I'm going to read to you all an excerpt from Brother
Brontë, my latest novel.
Whenever somebody is about to introduce their work
or talk about it, to introduce the passage that they're
going to read, I always immediately black out.
So I'm not going to say what I'm going to read.
I'm just going to read it.
Thank you, everybody, once again.
"Neftalí and Proserpina raced across the supposedly haunted
pedestrian bridge, over the busy intersection of Fourth and La
Cuchilla, then sat down to catch their breath at the far edge
of the embankment.
The onyx smokestacks from the fish cannery
whirled in the distance, against the scattered patches
of purple smog.
Yellow low-flying clouds often move
through the streets like packs of giant dogs,
lapping up windows, leaving muck residue
to harden on the pavement.
Proserpina pointed at a burning mass
in front of the old tamale shack and said,
'you see those gnarly fires happening constantly now.
What do you think everyone's burning so much?
'Probably garbage.
What do people expect?
The fires never get that big or grow out
of control inside the city anyway,
and people got to get rid of their shit somehow.
Garbage is piling up, stinking everything up, right.
When we'd figured out the rat problem, too.'
They loitered where the pedestrian bridge
met the embankment to look down upon the gutted,
abandoned tractors, and the mossy Brown Apollo statue
on the grounds of the burned-down elementary school.
Neftalí had memories of reading short-story anthologies
by the statue's immense feet when she
attended the school as a girl.
At the same spot, Proserpina had first
met the man who sold her the carbon papers
and emulsion to forge ration cards.
The Brown Apollo statue seemed to raise its arms in a flex,
as Neftalí and Proserpina wandered the charred
foundations on the property.
With the skeletal remains of the gymnasium behind him,
Brown Apollo watched as a thick ground-level cloud approached
Neftalí and Proserpina from the direction of a discontinued bus
stop.
Laughter and the whirring of tires and gears
were heard, as if the whale-sized, turmeric-colored
mist had hidden wheels and levers operated
by giddy, sadistic gnomes.
There was another sound, like an empty can
of soup trying to sing.
And as Neftalí's eyes focused on the silhouettes emerging
from the cream-thick haze, she made out
the bad doom metal, all treble, playing out of a small, possibly
broken speaker.
Four souped-up tricycles rushed by them,
grazing their arms and canvas bags.
Proserpina immediately recognized the riders
as the four boys she teased before they stopped at Dona
Julieta's.
She chuckled to herself, and it took all her strength
not to say the first thing that came to mind.
They were inside the belly of this yellow mist,
lost in an artificial desert dust storm,
and hard-pressed to see anything beyond its organism.
The oxygen thinned, making it somehow easier
to inhale the industrial pollutants.
Doom metal continued chirping from the miserable little
speaker.
Then a voice said, 'surprise, surprise
to see you sneaking into New Freeway, Neftalí.
Maybe you recognize your neighbors here?
They caught me up with what happened over at your house last
night.'
The voice fluttered out of Santo as he
rode his fixed-gear bicycle like it
was a miniature donkey with shuffling hummingbird legs.
He wore a denim jacket with torn sleeves, old skinny jeans,
and shoes with missing laces.
'Your old drummer, Proserpina, here too?
Very special.
And where's big-money-machine Alexei?
Santo continued.
'Bring in the old bass player.
Get a whole band reunion going.
Surely he must be looking for old bubblegum wrappers
to convert to dollar bills?
Or maybe it's shit-stained toilet paper squares today?'
The tricycle boys were clearly amused
by Santo's variety of humor.
He sat taller on his bicycle than the boys did
on their tricycles, and Neftalí quickly
gathered that they made up a small gang.
Dry axles begging for an oil reprieve
could be heard creaking louder and louder from somewhere
within the devouring mist, as if the gears were trying
to fiendishly laugh, too.
Proserpina grabbed a stone by Brown Apollo's sandaled feet,
tracked the speaker hanging from one
of the tricycle boys' shoulders, and pitched it
at a calculated moment.
The speaker fell, hit concrete.
The doom metal stopped.
Plastic and metallic guts spilled out unceremoniously.
Santo and his small gang were one
of many units of boys sweeping Three Rivers, wreaking
their brand of havoc on the population.
Their antics came handsomely rewarded
by Mayor Pablo Henri Crick.
Ever since Crick's administration
started developing-- ever since, Crick's administration has
started deploying book strategies to average citizens,
boys like these had carte blanche
to find and discard books that the Three Rivers
authorities had missed.
