The Tattooed Soldier by Héctor Tobar

landing on the wooden bed of an army truck.
    A boy next to him was crying, his face buried in cupped hands. The man with the wispy mustache was bleeding from a cut to the forehead. They were all heaped up against each other. The truck began to move over a potholed road, tossing the men around like tourists on a carnival ride.
    At the barracks, soldiers shaved the stringy hair from Guillermo’s head and issued him a uniform. That night he slept in a stiff cot, weeping quietly. He knew his mother would be angry with him because he didn’t listen to her and just buy the soap and come back home. If he were a good son, he wouldn’t have gone into the theater and he wouldn’t be in the army now.

 
    3. INSTANT SHELTER
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    At this point, anything would do. A glass of milk, a chicken sandwich, a torta like the Mexicans made with that round bread shaped like a pregnant woman’s belly. Antonio had not eaten since yesterday, before the eviction.
    He was sitting on a piece of cardboard, legs crossed, a blanket over his shoulders. The camp was in shadow, the sun still hiding behind the silhouette of the Financial District skyscrapers to the east. From time to time he heard rats scurrying up and down from their nest in the crown of a palm tree. Antonio and José Juan had moved their cardboard mattresses next to the whitewashed concrete wall of a basement, all that remained of a building that had otherwise dissolved into dust and pebbles. José Juan, ever resourceful, had found some plastic sheets nearby that he was going to use to build a lean-to. He was a bundle of Mexican energy, making the best of the situation, always finding something to do.
    Antonio’s hunger was an acid stream that flowed upward from his belly to his throat. Smoke signals from his stomach, a request from the intestines to the feet and legs: Stand up and find some food. He knew that they gave away groceries at the Unitarian food bank, thick blocks of orange cheese that you could eat with bread to fill you up. He should go soon, to get a good spot in line behind the bleary-eyed women who were always there two hours before the place opened. If he didn’t move quickly the women would take all the good tomatoes and bread, leaving behind the stale loaves that only the homeless would eat.
    But Antonio did not feel like moving from his patch of pebbles and dirt. A trip to the food bank would stave off the hunger for a few hours, and then he would have to start searching for food all over again. The effort seemed pointless, like building a wall of sand to stop the sea. And he would have nothing to show for it but the degrading memory of having waited in line, in the beatific glow of the church volunteers who smiled stupidly at the resentful winos, the impoverished mothers, the homeless immigrants.
    â€œ Tengo hambre ,” José Juan said, appearing suddenly with another sheet of plastic. “Let’s get something to eat.”
    Antonio ignored José Juan and the protests of his own stomach. He had forgotten something, and this had triggered another one of his famous depressions. He could feel it covering him, a somber rain, those leaden moments when even the breeze had too much weight, when it seemed his skin would collapse under the burden of so many thoughts, so much sadness. He could not remember when his wife and son had died. He could remember their birthdays—September 23 and May 15—but he could not place the date of their deaths.
    What kind of father would forget? If she were alive, Elena would smile at him and say, “Of course you don’t remember, Antonio. You always forgot everything. Anniversaries, phone numbers, appointments. You always forgot.”
    Elena is gone too many years. She has left me alone in this city of food lines and plastic cheese. Elena did not live to see this Los Angeles that I know, the empty sky, the only stars the lights of the skyscrapers that come on at dusk and watch over