A Glass of Water by Jimmy Santiago Baca

Author:Jimmy Santiago Baca
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Published: 2009-02-26T16:00:00+00:00

26

January 2005

Vito was back in Albuquerque and when he walked into the barbershop after being absent almost two and a half years, there were the same faces sitting in the same chairs, watching the same sports channel. When they turned and saw him, their eyes glinted hard and sharp. It was clear there had been many rumors about the reason for his disappearance.

“When’d you get out?” one guy asked.

“Was never in,” Vito replied and added, looking up at the boxers on TV, “that’s bullshit, he can’t fight. I whipped him in the Amarillo stockyards—punked his ass.”

“Heard you was running from the law,” another man offered.

Vito’s hair was long, his clothes smelled of too many nights on the road sleeping in his truck. “None of it’s true, I split off from Rafael for a while.”

Two and half years ago, at the end of 2002, he had taken off with Ronny, a big Déné Indian, and together they’d been to every reservation west of the Mississippi in at least fifty matches—in community centers, auditoriums, bars, VFW halls, bowling alleys, abandoned warehouses, hotels, parks, and county fairs; they had even done cage fighting and corral wrestling. There was no such thing as a draw—the rule was simple, one man walks out of the ring. Five or twelve or twenty rounds, until one went down. No headlines or sports-page write-ups; the fights were arranged in backrooms over cigars and whiskey.

Vito didn’t care who they were—Chicanos, Asians, or Gringos, they all hit the concrete, the dirt, or the canvas, and though it wasn’t a million-dollar purse, he had enough pocket change, after splitting it with his road-dog Ronny, to satisfy his meager needs—a good meal, a woman, and a warm bed.

“You see,” he said, sitting down, “used to be old schoolers believed fighters get in a ring to fight. None of that dancing and dodging as if they were rehearsing on stage for a ballet.” He paused, “I beat him,” he said again.

The men turned their eyes from the television to Vito, mulled over his lie.

“It’s not on record,” Vito added.

A thoughtful silence followed this statement.

Then one man growled, “I lost money on you. You were supposed to fight and you didn’t show.”

“Ask Puro how much of my earnings he stole from me. How many of you are willing to work without getting paid?”

They were Puro’s friends and a silence stretched out tense as a slingshot until the barber tapped the chair for Vito. “You look worse than a goat.”

“De-lice him,” one joked. “So, where you been?”

“You wouldn’t believe it,” Vito said and started to tell the tale.

Vito whipped a big Indian at the Grants, New Mexico, powwow and on his way to the next fight he had dropped in at a Navajo bar by Jemez Pueblo and bought drinks for the whole bar. A one-armed Indian slid in next to him at the bar and told him that the Indians in suits worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs and were no good. Knowing nothing about the BIA, Vito denounced them as traitors, warning them not to drink the tequila shots.

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