Satiety
1. Homesick-less
Carlos Gardel was a dolt. Well, that's what I think… His tiresome tango: life is a sigh; twenty years is nothing; the snows of time bleach the temples; yada-yada-yada. But the lights that mark my return are not the teasing stars, but the jaundiced lamps of the highway on which I walk towards Kingsville, this early morning. They look sententiously and pitilessly upon everything. And not one day of these last twenty years has left a mark on me…
Kingsville was where I won and lost everything, forever. Cheap-ass town had been in its last throes for the last fifty years, amid the mediocre economy of the Valley of Texas. At times it had been devastated by drug trafficking and corruption; at other times, it has been revitalized by the very same things. During the Eighties, which was the last time I was around, Kingsville was already the same depressing pit it is today, in spite of its appearance of progress. Even now the Navy base, the University and the chemical and pharmacological plants still hover at the fringes, like rank vultures on the emaciated near-carcass that clutches King Ranch as if it were the last half-empty canteen—which it is, in fact.
Kingsville was the place where so many immigrant ignoramuses like me dreamt of making something of themselves, after being roughly transplanted from our motherlands by individuals and situations similar to whatever we found here, also. And over here I had to work as a migrant farmer, harvesting someone else's land, and even washing dishes in any restaurant that gave me half a chance. But, with so many guys like me around, it was very hard to eke out a living… It's like my old man would always say, "outta da' fryin' pan and into da' fire."
In the end, though, Kingsville—located three hours away from the Mexican border—had been my home for twenty-three years. There, I learned how to live "on the wrong side of the tracks." And there you could walk around freely, without the police picking you up "for fitting the profile," except every once in a while. In that town I shacked up with a lady that loved me just the way I was, without any reservations, and we raised a son and a daughter up until they were teenagers, until the very end. Or until the beginning, I still can't tell.
* * *
Yeah, whatever, so here I am again, dammit, walking down Main street towards the old Town Hall. Kitty-corner to Joe's Pawn shop they still have the shoddy Savoy Theater, intermittently abandoned to Evangelical hymns since 1975, but that suffers today through its present incarnation as a curio shop. I wonder why this seems to be every old theater's destiny…
I'm about to continue this pilgrimage of penance at dawn when I see out of the corner of my eye a tall, skinny guy, with long and wavy hair, dressed up in cowboy boots, jeans, and a white cotton T-shirt, entering the gas station's store two blocks down. It has to be some sort of optical illusion, because his gait, and that slight slant of the head remind me of my teenage son. He used to like dressing up just like that every day, too… But it couldn't be him, since the last time I saw him was over twenty years ago, when I blew this town.
Regardless, I open up my mind, trying to catch some image from the skinny guy's thoughts, to make sure that the impossible actually hasn't happened. Well, that's weird… There is a slight purring that mostly can be felt on your bones rather than heard with the ears, which increases in intensity a little at a time, until you can feel it behind your eyes. I know very well what this means, and that's the last thing I thought I would find in this run-down town… I thought there was nobody like me left in this town…
The skinny guy is still in the store, motionless, with a hand resting on the magazines that he had been looking at up to a moment ago, and with his head slightly tilted to the side, as if he were listening to something. He doesn't seem agitated at all. I can see him through the front picture window, in the store, and before I finally decide to go into the store to make sure once and for all that he is not my son, I hear a murmur that comes from inside the sewer grate at the corner:
"Are you the Maker?"
Carlos Gardel was a dolt. Well, that's what I think… His tiresome tango: life is a sigh; twenty years is nothing; the snows of time bleach the temples; yada-yada-yada. But the lights that mark my return are not the teasing stars, but the jaundiced lamps of the highway on which I walk towards Kingsville, this early morning. They look sententiously and pitilessly upon everything. And not one day of these last twenty years has left a mark on me…
Kingsville was where I won and lost everything, forever. Cheap-ass town had been in its last throes for the last fifty years, amid the mediocre economy of the Valley of Texas. At times it had been devastated by drug trafficking and corruption; at other times, it has been revitalized by the very same things. During the Eighties, which was the last time I was around, Kingsville was already the same depressing pit it is today, in spite of its appearance of progress. Even now the Navy base, the University and the chemical and pharmacological plants still hover at the fringes, like rank vultures on the emaciated near-carcass that clutches King Ranch as if it were the last half-empty canteen—which it is, in fact.
Kingsville was the place where so many immigrant ignoramuses like me dreamt of making something of themselves, after being roughly transplanted from our motherlands by individuals and situations similar to whatever we found here, also. And over here I had to work as a migrant farmer, harvesting someone else's land, and even washing dishes in any restaurant that gave me half a chance. But, with so many guys like me around, it was very hard to eke out a living… It's like my old man would always say, "outta da' fryin' pan and into da' fire."
In the end, though, Kingsville—located three hours away from the Mexican border—had been my home for twenty-three years. There, I learned how to live "on the wrong side of the tracks." And there you could walk around freely, without the police picking you up "for fitting the profile," except every once in a while. In that town I shacked up with a lady that loved me just the way I was, without any reservations, and we raised a son and a daughter up until they were teenagers, until the very end. Or until the beginning, I still can't tell.
Yeah, whatever, so here I am again, dammit, walking down Main street towards the old Town Hall. Kitty-corner to Joe's Pawn shop they still have the shoddy Savoy Theater, intermittently abandoned to Evangelical hymns since 1975, but that suffers today through its present incarnation as a curio shop. I wonder why this seems to be every old theater's destiny…
I'm about to continue this pilgrimage of penance at dawn when I see out of the corner of my eye a tall, skinny guy, with long and wavy hair, dressed up in cowboy boots, jeans, and a white cotton T-shirt, entering the gas station's store two blocks down. It has to be some sort of optical illusion, because his gait, and that slight slant of the head remind me of my teenage son. He used to like dressing up just like that every day, too… But it couldn't be him, since the last time I saw him was over twenty years ago, when I blew this town.
Regardless, I open up my mind, trying to catch some image from the skinny guy's thoughts, to make sure that the impossible actually hasn't happened. Well, that's weird… There is a slight purring that mostly can be felt on your bones rather than heard with the ears, which increases in intensity a little at a time, until you can feel it behind your eyes. I know very well what this means, and that's the last thing I thought I would find in this run-down town… I thought there was nobody like me left in this town…
The skinny guy is still in the store, motionless, with a hand resting on the magazines that he had been looking at up to a moment ago, and with his head slightly tilted to the side, as if he were listening to something. He doesn't seem agitated at all. I can see him through the front picture window, in the store, and before I finally decide to go into the store to make sure once and for all that he is not my son, I hear a murmur that comes from inside the sewer grate at the corner:
"Are you the Maker?"
To Be Continued…
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