It Takes a Worried Man
by
Tracy Daugherty
For Kathie, Keith, and Freddie Jane
For their love and advice — and their efforts in our shared struggle to write as well as we can — I’m grateful to Marjorie Sandor and Ehud Havazelet. Thanks also to Glenn Blake, Michelle Boisseau, Jerry and Joyce Bryan, Betty Campbell, Kris and Rich Daniels, Ted Leeson, Martha Low, George Manner, and Jeff and Pam Mull.
The town of Houston, situated at the head of navigation, on the west bank of Buffalo Bayou, is now for the first time brought to public notice because until now the proprietors were not ready to offer it to the public … [but] when the rich lands of this country shall be settled, a trade will flow to it, making it, beyond all doubt, the great interior commercial emporium of Texas.
The intercourse which [the citizens] have had with the world and with each other has had the tendency to [banish] bigotry and obliterate prejudices and most of them are able to estimate with little partiality the pretensions of all, according to their merits.
Comfort Me with Apples
The Zamoras came to Houston from Jalisco, Mexico, in 1988 and settled first on Hickory Street by a dried-up spit of Buffalo Bayou. Julio Zamora has never applied for a green card; he works as a fast-food cook. His oldest son, Manuel, loves the comic books I bring him every week. “Who’s this?” he’ll say.
“Spiderman. Tough hombre. He can eat fourteen burritos in eight minutes while hanging, half-asleep, on the wall.”
“I can eat fifteen upside down!”
I think of him as my own little boy, sometimes.
My other family, the Thuots, fled the Annamese Cordillera in what’s now the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. They live with their six children in an efficiency apartment with no running water, near Allen Parkway. I bring them food and job applications from convenience stores; they teach me their customs.
The Thuots and the Zamoras are precisely the kind of people no one — repeat, no one, zero, zip — wants to read about, Cal of Cal’s Books is telling me now, planting his hands on his dusty front counter. Next to the cash register, a chipped fishbowl is gorged with slips of paper — a promotional gimmick. Cal’s always got one going. Trips. Bonus prizes. At the end of the month he’ll hold a raffle. Four free books.
“George, my customers want a peek at the secret lives of celebrities. Money, scandal, divorce …” he says. “They’re after books that’ll teach them better love techniques.”
Indian myths, black oral histories, Cajun culture guides, Mexico, Asia — these subjects are Death, he says. Pure Death. Business is slow for my Texas Republic Press.
“At least take a look at what I’ve done,” I say. I’m the founder, publisher, editor (my late wife, Jean, suggested the logo, of which I’m very proud — an amiable armadillo branded with a big Lone Star). Today, I’m the sales rep.
Cal takes my sample copy of Houston’s Latin Refugees, a one-hundred-page cultural study of families like the Zamoras. I’m also the writer.
“Sorry, George. I wouldn’t be able to sell it. If you could get me something sexy …”
“Be serious, Cal.”
“Never more.”
Shaking my head, “All right, forget it,” I glimpse an exterminator’s truck, backfiring as it rattly-clacks down the street. A giant foam-rubber bug is belly-up on its hood. X’s for eyes. It’s followed by a pizza-delivery van, pepperonis painted like measles on its dark purple doors.
Successful commerce: in the fast lane, way ahead of me.
I scribble my phone number and the names of the Thuots and the Zamoras on uneven ribbons of paper, then press them into the fishbowl. Cal’s got a picture of his teenage nephew, Ray, taped to the register as an ad for his “Family Novels” sale (“20 % Off!”). The boy looks just like his uncle but neater, with a slender goatee. I met him last summer when he worked part-time for Cal, and took to him right away. He was trying to save for his first car and help with the family expenses.
His dad, Cal’s brother Billy, was recovering from prostate surgery, something Ray couldn’t talk about without choking up, and I felt for the kid.
“Mr. Palmer, good to see you again,” he greeted me whenever I came in. Helpful. Polite. He always took the time to glance through my pamphlets and books, said he’d talk them up to his uncle. He loved showing me, and anyone else, the latest issues of Consumer Reports, dog-earing pages of jazzy red sports cars he longed to get his mitts on.
A boy to make a daddy proud.
If I were speaking to him now, or to any humane person, I think, I might be making progress.
Well. Cal and I are used to each other.
“These people you talk to, George, they have, you know what I mean, kinky love practices, don’t they? Fertility rites? Stuff like that?” he asks. His beard’s about to wilt in the heat. “That I could use.”
“Thanks for your time, Cal.” I snatch back the book.
The Zamoras live now near a black college in the projects. Most families here are too poor to buy new shoes, or to repair their old ones, and they have no sidewalks to use — only narrow dirt paths under splintered telephone poles near the street. The power lines between the poles are loosely strung over gardens and lawns, within easy reach of a child swinging a stick, say, or a rusty baton, or an old Louisville Slugger — something I’d fix right away, pronto, ándale, if I had kids here. The fire hydrants, busted, are dry.
The Zamoras’ house is pink with dark-green eaves. Spike cactus blooms on either side of the porch. A stiff plastic hose curls on a peg by the door.
When I arrive — it’s a ten-minute drive from Cal’s — Julio’s trying to figure out the plumbing in his kitchen. He tells me he’s just spent $780 on a new washer and dryer.
I say, “Can I give you a hand?”
“Sure. Grab that wrench for me.”
Some afternoons he cooks hamburgers at a Prince’s Drive-In; two nights a week he fries shrimp at a Chinese take-out on Wheeler. Eight months ago, he and his wife, Lira, and their five children lived in a small apartment in the Fourth Ward, behind a Southern Pacific Railroad crossing. Now, with two jobs, he can afford to rent this place.
“Lira downtown today?” I ask.
“Yeah. Pounding those fucking doors.”
“No luck?”
“Naw. I tell her, she’s gonna have to try a little harder. Small businesses, banks.” She’s been looking for work for a year. “Earn her keep around here.” He laughs, but the ripple in his throat is shallow and sad.
Twice in the last year, I’ve noticed bruises on Lira’s cheeks. Once, she had a black eye. She won’t talk about herself. “Every morning at eight, she catches a Metro bus downtown and interviews all day,” Julio explained to me once. “Then she comes home at seven to fix dinner for the children.”
Last week, on a whim, I stopped by while Julio was still at work, hoping to get her to chat. The timing was bad; she was exhausted from the bus, the kids were hungry, hanging all over her — “Off!” she howled, like someone in near-fatal distress — while she pulled knives and spoons, pots and pans, from cupboards, cabinets, drawers. I asked her how she was doing.
She just smiled.
Fidgeting, wishing I could vanish through the floorboards, I told her I’d recently seen up-to-date employment guides in my friend Cal’s bookstore.