Horacio Pascual McAllister Fuentes

 For three and a half months, Horacio Pascual McAllister Fuentes had been standing, sitting, and lying down in the parking lot of the Ralphs at the corner of Lincoln and California and he could not for the life of him remember why. 

He had paced the sleepless nights around the corners, eyes pegged open, wearing a fine suit of black wool and a tie in the colors of the Mexican flag with the Dodgers’ logo in the middle of it and a pair of shiny brown-and-white shoes that felt a size too large. He had looked across the street at the Ross and the donut shop and the school and the DWP substation and the old Aquarium store whose neon sign still swam through the night and the yoga studio. Each one, he realized as he looked at it, seemed new to him. He had spent the days trying to get people to talk to him, and hadn’t succeeded yet.

He had smelled the tacos cooking at the stand across the street and walked toward them, even, but decided against crossing the street before even leaving the parking lot. The comal that the compas had going was rich, maybe too rich for him. He had heard the faint strains of norteño music rising from somewhere he couldn’t quite see, and considered walking there, but found himself paralyzed by fear before leaving the lot. He had felt the drops of soft February rain that pushed him under the awning, and been socked in by the thick marine layer of the early mornings.

In the Norwalk office of the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder-County Clerk, Underregistrar II Dianne Ochoa began a second day of verifying petition signatures for an attempt to recall a County Supervisor. She had heard the whole speech yesterday from the Chief Deputy Registrar herself, that this campaign had become national, that they needed to make sure they were being scrupulous as possible so that they didn’t end up on cable news, that the people of Los Angeles depended on them to ensure the integrity of the system.

The days of an Underregistrar are unremarkable, mostly. It takes a lot of work to effectively run elections in a county of ten million people, and Diane Ochoa’s usual job was to map out the mobile vote centers that would pop up in the three weeks before election days, and verify locations with the organizations that sponsored them the previous time around. But when petitions came in, everyone in the office had to do a little verification.

Horacio Pascual McAllister Fuentes wandered toward the Ralphs again on a gray morning, feeling the overcast around him. There was a man standing outside, wearing a neat blue collared shirt and polyester slacks and comfortable sneakers. He was young, short, Black, smiling, with a thickly piled clipboard in his arm.

Like everyone outside the Ralphs these days, the young man looked up toward Horacio. Most people squinted toward him and then turned away, or tilted their heads like expectant labradors and then turned away, or started to cry and turned away, and every time it was a sad surprise for Horacio. But the young man looked into his eyes and said “Hello, sir!” 

Startled by the young man’s cheerfulness, Horacio jumped. Then, he walked toward the young man, right up to him, and hugged him. The young man, surprised but professional, patted Horacio on the back until he let go of the hug, and then a shudder of recognition passed through his body. Three months ago, this very same man, in this very same suit, in this very same place, had hugged him exactly the same way. The young man had been taken aback then, but not nearly as much as he was unsettled in this moment.

Horacio stood looking towards the young man, and the words he wanted to say were on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn’t get them out. The young man waited, and then asked the question he’d be asking all day. “Are you a registered voter, sir?”

Horacio said “yes I am.” The young man had expected this, the man had signed his petition three months ago, when he was collecting for a recall of a County Supervisor.

“Would you like to sign some petitions today, sir?”

“What do they say?”

“Well, you can read them, this one on top is to allow everyone to work for whatever kind of wage they want, and the rest are there too, there’s nine in this pile today.”

“Ok, I will sign them all.”

“You’re a good voter, sir. Very patriotic, sir.”

Underregistrar II Diane Ochoa was expecting to finish the thousand signatures she’d been assigned to spot check before lunch. She was efficient, and proud of it. She’d been disqualifying about a third of what she saw, which she felt was a fairly good ratio for the petitioners. She didn’t know much about this County Supervisor they were trying to recall. She lived in Norwalk and the Supervisor’s district was on the Westside.

She read out loud to herself the name written in the stuttering hand of an elder. “Horacio Pascual McAllister Fuentes,” and breathed out. She typed the name into the computer, and found the man’s registration. She matched his address, his zip code, his city. The signature was the signature of an older man than the one who signed to register, but it matched. She went to click the “verify” button and noticed a red dot next to “Check Other Records” which would usually pop up for voters who might have had a name change.

She entered his name into the Registrar-Recorder-County Clerk’s database and found his voter registration, two property deeds, and a death certificate. She began to match the records.

Horacio Pascual McAllister Fuentes began to sign the ninth petition (a referendum request on a law requiring solar panels on all new residential buildings) and the young man thanked him profusely. These fifteen minutes’ work had netted him $41, and he hadn’t had to actually ask for much of anything at all.

As he finished signing the last one, Horacio said “thank you,” and looked the young man in the eyes. The young man looked back, and said “thank you, sir” and watched as Horacio walked off, back away from the Ralphs, toward the fence on the far side of the parking lot. The young man shook his head and smiled and saw a woman coming towards him.

The Underregistrar matched the dates on the voter registration and the property deed and the death certificate, and pursed her lips. She clicked the box that rejected the signature (the man had been dead since a couple of weeks before they’d started circulating the petition three months ago) and clicked another box that said “deceased” and then clicked through to the next screen. There was a checkbox that said “Strike from Roll” and she checked it and clicked submit. The next signature, of a Laurel Jansen, popped up. Before she read the name, the Underregistrar said “rest in peace” and made a plan to mention the old man’s name in her prayers that night.

The young man looked past the woman, who’d said she was too busy to sign but might on her way out, toward Horacio and watched as the old man vanished in front of a tree. The young man shook his head and rubbed his eyes and said “Hello ma’am, are you a registered voter?” to the grandmotherly woman walking towards him now.

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