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The King Is Always Above the People
Daniel Alarcon
Longlisted for the National Book Award for FictionAn unforgettable collection of stories from Daniel Alarcón, one of the New Yorker’s 20 best writers under 40, and one of the best storytellers of our time.Migration. Betrayal. Family secrets. Doomed love. Uncertain futures. In Daniel Alarcón’s hands, these are transformed into deeply human stories with high stakes.In ‘The Thousands’, people are on the move and forging new paths; hope and heartbreak abound. A man deals with the fallout of his blind relatives' mysterious deaths and his father's mental breakdown and incarceration in ‘The Bridge’. A gang member discovers a way to forgiveness and redemption through the haze of violence and trauma in ‘The Ballad of Rocky Rontal’. And in the tour de force novella, ‘The Auroras’, a man severs himself from his old life and seeks to make a new one in a new city, only to find himself seduced and controlled by a powerful woman.Richly drawn, full of unforgettable characters, The King is Always Above the People reveals experiences both unsettling and unknown, and yet eerily familiar in this new world.
Copyright (#u776ef136-4f89-546b-9a85-0c5d7a3e88d1)
4th Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.4thEstate.co.uk (http://www.4thestate.co.uk/)
This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2018
Copyright © 2017 Daniel Alarcón
Cover design by Heike Schüssler
Cover images © plainpicture/Mira/Conny Ekstrom
Daniel Alarcón asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
The following stories have been published previously, in slightly different form: “The Thousands” (McSweeney’s); “The King Is Always Above the People,” “The Provincials,” and “The Bridge” (Granta); “Abraham Lincoln Has Been Shot” (Zoetrope); and “República and Grau” (The New Yorker).
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins
Source ISBN: 9780007517367
Ebook Edition © February 2018 ISBN: 9780007517374
Version: 2018-01-02
Praise for The King Is Always Above the People: (#u776ef136-4f89-546b-9a85-0c5d7a3e88d1)
‘Alarcón is an empathic observer of the isolated human, whether isolated by emigration or ambition, blindness or loneliness, poverty or war. His stories have a reporter’s mix of kindness and detachment, and perhaps as a result, his endings land like a punch in the gut … His purpose isn’t to approve or condemn, or to liberate. He’s writing to show us other people’s lives, and in every case, it’s a pleasure to be shown’
NPR
‘Superb … Throughout the collection, Alarcón writes with a spellbinding voice and creates a striking cast of characters. Each narrative lands masterfully and memorably, showcasing Alarcón’s immense talent’
Publishers Weekly
‘Alarcón is a truly impressive writer’
Boston Globe
‘Alarcón throws his characters into high-stakes situations to draw out humanity where it seems little hope is left’
Washington Post
‘Polished and poetic’
Vanity Fair
‘Elegant’
San Francisco Chronicle
‘Smart, political and incredibly engaging … Alarcón introduces readers to countless unforgettable characters along the way’
Nylon
‘Dynamic novelist and journalist Alarcón delivers a collection of loosely affiliated short stories, each buzzing and alive … Alarcón’s gift for generating real, tangible characters propels readers through his recognizable yet half-real worlds’
Booklist
‘Showcases his talent as a master storyteller’
Buzzfeed
Dedication (#u776ef136-4f89-546b-9a85-0c5d7a3e88d1)
FOR THE THREAD™
Contents
Cover (#ucdf1b6f5-20e9-5b94-adf3-eaa111cd4999)
Title Page (#ud4b87f51-b8e7-5e95-9624-321ffed4ec6f)
Copyright
Praise for The King Is Always Above the People
Dedication
The Thousands
The Ballad of Rocky Rontal
The King Is always Above the People
Abraham Lincoln Has Been Shot
The Provincials
Extinct Anatomies
República and Grau
The Bridge
The Lord Rides a Swift Cloud
The Auroras
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Daniel Alarcón
About the Publisher
THE THOUSANDS (#u776ef136-4f89-546b-9a85-0c5d7a3e88d1)
THERE WAS NO MOON that first night, and we spent it as we spent our days: your fathers and your mothers have always worked with their hands. We came in trucks, and cleared the land of rock and debris, working in the pale yellow glow of the headlights, deciding by touch and smell and taste that the land was good. We would raise our children here. Make a life here. Understand that not so long ago, this was nowhere. The land had no owner, and it had not yet been named. That first night, the darkness that surrounded us seemed infinite, and it would be false to say we were not afraid. Some had tried this before and failed—in other districts, on other fallow land. Some of us sang to stay awake. Others prayed for strength. It was a race, and we all knew it. The law was very clear: while these sorts of things were not technically legal, the government was not allowed to bulldoze homes.
