It Takes a Worried Man

Tombstone Television

Pedro Alcala died of influenza in November 1922, at the age of three-and-a-half — or so said an overworked general practitioner in the Houston barrio where Pedro’s mother had given birth to him. Two hours after the informal funeral service, Pedro awoke in his coffin. A gravedigger — probably overworked, paid hourly, no doubt, by the city — heard him crying.

He dropped out of school in the eighth grade. He told me this the day I first listened to his story, about a year ago. “Cain’t teach nothing to a dead man,” he said. As a dropout, he hung around movie houses. “The movies was still pretty new back then. Innocent. Flashy lights, sexy ladies. I figgered, whatever problems in the world, the movies can fix ‘em.”

After a tour of duty in Belgium during the Second World War, he returned to Houston and devoted his life to erecting a monument in the boneyard where he’d nearly been buried.

Kewpie dolls, deer figurines, tapestries adorn his dusty grave. He’s even hooked up a portable television in a gruta in the middle of the stone, running a triple-ply cord to an outlet in a nearby mausoleum.

I met him shortly after interring my family in the Magnolia Blossom Cemetery. Car wreck. The groundskeeper had warned me about Pedro (“He’s a little spooky, unnerves our older visitors, but you’ll get used to him”).

After we’d introduced ourselves, and I’d told Pedro what I was doing there (I was standing in the rain that day, clutching a dozen roses), he asked about my “people.” “Was it their time to go?”

“Is it ever time to go?” I answered. “I mean, really?” And that’s the last we’ve spoken of my family.

“So you live here?” I asked him, incredulously.

He looked at me equally strangely. “Where do you think you’re going to end up, man? I’m just saving a little time.”

This afternoon he’s sitting on his mound, watching Wheel of Fortune.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey. You look beat, bud.” He wears thin black jeans, an old pair of sneakers, and a white cotton shirt, sparsely buttoned.

“Fending off creditors,” I admit. “How ‘bout you? What’s up?”

“Got me some angel hair and some Christmas lights.” He shows me a box. “River Oaks bitch tossed ’em in the trash. Don’t know if the lights’ll work. Thought I’d string ’em up around the TV”

“You getting enough to eat?”

“Tell you what I need, man’s, a can opener.” He lifts a can of pork and beans out of a soft paper sack. “Shit don’t do me no good like this. Snapped my knife on one the other day.”

“All right, I’ll fix you up next time. Do you have enough blankets?”

“Yeah. This chick kills me.” He points to the screen.

“Pretty,” I say.

Pedro looks at me slyly. “You gettin’ any, George? You lookin’ mighty antsy to me.”

He thinks women are the only worries a “youngster” like me could possibly carry (I’m forty-three).

Once, I asked him if he’d ever had a family of his own. “Oh well. Yeah. Guess I did,” he admitted finally, scratching his ear. “Couple of kids.”

“Where are they?”

“All I know is, they ain’t here no more, and neither is their mother.”

Now, he coughs into his hands.

“You okay?” I ask.

“Refinery smoke,” he wheezes, sniffing the air. “Pisser today. It’ll pass.”

“Sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“All right, man.” I slap his knee. “I’ll bring you a can opener soon.”

On the television, a housewife from Gainesville, Florida, wins ten thousand dollars and a car.

“Watch yourself,” I say.

“Hey, ain’t no harm come to a man what’s already dead.”

For three years now I’ve worked at a local newspaper, moving up from obits and fillers to small features, community service items, neighborhood histories, other invisible stuff. I’m still paying off my family’s funeral expenses, falling farther and farther behind on my bills.

It just so happens, the day I went to buy Pedro a can opener, a small fire broke out in a shirt factory behind the supermarket. I stood in the parking lot with the other happy shoppers watching firemen scurry up ladders (I’ve noticed disaster makes people pretty happy, if they’re not directly involved in it). I hadn’t known a shirt factory existed at that spot, and I began to ask around. Were there other sweatshops in the area around the cemetery?

