That summer they discovered him by the river, playing his tape recorder to the weeds and dry rocks along the lower bank. His mouth was like Henry's mother's mouth, turned down at the ends. His thick eyebrows, hair flaring out at the edges, looked like Tina's father's eyebrows. The man's wobbly saucer ears were those of Carmela's uncle's ears. And he had the smooth, muscled arms of Raul's stepfather.

The children stepped closer to stare at this man with his tape recorder and his green dog.

They hardly noticed the dog, which besides its color was scrawny and had sunken, lazy eyes. Henry Medoza, oldest of the four children, asked the man what he was doing with the machine.

"Playing stories . . . . Listen."

The children sat down and waited.

"How come it stopped?" Henry asked.

The man glanced at the top of the river bank. "It's better if we go over to the middle of the river."

Tina shook her head. "My mom says I can't go in the river."

"It's dry," the tape recorder announced. "Nothing will happen to you."

"There's some quicksand," Carmela said, ignoring the machine. "Last year a boy died in the quicksand."

"Nothing will happen," the machine said in a louder voice. "I promise."

"Why is he green?" Raul asked, pointing.

"Is that you talking in the machine?" Henry followed.

"How do you do it?" Tina asked, wrinkling her nose.

"No more questions until we move," the man said, and he rose like a tired bedspring, lifted the machine by the handle and went off toward the dry river bed. The dog scratched its ribs and waited for the children to follow.

"Allright," the man said after they had gathered on a sandbar, "who wants to hear the first story?"

Four hands were up.

"Who was first?"

"Me!" they all yelled.

"Let's start with the littlest first. What's your name, muchachito?"

"Raul."

"Okay, Raul. This is for you."

The machine spoke. It was Raul's voice.

Tina's father is mad. She forgot to empty the wastebasket and he punished her. She has to stand in the corner of the kitchen for a long time. Now she sees an ant crawling near the dirty dishes and she asks the ant take her place so she can play in the sink. The ant says okay, and Tina gets down like an ant and starts to play. It's a lot of fun because she can slide down the knife with the butter, she can jump in the cranberry sauce, she can do somersaults in the spaghetti and she can sail in a tortilla on the dishwater.

Everyone looked at Raul, who was silent for a moment. The he smiled, feeling a little proud. "Now it's Carmela's turn!" he said excitedly.

Carmela blushed, and her skin was like an apricot's ripe, red side.

The man never touched the machine; the reels of magnetic tape kept turning round and round. When the machine began to speak with Carmela's voice, which was very deep for a girl, the dog raised its ears and once flicked its tail.

Henry, wants to be a frog and hop around the house. But he doesn't know how to be a frog. His mother is always sad and he wants to make her laugh. Finally he meets a big frog, a giant frog with green bumpy skin. Can I borrow your skin, Henry asks, and the frog says, here, but don't take too long, it's all I've got. When Henry goes up to his mother, at first she thinks he's a frog. Then she sees his socks are inside out, and she starts to laugh.

The children laughed too, and even more when the man's green dog began to hop over the sandbar making sounds like a frog.

Then it was Tina's turn, and the machine spoke with her small, squeaky voice. "Raul asked his stepfather if he would like to have a real son, not just a stepson. But his father wouldn't answer; right away they went to see the monkeys at the zoo. For a long time Raul watched the father monkeys share each other's baby monkeys. I get it, Raul said, you think I'm a monkey. And his father tickled him on his throat and made funny noises the way monkeys sometimes do.

After an easy yawn, the dog put it's head in Carmela's lap and completely relaxed under the soft strokes along its back.

It was Henry's turn.

Carmela's Tio Fausto is always bringing home bums and winos. One time he brought a lady who looked like she was lost. She also looked very poor because she had holes in her sweater. Fausto gave her food, then drove her to where she lived under the bridge. Everyone knew she was bad, and Fausto even let her steal the clock that was on the television. Later on he said he was glad she didn't take the T.V. too.

"I have to go now," the man said, switching off the machine. "I'll see you tomorrow."

Carmela petted the dog's green hair once more, then it trotted after the man who climbed up the concrete slope and disappeared over the top.

"That was neat," Henry said, breaking the silence.

The others nodded, slowly like grownups then ran across the sand, over the gravel and back to their homes.

The stories were not kept secret. The four children told everyone about the man and his machine. Their parents smiled or asked silly questions or said something about not speaking to strangers. No one really worried. They were just kid stories.

But the stories came true. The next day Tina's father punished her and she played on the dirty dishes.

And Henry forgot to take off his socks, and his mother laughed.

And because it was Saturday, Raul went to the zoo with his father, heading straight for the monkey cages.

Even Carmela's story about her uncle and the lady came true. Only she didn't take the clock; instead it was a bar of Dial soap and an old bottle of her aunt's perfume.

Every afternoon the children went to the river. The man seemed to like it there, but he would always leave in a hurry as soon as the machine finished its stories. The only thing he told them was never to follow him and his dog. And they never did, mostly because they didn't want him to get mad and maybe go away for good.

Even though the stories came true, the older people still weren't too curious about the stranger. After all, they were harmless stories, something that made their children happy.

But one day Carmela's voice spoke from the machine and said that Henry's older sister had died in a car accident. Henry felt like crying when he heard the words.

When the children went home, as usual they repeated their stories. Henry choked when he came to the end of his, and soon the prediction spread throughout the neighborhood and his older sister was locked in her room.

The parents were furious. Tina's father got his neighbors to follow him like a posse behind the sheriff. They were going to find the stranger, and who knew what they would do to him? The four children tagged behind, hoping their friend would not be found.

After a long search, the posse discovered the stranger and fell on him like a flock of crows. He had been sitting with his machine and green dog, quietly chewing a carrot among the tumbleweeds under the freeway bridge. Before they could reach him, he turned to the crowd, and hesitated, as if waiting for the children to catch up and go with him. Then he jerked to his feet and sprinted away with his dog. He seemed to fly, barely touching the ground, over the far bank, quickly losing himself among the freightyard trains.

Henry's mother found the machine. She raised it high in the air and flung it hard on the concrete slope. Then she tore the plastic tape into little crinkled pieces.

That night hardly anyone slept, thinking that Henry's sister would die, somehow killed in her car. But the next day came and went, and nothing happened to her. She even slipped out the window of her room so she could see her boyfriend in the park.

Since the story never came true, all the parents were relieved. And the children were almost glad they would never see the man with the green dog again.

written by Ron Arias

from "North Of The Rio Grande"
--The Mexican-American Experience in Short Fiction
edited by Edward Simmen
© 1992