Free The Prince of los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood by Richard Blanco Page B

with him—I had to train him in secret. During the afternoons, when Caco was away at baseball or soccer practice, I’d go through the exercises in the booklet with Tiger as quickly and patiently as I could. It wasn’t easy. Tiger was just as kooky as Alberto Delgado, who would get up in the middle of class and run around the room sputtering out raspberries. Mrs. McShane called him “hyperactive,” but we called him Alberto Del-spazo . Tiger was a spazo too: he’d become distracted by the faintest sound or slightest breeze through a tree or fixated on a leaf or a fallen aguacate and ignore me completely.
    It seemed hopeless, and I was about to give up, until the afternoon I discovered the one thing Tiger loved as much as I did—Easy Cheese. I was squirting some right into my mouth while teaching him to sit, encouraging him with a morsel of leftover fried pork. Instead of the pork, he stole a lick from the tip of the Easy Cheese can and then sat, salivating and waiting for more like a good little doggie. I could only conclude that Tiger didn’t like either Cuban food or Abuela’scooking, or both. He was German, after all, not Cuban. I broke through to him after a few weeks. He was no Lassie, but at least he learned to sit and fetch, and he stopped tearing up the yard as much. I showed Mamá, and she agreed to take him off his chain for a week to see how well he’d do. He passed her test and after a while she even looked the other way sometimes when Caco or I took him inside the house.
    It seemed like me, Abuelo, Misu, the chickens, the rabbits, Tiger, Mamá, and Caco would live happily ever after. And we did for a few months—some of the best months of my life that I can remember. Every afternoon filled with a sense of purpose, taking care of my animals as if I were a veterinarian: tossing feed to the chickens, weighing them on our bathroom scale to make sure they were getting enough to eat, collecting and counting their eggs; hand-feeding strawberries to Bonny and Bernie, cleaning their paws with soap and water, and checking the bunnies for ear mites; teaching Tiger a new command over a shared can of Easy Cheese, then taking his pulse and listening to his heartbeat with my ear against his chest. For those few months, even Abuela commended me for the manly duties I had taken on instead of rebuking me for the usual pastimes I favored, like coloring and finger painting. Life was good.
    Then Abuelo brought a rooster home from Ignacio’s farm. He was bigger than Misu or the rabbits, with talons almost as long as my own fingers. His scarlet wattle quivered under his beak like the wrinkly flesh under Abuela’s chin. I followed him around the yard at a safe distance, catching his steely, sideways glances at me with his glassy eye as if he knew what I was thinking. I was scared of him, yet fascinated by the architecture of his muted gold plumage; his waxy tail feathers like a poof of exclamation points, as bold as any peacock’s. Commanding even Tiger’s respect, he roamed the backyard freely, pecking and scratching and crowing every morning at dawn. He was majestic, stately, and royal, his comb like a big red crown. I decided to name him Rey, Spanish for “king.” Abuelo agreed. But Abuelo didn’t bring Rey home just for decoration; he had plans for him, which became obvious as soon as I saw Rey in the chicken coop perched on top of a hen, pecking at her head. Just as had happened with Bonny and Bernie, within a few weeks there were close to a dozen baby chicks darting around the coop like tiny yellow pinballs. What was Abuelo thinking? Surely Mamá would notice and become infuriated.
    But it wasn’t Mamá who would bring about the demise of the chickens. That would be Caridad. Her bedroom window faced my bedroom window, and at least once a week, usually just before my bedtime, Caridad and Pedrito would scream at each other, firing off cuss words in Spanish like my tío Emilio when he got drunk: ¡Papayua! ¡Hijo de