The manager of a nearby noodle factory, a middle-aged Chinese man who’d once worked at a button plant on a side street just off West Gray, said, “Sure. All around us. What you look for, you look for steamed-up windows, especially on hot days when the windows should be open. Boarded-up places with a little steam spitting through their cracks — yessiree. Dead give-away.”

After that, I saw the nailed boards and the tell-tale plumes everywhere I looked: above icehouses, shoe stores, auto parts suppliers. Next to the Bluebird Circle Shop and St. Vincent de Paul. I made notes and developed contacts on the street, like a real investigative reporter. I wanted to slip, like a spy, inside the scene of a crime, win a Pulitzer, the love of a good woman, and pull a whole new family around me.

“Pedro, you ever work in a sweatshop?”

On his television, a jumpy young weatherman says, “Cooler.”

“Sure, me and all my friends did. Back in the thirties — ”

“You were a kid in the thirties.”

“A workin’ kid, jack. Folks’d kill you for a dime, those days. I ‘member these cardboard signs in the shop, all over the walls, ‘No Home Work.’ Meant we couldn’t take the cloth home and sew on it there. Ever’thing had to be done in the shop. It’s a big joke ‘cause none of us, not even the adults, could afford to have a sewin’ machine at home.” He laughs.

“I get the impression nothing much has changed here, over the years.”

From where we’re sitting, in the northeast corner of the graveyard, we can see the Texas Commerce Bank building downtown, seventy-five stories, a correlated diamond pattern of rose and Barre granite. Its streaky windows blaze like tungsten bulbs.

“Poor folks still gotta work they asses off. That much hasn’t changed,” Pedro agrees. “But a whole lot else is differ’nt. Don’t kid yourself.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I ‘member ‘Whites Only’ signs in the Weingarten’s store over on Almeda Street. Dig? I ‘member black folks comin’ to Messkins like me in the sweatshops, real polite-like, and askin’ us to join ‘em in the sit-ins at the lunch counters. ‘You ain’t white, neither,’ they’d tell us, and they was right.”

“Did you do a lunch counter?”

“Oh sure. The Texas Southern students, smart little whips from the law school over there, they led the charge. Brave fellas. But it was baseball finally broke the color line in Houston.”

I hadn’t heard this before. “How?”

“They wasn’t any Major League teams in the South, see, till long about 1960 or so,” Pedro says. “When the Buffs started up here — later they’s the Colt 45s and finally the Astros, that’s when they’d forgot how to hit the damn ball — anyways, when other teams come down to play ‘em, what was the city gonna do? You couldn’t put a made guy like Willie Mays up in a segregated hotel, now could you? Make Houston look bad, ’specially to all them fancy-pantsed Northerners.”

Busted shoes, cigarette lighters, condoms, and pantyhose float down the bayou, past Pedro’s grave.

“I’ll tell you another way the city’s changed.”

“Tell me.”

“It’s going to hell.”

“How?”

“I know it, watchin’ the funerals here. Gettin’ cheaper. Shabby damn boxes, no handles to carry ‘em with. Might as well be wrappin’ these poor motherfuckers in tinfoil. You know. Birds Eye.” He coughs.

“Man, I don’t like the sound of that,” I say.

“It’ll pass.”

“You got to keep breathing for me, Pedro. You have too many stories to tell.”

“Yeah,” he says. “I’m gone, the history of this poor ol’ neighborhood’s gone.”

One of my street contacts pointed out to me a Mr. Ho, the manager of the shirt factory. I caught him one morning on the wooden steps leading to the only entrance I could see into the building, a door the size of an NFL linebacker covered with steel sheeting. Mr. Ho wouldn’t speak to me at first. But I cracked him, finally, with my repeated use of the word “sweatshop.”

“Is not a sweatshop,” he insisted.

“What do you call it, then?”

“Garment factory. Is a garment factory.” He scratched his pale nose. His eyes flicked back and forth with the speed of two hummingbirds.

