F I C T I O N
BENEATH MY SKIN
by Bridget Weiss
T
he lightning and wind
woke me at 4, course
there was no rain in it,
and Miss Ruby keening like
someone was dead and trying to
crawl into my skin. She who
came into my headlights in a
storm on the Mexican river road
has always been scared of
weather. She who is red and
white with a stumped-off tail
and consolidated like a well-
shaped loaf of bread will run
cattle if asked, but the girl has
her own fears, and she is my
friend. I settled her down so I
could watch the skies from the
porch in her company, without
which I would be alone, and
then came in to look at the post
office computer. The screen
glows strange in the dark of the
office, we are not supposed to
turn it off, and no dogs allowed,
and there it was: a volcano
erupted in Iceland last night,
shutting down flights clear across
Europe. I did know this some-
way, maybe because my dog
cried it thus, at least I knew
when I saw it, and such was not
entirely startled. Volcano ash
will mess up an airplane engine,
they said, cause it to catch fire
and crash to the ground with
everyone on board and no sur-
vivors, could be it brought the
wind to the casita and made my
Ruby cry.
Unnatural light from the sun
not yet rightly risen came
through the high fixed windows
and threw itself green and
strange against the cinderblock
walls, and got me thinking about
a million or trillion or maybe
more little pieces of floating cin-
der going up bright and hot and
drifting down gray and silent to
coat an entire continent. Maybe
that’s where Marco went, if you
will follow me – the heart of a
young man, not the body pre-
12
maturely set into a plywood box
6 feet on the wrong side of the
grass, into dirt born of rocks and
what time made of them.
We make our own headlines
and weather in Valentine, popu-
lation 187: the biggest earth-
quake ever in Texas in the 30s,
and almost every other year on
the national news for being one
of three towns with this name in
this country, with our boxes
jammed to overflow with people
driving God knows how many
miles wanting special postmarks
for Valentine’s Day. Local folks
come in wanting to hear what’s
going on out there, it’s part of
my job to tell what I learn from
off the computer. Miss Harris,
sweet sister-widow that she is,
likes to say, Raul my newspaper
man, what you got today.
My name is Raul but I’m not
Spanish. My real mother is Aunt
Jo. She was 13 when she got
pregnant, just a kid herself and
way over her head messing
around with some high school
senior. Aunt Iolanthe who every-
one calls Io was 30 at the time.
My daddy and her never could
have kids, and they took me soon
as Aunt Jo delivered in the hospi-
tal in Midland. Jo went on back
to school and only had to catch
up half a year. The way
Momma tells it, when my real
father who I never did care to
meet went to study horses at Sul
Ross in Alpine, he didn’t give a
backwards look at her, left her
with her heart broke into half
and his dust settling in the drive-
way, and a slow settling: she did-
n’t marry Abe until she was 42,
took her those years to put on a
dress and fall into love again, but
I won’t say it lightly, love is what
they have got. No harm can
come from a slow backwards
drift into what you used to imag-
ine was real.
Momma’s been taking in
strays long as anyone can
remember, she says that used to
drive Granddaddy crazy.
Goddammit, Io, we got enough
going on around here without
patching up another cowdog hit
by a cattle truck. Grammy loved
little ones: her four pretty girls
and most of the neighborhood
kids, not to mention those
messed up, broken-down things
Momma dragged home to their
three bedroom stick built house.
Why else we got this brand new
chain link fence around one third
an acre if we’re not gonna fill it
When Daddy
and her took me
home, Momma
decided two
things right off:
my paper name
was Raul Jesus
Boyd Johnson,
and we were
leaving Midland
to live some-
where nobody
knew us.
with children and dogs, she’d say
to Granddaddy. Eat this hot
gravied hash and let your Io be.
