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hand handed me La Biblia Blanca , oh I could tell some palabras words that the women taught me in the China Boy but I never had much time to read even if I could, unless twas written on the flesh of a body. And I wrote ARCADIO my name. But to tell the truth I never read a word that twas not with the help of Eddy Gonzales the atheist Mescan Dwarft that did not believe in God. The nights in the chow tent and the nights in the glass wagon with the Dwarft areading me the stories was the starting of my life. I have not time to tell all the stories to you. I can tell you them almost as they was written down. Eddy was amazed that I could read em out almost exactly like they was written down and look up to the next page right on time, Dwarft said he was astounded. Guess I become a storyteller more than a reader.
    I learned también from the tales outrageous that whores told, back in the China Boy . While other kids sat in school. A special one was a grand queen whore from Newark—said she was part Greek—and that her madre had been the principal of a school. Edna Pappas loved words more than anything. When she wasn’t on her back she was reading a book—and even while she was, sometimes; she would crook around her head and study her ceiling, even though it jumped sometimes when her customer john was abouncing. When she said to him easy mister it was because he was interfering with her reading. The johns didn’t know that she wrote on the ceiling over her bed the words that she was learning for that week, printed in grande letters. Every week she printed out a new list, her big ass up on a ladder while I held it. Oh we had fun. If a john shifted positions and looked up, what he might see if he held his eyes open would be a big word, like AD-MIR-ABLE or PRO-CRAS-TI-NATE . These are only a few of Edna Pappases words and some which I learned, among many others. Edna Pappas was improving herself for when she would one day get out of the China Boy . I wanted to do the same: the telling of tales fantásticos was what I wanted and the using of grande words, palabras . But for a long time I got off on the wrong track into a Show where I could not use my words but have to sit like a dumb ox, as you know, Oyente , but still—what I learned from Edna Pappas—I put my secret study words on a big boxtop down in front of me and nobody ever knew that I was learning them, I didn’t even move my lips when I practiced them; sometimes if I did mouth a word the gazers thought I was apraying or talking to myself like a crazy person, when all I was doing was saying a divided-up word like Edna Pappas showed me to, sílabas , syllables. In this way I was getting myself ready for the world, to tell tales, la grandeza is what I wanted, la extrañeza, la belleza , you wan hear? My teachers I will always thank, one taught me from the ceiling of a whorehouse, one from a Bible, and one to tell tales fantásticos with tongue of tin or silver. Once I excaped, as you well know, Oyente , I used what was taught to me, the telling of tales and the using of words. I have talked off my head—which is a peculiar espression, if you wan think about it, to talk off a head. Edna Pappases brother Silvestro Pappas came almost every day to have a beautiful poet’s conversation with his sister when she wasn’t on her back, Silvestro Pappas was a poet, full of some bullshit but his tongue was a silver angel’s tongue and a liar’s tin one, too, and a bitter one, and suave and mean— demonio —but he told tales fantásticos . I listened and I learned un poco how to speak like Silvestro Pappas and to get the rough Mejicano sound of my ancestors out of my mouth, I wanted to speak big habla , to be suave in my speaking like Silvestro Pappas and to have the words like his sister Edna. I will tell, he said, you cocksuckers, about the five trees in a hidden canyon of Montana which remain undisturbed summer and winter