Markus Junior Ramirez stood as tall as his five foot four frame would allow in the doorway of a cream, colored adobe house at the corner of Fourth and Pride Streets. His slender fingers slid back and forth across his shirt, draped over his forearm. They extended from his small, soft olive hands and danced like a water spider across the shiny shirt. He gesticulated; he waved. His words made very clear that a finer grade of poly could not be found anywhere but the most golden houses of Upper Hill. He stood in the doorway with one foot firmly planted just inside the threshold of the home. To the residents of the adobe house, his words seemed punctuated by the waves of heat blowing in off the crowded street.
Each house he visited over the course of the week wanted clothes less than the previous house. Markus plied a trade just as his father and his grandfather and his grandfather before him. According to their own records, the Ramirez family traced their lineage back ten generations. Other members of the community pegged the number closer to eight. Either way, the family had bought their bread selling various goods and occasional services to the crafting peoples of the town. Markus had taken up the family trade starting the day after his fifteenth birthday. He scoured the poorer quarters of the town and the surrounding county for clothing or fabrics made from the glossy material known as ‘poly.’ Markus would buy scraps or, if he was lucky, whole garments, and bring them home. The female side of the Ramirez clan, led by Markus’ mother Lou-ann Ramirez, would then take the fabric and sew it together or stitch it up, turning the fabric into a gaudy patchwork and eventually a full-blown article of multi-colored blotchy clothing. Markus or his father would then walk the more monied quarters of town selling the new garments or offering repairs of existing garments.
Six other families plied the same trade, and all six turned their fabric into larger, more colorful clothing than the Ramirez family. His father, Markus Senior, had several regular customers in the quarter of town known as Upper Hill. These customers paid in gold and always seemed distressed when Markus Junior made a delivery.
His customers lived mostly in the Medio Quarter, located along Pride street at the base of Upper Hill but above Carptown and the Waterfront. They mostly paid in silver or copper and sometimes didn’t pay in full. Like the denizens of Upper Hill, they seemed equally distressed by Markus Junior’s presence, though their distress was most notable after a few weeks of slow business. Candle makers, bakers and cobblers all saw seasonal swings in business, and their moods precisely tracked those swings. During the hot season, candle makers grumbled the most, and often made payments in candles themselves rather than hard copper. Bakers bemoaned the hot season for making their ovens unbearable, and they often paid with bread made from short day wheat, all the while pining for the cool season to return. Markus found cobblers mostly paid in copper during all seasons, though they rarely seemed happy about anything.
After leaving the cream colored adobe house with no more copper and the same arm load of clothes, Markus trudged through the late afternoon heat towards the corner of Fifth and Pride Street. The three coppers in his pocket would buy a full jug of wine.
* * *
Luis Bebedero rolled his cart across the intersection of Pride and Sixth streets. Traces of the night clung to the western horizon as the last small droplets of morning dew withered on the undersides of leaves and the surviving blades of grass. Luis pushed the cart to the corner of Pride and Fifth Streets. Luis positioned his cart directly under a knotted sycamore tree. The tree’s branches bent at odd angles at every separation. They angled first left, then right, then back left again. Luis was certain that this was the only sycamore tree still living in town, and for three and a half years, it shaded him from the blazing sun of the hot season.
Luis ran his short thick fingers through his coarse coal colored hair. They came away damp. Luis flicked the sweat off of them onto the back of his neck. All morning and all afternoon Luis stood by his cart at the corner of Fifth and Pride Streets. He shouted at the crowds that passed, offering thin beer, thick beer and watered wine. As the hours passed his three barrels drained and his lock box filled, one piece of copper at a time. Sometime during the hottest part of the day, with the bright yellow sun slinking lower in the western sky, an unwelcome visitor approached Luis’ cart.
The Pride Street Magistrate wore a bright gold sash across his chest. A plastique mesh made up the skull of his hat. In the mesh, he had woven a copious quantity of feathers which someone had then dyed various shades of gold. The Magistrate declared loudly and often that the feathers symbolized the wealth of the town which he protected. Luis and the other cart men on Pride Street joked in hushed tones that the feathers looked more like feathers birds had pissed on on and had no more use for. The Magistrate waddled up to Luis’ cart and leaned on the rough wooden counter above the three barrels.
