Carry Me Like Water (70 page)

“No, man, I ain’t never gonna be OK again.” His voice was distant and he trembled as he spoke.

“Are you cold?” Jake asked.

The man nodded, his head too heavy now for his body.

“You need some help getting inside this building?”

“I’m tired, man. I just want to sleep. I just want to fall asleep.”

“I’ll carry you,” he said. He remembered the night when he’d carried Joaquin to the hospital and he remembered what he’d said. “Like water.” He picked up the man who was small and frail and weighed no more than a hundred pounds. It was not a difficult thing to carry him. The-man remained completely passive in Jake’s arms, but he hung on to the sign he had made, clutched it in his hands as if it were life itself. Jake made his way slowly up the hill toward Sunset Heights from downtown, the man who smelled of old sweat and urine in his arms. People stared at them as he walked. Jake just smiled. When he reached the house, he rang the doorbell. Lizzie answered the door. “He’s sick,” he said.

Lizzie stared at his sign. “We can put him upstairs,” she said, “In the ballroom.” She took the sign out of his hand. “He’ll need a bath first. I’ll run the water. You want to help me bathe him?” she asked.

“Why not?” he answered.

Jake stared at the piece of paper on his desk. He didn’t know how to begin the letter. The only thing he’d ever written was a diary addressed to his brother, and that had been easy to write because it had been only for himself. He had not even let Joaquin read it. But now he wanted to write a letter to Tom, wanted to tell him about his new life. He wanted someone who had known him when he was someone else, wanted someone to know that rage had not had the final say. Jake took a drink from his glass of wine. He placed the pen on the white stationery his brother had given him:

Dear Tom
,
Today, I committed an act of kindness …

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Teachers come in all forms and I have had many teachers who have taught me to accept my sorrows when they came my way and to look for ways to articulate hope whenever possible. This book could not have been written without my association with people who taught me that despair is absolutely unacceptable: Karen Fiser, Larry Schmidt, Denise Levertov, the late Arturo Islas (who saw me through the genesis of this book, but did not live to see it to completion), Barbara DuMond and Virginia Navarro (who always believed), Ricardo Aguilar, Teresa Melendez, The Lannan Foundation, Scott Michaelson, Bobby and Lee Byrd, The Before Columbus Foundation, Mary Helen Clarke, Denise Chávez, and Daniel Murphy.

I owe a debt of gratitude to Alison Deming, a gifted writer and friend, who urged me to send my manuscript to her agent. Jennie McDonald is one of the finest professionals I have ever had the pleasure of working with. A fine editor in her own right; she is literate, intelligent, and possesses a relentless sense of humor.

Yvonne Murphy at Hyperion was an astute and enthusiastic editor. Her faith in this book made its publication possible. At every step she was supportive and respectful of my work without losing her critical acumen.

And to Patricia Macias—the woman with whom I share my home, my life, my body, my mind, and my heart—I give my deepest thanks. She saw me through this book, and still she is smiling. Amor, te adoro. Eres un milagro.

Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to my parents, my brothers and sisters, and the people of El Paso/Juárez—my people.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

BENJAMIN ALIRE SÁENZ
is the author of
In Perfect Light
and
The House of Forgetting
, as well as several children’s books. He won the American Book Award for his collection of poems
Calendar of Dust. A
former priest, Sáenz teaches creative writing at the University of Texas at El Paso.

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

Praise for
CARRY ME LIKE WATER

“Sentimental and ferocious, upsetting and render, firmly magic-realist yet utterly modern…. Sáenz is a writer with greatness in him.”

—LUIS URREA,
San Diego Union-Tribune

“Sáenz is wonderful, at times magnificent.”

—Baltimore Sun

“A powerful and poetic novel…. Demonstrates a perceptive novelist’s knowledge of those deeper, interior rhythms that somehow propel us, at times in beauty and at times in tortured patterns, across the surface of the earth.”

—Albuquerque Journal

“
Carry Me like Water
is indeed a lovely first novel, rich in its sense of place and people. Benjamin Alire Sáenz has a fine talent.”

—LARRY MCMURTRY, author of
Terms of Endearment

“
Carry Me Like Water
is full of love, loathing, and a cacophony of characters which people the spiritual airwaves from El Paso to California. Certainly a new perspective in the Chicano novel.”

—RUDOLFO ANAYA, author of
Bless Me, Ultima

“Benjamin Sáenz has created, with his first novel, a work of unique and endearing quality. The characters and conflicts appear as in no other book I’ve read. There is a well-wrought and compelling ferment of pain and pathos, the familiar with the supernatural, the poetic with plot.”

—LUIS J. RODRIGUEZ,
author of
Always Running
and
Music of the Mill

Also by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

F
ICTION
In Perfect Light
Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood
The House of Forgetting
Flowers for the Broken

P
OETRY
Elegies in Blue
Dark and Perfect Angels
Calendar of Dust

C
HILDREN’S
B
OOKS
A Gift from Papá Diego
Grandma Fina and Her Wonderful Umbrellas

Copyright

Quotations from Karen Fiser’s poetry are from
Words Like Fate and Pain.
Copyright © 1992 by Karen Fiser. Reprinted with permission of Zoland Books, Inc., Cambridge, Massachusetts.

This book was originally published in 1995 by Hyperion Books.

CARRY ME LIKE WATER
. Copyright © 1995 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.

EPub Edition © JULY 2010 ISBN: 978-0-062-04598-0

First HarperPerennial edition published 1996.

First Rayo edition published 2005.

ISBN 10: 0-06-083133-2
ISBN 13: 978-0-06-083133-2

05 06 07 08 09 RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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