The War Whisperer: Book 1: Geronimo Page 6

  At last I finally asked Dylan what he meant that time when he called me hermano.

  “Hermano?” he said. “You habla, chico. You know what hermano mean: Brother. What I mean was you like a little brother to me. I like having a little brother. You want to be brothers?”

  “Sí,” I said. “I would very much like to be your brother.”

  He clapped a hand on my shoulder. “That is settled then, mi hermano.”

  Mi hermano.

  Were there ever two more beautiful words in the universe? When I went to sleep that night it felt like three quarters of my missing parts had just arrived and found their places.

  Mi hermano. My brother.

  Fourth grade, fifth, sixth. Clammy in the winter, hot in the summer, days divided between working us to death and boring us to death.

  Classes seemed a waste. Some of the texts were kind of interesting, but I read them all in just a few days, answered the exercise questions in my mind, worked the math problems the same way, then it was all sitting around in stifling hot classrooms listening to teachers drone on, seemingly playing to the slowest student, which in our class was Hugo Hierra.

  In third grade Hugo couldn’t write his own name. In sixth grade he still couldn’t write it. He passed, though. I felt almost as sorry for Hugo as I did for myself. Maybe it was going to be tough going for me; For Hugo it was going to be impossible. Dylan disagreed.

  “Hugo going to be a politician: Speaker of the House Hierra.”

  I frowned and asked, “Don’t you have to be smart to be a politician?”

  “Nah,” responded my brother. “To be a successful politician you only got to be stupid at the right times—” he held up a finger, “—and keep a lot of receipts.”

  Abril had just begun ninth grade when suddenly she was gone. It was right after Stan, the male floor resident of Cook’s West Dorm “B” was found dead in his room. Rumor was that he had suffered a heart attack while whacking off. Some whispers I heard implied that Stan had a thing for the girls upstairs. Seven of the girls, including Abril, were questioned by the police after the medical examiner determined that Stan had suffocated. No charges were filed, however, and the next day Abril was gone. One of her teachers said she had gotten a scholarship to another school. I was devastated. Even so, the English Club continued without her and most of the time with pretty good middle and senior school students teaching the lessons they had learned from Abril. No one was playing her banged up old guitar, though, and someone claimed it and never used it.

  In sixth grade I had my first experience with girls and love. After dinner one evening, waiting to go back into the cafeteria to watch a science-fiction adventure movie titled The Darktime Chronicles, a really pretty girl named Diana Varela walked up to me, stopped a few inches away, and said, “Jerry, would you like to go steady with me?”

  My brain had absolutely no input as my mouth blurted out, “Sure!”

  She had been Roberto Banderas’s girlfriend. He was big, good looking, a jock. But now Diane was mine. She must’ve really loved me, I thought as I felt my family building: First a brother, now a steady.

  I fell hard. That this lovely sweet thing and I would have each other for love, comfort, friendship was a prize for me almost beyond imagining. My remaining missing pieces seemed to come home.

  We went to the movie together, she making a point out of touching my arm, kissing my cheek twice, and me overwhelmed by it all, grinning like a fool. I couldn’t have described anything about the motion picture ten minutes after it was done. I was on a cloud, my entire being lost in a pair of huge brown eyes. A girl loved me—

  —Then Diana was gone. I looked to see what had happened to her and she was walking away with Roberto Banderas.

  The universe suddenly braked, turned one hundred and eighty degrees, and resumed its usual pace and direction.

  One of the other sixth grade girls, Adela Hinojosa, saw me standing there, bewildered, watching the couple walk away. “She just asked you to go steady with her, Geronimo, to make Bobby jealous,” the girl said with a big smirk on her face as though her side had just scored a big one.

  I decided then that I hadn’t a clue what to do nor how to protect myself in this particular arena. I made up my mind to avoid the relationship trap at least until I was much more experienced.

  I told my brother Dylan about it the next day and he shrugged and said, “Don’t know anyone know how to stay safe, hermano. Women, girls,” he shook his head. “Not a clue.”

