Chapter 2
Charly the American
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TOCAYO
Part 1
Prologue
Playa
Norte
Charly
the American 
A
Catholic Education
Cold
Showers
A
Peruvian Name...
Tossing
Armando...
Bob
Cousey's Shorts
Inside
Immaculada
Warming
the Bench...
A
Little Socrates...
Running
From Lola
Ping
Pong Politics
A
Perfect Basketball Day
A
Man Needs His Friends
A
Pig In a Hole
Condors
Over Ticlio
Wrestling
in the Plaza
Handcuffs
and Curfews
Rochabus
A
Hero Hiding
Hitting
A Brick Wall
Part 2
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Spanish history in the Americas was fierce. To the dismay of professor Pezespada, Peruvian history, which began in 1821 when Spain was so distracted by its struggle with Napoleon that it allowed its entire South American empire to slip out of its hands into Independence, was perhaps poetic, but not fierce. By the time Professor Pezespada began to teach us history, our country, once the heart of Spain's vast colonial empire in South America, had lost more than half its territory to quick wars with our neighbors. And the only war we did not lose, against Ecuador, continued to irritate the Professor because the Ecuadorians had persuaded several map makers around the world to redraw the borders as if Ecuador had actually won. Pezespada compensated by delivering ferocious lectures.
They were a magical event, Pezespada's lectures. The profesor walked back and forth along the podium half bent over, so the back of his coat hung higher than the front of his coat. His legs were thin and rickety, and his pants were both too tight and too short. They left his ankles, always flopping around in shoes that were too large and too worn out, in plain sight, which left us, his students, with a mild but empathetic revulsion. A big Adam's apple full of edges and angles moved up and down his long skinny neck as he spoke, and his neck grew out of a pair of shoulders that were hunched over like a condor's. When he waved his arms around to make a point, it looked as if he was making a clumsly attempt to fly. Like those majestic but hideous birds, he had a large nose that stood watch over tightly clenched lips. His body was pathetic, but his eyes were an epic poem. Deep wells you would never know the depth of, murky brown and ringed with dark circles. They pulled you toward them like the river at the bottom of the great Cañon del Colca. How could you not listen to him?
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