Into the Beautiful North(62)

He sent word that he’d found work. He’d found a cheap house and a good-paying job, and he was going to apply for a green card and work in the tuna canneries of San Diego. His letters and telegrams to Irma were full of innocence and joy—amazing tales of bright American days and clean American beaches. Shining American bowling alleys! When he went on a small tour, he showered her with postcards of bowling alleys in Tucumcari, New Mexico; El Paso, Texas; Benson, Arizona. When it came time for her to bowl in the north of Mexico, the year of 1965, she went to Chava on a Mexicana flight, clutching a shiny black purse and wearing high heels for the first time in her life. She was expecting a wedding.

But Chava had stayed in el norte for other reasons. True, the cannery had paid him well. His little yellow house in the bucolic hills of Colonia Independencia was cute. His sly smuggling of Irma into the United States for her San Diego bowling premiere was memorable. But he’d been oddly chaste with her. Even distant. And in the end, he had sent her home with a mere peck on the cheek.

Only when she was back in Tres Camarones did Irma hear from Chava’s mother that he had impregnated an American woman. A blonde, no less. A cocktail waitress from the Aztec Lanes in San Diego. Chava was marrying her.

That was the end of Irma, that day.

La Osa, her alter ego, appeared in all her relentless glory to inspire chagrin and penance in the homeland.



Matt drove them to Hillcrest. Yolo had nabbed the shotgun seat, and Nayeli beamed smiles at him from the back. Their overwhelming girlscents filled the minivan. He was baffled by the whole visitation. What did they want? It was what the ZZs would have called “a for sure blow-mind.”

Atómiko was sprawled in the third row, snoring again.

Matt had the address on a scrap of paper. They took I-5 south to Washington and cut up the hill. The Hillcrest Bowl was across the street from a shabby little medical tower. They pulled into the lot. It was mostly empty. Atómiko stayed asleep in the backseat. A drunk street person addressed them in some ancient Babylonian tongue. Matt handed him a dollar, and they moved away from him.

Nayeli put her arm through Matt’s as they walked into the bowling alley. She had this way of looking up at him from under her brows that made him happy. The old sound of bowling washed over them like a tide, the rumble/crash of balls and pins. Matt heard Patsy Cline playing on the jukebox. It must have been a law in America that every bowling alley installed “Crazy,” “Walkin’ After Midnight,” and “I Fall to Pieces” on their jukes.

At the front desk, they asked after Chava.

“Who?” the guy said.

“Se?or Chava,” Nayeli repeated.

The guy looked at her.

He turned and yelled, “Hey, Sal! You know anybody named Chávez?”

“Chava,” Nayeli corrected.

“Whatever.”

They looked over at “Sal.” He was carrying a rubber bucket and a mop out of the women’s toilet. He wore blue rubber kitchen gloves that reached almost to his elbows. He wore thick-soled work shoes, and his gray trousers were pressed. His white shirt was buttoned up to his neck. Without the pomade, his hair had gone back to its tight curls. Except it had become white, as had his little mustache.

He looked at them with a frozen half-smile on his face.

Nayeli stepped forward.

“?Don Chava?” she asked. “?Chava Chavarín?”



Yolo and Matt were bowling. Atómiko wandered in and nodded to Nayeli and Chava. “?Orale, guey!” he said. He settled in the booth at Matt’s lane and started insulting the bowlers.

“That boy just called me a water buffalo,” Chava noted.

He and Nayeli sat at a small table, sipping sodas.

“He is a funny boy,” Nayeli said.

“Funny. Yes.”

Chava fidgeted. He seemed to have trouble meeting her eyes. He unwrapped her straw for her.

“Gracias.”

“Root beer is good,” he said.

“What was it you said to that rude man?” she asked.

“Which one? There are so many rude men. Oh. My boss? That was what they say here—‘Take five.’ It means I am taking a break. They have all these phrases you need to know. Like ‘easy ice.’ ”

“Easy ice,” she repeated.

“Yes. When you order a drink. They always put too much ice in it. It saves them money. But you want your money’s worth, you see. So you tell them not to put so much ice in the drink.”

“Easy ice.”

“Easy ice. Take five. See you later.”

Nayeli did her smile for him and sipped her soda.

“So. Tres Camarones,” Chava said, as if it had just come up in conversation. “How—is it back there?”

“Hot.”

They laughed.

He rubbed his face.

He said, “You will think I am a bad man.”

And he told her the story of how he betrayed Aunt Irma so many years ago. Nayeli listened carefully, hiding her smile when he admitted to making love to La Osa.

“We were young!” he said when he saw her grin. “Well, she was young.”

His face was tragic as he told her about the blonde. He hung his head, turned his glass of soda around and around on the ring of water it left on the table.

“Sal!” the guy at the desk called.