“On the street I’ve heard rumors that half your employees are underage,” I said. “Is that true?”

“Is not true.”

“Can you prove that? Will you give me a tour?”

“No tour.”

“What’s your pay scale?”

“Very good. Very competitive.”

“Not what I heard.”

“What you heard?”

“You pay less than minimum wage.”

“Hear that where?”

“On the street.”

He leaned over the wooden railing and dropped a gob of spit on the parking lot below us. “Street is filthy. Filthy dirty words on the street.”

“If you have nothing to hide, sir, I don’t see why I can’t — ”

“Work to do. Excuse me.” He tapped seven times on the door. Three big men let him in and kept me out. A blast of hot air. Scalding steam.

An hour later I came back, tapped seven times on the door. The big men nearly threw me off the stairs. Mr. Ho stood over me, at the bottom. “Whatsa matter, you? Go home. Take care your family. Let me do my work, so you have nice clean shirt to wear, okay?”

I don’t know, even now, if my editor wanted the story. He liked the anecdotes I brought back to him from Pedro, and even let me develop a couple as short features. “Good local color,” he said. But on the sweatshop thing all he said was, “Careful.” And one night, “Why the hell are you always working so late, George? We don’t have a wide-enough circulation to justify your efforts. Go home. Take care of your family.”

Today I find Pedro hunched above his grave, coughing so hard he can barely breathe. I drop the blanket I’ve brought him and walk him to my car. “No, George, I cain’t leave my TV settin’ here,” he wheezes. “I’ve never left my TV.”

“I’ll unplug it for you and put it in my trunk. It’ll be okay.”

“Dopeheads’d swipe it in no time. They sneak in here at night to do they deals, you know. Fuck they johns, pass out. I’m tellin’ you, city’s going to hell.”

“Easy, now.” I help him into the car.

The neighborhood clinic, on Dallas Street, sits across an alley from a chipped brick building with a hand-lettered sign in an upper window: “Bombay Films.”

Teenagers fill the waiting room. Tattooed and pierced. One’s eating Fritos. He keeps dropping the bag. He looks like he’s asleep, except every now and then when he nibbles a chip.

An orange-haired boy is sharing a can of RC Cola with a girl whose lips are purple. “It was the real deal, man,” he tells her. “We could actually taste the meth on each other’s tongues.” At his feet, a duffel bag with a chewed-on pipe and several bags of Ramen.

I flash my Blue Cross card; the receptionist hands me some forms to fill out for Pedro. They feel damp in the small, humid room.

Pedro’s huffing beside me. “Is gone,” he says. “Poof.”

“What’s gone?”

“The neighborhood. Look at this shit.”

He means the kids around us.

One boy says to a nervous friend of his (leg like a jackhammer, bouncing up and down), “No bullshit, he’ll help me off the streets.”

“He’s a dealer, man, how’s he gonna help you off the streets?”

“Brother connected. Not like them preachers at the soup kitchens. They just like us, man.”

“How you mean?”

“They got nowhere to go, either.”

Forty-five minutes later, a young doctor helps me guide Pedro to a leather table in a little room. “Undo your shirt, please,” he says. He’s blond and horsey-looking. Pedro’s stopped coughing. His buttons are dusty.

After a brief examination, the doctor motions me into the hall. The place smells of Mercurochrome, wet tennis shoes. “You’re this fellow’s guardian?”

“Not legally. I look after him, some.”

“Where’s he live?”

“In the graveyard.”

“Homeless, then?”

“I guess … yes, you could say that.” Though it seems to me he knows exactly where he belongs.

“He’s not getting enough liquids. The dry throat, the coughing, and so on. Is there some way you can make sure he gets several glasses of fresh water daily?”

“Sure.”

“There’s a bigger problem.”

“What’s that?”

“Asthma. Pretty severe, I’m afraid. God knows what he’s exposed to, living outdoors all the time. Probably has several allergies. I’d like to put him on a breather for half an hour, open up his lungs. Can you wait?”

