Always Running

by Luis J. Rodriguez

  By 1970 I felt disjointed, out of balance, tired of just acting and reacting. I wanted to flirt with depth of mind, to learn more about my world. My society. About what to do. I became drawn to the people who came to work at the community centers; they were learned. Full of ideas and concepts; they were, I realized, similar to my father, this former teacher and biologist, who once labeled all the trees and plants in the backyard so we would know their scientific names.

  Amid South San Gabriel’s hottest summer, the Bienvenidos Community Center hired Chente Ramírez. His credentials included a lifetime in the White Fence barrio in East L.A.—known as the oldest “street gang” in the country. But Chente managed to avoid gang involvement, went to school, worked in industry, helped his father with his trucking business and pretty much took care of his mom, six sisters and a brother while his dad traversed the land in a tractor-trailer rig.

  Chente, in his late 20s then, had already gone to a university, been a founding member of the United Mexican American Students (UMAS), helped organize the East L.A. school walkouts of 1968, participated in forming MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán) and the Brown Berets. Later still he put together a number of East Los Angeles study groups engaged in revolutionary theory. He was also a martial arts expert.

  I had certain yearnings at the time, which a lot of us had, to acquire authority in our own lives in the face of police, joblessness and powerlessness. Las Lomas was our path to that, but I was frustrated because I felt the violence was eating us alive.

  Chente impressed me as someone I could learn from. He was calm, but also street enough to go among all those crazy guys and know how to handle himself. He didn’t need to act bad to operate. He could be strong, intelligent, and in control. He was the kind of dude who could get the best from the system—education, karate training—without being a snitch or giving in. I wanted to be able to do this too.

  I was in my mid-teens and Chente was about twelve years older. I looked up to him, but not as a big brother. He was someone who could influence me without judging me morally or telling me what to do. He was just there. He listened, and when he knew you were wrong, before he would say anything, he would get you to think.

  The cue ball rolled across the tattered green felt and struck an odd-numbered striped ball like a firecracker, the violence sending it twirling into the corner pocket. Smoke curled through the luminance of the fluorescent light hanging by wires over the billiard table. Puppet gazed momentarily at the remaining balls which lay scattered on the playing field as he contemplated the next move. Across from him stood Toots, aware of Puppet’s every gesture. Puppet placed a well-worn piece of chalk and twisted his cue stick into it for several seconds, all the time deducing the trajectory of the cue ball for his next stroke. Next to him in leather blouse and tight denim jeans stood Pila, Puppet’s squeeze.

  Puppet’s forearms were a canvas of extremely elaborate, interwoven and delicately-pinned tattoos that danced on skin with cholo images, skulls, serpents and women’s faces. On his neck was a stylized rendering of the words Las Lomas. At 20 years old, he was a veterano and just out of YTS.

  Along with a handful of other pintos—like Ragman, Peaches, Natividad and Topo—Puppet ruled the ’hood with fear. Soon the veteranos took over the John Fabela Youth Center, along with its pool and ping pong tables.

  Puppet bent low, closed an eye, and with the other followed the length of the stick, which rested on the skin between his thumb and forefinger, all the way to the cue ball.

  “Eight ball in the corner pocket,” he announced, as if he had sawdust in his throat.

  He waited, breathing easily, then he pumped the stick, the cue ball sliding toward the side of the table, then back down in an angle and striking the eight ball into another corner pocket. The game belonged to Puppet.

  Pila placed her arms around Puppet’s shoulders. Toots pulled out some bills from his pocket as his jaina, Lourdes from Mexico, looked hard in Pila’s direction.

  “What you looking at, puta tijuanera?” Pila responded.

  Lourdes walked up, placed her arms out wide and replied:

  “Fock you—quieres algo conmigo, pues aquí estoy.”

  Toots rushed up between them and pushed Lourdes back into the dark. He knew what messing with Pila meant—a rip across the belly or face. But he also knew it might involve crossing Puppet, and he wanted to avoid this more than anything.

  Fuzzy then called out for other players and more bets.

  Puppet looked intently at everyone, especially Toots in a corner with Lourdes. He neither disciplined nor encouraged Pila. She took care of what she had to take care of. Puppet didn’t like people from Mexico anyway. For that matter, he didn’t like blacks, whites or other barrios. In fact, Puppet didn’t care about anybody.

  La Casa Community Center occupied a two-story building with Mexican motifs on the outside, a gym and a recreation area with a single pool table. For a few weeks I took karate lessons there until I decided to leave before anyone discovered my ties to Las Lomas. Sangra members roamed in and out of the center nightly, planning battles, drug deals, or just to get high. Cokie and Dina would practically live there, along with the other girls in the flaming red hair. Sal Basuto was the community organizer, playing the role Chente had at the Bienvenidos/John Fabela Center. He walked through the T-shirted and muscular Sangra dudes, with combed-back short hair or bald heads.

  “¿Qué hubo?” Sal greeted.

  Some gave him Chicano-style handshakes while others responded with hand signs signifying Sangra. Boy, Hapo, Night Owl, Tutti and Negro were there, sort of hanging and barely acknowledging Sal’s enthusiastic approach.

