Tooth Man: Stories from Nicaragua's Mosquito Coast

By Eric Timar

Short stories from the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua. A fish soup love potion; a theft of gold from an old man’s mouth; a rum-powered boat launching; revolutionary washing machines; a dreadlocked baseball prodigy; more. Nine interconnected stories; 142 pages.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eric Timar
• Release date: Dec 14, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301269068

Eric Timar

Eric Timar lives in Virginia with his family and rabbits. He can count to ten in Miskitu.

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Tooth Man

Stories from Nicaragua’s Mosquito Coast

Copyright © 2011 Eric Burnett Timar

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White Cedar Press

New York - Miami - Auckland

Contents

Chico Largo

Tooth Man

Father Juan’s Boat

Mr. Gordon

Science

Circulation

The Peruvians

Seasons

Nicaragua Spin Cycle

Chico Largo

Eyes in the lemon trees. Jay strode past the stand of trees that grew in the yard on the south side of the Martinez house, and he felt that they stared at him. They loomed over the road, loomed over him, this band of trees that had never presumed to loom before.

He glanced at them. He could see the tops of the trees well, their leaves and fruit reaching up into the last of daylight; but down beneath them night had fallen, smothering the trunks. The lower branches seemed to bottle up a darkness that rose from the ground.

He stopped walking and repeated the nonsense to himself. The darkness of the lemon trees.

He shook his head and looked at the Martinez house. He walked past the place four times a day and nothing seemed different now: The house needed a few new roof tiles, chickens paced around the back yard, and a radio turned up to Nicaragua-loud blasted news. But something about the trees held him.

Jay didn’t really have the time to stop and stare since he had worked late and wanted to get back home before Carmen finished cooking dinner all by herself. She seemed happy enough to cook for Jay and for her husband and their children and whatever hangers-on might show up on any given night, but he tried anyway to make it back in time to do something; at least peel pineapples or buy the tortillas from the street vendor.

But the lemon trees:

They were tall and rounded, spangled with fruit. The rains this time of year kept the leaves dark green and washed them clean. Jay looked hard into the shadows beneath the branches, now, and noticed something staring back at him: A pair of eyes, then two pairs of eyes. He took a step away and shuddered involuntarily, feeling cornered and trapped, but realized they were only two girls; two young girls. They sat in a trance for a moment like frightened rabbits and then squealed, popped up, and bolted. Each held a glass jar in her hands and they ran laughing toward the house next door.

He thought he recognized them: They belonged to a family that lived further down the street. Their mother owned a little grocery store and they often hovered around, played marbles in its aisle, and pointed and whispered and laughed at shoppers while their older sister totaled sales.

The two girls shrieked and then disappeared, slipping through fences.

Well, that was curious, Jay said. He tapped sand off his boots and entered the kitchen.

What? Carmen concentrated on the rice she was sifting through; all tonight’s food was prepared and she had started on tomorrow’s. She dumped a few cups on a table and picked out stones and dirt.

On my way home, just now, I turned the corner at the Martinez house on the edge of the barrio, you know? I walked past the shady part of the yard where their lemon trees grow and surprised some girls who were digging for something. They had empty jars and were turning up the ground with sticks. I think I knew them.

Who were they?

The younger sisters of Mercedes, the woman who works in that blue store, I believe. I talk to her sometimes and they’re always underfoot. The strange thing is, when I saw them – or they saw me – they screamed and giggled and jumped up and ran. They ran off into another yard. I wonder what they were doing.

Digging beneath the lemon trees?

I think that’s all they were up to.

Maybe they were looking for worms.

Worms: Gusanos. It took Jay a moment to remember the word when Carmen said it in Spanish.

It could be.

Chico Largo, Carmen said, keeping her eyes on the table before her. She flicked away debris from the rice.

What?

It could be Chico Largo.

Who is that?

