Arcadio (2 page)

Everyone was quiet and no one said another word. Then Ben said finally, “Wish I had a picture of it, wish I had it on my dresser and could look at it, the holy sight in the river, naked, naked. Twas—well, just a feeling I never had before and not again since, I guess, until just now when I've told it, more than I could ever find a word for, don't know what, to this day, exactly, and that was oh I guess fifty years ago, by this time the beautiful bather must be dead and buried in its grave. But now somebody else will know its story cause I've told it, and I'm glad.”

And then my Uncle Ben, a man I knew was going soon to die—I'd heard the whispering about it—and lately had been saying peculiar things, sometimes black and dreadful, out of an obsessive remembering, went slowly on away.

I knew so little about him—how could I know except what I overheard and what I imagined: he had gone away early in passion to some promise, against all pleading, and lost the promise, and came back, made dumb. We had never before—and then suddenly—heard him speak like that; sometimes a person finally finds the song out of what had struck him dumb long before; and later I heard a person say that such a time is the time of Grace, of reconciliation with the will of God after long pain of lost promise, and I believe that Uncle Ben had found the song that summer night and was, for those moments of his found song, in the grasp of such a time; and his song was a parting song, a song of farewell. So had Arcadio in my vision of him found his
adiós
—voice to sing a sweet goodbye, and after his own long dumbness.

Then Aunt Evelina said, “Ben was drinking. Never hunted a rabbit in his life sober.”

“Twas a Sideshow escaped from a Carnival,” another voice explained.

That night I could not sleep because of the extraordinary visitation to our ordinary place that Uncle Ben had surprisingly told of. I was haunted by visions of the beautiful being. I felt its presence. It beckoned me. I wanted at once to go into the night to the riverbottoms in search of the beautiful being Arcadio, long long dead, to wait under the willows in expectation of its appearance. What beings there were in the world, and had been! Magical and mysterious and hidden, not plain and easy and available like people in the town, saying “Hoddy Son how's your folks?” I was ready now, full, where I had been in preparation before, I would without question go away with it, into the magical world where all the other visitors to my solitude dwelt. For this I called softly through the window, into the blue personal moonlight of our local midnight. I left a futile call, long ago and long too late, “Arcadio! Arcadio! Come back to our place! Come back!”

In a rapture, that night, I saw that the strange being had come to the window by my bed. I saw in the gentle moonlight its face glowing through the trembling curtains that the midnight breeze touched. It was all hot and luring. I was stirred to an excitement I had never known, a surging, now, of that earlier faintly touching excited fear and wanting, touching at my breast, and down below my belly in the tenderest part of me. The face and drawing presence of the beautiful naked bather demanded something of me I had never given.

“Is your heart right?” I heard it whisper. “You got to get your heart right, Son. Because we are living in the Last Days! It is the End Time, the Rapture is coming.”

The being of the beautiful body was imploring me to consider my soul, to look after my salvation at the end of things. Yet I hadn't even begun! I was fresh, daily charged with powers that were ripening me, I was new, my body was beginning to glow, there were secret moistures, there was new soft hair, there was a promise of a coming rapture that would deliver me of what had grown to be unbearable swelling of my senses. Yet the beautiful visitor spoke of the salvation of my soul, of the Last Days, the Rapture of the End of the World. My world! Soon to end just when it was soon to begin! And my annunciator of the last days of the world was my very tempter, my very invitation to my beginning, to my first days!

I whispered back to my visitor through the moonlit window, “But how do you know? How do you know that these are the Last Days of the World?”

“Omens, promises, prophecies coming to pass—hens crowing, women whistling, man's greed and the murder of fresh water.” My visitor pronounced its doom in a voice that was melodious.

And after an awful time of silence, I whispered, trembling, “Make my heart right! Save my soul! But let me see your body again.”

But it was gone.

I did not tell my Uncle Ben about my vision of Arcadio. In the days that followed his story and my dream I watched him, dumb again and staying far apart, sitting sometimes in the field under the live oak tree. Within another year my Uncle Ben was dead and gone. But this was what I heard and what I saw and all I had with which to make the story that follows, if you will read it or hear the song of it, although time stopped it until just today, many years later. For within some more years I was gone, in my own passion and toward my own promise. I never came back again.

But today as I've held the picture postcard before me, that place and those people are live in my memory, that summer night hums in heat and music in my head: I see again that dark gathering of stilled listeners. They heard a mysterious song sung only once. Those listeners are gone, all but one, and the first singer is gone but not the song. I sing it again.
Canto
.

