The Tattooed Soldier by Héctor Tobar Page B

he set foot in this country, Antonio felt that he knew California because he’d seen it come to life over and over again on his television set. In Antonio’s homeland, the words “Los Angeles” sparkled, like sunlight glimmering off a mountain lake.
    And now this. Skinny question-mark men with dirty bodies and unshaven faces, hanging clothes on a line strung between palm trees, in a lot in the center of the city.
    Antonio began to imagine that he was somehow responsible for their plight. If his own mind were not clouded with so much pain, they would not exist. They are what I feel. Somehow he had tainted the prosperous Americanos with his condition. The pathos of these men was his own creation, an extension of his tortured past, the curse of a man with a dead wife and son. He wanted to apologize to these gringos, to say, “I’m sorry. It’s all in my head. My head is full of all this trash, you see.” He hadn’t meant to put them in this horrible predicament. It was all his fault, and they could go home now, back to the lives they had before, to their beaches and ice chests. As soon as Antonio went away, they would slip back into their fit American bodies.
    He closed his eyes for several minutes, meditating in a dizzy darkness, wondering if he could make them disappear. They were still there when he opened his eyes, men with teeth and skin yellow like ivory. They were as real as his hunger. He shook his head vigorously, like a dog shaking water out of its fur. He had been out here in the open air too long and was suffering some sort of psychological reaction. If he had a medical dictionary he would look up the symptoms. Hallucinations, delusions. If he stayed here he might lose his mind completely.
    It was important not to lose control.
    The men in the next lot went about their morning chores with a serious and practiced efficiency, making coffee, dishing out the beans with a small plastic spoon. Even here in a barren lot, it seemed, people could settle into a domestic routine. With two plastic buckets that looked like beach toys, one of the black men brought water from an unseen source at the bottom of the hill.
    A few minutes later José Juan returned, carrying several pieces of scrap wood.
    â€œLet’s go get food,” he insisted. “We need to eat.”
    Antonio stood up. Together they hid the Hefty bag with all their possessions in one of the bushes that ringed the empty lots. Turning onto Third Street, past the last of the camps, they stepped over a cyclone fence that had been cut apart. A sign was still attached: Coming Soon: Crown Hill Hotel and Finance Park
    *   *   *
    They could see the man from half a block away, reaching into the brambles to pull out the Hefty bag.
    â€œHey, you!” Antonio called out in English, dropping a sack of groceries from the food bank and breaking into a run. Startled, the man began to walk away with José Juan’s hotplate tucked under his arm, taking long, gangly strides. Antonio sprinted to catch up with him and tackled him from behind. The two men fell to the ground with a thud, Antonio landing on the thief’s back, pounding him into the weed-covered soil.
    Antonio rolled him over and formed his hand into a fist over the man’s face. “Bastard!” he shouted.
    The thief raised his arms meekly and cried out, “Please don’t hit me!” He was the older man Antonio had seen before, pasty-faced, his long beard stained yellow just below his mouth.
    We have almost nothing, and this man wants to take it from us. Antonio drove his fist into the man’s face, the nose cartilage snapping under his knuckles. Another punch, this one like hammering nails into the ground, a clenched fist to the temple. A weak scream from the thief, and then one more punch, to the mouth.
    â€œDon’t fuck with me!” Antonio yelled. “Hijo de la gran puta, no te metes conmigo.”
    It felt good to