We had until morning to build them.
The hours passed, and by dawn, the progress was undeniable, and with a little imagination one could see the bare outlines of the place this would become. There were tents made of tarps and sticks. There were mats of woven reeds topped with sewn-together rice sacks, and sheets of pressboard leaning against the scavenged hoods of old cars. Everything the city discarded we’d been saving for months in preparation for this first night. And we worked and we worked, and for good measure spent the last hours of that long night drawing roads on the earth, just lines of chalk then, but think of it, just think … We could see them—the avenues they would be—even if no one else could. By morning, it was all there, this ramshackle collection of odds and ends, and we couldn’t help but feel pride. When we finally stopped to rest, we realized we were cold, and on the soft slope of the hill, dozens of small fires were built, and we warmed ourselves, each taking comfort in it, in our numbers, in this land we had chosen. The morning dawned pale, the sky scoured clean and cloudless. “It’s pretty,” we said, and yes, the mountains were beautiful that morning.
They still are. The government arrived before noon and didn’t know what to do. The bulldozers came, and we stood arm in arm, encircling what we had built, and did not move. “These are our homes,” we said, and the government scratched its febrile head. It had never seen houses like ours—our constructions of wire and aluminum, of quilts and driftwood, of plastic tarps and rubber tires. It came down off its machines to inspect these works of art. We showed the government the places we’d made, and eventually it left. “You can have this land,” it said. “We don’t want it anyway.”
The newspapers wondered where the thousands had come from. How we had done it. And the radio asked as well, and the television sent cameras, and little by little we told our story. But not all of it. We saved much for ourselves, like the words of the songs we sang, or the content of our prayers. One day, the government decided to count us, but it didn’t take long before someone decided the task was impossible, and so new maps were drawn, and on the empty space that had existed on the northeastern edge of the city, the cartographers now wrote The Thousands. And we liked the name because numbers are all we ever had.
Of course, we are many more than that now.
THE BALLAD OF ROCKY RONTAL (#ulink_07120712-9a76-5457-bea4-9c21d28a743f)
1
Let’s say your given name is Adrano Rontal, but they call you Rocky. Let’s say you’re a poor boy growing up in a poor city in a poor region of a very rich country. The richest in the world, or so they tell you. Let’s say there’s no evidence of that, at least not any that you’ve seen.
You have five brothers and a little sister. You’re not the oldest, but you are the bravest. Brave, even though you’re small. Brave, even when you shouldn’t be.
Let’s say the welfare check comes on the first and the fifteenth. Your father gets his cut first. For whiskey. No one sees him until night falls … And then, it isn’t your older brothers who protect your mom.
Instead, it’s you. Let’s say they dress you in layer after layer of clothes: extra sweaters, long-sleeve shirts, jackets, an ad hoc suit of armor, so stiff you can barely bend your arms. And your father, he beats you with a nightstick, like the kind cops use. And still you don’t cower.
Life has a way of punishing brave boys like you. Life has a way of making brave boys like you punish themselves. Particularly here. Where you live. You already know that.
One night your father gets carried away. He locks you in the closet, and your mother spends the night sleeping with her back to the door, to protect you.
In the morning, she sneaks the keys out of your father’s pocket. Let’s say she opens up the closet. And you’re caked in blood.
And so she kicks him out. A not insignificant act of bravery for a young woman with little education and few prospects, suddenly alone, with six children to feed.
