Markus Alvaros, Or Just Alvaros

Meeting Markus

Mass was a time of comfort for Markus. It always had been. Mother and son would sit in the very middle of the church and listen to the priest and his teachings while Grandpa would sit in the very back with the rest of the older residents of the small town.

He was alone on the pew at the very front of the church, waiting for the moment that the priest would tell the rest of the members of his church to give their prayers to his mother at the hospital at this very moment. Her diabetes was weighing in on her, but he knew she was going to get through it. Just a bump in the road, she said. Soon they were going to go back to the house and she'd joke about how his father was probably jumping freight trains somewhere in the world and then get some fruit or a raspado. It was just a matter of time.

"Rosa Alvaros was a beautiful young woman who had an untimely demise. God has taken her from this world to let her rest among the marigolds in her peaceful slumber. She has been put to rest with her beloved father and God has forgiven her for all of her sins, He paves the way for her son, her beloved Markus.."
The priest went on. She died. That was it. Plain and simple. It got the best of her. The bump in the road had dragged out to be a crossroads for Markus. One where he left his mother behind and got ready to move on to his Tia's house in Hawaii. Maybe they would have horses in Hawaii, or snakes, or really fluffy dogs. Maybe they had some sort of volunteer animal care program that he could ask Tia Lola to visit one day. He could move from island to island, and leave his mother's memory in the casket in Arizona . He could leave the sad memories behind and start new. No one would know about him because Tia Lola didn't really talk to anyone. It was going to be great.

Markus didn't talk much about his father because there was literally nothing to know about him. He was a bastard and he knew it, but he never believed his mother's explanation of who his father was or what he was doing with his life because she simply made it seem so illogical.
"Your father was Jesse McCree, the one and only hero and bounty hunter. The last time I saw anything about him, he was jumping on and off of freight trains and making his escape from terrorists. Mijo, I'm glad you didn't inherit that sense of wildness."
And then the both of them laughed because it was so crazy to even think that he had that type of blood in him.
Yeah, he did have lighter skin than the rest of his classmates, but that was because there was no short amount of white men who stopped by on vacation and got a little bit of a good time with the ladies there. So he assumed that the man who was never in his life was simply one of those men. He probably had a family somewhere with a nice wife in the suburbs of some city with a good car and a nice and hefty paycheck to make them eggs and bacon for breakfast every day. A little boy and a little girl ready for school and getting a good education at a private school.
That was back when they lived on grandpa's ranch. His mom would wake him up early to get to the public school that was a few miles away. There would be the smell of reheated chorizo and tortillas made from the night before, thick and fluffy. The taste of sour cream always lingered on his tongue some time after the bus took off from the dusty road that led to the stop, his mother waving him off. In the back he could see the old and creaky house with horses milling around and loitering, hoping to get a sugar cube from his mother because she always carried them. Her with her low blood sugar.

At his school, a middle school, sometimes there would be boys in the hallways looking at their phones with holovideos displayed, talking about what old hero did this or what celebrity did that. Sometimes they'd call him out and yell "Hey Markus! Look what you're dad is up to!"

And then they'd all laugh because it was a running joke, despite how it sometimes stung to know that his dad wasn't there with him. It was all just a running joke. They'd talk about what was going on and the tensions and try to make light of everything that went on. Nothing new.

But then grandpa died in January. He was 11 at the time, and now Mom had to look over the bills and said to him. "We'll sell it and move to a home closer to the school so that you don't have to get up so early."
And so the two of them moved into the town not too from the school and ranch. A midway point. A house in the suburbs and they had a lot of good furniture because all of it was left to the two of them in Grandpa's will. They didn't need to buy anything but the house. It was small, it only had three rooms, but it was more than enough given that it was just the two of them. There was even enough money left to get Markus a laptop. It was so happy then. The house was theirs and the yard was theirs. Mom was thinking about getting a pet snake for Markus, but he noticed that she sort of looked worried often. Something on her mind that was getting in the way of his little python that led the Lady Guadalupe to city of Mexico.

He thought that it was the crisis starting up and that Tio Eric was getting called out to be a coast guard again in Hawaii with Tia Lola.

He was wrong, he was so wrong to think so. She was fine until he had to call the ambulance and take her to the hospital. He stayed with her all night and then the doctors would ask him if he had anyone else. He said no, all his family members were in Mexico or Hawaii. With concerned faces, the doctors talked to his mother one last time, getting his birth certificate and going through the long process of finding his father.
Of course, no one told Markus they were looking for him. As far as he was concerned, he was going to live in Hawaii with Tio Eric and Tia Lola in their little house near Waikiki and he was going to see the sharks and the wonderful fish and it was going to be rough to get used to at first, but there was nothing else to do. His dad was nowhere to be found and there was no one else to pick him up and carry him to Mexico where the rest of his Tias and Tios were.

But he was wrong. He was oh so wrong.