Quetzalcoatl Ate Plums

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Leo was sprawled out on his bed with books and papers spread around him, kind of doing homework but mostly feeling his eyes glaze over as he read over geometry equations again and again. Mom was in the kitchen preparing to make some popcorn on the stove because Dylan wanted to watch a movie, and Dylan was helping by sitting in the floor near her feet and playing with his toy trucks, judging by the engine noises Leo could hear him making. Dad was sitting in the living room with the news on, watching the space on the wall above the TV.

It was a nice, normal evening, until it wasn’t.

The popcorn was doing its thing, and a particularly loud pop went off, enough to make Leo jump even in his room.

There was no time for his heart to settle before he heard the creak of the recliner in the living room and then Dad stomping towards the kitchen.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing!?”

“Making a snack-” was all Leo’s mom was able to get out before his dad started in again.

“The hell you think you’re doing making noise in here, I told you I don’t want noise! Who pays the bills around here, huh? Is it too much to ask to get some damn peace and quiet in my own home!?”

Mom was still stammering. Leo was rolling off the bed and onto his feet as soon as he heard Dylan start to cry.

“Hey-” Leo started speaking halfway between the hall and the kitchen, but Dad steamrolled right over Leo’s words as easily as he had his wife’s.

“I tell you all the time I don’t want noise, are you trying to drive me crazy? You wanna drive me crazy, Silvana?”

“Dad-”

“Luis, honey-”

Dylan was bawling in earnest now, clinging to Mom’s leg. Leo’s heart was pounding. The popcorn continued popping, as it was wont to do, and the continued background noise just aggravated Dad further.

“How many times do I have to tell all of you, huh? You’re gonna drive me crazy and I’ll have to be locked up, is that what you want? Huh? Are you listening to me, Silvana!? You ever listen to me!? Do I have to-”

“Don’t yell at her!”

The room went silent except for Dylan’s hiccups and sniffling, and the popcorn continuing on as popcorn did, undeterred.

Both of Leo’s parents were staring at him where he had planted himself between them, breathing hard. His mom slowly and shakily reached out to squeeze Leo’s arm, and he couldn’t tell if she was trying to give reassurance or looking for it herself.

Luis’s gaze darted around to each member of the family, all facing him, but his eyes kept returning to Leo’s face, staring as though he had never seen his older son before.

“’M goin’ out for a smoke,” Leo’s dad said finally, sounding like a scolded teenager, and he turned on his heel and left the room. A moment later the front door slammed, signaling his exit from the house.

Dylan took that as his cue to resume loudly crying. Leo felt his mom squeeze his arm again before she too retreated from the kitchen without a word. He let out a long breath and reached over to turn off the stove before the popcorn burned and made everything worse by filling the house up with smoke and stench. His hands were shaking.

“Hey,” he said softly, turning and crouching down in front of Dylan. “Hey buddy, it’s okay.” He didn’t sound very convincing even to his own ears, but he scooped Dylan up into his arms and hugged him tightly. Dylan hugged back, burying his face in Leo’s shoulder and wiping tears and snot on his shirt.

Leo patted Dylan’s back, bouncing him slightly like he would when Dylan was a baby. “It’s okay, it’s fine. Let’s have a milkshake instead, alright? How’s that sound?”

Dylan blubbered something unintelligible into his ear, locking his arms and legs around Leo’s neck and waist so that he couldn’t be put down. Leo was well-used to such restrictions, however, and maneuvered around to the fridge with minimal trouble, retrieving milk, ice, and a container of strawberries. Mom had bought the strawberries with intent to use them for some kind of school bake sale or something, but strawberry was Dylan’s favorite and that took priority right now. Not like the school even needed a fundraiser that badly, anyway.

Dylan was convinced to let go long enough for Leo to grab the blender by being allowed to sit on the countertop and having his trucks returned to him. Leo made sure to put the blender on a high enough setting that neither of them would be able to hear their mom crying in their parents’ bedroom. He didn’t look at the clock to see how long their dad had been out wandering the neighborhood with a cigarette in hand.