You don’t know it yet, but you’re full of guilt. Full of hate.
Within a year, your older brothers are in juvenile. Now you’re ten years old. Now you’re the man of the house.
Let’s say one day a social worker comes by to check on you and your brothers. There’s no food in the pantry. You’re humiliated. You and your baby sister and your younger brothers are sent to a children’s shelter. You escape that same night and come home, but it’s your mother who convinces you, with tears in her eyes, to go back. “Don’t you wanna be with your younger brothers?” “Yes, jefita.” So you spend three months there, in a foster home, across the street from a methadone clinic. You recognize the junkies when they come by. You know them from the neighborhood. “Hey, Rocky,” they say. You can’t wait to go home.
You promise yourself you’ll never let the food run out again.
So when you come home, you start stealing. The first time you ever get busted it’s for breaking into a fruit stand. But before long you move on to bigger things. Let’s say you burglarize houses, taking anything that can be sold, but paying special attention to the food. You fill your father’s old duffel bag with cereal, with bread. You’re obsessed with the pantry. Obsessed with keeping it full. A week before the food runs out, you’re already in motion.
And then: at thirteen you’ve got your first .38. It’s the year you graduate to boosting cars. Let’s say you get a list, three or four a week. Make, model, year, color. You’re going to school now and then, but it’s like you’re not really there. You have other business.
At fifteen, you get picked up and sent to juvenile, like your brothers before you. You see friends from the neighborhood, tough, unsmiling boys just like you. You meet others, from all over California. And this is the first time you realize what you are. Or rather, this is the first time you realize what the world thinks you are.
Let’s say you’re sitting in a group meeting when the counselor calls you a gang member.
You’re offended. You hang around with people of the same cloth, the same experience, the same sufferings. These are your friends, like family. You don’t think of yourselves as gang members, but of course, technically, that’s what you are.
And let’s say you embrace the label.
When you get out, you start doing robberies. Holding up liquor stores, convenience stores. Let’s say you carry a gun, and every night you wave it in the faces of frightened cashiers. You don’t just take the bills; you take the change too. And at the end of the night, when you come home, let’s say you empty your pockets, slipping these coins under the pillows of your little brothers and your sister. It’ll make them smile when they wake up. They’ll know it was you who left the coins, even if they won’t know where they came from.
2
This is a story of three terrible crimes. The first is your childhood.
Here’s the second. Let’s say you’re seventeen when a crew of Sureños come up from Los Angeles. They’re called Vicky’s Town, or VST, and it isn’t long before they’re tagging in the neighborhood.
“Kick on back,” you say. You let it be known. This is how wars begin.
Your house is sprayed with bullets one night when you aren’t home. Your mother tells you, and then immediately regrets it. You know what to do. She begs you not to. Let’s say you do it anyway.
This is it. It’s two in the morning when you drive to your victim’s house. Let’s say you shoot him at close range with a sawed-off pump shotgun. Let’s say his mother and his little sister are in the house.
You don’t let your mother come to the trial. Let’s say you tell your brothers not to let her near the courthouse, not under any circumstances. But she’s your mother, and she comes. Years later, she’ll tell you, “You were always a good boy, mijo …” And you’ll find it astonishing she could say that, much less believe it.
But she does.
Let’s say the day she comes to the courthouse is the day the coroner testifies about your victim’s wounds. You’ll remember this for a long time. He’s on the stand, giving a detailed medical account of what happened, and your mother is sitting behind you, hiding her face with both hands. And on the other side of the courtroom, your victim’s mother is doing the same.
It’s the first time you feel ashamed of what you’ve done. If someone had intervened, right then, let’s say you could’ve been saved.
You’re sentenced to twenty-seven years to life.
You’re inside a year and a half when your little sister and a friend of hers disappear. It’s 1982, and this is the third terrible crime. Your sister’s name is Renee and her friend is named Nancy, and they’re both thirteen years old. Let’s say they were last seen on the avenue, getting into a car with two men. The two girls are found a week later, facedown in a ditch on the outskirts of town.
