WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.381 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:00:03.381 --> 00:00:04.350 align:middle line:90% 00:00:04.350 --> 00:00:07.140 align:middle line:84% I'm as moved as I knew I would be. 00:00:07.140 --> 00:00:10.680 align:middle line:90% Thank you, Ingrid. 00:00:10.680 --> 00:00:13.950 align:middle line:84% I'm going to keep my coat on because it is very cold, 00:00:13.950 --> 00:00:18.060 align:middle line:84% and I'm not going to try to brave it like anybody else. 00:00:18.060 --> 00:00:19.560 align:middle line:90% If I get hot, I'll turn it-- 00:00:19.560 --> 00:00:24.480 align:middle line:84% I'll take it off, like Aretha did at the Kennedy Center 00:00:24.480 --> 00:00:26.370 align:middle line:90% Honors. 00:00:26.370 --> 00:00:33.570 align:middle line:84% But I'll be mercifully short because I also get very shaky 00:00:33.570 --> 00:00:34.410 align:middle line:90% when it gets cold. 00:00:34.410 --> 00:00:39.810 align:middle line:84% So I'm noticing that I'm--it's getting into my bones. 00:00:39.810 --> 00:00:42.150 align:middle line:90% I'm going to read-- 00:00:42.150 --> 00:00:44.760 align:middle line:84% well, before I share, I also want 00:00:44.760 --> 00:00:47.430 align:middle line:84% to say thank you to you, Tyler, Diana. 00:00:47.430 --> 00:00:51.210 align:middle line:84% Everybody at the Poetry Center for hosting us. 00:00:51.210 --> 00:00:54.990 align:middle line:84% It is really great to read with Andrew and with Bojan, 00:00:54.990 --> 00:00:59.490 align:middle line:84% and I want to say thanks to Graywolf for-- 00:00:59.490 --> 00:01:02.190 align:middle line:84% its just chance that we were all finishing 00:01:02.190 --> 00:01:03.150 align:middle line:90% at about the same time. 00:01:03.150 --> 00:01:06.180 align:middle line:84% They did not have to schedule our books the way 00:01:06.180 --> 00:01:07.030 align:middle line:90% that they did. 00:01:07.030 --> 00:01:10.440 align:middle line:84% But it's just a really fortunate way 00:01:10.440 --> 00:01:14.250 align:middle line:84% to be able to share time together 00:01:14.250 --> 00:01:17.790 align:middle line:84% because books are so lonely when you write them 00:01:17.790 --> 00:01:20.940 align:middle line:84% so that the fact that all three of them came at the same time, 00:01:20.940 --> 00:01:22.585 align:middle line:90% one right after the other-- 00:01:22.585 --> 00:01:24.210 align:middle line:84% I really just wish the University would 00:01:24.210 --> 00:01:26.320 align:middle line:90% recognize how amazing that is. 00:01:26.320 --> 00:01:26.820 align:middle line:90% It is. 00:01:26.820 --> 00:01:28.480 align:middle line:90% It's pretty great. 00:01:28.480 --> 00:01:32.280 align:middle line:84% I'm going to share just the first four 00:01:32.280 --> 00:01:35.550 align:middle line:84% sections from a section story just because I'm 00:01:35.550 --> 00:01:37.320 align:middle line:90% at the Poetry Center. 00:01:37.320 --> 00:01:40.440 align:middle line:84% So I can intone the number before I 00:01:40.440 --> 00:01:43.230 align:middle line:84% read the little section, and also you'll 00:01:43.230 --> 00:01:45.720 align:middle line:84% know when the reading is going to be over because I'm only 00:01:45.720 --> 00:01:47.040 align:middle line:90% going to read four of them. 00:01:47.040 --> 00:01:48.354 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:01:48.354 --> 00:01:49.230 align:middle line:90% 00:01:49.230 --> 00:01:51.690 align:middle line:84% This is a story that if it were in workshop, 