Toucan Whisper, Toucan Sing Read online

  “She’s dirty. You think you’re the only one, Antonio?”

  Antonio thinks he could have gone to one hundred fifty pushups a long time ago. But it’s okay that he waited, because if you push the reps too quickly you get these huge biceps bulging like papayas, and they’re simply out of balance with your forearms, your delts and your abs. And I suppose your pecs and even your traps if you think about it. So waiting was the right thing to do.

  “Seventy-three. Seventy-four.”

  Am I the only one? Maybe I am. Maybe I’m not. Mrs. Mayfair came only once a year until last year. Now it’s twice. So why would she double up if she were getting it elsewhere?

  Lyria laughs scornfully. Where is her husband getting it? Does he wear the cover? You are teasing evil, Lyria says.

  But Antonio doesn’t need negativity and tells her so. Furthermore, he will not confide in her if she abuses the privilege. Besides, he wears the cover. And Mrs. Mayfair is very hygienic, which you can plainly see. And besides all that, she, Lyria, sounds like a jealous woman, which is foolish.

  The privilege? You call it a privilege to hear about you and that puta, which makes me want to puke?

  Lyria was never delicate but now seems farther from the soft touch than ever. Still, her accusation and yelling are playful in nature and no different than all those years ago, since she first caught him peeing on her leg in the bath they shared as children. She yelled then, too, but can you blame her?

  Any little girl will yell when she discovers you peeing on her leg. Lyria’s been steady through the years, a sister to the one and perhaps a surrogate mother to the other. Why can’t she see these things as they really are? At least Baldo retains the mystique and secret wisdom of a person of silence. Lyria is a shrill young woman whose every thought is volubly shared with everyone. What can she know? Why must she yell and accuse? Why do I confide in her? Well, because she is the only one. And no matter what she says or how loud she says it, a different mystique surrounds her. Perhaps it resides in her shape, which is so different from what it was. And her innocence, biblically speaking. She ripens rapidly. Soon she will be ready for plucking. This will be a time of joy.

  Do you wear the cover on your tongue? Lyria wants to know.

  But he will never answer such harsh questions that serve no purpose other than to make a man feel wrong. “One hundred thirty-seven. One hundred thirty-eight.”

  It has been known for years that Antonio and Lyria will marry. And a happy day it will be, perhaps with minimal yelling. She will be his love forever, which she surely must know as well as she’s ever known anything. Still, who in his right mind would respond to such caustic interrogation so devoid of civility, much less compassion or understanding?

  Hardly a little girl anymore, her raven hair falls profusely down her back, and her dark eyes glare with conviction. Racing to finish her womanly growth, already she blazes inside and out. You can see it if you look, but it’s too bright to stare directly into and too hot to eat. One day Antonio Garza will see and taste the fire.

  Is he not the hot tamale for her corn shuck? Of course he is. So why must she make him so unhappy with such noise between now and then?

  ¡Ay Caramba! Who can take it? Nobody is who. She knows this, falling silent only when he takes his leave. He turns back as if for more abuse, but she’s done. He really only wants another look, however brief. She fills out with specific succulence in the gentle curve separating the girl from the woman. She seems to taunt that curve just as she taunts all things, until she appears ready to split from too much ripening, too much juice and sweet pulp inside. He wants to lay her naked and run his palm through the slalom course from her ribs to her thighs, over hill and dale and back and maybe then some. He will not yet divulge this desire. She would take him entirely wrong, most likely assuming his attraction is merely the lust of a teenage boy, which he is not, though the lust feels the same, and he wants to roam those hills and spelunk the caves too. But the hot depths of womanhood must fully ripen in the spirit and heart to catch up with the body so that all can be savored at once, as a wife should be. Such is the moral standard of people who would marry forever, not to mention the standard of good taste in those on the path of goodness.

  He compensates self-denial by facing her scorn, knowing the cold drenching will be like gasoline on coals. They will fuel the passion when the match is made and the lust blazes, and Antonio and Lyria will laugh at her former derision.