In my vision I went to the riverbottom—twas in early May, I recollect. I was headed toward the wondrous bather's pool when I begun to hear the faint music, silvery and watery and softly throbbing, and it was like a warmth around my head and face and seemed to come out of my own head, music of my own. It softly pulled me through the palmettos and the dewberries and the crawling vines. And then when I looked up I saw the early-morning specter of the old abandoned railroad trestle. Aloft against the hot blue sky, vaulted higher than I ever remembered it, held ascendant by frail legs rising out of the green willows and wateroaks of the bottomland, aloft and slender and as fragile as if it were made of paper, hung the condemned trestle, a lonesome bridge of orange-colored rails and gray ties that weather had taken over after the trains were forbidden, a lonesome pier reaching over a white riverbed of shell, vanishing into a green billow of woods, a crossing of dreams, of secret trespasses, flights of ghosts and fairies, and since it was removed from the dead weight of iron was now the fragile avenue of weightless things, slide of snakes, feet of frogs and tread of birds, the passing over of groundless, footless things, motes and beams and flowers of floating snow, and winged seeds and blown crystals of rain, a transfer for winds and fogs and aerial lights and fires.

And there I saw the being sitting under the trestle, in the latticed light, leaning against a leg of the trestle that, although it stood in the white shell of the dry riverbed, was green and garlanded with blooming vines, woven with trumpetvine and honeysuckle and morning-glory, like a Maypole. He was dressed in an old army uniform. An officer's cap was aslant on his head and he had a harmonica clasped between his lips, blowing and sucking and fluttering an odd tune.

All of a sudden the music stopped and the figure stood up and spoke to me out of the pale green latticed light from the wild bower in the dry shell. And it was very strange and was not like anything I had ever laid my eyes on; it was fearful, it was strange.

MY
NAME
IS
ARCADIO,
and I will not do you no harm, come under the shade of this old rayroad trestle if you wan to. Train's gone. Por
favor: siéntase
, set down please, here by the blooming vines of morningglory and honeysuckle that smells so sweet in the morning sun, here in the bed of the river, white bed of shell, river's gone too. You look like you been walkin for some time in the hot riverbottom through the palmettos and the dewberries and the crawling vines,
siéntase
. Set down. If you wan to.

How did you find me did you hear my tune did you come to where the frenchharp played, tis an old tune you heard acomin from the dead river's bed, “The Waltz of the Spotted Dog,” my old tune that I played out in the Show, a sad waltz, some folks have said that tis the same tune as “Missouri Waltz” if you have ever heard a tune called that, “Missouri Waltz”; tis not, tis not the same tune,
compadre
. When I was in the Show. And never said a word, only sound my breath made was through this little harp, played it once for each Show, Old Shanks made me do it, well did keep me awake and showed I had some talent. Sometimes tears of my eyes run down into the little harp, I blew the music through my tears, a watery sound for a
vals
, this little
arpa
harp is rusted from the salt of my tears, little salted frenchharp. When tears dry up their salt bites deep as rust. Ever see that on something? Makes a little speckle of rust. Tears can rust,
compadre
. Hope you never had to cry too many. You wan hear.

Cantando, compadre. Canto
. But there was a long time when I didn't sing no song. I am at large. Which is how they called me on the radio when I was found missing. At large. There is no Mescan word for it.
Cantor soy
. I think of myself as a singer. A singer at large. I had not been free in all
mi vida
, that's the Mescan word for life, until I excaped. Locked up by my father Hombre, locked up by the Chinaman Shuang Boy, locked up by Old Shanks in the Show. All of which I will tell you, singing my song. Come under the trestle and listen if you wan to, in the shade of the morningglory vine in the morning, God knows how it blooms so fresh without no water; or go on, if you wan to. I am bidding a sweet
adiós
to civilization, old world is wearing down,
Corazón
. What have they done to this place? I got a sweet goodbye to sing to it.
Pasa el mundo viejo, se pasa
. Old world is passing away. Meantime, I keep an eye out for my mother. Sounds funny but that is the words for it, keep an eye out, that is the Anglo espression. We have no such Mescan espression.

I am used to sitting silent under the public gaze as a serene listener. I was not allowed to speak back to my gazers nor answer their questions. Away from my gilded chair of serenely listening, I now sit in an open place and sing free. An at-large singer. You listen if you wan hear it. If not, the air is my listener, leaves and birds my hearers. I listened to the world, now world hear me is what I'm thinking!
Qué dice Arcadio? Qué dice el Mundo?
God knows the years my ears heard whispers and soft calls.
Muñeco! Chíngame! Corazón Dulce!
Show it to me! Fuck me! Filthy people of cheap towns. Sometimes a person alone in the tent with me would stand before me and tell me his trouble. My wife she run off with another man; my little baby turned out deaf and dumb, are you a healer can you lay on hands. As if I was a Buddha or
San José
Saint Joseph—or
Santa Teresa
. Sometimes one of my gazers would implore.
Comprendes?
You wan hear? Sometimes I would be supplicated in whispers. But I do not now supplicate nor implore. My song serenely sing,
cantando
, is the way I look at it. And I keep an eye out for
mi madre
, which is an espression, keeping out an eye,
comprendes
.