00:01:51.690 --> 00:01:54.615 align:middle line:84% I'd be asked to change the title because it's too long. 00:01:54.615 --> 00:01:57.640 align:middle line:90% 00:01:57.640 --> 00:02:00.450 align:middle line:84% It's called "That Pink House at the End of the Street 00:02:00.450 --> 00:02:04.010 align:middle line:90% on the Other Side of Town." 00:02:04.010 --> 00:02:12.120 align:middle line:84% One-- "Silvio, whom everyone called El Sapo, 00:02:12.120 --> 00:02:16.500 align:middle line:84% had been coming the longest, but only during the wet times when 00:02:16.500 --> 00:02:19.650 align:middle line:84% the fields ran muddy and no one else would 00:02:19.650 --> 00:02:21.750 align:middle line:84% brave the kind of cold that would not 00:02:21.750 --> 00:02:26.910 align:middle line:84% lock your knuckles, no matter how thick the gloves. 00:02:26.910 --> 00:02:31.230 align:middle line:84% By spring, he'd returned to a pueblito called Pozos, 00:02:31.230 --> 00:02:34.260 align:middle line:84% which made everyone ask why he'd go back 00:02:34.260 --> 00:02:37.020 align:middle line:90% to a hole in the ground. 00:02:37.020 --> 00:02:42.060 align:middle line:84% A frog crawling under the mud to wait out the heat. 00:02:42.060 --> 00:02:46.590 align:middle line:84% That was El Sapo leaving sometime in early April 00:02:46.590 --> 00:02:51.120 align:middle line:84% before the heat came, and then the others would arrive. 00:02:51.120 --> 00:02:55.560 align:middle line:84% Fidelio and his twin brother, Modesto, who for some reason 00:02:55.560 --> 00:02:59.370 align:middle line:84% was several inches shorter than him, Jerónimo, 00:02:59.370 --> 00:03:03.390 align:middle line:84% more quiet and stark, who claimed to know Silvio 00:03:03.390 --> 00:03:06.520 align:middle line:90% but nobody knew for sure. 00:03:06.520 --> 00:03:09.000 align:middle line:84% Baldomero El Mero Mero, who boasted 00:03:09.000 --> 00:03:11.370 align:middle line:84% that he was the one who had shown the others how 00:03:11.370 --> 00:03:14.670 align:middle line:84% to start with a bus in Celaya, take it 00:03:14.670 --> 00:03:16.800 align:middle line:84% to the outskirts of Tijuana and right 00:03:16.800 --> 00:03:21.420 align:middle line:84% over there at a llantería owned by his old friend, Raimundo. 00:03:21.420 --> 00:03:25.920 align:middle line:84% You could sneak through the dust yard of Raimundo's old tires 00:03:25.920 --> 00:03:31.390 align:middle line:84% and cross to the other side, get to the highway on foot. 00:03:31.390 --> 00:03:34.950 align:middle line:84% And if you were smart enough to hide your money, 00:03:34.950 --> 00:03:37.590 align:middle line:84% catch a Greyhound to a place called 00:03:37.590 --> 00:03:40.620 align:middle line:84% Goshen, where you'd go to the phone booth 00:03:40.620 --> 00:03:44.760 align:middle line:84% outside of the station, look out at the cotton fields 00:03:44.760 --> 00:03:49.410 align:middle line:84% as you dialed a number and told a man named Poldo 00:03:49.410 --> 00:03:52.050 align:middle line:90% that you'd made it across. 00:03:52.050 --> 00:03:57.510 align:middle line:84% A cousin by way of another cousin, a friend of the family, 00:03:57.510 --> 00:04:02.820 align:middle line:84% from Celaya, from Ojo de Agua, from La Cuevita, 00:04:02.820 --> 00:04:04.170 align:middle line:90% from Charco Blanco. 00:04:04.170 --> 00:04:05.640 align:middle line:90% Yes, of course. 00:04:05.640 --> 00:04:06.810 align:middle line:90% Yes. 00:04:06.810 --> 00:04:10.890 align:middle line:84% A third yes, if you promised you had the money 00:04:10.890 --> 00:04:14.220 align:middle line:84% to pay a little rent for a month. 