William Goyen (1915–1983)

More like a poetic apparition, narrated in earthy Spanglish by a Chicana hermaphrodite squatting in the dry rut of an East Texas riverbed beneath a crumbling railroad trestle. Arcadio was raised in a brothel above a Chinese restaurant in Memphis, then indentured to a roving freakshow-carnival after her father disappeared. S/he has stories to tell, and all the torments of Man & Woman in one body. His mother charmed a rattlesnake with “La Paloma,” and killed a man mid-coitus. A younger half-brother died of hunger. A paralyzed man took his first steps in 38 years and was arrested for jaywalking. Jesucristo was a red-headed woman. Rathawks and moaning bullfrogs and a lock of hair from a dead girl in a tobacco pouch. A dwarf burned to ashes in a posture of prayer, after a carnival fire set by a hairlipped lion, still on the loose. A man spoke so many foul words that the Lord one day just twisted his mouth around under his ear and left it that way. Everyone has at one time or another escaped from a Missoura jail. Everything has a machine in it except God. The Devil always whispers in our left ear. “What kind of salvation keeps me from killing my father?” with crazy orange wine eyes and a curse between his legs. Arcadio he carries his stump-kneed father out of town on his back until the old man throws himself to the ground, tears off his clothes in a whirl of red dust and clubs himself to death with his infernal member. It may be a Christian parable, but I don’t know. Is everyone forgiven?… (mer)