10
He had never been one to walk around in short pants, showing off his legs to the world. So while the others wore shorts or exercise pants, Don Celestino preferred his blue jeans and an old short-sleeve work shirt. His black cushioned shoes were easier on his feet and still looked like proper shoes. The girl at the store had tried to sell him a pair that fastened with Velcro straps, but he chose the laces because he didn’t want to get in the habit of doing things the easy way.
Cooder, on the treadmill to his right, wore running shoes, athletic socks that reached just below his knees, long pleated shorts, and a sagging muscle shirt that allowed tufts of his white chest hair to billow over the top. His black fanny pack hung loose on his hips like a loaded holster. “Ready to be young again, Rosales?” he asked.
Don Celestino was turning side to side as if loosening his back before a long run. “What do you mean, again?”
Cooder patted him on the shoulder. “Good answer.”
Then each one hit the start button on his treadmill.
Cooder jogged at a slow enough pace that it might have been confused with a fast walk. As he trotted along, he leaned forward as if he were carrying a sixty-pound car battery and desperately looking for a safe place to set it down. He chose the machine on the right because it was closer to the mounted television and the game show he liked to watch, though he generally jogged with his head down, his eyes focused on the black conveyor belt whisking beneath him.
Don Celestino kept his finger on the speed button until it reached 2.0, the setting for the comfortable pace he preferred to walk. He reread the inspirational poster on the wall in front of him: STAYING HEALTHY, MAKING THE MOST OF LIFE! In the poster a gray-haired couple strolled in a wooded park and laughed about something only they knew about. He could look around if he wanted to, but he chose to concentrate on what he was doing and instead stare straight ahead at the gray-haired man and woman. Once or twice he had lost his balance and then caught hold of the railings in time to correct himself. Later he blamed the machine for somehow speeding up when he wasn’t expecting it. Anyone would have been caught off balance. He hadn’t reported the malfunctioning equipment only because he didn’t want to get anyone in trouble.
“Who is Zachary Taylor?” the old man shouted. “Who’s General Zachary Taylor?!”
Don Celestino focused on moving his legs at the pace of the machine; by now he was used to Cooder yelling while he watched television. He had more trouble with just the idea of being here with these old men and women. He knew he wasn’t old like some of them. Other than his plume of white hair, there really wasn’t anything that showed his age.
“Who is Pershing?! Black Jack Pershing!”
And it wasn’t just his appearance and physical strength, because he knew his mind was sharper than those of much younger men. You wouldn’t find him repeating the same story over and over. He could still describe how the dagger-shaped icicles hung off the truck’s bumper that night in 1949 when he had to go for the doctor and how Dora was already holding the baby in her arms by the time they arrived back at the house. And before that, he could remember attending barber school for almost three years because he kept having to leave with his brothers to follow the crops up north to Ohio, to Minnesota, to Iowa, to Michigan, and then by the time he did get his license, the army was ready for him. The foggy morning of June 24, 1945, he and eighty-seven other young men headed to Fort Benning, Georgia, for basic training. He remembered sitting directly behind the bus driver, and when the sun was barely rising over the King Ranch, he pulled out a small notebook and began writing what he imagined might be his last letter to Dora. And when the war ended before he had actually made it overseas, the army shipped him back home, and in Houston he boarded a commercial bus that eventually stopped at a roadside diner near Corpus, and while the rest of the passengers were free to enter the restaurant, because of the times he was forced to sit on the back steps of the kitchen and eat a cheeseburger so greasy it stained his uniform. All these stories and more still came to mind as though he had experienced them only yesterday, no different than they would for a much younger man.
“Who’s Johnson?! Who’s…”
Cooder’s fanny pack had slid around to the front and he had to step off the machine to adjust it. Inside the pouch he kept several ballpoint pens and a tiny spiral notepad, where he recorded the distance and time of his walk. He’d shown it once to Don Celestino and later turned to the section where he logged the miles he and his wife traveled in their motor home between here and Belton, Missouri, where they lived during the summer months. Cooder claimed he didn’t mind the cold, but his wife’s arthritis did better when they traveled south for the winter. They were about to celebrate fifty-six years of marriage, only two years more than Don Celestino had been married to Dora. He had thought they would still be together. He felt so alone in those days after she left him behind. It seemed like he would stay this way, but his life took an unexpected turn and suddenly he went from being married to the same woman for more than fifty years to being with a young woman who herself was still a long way from fifty. It troubled him that Socorro didn’t seem to appreciate what this meant for him and instead pretended they were like any other couple that had fallen in love. Their situation was more complicated than that, at least for him it was. And now this business with his brother. If she only knew what she was asking of him.
According to the control panel on the treadmill, he had walked only a little more than a mile, though it felt as if he had already reached his goal of two miles. At this pace he would be here all day. It was Wednesday, his day to wash the car, and if he didn’t hurry it was going to get dark on him. He needed to spend some time vacuuming the inside, especially the space between the driver and passenger sides. He increased the speed to 3.0 and began taking longer, more purposeful strides.