00:04:14.220 --> 00:04:18.810 align:middle line:84% That's how Eliseo showed up and poor Casimiro, 00:04:18.810 --> 00:04:21.990 align:middle line:84% who wore thick glasses and peered into the fruit trees 00:04:21.990 --> 00:04:26.070 align:middle line:84% with his whole face to see what he was picking. 00:04:26.070 --> 00:04:30.900 align:middle line:84% But you'd have to know Spanish to know why all the other men 00:04:30.900 --> 00:04:34.810 align:middle line:90% laughed at his name." 00:04:34.810 --> 00:04:40.740 align:middle line:84% Two-- "Poldo was Leopoldo Ruelas-- 00:04:40.740 --> 00:04:44.760 align:middle line:84% as thin as his mustache, who came out of nowhere 00:04:44.760 --> 00:04:47.790 align:middle line:84% and bought that pink house at the end of the street 00:04:47.790 --> 00:04:50.010 align:middle line:90% on the other side of town. 00:04:50.010 --> 00:04:53.280 align:middle line:84% That house had stood empty for a long time. 00:04:53.280 --> 00:04:57.210 align:middle line:84% The paint chipped, and the weeds growing high in the bank 00:04:57.210 --> 00:05:00.930 align:middle line:84% only sometimes coming to clean up the yard. 00:05:00.930 --> 00:05:02.940 align:middle line:84% Not often because it was in a town 00:05:02.940 --> 00:05:05.760 align:middle line:84% where just anybody could buy a house. 00:05:05.760 --> 00:05:10.140 align:middle line:84% People rented and maybe they passed by the faded pink house 00:05:10.140 --> 00:05:13.950 align:middle line:84% with the enclosed back porch and wished that they 00:05:13.950 --> 00:05:16.680 align:middle line:90% could one day be its owner. 00:05:16.680 --> 00:05:19.980 align:middle line:84% Poldo had to be born here to do that. 00:05:19.980 --> 00:05:24.390 align:middle line:84% Mexicano, of course, but he knew how to get the kind of money 00:05:24.390 --> 00:05:27.010 align:middle line:90% to get a bank to talk to you. 00:05:27.010 --> 00:05:31.560 align:middle line:84% And he had a pretty wife who was taller than him, Belén, 00:05:31.560 --> 00:05:36.480 align:middle line:84% who led a toddler by one arm and cradled a baby with the other, 00:05:36.480 --> 00:05:42.330 align:middle line:84% and maybe it was she who decided to paint the house pink again. 00:05:42.330 --> 00:05:46.590 align:middle line:84% That was one reason why people thought she was from Mexico. 00:05:46.590 --> 00:05:49.110 align:middle line:84% If you bothered to dream about a house, 00:05:49.110 --> 00:05:53.430 align:middle line:84% only a true Mexican would dream about a pink one. 00:05:53.430 --> 00:05:57.120 align:middle line:84% Or one that was bright orange up on a hill somewhere 00:05:57.120 --> 00:06:02.280 align:middle line:84% looking down at everything else in drab colors, or worse, 00:06:02.280 --> 00:06:04.650 align:middle line:90% unpainted wood. 00:06:04.650 --> 00:06:08.310 align:middle line:84% Belén, who always wore dresses and high heels 00:06:08.310 --> 00:06:10.840 align:middle line:84% and knew just the store in Fresno 00:06:10.840 --> 00:06:15.660 align:middle line:84% where you could get a good deal on clothing de buenas marcas. 