The spirit here, the ghost. He comes out at night sometimes and runs around the barrio. From the bay all the way to the hill between us and Alta Vista – that’s where you’ll find him.

I haven’t heard of this.

He plays tricks and causes trouble, usually. He’s been around for hundreds of years. He lives down near the bay shore near the little bit of black beach – do you know where that is? – but comes up here sometimes.

He doesn’t run around the rest of Bluefields?

No, just our part of it. The Creole areas may have their own spirits. The city was diverse but Carmen’s bay-side neighborhood was tight-knit and mostly Latino.

The last time he was really active was during the war. You know the army had a garrison here during the war, right? And how they shut down two years before the war ended?

Jay nodded. Because they were relocated to protect the airport, right?

Ha! Carmen laughed. That garrison gave up and left because Chico Largo wouldn’t leave them alone. For the last year I don’t think they ever got two good nights of sleep in a row. Right after midnight he would come running through the compound, yelling and knocking things over. And their base was surrounded by land mines and barbed wire, and half a dozen sentries. But he would break in and push over water barrels, steal ammunition, break bottles of cooking oil, whatever he could do. He really didn’t like them; most of the soldiers were outsiders, you know, from other parts of the country.

I’m surprised they didn’t just try to shoot him.

Carmen pounced on this. They did! Brother – some nights six or eight of them would jump out of the barracks in their underwear and open fire with their rifles. That was the only shooting they ever did, I think.

What does Chico Largo look like?

Just like an old campesino, people say; a barefoot man with frayed pants, a red shirt, and a sombrero. Some people say he looks very Indian; he’s old, you know, he was here before the British came, or the Spanish. He has lots of white hair and an enormous nose.

And the soldiers would shoot at a guy like that?

A lot of good it did them! He’d always come back. And you know, one night they caught him next to a stack of flour sacks. They had fifty big sacks of flour piled up in the camp, and he was chopping them apart with a machete. Five of them opened up on him with their machine guns. Five men, and he was no more than ten yards away, and he just ran off. Chico doesn’t worry about bullets.

I don’t believe it.

"My cousin was one of them! You know Ramiro? Ask him! But he doesn’t like to talk about it. And you know what? The next morning they checked those flour sacks – and they didn’t find any bullets. Not one. They had him pinned right against them! They fired fifty, sixty rounds! The flour should have stopped half of them anyway. But they didn’t even find the bullets.

Chico Largo ran them out of the barrio. They never got sleep, they had all these false alarms, they had clothes stolen off laundry lines, they had tires on their jeeps deflated. They just gave up and left.

Didn’t the counterrevolutionaries overrun the barrio, then?

Oh no, Chico had cleared them all out from the bush south of here before he started on the army base. Carmen turned back to her rice-sifting. So there you are, now you know about Chico Largo.

She sifted in silence.

Is that all? Jay asked. What about the worms?

Oh, right. You see, Chico plays all these tricks on people but he also does nice things. You have to know how to get on his good side. One of the things he’ll do for you is make someone fall in love.

He uses worms for that?

Yes. If a young woman takes some worms down to that little bit of black beach at night, where Chico lives, and gives them to him, he will catch fish for her. The woman comes back at dawn and picks up her catch, usually six fish. If she takes them home and makes soup out of them, and then feeds the soup to any man she loves, the man will be hers in two days. Carmen paused. Or maybe it’s three days. Anyway, he’ll be hers.

Did this happen to your cousin Ramiro? Jay asked drily.

No, but have you heard of the Swiss doctor who married a woman here?

No.

Or the Swedish professor? Or the Mexican poet? Or the two lawyers from Granada who came here on vacation?

The barrio, Jay realized, had indeed married off a number of its women to outsiders. He furrowed his eyebrows just a little.

"Ha-ha, there are a lot of women here who married foreigners, aren’t there? People think Chico does this for the same reason he chased away the soldiers: He doesn’t like outsiders. But one way to get rid of an outsider is to tie him to the neighborhood, of course,