ORANGE MESSIAHS by Scott A. Sonders (books to read this summer .txt) 📕

smiled politely. “Yes, yes I have. But it’s a place for jokers. Too many smart college kids from San Diego acting stupid. You know, being very loud, drinking too much beer.” She paused for a barely perceptible snort of contempt then added, “Gringos locos, sí tal!”

Suddenly, a bluster erupted from one side of the compound. Uncle Gordo came charging like a bull into an arena. He was a Paul Bunyonesque creature, no less than six and a half feet in height, tall for a Mexican, and nearly as big around as the Volkswagen. He had long braided hair, oily, black as coal tar, with a full beard streaked badger gray. What soon become known to me as his trademark question bellowed from the billows of dust, “Are you ready to eat clams?”

I’d hear that question thunder in my ears a hundred times in five days. I came to fear deafness. Likewise, I came to fathom the ebb and flow of tides and the mystical nature of clams. But I also came to fear riding horses that didn’t speak English.

There is arguably a single cloth woven across the many pedigrees of this planet, holding them together even after individual fibers disentangle, die, or fade away. This uniqueness, that cloth, is simply spun from the common thread of what we know as “skeletons in the closet.” It is this secret backbone that supports what is otherwise and optimistically called family. Most have it. Some dread it. Few exist without it. The families of Ramona and Marisa were no exception. I was shown one of these “skeletons” on the first night in San Felipe‚ by Carlos, while we shared what felt like a TV situation comedy.

When we’d first arrived, Uncle Gordo the Clam Man had invited us to stay with his mini-tribe. Ramona thought this was a splendid suggestion, but Carlos and I had a different notion. There would be no moon that evening and very few electric lights to preclude what promised to be a dazzling, star-struck sky. Cars were rare enough on the Gulf peninsula, so there wouldn’t be even a suggestion of smog or anything else that would corrupt a nighttime heavenly view. Our plan, then, was to sleep on the beach and enjoy a rare celestial vision.

Marisa advised against this strategy (something about the tide being higher when the moon is new) and actually added a more extensive explanation. But Carlos and I didn’t hear it. We were too distracted by the clamor from an army of children, and ample luncheon servings of clams, beer and great golden oranges.

So, leaving Ramona and the Clam family behind, we hazarded our way down a dark path to an even darker beach. We spread our sleeping bags over the smooth, flat sand and made our simple camp at what appeared to be some forty yards from the water’s edge.
We weren’t disappointed by the stars. They were a mystical vision of Orion hunting across an island universe permeated by great gaseous nebulae. After four cans of beer each, our powwow began mixing the ridiculous and sublime. Carlos proved to be the prince of dark places when it came to mixing paradox with black humor and coming up with rhetorical dilemmas.

“Have you ever imagined,” he said, “how repulsive our already low state of humanity would be, if all bodily excretions stopped being water soluble? Then everything that dripped or oozed from your eyes, ears, nose, sweat glands, and genitals would form crusty accumulations. Tears and sweat and piss and snot would become like pieces of different colored shit, covering our eyelids and lips, dicks and cunts in a mass of ugly tumors that would break off in chunks as we blinked or kissed or had sex.”

“That’s pretty fuckin’ gross,” I answered, “and no, I’ve never imagined anything like that. It’s totally nauseating.” I hesitated then asked, “Where in the name of God do you come up with crap like that?”

His somber answer proved he’d been leading up to something. It was unanticipated but not surprising. “Hey Jonah, maybe you should spend some time in prison. All day long when I was there, even during all the hours I spent reading, I’d wonder if maybe somebody didn’t like me and if they were gonna try and cut me. I couldn’t stop thinking that somebody else’s homeboy was gonna try and stick me in the ass.”

“Then at night, after lights out, I’d lie on my bunk and stare at the empty ceiling and wish more than anything that I could just be on the outside and see the stars. And I’d try to keep a sense of humor so I wouldn’t go insane from the fear. But even my sense of humor got filtered through all the bullshit surrounding me. And then I’d start to think about things like what I just asked you. And about the fear and the sweat on the bodies that I could smell all around me. And then sometimes, I’d pray.”

He paused as if to catch his breath and collect his thoughts, then continued in the same monotone. “You remember that thing from the Bible, man? You know, For He gave the world His only begotten Son. Well, I’d think to myself, did you really give me to the world, Father, or did you just give me up and give me away?”

He sighed deeply. And as if to make his nightmare less distressing, he added, “I’m not tryin’ to be a downer, man, but do you get what I’m about?”

