Drown

The narrator opens the story by stating that that his mother told him that someone named Beto is home. Although his mother waited for a response, the narrator merely continued to watch TV. He recalls that Beto used to come over and rouse both he and his mother from their respective rooms with “a voice that crackled and made you think of uncles or grandfathers” (91). The narrator says that Beto is a pato (English: homosexual) now, and implies that they are no longer friends because of it. He waits until his mother is sleeping to leave the house and look for Beto.

The narrator recalls that during the summer before Beto left for college, the two young men would get into trouble around the neighborhood: stealing, breaking windows, and urinating on people’s steps. He recalls that Beto was delirious about leaving their decrepit neighborhood, which he hated everything about, especially the town dump. Beto told the narrator that he didn’t know how the narrator could stand living there, and that he would just find any job and leave, if he were the narrator. The narrator would just respond with a vague “yeah”—he had one year of school left and, unlike Beto, and had no promises or prospects outside of his current life.