"Fernie vs. Mexico" by Charles Haddox

Fernie vs. Mexico

Fernie Gonzalez and I used to pretend we were brain surgeons. Fernie would be the patient and lie on a bench in front of the kindergarten that faced the playground, while I — the surgeon — stood next to him and operated on his head. Since the surgical instruments were my fingers, the operation consisted of moving them over his scalp in a stylized way. When the operation was finished, we’d switch roles. Sometimes we’d pretend that the patient was a celebrity, and whoever was playing the surgeon would have to give an imaginary press conference afterward to report on the patient’s prognosis.
On one hot June day near the end of our quarter, my patient failed to show up. Fernie’s mom had called the school and said that he was sick. But I knew he was just suffering from “soccer flu.” The 2006 World Cup was in full swing, and his mom let him stay home to watch Mexico-Argentina in the Round of 16. She even made soccer ball cookies with royal icing for Fernie and his grandfather to eat during the game. And caramel-filled coyotas that they could dip into hot chocolate. Fernie was celebrating with his grandfather, and I was without my usual recess and surgical partner.
All the other kids in the playground were playing basketball, or card games, or doing chin-ups on the monkey bars. All except Joe Dafter. Joe was considered a “bad kid” by the school and had only escaped a year of in-school suspension for peeing on the toilet paper in the girl’s restroom because he came from a troubled background. His mother was in prison, and he lived with his elderly grandmother, so the principal decided to give him a break. Joe was sitting all alone under a tree. I decided to try and start a conversation with him.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“The sky,” he said.
“Ha, ha. What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
I always thought that Joe looked like a cartoon character. His head was perfectly square, and his eyes and teeth were too big for his face. I was about to give up on him, but he smiled and asked me, “Do you want to go up on the roof?”
“What?”
“The school roof. I know where Mr. Gallardo keeps his ladder.”
Mr. Gallardo was the school janitor. He was shaggy-haired and bearded, so we nicknamed him “Pelos de León.”
“What if somebody sees us?”
“We’ll climb up behind the gym.”
“Where’s the ladder?” I asked, stalling for time.
“In a shed behind the Boy Scout hut.”
“Huh.”
“Well...?”
“Sure. Why not?”
Our school had been built around 1930, in a style that combined Art Deco with the type of penitentiary layout that was popular back then. It was a temple of learning intended to intimidate rather than enlighten. An ornamental concrete tower rose above the rest of the structure and could only be accessed by an iron ladder bolted to its side. I prayed that the tower wasn’t our ultimate destination, but with Joe Dafter, I knew it was a definite possibility.
Using Mr. Gallardo’s extension ladder, we made it onto the roof of the gym. My whole body was tingling. I looked out at the surrounding neighborhood: aging brick bungalows and San Francisco-style apartment buildings, the El Pollo Grocery, San Jose Church with a silver dome, and a vacant lot where Fernie and I would sometimes start fires.
“You want to climb the tower?” Joe asked.
“I don’t know,” I answered nervously. “You can try it, though.”
“Don’t be a chicken.”
“Okay.”
Joe scrambled across the school roof and climbed the rusty ladder on the side of the tower. He disappeared into an opening just below the tower’s pointed roof. Holding my breath, I followed him to the tower’s base. He stuck his head out of the opening and yelled, “Pigeon poop!”
“Quiet,” I said.
I was halfway up the ladder when I heard a different voice.
“¿Que esta pasando?”
It was Mr. Gallardo, his leonine head peeking over the roof of the gym.
“Nobody here but us pigeons,” Joe said from inside the tower.
Mrs. Little, the principal, decided to reprimand Joe and me in front of our whole class, in the middle of the playground. Mr. Gallardo carried off his ladder, cursing in Spanish under his breath and giving us dirty looks. “Pinche malcriados,” he mumbled. I was terrified that Mrs. Little was going to call my parents, but she didn’t even give us in-school suspension. She just yelled at us. We had “Joe Dafter: troubled background” immunity.
“I should call the police,” she said. “If you two were a year older, you’d be in jail right now.”
I noticed that Joe was giving her the finger behind his back, and I struggled to keep a straight face during the rest of the scolding.
Fernie showed up the next day, fully recovered from his “illness.” My classmates and I were in mourning after learning that Argentina had beaten Mexico 2 to 1 in overtime. Surprisingly, Fernie was the only kid who didn’t seem upset.
“What?” I finally asked him. “Were the soccer ball cookies and coyotas enough for you?”
“Hey, at least I got a day off from school.”
At recess, he sheepishly admitted that he had been secretly rooting for Argentina all along.
“Brain surgery?” he asked, quickly trying to change the subject.
“Okay. But you’re going to be the patient. And I’ve got a new assistant. Joe, come on over.”
“Joe’s playing?”
“Yeah. He’s okay.”
Fernie lay down on the bench, and Joe and I began operating on him. I grabbed a tuft of Fernie’s hair and pulled it hard.
“Cut it out, cabrón,” he whined.
“Sorry. Brain surgery’s painful sometimes.” I was still frustrated and angry—though as a surgeon, I should have been able to put my feelings aside—and it was not so much because of Fernie’s betrayal as Mexico’s devastating loss once again in the World Cup Round of 16.

Charles Haddox

Charles Haddox lives in El Paso, Texas, on the U.S.-Mexico border, and has family roots in both countries. His work has appeared in a number of journals, including Chicago Quarterly Review, The Normal School, Folio, and Stonecoast Review. charleshaddox.wordpress.com.

Headshot: Lizabeth Berkeley

Photo Credit: Staff