La Cucaracha

When I lived in the Hispanic part of town I was content—more content than I had ever been. Musicians call it harmony. (So do regular people.) Buddhists call it self-awareness. Hippies called it peace. The rest of us don’t have a name for it, but know it feels good. For me, it had a sound. It went like this:

Bah Da-Da Duh DAH! Bah Da-Da Duh DAH! Bah Dah Duh Dah Da-Da Duh!

Sing it. The song is “La Cucaracha”. It’s more than likely you’ve heard it coming from a car horn. That’s where I heard it. Every night between the minutes of 9:45 and 9:50, the faint squawking of that song echoed through the streets and up to my bedroom window.

Around that time I usually found myself lateral on my bed, either sleeping or thinking about sleep. (It’s a little known fact that the best method of falling asleep is to actually think about sleep itself.) Sometimes it would roust my resting, while other times it would simply prohibit it from happening in the first place. The noise was distracting, to say the least. It took some nerve for that honking man or woman to do such a thing at such a relatively late hour of the night!

I got in the habit of waiting until ten o’clock before I started to think about sleep. On one evening, my thoughts consumed by the waking threat of the automobile opus, I was able to trace back to my first memory of the song.

The television was on and I sat in front it, seven years of age and plump. My mother allowed me to watch cartoon shows on Saturday mornings, so long as I promised to do my chores as soon as they were over. It was a reasonable compromise in my estimation, so I always followed through with my end of the bargain.

Tom and Jerry were a cat and mouse I loved. Eventually I fell out of love (as tends to happen with hobbies, spouses, and things not connected directly to one’s self), but at the time there was nothing better in the universe to me. The episode featured a Latin American setting. Jerry had made a friend, a fellow mouse of Hispanic heritage whose name was not revealed to the audience. Jerry and Mexican Mouse ran and ran and ran. Tom chased them. With capture eminent, the mice leapt into an arc-shaped hole, narrowly escaping Jerry’s not-so-threatening paws. Unfortunately for Jerry, his focus on the passion for the kill, he slid into the hole himself, though only his head could fit. He stuck. In a mocking and fantastically entertaining gesture, Jerry and Mexican Mouse took his whiskers in hand and played them like guitar strings. Jerry sang lead vocals. Mexican Mouse sang back up. Bah Da-Da Duh DAH! Bah Da-Da Duh DAH! Bah Dah Duh Dah Da-Da Duh! It sounded more like a sped up forty-five than a car horn, but there was still a distinct similarity.

Another night. 9.31 PM. Surely it was coming again soon. Particularly restless that night, I decided to go out and find the source of the perpetual disturbance. Out the flat, down the stairs, through the front door, and into the streets. Directionally, it was clear that the honking resonated due east of my apartment, so I walked to where the sun would eventually rise.

A few late-nighters meandered about the sidewalks, gently caressing their lovers or carrying bags of groceries that they were unable to collect during the work day. In the same way I felt, they all seemed at ease with the general state of things. Not to say they were polite or even smiling, for that matter, but I could tell. It was good to know that everything was alright. Everything was fine.

I ticked along with the clock as it neared the time of the chime. Approximating the location of the noise, I stopped between a mailbox and a palm tree about three blocks from home. With nothing to do but wait at this point, it gave me time to make specific note of my surroundings.

An alley cat. Cracked sidewalk. A homeless man. The mailbox, as mentioned before. A gentle breeze. Stomped out cigarette butts. Parked cars. Chalk drawings for hopscotch. A newspaper tumbleweed. Crab grass. It was all very regular, very comfortable.

There was a calm. For a moment, it was as if all things ceased to move or breath. Even those things not known for moving or breathing—the mailbox, for example—ceased to do so. It happened the same way an animal reacts to the presence of seismic waves. Stillness. Then. . .

Bah Da-Da Duh DAH! Bah Da-Da Duh DAH! Bah Dah Duh Dah Da-Da Duh!

Life resumed.

It was louder than I was used to hearing it, but not loud enough. I was off by a block or so. Considering the mission a positive step in my search, I returned home and thought about sleep, then dreamt about dreaming.

There I was again. 9:39 PM. I didn’t have to leave quite as early this time, for I had already picked my next vantage point earlier that day. It was a residential street two blocks further east than my previous location. Something about this place felt right. My ear was most upset about this whole debacle, so I trusted it when it told me to test 3^rd and Manhattan. At last, I could confront the honker and get to rest without disturbance!

9:47 PM hit. I started to worry. Of all the nights for the racket to end, why tonight? Was it because I came searching? Obviously this was an undue reaction. Moments after I asked myself these two questions and before I could ask a third, I spotted a man walking to his car with keys dangling from his index finger. I knew it was him.

He was of a stout build, reaching his mid-life, and had hands thick as the leather on a football. His white undershirt was tucked into a pair of plaid boxers. He was shoeless and Mexican. I found out through a later conversation that his name was Saul.

As he reached his car, Saul took slight notice of me, almost as if he was expecting me to be there, or like he’d had this encounter before. He unlocked the door of his four door pick-up truck, a modest American model with scraped paint—a laborers automobile. Casually, he hopped in the driver’s seat and closed the door behind him. His leathery left hand pushed the lock back down.

A moment passed and right on schedule, the calm came. My heart raced, then stopped.

Bah Da-Da Duh DAH! Bah Da-Da Duh DAH! Bah Dah Duh Dah Da-Da Duh!

Thank heavens my bedroom wasn’t situated on that street! The cry of “La Cucaracha” was nearly deafening and seemed to last longer than it ever had before. I stepped to the flat bed of the car and rested on its dented bumper, back to the cab, waiting patiently. The door opened and a great weight was lifted as he returned to the pavement. My feet no longer touched the ground with him. They dangled as they do when one sits on an examination table at the doctor’s office.

Auditory senses were in charge at this point. Had he been wearing cowboy boots, my ears would have been in tune with the crackle of the hard soles scraping along the rocky surface beneath them. Instead, they heard the almost silent pats of his bare feet.

Saul faced me as I sat on his bumper. I attempted to formulate my inquisition as succinctly as possible:

“Why?” I asked.

He left. Not far, though. I craned my neck to watch him go back to the driver’s side door and once again insert the key. He had forgotten to lock it back up. Click.

Saul returned to me with the knowing saunter of a monk and put his arm snugly around my shoulder. Strangely, it didn’t seem strange. Had I not needed my own arms to balance myself on the bumper, I would have reciprocated in the embrace.

“Why?” I asked again.

“What would you think if you didn’t hear the horn tomorrow night?”

It was a calculated and unexpected response. I was looking for answers, not questions. Despite this, I answered his query honestly, surprising myself with the answer.

“That something was wrong, I suppose.”

It was true.

“And you heard the horn tonight, no?”

“I did.”

“Well then I guess everything’s alright, isn’t it?”

Saul gave my shoulder a firm pat, knocking me off the bumper and onto the pavement. He meant no harm. Tucking his shirt back into his plaid boxers, that horn-blaring Mexican walked back to his front door and disappeared inside. He didn’t need a key for that one.

Harmony, peace, self-awareness, contentment. Since I moved, it’s never been quite as easy to obtain. However, I’ve never had to think about sleep to reach it since then, either. I just have to hear that sound.

Bah Da-Da Duh DAH! Bah Da-Da Duh DAH! Bah Dah Duh Dah Da-Da Duh!

And everything’s alright.