks?”
“Eight bucks?!” Nate hollered. He hesitated a little and looked at me. I saw him out of the corner of my eye but I wasn’t paying any attention. I couldn’t take my eyes off Sally’s chest. “Shouldn’t a dime bag be a dime?” Nate asked.
Bobby laughed. “I don’t know why they call it that. You want it or not?”
Nate slapped me on the back of the head, “Wake up!” I snapped out of it and the two of us searched ourselves for money. The pajamas didn’t have any pockets.
“No money batman?” Sally was talking to me. My pajamas had the bat symbol on the chest and a Velcro utility belt. Pretty ace if you ask me. But girls don’t understand stuff like that, so I just shrugged all embarrassed and everything.
“Can we pay you tomorrow?” Nate asked.
Bobby looked like he was pretending to think it over. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it was all secrets or something, cause when he looked at Sally she just laughed and said, “Sure, tomorrow.” The whole thing seemed mysterious.
He left and made us wait there with Sally, who just looked around like she was bored or something. I hate girls, really. They don’t know how to do anything. Well, Karen’s nice, and she did good on the fort. I thought she was gonna hang drapes and stuff on it but she didn’t. She made this swing that was really cool. My swing was crappy so we took it down.
I played with Dane a little while. If you hold the stick high over your head he’ll put his paws on your shoulders and jump up at it.
After about ten minutes or so Bobby came back with the bag and this huge smile on his face. He held it up to us. His fingers were all muddy. “Here you go kiddies, pure St. Augustine.”
Nate and I looked at one another. “Is that a good one?” Nate asked.
Bobby just laughed and nodded his head. He threw us the bag. Nate asked what else we needed and Bobby gave us a lighter and a look like we should get out of there now. We both looked at Sally, who was rearranging her chest or something.
Once we got a safe distance from the greenbelt we walked into the wheat brush and inspected the contents of the bag. Nate acted like he knew what he was doing. He smelled it and smiled, “That’s the real stuff, boy.”
I smelled it too. It smelled like lawn fertilizer. I thought maybe Nate doesn’t know what lawn fertilizer smells like cause he’s never had a lawn, just gravel and wheat. “Is it supposed to smell like that?”
“Of course! Idiot!” Nate hollered.
He said you needed paper or something to smoke it with. This much I knew. We couldn’t find any paper. There was just a cardboard box we found lying near the greenbelt.
Nate picked it up and started shredding it. “This will have to do.”
We rolled the grass up in the cardboard into this huge cigarette deal. It was massive. It looked like we were gonna blow darts out of it like these bushmen do in the nature videos.
Nathan lit up and coughed his ass off and handed it to me. I took a long puff and coughed too. “Jesus!” I shouted.
“It’s supposed to be like that, you gotta stay with it, I think.” Nathan sucked on it some more and handed it back to me.
Nate’s dad burns scrap wood and stuff in the backyard sometimes. It tasted just like that. Like hot paint. My arms felt like jelly.
“This is the life man…” Nate lay down in a patch of straw and looked up at the sky. I did too.
We passed the cardboard cigarette back and forth, watching the birds swoop from the greenbelt into the wheat field and disappear.
“What’s that?” I opened my eyes and saw the silhouette of Peter Jenkins blotting out the sun. His belly hung over his waist just slightly uncovered by that crusty t-shirt he wears all the time. He hung over me like that awhile, like I was Japanese and he was Godzilla.
I sat up and looked over at Nathan, who had the cardboard smoked down to almost nothing. He looked like something I’ve never seen before.
“Forget it Jenks, you’re not cool enough,” Nate said.
I had a headache the size of an anvil. “How long was I out? Is it supposed to be like this?” I felt like I wanted to puke.
Jenks bent down and picked up the bag and took some of the grass out. “Grass?” he said.
“Duh,” said Nate.
“No. Grass grass, not grass. You guys are smoking lawn grass. Why you smoking lawn grass?”
Nate and I stood up and looked at the bag. I couldn’t figure out how I didn’t recognize it before. Bobby had it all twirled up to make it look different, but I shoulda caught it. Jenks was dead right, we were smoking lawn grass.
Nate must have realized it the same time I did, cause this look just came over him like he was gonna flip. “But, why do I feel all strange then?”
“Cause you were smoking cardboard!” Jenks doubled over in laughter. Watching him I couldn’t take it anymore and started laughing myself. Bobby really ran one over us. Bobby Fisher. Not like Bobby Fischer. Bobby Fischer wouldn’t sell us lawn grass. He’d tell us to keep our money and disappear.
“Where’s Dane?” Nate asked, looking around.
We called his name out and he came running. Dane always comes when you call him.
Jenks got up and dried the funny-tears from his eyes. Nate punched him in the arm and he just winced a little and laughed some more. Jenks has big wobbly arms, and he takes a punch like a champ. Not like me.
“So you guys want to see the Mexican?” Jenks asked.
Nate and I suddenly remembered why the hell we came out here in the first place.
“I haven’t seen it yet but dad still has it out there in the dirt I think.”
