The Revolutionaries Try Again Read Free

busted telephone first thing tomorrow morning.
    I don’t take bribes. Please vacate the premises.
    After securing enough witnesses that she was already at the front of the line, an old woman approaches him, bowing to him as she sets down her pineapple by the coinfilled cap, showing him she has nothing left in her grocery bag except lettuce and a bag of rice, shuffling back to her place at the front of the line.
    Everyone tallies what else they are willing to part with. Should they send the boy again? No. One by one for greater impact? Who should go first? Who will account for their place in line? Malena rips a page from her notepad, hands numbers to everyone in line. The boy claims he and his father should receive a better number because of their cap collection idea. But it didn’t work, someone says. One by one they deposit their belongings in front of Leopoldo. Green mangos, ripe bananas, photographs of their loved ones, plastic rosaries, a bag of lentils.
    If Leopoldo were Antonio he would cry of embarrassment and hurl their belongings back at them and leave them to their ridiculous phone calls. Why don’t they just assault him? Wouldn’t that exonerate him from deciding anything?
    I don’t take bribes. Please vacate the premises before I summon the squadrons.
    No one moves. In line someone shushes someone until everyone’s shushed. The crowd seems to be waiting for something to happen. For someone to appear before them and rectify this.
    Let’s get out of here, Malena says. We’ll find some other way to call our families.
    A collective groan. Whistling. As they collect their belongings some are muttering desgraciado, others holler descarado, malparidos like him are what’s sinking this country, rata de pueblo, moreno de verga, just wait till El Loco returns.
    No one’s left at the Calderón but him. From his wallet he tries to pull out his phone list, which includes the numbers for his grandmother,for his friend Antonio, for the economics department at the University of Indiana, where according to his contacts, scholarships for Ecuadorians might be available through the ministry of finance. The phone list’s lodged inside a pocket where his fingers almost fail him. He pulls the list out but drops it, swatting for it in vain on the way down. If you ask him about it he won’t show you his muddied phone list. Or tell you he was surveilling the withered ceibos of the Calderón to check if Little Jaramillo was lurking behind them, checking the sky for lightning too, although this telephone does not look as if it has been struck by lightning. Not that he would know what that looks like.
    Leopoldo dials his grandmother.
    No estoy, deje un mensaje, y si no hablan español me importa un pito, por su culpa mismo estoy aquí así que no voy a aprender su inglish del carajo.
    Leopoldo’s relieved that her answering machine picks up. He would have been embarrassed to talk to her. He hangs up without leaving a message. He has expelled those people for nothing. Does the mud beneath him smell like vinegar, sulfur, or piss? Did the mud already absorb Little Jaramillo’s piss? Was it softened by it such that children could frolic in it? Make mud balls and snowmen benosed with carrots? The next number on his list is for his friend Antonio, known at San Javier as the Snivel, Gargamel, Drool, Saber Tooth. Leopoldo hasn’t talked to him since he left to study abroad, a month after their graduation, almost ten years ago. At Stanford, Antonio was supposed to breeze through a double major in public policy and economics and then return. At the Universidad Católica, Leopoldo was supposed to enlist the luminaries of their generation and then run for office with Antonio. Together they were supposed to do — what? what did you think you were going to do? — so much.
    Leopoldo dials Antonio. Through the decrepit phone line Leopoldo hears the first ring, the fourth, and then