  “Did that ever happen to you?” I asked.

  He laughed and shook his head. “No.”

  “Too smart?” I asked.

  “No, man. Too ugly. Girl hook up with me just to make somebody jealous, she only get laughs from the pendejo.”

  That same year the SkaagRap group Grass officially changed its name to Mower after three members of the group were beaten senseless and hospitalized in Los Angeles. It turned out that “grass” was gang slang for “turf” or “territory,” and the three Grass members had wandered onto the wrong grass. Sort of how I felt after my miniscule love affair with Diana. Later that year, she was adopted by a wealthy looking couple from Austin. She was almost thirteen, which was unusual.

  Three weeks later Diane was back. She looked sassy, but when she thought no one was looking she would sometimes look sad and sniff. I saw under her sleeve two days after she was back and her upper arm was bruised. I didn’t like that. It made me angry that someone had hurt her.

  I made up my mind then when I became free I would never track down Diana. I was afraid that I would feel good should ever I find her toothless, homeless, and loveless. I really didn’t want to see her like that. Cruel unattainable love is easier on the memory than crushed dreams and ruined beauty.

  Soon after my experience with Diana, Ms. Kohl was replaced by Mister Watts, who was replaced by Mister Gruver once Mister Watts’s thing with little boys at his previous place of employment was revealed. Mister Gruver retired just as I entered seventh grade. He was replaced by Mister Makin a month later who, it was reported, was all better now. He looked better and no one ever saw him drink again.

  In classes, unless I had use of a computer, I drew pictures, dozed, played stupid pranks, and looked out of windows at other classrooms whose students were dozing, playing stupid pranks, and looking back at me.

  Years before Mangas had said that Thiago and Bodaway killed each other because they were “wire happy.” Wire happy is knowing what every day is going to be like, day after day, year after year, until you break the rules. Wire happy is watching one’s life erode by time, monotony, and pointless make-work until the futility of it all grows into despair, which in turn becomes an obsession for change—any kind of change.

  That’s what Thiago and Bodaway did all those years in the past: They got change. It was one way out. Death frightened me, but less so I noted with the passage of each day. Crazy change is, after all, still change.

  Comforting, still, knowing that me living or dying, within certain bounds, was still my choice. Existence —my existence— was between me, Thiago’s blade, and what the future might bring. Mister Makin, the UCH authorities, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the United States Government had no vote in my continued existence. Their votes only involved how crappy they made my life should I choose to stay alive. My continued existence had only two voting members: Me and my knife.

  It was around then I began cutting my arms, my chest, my legs: Little razor scratches, just enough to draw a few beads of blood. I’ve heard it since called a sickness or an addiction. Perhaps. The blood I drew presented me with irrefutable evidence that my continued life as well as my moment of death were mostly in my own hands. That was the control I had.

  One night Scotty Odell spoke to me just before lights out. He said he had talked with Phil Gomez, who taught American history, and that Mister Gomez said I maxed all the history tests but did none of the homework.

  “He said you told him you’d do homework ju
st as soon as you got a home.”

  I nodded. “That is accurate,” I confirmed.

  “Don’t you find the assignments interesting or useful?”

  I shrugged. “Most of them are just stupid, having us regurgitate the same stuff that the book says or that Mister Gomez says. Some assignments are just dead wrong.”

  “What do you mean, ‘dead wrong,’ Jerry? Give me an example.” There was an edge of irritation in his voice.

  “Okay. The most recent topic was ‘How U.S. Foreign Policy Prevented War With the Middle East.’“

  “What’s wrong about that?” he demanded.

  I sighed, knowing as I did so that there was little point in trying to explain. “Well, Scotty, judging by all we are allowed to read on the net, U.S. foreign policy hasn’t prevented war in the Middle East for the past hundred years. All the U.S. diplomats managed to accomplish this last time was to postpone any kind of shooting war involving the U.S. actually inside Iran’s borders. We’re still fighting in Egypt, Syria, and the United States.”

