“No?”
“Community service.”
“Fucking community service?”
a b e l 417
“The parole board didn’t know what to do with me.”
“It’s cuz you’re a fucking freak.”
“Guess so,” he said.
He had a look on his face.
I knew he’d been through his own hell. I didn’t want to know
anything about it. Just didn’t. There are a lot of fucking things in this fucked up world that we don’t want to know.
Then I just laughed. I laughed and fucking laughed.
And he laughed with me. So there we were laughing, me and
Conrad García. When we finally fucking pulled ourselves to-
gether, hell, we had us another cigarette.
o c t avio
You think you have a family—a wife, a daughter, two sons.
You think you have a home. The day you bought this house, you
imagined your future, and for a long time you felt you’d stepped into the beauty of that dream. Once you had nothing. And then
you had everything. The love of a virtuous woman. A son and a
daughter. And then, later, another son.
There was nothing you did not have.
You gave up dreams, it’s true—but in the end, you thought it
did not matter. You are just a man. Like all men, you exchanged one dream for another.
One dream is as good as another.
You don’t know how it happened. Or when. But the dream
began to fade. To erase itself. And you began to understand that you had become a stranger to your family—a stranger to your
wife, to your son and your daughter—even to your Charlie. Your
o c t avio l 419
Charlie, who forgave all things, who seemed to understand all things. Even to him, you were a stranger.
Now, you ask yourself, what do you have? What is your life?
What has become of it? You cannot make sense of anything. You
stare at all the books on your shelf. They are all neatly arranged and ordered. That is what you wanted for your life. Why? Why?
You have lost your mother.
You have lost your son—but you lost him long before the day
he left. You never knew how to go looking for him.
You have lost your wife.
You see yourself raising your hand. You see your hand as it
lands on your wife’s face.
You see the hate in her eyes.
You do not forgive yourself. You would do anything to take
back that moment, to take back the slap.
In all things you have failed.
Now you are only a piece of furniture. No more than that.
Your heart is a stone. Cold. Dead. Inanimate.
You have lost your wife. No. You cannot accept this. You did not go looking for your son. But you will, you will go looking for her, for Lourdes. You will.
g us t avo
All this was many years ago.
You always knew that something was going to go wrong
with your life. Icarus falling to earth. You see yourself saying, Gustavo Espejo, you are going to have a beautiful American life.
A beautiful American life. It’s strange now, strange, to think of yourself as a boy whispering optimistic things to yourself.
Whistling in the dark. You’ve grown so accustomed to living a
nomadic, complicated life. Since the day you left, you have lived your life one moment at a time. And it seems like nothing was
ever simple.
You have a memory. You hate and curse that memory, but it is
your only possession. And sometimes that memory comes to you
unexpectedly—though the visit is always unwelcome. There was
a time when you lived in a house with a mother and a father and a brother and a sister and it was a simpler time. You don’t like to think about that time. It is a futile exercise in nostalgia.
g us t avo l 421
You were always on the margins—that is the truth of your
past. But you were deeply loved. Is that nostalgia? You detest nostalgia. There is nothing in your life that resembles the past. There is nothing in the past except for the ruins of the cities that broke your heart. That broke and broke and broke your heart.
You wonder why you still dream that Saturday afternoon.
Even now. You see Charlie sitting on the porch, that sincere look on his face, that hurt in his eyes he could never hide as you say something careless that wounds him. And in the dream, it is as if all the light of the afternoon is coming from somewhere inside him. And then—you don’t know why exactly—you turn away
from him.
Then Xochil is there, walking up the steps. You can see she’s
been crying. And then you hate the dream, because all the beauty goes away and there is so little beauty left in your life, all that beauty. Gone. And all that is left is everything that frightens you, and your heart begins to beat, beat, beat, and you feel hollow, strange, lost, and you want desperately to ask Xochil what’s wrong, but you can’t speak because all the words you know are
stuck in your throat and you can’t push them out, you can’t, you can’t—and then all of a sudden they’re gone, Xochil and Charlie and your mother’s oleander.
Everything is gone.
