“Walked,” Wilson said, and he stood to find his legs, swayed a bit as if with a breeze. The men watched him negotiate his coat and mittens.
“Gonna walk home?” the lame man asked.
Wilson studied the man’s face and offered a reluctant smile. “No, just walkin.”‘
“We’ll drive you,” said the tall man.
But there was fight in Wilson’s eyes. He gained the door. He didn’t look back.
Against a dense night, he inhaled all the frozen air he could. He kissed the wet, parted lips of his wife’s memory. He sang softly to himself a song which once he had sung to his children. It had helped them find sleep.
Chacón, Chacón
Miguel Chacón had a scar on his left shoulder. The bullet had gone through neatly, but a drunk bootleg doctor had butchered him taking it out. The wound was suffered during a gang fight in Española when Miguel’s friend, such as he was, introduced him as Killer Chacón from Taos. On his left hand he had a thumb and three fingers, his pinky having been wrenched out of his socket when it got tangled in his insanely small chain-link steering wheel as he slammed into a spin. The left side of his face was noticeably disfigured: he and a friend felled a tree which landed on a good-sized fir sapling. Miguel, for a reason no one knows, took the chain-saw and began cutting the bent tree. The tree whipped and the saw went flying high into the air. The tree hit Miguel in the face. The chainsaw came down, still running, and sliced the left side of his back. Miguel’s friends, such as they were, sometimes called him Lefty. Mostly, they did not call him. They didn’t like to look at his scars. In a group, Miguel was always the last one on the left or the first one on the right. Those who knew his car always passed quickly, eyes forward, on the right if possible. Miguel concluded, logically, that his right side was charmed, invincible even.
His belief in the guarded nature of his right side was reinforced by an incident on Route 3. His car stalled as he was pulling out from San Cristobal and a semi narrowly missed, yes, the right side of his low-rider. The truck rolled over the shoulder and down a steep slope. When the driver of the truck was hauled up he claimed not to know what had happened. He said, “I just lost control. Hell, I’d rather have crushed the low-riding son of a bitch than drive off the road.” When Miguel was pointed out as the driver of the stalled vehicle, the trucker tried to leap from the stretcher and hit him. “I’ll get you, Poncho,” the man said as the ambulance doors were shut.
This notion of one-sided immortality led Miguel to do everything with his right hand and those tasks which required two hands were performed with his right side facing the project, his left arm stretched to its limit across his front. He always appeared to be handling caustic or potentially explosive materials.
Many of the religious people in Taos saw Miguel Chacón as a living, breathing, nearly talking example of the dichotomy of the world, an ugly but tangible manifestation of nature’s duality, good and bad. Of course, they seldom spoke of it as such — they just crossed themselves and tried to stay on Miguel’s right side as it were. His presence taught them that whereas evil was disfigured and ugly, good was not much to look at. At first, the talk was in jest of Miguel’s right side being a different agent than his left. Then the talk, out of habit, became literal. “I saw Lefty Chacón,” someone would say. “Is he still alive?” was the stock response. People waved to Righty Chacón and turned away from Lefty. With all this going on, Miguel, not the brightest man, began to believe that he was indeed two distinct Chacóns, his right side, pure and uninjured, constantly riding herd over his blemished and misshapen left side.
Lefty Chacón once punched huge José Archuleta in the face, then turned away, showing the man the opposite Chacón. Archuleta looked and looked but could not find Lefty to hit, in spite of the patrons of the bar pointing and shouting, “There he is! There he is!” The Chacóns slipped out of the bar and argued in the parking lot.
“I wished he had bashed in your head,” said Righty.
“If I die, you die, compadre,” said Lefty.
“You’re ugly and disfigured,” said Righty.
“And you are only ugly.” Lefty laughed. “You should be so lucky to share my deformity.”
Righty began to pound Lefty with his fist, but Lefty kept laughing. Soon Righty was tired and they went home and to bed.
That night, while they wrestled for covers and position, Lefty said, “You can not be so good if you have me.” This caused Righty to cry. He prayed for an angel to come smother Lefty.
Lefty awoke before his opposite one morning. He dressed and carried himself out to the car. When he tried to drive away from the house he could only guide the car through tight left-handed circles. Undaunted, he marched to the road and hitched a ride. Old Lester Muñoz saw Righty at the highway-side, but it was Lefty who climbed in beside him.
“Take me to the liquor store,” said Lefty, and a terrified Muñoz complied.
At the liquor store, Manny Medina was opening the cash register. Lefty walked in and produced a rather large and nasty pistol.
“You stupid pendejo,” said Manny, “I just opened up. I don’t have any money.”
“I don’t care,” said Lefty. “Hand it over.”
Apparently, Old Lester Muñoz suspected funny business and told the police, because the police showed up.
Lefty turned to show the deputies a still-sleeping Righty Chacón. Righty woke up to find Manny and the two officers demanding to know what had become of Lefty. Not knowing what was going on and following an instinct for self-preservation, Righty said, “He’s run outside and down the street.” The men ran after.
When Righty discovered what Lefty had tried to do, he beat him. But Lefty only laughed.
Righty, at the end of his rope, dragged the other Chacón to the church. Once there he could only manage his half of the whole through the doors.
“No, I will not go in,” said Lefty.
“I’ll drag you in here so that Christ will strike you down with a lightning bolt.” But hard as he tried he could not do it. He prayed with all his heart and strength, breaking a sweat over the side of the face, his side of the mouth working madly.
Lefty smiled and watched the traffic pass, waved at the pointing people. Soon Righty was exhausted from pleading with God.
“Won’t You do anything?” was the last thing Righty said before collapsing.
Clouds rolled in from the mountains as Lefty muscled the body many miles to Taos Junction, where Taos Creek and the Rio Grande meet. Lefty stepped to the point and laid the whole down, steep, deadly cliffs on either side. They slept.
When they awoke, the moon was full and bright and a stiff wind pushed at them, urging them nearer the edge.
“Why have you brought me here?” asked Righty.
“We’re jumping.”
“Do you want so much for me to feel pain?”
“Yes.”
Righty, upon quick reflection, saw this as a route to freedom. Certainly, Lefty could not follow him to heaven and, most definitely, he would be going to heaven. “Very well, then.” He paused and looked over the edge into the darkness. “Let’s jump.”
They jumped. On the way down, Righty heard Lefty speaking.
“What are you saying?” asked Righty.
“I wasn’t talking to you.”
“Who were you talking to? What did you say?”
“I said that I accept Jesus Christ as my savior and the Son of God and I asked that he forgive my sins.” With that, they fell on, the only sound being Lefty’s laughter.
This story originally appeared in Montana Review, Number 8 and Time Enough for the World (Seattle: Owl Creek Press, 1986), and is reprinted here with the permission of the Owl Creek Press.