  Meanwhile, her derision proves her desire for him and her concern for his welfare. Will not Antonio and Lyria consummate their union soon in a bonfire of delirious joy with flames soaring skyward? Will not a love sweetly anticipated be sweeter still, once it emerges from the clouds of abuse and denial?

  After all, for whom did she adopt the habit of shaving the hair from her armpits, if not for him? She sees the women of affluence by the pool, women whose armpits are smooth as ceramic. Antonio wishes she would catch on and shave the coarse hair from her calves and outside her high thighs while she’s at it. He knows many men would find her hairy legs repugnant, but he does not. For one thing, he grew up among women with hairy legs. For another thing, you can’t see the hair in the dark. But Lyria will one day sit poolside as the maestro’s wife and should have creamy thighs for the occasion.

  Like Mrs. Mayfair, who likes to keep the lights on during services, and who lathers cream in dollops on her thighs while lounging by the pool. Antonio suspects great effort and some discomfort in achieving such a lustrous hue up her thighs to the narrow patch of radiant red above the sliver that matches the hair on her head. Not that she creams the sliver, not by the pool anyway, but she does push the cream up under the elastic in her strange, provocative way. Who knows? Maybe leaving the lights on is sweet reward for a woman’s effort toward beauty. Maybe one day Lyria will work as hard.

  At any rate, the hair outside of Lyria’s high thighs could stay as far as Antonio the man is concerned. He only thinks it should go for practical reasons. He considers leaving the lights on with Lyria, though he doubts she would allow it, even in deference to beauty and love.

  Besides, Lyria’s beauty is unique, not so self-conscious or staged. Lyria will be well-explored in the dark, and he knows what softness will lie in the fur of her thighs.

  So what does it matter? Long run; short run; who cares? He loves her as he has since the hair on her legs was downy fuzz. He could never condone removal of the hairs from the edge of her Fertile Crescent as the women by the pool do and as Mrs. Mayfair does, as if a woman and a racing car both need a stripe up the center. Antonio knows the two are different; both can be fast and expensive, but a woman should have a proper bush, and if it sticks out the sides of her bikini, who’s to mind? Who is required to look, except for one who enjoys such a view?

  Then again, a woman seems so much closer to social evolution if she works as a waitress rather than a maid. The maids have hairy legs. The waitresses are smooth, svelte, and shapely, with a slow swagger. “This way, please.” Lyria can’t be a waitress; she won’t shave her legs, because cleaning is one thing and servitude is yet another. But still, maybe she will soften.

  “Yes, my father,” Antonio tells his late father. “I have learned many things I would like to share with you to see what you would say. I sweat like you. I work very hard for my money like you did.” He rises, pulls the chair out, and sits to count his morning tips. “But it’s different now. I wish you could see. It’s more money. Much more money.”

  He savors the count to forty-eight pesos. In only two days he can have another T-shirt, the toucan, the most beautiful of all in his opinion and perhaps the nostalgic favorite as well, symbolizing that which Baldo knows or might know some day. Still, he wanted the panther first; it’s so lean and muscular, with electric eyes and a willingness suggesting high voltage.

  ¡Ay!

  He feels the impracticality of another hundred-peso T-shirt but also senses a level of opportunity unknown in former times. Can you weigh potential on
the same scale that you weigh tortillas? Is not a hundred pesos meager capitalization for viability? Flamboyance may tip the balance in the long haul.

  Such is the complexity of his world. Antonio sees how the affluent tourists feel at home in the company of a man like himself if his exotic side is properly presented. By deferring to such sensitivity, a toucan T could bring additional barriers down.

  Antonio is not so much concerned with garnering the favors of another Mrs. Mayfair. But a firmer toehold among the men might ease them into asking his opinion from time to time. He knows it’s only a matter of time before such men come with their money for more development and realize that local knowledge is a premium.

  Antonio waits for his late father to chime in with his fatherly dos centavos. Gustavo wore T-shirts, but not like these. Never new, they simply appeared as their predecessors tattered to failure and could no longer stop a breeze or soak a sweat or even admonish motorists through their stained shreds to Drink Coca-Cola, or to remember Avis. We try harder.

  Remnants of Avis and Coca-Cola now line the shelf over the table. Antonio reaches to touch the cotton cloth; rotten and coarse as a laborious life, it crumbles.