“I’ll wait.”

“I’ll set it up, then.”

The light’s too bright in Pedro’s room, and he’s blinking like a broken stoplight. “I’m missing Jeopardy,” he says.

“I’ll get you back soon.”

“It’s half over! George, what if someone steals my Christmas bulbs?”

“We’ve got to get you well, man.”

The kids’ talk in the waiting room depresses me, so I wait outside, in the alley behind the clinic. It smells of urine. The door to the building abutting the clinic is open, showing a steep wooden stairway, crooked, cracked, water-damaged. I look for steam, but don’t see any. At the top of the stairs there’s another sign for “Bombay Films” by a frosted-glass door. Next to it, a torn black-and-white poster. Marlon Brando kissing Maria Schneider.

The economic life of the city, pumping away. Whatever problems in the world, the movies can fix ’em.

Back in the clinic, Pedro is huffing into a cardboard tube on a machine that looks like a carpet cleaner. I give him a thumbs-up and he scowls. In the waiting room, the girl with purple lips slowly licks Madonna’s face, on the cover of Vogue.

Back in the alley, a woman approaches “Bombay Films” wearing a yellow mini-skirt and spiked heels. A Walkman rides her waist. She flicks a cigarette into an open trash bin and starts up the stairs. Halfway up, her left heel catches an exposed nail and she stumbles. “Goddammit!” she says, spotting me, grabbing her ankle. “These your stairs? I’ll sue you bastards!” She whips off her shoe.

The door at the top of the landing groans open. A paunchy, bald man in cowboy boots. He’s wearing thick glasses. “Are you the dancer from Haughty Bitch Showgirls?” he calls down the stairs. “April?”

She pulls a pack of Marlboro Lights from her right jeans pocket. “Guzman?”

“Yeah. Call me Goose. They told me you had tits, April.”

“Fuck you.” She climbs the stairs and shoves past him into his office.

He studies me, adjusting his glasses. “You’re the new guy, right? From the distributors downtown? Barney? Beatty?”

“Not me.”

“Come on up. Cup of Flesh is ready to go.”

“I’m not the guy.”

He twists his glasses again.

“I’m just waiting for a friend at the clinic.”

He perks back up. “Blood test? Your buddy getting married? Need some stag films?”

“No thanks.”

“All right, then.” He wags his head sadly. “Change your mind, I got some stills here that’ll dilate your fuckin’ pupils.”

I reconnect Pedro’s television. He settles down for The Price Is Right. “I tol’ you I’s gonna miss Jeopardy. Mr. Ace Reporter.” His voice is high and scared. “You’d think he’da figgered that out.” The doctor had given me an inhaler for him, and I plug it into his mouth.

The doc had also handed me a packet of Accolate tablets. “Twice a day with lots of liquids. Can you bring him back, end of the week? I’d like to check on him.”

“Sure.”

“You can keep an eye on him, right? In case something goes wrong with the medications?”

“Absolutely,” I say, realizing the truth of my words as I speak them. “He’s pretty much family now.”

On Friday, as I’m waiting in the alley while Pedro puffs for Doctor Horsey, April appears in Guzman’s stairwell, wearing only a bra and panties. Grape lipstick. Small, powdered breasts. “I’m auditioning for Goose’s latest Western epic,” she says. “Saloon Sluts. He’s up there now, setting up the cactus.”

I smile.

“If I get the part, I get to die. Got a light?”

“Sorry, no.”

“You work at the clinic, or what?”

“Newspaperman.”

“True crime? Scandal and divorce? I love that stuff.”

“More like community service. Local history — ”

“I got some history for you.”

“What’s that?”

“Pancho Villa raped my grandmother.”

I don’t know how to respond to this.

“When he crossed the border?”

“Yeah?”

“Granny cut his pecker off with a bowie knife.”

“You’re sure about that?” I say.

“Sure I’m sure. Still got the little feller, in a pickle jar down in Harlingen.” She smiles wistfully. “I used to play with it when I was a girl.”