We walked down by the pond between Jenks’s house and Nate’s house. Nate wanted to dunk his head in water cause the cardboard gave him a headache, too. The whole time walking down there he was going on about how he’d like to show Bobby Fisher a piece of his mind, which is really all just garbage cause Nate’s fond of Bobby and we all knew it. I asked him to just forget about it and Jenks changed the subject back to the Mexican, and when he did that, I felt like I was getting hit with something all at once. I had this feeling like we were gonna go take a look and I’d bend down and the bones will just claw up at me and pull me deep into the ground. I saw Evil Dead, too, so I know how that goes.
That well Dane jumped over, I thought about that. One summer we threw rocks down there trying to measure how deep it goes. We never heard the clunk. It was like they just kept falling. I think that’s what it’s like to die, like you’re a rock just hurling through darkness.
When we got to the pond Nate just rope swung straight in, pajamas and all. It looked ace. He let go of the rope and did this back flip thing in the air. I couldn’t do that. Maybe they had something with this country/city thing. Nate’s got this way of unknowingly doing things real tough like. Nonchalant. That’s the word. I know that cause I misspelled it in this year’s spelling bee. I didn’t even make round two.
I swung on the rope but I did it real easy. I can’t do that diving stuff. I worry about rocks.
Jenks just stood in the leafs watching us. We had our pajamas on and we got to that point where we knew when we got home we’d catch hell but right now it didn’t matter.
Dane backed up a little and ran head first towards the water. He jumped in hard and swam in circles.
“I bet that Mexican has gold or something!” Nate yelled, splashing water all around him.
I dunked my head underwater and swam around looking for fish. People say they stock this pond, but I haven’t seen one fish in all the time I’ve swam here. I open my eyes under water, too.
“Come on guys!” Jenks did that big rainbow wave he does and we sauntered out of the water. Even half past six it’s hot as hell. We figured the clothes would dry on our way back.
“I bet if we dug underneath him we’ll find a treasure chest,” Jenks said, picking his nose and wiping snot all over his shirt.
I tried riding Dane again but he just shot out underneath me.
“They didn’t even have much gold…hey wait a minute! I bet he was a deserter or something, why else would he be all the way out here?” Nate said.
I thought about that. In Texas history class all they ever talked about was the Alamo. There was this General Wool or something that marched from San Antonio to Chihuahua. And then there was this Taylor. Anyway, what I remember for sure was that the Americans were driving them deeper into Mexico, and there was nothing resembling a battle in East Texas. Especially Marion of all places. So how the hell did he get out here?
By the time we reached Jenks’s farm our clothes were nearly dry and Nate and I gave a sigh of relief. Now we’d only have to explain the sneak out (if they hadn’t already gone to bed and didn’t notice we were missing).
“Hey, my dad’s out there!” Jenks hollered.
Sure enough, there was a tractor plow out on the field and two people sitting next to it in lawn chairs drinking beer out of a cooler. We weren’t close enough to see the Mexican yet but from where we were standing I could make out old man Jenks’s confederate uniform clear as day. He was tossing back a beer and listening to oldies with his buddy, Jim Fisher –that rat Bobby’s dad.
I felt that heaviness again and wanted to turn back.
“Don’t be a wuss.” Nate sped up a little and I followed after him. “Man…I bet crazy old Jenks probably already took our gold!” He broke into a run.
We, all three of us, ran up to the plow. It was there, just like Jenks said. The skeleton of a man. It wasn’t entirely uncovered but you could see the hand gripping out at the sky and the open mouth of the skull. It was as if he were clutching out at the sun, one last time before being dragged back down into the ground. We fell silent.
“That there’s a real bo-ner-fied Mexican,” old man Jenks smiled at us and rocked back a little in his lawn chair.
The man in the dirt had bits of tattered jacket hanging off him, and bits of metal shone through what was left of the ribcage. You could see the butt of a sword sticking out a little from the ground.
“We’re waitin’ for the Ar-che-o-ology Society to come out here and dig his ass up,” said Bobby sr., a big half-toothless smile on his face.
Nate turned to me and said, “Let’s go.” He was all red and I thought I was too. I didn’t look at him too hard cause he looked away like he didn’t want me to see him.
It really was like the Mexican was reaching for something.
I made a move to grab Peter but his arm was frozen stiff.
“Just leave him, Clem.”
We left Jenks standing there like that, just starring at the skeleton, paralyzed.
Nate and I followed the barbed wire fence line towards his house. It used to have electrical wire to keep cattle in but there’s no cattle here anymore.
We didn’t say anything for a while. I just kept my eyes fixed on the gravel road and picked out at the wire here and there. All I could think about was the image of that skeleton with its bony hand clutched out at the sky, and I remembered what Aunt Ellie said, It will never come.
The little gravel road opened up to Nate’s field and Dane trotted up ahead of us close to the field line. I walked in and Nate followed behind me like he knew where I was going. When we got to the well the both of us just kind of hung there on the rim and looked in. Nate took out that lighter Bobby Fisher gave him and dropped it in. Not a sound.
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