Angel Boy
George Zamalea
Across Moonlight square the bar of the Hawaiian Joe stood up. Decorated with exotic Hawaiian passages described the story of a brawny man who owned it. The drinks were cheap; there were extra beers and dried shrimps. The environment was good and familiar.
Brown Joe was a good man. Everyone liked Brown Joe the Hawaiian. Everyone liked the way he smiled down at you. They liked the way he treated people. Beyond Brown Joe’s smile, he made everyone to feel good by giving you the best time in his bar.
Today was Tuesday. It was the same crowd every Tuesday.
Frankie Jones, a heavy truck driver, made his entry.
“Hello, hello.”
Robert “Je” Jessup, a contractor for GE Co, followed him. “I’m here!”
“I see you,” Anthony Contreras, a mechanic for Sears, waved to him.
Adrian Chia, a Japanese American veteran, an old timer teacher, waved back at him.
“What’s up, fellows?”
“Livin’!” Norman Collins, a bus driver, replied.
Down to the hallway, Armando Cuervo, a “doctor” of rats, yelled to them.
“How are the old citizens doing?”
“Growin’!”
Laughers.
“What are we going to drink?” Brown Joe asked Andrew who at this particular moment stepped into the private circle of friends. He put down the plate filled with peanuts, shrimps, and pork’s dried skin.
“Hey, everyone!”
“How do ya do, Andrew?”
“Happy!”
“You look happy, Andrew.”
“Yes. I am!”
“Really happy?” Norman Collins said, fishing a handful of peanuts.
“Yes. I really happy,” he said suddenly. “It’s a boy.”
Everyone in the inner circle halted their breath. They turned their head, and then paid attention to Andrew.
“How that happened? You’ve said you couldn’t.”
“Well, I just forgot.”
“That you’re an impotent?”
“It was a secret, wasn’t it?”
“You’re almost right. I fear, you know. To tell you guys I was unable to rise butterflies!”
“I always think you’ll make it if you follow Dona’s homemade medicine.”
“Well, Andrew, are you still have your rubber?”
Laughers.
“Hell! It’s a beautiful news.”
“I remember mine.”
“Me too.”
Everyone remembered the first-born boy or girl.
Andrew said, “It blessed. I’m blessed. I got a boy.”
“Well, Andrew, you can have all you want,” Brown Joe said. “This is my bar.”
“No, Joe,” Frankie said, putting a sandwich of greens on the table. “Let’s divide it, should we?”
“Why! That’ll be unfair,” Anthony said, deposing a roll of dollars on the table. “Timbales!” he said with a Hispanic word means my balls. “This is my show, too.”
“Enough for me,” Adrian said. He came close to Andrew. He slid some monies onto the surface of the table. “It’s boy. I’m afraid I haven’t none. Just three girls and a hell of noises!”
“Let’s go, Joe,” Je cried. “All for that, eh?”
“To the boy,” Armando said as he retrieved a dozen of hundreds and tried to decorate with them Andrew’s chest. He couldn’t. “Who has pins?”
From the second group Myra got to her feet. “I got pins.” She approached Andrew. “Congratulations!”
“Thanks, Myra.”
They started to put monies on Andrew’s chest.
“Joe, bring in.”
“Tequila, beers, and more dries,” Adrian Chia corrected.
“Tequila, beers and more dries are coming right away,” Joe repeated.
“How it goes?”
“I did not plan it,” Andrew said awkwardly. “It just happened when I start to swallow these green seeds given me by Dona. My wife told me. And you guys know how God work!”
“Sometimes, He is onrushing beats, but He does His job,” Je said, drinking.
“Amen!” Adrian made a cross with the fingers across his face.
“Yessir!” Frankie echoed.
Brown Joe brought thirty-six beers and twelve bottles of tequila and a basket of peanut and shrimp. To their surprise, there a Russian caviar’s plate.
“Good Lord! Is this comin’ from Russia?”
“No, from Hawaii!” Brown Joe passed the drinks.
Andrew took his beer.
Frankie poured tequila in the tiny small glasses. He took of his, salted his palm, and with a ready halve lemon, he drunk. He sucked the salt from the palm and then squeezed the lemon all the way into his mouth. “Goddamn! It’s good!” he said. “Who will be the next on lines?”
“In bringin’ babies?”
“Yeah.”
“Who follow me?”
