Seeing Off the Johns (3 page)

He looked outside to see a line of cars making its way down Main to Viggie. It was a strange sight, so many cars on the road traveling in the same direction when there wasn't a baseball or football game to get to. Was there a funeral in town? No, the cars were going in the opposite direction of both the church and cemetery. Besides, how could someone in town have died without Chon hearing about it? No matter how good he was at shutting his eyes and separating himself from what went on around him, he would have heard that kind of news the second it hit town.

It wasn't just the cars. There were people on foot too, crying as they walked down the street. Chon felt like someone wading upstream in a rush of panicking hordes, unaware of the calamity and terror from which they were fleeing. His curiosity at the sight morphed to fear. That panic was interrupted by the bells over the storefront entrance. It was Henry, flushed and breathless.

“Holy shit, bro, they're dead,” he blurted out. Henry's face was covered with sweat, much of which had collected at the corner of his mouth on his pathetic Fu Manchu whiskers.

“Who's dead?” Chon said.

“The Johns. There was an accident. They're dead.”

Chon felt his eyebrow rise of its own volition.

“Give me the keys to the Dodge-nasty, man. Everyone's going to the Robison place,” Henry said. He looked out impatiently at the cars and pedestrians making their way to the action. “Holy fuck,” he said to himself.

Chon took his keys from his pocket and slid them on the counter. Henry picked them up.

“Alright, man. You're off at midnight, right?” He didn't wait for an answer. “I'll be back by then. Hay te watcho.”

Then he left. After a short time, everyone seemed to have left. The streets of Greenton were empty, Chon Gonzales alone on his stool to contemplate what it all meant.

Andres and Julie Mejia had eaten breakfast and then made love. They'd planned on being louder, but it was as silent and meditative as the first time after their oldest son Gregorio was born. Goyo was asleep in his crib, put down after his changing and bottle. Andres would swear that the look in his eye that day had nothing to do with the fact that it was the day the doctor-mandated moratorium on sex had ended.

“I really didn't know,” he said whenever Julie brought it up afterwards. It became one of their favorite stories to share in intimate moments. “And who says I would have waited one second longer anyway, no matter what any doctor said.”

Andres had done some boxing in his teen years and some volunteer firefighting with the county. He had worked odd jobs stripping roofs and picking and hauling watermelons, at the same time serving as a mechanic's apprentice. All of this work led to his still impeccable physique, a source of pride and shame to Julie. She had always been big. On the arm of her Mexican Adonis, her Adanis, she figured all anyone could see was the disparity between the two of them. She couldn't see, like Andres did, like her sons did, like everyone did, that she wore every ounce of her weight perfectly—her face was exactly symmetrical save for a beauty mark above her lip on the right side, her hips and thighs would have broken the charcoal pencils of a thousand would-be artists trying to master curves, even her belly with its uniform softness which made Andres
crazy when he wrapped his biceps and forearms around it—all of it transcended the oppression of Barbie, drove men who were into bigger women wild, and made men who weren't see how they might be.

When Andres and Julie were done, sweaty bodies glowing in the strange glow of daylight filtering in through the shades, they lay in bed thinking that life would be like this from now on. After a day at work—him at the shop, her at the library—it would be making love—fucking, if that was the case—at any time, volume, or place in the house they so chose. They were both thinking, though they didn't say so to each other, that they hadn't felt like this since they'd played hooky back in school—lied to mom about a stomachache or to dad about menstrual cramps. But now they had no one to lie to. There was no shame in being in bed in the morning like this, only pride. Pride in their boys and pride in themselves for having made them.

Julie got out of bed to shower. Then Andres did. Then they made love again, remembering their resolution to not stifle the moans and grunts and climactic screams that had been building up in them for twenty-three years. After this they took to the shower together, during which she scrubbed his chest and back and he massaged shampoo gently on her scalp. They stood dressing at their respective ends of the bed where their bureaus were. Andres made a playful lunge at her, and she laughed.

“No,” she said. “We'll be late.”

