Arcadio by William Goyen Page A

looking for my mother and to surrender her to Jesus, and to give myself to Deliverance Choir.
    First about my life as a jailboy, Tomasso said, twas like a convict life. Mr. and Mrs Policheck seemed to forget that I was not a convict. They seemed to forget the same about each other, for they let each other in and out of the Missoura jail cells with big keys. They had, as Reverence…Carl…C…. Cane said, a prison mentality, Tomasso said. Said Mrs. Nan Policheck was his teacher and school was the jail cell and that when he was astudyin he often would look up through the little jail window and wish he could excape; and then the little window was filled up with Instant Cement so that he would not have daydreams of excaping and would study, Tomasso told me. But said Nan Policheck—that was her name, Nan—said Nan Policheck held a little Sunday School in the jail cell on Sundays and taught him Biblia lessons, said he wrote out on the wall sayings from La Biblia, God Loves Me and Suffer the little children to come unto Me , and said he asked Nan Policheck why did little children have to suffer and said Nan Policheck answered because they are little children and Tomasso said he thought to himself that don’t make any sense I will ask Hondo later but when he later asked Hondo Hondo said he didn’t know. Let’s see where was I oh yes, somehow he said, Tomasso said, he felt he was apaying in the Missoura jail for the sins of his unknown mother. But she had committed the crime, not him, and he wondered many nights layin awake in his sad bed of an orphan and a prison what in the world his mother’s crime could be. I says to myself I’ll wait to tell him that she stole a green dress with sparkled fringe, that was her crime. And said that he ate meals at the long table with the convicts, Hondo and Old John, lousy jail grub, said. Who were the others? I asked, and Tomasso said no others, only Hondo and Old John, except for town drunks or burglars in for a few days but not to stay, somebody bought them, come with money, bailed them out was the espression. But nobody come with money for me, said Tomasso, and I used to pray that somebody, maybe my mother, would show up with some cash for me and bail me out. That is an espression I have never heard, I said. My mother did show up, showed up at the Show, I says, but not with money, I was not bailed out. I begun to get sick, Tomasso said, wonderin what I was in for, what my sentence was that I was imprisoned as a prisoner in a jail, why I could not go to school with other kids or go to town. What do you mean sentence I asked my brother and he said I cain’t hardly esplain it to you. Well I says tis a gringo espression, we have no such Mescan espression. And Tomasso says sentence means like a fine or something, the number of time you have to pay for the crime you done. We have no such Mescan espression I told him. But go on about the jail I’m getting all mixed up with different things agoing in my mind, and different words and espressions, my God; it was a sad little life for a niño boy like you, I said. I could begin to have thoughts of blaming that chalupa Chupa our mother and to think that once again she’s gone and hurt her sons, that she only give us hurt! God damn why did she do that, God damn, forgive me God and Jesucristo but here is another ejemplo example of that woman’s hurt that she caused others. That’s why we got to find our mother, so we can get over these feelings, especially so I can, I told Tomasso; to settle these hurts. And then to forgive her, said Tomasso. Reverence C. Carl Cane told me to forgive my mother. Reverence Carl C. Cane is right, I says, tis the very teachings of our Lord and Savior Jesucristo as tis told us in the White Bible. C. Carl Cane, said Tomasso. The C. is first. O.K. I says. Where is the virgen’s hair? Here in my pocket in the little Bull Durham sack Hondo give me, says Tomasso. Let me see