He spoke at length about the number of folks from the poor quarters of the town. He referred to them as carps because they ate carp straight out of the river. He spat on the street after he said the name of their quarters of town. Luis handed a yellow plastique cup of thin beer to a butcher who had stopped at his cart. The butcher bobbed his head as the Magistrate went on about the trouble-makers coming up from or the Waterfront Quarter. The butcher wandered off after a few minutes fewer coppers in his pocket, and the Magistrate wandered off with a full piece of silver from Luis’ lock box and few words about supporting the orderly governance of the town.
Shortly after the Magistrate left, one of Luis’ most loyal customers sidled up to his cart. Markus Ramirez never walked directly up to the cart. Instead, Luis noted that Markus always approached at an angle, as if he might need to run from the cart at any given moment.
“Hey amigo, how is the wine holding out today?” Markus spoke softly when talking to Luis about wine, though Luis could never tell if the hushed town were spoken out of reverence for the drink or fear he might be overheard discussing it.
“People buy heavy during the hot season,” Luis replied. He reached for the bottles with stoppers that stood next to the watered wine barrel.
“I have a few coppers, will that buy me some stout wine?” Markus shifted his sales goods from his left arm to his right and stuck his left hand in his pocket.
“For you, Mr Ramirez, a few coppers will buy two bottles of the stout stuff. I’m assuming that Mr Moore will be joining you soon?” Luis put extra bottles of stout wine in his cart at the end of every week, as people always seemed to find the copper needed for a stout drink before Sunday.
“I’m sure he will,” Markus replied. “How is business holding out this week?”
“Would be better if that piss-head would stop reminding me of my civic duties every two weeks or so.” Luis answered. He never spoke of the Magistrate and his ‘upkeep’ fees in such a derisive tone as a shop owner. Markus chuckled for the first time in a week.
“Between piss-head and the carps walking off with your cups, it is a wonder you persist in working on Pride Street,” Markus handed his coppers to Luis. The cart man placed two bottles on the counter. “Now, you know why I don’t get a cart. I can avoid my civic duties more easily!”
Luis smiled and shook his head, “you know, the carps have not been walking off with many cups lately. I noticed a while ago that they don’t care for the plastique ones, so I don’t pour them anything in clay.”
“Really, they don’t walk off with plastique? I thought everyone wanted to drink out of the same sort of cups the uppers drink out of?” Markus stared at the bottles on the counter, looking genuinely confused. Just at that moment a huge hand landed hard on his right shoulder, almost knocking him into the end of Luis’ cart. James Moore slapped a handful of coppers onto the counter and motioned for a third bottle of stout wine.
* * *
James Moore swung open the side gate of his family’s yard. The gate creaked as it opened. The bottom of the frame fell to the ground as he opened the gate. James knelt down and pushed the metal tube back into the ‘L’ joiner then looked up at Markus, motioning him into the yard. Holding the bottom of the gate together he pushed it closed then stood. At six feet tall, he stood a full foot taller than the top of the gate and a full eight inches taller than Markus. James pushed the sweat off his brow with his forearm.
Markus followed his friend off the street and through the gate and into the yard behind the house. Grape vines lined the back fence of the yard, and various cucumber and gourd vines ran across the lawn, chased after by strawberry vines. The two young men walked to the middle of the lawn and sat on the benches resting under an apple tree and a peach tree. James pulled the stoppers out of the bottles and set them aside. He handed one of the bottles to Markus. After clinking the necks of the bottles together, they began to drink. A light breeze rolled over the roofs of the low slung houses.
As the light of the day faded from the sky, they drained the last from the first two bottles of stout wine. James opened the third bottle then looked at Markus, who sprawled out of the bench and stared up at the leaves of the trees. The serrated leaves of the apple tree bobbed and weaved in the evening breeze. James chewed on his lower lip, causing a scab to work loose. He tasted the iron from a drop of blood.
