PASQUALE BOTTIGLIERI

DANCING WITH CARERO

“Do you see that sign over there?” the fat one asks. His voice is raspy from the dust in the air. “It says correctional facility.” He continues, emphasizing each syllable like he is trying to bite it off. “Fa-ci-li-ty.

Not Club Med, like you think it says. Comprende?”

They are running cattle out of the trailer into the stockade. There are three cows this time. One of them is a high headed woods cow with a big splotch of white on her distended belly.

The thinner of the two men says “You can learn a lot about people from animals, and the other way around too.”  He is not working as he talks. He is staring at the fat one. Finally, dramatically, he waves the driver away.

“So,so, so…you are a poet too.” says the fat one, shaking his head in mock disbelief.

“You know, you wear stripes, just like me. You know what I mean, man.”  says the thin one.  He stops again and points at the fat one. 

As this is happening, Carero is walking toward the outer door. He knows the teacher is coming for him. He also knows how he hates this place; the guards, the walls, the food, everything.

He hears the muffled sound of metal on metal. The lime green door eases open. Air, trapped like the men inside the Pod, rushes out into the hallway.

Right then, as Carero passes through the door, the faceless voice of the prison comes echoing down on him like it is sung from a pulpit. “Carero…Carero out, for the Stockade.”

The teacher, waiting in the hall, answers the camera dome in the ceiling. “I got Carero…Carero for the Stockade.” The Teacher is in mid sentence, talking to the ceiling. He is holding his ID away from his chest with two fingers. Carero comes out of the Pod, pushing the door closed behind him.

“Bye, bye Sweetie..Have a nice day.” says the voice from the pulpit to Carero.

Hearing this, Carero turns to the camera and thrusts his crotch toward the ceiling. Knowing better than to say what he is thinking, he points to his crotch and, with exaggerated strokes of his right arm, nods a few certified sneers to the camera. He is enjoying the opportunity to vent a little. Not wanting to turn away from the camera, he backs down the hallway toward the Teacher.

“ I guarantee you going to learn something today, Carero”  says the Teacher. He is looking at Carero’s back coming toward him. The Teacher is standing in the middle of the hallway. His voice bounces sharply off the tile walls.

“What you going to teach me, Teacher? What?” Carero asks. He spins himself around to face the Teacher, stopping a foot away. He tilts his head back.  He looks down at the Teacher across his high cheek bones, rocking his head slowly right, then left. He is standing a little spread legged, his knees slightly bent, one foot a little behind the other. “What?” he shouts. Both his hands are away from his body, palms slightly upward. “What?” he shouts again. Behind the Teacher, at the intersection of the main corridors, Carero sees three uniformed men. He knows they are watching him.

“Step to the wall!” says the Teacher. Carero moves quickly to his right. He walks along the wall toward the intersection where the three men are standing.

“C’mon man. Show me something. Teach me something. C’mon man.” says Carero.

The Teacher walks along side of him. They look at each other across their shoulders. They are walking almost in stride with each other.

“I’m not going to teach you anything. The cows are going to teach you.”  says the Teacher. They round the corner at the intersection. The Teacher nods to the uniforms and they nod back.

All the while they are walking, Carero is talking. He is taunting. He is cursing. He is challenging everybody he sees.

“You are going to learn something today.” says the teacher for the third time. Carero spits and curses. Once out of sight of the uniforms, Carero pushes the Teacher away from him.

When they get to the stockade, the cattle are quiet in the center pen. The Teacher calls to the two men.

They are still arguing with each other. “Go on inside and work the kill floor. Carero is going to work outside with me today. If I need you, I’ll call you out.”

The fat one doesn’t like the idea. “You sure, man. You know, Carero, he….” the fat one starts to say. Carero is staring at him. As soon as he starts to speak, Carero steps toward him. The fat one holds up his hand, palm out toward Carero and, looking down at the ground, he says “No problem, man, no problem. We going." Carero spits on the ground behind them as they walk toward the front door of the building.

The teacher kicks some dung off the driveway onto the grass.  The Teacher is staring at the cows in the center pen. His hands are on his hips. He is sucking air through his front teeth.

“You got three woods cows in there, Carero. They are not used to being in a pen or around people on foot. I want that red one up first. She’s a high headed cow, so watch yourself in there.”  He places his hand on Carero’s upper arm as he speaks to him, but Carero brushes it away.

Carero says nothing as he opens the gate to the inner stockade. Another gate separates him from the cows. He comes around from behind them through the back gate. The Teacher nods his approval and climbs the outside fence. As Carero enters the pen, the red one backs up and stares at him. She drops her head and blows at him . The other two quickly move to the side. She takes a few false steps toward him.

