Oscar Casares (3 page)

Mr. Z and Ricky were sitting on the tailgate. Diego wiped his eyes and runny nose on the inside of his shirt. He walked to the truck and started eating his cheeseburger. All the crying had left a funny taste in his mouth and he wasn't that hungry.

He was eating his french fries when two young boys came by on a bike, one of them sitting on the handlebars. Diego said he'd take care of them.

The boys were brothers and their hair was cut the same way, in a straight line across their forehead. Diego brought out the sparklers and Black Snakes, but they weren't interested in little-kid fireworks. One brother wanted bottle rockets and the other wanted Silver Jets.

“Bottle rockets are stupid,” the younger one said.

“No, they're not,” the older one said.

“I'm sick of bottle rockets.”

“Stop being a llorón. Bottle rockets is all we got money for. The Silver Jets cost more.”

“You're the llorón. You're the one that wants bottle rockets. Those are for stupid babies. Give me half the money.”

They argued for several minutes, calling each other names. The younger one kicked dirt at his brother, which led to a shoving match the older one eventually won. In the end, they bought two packages of bottle rockets.

The boys were still arguing when Diego dropped four Silver Jets in their paper bag without them noticing. He did it as if it were the most natural thing in the world to do, as if he were standing in the middle of the street lighting the fuse to a long pack of Black Cats.

The brothers rode away with their fireworks, and Diego wished he could see their reaction when they found the Silver Jets. He felt himself kicking the old man in the gut.

Later Diego helped a man wearing a black cowboy hat with a tiny horseshoe pin stuck to the front of it. The man bought Roman candles, bottle rockets, Silver Jets, and Black Cats. Diego put them all inside a paper bag and then slipped in two more Roman candles. If the man noticed, he didn't say anything. Diego charged him only for the fireworks he had asked for. The man nodded and walked to his truck.

Diego gave away fireworks every chance he had. The packages of Black Snakes, smoke bombs, bottle rockets, Black Cats, and sparklers tumbled to the bottom of the paper bags for the rest of the night. It became a game for him, a challenge, the same way learning how to sell Black Snakes and sparklers had been a challenge. The trick was to figure out what kind of firework the customer really wanted and to stick it in the bag without anyone noticing. A heavyset lady with three kids almost caught him putting some extra smoke bombs in her bag.

“¿Y ésos, qué? Are you trying to trick me, make me buy more than I want?”

“No, ma'am, these are two for one.”

“¿Estás seguro? Because I don't like tricks.”

“Yes, ma'am, they're on special.”

“Pues, entonces let me buy two more de esos smoke bombs.”

He had started by giving away the fireworks only when he was alone in the stand, but with the evening rush he became more daring. With Ricky working next to him and Mr. Z at the other end of the counter with a customer, he dropped the fireworks in a bag and then smiled at the old man as if he'd just made the biggest sale of the night.

Mr. Z told more of his jokes on the ride home. The one he laughed at the most was about how Diego's father probably never went to confession because it would take too long. Ricky ignored the old man and stared straight ahead as if he were on a long bus ride. Diego sat next to the door. It was colder now, but he rolled down the window because he didn't want to hear the jokes. He wondered what would happen in a day or two when the old man did an inventory check. It was the first time he had thought about it all night. Each time he had added extra fireworks to a customer's bag, he felt he was somehow covering up the last time he had done it, so that in the end it wouldn't be dozens of fireworks that had been given away but only one or two packages that could easily be written off as a mistake. It became less of a bad thing the more he did it. Now he was getting nervous that one of his customers would come back to ask Mr. Z for free fireworks, telling him that one of his boys had been loading up bags the night before. He was afraid Ricky might get blamed, and then he would have to come forward and confess the whole thing. Given the choice, he would prefer to get fired and not have to confess. He didn't feel bad about what he had done, because the old man deserved everything, maybe more. In the distance, fireworks lit up the dark sky, and Diego imagined they were the Roman candles he'd given away. He smiled as he watched the bright lights.