“Hey, Markus, you up for a real taste?” James asked.
“A what?” Markus responded.
“A real taste. My parents got a hold of some hard booze a month ago, and I don’t think they know what to do with it. Want me to go get it?” a sly smile worked its way across his broad freckled face. He stood and walked into the house. The night’s candles had been extinguished and James’ younger brother lay snoring on the couch. James pushed aside the curtain to the kitchen. Feeling his way along the counter in the dark, he found the bottle. When he returned to the back yard, Markus was sitting up, staring at the sky. James pressed the bottle into Markus’ left hand. Markus looked down, then looked up. Smiling, he took a burning swig of the drink.
“Well, I may not be able to make any money, but at least I can drink like I do!” Markus took a second swig then handed the bottle to James, who took two gulps to match the drinks of his friend.
“Salud! My parents are such sober folks, they probably won’t even notice it is gone,” James grinned. The two men sat in silence for a few minutes.
“I don’t get it, amigo. Why don’t I sell? What do I gotta do to sell a damn shift around here? By the time my dad was twenty one, he was selling shirts and blouses and leggings and shoes. Shoes, James! I cannot even unload a damn shirt. And our poly is just a good as anybody else's!” Markus rolled his head from side to side against the trunk of the apple tree.
“I do the making, not the raking, I don’t know what it takes to sell stuff. You know what I mean,” James looked down at his hands. His family had been crafting furniture and working wood for fewer generations than the Ramirez family had been selling clothes.
“I mean, Luis told me today that the carps don’t even steal plastique cups anymore,” Markus repeated himself.
“Really?” James leaned forward.
“Yeah, what the hell!?” Markus raised his voice.
“Quite down,” James tried to soothe his friend with another swig of the bottle.
“So what do I do?” Markus raised his voice again. A window opened in the three story apartment building north of the Moore’s lawn.
“You all shut your damn mouths!” the neighbor yelled out the window. Markus stood quickly to face the building, While his legs stayed still, his torso kept turning. Markus flopped onto the ground, his legs spinning like the arms of a windmill.
James waved at his neighbor, then lifted his friend up off the ground and placed him on the bench under the apple tree. Markus rolled onto his back.
“Maybe I should just throw all those damn clothes in a trash-fire and be done with it,” Markus almost whispered. His thoughts circled lazily in a counterclockwise direction. The part of his mind still awake ran after them.
* * *
Dawn rises late after drinking. Markus dips a rag in cold water and runs it across the back of his neck. He leans against the door of James’ home and steps out onto the street. He weaves between the foot and cart traffic on Pride Street. Every step jars his thoughts. His vision skips beats in time with his steps. After what he later swears to be hours, he arrives at the corner of Fifth and Pride Streets and greets Luis Bebedero with a wave of the hand. Luis pulls a bright yellow cup from the plastique tub and places it on the sanded wooden counter of his cart. Markus leans on the cart and nods to Luis.
“So Luis, if the carps aren’t stealing plastique cups anymore, what are they drinking out of instead, and where do they get it?” Markus asked, sliding a scrap of paper and the nub of a pencil across the counter. Luis looked at the paper, then up at his customer, and put the yellow plastique cup back in the tub.
Part 2 - Carptown
James and Markus pushed through the seething throngs of Carptown. Even the widest streets clogged with a mass of arms and legs. Of hands gesticulating and imitating their daily labors. Of legs walking straight lines from one task to the next and lazy legs splayed out on the ground. Of smells and sounds of squishing waste and baking food. Of sounds loud and coarse, clanking and turning. The two heaved themselves from one sidewalk to a thin plank crossing a meandering dun colored stream to the dirt path beyond. Faces peered out from under broad-brimmed straw hats and from under light felt caps with narrow brims. Faces gazed through open holes in the walls onto the streets.
The two men followed Luis’ sketched map, turning off of Pride Street onto Marshall Street, then off Marshall down an alley. They crossed another brown, muddy stream, through a densely packed garden full of flowering vegetables and berry bushes to a shack with a peeling plywood door. James judged aloud that the door was older than the quarter itself, then knocked loudly. The curtain hanging on the inside of the door pulled aside and a man looked out through the crudely sawed opening.