By the time the milkshakes were prepared, Dylan had stopped crying, though his eyes were still red and puffy. Leo wiped his sleeve against Dylan’s face to dry the last of his tears before handing him a filled glass with a straw. “Here, careful.” Dylan sipped quietly, driving his tow truck in between the ingredients still sitting out on the counter.

While Dylan was momentarily occupied, Leo took the popcorn off the stove and dumped it into the trash, following it with all the unopened bags from the pantry.

He returned to lean against the counter and drink his own milkshake while Dylan drove a truck up his arm. Their mom had stopped crying, at least that Leo could hear, but she didn’t come out of the bedroom again that evening.

After they finished their milkshakes, Leo sent Dylan to take a bath while he cleaned up the kitchen. He heard the front door open and then close much more softly than when it had slammed shut earlier, but he didn’t look up from the dishes he was washing. He listened to the subdued footsteps approach his parents' bedroom, stop, and then backtrack to the living room, followed by the familiar creak of his dad settling into the recliner. The TV volume cranked up just a notch, just enough to muffle any outside noise if you were in the living room sitting in front of it. The nine o’clock news was coming on.

Leo put the dishes away and went to get Dylan out of the bath and into his pajamas. “What story do you want tonight?” He asked as he toweled off Dylan’s hair.

“Runny Babbit!” Dylan exclaimed from underneath the towel.

“Didn’t I read that for you the other day?” Leo asked, smiling.

“I want Runny Babbit again,” Dylan pouted, and Leo laughed, picking him up and carrying him to his bedroom.

“Alright, alright. Get your animals and get in bed.” Dylan’s favorite books lately were the set of Shel Silverstein poem books they had picked out at a garage sale a few months ago, with a particular fondness for Runny Babbit: A Billy Sook, with its talking animals and mixed-up names. It might have been due to Leo’s habit of slipping into different silly voices for each character.

Dylan snuggled under the covers with his stuffed tiger, bear, and dog, watching Leo with those big blue eyes as he retrieved the book off the shelf. Leo could remember his dad’s amusement that they both turned out blue-eyed.

Lookit those baby blues, he’d said, leaning over Leo’s shoulder as he held the newborn Dylan in his arms on the first day they’d brought him home from the hospital. I remember my abuela had eyes just like yours.

Leo hadn’t heard his father speak Spanish since the day he shipped out six years ago.

---

Leo grunted when one of the senior guys bumped into him for the third or fourth time in a few minutes as he tried to tie his shoes. The older guys were roughhousing as usual in the locker room before track practice, and Leo and a couple of the underclassmen had barely avoided getting trampled a few times already.

“Hey, careful!” One of the guys who had been doing most of the shoving said, grinning at the boy he had pushed into Leo. “Watch your step there, Leo’s delicate.”

Leo thought about the time he had fainted in class, about the wounded soldiers falling on the screen, about his dad staring at the spot on the wall above the TV and thought, You don’t even know what that means.

On the outside, he grinned and said, “Hey, don’t hate. I hear your mom’s real into sensitive guys, Jake. It’s a plus sometimes.”

He got a snort and an eyeroll in response, but nothing further, and he was able to finish tying his shoes in peace. Jake unsubtly bumped into Leo as they all jogged to the cross-country course, and Leo stepped up his pace, calling back over his shoulder as he did so. “Hey, don’t get too rowdy, or I might have to think of making you my stepson! Not gonna find it so funny when I ground you and take away your phone!”

He heard an annoyed grunt behind him and laughed into the gray, cloudy sky.

---

All the commotion earlier in the evening meant that Leo was up late finishing his homework. The TV was still on when he shuffled out to the kitchen in his slippers for a glass of water after finally finishing up, but he didn’t look into the living room. His dad slept in the recliner more often than in his parents’ bedroom these days.

Leo heard the creak of the chair and footsteps following him to the kitchen as he filled his glass and drank. He drained the glass, rinsed it, and replaced it in the cabinet before he turned to acknowledge his dad.