00:06:15.660 --> 00:06:18.120 align:middle line:84% Her little ones not yet old enough 00:06:18.120 --> 00:06:21.270 align:middle line:84% for anyone to know their names, her little ones 00:06:21.270 --> 00:06:24.660 align:middle line:84% weren't, but one looked like her, and the other one 00:06:24.660 --> 00:06:28.240 align:middle line:90% already with Poldo's rat face. 00:06:28.240 --> 00:06:31.390 align:middle line:84% Whether she was from over here or over there, 00:06:31.390 --> 00:06:35.980 align:middle line:84% Belén was the kind of person who had long ago stopped 00:06:35.980 --> 00:06:40.000 align:middle line:84% thinking about those days in some pueblito, where you hoped 00:06:40.000 --> 00:06:45.280 align:middle line:84% into a little luck with a piglet given by a generous neighbor. 00:06:45.280 --> 00:06:48.590 align:middle line:84% She had dresses now, and a family, 00:06:48.590 --> 00:06:51.640 align:middle line:84% a husband who could walk into a bank. 00:06:51.640 --> 00:06:54.970 align:middle line:84% She didn't have to sit around wondering if she should butcher 00:06:54.970 --> 00:06:59.380 align:middle line:84% the piglet or fatten it up, feed it the scraps 00:06:59.380 --> 00:07:01.510 align:middle line:90% or save it for later-- 00:07:01.510 --> 00:07:07.060 align:middle line:84% the hunger now or the hunger later." 00:07:07.060 --> 00:07:11.445 align:middle line:90% Three-- it's two more. 00:07:11.445 --> 00:07:14.430 align:middle line:90% 00:07:14.430 --> 00:07:19.970 align:middle line:84% Three-- "Poldo's truck left one morning and was gone for about 00:07:19.970 --> 00:07:23.960 align:middle line:84% an hour, which was just about time for the ida y vuelta 00:07:23.960 --> 00:07:26.090 align:middle line:90% to the bus station in Goshen-- 00:07:26.090 --> 00:07:30.050 align:middle line:84% the one that sat out by the edge of the cotton field. 00:07:30.050 --> 00:07:33.500 align:middle line:90% He came back with one person. 00:07:33.500 --> 00:07:36.230 align:middle line:90% That's how Eliseo showed up. 00:07:36.230 --> 00:07:40.130 align:middle line:84% And just in time, too, because it was May, and the fruit 00:07:40.130 --> 00:07:42.420 align:middle line:90% was coming in early. 00:07:42.420 --> 00:07:45.870 align:middle line:84% Poldo needed every hand he could get. 00:07:45.870 --> 00:07:49.890 align:middle line:84% Things were too busy to ask too many questions about why Eliseo 00:07:49.890 --> 00:07:54.840 align:middle line:84% had come up all alone or about exactly how he knew El Sapo, 00:07:54.840 --> 00:07:58.020 align:middle line:84% or where he got all the money that he kept pulling out 00:07:58.020 --> 00:07:59.130 align:middle line:90% of his socks-- 00:07:59.130 --> 00:08:01.260 align:middle line:84% the left front pocket of his brand 00:08:01.260 --> 00:08:06.360 align:middle line:84% new Wrangler jeans, the shirt pocket of his long sleeve. 00:08:06.360 --> 00:08:09.170 align:middle line:84% He wouldn't last more than a week in the fields, 00:08:09.170 --> 00:08:11.650 align:middle line:90% some of them said. 00:08:11.650 --> 00:08:17.350 align:middle line:84% Too slender, too quiet, and drinking only one can of beer. 00:08:17.350 --> 00:08:20.590 align:middle line:84% When he showed up, that made at least seven men 00:08:20.590 --> 00:08:23.230 align:middle line:84% from the other side sleeping on the enclosed 00:08:23.230 --> 00:08:27.100 align:middle line:84% back porch of the pink house at the end of that street. 00:08:27.100 --> 00:08:29.440 align:middle line:84% He wouldn't last, some of them said. 00:08:29.440 --> 00:08:32.539 align:middle line:90% He'd miss his mother too much. 00:08:32.539 --> 00:08:37.510 align:middle line:84% And with a name like that too sweet for a full grown man, 00:08:37.510 --> 00:08:43.559 align:middle line:84% you knew something bad was bound to happen to him." 00:08:43.559 --> 00:08:49.730 align:middle line:84% Four-- "The only one who ever made enough money to keep 00:08:49.730 --> 00:08:51.590 align:middle line:90% was Poldo. 