The Barbarian Nurseries A Novel - By Hector Tobar Page 0,101

awakened in the half hour it took Araceli and the boys to return to Pacific Avenue and cross to the other side, into a neighborhood where they were greeted by the creaking springs of two sets of garage doors opening. Freshly showered patriarchs began to retrieve oil-barrel grills, lawn chairs, and other Fourth of July accoutrements, while behind kitchen curtains stoves sizzled with cholesterol-spiking breakfasts. Brandon felt an order in these sounds and their growing volume, the power of routines repeated behind fences and inside homes, while Keenan grew more convinced they were closer to his grandfather, because these were noises he made with his clumsy, old-man hands. As the day progressed further the neighborhood noises would grow louder and more varied: they would become electric and gas-powered, amplified and transmitted far beyond property lines, with pirated MP3 melodies and power-tool percussion jams ruining the quiet inside next-door living rooms where old men were trying to read, goddamnit, to bedrooms a block away where adolescents were trying to sleep past noon. The growing holiday din reminded every resident of the existence of their many neighbors and all their irritating habits, of their penchant to shout for Mom and their poorly maintained toilets, their excessive hair-drying, and how they badgered their sons and daughters and disrespected their parents. With each hour the noise grew, and it grated, serving as further proof, if any were needed, of the central, inescapable fact that subtracted from Huntington Park’s pleasantness: the existence of too many people, too close to one another, in too little space.

The residents of Huntington Park were going to try to forget these many irritations during a Fourth of July they planned to fill with hamburgers and carne preparada with cilantro, and mesquite charcoal and the not-necessarily-patriotic acts of crabgrass-lounging and beer-can-lifting. It was a time of down-market plenty in Huntington Park, thanks to second mortgages and their illusory windfalls, and the extra cash on hand from copious overtime working at ports and railyards and warehouses unloading goods from an Industrial Revolution taking place on the other side of the Pacific. Les va bien, Araceli observed, because the Americans still have plenty of money to spend on the things that people like me and these people can do for them. Araceli did not know, however, that the flow of containers marked with Asian logograms had begun to slow, imperceptibly, and that the burden of mortgages here had begun to grow, as it had elsewhere, leaving the working people of Huntington Park worried about all the purchased pleasures of second cars and debt incurred when garages were converted to playrooms, and thus a bit relieved, relaxed, and decompressed by the prospect of enjoying a free pleasure this evening. For the Fourth of July there would be no tickets to buy, no parking to pay for, no lines to form, but simply the joy of resting and having the show brought to them when the inky curtain of the post-sunset sky fell over the horizon. At that hour they would turn their lawn chairs and their necks toward Salt Lake Park and the municipal fireworks show, and all the neighborhoods across the city grid would be joined together by the light and the explosions of Chinese powder, louder than any other noise on that noisy day. They were sounds of simulated battle meant to unite the respectfully quiet families of Huntington Park and their dysfunctionally loud neighbors in place and purpose, reminding them all of the name of the sovereign land upon which they were standing: Los Estados Unidos de América, the USA. It was a land held together by paychecks with tax deductions and standardized forms available in just about any language, and police cruisers that sometimes stopped late at night at the homes of the most serious violators of aural tranquillity, to tell them to keep it down, if you would, please. And it was home to a suburb where two boys wandered with their caretaker, scanning the doors and windows for a grandfather who had never lived there.

The rest of the home was as perfect as the kitchen. Maureen found no truant dishes wandering about the house, no bowls filled with cereal and curdling milk in the living room. No dirty clothes marred the hallways, none of the small Danish building blocks were tossed about, the windows were free of smudges. In Araceli’s orderliness Maureen sensed an explanation for the emptiness. They’ve gone off to do something, it seems, and Scott