Silence stretched between them for several long minutes as they looked at each other in the weak fluorescent light cast by the bulb over the sink. Leo saw the shame written plainly across his father’s face and didn’t know what to say to it, so he kept his mouth shut and waited.

Eventually his dad let out the weariest sigh Leo had ever heard and looked away. When he spoke, it was so quiet that Leo almost didn’t catch it.

“I’m sorry, mijo.”

Leo wasn’t prepared for the way his throat suddenly tightened up. He didn’t know what to say to that either, so he looked away too.

“…You thought about seeing somebody? Like a professional?” He asked finally.

His dad sighed again and shoved his hands into the pocket of his sweatpants. “Don’t think we can afford it right now. Shrinks don’t come cheap.”

Leo wasn’t sure whether that was the truth or an excuse, and he didn’t want to wonder about it. He didn’t have much time to dwell on it anyways before he was unexpectedly folded into an awkward bear hug.

His dad stank of stale sweat and nicotine smoke. Leo didn’t know when the last time he’d showered was. He went around to the motel every other day or so to go through the motions when it was his turn to work, and then he sat in the recliner all night when he got home.

Leo hugged him back anyways, tight enough to bruise, like he might disappear if Leo loosened his grip the tiniest bit, just like when Dylan had clung onto him earlier in the evening.

Neither of them said anything else, and they eventually parted and went their separate ways again to go to bed, but Leo wasn’t the only one with tears prickling in his eyes when they pulled away.

---

Dylan was fussy on Monday mornings at the best of times. This was not the best of times. This was full-blown tantrum times, and Mom had been laid up with a migraine, so Leo was taking the brunt of it this morning.

First Dylan hadn’t been able to find his favorite shirt, the one with the dinosaur on it, and had been inconsolable when it was discovered that they had forgotten to put it in the laundry over the weekend. In the hour between getting him dressed and getting halfway to the elementary school, he had gone into a rapid downhill slide from inconsolable to absolutely wretched and was now trying to take Leo with him, judging by the way he kept kicking the back of the driver’s seat and shrieking “I don’t wanna go to school!” whenever Leo tried to say anything to him.

Leo caught sight of their church just before the turn-off that lead to the elementary school and made a snap decision, pulling into the parking lot. Nobody was there at this hour. He parked and killed the engine before unbuckling his seatbelt and getting out of the car. He opened Dylan’s door and squatted down to get at eye level with him, and said nothing while Dylan continued to scream and cry.

Eventually Dylan tired himself out, and maybe got just the tiniest bit self-conscious under Leo’s silent gaze, and his sobbing petered off into hiccups. Once he had calmed down to the point where he was no longer kicking and screaming, Leo undid Dylan’s seatbelt and lifted him out of the car.

“What’s going on with you today, buddy?” He asked, bouncing Dylan slightly. Leo thought that he should have been getting too big to carry easily by now, but Dylan had always been small for his age. Leo hoped that he was just a runty kid and that it wasn’t an omen of any potential health problems in Dylan’s future; he wasn’t sure they could deal with medical bills on top of everything else any time soon.

“I don’t wanna go to school,” Dylan said for probably the fiftieth time that morning, mumbling petulantly into Leo’s shoulder.

Leo patted him on the back, rocking him back and forth. “Why not?” Dylan didn’t answer right away, prompting Leo to ask again. “What’s wrong with going to school?”

“My teacher’s mean,” Dylan said finally.

“Yeah? How’s she mean?”

“She yells a lot, like Dad.”

Leo’s stomach dropped. He started rubbing soothing circles on Dylan’s back. “What’s she yell for, do you think?”

“Marco said it’s ‘cause she’s getting a diverse.”

Leo puzzled over that for a second before it clicked. “A divorce?”

“Uh-huh. Marco says her husband went and started dating a gringa. And then he got sent to the office because she heard him, and she yelled at everyone.”

Leo had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from bursting into inappropriate laughter. “Okay first of all, don’t you go around calling anybody gringo or gringa. Don’t copy Marco.”

Dylan shook his head vehemently. “Uh-uh. I don’t wanna get sent to the office.”