  “United States?” he repeated.

  “We do get some news in here. How many bars, nightclubs, shopping malls, and police stations in western countries—including the U.S.—have been blown up just this past year?” I shrugged. “If you believe Iran’s supreme leader, another shooting war has to come.”

  “Do you believe him?” Scotty asked.

  “He and his predecessors have been trying to get one going for over a century. He also believes he’s talking for God and El Supremo is the one who tells everyone else to go fight. Yeah, I believe him. I can’t say exactly when, but within the next few years we’re going to be in one more war in the Middle East.”

  “Well, why didn’t you write about that, then?” asked Scotty.

  “It’s a matter of energy conservation.”

  He frowned. “How so?”

  “Mister Gomez believes we are at peace in the Middle East. Egypt is a mop-up operation, Syria is mainly a Russian thing, the fallen cities, explosions, and dead bodies in those places and in the States are only ‘random incidents by individuals.’ According to him all the governments and terrorist and resistance groups all want peace.”

  “Perhaps he’s right.”

  “Then they all have different definitions for the word ‘Peace,’ Scotty. What one calls ‘peace’ another calls ‘heresy,’ and yet another calls ‘genocide’. There is no peace in the Middle East and titling a paper with a false premise makes the whole thing a lie.”

  “I don’t think Mister Gomez would want you to lie.”

  I looked Scotty right in his eyes. “If I don’t go along with the assertions put forth by Mister Gomez, he fails my paper. I can achieve the same result by not doing the assignment, and with much less expenditure of time and effort.”

  Scotty Odell glowered at me for a few seconds then said, “Would it do any good to spank you?”

  His face was hot. I felt the knife in my pocket as the moment amped up to Big Decision Time: Kill, die, or fool around. I wasn’t about to let myself be beaten like an animal. I shrugged and smirked. “Spanking me wouldn’t do a thing for me, Scotty,” I said. “Maybe for you?”

  Scotty’s face turned bright red and he looked at me a long time before he said, “You’re just a little kid.” He closed his eyes. “Just a little kid.” Then he turned, walked out of the dorm, went in his room there at the end, and quietly closed his door.

  Decision time approached, lingered a moment, then sped away.

  Alive for another night.

  Scotty, too. I closed my knife and slipped it back into my pocket.

  Choosing Battles

  Dreary dusty dried-out sameness, the seasons, another president, another war, but this time going back into Egypt to support the rebels we didn’t want to win against an administration we also didn’t want to win. Nothing really to do with UCH, except that new clothing and fresh food grew more scarce allegedly “because of the war effort.”

  There wasn’t any war effort except for the soldiers, Marines, and Air Force people who fought it. There hadn’t been a real national war effort of any kind for over a century in World War II. There was an election in the U.S. and a new president and the other party took over just in time to accept the surrender of rebel Egyptian forces that we had wanted to lose so we could send billions in aid to the same old anti-American Egyptian president who started it all in the first place. Everybody on the vids made fun of the war, and especially of the peace that lasted almost eight days.

  On our side of the wire, we learned how to get around the new government metal detectors using “lizard skin,” a tissue coated with a nanothin layer of a substance that utilized the same principle as the chameleon skin on the police drones, except with lizard skin it worked with magnetism and x-rays, as well. According to the science blogs, lizard skin was a breakthrough in developing an anti-gravity drive. All we knew was that concealed knife and firearm carries in the U.S. multiplied exponentially. I advanced in grade and in height and strength, and learned more about fighting and in running track. Dylan showed me how to paint my knife with the active ingredient in lizard skin. Twice I went through metal detectors carrying my knife in my hand, and was passed both times.