Before he retired and learned his diabetes had grown worse, he figured he was getting enough exercise just being on his feet at the barbershop. That was where he had spent most of his days and where he had last spoken to his brother. If it hadn’t been for the barbershop, he might not have seen him at all. He referred to him as his brother, but because of the years that stood between them, he had thought of him as an uncle or cousin who came around to the house more often. Don Fidencio was in his early eighties and by this point living alone. Even after retiring from the post office, he had continued to show up early in the morning on the first Saturday of the month.
The last time Don Fidencio had come by, Don Celestino had pulled up to the barbershop at twenty minutes after eight, which was unusual for him since he was in the habit of turning on the lights and the pole a few minutes before the hour. Don Fidencio was waiting inside his car, staring straight ahead as if he were stuck in a long line of traffic.
“I didn’t know if you were still in business,” he said, then glanced at his watch as he got out of the car.
“We went for coffee,” his brother said.
Don Fidencio looked surprised when another man parked his car behind his brother’s car and walked up to where they were standing. The man was short and he squinted through one eye as though he couldn’t see so well.
“This is my neighbor. Sometimes we go for coffee.” Don Celestino turned back toward the man. “This is my older brother.”
“Your brother?” He squinted a little more. “Bill Harwell. Good to meet you.”
Don Fidencio looked at him a second before finally switching his cane to the other side and putting out his own hand. The two men stood at the entrance of the barbershop, neither one speaking as they waited for Don Celestino to unlock the door. When they were inside, he flicked on the pole and then the lights in the room.
“Did the Astros play yesterday?” he asked, thinking baseball was something the two men might have in common.
“Going to, but they got rained out,” Harwell said.
Don Fidencio only nodded.
“They said it was going to rain here today,” Don Celestino said, pulling up the blinds. “But I don’t see any sign of it.”
“I went ahead and cut the grass yesterday,” Harwell said, “just to be on the safe side.”
“If it’s not too much trouble, you think I can get my trim now?” Don Fidencio asked in Spanish.
His brother turned around to find him sitting in the barber’s chair, the wooden cane hanging off the armrest.
“I already told this man I would take care of him first.”
“And me?”
“It won’t take long, then you can go next.”
“I was the one who showed up first, not him.”
“Yeah, but he called me last night.” He tugged on his brother’s arm, hoping to nudge him out of the chair, but the old man pulled his arm back and stayed where he was.
“Now you take appointments, like a beauty parlor?”
“That’s fine, if you want to start with him.” Harwell had sat down in one of the chairs against the wall.
“You see?” Don Fidencio said. “The gavacho agrees with me, even if he doesn’t know Spanish. He knows I was here first.”
Don Celestino looked at his neighbor, realizing the man had lived here long enough to know when he was being talked about.
“I can come back a while later,” Harwell offered, then actually stood up.
“So, how is it going to be?” Don Fidencio said. “For him to go before me, like you don’t have a family?”
“Just let me take care of the man.”
“You forget, that’s the problem.”
“Don’t start.”
“You act like one of them. And to hell with your brother, he doesn’t matter. ‘Just let me take care of the man,’” he mocked. “‘I have to take care of the poor man.’ Because how can you think to make him wait a few minutes, like I waited half the morning out there in the car, like some dummy? But how?”
“Ya, Fidencio.”
“I got here before him, that’s all I know,” his brother said, placing his hands on his knees and standing up on the footrest. “It should count for something, being the first one here.”
“I promised him.”
Don Fidencio glanced over at the other man and then back at his brother just before he grabbed his cane.
“Then both of you go to hell,” he said, this time in English.
He must have found somewhere else to cut his hair because he stopped coming around. Then several years later Don Celestino read in the paper that Don Fidencio’s wife had died. Though she had moved out years earlier, she had never actually divorced his brother. Don Celestino debated whether to go to the services; Dora argued with him that they should at least attend the Rosary. Wouldn’t he want his family to show up if something happened to his wife? And then a year later something did happen. By that time he figured his brother would have let go whatever bad feelings there were between them. But when he failed to show up for Dora’s services, this slight, from his one remaining brother, only stirred his sorrow. He knew it was the old man paying him back for his own lapse. But he reasoned that Don Fidencio hadn’t been living with his woman when she died. She had left him years ago, wouldn’t even talk to him, practically divorced him. How could that be the same as a husband and wife — under the same roof, in the same bed — for more than fifty years? It didn’t compare back then, and it didn’t compare now.
Don Celestino glanced back down at the control panel and saw he had half a mile to go on the treadmill. If he trusted the machine a little more, he might have raised his arm to see what time it was on his wristwatch. He pressed the speed button until it reached 3.5. Thinking about some old man wasn’t helping him any. He still had lots of work to do at home before tomorrow came around.