He asked who they were and what they wanted. He assured them that his three young cousins had left and were floating down the river somewhere. When they told him they weren’t there about the cousins, the man reminded them that sometimes people from the Medio Quarter didn’t come back from Carptown. The two showed off Luis’ map and made drinking motions while talking about clay cups and hemp-and-flax clothing. The man raised an eyebrow at them, then insisted that his neighbor made hard drink but that he had none. Finally, a woman’s voice from the back of the shack chided the man and asked the strangers to come in.
Markus and James entered the shack. It had been built from cinder blocks that were slathered with mud and plaster both on the inside and out. The roof consisted of mostly a patchwork of short and long boards that met along a central metal beam which ran the length of the three rooms. Hay and hemp stalks lay tied in tight sheathes across the makeshift frame. In the first room sat three plump pink women, each busily working on some spinning devise or another. The first was making yarn from hemp and flax fibers. The second threw clay, working the dripping mud with her bare hands into pots and plates and cups. The third was in the process of weaving the yarn into bolts of cloth. James briefly inspected the wood of the loom and asked the woman how old it was. She shrugged and replied that it had been in this corner of the shack as long as she could remember.
Markus began speaking to the older woman and the man. The older woman’s name was Mary, though he could never quite understand the name of the man. He gathered that the man was Mary’s son, and probably married to one or all of the women in the shack.
Markus explained that he wanted to buy their pottery and their cloth, and that he would even buy fully made clothes if they had them. Mary and the man looked suspicious at first, but when James put three pieces of silver in front of them, their distrustful looks gave way to mild, bemused skepticism. They agreed that the men could come back with a cart for their goods, but reminded them not to come by after sundown. Mary turned back to the fire she had been tending when the two men entered.
* * *
Markus returned to the clay throwing shack. His shoulders slumped as he moved, taking a cue from the lazy legs laying all about the poorer quarter of the town. He pushed open the wooden plank that served as the door of the shack. He walked right in without even removing his shoes. Grandmother Mary gave him a disapproving shake of the tasseled head and pointed at his feet. Markus looked blankly at her, shook his own head then looked down at his feet. His shoulders straightened and he knelt down, untied the laces and removed his boots. He placed them next to the other foot-ware of the house, soles facing upward to dry under the hot breeze blowing in from the street. He stood again, back straight and hands held palm-up before him.
“I don’t understand it Grandma Mary! I have sold some of your shirts, mostly to medios who can’t afford poly. But the pottery won’t move. My mother runs about the house wailing that I, her only surviving son, have ruined them. It isn’t even her money I used to finance all of this!” he paced back and forth in the five feet of open space between the loom and the pottery wheel. Mary’s daughters, Ellisa and Mag, hardly noticed Markus’ pacing. The son’s wife Marge didn’t stir either.
Mary slowly stood from the fire she seemed to perpetually tend. She picked up a bottle from under the stool she sat on and strolled slowly over to the young man. She motioned for him to put his shoes back on. Markus complied, and they walked back out to the garden in front of the shack. Grandma Mary handed him the bottle. “Drink.”
Markus took a swig. His throat seemed to burst from into flame. He barely could choke down the hard drink. Mary opened her mouth in a noiseless laugh.
“Wow that’s strong!” Markus caught his breath. “Look Grandma Mary, I just don’t get it. I sell some of your stuff, then people just shut the doors. How do you sell stuff around ?”
“People need it,” Mary informed, taking a swig.
“Well, how do I get people to need your clay when they still eat off plastique?” Markus paced along the narrow path between a compost pile and potato bed. He screwed up his courage and took another pull from the bottle. The booze burned down his throat.
“Those poly clothes are so thread bare, we can barely sew them back together! Your hemp-and-flax stuff really stands up to tough treatment. And the pottery doesn’t cut your lips! I mean how can that not sell?” Markus was now walking in tight circles around a cluster of corn, beans and squash. “Can I have one last pull?”
Mary nodded and handed him the bottle.
