underneath the piano, where Willie sat and watched.
The night of the wake, the kitchen was stuffed full of people with greasy hands and greasy mouths eating
pastellilos
and
arroz con grandules
, they looked like one body with forty heads, and he took shelter in the front parlour where Uncle Sanchez was laid out in a pine coffin ringed by scented candles and screw the Health Codes, he was safe home in Banos de Coamo by now.
It was Willie’s first stiff, the stench of calla lilies and incense mixed with embalming fluid almost made him throw up, but he raised up on tiptoes instead, and draped himself jack-knifed over the coffin’s edge. Only Uncle Sanchez wasn’t inside; some stranger was in his place. A man made of yellow wax with dyed black hair brushed across his bald skull; blood-red lips like Dracula’s, curled back from a set of store-bought pearly-whites never stained by cigar smoke; and no eyes.
Or his eyes were covered by silver dollars. And Willie needed to see underneath. When he reached down to explore, the silver dollars felt lukewarm, a little slimy, against the ball of his thumb, but the eyelids beneath felt cool and dry, something like the texture of black grapeskins.
Just a sliver of eyeball showed, cloudy yellow, at the lower rim of the socket, and if you wanted to see the pupil whole, you had to peel back the lid like peeling a raw shrimp. A creature that Willie could never tolerate. So he hung there on the coffin, the silver dollars curled in his palm. Some drunk was singing
Dias y Noches Perdidas
in the kitchen, then a man’s voice spoke behind his back, “How about them Yankees?” it said.
His Cousin Humberto. The biggest man that Willie had ever been in one room with. A hardcore bodybuilder, baked bright orange by the tanning lamp, with wild horses tattoedon his shoulders and arms, and every time he flexed, the horses swished their tails, started running.
He had a pocket radio with him, and he sat himself down in Uncle Sanchez’ armchair to listen to the ballgame. The springs twanged and popped, the candles flickered but didn’t go out. It was the bottom of the eight, and the Orioles were leading 3–2, with the Yankees coming to bat. But Cousin Humberto was no way dismayed. “They don’t die. Every time you think they’re nailed, that’s when they rise up ripping,” he said, dragging on a cigar, and Willie lit up his own, the mangled stub he’d picked up underneath the piano, they smoked together in silence.
Not a word, just Humberto cracking his knuckles and the far murmur of the ballgame, with the yellow wax stretched in his box and the reek of embalming fluid in Willie’s eyes, on his hands, underneath his nails, the two silver dollars tucked safe in his cuff, and Nettles homered to right, an upper-deck shot, scoring Randolph and Don Baylor, Righetti took the win, Goose Gossage got the save.
So he was a man then, and three days later, when Aunt Sanchez had her dispersal sale, Cousin Humberto took him for the summer, brought him to Coney Island where Humberto worked as a whip on the Wall of Death and lived with his girlfriend Oceana on Surf Avenue, third-floor front in a fall-down apartment house filled with mutations: a lizardskin boy; a red-bearded lady; a goat-hoofed man; twins with X-ray eyes.
All of these and many others were the property of Mr. Sy Stein, who ran a chain of sideshows called Stein’s Amazements on the boardwalk and in the alleys. A man got up like Buffalo Bill in cavalry boots with silver spurs, deerskin fringe jacket, a goatee and waxed moustaches and shoulder-length silver hair. And outsize black shades as well. Because the man was blind.
From his window Willie could see the whole carnival laid out, the Big Dipper and the Tilter Whirl, the shooting galleries and girlie shows, the gypsy fortune-tellers, the Tunnel of Love, the House of Mirth, Bluebeard’s Castle, all the lights and colours and flashing neon, and they were glamour in his mind. But he
The night of the wake, the kitchen was stuffed full of people with greasy hands and greasy mouths eating
pastellilos
and
arroz con grandules
, they looked like one body with forty heads, and he took shelter in the front parlour where Uncle Sanchez was laid out in a pine coffin ringed by scented candles and screw the Health Codes, he was safe home in Banos de Coamo by now.
It was Willie’s first stiff, the stench of calla lilies and incense mixed with embalming fluid almost made him throw up, but he raised up on tiptoes instead, and draped himself jack-knifed over the coffin’s edge. Only Uncle Sanchez wasn’t inside; some stranger was in his place. A man made of yellow wax with dyed black hair brushed across his bald skull; blood-red lips like Dracula’s, curled back from a set of store-bought pearly-whites never stained by cigar smoke; and no eyes.
Or his eyes were covered by silver dollars. And Willie needed to see underneath. When he reached down to explore, the silver dollars felt lukewarm, a little slimy, against the ball of his thumb, but the eyelids beneath felt cool and dry, something like the texture of black grapeskins.
Just a sliver of eyeball showed, cloudy yellow, at the lower rim of the socket, and if you wanted to see the pupil whole, you had to peel back the lid like peeling a raw shrimp. A creature that Willie could never tolerate. So he hung there on the coffin, the silver dollars curled in his palm. Some drunk was singing
Dias y Noches Perdidas
in the kitchen, then a man’s voice spoke behind his back, “How about them Yankees?” it said.
His Cousin Humberto. The biggest man that Willie had ever been in one room with. A hardcore bodybuilder, baked bright orange by the tanning lamp, with wild horses tattoedon his shoulders and arms, and every time he flexed, the horses swished their tails, started running.
He had a pocket radio with him, and he sat himself down in Uncle Sanchez’ armchair to listen to the ballgame. The springs twanged and popped, the candles flickered but didn’t go out. It was the bottom of the eight, and the Orioles were leading 3–2, with the Yankees coming to bat. But Cousin Humberto was no way dismayed. “They don’t die. Every time you think they’re nailed, that’s when they rise up ripping,” he said, dragging on a cigar, and Willie lit up his own, the mangled stub he’d picked up underneath the piano, they smoked together in silence.
Not a word, just Humberto cracking his knuckles and the far murmur of the ballgame, with the yellow wax stretched in his box and the reek of embalming fluid in Willie’s eyes, on his hands, underneath his nails, the two silver dollars tucked safe in his cuff, and Nettles homered to right, an upper-deck shot, scoring Randolph and Don Baylor, Righetti took the win, Goose Gossage got the save.
So he was a man then, and three days later, when Aunt Sanchez had her dispersal sale, Cousin Humberto took him for the summer, brought him to Coney Island where Humberto worked as a whip on the Wall of Death and lived with his girlfriend Oceana on Surf Avenue, third-floor front in a fall-down apartment house filled with mutations: a lizardskin boy; a red-bearded lady; a goat-hoofed man; twins with X-ray eyes.
All of these and many others were the property of Mr. Sy Stein, who ran a chain of sideshows called Stein’s Amazements on the boardwalk and in the alleys. A man got up like Buffalo Bill in cavalry boots with silver spurs, deerskin fringe jacket, a goatee and waxed moustaches and shoulder-length silver hair. And outsize black shades as well. Because the man was blind.
From his window Willie could see the whole carnival laid out, the Big Dipper and the Tilter Whirl, the shooting galleries and girlie shows, the gypsy fortune-tellers, the Tunnel of Love, the House of Mirth, Bluebeard’s Castle, all the lights and colours and flashing neon, and they were glamour in his mind. But he
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