Everything is quiet as death. The street is empty, as if some-
thing has startled all the residents back into their locked homes and there isn’t anyone else in the whole world except you and
Mr. Rede. He waves at you. He is carrying a letter. And you
know what the letter says. He walks toward you—the letter in his hand—and Mr. Rede isn’t Mr. Rede at all, he’s Charon, with his skeletal hand out demanding his coin so he can carry you across the River Styx or the Rio Bravo. You can smell the stench of the dead on his black robe, and you can’t move, you can’t, you can’t and you think this desperation will stop your heart. All you can
422 l si lenc e
do is sit and wait, your heart leaping out of your chest, the earth trembling beneath you, almost as if the earth was as frightened as you.
For years and years, you’ve had that dream. It never changes.
You wake. And then you cry. You don’t fight the tears any-
more. Fighting tears is a way of lying to yourself. You don’t do that anymore. But you’ve taught yourself to cry silently, and
you’ve learned that tears can be the most silent thing on this sad and fierce and pitiless earth.
You know that trying to piece the story together is futile, the story of your leaving them and your country, the story of returning to your father’s homeland and entering an exile that has become another name for home. But the story does not belong only to you. The story belongs to Octavio and Lourdes, who gave you life. The story belongs to those who went to war, Jack Evans and all the other young men whose names you do not know. The
story belongs to Conrad, who refused to go to war—and did not
run. The story belongs to Charlie, who searched his globe for
years trying to discover the exact location of an older brother who disserted him. The story belongs to Xochil, who hated the idea of war almost as deeply and purely as she loved you. The story belongs to America. So why should your story matter more than
anybody else’s?
What about the dead?
What about those who died more slowly?
The story is not about you. Did you think the world would
stop—just for you? Grieve for you? The world is a stranger to
tears. The world has a heart made of stone. It did not stop its spinning to grieve for the men who died in Vietnam. It did not stop and grieve for the inhabitants of that country. Did you think it would stop and grieve for you? You, who left your country, you who always lived on the margins of America? You, whose story is the smallest
part of history?
g us t avo l 423
This is your only consolation. You were never unloved. That
is the one sliver of the story that belongs to you.
There are visions of heaven. And there are visions of hell. For you, those visions are the same: forever, you are blessed and condemned to see yourself, a boy of eighteen, walking over the Santa Fe Bridge. Forever, you see yourself turning around, and breaking into tears of laughter as you stare into the eyes of your sister and your brother, whose faces are eternal flames of hope.
You were never unloved.
You remember the poem your sister gave you. You are the wolf
that chewed his leg off to free himself from the trap. You no longer have a notebook where you spill out all your confessions, but there are words floating around in your callused, callused heart: Gustavo time, is that it?
Gus! Gus!
The best thing that happened in 1967.
You see yourself on a bus going to Mexico City. It is the mid-
dle of the night. You have left everything you have ever known.
You are taking a journey that millions of immigrants have taken.
Immigrants who leave behind their homelands for reasons that
are known to them alone.
You are afraid. You hear your mother’s voice: You are afraid
to hurt the people you love. Then all the confusion leaves you.
Because you know why you are on this bus. You refused. The war.
You refused it.
You are on a crowded bus.
You are going to Mexico City.
The road is dark and silent.
ack nowle dgmen t s
No author writes a book alone. I am surrounded by gener-
ous people and their contributions are everywhere to be found
throughout the pages of this novel. I am profoundly grateful to Dolph Quijano with whom I had many conversations about his
experiences as a U.S. Marine fighting in Vietnam. Without his
reflections, the Vietnam sections of this novel could not have been written. My conversations with him led me to reflect on
the deep wounds that the Vietnam War inflicted on millions of
people. His recollections and memories were far more moving
than any work of fiction can ever hope to be. I cannot thank him enough for his candor, his high-mindedness, his sense of humor, and his honorable humility.
I owe a lifetime’s debt of gratitude to Ruben García, a man I
have known since I was sixteen years old. His intellectual hon-esty and his moral integrity has been a beacon to hundreds if
not thousands of people. It is not possible to express what I have
426 l ack no wle dg men t s
learned by listening to him, speaking to him, and observing him as he has followed a path few men have even attempted to travel.
True men of peace are rare in this all-too violent world. I count myself lucky to be among his friends. I would not only be a poorer writer without his presence in my life but I would also be a much poorer human being.