“This stuff burns, I bet it would start up a real hot trash-fire,” Markus stopped pacing. He turned and looked at Mary, then let out a whoop and hugged the old woman. He handed the bottle back to Mary. “You are brilliant, grandmother!”
Part 3 - Tears and Trash-fires
Luis saw his regular customer coming as soon as he turned onto Pride Street from Seventh. Luis noted before that his sandy-haired customer always walked with purpose, even when he was not walking a straight path, and this afternoon, his young customer was not walking a very straight path. Markus Ramirez stopped at his cart and began speaking. In spite of the smell of high proof booze, the young man’s words did make some sense. Luis nodded as he spoke. He pursed his lips and did crude math in his head. He nodded some more. The two shook hands and the young man bounced down Pride Street in the direction of the Moore family house.
There he found the family hard at work carving head boards. Markus barely paused to remove his shoes. He came in excitedly waving his hands, talking on a full volume. They would need posters on all the community announcement boards. Every neighborhood in the middle quarter and Upper Hill would be invited. And of course they would have to put in for the space and the town square. They would need good weather as well, and if that could not be acquired, then they would need plenty of grease and fat. After an hour of talking, some arguing and many horrified looks, the patriarch of the Moore family kindly asked Markus to leave, and to return only when he was sober.
Markus left, and walked straight over to the printing house and put his last coppers on the table. The printer said that he would do the job, but that he wouldn’t ask Markus for more than the price of the paper, as he hated to watch young men get burned by hair-brained schemes. Markus smiled, thanked the gray haired shop keeper and told him he would pay the man back in full when he had sold out of pottery and clothing.
When he walked out of the printer’s shop he nearly ran up one side and down then other of his much taller friend.
“I suppose you can to talk me out of this?” Markus paced in circles around his friend. He clenched and un-clenched his fists. barely hearing James’ answer. He looked up at his friend somewhat blankly, realizing that he had not, in fact, heard the man’s response.
“I said that I’ve spent all my twenty two years doing just as my father asks. I didn’t even tell him about the money we gave to the carp family for the goods. I think you might have a buena idea. Let’s set some stuff on fire!"
* * *
The next several weeks were the driest, of the hot season. The whole town languished under a blazing yellow sun. When the rains did come, they did not stay long, and the water that did fall from the clouds quickly soaked into the cracked earth, or sloshed down to the river. Even the deepest root cellars on the top of upper hill warmed. In the midst of all this, the people of the town and the surrounding county chattered on late into the night. Some one kept putting up posters promising a grand spectacle on the town green at the autumnal equinox. The posters promised that the spectacle would usher in a new era of fashion and sophistication which would be the talk of the river from Saint Pablo to Saint Luis.
* * *
Lou-ann and Markus Senior Ramirez plod with their youngest daughter in toe to the town green. They climbed the stairs from the street up to the terrace that lined two on the four sides of the green. Walking with eyes cast downward, they shuffled to the far end on the terrace, having found out only two days before that their only surviving son was the force behind the mysterious posters and the impending spectacle. To them it seemed that all the town had showed up. The preachers had made clear during Sunday sermons that, while they did not approve of holidays which placed the turning of the Earth before the worship of the Lord, they understood that many of their own parishioners frequented celebrations outside of the church’s teachings. They noted that this Equinox Spectacle would prove to be one of those celebrations.
The terraces teemed with neighbors and acquaintances, business partners and rivals. Many rural landlords and tenants had come to town by horse, by bicycle and on foot. Even people from could be seen standing in the highest sections of the terrace, distinct in their earthen colored clothes and wide brimmed hats. The Ramirez clan made their way to the edge of sections for the medio class. They sat behind a skinny, red faced man and his black haired wife. The two wore loose fitting shirts made from poly. The wife’s dress had been sewn together from many pieces of the silvery, slick fabric. Markus Senior mused that the husband’s patchwork pants must have taken hours to sew together. The couple’s finest clothing with its hundreds of seems and splotches of faded color stood in sharp contrast to the one piece shirts and pants worn by the carp family sitting in the section above them. The Ramirez clan took their seats, speaking to no one that they knew.