“No, you don’t,” Leo agreed. “Now, I can’t do anything about your teacher yelling, but think a little bit about how she feels, okay? She must be having a rough time. I’m sure she’s very sad right now and doesn’t know what to do.” He waited for an affirmative noise from Dylan before continuing. “It’s not right for her to deal with it by yelling at you guys, but you can’t do anything about it, so you have to try to not take it so hard, okay? She’s madder at her husband than at you. You just do your best to be good.”

Dylan didn’t seem especially satisfied by this, but he nodded. Leo hugged him tight and set him back down in the car. “Now, you’ve still gotta go to school. Will you be as good as you can be?”

Dylan nodded again, though sulkily. Leo wiped at Dylan’s tear-streaked face with his sleeve and brushed his hair out of his face. “If you’re good at school today, we can go get a Happy Meal after I pick you up, okay?”

That got a more cooperative response, so Leo buckled Dylan’s seatbelt and closed the door, heading back to the driver’s seat. As he was pulling out of the parking lot, Dylan spoke up again.

“Are Mom and Dad gonna get a divorce?”

It was a good thing the car was barely moving, because Leo might otherwise have swerved into a ditch. He kept his gaze straight ahead on the road as they pulled out, mulling over his response carefully before replying.

“I don’t know, buddy,” he said truthfully. “I hope not.”

Dylan was quiet for several minutes. “Did they like each other more before he left to go fight?”

Leo sighed quietly. He credited himself with staying mostly composed on the outside, though his stomach was tying itself in knots. “Maybe so. They still love each other, though.” He wasn’t so sure about that part being the truth. Their parents were trying, at least, but sometimes trying wasn’t enough.

“I don’t wanna go fight, Leo.”

I don’t either, buddy, Leo thought.

“You don’t have to worry about that for a long time,” he said. “Just don’t think about it at all right now, okay? You’ve got lots of other things to do. You guys are doing art projects this week, right?”

It was a clumsy change of subject at best, but Dylan perked up at the reminder. “Yeah, we’re making clay pots! We get to paint them when they’re done.”

Leo smiled. “Hey, that’s pretty cool. What are you going to paint on yours?”

Dylan stayed occupied discussing his future pot until they got to the elementary school. His eyes were still a bit red as Leo walked him to the door, but he doubted that anyone would find it cause for concern. Dylan cried at a lot of things and any school officials who were inclined to care were probably used to it by now.

Leo crouched down in front of Dylan before handing him his backpack and sending him inside. “Hey, listen,” he said in a low voice, “everything’s going to be alright. Okay?”

Dylan nodded back, and there was nothing but trust in his eyes. On a whim, Leo pulled him in for a tight hug. “Te amo. Remember to be good, okay?”

“Okay!” Dylan hugged his neck and then pulled away to run inside, almost forgetting his backpack. Leo called him back and handed it over before sending him on his way for real.

When all was said and done, Leo was a good fifteen minutes late to first period. “Car trouble,” he said when asked, too blithely for it to be anything but an obvious lie. Mrs. MacNamara gave him the evil eye, but was distracted enough by the end of class that she forgot to write him up for tardiness, so he considered it a win.

---

When running, Leo always fell into a pattern of alternating breaths, steps, and thoughts.

Inhale. Did we remember to set the pork out to defrost for dinner tonight? One, two. Exhale.

It was easiest during the stretches of the course where everyone would get spread out, and Leo was able to run for several minutes at least with nobody else in sight.

Inhale. If the film opens after a disaster, is it better to cut in flashbacks, or should you keep everything to spoken exposition? One, two. Exhale.

He could let his thoughts wander during these less intense stretches. At the beginning and end of the race, all thoughts left his head but the mantra of go go go and the awareness of his blood pounding in his ears.

Inhale. Are Mom and Dad going to get a divorce? One, two. Exhale.

Sometimes it was a relief when the runners began to bunch together again and the finish line was in sight. When that happened, Leo’s focus narrowed, gaze fixed firmly ahead, go go go, and he didn’t feel anything except exhilaration.

He didn’t usually come in first, but for one brief, shining moment, Leo flew.