Horsey hands me some Flonase and Albuterol. “These are samples. They should last him a month or so. If his breathing’s still labored then, I’ll write you a prescription for more.”

Pedro’s sucking on a tube, as if gasping after the city’s last sweet breath.

“He’ll never get better,” the doctor says to me softly. “But maybe we can keep him from getting worse for a while.”

I glance around the waiting room. Sneezing and snores. “Right,” I say.

About a month after my last encounter with Mr. Ho, another fire broke out in the shirt factory. I heard the news on the street. Three women, all in their teens, collapsed of smoke inhalation on the floor because the door was locked and they couldn’t get out fast enough.

From the supermarket parking lot, one morning, I called to Mr. Ho. He was standing at the top of his stairs. “You!” he said, pointing at me. “Interloper! Bad man!”

“You have a statement, Mr. Ho?”

“Door never had a lock till you come snooping around, asking fancy question! Now city shut us down. Your fault!”

Standing there, I felt only relief that the women hadn’t died. “I’m sorry for your troubles,” I said.

“Whatsa matter, you? You don’t like nice clean shirt? What the world be without a nice clean shirt?”

At my editor’s insistence, I stopped working late, stopped scrambling so hard after stories. “No one reads anything these days but the damn headlines anyway,” he grumbled. “And those they don’t understand.” I settled back in to a dull routine.

At home, in the wee hours of the morning when I couldn’t sleep, and I’d tired of flipping through family photos, I’d watch the local cable access channel. Turns out, Guzman produced its highest-rated show, “Naked Sports with April Blow.” April sat topless behind a flimsy desk talking baseball, hockey, squash. I loved to hear her say “squash.” Next morning, I could never remember last night’s scores. I kept seeing 0–0.

Once a week now I bring Pedro some fresh Ozarka water. I’ve made him a chart, so he’ll know when he’s taken his pills. He marks it with a pencil.

This evening I bring him some beer to go with his supper: a stick of jerky, lightly salted, two lemons, and an orange. I sit and drink with him.

“They just closed down a bunch of refineries east of town,” he says. “I’m tellin’ you, city’s going through some panty-twisting money shit. But it makes the air cleaner. Ain’t used my inhaler all week.”

“Good,” I say. I glance in the direction of my family’s graves. It’s been a year since they died, and I’m blue.

A Mickey Mouse mask, a gold ceramic owl, and a laminated poster of a unicorn line Pedro’s dusty gruta. He points to a muddy pool, choked with garbage, near the war veterans’ plots. Plastic U.S. flags rain-beaten to the ground. “Lots of new stuff floatin’ down the bayou this week. Socks. Broken toys.”

“Nice.”

“Yeah. Gonna do some rearrangin’. Fella cain’t let hisself get bored.”

We decide to watch a movie on his tombstone television: Dancing in the Dark, about a down-and-out actor, starring William Powell. Every now and then, Pedro wipes dust off the screen.

After a while I say, “I think you’ve got the right idea, Pedro.”

“How’s that?”

I sip my beer. “Tending your own grave.”

“Ah, hell.”

“It’s what we all do one way or another, isn’t it?”

“What the fuck you talkin’ about, George?”

“Losing our families, working lousy jobs.”

“Aw man, you’re a sad drunk,” he says. He watches me good. “You need to get laid.”

“No. Well, yes. But that’s not what’s creeping me out.”

“What’s creepin’ you out is you own mopey self. You probably the type of guy stays mopey, even after he’s been laid, right?”

“Sometimes.”

“Mr. Ace Reporter, sees Evil ever’where he turns. Wants to right the world’s wrongs, that it?”

“Sure. You said it yourself. The neighborhood’s gone.”

“Shit. If it’s anything I cain’t stand, it’s a sad drunk,” Pedro tells me.

I shrug.

He opens me another beer. Downtown Houston twinkles in the distance. “Watch the damn movie,” he says.