When Diego opened the front door, he saw his father drinking a glass of water in the kitchen. He had hoped that his parents might already be asleep. He wanted to go to bed without having to talk about his day, but as soon as he walked in, his father asked him to sit at the table.

“How was work, mi'jo?”

Diego hesitated for a moment. He stared at the salt and pepper shakers on the table, trying to find an answer in the grains.

“It was good,” he said. “I think I sold more fireworks than anybody.”

“That's the kind of news I like to hear about my boy.”

Diego smiled.

“Then you're going to keep working for Mr. Zamarripa?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Qué bueno,” his father said. “I knew everything would work out. Sometimes you just have to wait a little while for it to get better.”

RG

I
saw Bannert at the mall the other day. He was standing near the entrance eating a cone of pistachio ice cream. He pretended he didn't see me, and I returned the favor. This is the same man who used to live across the street from us years ago. Our boys grew up together, played, got into fights. Bannert would wave hello if we happened to pull out of our driveways at the same time. He knows a little bit of Spanish, and sometimes when he came over to the house he tried to say a few words here and there. I appreciated the effort he made. If we saw each other at one of the high school football games, we might shake hands. We were never close friends, but there was a time when we talked in the way neighbors do. That was years ago, though. I couldn't find anything to say to him that day at the mall. And I guess the same goes for him.

Bannert probably thinks I'm crazy. But I'm not. I can tell you exactly when the trouble started—October 3, 1976. I know the date because I keep a record of things. It's nothing fancy, not a diary or anything like that. I just write down what I do every day. It started when I was delivering bread and I had a problem with my supervisor. One day I noticed he was following me on my route, checking to see that I wasn't slacking off. The man had a problem trusting people. He wasn't from around here—maybe that had something to do with it. Either way, I thought writing everything down on paper was a good way to defend myself if he ever said anything against me. I did this at the end of the day, right before I went to bed. Just a few short notes about what I did on my route, the people I spoke to, the mileage on the vehicle, and how long a lunch break I took. Then one night I was writing down all the things I'd done and I realized I hadn't worked that day. This was a Sunday. It had become a habit after so many years, is what I'm trying to say. From then on I wrote in my notebook every night, even after I quit that job and found a better one.

Don't think that I spend a lot of time writing in it, because I don't. Here's what I wrote last Saturday:

Breakfast at Reyna's Cafe, rotated and balanced tires, bought a new ceiling fan, haircut at Treviño's.

If it's a good haircut I might mention it, but usually it's just a haircut. Sometimes I look back at the end of the year and see what I was doing. Or I'll pull out a notebook and see what I was doing five years ago on that day. I have one for every year back to 1973. They're small spiral notebooks, fifty pages, the same ones the kids use in school. I write the year on the cover.

October 3, 1976—Mowed grass, front and back, trimmed weeds growing next to fence, loaned hammer to Bannert.

So, you see, I have it in writing. I'm not crazy.

My wife said Bannert probably just forgot. I don't know how an honest man forgets for almost four years. I don't know how he wakes up every morning, walks out his front door, looks across the street—straight at my house—and forgets he hasn't returned my hammer.

But she's quick to defend other people, make excuses for them, especially if they happen to have blue eyes. Then they can't go wrong. She thought I was exaggerating the time I told her about my supervisor following me. She claimed that the reason I was so upset was because this supervisor happened to be a gringo. That is her opinion. I've come to expect this from her. You should have seen her when we first moved here. There were only a few Anglo families, but she thought we were living at the country club. Over the years, most of them have moved across town or passed away, until it's come to be almost all raza that live here. I've lived and worked with gringos my whole life. Gringos, mexicanos, negros, chinos. It makes no difference to me. I've always been more interested in living next to honest people than anything else. After that, they can be any color they want.

My wife actually wanted me to walk over and ask Ban-nert for the hammer.

“Excuse me, Mr. Bannert, but you know that hammer you borrowed a really long time ago, the one you know and I know is mine, pues, I need it back now.”

Something like that. But I said I wasn't the one who did the borrowing, so why should I be the one doing the asking?