  Sitting and staring, Gustavo would hang his head for absolution from the little deity, to whom all praise, gratitude, and requests are due. If a few pesos could be spared for a small round bottle of mescal, his indeterminate woe would be shared with his sons as well. One played under the table while the other looked askance and asked his father what was so wrong.

  “I don’t know what to do,” Gustavo said.

  Do? What can you do? Antonio bows his head again all these years later in abeyance to his father’s uncertain guilt. What did he do wrong? Nothing, is the answer; it was only the mescal that clouded his vision. Was he wrong to work behind the heavy equipment, clearing a swath through the jungle? No again, he was only out of synch with modern times. The men of development would have built the road no matter what, because roads must be built. Tree clearing is back-wrenching work, which was a commodity to be thankful for.

  “Father,” he says to his late father, “toucan and panther and weasel and the little birds must move out of the way. They must adapt like us. You cannot stop progress.”

  Well, Gustavo has little use for such assessment at this point, yet he is urged to see the light and shed the ignorance from the Garza legacy. Such suggestion may not be within a son’s proper place, but Antonio senses comprehension in the spirit of his late father. Gustavo must have sensed something in life, because he wasn’t entirely ignorant, even when the mescal slurred his speech. Nodding sanguinely and shaking a finger he instructed, “Each is a life, my son. A life like yours or mine. Or maybe better.”

  Better? He asks himself and implores aloud, “How can it be better, Father? Those cats and birds are wild animals. They spend their days looking for a little seed or a mouse to terrorize, or hiding from whatever terrorizes them. But look at us. We have all of this now, a place to eat and sleep with four walls around us to keep us safe and away from the bugs and to take care of our business in private. I don’t understand how the animals have anything better than we have here. Progress is good, my father.”

  Gustavo smiles wearily when Antonio flows with youthful vigor. He smiles just as he smiled until the night near the end of his life when he said, “It is a matter of pride.” Antonio waited, but his father was done.

  “Are you not proud, Father?”

  I am proud of you, Antonio, he so much as says. Please keep me that way. Antonio hears him and answers, “Yes, father.”

  Antonio has no doubt that family pride will be sustained. Yet he also knows that neither his father nor the little deity can change the ultimate law of humanity, requiring us to lead, follow, or get out of the way.

  Just look: the Garza brothers adapt and move daily past the baseline called survival, inching surely to prosperity. Antonio knows his father’s smile will be justified for years to come, for him and for his unlikely younger brother too.

  Baldo crawled out from under the table and gazed at his father’s mournful mumble over something or other about wild animals sent screeching in the face of progress. Soon after, he gazed at the simple wooden box, and years later he gazes still with his simple wooden knowing. In Baldo something ferments like yeast and sugar, blowing off when you least expect it. He’s sweet if the balance is right but can explode if it’s not.

  Well, maybe it’s a phase he’s going through.

  Antonio inventories his father’s legacy and knows it might be seen as paltry. Gustavo Garza left enough money to spend in one minute in a tienda, but he left something else that may germinate to greatness, and from greatness can come the money to buy the tienda itself. His father left Antonio the tenacious spirit. As for Baldo, inheritance seems a different egg altogether, for Baldo got nada. Well, maybe he got more than that. Maybe he got sweetness too, for two beings sweeter than Baldo Garza and his poor dead father have yet to breathe the sultry air of Oaxtapec.

  Well, enough of wonder and legacy, sweetness and madness. Antonio flashes his warmest smile, which is soft and happy but is not a grin. With humility, not pride, he reveals his perfect teeth to tiny Jesus. The teeth he got from his madre.

  The coffee can brims with eight thousand pesos at two point nine one to the dollar. Antonio wishes his father could just once hold the tin can and feel its heft and then shake the small fortune so they could laugh together. He wishes to reach in just once for an idle handful and shower his father with money. Just once he would like to treat his late father to a meal of too many tamales with both mole verde y mole rojo, and enough frijoles, arroz y tortillas to make his belly ache, and a few cervezas. They would scorn the mere thought of mescal, Antonio and his padre. They would crown their comfort with some of the new tequila that costs more than man’s wage used to be and tastes like thin air but warms your fingertips and your heart before popping a sweat on top of your head.