The voices of the 1960’s can be found on every single page of
this novel. I remain forever grateful for having been shaped by a generation who not only questioned their own country and its
political leaders but also who questioned themselves with equal tenacity and vigor.
As always, I am grateful to my agent, Patty Moosbrugger,
who continually offers not only encouragement but also intel-
ligent insights and good humored conversations. Her faith in my work never fails to move me.
I am the luckiest of writers to have Rene Alegria as my pub-
lisher and my editor. He has proven time and time again not
only to be a fierce and thoughtful reader but also a warm, good-natured, generous friend. He is a good and decent man who has
more than earned my gratitude and affection.
And finally, I thank my wife, Patricia, who resides in my head and in my heart. I stand in her presence, wordless and inarticulate. My gratitude for her presence in my life is beyond words.
About the Author
BENJAMIN ALIRE SÁENZ is the author of In
Perfect Light, Carry Me Like Water, and House of Forgetting, as well as the author of several children’s books. He won the American Book Award for his
collection of poems Calendar of Dust. Sáenz is the
chair of the creative writing department at the
University of Texas–El Paso.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive
information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
a l so by
BE N JA M I N AL I RE S ÁE N Z
f ic tion
In Perfect Light
Carry Me Like Water
Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood
The House of Forgetting
Flowers for the Broken
p o etr y
Elegies in Blue
Dark and Perfect Angels
Calendar of Dust
Dreaming the End of War
ch i ld ren s
A Gift from Papá Diego
Grandma Fina and Her Wonderful Umbrellas
Credits
Designed by Joy O’Meara
Cover Design by Mumtaz Mustafa
Cover photograph © 2007 by Richard Schultz
Copyright
NAMES ON A MAP. Copyright © 2008 by Benjamin
Alire Sáenz. All rights reserved under International
and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By
payment of the required fees, you have been granted
the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and
read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this
text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded,
decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or
introduced into any information storage and retrieval
system, in any form or by any means, whether
electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter
invented, without the express written permission of
HarperCollins e-books.
Adobe Acrobat e-Book Reader December 2007
ISBN 978-0-06-157734-5
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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Document Outline
Title Page
Dedication Page
Epigraph Page
Contents Part One: The Day the War Came A Family
Abe
Gustavo
Xochil
Adam
Charlie
Gustavo
Abe
Adam
Gustavo
Xochil. Gustavo.
Gustavo
Xochil
Abe
Gustavo
Adam
Charlie
Lourdes
Adam
Octav
io
Gustavo
Abe
Lourdes
Charlie. Gustavo.
Lourdes. Octavio.
Adam
Octavio
Abe
Xochil
Lourdes
Rosario
Lourdes. Rosario.
Vietnam
A Family
Xochil
Gustavo. Charlie.
Xochil
Abe
Gustavo
Lourdes. Rosario. Xochil.
Adam
Gustavo
Part Two: And the World Did not Stop Adam
Lourdes. Octavio.
Xochil
Charlie
Lourdes
Abe
Charlie
Adam
Xochil
Gustavo
Xochil. Lourdes.
Abe
Charlie
Octavio
Gustavo
Adam
Xochil. Charlie.
Gustavo
Xochil. Charlie.
Octavio. Gustavo. Lourdes.
Lourdes. Octavio.
Gustavo
Xochil. Gustavo. Charlie.
Adam
Lourdes
Octavio. Lourdes.
Gustavo
Abe
Gustavo
Lourdes
Xochil
Gustavo
Gustavo
Lourdes. Gustavo.
Adam. The Dead.
Lourdes
Xochil. Jack. Gustavo.
Xochil. Gustavo.
Abe
Charlie
A Family
Adam
Xochil
A Family
Charlie. Gustavo.
Gustavo
Octavio. Charlie. Lourdes.
Gustavo. Xochil.
Gustavo
Abe
Xochil
Gustavo. Octavio.
Charlie
Gustavo
Lourdes
Gustavo
Lourdes
Gustavo. Xochil. Charlie.
Adam
Lourdes
Xochil
Lourdes
Epilogue: Silence
Charlie
Xochil
Adam
Lourdes
Abe
Octavio
Gustavo
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Credits
Copyright Notice
About the Publisher