A Short Story
by Augie Bareño
Muffin, whose real name is Alice King, is the daughter of Floyd Wayne King, superintendent of facilities for the 1935 Pacific Exposition in Balboa Park, San Diego.
King is a very busy man, as he has to make sure all the activities of the exposition and employees are in working order and that the public is enjoying themselves. Privately, he is grieving, having lost his wife to the dustbowl, back in his hometown of Lawton, Oklahoma and knowing that he cannot adequately take care of a twelve-year-old girl. On top of everything else, Muffin is a very curious and independent person, always seeking something. Perhaps, its attention she seeks, as a substitute for the loss of her mother.
All the workers and exhibitors in Pacific Exposition know that she is a sad little girl, so they all try to watch out for and comfort her whenever they can. The exposition is centered on villages, the industrial village, agricultural village, military village and the most popular and filled with thousands of kids running around, enjoying themselves is the Spanish village.
Muffin, had been drawn to Don Jose Puentes, in the Spanish village, because it was next door to the power plant, where her dad Wayne King, has his office and the display of Mexican candie making, which is run by Don Jose Puente’s and his Family always smells so good.
The display of Mexican candie making consisted of preparing the candie and then letting it dry in two great big wooden serving platters. As the candie cooled down, Chapito Acosta Meza, Don Jose assistant would set up a table and chair in front of the booth, where Don Jose would mesmerize all the kids who had gathered for the candie with his tales of magic and ancient Aztec wizardry. When he finished his stories, Don Jose would hand out candie to all the kids whether they could pay for it or not.
Since her mother passed, Muffin had lost her sense of family and even though her dad Wayne King, tried, he was always too busy, with his work to really pay Muffin much attention.
Don Jose had sensed that Muffin was a lonely child, who used her imagination, as a survival tool, she imagined she came from a family with lots of uncles and aunts and cousins, and that she lived a very happy life. She imagined many things; she imagined that all of Don Jose relatives working in the candie shop were her relatives as well. She would ask Don Jose if she could be in his family, he would smile and say of course, mijita, we are all in the family of man.
He took a liking to the little “Huerita,” Muffin, asking his oldest daughter Victoria, who was working in one of the most popular attraction at the exposition, the Japanese Garden, to talk to their cousin Manuelito Jones, who happened to be the only Mexican-American on the San Diego Police department at the time and in charge of security for the Spanish village, to look after Muffin, because she seemed to be spending too much time, wandering around the exposition grounds in the dark and by herself.
Chapito Acosta Meza, who had worked with Don Jose since they met crossing the border at Calexico, in 1922, was a very spiritual man, having come from the Kumeyay tribe in Santa Rosalia, Baja California, he very much believed in the power of nature and mother earth. He conducted his life in accordance with the stars and the movements of the earth and he believed that one day the ancients would reclaim the earth and that their return would be heralded, in a sound that would be understood, by only the most learned and righteous and transmitted through the most innocent soul of the earth.
Chapito, somehow sensed that the “Huerita,” Muffin King had been drawn to the Spanish village and Don Jose, as the innocent soul, who would reveal the return of the ancients. The teachings of the Kumeyay spoke of a passageway in which the innocent soul, would travel through, to fulfill the great destiny.
The advances in machinery and electricity on display at the exposition had scared many in the Spanish village and throughout the exposition, because they were pushing the boundaries of man over his environment. Crazy thing like a stove that cooks with no fire, phones that talk to each other, and so many other futuristic devices, that at their core seem to devalue humanity.
In the evenings, the pace of life in the Spanish village would slow down and at the rear of the candie shop, the Puente’s family and friends and other Spanish village worker families, would gather to eat and rest for the evening. Some would play music singing songs of mi Pueblo Querido, lost loves and beautiful women. Others would play cards or argue in Spanish about stopping Hitler in Europe.
The children would start to drift off to sleep, Muffin would wait with the Puente’s family, until her dad would come for her to take her home, to the superintendent house on the other side of Balboa Park, near Upas street.