  Gustavo often said the best was yet to come, and maybe this is it, this fantasy of prosperity and the very best of eating and drinking between father and son.

  Antonio savors the moment and vows to live as best he can, with no regrets and with love for what comes his way. Look how much has come so quickly. Twenty-two already and well on the rise. Well, twenty-one and eight months, which is practically the same as twenty-two. Bowing his head again with respect and deference to his late father and tiny Jesus, he genuflects quickly and turns to see his brother watching from the doorway.

  Baldo is sixteen now, still thin as a weed but taller than most and gaining the swagger common to adolescent boys. He stands in silhouette before the blaring siesta sun; his sinewy muscles stretch along the bones now, his limbs at last looking heftier than straight lines between the joints. The machete hangs like an extension of his left arm, not grasped and not separate. A huge green coconut is snug under his right arm, and he waits, perhaps observing or seeking approval. “What?” Antonio asks. “No thirsts today?”

  Baldo nods; yes, we had some thirsts today. He stoops and sets the coconut at an angle on the stone threshold and with an easy slash from overhead, cuts the husk to the nut close to one end. Spinning the coconut to the opposite angle, he cuts again, twists, pries and pops the top to reveal a hole for drinking.

  He offers the nut to Antonio, who takes it for a short drink and returns it.

  Baldo tilts it up and drinks long and hard, until Antonio asks if he’s trying to swim to the bottom. Baldo comes up for air and stares off. Coconut juice blends with the sweat on his neck and runs down his chest.

  He walks over to the table and empties his pockets of twelve pesos. These are his own tips from a morning on the beach where he opens coconuts and serves them with two straws and ice cubes—purified of course—to hotel guests who sign a chit and add a tip and who sometimes throw in a peso or two.

  Antonio nods and counts and adds both piles to the coffee can.

  Baldo removes his shorts in preparation for siesta and goes
outside again, where he cleaves the coconut with another slash. The blade whispers, rendering two halves with a good core of sweet, tender meat. Baldo knew this would be the case, because Baldo knows coconuts and saved this one for home.

  They eat.

  Baldo may be innocent, but a boy who stands nearly two meters tall in his bare feet and swings a machete of another meter while dangling a ten-inch pinga should know the difference between innocence and carelessness. It is one thing to cool off and another to waltz around the casa with a semi-swell.

  What if Lyria walked in?

  Antonio wonders if Baldo knows the facts about men and women. Besides needing guidance on innocence and nakedness and the wise thing to do, Baldo needs instruction on the difference between a tool and a weapon. The machete should rest on a shelf most of the time, just as the pinga should be inside the trousers most of the time. Perhaps a boy is more comfortable sleeping naked, but no boy needs to sleep with a machete.

  Well, this too may be a phase he’s going through. But how many phases can an elder brother be expected to process all at once?

  Antonio will speak with him one day soon, man to man, because it is time. Perhaps it will be today, after siesta. For now the heat prevails and the brothers surrender, stretching into the curve of their hammocks.

  Outside, the cicadas pick up their pace for the apex of the afternoon. The weak breeze goes flat; the fronds hang limp, the hammocks sag and soon the brothers snooze. Antonio dreams of myriad bugs rubbing thighs in celebration of the heat. Sweat rolls from his face and chest. Baldo sweats less but dreams more, twitching and flopping like a dog still running and jumping through his dream. He hears cicadas too but dreams of a different rasp and resonance, which is simply Toucan’s song outside, though Toucan has flown the coop, as it were. Perhaps he, Toucan, dreams as well this afternoon, twitching like a bird who watches his dog run and jump.

  Toucan went to live in another cage at Jimi Changa’s, the wild tourist restaurant and discotheque across from the hotels. Jimi Changa specializes in Mexican cuisine, and both diners and revelers keep Toucan awake long after his bedtime. Such is the nature of progress, which has served to enrich Toucan’s life as well, providing him with many new friends and admirers who squawk in passing. Some even offer fingers for a nibble.