They took his truck, which he never took anywhere but to the shop or out on a call. He was not only Greenton's most trustworthy mechanic, he was its one-man roadside assistance. Goyo helped. Every now and then, John did too, as the case demanded it.

They hadn't even made it to the end of Sigrid when they were greeted by their neighbor Pedro Guerra who gave a shout to the couple and picked up his right hand, ring and middle fingers held down by his thumb.

“Hook 'em,” he shouted, and flashed a two-tooth smile.

Andres managed to wait until he pulled onto Viggie before he burst into laughter. Julie couldn't hold it that long. Three other cars honked at the Mejias, extending the same greeting. They even saw other people salute friends and neighbors with their index fingers and pinkies. It seemed that the whole of Greenton was going to do this for the next four years, bathed in a sea of burnt orange until the boys graduated and went pro, as was their plan, and a new color was adopted. But pro ball teams didn't have hand signs like the Longhorns did. Hook 'em just might turn into Greenton's new hello.

Arn Robison had the fire going, coals nice and grey, grill warmed and ready for whatever flesh needed cooking. Andres and Julie walked straight to the Robison backyard to hug Arn and Angie. She was still as beautiful as she was when she met Arn. That made the couple a funny sight because Arn had lost most of his hair and gained quite a bit of weight in the interceding years.

The Mejias were always told not to bring anything but appetites to the Robison house. After so many dinners with them, they were finally comfortable in complying with the familiar directive. A fruit tray had been set out. When the Mejias arrived, Angie ran inside and returned with a tray holding four big New York strips.

“This is too much,” Julie said, as she often did at the Robison's get-togethers.

“Who can begrudge us an indulgence on such a great day?” Arn looked up. But he was not talking about the weather, which was prefect by Greenton standards, the dry heat not so bad under the shade of a tree or, as in the Robison's case, a deck covering. Andres looked at Julie and they smiled their secret at each other. No one could.

“And in that spirit,” Arn said, “a toast.”

He held out a glass of bourbon to Andres while Angie poured a couple of margaritas in stemware waiting on the table. They raised their glasses, the four of them,
and looked at each other as though they'd all just rolled out of bed after an afternoon of intimacy.

“To our boys,” Angie said.

“To our Johns,” Julie added.

“To our Johns,” they all said.

They had always gotten on this well, despite their difference in age. The Robisons had their John late in life, after having been told they never would. Though the Mejias were in their early forties and the Robisons were well into their sixties, they were friends because their boys were friends, best friends. Well before Araceli sat down to dinner with the Mejias, they'd had John Robison over as a guest at countless dinners. They were not special dinners. The Mejias rarely strayed from their standard foods—fideo and meat, tacos and chalupas, easy ricotta-free lasagna, beef and, more rarely, chicken enchiladas. But they didn't have to be special. They were not about anything more than two friends hanging together outside of school, the diamond and the huddle.

The Robisons, on their part, seemed to regard the Mejias—as some people do with their friends who are more than two decades their junior—as younger siblings and as children of their own. The Mejias had felt a sting of embarrassment when they went to the first of their dinners with the Robisons. They knew the Robisons were well off—Arn was the youngest grandchild and sole remaining Greentonite of Samuel and Wilhelmina Robison, who'd made a small fortune on a ranch outside of town. Arn had inherited money from them. He'd worked hard all his life as a horse doctor and hit big on some investments. But the Mejias weren't prepared for the kind of food the Robisons were used to.

That first meal together, the Robisons served blackened catfish, which Julie thought
was too fancy for her taste. Over a decade of dinners, though, the Mejias accepted that there would be the occasional lobster tail or swordfish or prime rib or hundred-dollar bottle of bourbon.

On that night—the night after the Johns headed to Austin—Arn grilled the steaks and served twice-baked potatoes he'd made earlier and left warming in the oven. The men switched to beers, the women to margaritas, with an occasional shot of the hard stuff in between. Angie brought out a stereo and CDs and looked for whatever stations could be caught from Corpus and Laredo playing the country and conjunto music that they all knew and loved, even Arn. The sun was flirting with the horizon, day with night, when the phone rang.

