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  ...presents...                  Santa Chulo
                                                         by Ed Long

                      >>> a cDc publication.......1994 <<<
                        -cDc- CULT OF THE DEAD COW -cDc-
  ____       _     ____       _       ____       _     ____       _       ____
 |____digital_media____digital_culture____digital_media____digital_culture____|

     I can see Chulo dancing at the end of the block.  He is small, and he
always wears a striped red and white shirt and blue jeans.  I think he is a
little odd.  Sometimes when they open the hydrants and the kids all go out in
the street in their underwear he is there, grinning.  He likes it when there
are a lot of people around.  He likes it when he can dance for them.  Sometimes
my mother would ask him to come over to our house and eat dinner on the porch
and drink iced tea with us and tell us of his dreams.  He has big dreams,
Chulo.  They are oddly shaped, but they are large, my father says this.  Chulo
has a dog.  Her name is Changita.  She never barks, she just lies on the bricks
in the sun and sleeps.  We give her candy sometimes.  She is sweet and she
loves the candy, too.  My brother says she is too good for him, but she belongs
to him and he belongs to her.  Chulo is not wearing shoes.  His feet are very
large, and they slap on the street and make music while he dances.  He is
always smiling while he dances.  His arms and legs move about and his body
twitches to and fro but his smile always hangs in the air, fixed.

     He has a sister in San Antonio who sends him money.  He buys what he
needs, and gives the rest to Father Alomar for the children.  They love him,
and sometimes on Sunday after Mass they go down to the store for root beer and
dance with him on the curb.  He calls them "Senor" and "Senorita," and never
treats them like children, so they always come back to him when the weather is
nice.  Mother thinks he is very wise.  She says that he has captured the soul
of the neighborhood, and dances on the sidewalk to show us that it is alive.  I
think he dances because he is happy.  My father says it is not good to dream so
much.  He says that Chulo will make the children think it is good not to work,
and to dance in the sunshine without worrying about tomorrow.  But even my
father smiles when we go down to the store and hear Chulo's feet slapping on
the pavement in perfect time, and Changita slaps her tail on the sidewalk
because she remembers him always as the boy who gave her chunks of ice from the
truck even though she is almost blind.  He still gives her ice.  Father Alomar
thinks Chulo is a saint, maybe.  Santa Chulo.  I laugh as I think of it. 
Perhaps God is this strange, I don't know.  Chulo says he dreams of God often.
He once whispered to me that God will never let anything bad happen in the
neighborhood while Chulo is dancing, he promised this.  I don't know.  But
sometimes, when the sun goes down and the wind blows and Chulo goes off behind
the store to sleep I stand in the window and look at the stars and cross myself
and ask God to be with him, and for a moment I think I see a light in his face
as he raises his arms up and waves goodnight.  I think God must love people who
are happy.  My mother says this is too simple to be true, but she never sounds
quite certain when she says it.
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  (' ')  |            Save yourself!  Go outside!  DO SOMETHING!            |
   (U)   |==================================================================|
  .ooM   |Copyright (c) 1994 cDc communications and Ed Long.                |
\_______/|All Rights Reserved.                               12/01/1994-#293|

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