He is clicking softly through his teeth. They are staring at each other. Finally, she rushes him.

Carero is a big man, but agile for his size. He steps behind the hitch pole in the center of the pen, she on one side, he on the other. She is snorting now, more deeply, more angrily. Her eyes are distended. She is sucking in air, snorting it out her open mouth and nose. Carero reaches around the pole and grabs a horn.

She pulls him hard against the pole then drives her shoulders past him, the suddenness of it pulling then pushing him off balance against the back fence. She is trying to pin him against the fence and he is sidestepping, waltzing with her, avoiding her thrashing 1200 pounds. She throws him sideways and he hits the fence hard with his head and side.

They dance this way for 20 minutes while the Teacher watches from the top of the fence. Finally, she tires. She stands still in the middle of the pen. She will not move, not for all of Carero’s clicking and clapping. The Teacher throws a loop over her horns and, with the two other men from inside, they pull her around to the knocking pen. The Teacher quickly dispatches her.

Carero is sweating and pumped from the exertion. “No problem, I told you, man. No problem.” He is still

breathing hard. He is running the other two cows into position when the Teacher calls to him from inside.

“Carero,..finish what you are doing and come in here. I want to show you something.”

The Teacher is talking to the Inspector as Carero walks onto the kill floor. “Those are deep bruises on both her hips and over her tail head. It looks to me like she got roughed up somehow.” says the Inspector as Carero walks up to the back end of the skinning cradle.

“She’s a fence jumper.” says the Teacher. “I heard them talking about this red fence jumper. They must have beat her up pretty good a couple of days ago getting her out of the Palmetto.”

The Teacher stands to the side a little so Carero can see the bruises. He points to the biggest one and says “That is why she fought you so hard, Carero; because she was hurting, because she was in a lot of pain.”

The teacher is talking slowly now, and the Inspector is looking down at the ground. Carero is silent. The Teacher says “Come over here. I want you to see something else.”  He walks to the side and reaches in through to open abdomen. “Here, look at this, Carero. Look at this.” The Teacher gently, slowly lifts the uterus up through the mass of intestines. There is a big, near term calf inside. The shape is clear as the uterus is stretched. “Here, give me a knife!” says the Teacher and when he has it in his free hand, he gently opens the uterine wall and exposes the calf’s head. “You see why she fought you, Carero. She is fresh. She is …was going to be a mama.”.

The Teacher lets the calf slide back inside. He is looking directly at Carero, and there is no sound in the room. “What do you think, Carero. What did she teach you?”

Carero does not answer. His face is a blank. He washes his hands at the sink and leaves the room. He walks to the classroom and sits down at one of the desks, the one he always sits in when he is in class, the one in the back by the wall. He sits with his head in his hands, staring at the ground.

An hour later, the Teacher comes into the classroom. Carero is still sitting with his head in his hands. “What did you learn from her, Carero?”  asks the teacher, this time in a low voice. There is no response. The Teacher pulls a desk closer and sits down. He is leaning toward Carero and speaking very softly, almost in a whisper. “What did you learn, man?” The Teacher gently punches Carero’s left chest.

“I didn’t learn nothing, …man, nothing.” says Carero.

Now there is a glint of moisture on his high cheekbone. He wipes his hand on his lab coat. He stares blankly at the floor. With his knees spread wide apart, he bends to bury his face in his thick hands.  Now, he inhales a deep breath. He is holding it. Now he lets it out with a visceral groan that comes from somewhere deep down inside of himself. “They did my mother like that…they made my mother crazy like that” says Carero through a deep sob.

After a few moments, he catches himself. He looks up and his eyes are wet. He stands. He looks down at the Teacher, still sitting. He walks out of the classroom without saying a word.

Four months later, almost to the day, and only six days after his release from jail, Juan Carero is killed by a small, angry man with a shotgun. He is trying to stop the man from beating a bruised and bloody young girl. The man is beating her with a piece of knotted rope. Carero chases him into a nearby trailer and as he goes through the door after him, he is shot once in the neck and face with a 12 gauge. His heart stops in the ambulance after a frantic effort to save his life.  

Pasquale was born and raised in the Bronx, a member of an immigrant Italian family, first a meat cutter, then a software engineer, then a counselor, teacher and finally a writer of sorts. Most importantly, the bubble that inevitably comes with upper middle class upbringing ruptured on the jagged reality of adjudicated adolescent counseling and the insides of a state penitentiary.