Adrian drank from his bottle of beer and when he slid down the bottle on the table it was half empty. Then he lifted the tiny small glass contained tequila and he swallowed it.
“Babe!”
Robert “Je” Jessup picked up the small glass and drank. It was then Armando Cuervo, Norman Collins, Anthony Contreras, Frankie, and finally Chia. The rotation started now from Adrian Chia, etc.
Andrew felt the heat and began to talk. Not happy talk but the way a drunkard was talking. Painful talk. As the drunkard people did when a dozen of beers had begun to make them to do funny things.
“She tried hard this time, ‘know?” He looked at Brown Joe who was drinking a glass of milk. He smiled at him as a father of five. “It’s an angel.”
They raised their glasses or bottles.
“To the Angel Boy!”
More drinks.
“Who has the cigar?”
“The cigar?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Somebody has forgotten the cigar?”
“It’s my culture,” Andrew said. “But we can have cigarette.”
“It’s not the same. It’s cigar!”
They raised their glasses or bottles.
“To the cigar then!”
More drinks.
Armando Cuervo got up. Balanced himself he turned and moved to the door.
“Hey, Cuevo, what the hell you are goin’ man?”
“Get the cigars, man!”
Coming out of the bar he walked to an Iranian shop that was located at Tamarind. He reached the section of International Cuban Cigars. He grasped three boxes of cigars. “Ea, Harom!”
“Yes, C’evo?”
“Are they legit?”
“Yeah, C’evo!”
“I got’em.”
Cuban Import.
The Iranian Harom looked at him.
“Boy or girl?”
“It’s a boy!”
“Good livin’ him!” he said. “This will be my gift.” He moved right. He opened a box and retrieved an extra box of Ohio-Cuban Import Cigars. He tossed it before Armando.
“I will tell it to Andrew.”
“Yes, please!”
Armando waved towards the Iranian. Moving out of the shop he walked to Brown Joe’s bar. He ambled to the private table.
“Got them?”
“Yeah.” He deposited the boxes down on the table. “Iranian gave you one free.”
“He did?”
“Yeah!”
“Don’t say it?”
“But they’re not Cuban cigars.”
“Cuban cigars?”
“No, Iranian cigars.”
“Iranian?”
“Yeah!”
“I thought they were coming from Ohio?”
“Me too.”
“What is the difference?”
“The Cuban cigar names! That’s the difference!”
“What the hell!”
“How are these cigars?”
“Don’t ask. Lit it. Smoke it.”
More drinks.
Andrew felt to talk more. He felt now to cry. And then he began crying.
They looked straight past him and sighed to Brown Joe.
“More tequila.”
They stared at him. Their tears were coming too.
“Oh. I’m so damned weak,” Je said.
“It’s not difficult to be a father.”
“No, isn’t!”
“Be a mom, perhaps.”
Andrew spoke. Spasm of irritation crossing his face. His words sounded bitterly set. They looked at each other. They looked at him. They did not understand his angry facial expression. “She gave him her life. Her life for him.”
A silence fell. It was like a drop of lava in full steam had fallen from their head and cascaded it over their shoulders and chest.
They stared at him. They raised their eyebrow in a questioning slant. They were a kind of confuse, a little aback.
“What did you mean?”
“I told her I couldn’t let her,” he said with a pitiful look of appeal. “I told her I love her. That there must be another way to handle it. She mentioned some conversations we’d a long time ago. It was a stupid conversation. I told her why she could not have baby. To have a family, you know. She could but it will be fatal. I still pushing her and pushing her. I am looking at me only, and here I am about to call myself a coward.” And he was crying and he was drinking and he was talking a little more in a rushing way. “I didn’t know she has given her life for him...for my own egoism.”
“You meant she gave her life.”
“I cannot figure it out until last moment.”
There was more silence. And there were more tears.
Brown Joe swallowed his saliva. He was utterly unable to control himself. He took a medium glass and filled it with tequila. He drank it in one tip.
“Hey, Andrew, let’s forget it, uh?”
“I can’t,” Andrew said. He got up. He looked at them. His face bathed with tears. “I just can’t man. It was like I kill her.”
They saw him walking to the exit. They saw Myra getting up and saying something to Andrew that they could not hear. They saw Andrew nodding as Myra close to him.
“Bye, Andrew,” Brown Joe said.
He didn’t reply.
“Andrew! Andrew!”
They saw him rising his arm and then it fell on Myra’s shoulder. A few minutes later Andrew and Myra were gone.
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