00:08:51.590 --> 00:08:54.830 align:middle line:84% He hit them up for every dollar, and he 00:08:54.830 --> 00:08:59.240 align:middle line:84% asked when they couldn't say no at the Goshen bus 00:08:59.240 --> 00:09:04.340 align:middle line:84% station, for space on the back porch to sleep at night-- 00:09:04.340 --> 00:09:08.060 align:middle line:84% a Saturday night collection to buy carne asada, and tortillas, 00:09:08.060 --> 00:09:09.740 align:middle line:90% and beer. 00:09:09.740 --> 00:09:12.320 align:middle line:84% A Sunday collection for a sack of beans 00:09:12.320 --> 00:09:16.310 align:middle line:84% to last a week, for a ride out to the fields 00:09:16.310 --> 00:09:19.330 align:middle line:84% in the back of the truck, for the favor 00:09:19.330 --> 00:09:23.050 align:middle line:84% of having Belén stand in line at the Western Union office 00:09:23.050 --> 00:09:27.370 align:middle line:84% to send money home and coming back with the receipt. 00:09:27.370 --> 00:09:29.470 align:middle line:84% Sometimes, a few dollars interest 00:09:29.470 --> 00:09:33.190 align:middle line:84% for having loaned out a week's pay to get started. 00:09:33.190 --> 00:09:36.740 align:middle line:84% You needed your own cutting knife, your own gloves, 00:09:36.740 --> 00:09:41.430 align:middle line:84% your own wide-brim, your own cazo y costal. 00:09:41.430 --> 00:09:44.790 align:middle line:84% Another pair of pants, work shirts, 00:09:44.790 --> 00:09:47.580 align:middle line:90% a fresh pack of underwear. 00:09:47.580 --> 00:09:49.830 align:middle line:84% Everyone with the same calcetines 00:09:49.830 --> 00:09:53.240 align:middle line:84% blancos hanging from the clothes lines. 00:09:53.240 --> 00:09:56.030 align:middle line:84% Just a few dollars more from everyone 00:09:56.030 --> 00:10:00.680 align:middle line:84% for a white bucket of detergent, a bottle of bleach. 00:10:00.680 --> 00:10:04.490 align:middle line:84% The washing machine outside by the tool shed 00:10:04.490 --> 00:10:10.250 align:middle line:84% sat idle all weekend, but you could slip Belén a few dollars, 00:10:10.250 --> 00:10:12.920 align:middle line:84% and she'd have your clothes clean and folded 00:10:12.920 --> 00:10:17.940 align:middle line:84% on the back porch by sundown's return from the fields. 00:10:17.940 --> 00:10:19.560 align:middle line:84% And for the ones who couldn't always 00:10:19.560 --> 00:10:23.580 align:middle line:84% bear so much of the men's laughter in the backyard 00:10:23.580 --> 00:10:26.850 align:middle line:84% and the bored exhaustion around sundown, 00:10:26.850 --> 00:10:31.440 align:middle line:84% Poldo left them with just enough in their pockets 00:10:31.440 --> 00:10:35.730 align:middle line:84% for niceties, like a bottle of Tres Flore 00:10:35.730 --> 00:10:39.510 align:middle line:84% or Lucky Tiger or English Leather-- 00:10:39.510 --> 00:10:43.680 align:middle line:84% something to put on for an evening walk into town 00:10:43.680 --> 00:10:46.920 align:middle line:90% and a beer at John Henry's. 00:10:46.920 --> 00:10:53.880 align:middle line:84% Just enough for a few last coins to drop in the jukebox, a baile 00:10:53.880 --> 00:10:57.900 align:middle line:84% or two with a woman kind enough to say yes 00:10:57.900 --> 00:11:02.340 align:middle line:84% but who wished she was someplace else." 00:11:02.340 --> 00:11:05.690 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:11:05.690 --> 00:11:06.411 align:middle line:90%