I was sitting on the porch steps sharpening the blades on the clippers when Bannert came over that afternoon. He stared like he'd never seen anybody sharpen blades. He stared long enough that he made me uncomfortable, and I finally stood up. I don't like people standing over me when I'm working. He was wearing a white T-shirt and a pair of overalls that had creases. His freckled skin was burning with the sun. Bannert isn't the kind of man who works outside every day. He earns his living selling sofas and beds and whatever else they have in a furniture store. If he had yard work, he usually hired somebody to do it.

“The yard looks good, hombre,” he said.

“It could use some rain,” I said.

“I guess that's why God made sprinklers.” He laughed at this.

“Looks like you're getting ready to do some work, Bannert.”

“Yeah, I need to fix a few things around la casa. The dryer needs a new exhaust hose. Plus my wife has me hanging up some curtain rods but, chingado, I can't find my hammer. You think I can borrow yours?”

That's how it happened. That's how I remember it, anyway.

He's not the first person I ever loaned something to. George Fuentes used my weed whacker once or twice. I let Domingo, the man who cleans yards, borrow my machete when the handle on his broke loose. Torres needed a small wrench to fix a toilet. Nobody can say I'm pinche with my tools. But then all those things were returned to me within a day, two days at the most.

Bannert was different. Four days went by y nada. No hammer, no apologies, no “Do you mind if I borrow it for a few more days, hombre?” Nothing. Like they say on the radio: Ni-fu, ni-fa.

So I asked myself, “How long do I wait before I say something?”

It's not like he was a stranger who was going to run off the next day. He lived on the other side of the street, maybe a hundred feet from his front door to mine. If I went over too soon, it was going to look like I was desperate and I didn't believe he'd bring the hammer back on his own, which wasn't so far from the truth.

I can only remember one thing that I ever borrowed from Bannert. It wasn't even for me, really. My wife invited some of her family to go with us to the beach and we needed an extra folding table for all the food. We thought Bannert might have one and he did. I put a plastic covering over the table just in case one of our boys spilled something on it. I didn't want Bannert saying later that those people across the street didn't know how to take care of things. And as soon as we got home, I wiped off the sand and returned the table to him. Bannert looked surprised to see me and asked if one of the legs had busted. The man couldn't understand why I wanted to return the table so quickly.

“Thanks,” he said, “but you didn't have to bring it back so fast. I knew you'd stop by when you had a chance.”

Right there's the difference between us. Bannert takes everything for granted. Why should I have kept his table one minute longer than I needed it? I was glad that he had a table and he was willing to lend it to me in the first place. He thought it was okay to bring back my hammer when it was convenient, when it suited him. I don't work that way.

Time passed: two weeks, three months, seven months, a year, two years.

I understand that most people would've already done something about the hammer, but I'm not most people. I never felt it was my responsibility. Bannert's a grown man. He knew what he was doing. I shouldn't have to go around picking up after him. Just forget about it, my wife said—which was easy to say, since he didn't take something that belonged to her.

During that time, I saw him use my hammer on three different occasions:

May 18, 1977—Mowed front yard, trimmed grass along the sidewalk, cleaned lawn mower, watched Bannert hammer a new mailbox onto the side of his carport.

November 30, 1979—Raked leaves in front and backyard, changed oil and filter in car, saw Bannert and his wife nailing Merry Christmas decorations to the front of his house.

July 4, 1980—Sprayed tree for worms, washed car, drove the boys to fireworks stands, Bannert posted a red, white, and blue sign in his yard: Vote Reagan.

I'm not a political man, not any more than the next Democrat on this block, but I came pretty close to walking over there and grabbing the hammer out of his hand. The problem now was so much time had gone by that saying anything would make it look like I had been hiding my true feelings the past four years. That every morning when he waved and I waved back, I wasn't thinking, “Good morning, Bannert.” That instead I was really thinking, “Why the hell hasn't this gringo brought back my hammer?” But the truth is that I didn't think about it all the time. Sometimes months would pass before I remembered again. And when it did come to mind, it was more like a leaky faucet that you forget about until some night when you can't fall asleep and then you hear the
plop…plop…plop…plop…
but then you forget about it again the next morning.