“They're probably already there,” Angie said before she got up from the table. She didn't want John's first call home to go unanswered so she made to run to get it but slowed her pace when the tequila and bourbon hit her. She left Arn and the Mejias waiting at the table, their talk quieted in the hope that they could soon talk to their sons who were on the other end of the line.

Then they heard Angie scream.

On the stereo, George Strait sang that he would be in Amarillo by morning.

Chon's first thought—right after Henry brought him the news, picked up the car keys and ran around the side of The Pachanga to get in the Dodge-nasty—was that the Johns death was an act of God, given to him as a personal blessing because he was a good Catholic boy who had completed all of his sacraments and said grace before every meal. He was too ashamed to ever share that thought with anyone though, not with Henry or his mother or even Araceli if she ever asked. He would never tell a soul.

The thought died quickly anyway, almost as soon as it had come to him. It was
replaced with the image of an old couple crying over the loss of their only son; of the mechanic who had brought the Dodge-nasty back to life after Chon had bought it for $350 off the street and his wife who had checked out books to him—Dr. Seuss to Mark Twain—weeping at the passing of their youngest. And of Araceli Monsevais, Goddess of Greenton and queen of Chon's dreams and imagination, crying. He thought of the lake of tears the people of Greenton were crying at that moment and was shocked. And shamed even further when he didn't feel the warm stuff on his own face.

He sat at the register in silence. Through the store's windows, he looked at a Greenton that was emptier, deader than he had ever experienced it before. He thought of the last time he'd seen the Johns. Araceli was sitting across Mejia's lap on the tailgate of his father's truck. Robison was sitting at the other end of the tailgate, entertaining a group of girls. The girls claimed to be friends, but were strategically elbowing each other away from the single John with malicious words told out of smiling mouths. They hungered for their sisters' blood and the bragging rights that being with Robison on graduation night, the very weekend he was set to leave town, would have afforded them.

There was a huge circle of cars around the fire pit at the Saenz ranch that night, all of them driven there by high school students who had known the Johns as classmates and teammates and all of whom would be embraced and regarded as old friends if they ran into them on some city street in the surely glorious future. That said, the Johns were left alone—not necessarily placed in the limelight, but looked at enviously from a distance as they always had been at Greenton High and in town.

Chon and Henry were walking from a trip to the keg trough when Chon was summoned.

“Hey Dodge-nasty,” Robison shouted from his Chevy throne.

Chon looked at Henry. Henry shrugged. Chon made his way over to the truck.

“You really pulled through with the beer,” Robison said, raising his plastic cup.

Chon had gone against his better judgment in providing access to the night's spirits. Though he didn't have a problem selling beer to minors, he had never sold anyone underage so much—three kegs that had gone skunky from having been dropped, rolled, and kicked from one end of the Pachanga's walk-in to the other. Chon knew that he could be fired, even arrested, if anything bad happened as a result of the beer he'd sold. He knew that every time he sold a six-pack to his contemporaries for ten dollars and kept the change.

“Didn't Jesus say, ‘Drink up, folks,'—or something like that—at a wedding? So, you know, it was the Christian thing to do,” Chon said, looking over at Araceli.

“Hi Chon,” she said, with a little wave of her fingers. Mejia gave him a nod. This was why Chon had sold the kegs, this very exchange here.

“Yeah, man. Jesus. You're a pretty weird guy, you know that, Dodge-nasty?” Robison said. He was drunk.

“You know what, Robe? This is the first time someone's ever told me that when it didn't sound like they were trying to be mean,” Chon answered back, trying his best to stare Araceli down, but out of the corner of his eyes.

“Hot damn, Dodge-nasty. You know how to make a guy feel good about himself,” Robison shouted. His crowd of girls all roared with laughter.

“Hot damn, Robe, that's what I'm trying to tell you.”

Robison gave Chon a pound on the shoulder.