Bless Me, Ultima(31)

“Whaggggggh!” The cry split the air. The vatos from Los Jaros ran by. I raced after them but cut off at Allen’s, past the Longhorn Saloon, cut past Rosie’s and to the bridge.

I started across the bridge, and it was the first time I ever remember talking to it. I sang a song in my mind. Oh beautiful bridge, I cross you and leave the town, I cross towards the llano! I climb the hill, I race over the goat path, and I am home! I did not feel it was a silly song, I only felt happy.

“Toni-eeeeee…” hoof beats clattered on the concrete and the hatchet face of the Kid passed me by.

“Pass?”

“Yeah!” And he was gone. At the far end of the bridge he passed Samuel. “Samuel!” I called. He turned and waited for me. “I passed, did you?”

“Oh yes,” he smiled, “those teachers keep passing us right along,” he said. Samuel was only in the third grade, but he always seemed wise and old when he talked, kind of like my grandfather.

“But I passed to the third grade, next year I’ll be in class with you!” I bragged.

“Good,” he said, “let’s go fishing.”

“Now?”

“Sure.”

Usually I only thought of fishing on weekends, but it was true that school was over. The first runoff was just subsiding in the river. There should be a lot of hungry catfish waiting for us.

“No line,” I said.

“I have some,” he said.

I thought of my mother. I always went straight home after school, but today I had something to celebrate. I was growing up and becoming a man and suddenly I realized that I could make decisions.

“Sure,” I said. We turned right towards the railroad bridge. I never came up this way. Farther up were the cliffs where Jasón’s Indian lived. We passed under the dark shadow of the gigantic railroad bridge.

“There is evil here,” Samuel said. He pointed to a clear plastic balloon beside the path. I did not know why that was evil.

“Heeee-heee-haaaah-haaaaaagh!” Frightening, wild laughter filled the air. I froze in my tracks. I thought that surely here in the dark shadow of this bridge la Llorna lurked.

“Ay!” I cried. I must have jumped because Samuel put his hand on my shoulder and smiled. He pointed up. I looked up at the black girders of the huge bridge and saw a figure scamper precariously from perch to perch. I thought it was the Kid.

“Is he crazy?” I asked Samuel.

Samuel only smiled. “He is my brother,” he answered. He led me out of the shadow of the bridge and far away from it. We walked to the bank of the river where Samuel had some line and hooks hidden. We cut some tamarisk branches for poles and dug worms for bait.

“You fish a lot?” I asked.

“I have always been a fisherman,” he answered, “as long as I can remember—”

“You fish,” he said.

“Yes. I learned to fish with my brothers when I was very little. Then they went to war and I couldn’t fish anymore. Then Ultima came—” I paused.

“I know,” he said.

“So last summer I fished. Sometimes with Jasón.”

“You have a lot to learn—”

“Yes,” I answered.

The afternoon sun was warm on the sand. The muddy waters after-the-flood churned listlessly south, and out of the deep hole by the rock in front of us the catfish came. They were biting good for the first fishing of summer. We caught plenty of channel catfish and a few small yellow-bellies.

“Have you ever fished for the carp of the river?”

The river was full of big, brown carp. It was called the River of the Carp. Everybody knew it was bad luck to fish for the big carp that the summer floods washed downstream. After every flood, when the swirling angry waters of the river subsided, the big fish could be seen fighting their way back upstream. It had always been so.

The waters would subside very fast and in places the water would be so low that, as the carp swam back upstream, the backs of the fish would raise a furrow in the water. Sometimes the townspeople came to stand on the bridge and watch the struggle as the carp splashed their way back to the pools from which the flood had uprooted them. Some of the town kids, not knowing it was bad luck to catch the carp, would scoop them out of the low waters and toss the fish upon the sand bars. There the poor carp would flop until they dried out and died, then later the crows would swoop down and eat them.

Some people in town would even buy the carp for a nickel and eat the fish! That was very bad. Why, I did not know.

It was a beautiful sight to behold, the struggle of the carp to regain his abode before the river dried to a trickle and trapped him in strange pools of water. What was beautiful about it was that you knew that against all the odds some of the carp made it back and raised their families, because every year the drama was repeated.