Sometime, when her dad would be late to pick her up Don Jose, would let her sleep, next to him and Dona Rosa, so she could be safe and warm. Don Jose would notice how deeply, Muffin slept, she would have her eyes wide open, yet be fast a sleep, as if she were in a trance. Muffin King would fall into a deep trance, where crazy images and sounds would cloud her mind, she was seeing images of clouds, in the form of wolfs and other strange beast, coming at her with great speed, then a sound, so strange, would somehow, stop the beast clouds and a lite would appear to her as though it were beckoning her, to safety. While in her dreams, she couldn’t understand what was happening, at the end of the dream, she would always feel a great sense of pain and darkness, she would try to wake up to escape the darkness, but it wouldn’t let her.
Chapito, who is now convinced that Muffin King, the long awaited innocent soul, suddenly starts to feel so sick that death would be a relief. He knows something is very wrong, he needs someone to help explain, the significance of his illness and the terrible darkness, he feels in his soul. The only one who can help him is his Tia Apolonia, who lives in the Colonia Libertad, Tijuana, where the many of the Mexican Kumeyay, have settled, since coming from Baja, Ca Sur in 1900.
The old practices and customs are still very much alive in the “Libertad” and Tia Apolonia, at the age of 93, is a very respected Healer and Seer of things. The minute Chapito reaches Tia Apolonia house, she reads his facial expression and immediately tell him, he must return to San Diego, to help the innocent one find the way, no time to waste, as the fate of the world, rest on the innocent one understanding the sound and the signs of the returning ancients.
Its very late, there are no buses or taxi willing to serve the Colonia Libertad, during the daytime, let alone, the nite, so Chapito, has no other option but to start walking back to the border, he notices off in the distance a truck, which looks to be from the propane gas company Bustagas, he recognizes the driver, its Alberto Garcia, who work to set up a transportation union in Tijuana for Truck and Cab drivers. Chapito ask for a ride to the border. Alberto Garcia tells Chapito he will give him a ride to San Ysidro Blvd, in San Ysidro, but that as far as he can go. They cross the border at about 1 am, in the morning, the last street car, serving downtown and Balboa Park, has been gone for quite sometime, so Chapito knowing that there is an all nite taxi stand, next to Moreno family produce stand at the corner of Montgomery and Third Avenue, heads for Otay.
Chapito was always known to keep his money and valuables on him at all times, having learned, as a young man to be distrustful of bank and bankers. He starts hitchhiking up 101, trying to get to the taxi stand. As Chapito is walking on the side of Hwy 101, a flatbed Ford Deuce and half, being driven by a hard luck fella by the name of San Diego Smith, a name he got for doing a stretch in Alcatraz, for murdering his wife, stops and offers Chapito a ride, thankful Chapito offers to give him five dollars for gas if he would take him all the way to the Spanish Village in Balboa Park.
San Diego Smith agrees and as Chapito brings out his wallet, he notices how full the wallet is of money. In his mind, this will be an easy mark; he just needs a good place to do the deed. He drives a bit, then fakes a problem with the accelerator and tells Chapito he needs to pull over to check the problem. Smith slowly drives the flatbed into an unlit, area near Nestor. No sooner, had San Diego Smith stopped the truck, when he whips out a snub nosed 45 and yells at Chapito, give me your money and get out the truck or I will shoot you.
Chapito, senses that this real danger, yet he knows he is serving a higher purpose, by trying to reach the innocent soul, in his broken English, he tells San Diego Smith, this is not right, what you do here, I will not allow it, my path is set, and with that Chapito calls upon his vast experience in bar and cantina fighting and delivers a nasty round house right to the nose of San Diego Smith, blood squirts all over his face and he is blinded for a second. He recovers and is seriously angered, without thinking he unloads three shots into Chapito and takes off like a bat out of hell.
Chapito is dying on the road right outside of Nestor. The main road into Nestor, which is about 150 yards, west of where Chapito was shot, is well lighted because of Chieftain gas station, people in the gas station heard the shots, and they can see somebody is down.
They call the San Diego Police, who as a matter of practice sends out Manuelito Jones, on all calls near or at the border or those involving what appear to be Mexican nationals. Manuelito Jones reaches Chapito, who is barely alive, in his dying last words, he whispers to Man-uelito,”Tell the Huerita”, she is the “Proxima,” the passageway to the sound and the lite of ancients, are hers, she need not be afraid.