The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [31]
(When I am big I build fly-planes.)
Short white pants which reach the middle of his thighs. His white open shirt shows slim brown boy-arms, his hair is dark and clustered with ringlets. Cunning little Mex.
Teacher likes me, Momma likes me, big fat Momma with the smell; her arms are great and her breasts are soft; at night in the two little rooms there is the sound of Momma and Poppa, shlup-shlup, shlup-shlup, giggle in your pillow. (When I am big I build fly-planes. )
The Mexican quarter is unpaved, and little wood lean-tos sag in the heat. You can always breathe earth-powder, always smell the kerosene, the cooking grease, always sniff the mangy summer odor of spavined horses drawing carts, barefooted old men sucking at pipes.
Momma shakes him, talks in Spanish. Lazy one, get me a pepper and a pound of pinto beans. He grasps the coin, which is cold against his palm.
Momma, when I am big I fly plane.
You are my good smart boy (the wet pungent smack of her lips, flesh smells), now get what I have sent you for.
There are many things I will do, Momma.
She laughs. You will make money, you will own land, but now you hurry.
Little Mexican boys grow up, have hair creep like minuscule vines across their chins. When you are quiet and shy it is hard to find girls.
Ysidro is your big brother; he is twenty and slick dresser. His shoes are brown and white and his sideburns are two inches long. Julio listens to him.
I screw good stuff. Big girls. Girls with plat'num blonde. Alice Stewart, Peggy Reilly, Mary Hennessey. Protestant girls.
I screw them too.
Ysidro laughs. You make love to your hand. Later you will be smart. You will learn to play a woman like a guitar.
Julio makes love when he is fifteen. There is a little girl on the earth-pressed street who wears no bloomers. Ysabel Flores, dirty little girl. All the boys she makes love to.
Julio, you are sweet sweet sweet.
Under the tree behind the empty house in the dark. Julio, like the dogs, okay?
He feels the sweet sick nausea. (Protestant girls like me, I will make much money.) Ysabel, when I am big I buy you many dresses.
Her wet velveted body relaxes. She lies down on her spread-out dress, her premature breasts lolling in the summer heat. Dresses? she asks. What color will they be?
Julio Martinez is big boy now, big financier; he works in a hashhouse. Counterman. The foul rich barbecue smell, the garlic molten in the hot dogs on the griddle. Joe and Nemo, Harry and Dick, White Tower. Grease on a sizzling plate and the crumblings, the rancid fat, all to be scraped with the spatula. Martinez wears a white jacket.
Texans can be impatient. Hey, you boy, hurry up that chili.
Yes, sir.
Prostitutes look through him. Lots of relish, boy.
Yes, miss.
The cars flare by in the electric night, his feet ache on the concrete floor. (I will make much money.)
But there are no jobs with much money. What can a Mexican boy do in San Antone? He can be counterman in hashhouse; he can be bellhop; he can pick cotton in season; he can start store; but he cannot be a doctor, a lawyer, big merchant, chief.
He can make love.
Rosalita has a big belly; it is almost as big as the belly of her father Pedro Sanchez. You will marry my daughter, Pedro says.
Sí. But there are prettier girls than Rosalita.
It was time you were married anyway.
Sí. (Rosalita will grow fat, and children will run through the house. Shlup-shlup, shlup-shlup, giggle in your pillow. He will dig ditches on the roads.)
You are the first with her in any case.
Sí. (It was not his fault. Sheik, Ramses, Golden Trojan. Sometimes it was even two dollars out of the twenty he made in a week.)
I will talk with Señora Martinez.
Sí. If you wish.
The night is dull with woe. Rosalita is sweet but there are girls sweeter. He walks along the dirt-impacted streets. They are beginning to pave them now.
Tired? Restless? Knock up a dame? Join The Army.
Martinez is a buck private in 1937. He is still a private in thirty-nine. Nice shy Mex kid with good