On most days I have me some
paz
. Peace. It was not so before. I wan be on the road, peaceful, I said, to be wandering in the woods and prairies, in the liveoaks and bluebonnets of my old home, I wan beg for my supper and lay in the fields, I said, be with the stars and the streams, sit all day if I wan to, in the shade, see Texas, see Texas down around the Boca Chica down around there, if I wan to, at Brownsville and down around there, I said. And ask about my mother over at San Antone, although I have a feeling that she met an early death. I am dressed in this old army officer's uniform of some old war, man said to me that give it to me outside of some town said that he don know where tis from, an old war, said don know which, man said; give me the cap too; nor do I know the name of the town. I am
contento
in this old war uniform and I am clean, I dote on cleanliness, I bathe in rivers and keep my body fresh and I wash my clothes in waters of streams when I can find them without any brown foam afloating, what is that shit? Who did all that? What in God's name have they put into the rivers and the streams?—where they happen to run water, most of them are dry—who let them do that to the waters? Put all that shit in the waters? I beg for bread at doors, to know a part of human charity though I'm pretty rich in my own right
porque
I saved my money in the Show. Which I carry privately, rob me if you wan to, I feel too gentle to resist, I am a peaceful person walking towards God. You'd never find it anyway,
oyente
, listener.

I try to stay out of the stinking cities—who did that, who put all the cars? Ought to catch em and throw em into the rivers of shit, that put all the cars. You wan hear? I am near the little town where I was born, in Texas, where I lived before my mother left me. I know that I am now outside that town because I remember this trestle rising up high out of the river waters, today when first I come upon it trestle was higher to me than ever I remembered it and its long thin legs comin up out of the old bottomland seemed like twas made of paper when first I seen it, lonesome bridge of orange rails and gray ties, tis a lonesome pier areachin over a white riverbed of shell, a
vision
seemed to me when first I seen it, seen the trestle. And under the trestle as I got closer come bloomin up out of the white shell of the dry riverbed morningglories and honeysuckles and trumpetvines all abloomin in the early morning light. And into this
visión
I took my seat, sat down to rest and play my frenchharp. And you come.

And I remember the train passin over and the blue thicket of trees where are they all now who did this seems like somebody burnt up a lots of the trees, dry trees lots of dry trees among the green ones I hate a dry tree, Devil got it. And greedy rich men helped him. And I know I am now outside that little town where I was borned because I hear the rumble of it, must have grown severely for I don remember a rumble when I lived there with
mi madre
Chupa before she run away. Who did that? I never been back since, after my mother run away from us, for my father Hombre took me on to a town that I will later sing you if you wan hear it, if not I'll tell it to the air, as I have said earlier, it is the singing that is important to me. I wonder if I'm tryin to come back home, to where I started, wonder if that's in my head, travelin at large. As a traveler with the Show, in my cheap wagon—have I ever told you about my Show Wagon? I'll have to tell you sometime. I said why the iron bars on my wagon windows Señor Shanks, why the big lock on my door, is this wagon for Heracles the old lion
feroz
for God's sakes? You wan to get raped or beat up some night? said Shanks. Some nights it's a thought, I murmured. Shanks riled. Bars on Heracles's wagon, he riled, is to keep him
in
, on yours to keep them
out
. Well one way
not
to keep em out is to make it look like a whore wagon, I said to Shanks. All the glass jewels of rubies and sapphires, tin moons and golden leaf paint. Yet a hovel inside.
Course
you don wan em in my wagon, see a pig sty, gold leaf and glass jewels on the outside, broken bed inside and roaches that travel as if twere part of the Show. We'll fix the bed, Shanks riled, we'll fix it I keep tellin you. You keep tellin me, I answered. People see glass and tin shinin for a mile away in the bright sunshine, see what you'd think was gypsy whores movin in the night, sparklin under the moon. No wonder they stoned it that time outside of Hannibal Mis-soura. Is why we have on the lock and iron bars, like I've told told you, says Shanks, gettin hysterical. You could not win with Shanks (nor could those bars keep
him
out when he'd had a few rums and Cokes, I can tell you, you wan hear?). As a traveler with the Show I was in almost every town and city of this old nation. This was in the nineteen hundred and thirties and the nineteen hundred and forties and the nineteen hundred and fifties. I believe the time of my excape, of becoming at large, was in the nineteen hundred and sixties,
no tengo por seguro
. I am not for sure. I know that right now as I sing to you it is in the nineteen hundred and seventies, near the end, it may be nineteen hundred and eighty I don know, nobody comes up to me and says what year it is. I only know that this old world is wearing out. I sing a sweet
adiós
to it.
Cantando, compadre. Canto
. You wan hear.