  Every morning we were required to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, a set of words that, like a familiar poem or ritual prayer, became a rote string of virtually meaningless syllables mumbled at the appropriate moment to avoid confinement, a lecture, or a whipping. If we ever thought about it, the meaning, we were defeated before we began. The flag itself was pretty enough and represented “our side.” We weren’t sure what a “republic” was. What it appeared to be was a quite silly and very inefficient form of interventionism.

  “. . . With liberty and justice for all” really confused us. Either the dictionaries got it wrong, or “all” did not include students at UCH or most of those in the United States. “Under God” was a phrase that came and went according to the whims of a deliberative body called “Congress.” God, too, remained undefined.

  “The Pledge” was clarified for me one day by Mister Duchin, the shop teacher. I had asked him what it really meant. “It means shut the hell up and do what they tell you to do.”

  That was what I always thought it meant.

  Dylan taught me that knives have a time and a place. In UCH, unless you wanted to wind up dead or in jail, you don’t get caught using a knife on anyone else. Inside the wire, you use knuckles, elbows, feet, knees, and brains. If you use a knife, either make it clear the sliced knew what would happen if he or she told anyone, or make it terminal. That year four students died in knife fights. There were at least thirteen knife fights that I knew happened.

  What I learned about track was to run, jump, vault, and throw things. We didn’t get to compete against other schools. We were considered risky, a possible bad influence on competing athletes—all those redskins, wetbacks, and psych cases, you see. We couldn’t compete against the kids going to any of the reform schools either, of course, because they might be risky and a bad influence on us.

  I ran track and could beat anyone in the school in sprints or long distance. Mister Dover, who coached football and taught phys ed, wanted me to try out for the football team. Just like in track, the football team got to play against itself. I thanked him for the invitation but declined. Then he said, “Hate to see you go, Geronimo.”

  In an instant, everything went black, then red. I flew at his throat, kicked him in his nuts, and was kicking him in the head when two of the teachers put down their fatties long enough to pull me off him.

  That event earned me three days and nights naked in solitary. No clothes, reduced rations, seventy-two squares of toilet paper total. Too much toilet paper, actually. Nothing much in, nothing much out. I had seventy-two sheets and took sixty of them, arranged them in ten columns of six, three columns of twelve, twelve columns of three, five of twelve, and so on through all of the combinations seeing once more why the number sixty had be
en so important to ancient merchants. Then I arranged the sheets into pictures of flowers, animals, people, then made military units out of them and fought several historical battles. At night I stacked the sheets of toilet paper and used them for a pillow.

  At UCH they weren’t even aware of the most important skill they taught us: Endurance. There are limits to pain, to cold, to hunger, to weariness. Those who couldn’t compete died. We never went to any funerals, though. Suicides and victims of abuse, fighting, and murder simply disappeared. One day they were there, the next they were gone. Several I knew of who had been sent to solitary disappeared just like that.

  Strange to go for days, though, wishing to be lectured, beaten, or attacked just for some human company. I explored my body and discovered that the lump in the back of my right leg was gone.

  On the night of the second day, shivering on the floor of my cell, on the concrete floor my head resting on my asswipe pillow, I heard singing coming from outside.

  I sat up, looked to the little window high above the floor, then listened very hard.

  It was, Dylan, singing his favorite song, “La Noche y Tu,” Karaoke music provided by a pad he must have stolen or borrowed, his singing patterned after Miguel Aceves Mejía. Ancient song, ancient singer, okay voice, but a very powerful moment. Out there, in the dark, I had a brother, mi hermano, breaking rules to sing to me to keep up my spirits. I jumped for the windowsill, caught it, pulled myself up, and sang along with him.

  Anoche soñé contigo

  Soñé y soñaba . . .

  That night I felt warm as I slept. Fuck UCH, fuck the world, take all your torture and punishments and pound them up your very tight asses. I had a brother who loved me. I could withstand anything.

  As the fourth day dawned, Mister Popovic opened the door, threw in my clothes, and told me to go to my dorm, get showered and dressed in clean clothes, get breakfast, then report to the school office. My knife wasn’t returned. The day was already very hot.