Momma had a thing for the
Mexican names. I tell you the
reason she has had all these ani-
mals around her was to name
them. Tiburcio, Abelardo, Santa
Minerva, Inocencio, Esmeralda
– the list of round, chocolate
namings goes on longer than my
arm. Daddy only says, Well then
Miss Io, and there’s another dog
on the porch, and it’s settled. He
sits easy on a horse, he rests quiet
and forgiving with Momma and
Cenizo
Fourth Quarter 2012
her desire to love on lost and bro-
ken things. No one would say it
to my face that I was a stray too.
When Daddy and her took
me home, Momma decided two
things right off: my paper name
was Raul Jesus Boyd Johnson,
and we were leaving Midland to
live somewhere nobody knew us.
A fresh start, Boyd, she said to
Daddy.
That’s how we went to live
outside of Monahans, where all
you can see for 30 miles is the
giant wind electricity mills sitting
up on the mesas, turning slow
and looking like stick figures with
crazy extra fingers when they’re
spinning, or totem poles from
the Indians built up to talk to
some god in the heavens. It takes
500 acres to run one cow in the
Trans-Pecos on account of there
is no water, and the way the land
is nothing but sage and horse-
crippler cactus. There is wind,
Lord God knows there is, and
blowing dust to spare. If you got
10,000 acres and a million dol-
lars and you’re forward thinking,
a wind farm is how to go.
Auction off the cattle, wait for
the mailbox money, and sit back
nights knowing you’re making
lights for people all the way
down to San Antonio.
They look like they’re turning
slow from I-10, but me and
Marco got a six-pack of Schlitz
tallboys when we were 15 and
trespassed up there on his
daddy’s four-wheeler, and I tell
you what: the turbines move fast
enough to take your head off
and 25 stories high. We laid on
our backs on a horse blanket,
beer spilling down our necks and
laughing like coyotes, our breath
stolen away from squinting into
a white hot sky watching the
arms go around. Mr. Gonzalez
caught us coming back down
and swore not to tell. He said the
blades turn 200 miles an hour. I
believe him, for I have never
seen anything like it, slow from a
distance and fast close up. Seems
like since then everything that
ought to have been quiet has run
real quick and cutting, and me
with no ability to slow it down to
the way we used to be.
Me and Marco were cut out
to be friends – peas from a shell,
Momma said. He taught me to
rope calves and two-step.
There’s no shame in that, but I
wouldn’t have wanted anyone to
see. Summers we worked cattle
drives and slept on the ground. I
could hear him breathing in his
sleep. Once I got stung on the
end of my nose by a bee when
we were moving the Pruitt’s cat-
tle to the other side of the Davis
Mountains. The more I messed
with it, the worse my eyes
watered and my nose ran, you
would have thought I’d been bit
by a rattler. Raul, dejalo, you’re
rubbing all the poison into your
skin, he said. He pulled the
stinger out of my nose with his
teeth and spat it onto the
ground. We halfway never heard
the end of that from the cow-
boys. Marco used to say, Shit,
Raul Jesusito, you’re half
Spanish already, that’s how
come all the ladies want to
dance with you. It felt alright to
dance with Marco.
We were raised to do better
than Monahans. Day after grad-
uation we piled into the 1956
Ford pickup with only a coat of
gray primer left on it that his
daddy gave him for finishing and
came here, west to Valentine.
Our mamas cried when we left
that morning, hanging onto
each other like lovesick hens,
waving dishtowels and talking
Spanglish. Daddy shaking our
hands, Now you boys be good.
He give me 500 dollars in bills
dirty, torn and dry like old wall-
paper, and rolled up in a rubber
band. Marco’s papa made the
sign of the cross on our fore-
heads, Vayan con Dios, mijos.
We were gone with the screen
door slamming and the dust ris-
ing in the road.
There are times I wish to
have said kind words, to have left
some water from my eyes in the
sere earth of my home, to have
spoken the things I did not speak
when they were right to say.
Now they would only be disasso-
ciated letters committed to
ground whence lightning strikes
cease, a prehistoric tongue or
broken language with no com-
fort to come of them, too many
years after to put them back
where they belong. When you
hold yourself quiet in sadness or
in hope, the words go home to
small graves, not ever to be
restored to their rightful vibran-