An Old Testament to Breathe and Eat
Todos should have made headlines with his last act. He was a prophet God blessed with the language of fire. Spit, fire, and smoke; spit, fire, and smoke; the whorled nature of every waking day meant to bring prophecy to those who drove past, businessmen and brown-skinned men alike. But they only spit back at him as they drove by: a different kind of baptism. Soon poverty would pull the skin at his ribs and steal away
his faith. Todos had heard God's voice after he'd been cuffed and beat back to his side of La Caldera's border. Immigration didn't care that he was just trying to follow in his parents' footsteps. They didn't care to hear his story: the memory of footsteps was the only dream his parents had left him worth a waking breath. So he was sent to the outskirts of La Caldera where he slept on the same rockless patch of mud under piece of tin where he had always slept. Only this time he was alone, and after a few lonely nights, he heard God speak to him. God told him to use his voice to set the world on fire. Todos needed only to speak. He agreed, hoping to be rewarded, but God didn't mention the specifics.
Five years since and Todos spent too many days callus-footed, shirtless, and hungry. No matter how wondrous he'd shape the fire, wilting of a smoking rose, the flaming beak of an eagle, at the end of the day, all he had in his pockets afforded him a few oranges from the boy who sat against the palm tree in the median, pillowing a wicker basket between scraped knees, and the dream of footsteps slowly burning into ash.
Then one day a pink-skinned man passed through on a business trip to their side of La Caldera. He stopped his car, pulled down his sunglasses and said he would pay double to see him eat the fire. Todos thought about his ribs, his bed, his ashen dreams and found he could kill two birds, if not more, by eating his words. One, eating fire might make him more money. Two, if his words were holy then eating them, turning them outside in, would make him more holy. So he held up five fingers. The businessman knuckled his chin and nodded. Todos pulled out the folded aluminum wire through a hole in the back of his jeans. He spit a poem of flame that held his life's story in every tongue that whipped on the balled rag at the tip of the wire. Todos devoured every trail of heat and artistry the flame once held, and the businessman reached a turned-down hand full of pesos over the window, letting them fall.
After that day, Todos ate his words and swallowed their meaning until his life made more profit, giving him true reason. Within days he forgot what God hade once told him, that his voice was his art, a sacred fire to combat the din of horns, rattling hoods, curses, and laughter.
Falling more in love with the weight of pesos in his pockets, the day came when Todos decided to put on a real show. He burned his feet straddling the come-a-parts in a road just a ways from Plaza Cuatro Caminos, patting the hood of each car that slowed in the smog. He flashed five fingers on both hands twice. All lanes of traffic stopped. The flock of businessmen and brown-skinned men alike gave him his ransom. He stood at the center of four-way traffic with his feet sunk in a pile of pesos as he began eating fire, one word, one balled up flame at a time. He didn't stop for all the burning pain that ate him inside, the flames setting cinders to the story in his stomach: his name is Todos; he doesn't know what ice cream tastes like; he still thinks the price of a kiss is a few Chiclets and the promise to keep a secret; he misses his mother's hugs; his father's mustache; he just wants to be happy.
The smoke bellowed from his ears while the businessmen and brown-skinned men watched and clapped and sang and threw more money. The businessmen and brown-skinned men did nothing when he ignited at his knuckles, knees, wrists, and neck. They didn't stop when he was all fire, when he began eating himself, fingers to knuckles to wrist to elbow until he was nothing but a pile of ash.
The show was over. Some immediately drove away. Some got out of their cars to take back the money they threw before doing the same. All moved on.