My name is Wendell Espana, Wendell Liverpool Espana or maybe it isn't Espana but Span or Aspen, I never found out for sure, I’ve never seen it written down, Wendell Liverpool Span or Aspen, span means distance, a while, and aspen means trembling poplar, some say I tremble, though before knowing who my father and my mother were, well, father and mother has kind of a hard ring to it, I usually say papa and mama, but, anyway, before knowing who my papa and my mama were, I called myself Wendell Liverpool Lochiel, but it doesn't matter, my name is Wendell Espana, that's how I always write it, or Span or Aspen, and the pages that follow are mine, I wrote them myself in my own handwriting, and my papa, no, I’m going to get used to saying it the right way, my father was the owner of a tame caiman, half-owner at first with Taco Lopes, though some call him Taco Mendes, but later he bought out Taco's share, it's the best way to avoid arguments, a caiman that spoke a few languages, English, Spanish, and also imitated the neighing of a horse and recited poetry, that's impossible, Zuro Millor told him one night, the lousy half-breed that used to spit up blood and sleep with an inflatable doll named Jacqueline, it seems to me the business with the inflatable dolls came years later but I have no way of being sure, I'm telling it the way they told me, and everyone knows that Jacqueline the inflatable doll never had fleas or got drunk on gin, the one who was covered in fleas, lice, and crabs was Taco Mendes, though some call him Taco Lopes, he had snails growing on him, actually had snails growing in his armpits and he got drunk on cologne, my fathers tame caiman could also sing some simple songs, that's a lie Zuro Millor told him one night, that lousy half-breed who was always horny and kept jerking off all over, everywhere, in the snack bar at Smith's Motor Service, at the Grau funeral home, at the emergency hospital, at the beauty parlor, at wakes for dead children, so naturally my father killed him, he butted him hard in the chest and killed him, well, he knocked the wind out of him and the lousy half-breed went off and died by himself, it amounts to the same thing, it's always hard to tell, only God knows the exact moment of death, the chief of police told my father, look I'm going to keep on kicking you until I get tired of it and then I'll leave you at the border, that lousy half-breed, that lousy mestizo isn't even worth the expense of the paperwork, he said, but the chief of police wasn't really a bad fellow, he only used his feet and didn't even laugh when a kick missed its mark, the chief's name was Sam W. Lindo and his teeth and gums were black from chewing tobacco, the kind he liked best was Black Maria, very sticky and sweet, very greasy and with a strong aroma, and contrary to what Sam W. Lindo used to say he had nothing to do with the lynching of Marco Saragosa the traveling con artist, we used to finish work at seven and then Gerard Ospino and I would go through the following seven-step procedure: wash up a little, comb our hair with the parts to the right, the rest of the week we would comb our hair with the parts to the left, splash some aftershave on our faces, put on clean clothes, take the train from Tanque Verde to the south of Sabino Canyon, to Sabino Otero, where the romeno bush adorns the countryside with its little white and lonely flowers, there's a lot of loneliness around here, and rosemary grass is used to fix up vaginas, to fake virginities, and my friend and I still have two steps to go, drinking beer and pissing on the Chinaman's door, Gerard was a missionary in Port Tiritianne, though nobody knows exactly where that is, a Baptist missionary, he also hunted whales in Adehe Land, Orson the botanist already told that story in his Memorial and there's no need to repeat it here, it was hot in the Anteater saloon, it's true, very hot, but the beer was good and the owner was always half-drunk and sometimes he forgot to charge us, Sam W. Lindo never paid but didn't drink too much either, the owner was a redheaded Irishman named Erskine Carlow, they called him Anteater because he had only one testicle and a nose like a pool cue, red with lots of pimples, it's all pretty hard to understand but it happened just the way I'm telling it, I swear I'm not lying, until I was twenty or twenty-two I just didn't know who I was, where I came from, in other words didn't know who my parents were, until I was told about my mother who worked as a whore in Tomistón, the Tomistón newspaper is called The Tombstone Epitaph, Tombstone doesn't mean tomb of stone but rather stone of tomb, gravestone, some people translate backwards, Tomistón lies in Cochise County, among the Dragoon, Burro, and Mule Mountains, to the south of town stand the heights of Huachuca, in Tomistón, people live with death and pride themselves on knowing how to kill and also how to die, men kill and own up to what they’ve done and then die with dignity, it's a local custom, and I tell you that my mother acknowledged me, I would never have had the guts, but my mother acknowledged me, I didn't even know she was my mother until she told me and she didn't know that she was my mother until she saw the mark, she was sixteen years older than me and was making a good living, she never lacked for customers because she refused them nothing, she never got tired, and she cried whenever they asked her about it, you have to pay for that, the brand you have on your ass, around here they use the word ass for women's frying pans, that is, what the Spaniards call cunt but I call the backside the ass, I do like the Spaniards do, it's a very lovely word, the mark that you have there on your ass, you know, right where the skin turns into hair, she told me this on September 20, 1917, though maybe I have the date wrong, the same day that Augustas Jonatas's train derailed, full of Indians almost all suffering from paludism, they were taking them so that they would die far away, that mark that you have there, she said, your father put it there to celebrate the new century, on your fifth birthday, or, rather, when you were old enough to feel the branding-iron, and then he left you in an orphanage in a far-off city, he never wanted to tell me which one, your father ordered me to do dirty things with his caiman, that lecherous caiman, like a ram or a Portuguese, your father called him "alligator" and laughed a lot, and when the chief of police left him half-dead at the border, after kicking him a hundred times and spitting on him for more than three hours, your father boarded the freighter Fool's Wedding, and in no time he caught smallpox and the captain ordered him thrown overboard twenty miles from Ankororoka, to the south of Madagascar, it would have been glorious if the sharks had eaten him alive, but no, not even that, the brand that I have on my ass is a flower, it's still very clear, my mother went on, before sending you children to the orphanage your father wanted to brand you all, I don't know why he bothered if he was losing all of you anyway, but he waited until you were all five or six years old so you would understand and would remember him for the rest of your lives, your father gave me eleven children but you're the only one I've found, the first thing that I do when I go to bed with a young man is look at his ass . . .