A large boy emerged from the haggard fog,
pedaling with the strain of Sisyphus,
barely making it over the cliff.
Behind him, strapped onto a flat wagon with those
pleading, thirsty axles, sat a mechanical beast
with four wide, sharp, well-fed mouths,
like a savage prince being promenaded through the jungle,
waiting for fresh grapes for dessert.
Two of the tricycle boys stepped off their rides,
approached Neftalí first, made as
if they weren't afraid to put their hands on her.
'Don't make this hard, Neftalí.
Just hand over your bag.'
'What are you going to do?
Feed your machine my shit?
What's in this bag is all I got left.'
In three flashes, and perhaps blinded
by the immeasurable measurable depth within the lurking mist,
the two boys effortlessly snatched Proserpina's bag,
then slipped off Neftalí's like a choreographed magic trick.
Santo emptied both canvas bags at the feet of Brown Apollo,
like an offering among thieves.
Even within the diffused sunlight
inside that abnormal, low-flying cloud,
the two books that fell out of Neftalí's bag were clear as day.
The boys' faces all wriggled into large smiles,
as the largest boy unstrapped the four-mouthed oblong
shredder from the bed of the squeaky wagon, balanced it
on the uneven school grounds, then yanked on the cord
to start it up.
After plenty of unsuccessful yanks, Santo ordered,
'clean the gasket.'
'You're really going to do this, Santo?'
Neftalí', do I look like a politician?
It's the law.' 'Bullshit,' Proserpina said.
'All right, all right.
Let's switch places, and you are me.
And you find me here, carrying two books,
when-- when a literacy permit is required and strictly enforced.
Now, seeing as how you know the person with said books,
what's the nicest thing you could do,
without having to call the bosses?'
'Listen to the way he talks,' Neftalí exclaimed to the other
boys, unable to contain her disgust at Santo's words.
'We both learned how to read in a class together once upon
a time.'
'You don't need to invent lies,' Santo cracked,
as the large boy finally got the shredder's for mouth's chewing,
complete with thousands of micro-blades crunching,
spinning, and shrieking to be fed through the miasma.
'Now that you've considered my point of view,
and given your lying nature, what would you do in my place?'
Santo yelled.
He reached for the book on the ground
that appeared the most seductive to him, the hardcover.
He traced the embossed title with his right middle finger.
Understanding Urban and Agricultural Hydraulics,
then slowly flipped through its pages,
pretending to be interested in the knowledge it offered,
to spite the young women.
Proserpina noticed Neftalí shaking
and felt that her friend was capable,
at any moment, of making the rashest decision.
In the blink of an eye, Proserpina
imagined flying sparks involving crowbars, machetes,
and all sorts of vengeful madness.
So upon returning to the present moment,
she harbored an urge to keep the peace.
And in the friendliest tone, she exclaimed,
'that book can be useful to somebody,
even if you think it's trash.
Why destroy it?'
Neftalí missed these words, looking up
as Brown Apollo's torso and head seemed
to descend on them with the passing of the yellow cloud,
and for a sliced moment she indulged her innermost fantasies
of why the two of them had even stopped to visit this monument.
She imagined Brown Apollo approaching them
with his cast iron muscles, and their conversation turning
immediately to galloping horses, the difference
between the wild horses on the pampas and the horses
by the shores of South Padre Island.
Brown Apollo would give them tips about wearing seashells
as masks.
Proserpina and Neftalí would brainstorm questions
for Brown Apollo, to take advantage of this rare close
encounter with a god.
But mostly they'd want to have a chill time with him,
to have drinks and watch Italian movies about ancient Greece
with the divine bulwark himself.
This was the delirium Neftalí found herself
in as she watched Santo feed the nearly impossible-to-find
hardcover copy of Understanding Urban and Agricultural
Hydraulics, meant for Bettina on her birthday,
to the buzzing, chomping, four-mouth book shredder.
It surprised most people, despite repeated firsthand
accounts, that the machines microblades pulverized
the book entirely dust blowing in the wind
after the procedure like a wildflower bouquet's ashes.
Brown Apollo seemed to turn away his head,
perhaps in disgust, or perhaps reluctantly,
agreeing with the perspective of the young man
and the book-banning laws.
Santo thumbed through the remaining dog-eared paperback.
'Ghosts in the Zapotec sphericals,' he read aloud from
his time-yellowed title page.
'By Jazzmin Monelle Rivas.
'She's correct about one thing, boys.
I was one of the last to attend this burned-down school.
Learned how to read here.
So take it from me.
You're not missing much.'" Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]