The summer that I turned 12 was when Quetzalcoatl moved onto our block. We kids didn’t pay much attention to him at first; after all, he was just an old guy with no children. We would see him out watering his lawn, weeding his roses, wearing baggy, old-man shorts, funky sandals and black socks, a loud Hawaiian print shirt and thick sunglasses. Just like half the fogies on our street.
Then we learned that Quetzalcoatl, which meant “Feathered Serpent,” was an Aztec deity, the creator god, the big cheese as it were, god of the morning star, inventor of books and the calendar, giver of maize (that’s corn) to mankind, symbol of death and resurrection. We found that last part really cool.
Tommy, the scholar of our neighbor group, learned all of this from a mythology book he found at the library. Tommy actually went to the library in the summer, when school was out!
So we cruised by his house on our bikes more often, checking him out, saying hi. Quix, as we called him, started waving to us, saying hello back and eventually we began hanging out with him during the hot afternoons.
Quix had a refrigerator in his garage, and he gave us cokes and told us stories as we sat in the shade on his driveway. He had some great stories. Impossible ones about cataclysmic fights with other Aztec gods, throwing mountains at them, using lightning as spears and good stuff like that. We didn’t believe him, of course, but his stories weren’t that much crazier than tales our grandpas told us, so we just enjoyed them. And the cokes.
Everything was pretty sweet until one day in July when Tezcatlipoca came looking for Quix. Tez was an old enemy of Quix’s (and I mean old, like 3,000 years or so). A grudge from when they were both young gods, I guess. Something about a girl, a goddess. Quix took her from Tez, I gathered, and Tez was still pissed about it. Girls are nothing but trouble.
So we sat there, feeling uncomfortable, as these two old guys argued and dredged up old memories. Anyway, one thing led to another, and soon Quiz and Tez were challenging each other to settle this feud, once and for all. We all cast glances at each other, hoping we weren’t going to witness two old geezers embarrassing themselves in a fistfight right out in public on the front lawn.
Quiz and Tez walked, well, hobbled out into the street, now yelling at each other, neither one listening to the other, and all of it lost on us.
“Johnny,” Quiz said to me, “keep Tommy, Peter and Matt out of the way and safe while I take care of this ancient jaguar.”
“Less talk, more action, you old bag of stardust,” Tez growled.
Then, as we watched, incredulously, both old men took on their Aztec god aspects. Suddenly they had fearful, painted faces and exotic, feather-and-silver costumes, and grew maybe fifty feet tall.
They wrestled around, shoving each other back and forth, until Tez’s enormous foot came down and smashed Mr. Barnes’s parked Triumph flat. Then they rose into the air, maybe a hundred feet or so, and continued their battle.
They smacked each other a couple dozen times, pretty good blows for old guys, for about ten minutes. By then, they were both wheezing and gasping for breath. Tez was holding his right shoulder, and Quix was rubbing his knees. Not combat wounds; arthritis.
So they floated down slowly to the street, assuming their human shape and appearance again, apparently deciding to forget the past and let bygones be bygones. Tez joined our little circle of summer friends, he and Quix drinking tequila shots while we drank our cokes.
Tez and Quix tried to top each other with yarns from their younger days. They were laughing and poking fun at one another at all the goofy stuff that had happened a couple thousand years ago. Our moms called us for supper, so we waved goodbye as we biked reluctantly home.
The next morning everything was back to normal. Tez was gone. Quix watered his lawn and weeded his roses just like every other old guy in our neighborhood. We enjoyed the free cokes in the afternoon.
But we never forgot what we saw one summer day in our neighborhood.
Rod Drake is not a Desolation Angel, a Dharma Bum, a Subterranean, nor is he On the Road. Check out Rod’s other stories in Flashing in the Gutters, Fictional Musings, Flash Flooding, Flash Forward and AcmeShorts.
What an interesting concept. I liked the way you played with the mythology.