Below them the sand diamond at the middle of the town hosted a great pile of household goods piled around a large wooden pole. A thin wire ran from the top of the pole to the corner formed where the two sections of the terrace joined. There they saw their only surviving son standing under the metal awning at the top of the terrace. Over his shoulders he wore a bright cape made of plastique shirts stitched together in a tricolor of yellow, orange and red.
* * *
The sun collapsed beneath the oppressive heat of the late afternoon. Its yellow disc slunk below the horizon, masked by a few light wispy clouds. The wind shifted to the south, bringing with it a cool breeze. The breeze cooled the temper of the crowd. The sporadic fights and arguments over the scraps of shirts and cups on the thrash-fire died down. The crowd instead began to speculate about what might happen next. If the trash-fire would even be lit. Some in the audience speculated that it had all been a hoax. One family even went running from the square believing that the gathering had been orchestrated by thieves who were now systematically looting the town. As the last light of day escaped to the west, Markus readied the torch.
James and he had devised a simple wire basket and hung it to the wire leading to the pole at the top of the trash-fire with two loops of wire. In the wire basket they placed a thin-walled clay pot they had filled with burlap scraps, old hemp rope and pig fat. Markus took a deep breath then raised his voice above the low hum of the crowd.
He waved his arms and pointed repeatedly at his tricolor cape. He spoke at length about the number of holes he had put in his fingers stitching together the cape. He drew schematics in the air with those same sore fingers showing how the repeated stitching together of fabric was failing to keep pace with the passage of time. He stated repeatedly that he did not intend to destroy the clothes and everyday items on the trash-fire simply to be shocking. He shouted about about cutting his lips repeatedly of frayed rims of plastique cups. When he asked the crowd who among them had the same cuts on their lips, many people found to their surprise that their fingers had found scabs on their own lips.
A woman on the top level of terraces to his right wailed upon discovering that she too had cuts on her lips and promptly passed out onto her brother’s lap. As the husband and brother carried her from the square, she yelled at them both for offering her water from a yellow plastique cup. The husband quickly cast the cup aside a bought and brown a clay cup from Luis as they hurried down the stairs with her.
As the commotion died down, Markus motioned to James, who struck a match against the concrete of the terrace. Cupping his hand around the the tiny flame to keep away the breeze, he placed the match in the clay pot, then fanned the growing flame. Orange and red tongues of flame lapped around the scraps in the pot. They grew in strength and temperature as James blew on them and fanned them with his hands. Markus gave the pot a push, and it began to slide down the wire. As it picked up speed, small embers and burning bits of rope and burlap blew out of the pot. The burning scraps fell amongst the crowd. Men, women and children all bolted from under the clay pot’s guide wire. One man even shouted something about a comet setting the town on fire.
The pot slid down the guide wire and came to a stop at the top of the pole. The contents continued to burn. The mass of people who had moments before stood up in anticipation of needing to make a hasty exit stopped seething. Some even pointed at the pot and laughed. Others quickly brushed the ash and cooling embers off their shirts and pants. The band standing on the roof of the dug out seats by the diamond stuck up a song. As people in the audience recognized the tune, they raised their voices to the air, singing a ballad about the last of the great fire storms and the return of the summer rains. Carps in the audience started the dancing. Soon medios and a few uppers began to dance in halting, jerky motions. A young boy standing near the trash-fire pulled a stone from his pocket and threw it at the pot. The rock made contact with the bottom of the pot, splitting it into three large fragments, spilling the fiery contents over the top of the pile. The fat and grease Markus and James had poured onto the top of the pile sucked up the fire from the scraps. It bubbled and expanded then burst into bright reds and oranges itself. Soon the flames spread down the sides of the pile, beginning a conflagration that pushed the crowd back and drove most of them into a frenzied dance. Markus and James stood at the top of the terrace and watched.
* * *
Months passed, and the seasons turned. The languid days of heat turned more fully to the mix of warm and cool that marked the months between the hot season. Then, five days before the winter solstice, snow fell. The few literate members of the community scurried to their record books, trying to find a written account of a snowfall before the solstice.