Arcadio Read Free Page A

is how they called me on the radio when I was found missing. At large. There is no Mescan word for it. Cantor soy . I think of myself as a singer. A singer at large. I had not been free in all mi vida , that’s the Mescan word for life, until I excaped. Locked up by my father Hombre, locked up by the Chinaman Shuang Boy, locked up by Old Shanks in the Show. All of which I will tell you, singing my song. Come under the trestle and listen if you wan to, in the shade of the morningglory vine in the morning, God knows how it blooms so fresh without no water; or go on, if you wan to. I am bidding a sweet adiós to civilization, old world is wearing down, Corazón . What have they done to this place? I got a sweet goodbye to sing to it. Pasa el mundo viejo, se pasa . Old world is passing away. Meantime, I keep an eye out for my mother. Sounds funny but that is the words for it, keep an eye out, that is the Anglo espression. We have no such Mescan espression.
    I am used to sitting silent under the public gaze as a serene listener. I was not allowed to speak back to my gazers nor answer their questions. Away from my gilded chair of serenely listening, I now sit in an open place and sing free. An at-large singer. You listen if you wan hear it. If not, the air is my listener, leaves and birds my hearers. I listened to the world, now world hear me is what I’m thinking! Qué dice Arcadio? Qué dice el Mundo? God knows the years my ears heard whispers and soft calls. Muñeco! Chíngame! Corazón Dulce! Show it to me! Fuck me! Filthy people of cheap towns. Sometimes a person alone in the tent with me would stand before me and tell me his trouble. My wife she run off with another man; my little baby turned out deaf and dumb, are you a healer can you lay on hands. As if I was a Buddha or San José Saint Joseph—or Santa Teresa . Sometimes one of my gazers would implore. Comprendes? You wan hear? Sometimes I would be supplicated in whispers. But I do not now supplicate nor implore. My song serenely sing, cantando , is the way I look at it. And I keep an eye out for mi madre , which is an espression, keeping out an eye, comprendes .
    On most days I have me some paz . Peace. It was not so before. I wan be on the road, peaceful, I said, to be wandering in the woods and prairies, in the liveoaks and bluebonnets of my old home, I wan beg for my supper and lay in the fields, I said, be with the stars and the streams, sit all day if I wan to, in the shade, see Texas, see Texas down around the Boca Chica down around there, if I wan to, at Brownsville and down around there, I said. And ask about my mother over at San Antone, although I have a feeling that she met an early death. I am dressed in this old army officer’s uniform of some old war, man said to me that give it to me outside of some town said that he don know where tis from, an old war, said don know which, man said; give me the cap too; nor do I know the name of the town. I am contento in this old war uniform and I am clean, I dote on cleanliness, I bathe in rivers and keep my body fresh and I wash my clothes in waters of streams when I can find them without any brown foam afloating, what is that shit? Who did all that? What in God’s name have they put into the rivers and the streams?—where they happen to run water, most of them are dry—who let them do that to the waters? Put all that shit in the waters? I beg for bread at doors, to know a part of human charity though I’m pretty rich in my own right porque I saved my money in the Show. Which I carry privately, rob me if you wan to, I feel too gentle to resist, I am a peaceful person walking towards God. You’d never find it anyway, oyente , listener.
    I try to stay out of the stinking cities—who did that, who put all the cars? Ought to catch em and throw em into the rivers of shit, that put all the cars. You wan hear? I am near the little town where I was born, in Texas, where I