“Listen, Carlos,” I said. “Between these amazing stars and this not quite so amazing beer, I’ve copped a pretty decent buzz. So, what I’m about to say won’t necessarily make sense, and it might not even follow any logical order of thought, yet alone what we’ve been talking about. But I knew you’ll understand. I mean, we had that kind of synchronicity. Right?”

I looked at the dim outline of my best friend, and I thought I saw him shrug his shoulders and nod his head.

“Well,” I began, “you’re not exactly the Lone Ranger, here. I really do know what it means to be given up and given away. About eighty percent of my twenty years has been spent in a series of foster homes. I never told you that before. Did I?”
I heard Carlos swallow from his beer can, but he said nothing.

“Anyhow, most of those people playing Mom & Dad did have good intentions. But you know about the road to hell and how its paved.”
I stopped talking and tried to look at the face of my friend in the darkness, to see if he was listening, to see if he hadn’t lost himself in his own dark thoughts as I’d perceived him to do many times before. I could still only see a silhouette, but I could hear him breathing. When he was lost in thought his breathing would get a slightly more sonorous tone. The space between breaths and the breaths, themselves, would level and lengthen. His breaths now were shorter and more irregular. Without asking, I concluded that he was still listening, so I continued.

“And furthermore, I can tell you that some of those people lacked any intentions other than the meager four hundred and fifty bucks a month they would get for providing me with room and board. And that, well that’s putting it nicely. Room and board. Yeah. I remember this one time that that the house was more like a pig-sty with pig slop for dinner. Really. I’m not shitting you, either. This one couple, I swear, their family tree didn’t branch. They looked like those hillbillies from Deliverance. It made me feel like a young Jon Voight. They scared the crap out of me. They were missing half of their front teeth. They were usually drunk half the day and most of the night. They had a pet sheep in the back yard. You’re going to think I’m full of it, but I wear they were using that poor animal for something other than it’s wool. Imagine, keeping a pet sheep in the city.”

I thought I heard Carlos start to snore. I reached over poked him with a finger. “Hey, beaner, wake up.”

“Beaner my butt,” he said. “Call me that again and I’ll kick your white ass.”
“Okay,” I said. “I was just testing.”

“I’m awake. Okay? So where’s this leading?”
“Leading?” You get to talk about whatever you like and I have to be leading somewhere?”

“Uh-huh,” was all he said.

“Jesus. Who died and made you king of the Aztecs?”

“Jesus,” he mimicked. “Who died and made you king of the Jews?”

“Touché,” I said. “Well, maybe I haven’t done any hard time, Carlos, but that doesn’t give you a lock on understanding about how a jail conceptually constructed. You know, four walls don’t a prison...”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” he cut in. “So don’t BS me, because you already know I know you know.”

I paused for reassurance. I didn’t get it. I asked, “Hey, you wanna hear a funny story that also happens to be true?”

Carlos sighed impatiently. “Why don’t you fire up that hemp you were bragging about?”

“Then, do you want to hear the story?’

“Fire up and fire away,” he said.

I rolled over to my side and reached for my backpack. I felt around inside and found what I was looking for. “Now, listen. I’ve only got three of these fatties and I promised Ramona that we’d get your cousin high for the first time. That means we can only smoke one, okay?”

I could hear the rustle of his shirt against his neck and recognized that sound plus a two syllable grunt as Carlos nodding his head in assent. I reached in my coin pocket where I always kept my Zippo stashed. I liked my silver Zippo better than the butane jobs. I liked the smell of the lighter fluid. I stuck the whole joint in my mouth and licked it as I drew it out. The weed smoked more evenly when the paper was wet. I took a long drag and handed it over to Carlos.

He toked, coughed a little, then took a bigger toke. Holding it in his lungs for about half a minute, he then exhaled and returned the joint. Two big tokes and it was already about a fourth gone. “So what the story?” he asked.

About three years ago,” I said, “I met this girl in Camarillo. I’d been trying to save up some college money, and for about six months had this putrid job that paid really well as an auto repossessor.”

“Hey,” I said, “do you remember that lock jimmy that you used to break into my car when I first met you? Well, that was exactly the same kind as we car-jack pros would use. They came in real handy. That’s why when I first saw you use one, well, it sort of opened a door for us to be friends, you know, like we had something in common.”

I continued, “Anyway, people would get too far behind on their payments and I’d have to sneak around and sort of legally steal their car back, either with a set of keys given to me by their loan company, or by using the jimmy and a handmade hot-wire. “

Morally, the job sucked. But I have to admit, it was really exciting, and it paid very well. Anyway, on this one particular gig, I’d started the paperwork so I could state out this new repo, and, well, I met this total babe.”