  “Hey, homes, you got a frajo?” Hapo asked.

  “Lung cancer kills,” Sal said and handed him a cigarette.

  “Don’t worry,” Hapo smiled. “I don’t inhale.”

  Sal entered the pool table area, a small room which once held books and tables and a record player but which were taken during a break-in by unknown persons who also vandalized the place, tore shelving off brackets and ripped away chunks of wallboard.

  Blas played a solitaire game of pool. Blas had a birth defect in which his right arm came out missing and only a rumor of fingers pressed out of his shoulder. But he trained himself to play pool with one arm and became a leading player, often beating those with two good arms.

  Sal looked weary. Once, he told me he always tried to put on a face of interest. He felt a lot depended on his mood. There were days he didn’t know what else to do with these young people. There were no jobs for them. The schools surrounding the barrio catered to the affluent whites who lived around Sangra, so they all dropped out. And Sangra and the police were in a constant clash.

  Appropriately, the initiation for new Sangra members involved jumping a cop. Ambushing police car units in any of the narrow alleys here became a common occurrence. The city of San Gabriel had its own police force and jail house, which lay on the outskirts of the barrio. Every homeboy knew the inside of those cell walls. It was home.

  Sal often returned to his cluttered office inside La Casa’s main building. He would sink down in an ancient metal chair, and stare out the window at the small, well-kept homes in front of the center. He felt sorry for Sangra. They were a small barrio. The leading section, Los Diablos, had no more than 100 members. Lomas, on the other hand, had several hundred. Sangra was constantly under fire: Monte Flores, 18th Street and El Sereno were some of the other barrios at war with them—and each of them as big as Lomas. In the first year Sal worked at La Casa, he attended nine funerals of Sangra warriors.

  Yet in many ways this made Sangra more vicious. Because they were small in number, they made up their strength with guts, intensity and uncompromising locura.

  Cokie and Dina made sure the Sangra girls were intimidating and feared. The leader of Los Diablos, Chava, did the same thing with his stylized dress and ever-present small felt hat and cane. Also their style of graffiti, quite colorful and cryptic—an
d their ability to sneak into the Hills unnoticed and cross out Lomas placas—brought much ire upon them.

  Sal knew one day they would pay a heavy price.

  Many nights in the garage, while in the throes of sleep, I heard knocking and voices. They appeared to be woven into the dreams. But I’d wake up and realize it was no dream but Chicharrón or another homeboy or homegirl needing a place to crash, to party or just hang.

  On such a night, I woke up to raps on the window. I yanked myself out of the blankets and opened the door. Santos, Daddio and Pokie, three of the Lomas crazies, were standing there.

  “Qué hubo, homes?” I greeted.

  “Chin, we need to do something tonight,” Santos responded. “You with it man.”

  I already sensed what they meant. They wanted me to do a jale, a hit against Sangra. The night before Tutti from Los Diablos had gotten into a big argument with his long-time girlfriend, Cokie. In anger, Tutti drove up to Las Lomas and shot Little Man, killing him instantly. The police had already busted Tutti, but Lomas needed to exact some revenge. I knew the whole story. What I didn’t know was Puppet, Ragman and the other main dudes had decided I needed to help “take care of it.”

  “Orale, let me get ready.”

  I put on dark clothes and my trench coat. It became a habit for me to take the trench coat whenever I did jobs like this.

  We climbed over fences behind the garage and emerged onto Ramona Avenue. A car was there already. I entered, sitting in between Pokie and Little Man’s brother, Beto, who had been sitting, deathly still, in the car. Santos and Daddio sat up front.

  “What we got to do?” I asked.

  “Look under the seats,” Santos casually suggested.

  I looked down with my eyes, without moving, and could see the edges of bottles and some rags. Shit, I thought, they want to firebomb a house. This meant somebody’s mother, little sister or brother could be hurt or killed. But this is how things had gotten by then. Everyone was fair game in barrio wars; people’s families were being hit all the time.

  We cruised toward Sangra. Santos knew the police would be extra heavy the night after a shooting. But if we didn’t move in a timely manner the impression would be anyone could hit us, anytime.

  “Where we going?” I asked.

  “We’re going to Chava’s cantón.”

  This was heavy. We were going after Sangra’s main warrior. Who knows how they found out where his family lived, because Chava had moved in with Dina somewhere else. But the idea was to make him pay dearly, going after his mother’s house, and if need be, anybody who might have the misfortune of being there.

  I felt edgy, my muscles straining, my leg striking a beat against the back of the seat. I didn’t want to do this. But once you’re asked to do a hit, you can’t refuse, can’t question or even offer an excuse. Since I was easily accessible in the garage, I became a good candidate for these undertakings.

  We pulled up to a quiet, suburban-looking street. Chava’s family actually lived outside the barrio, in a better part of San Gabriel, pretty much like me. We parked down a ways and climbed up an embankment behind a row of houses.

  Pokie brought up a bag filled with the bottles and rags. Daddio had cans of gasoline. We squatted in weeds behind a brick-fenced house with a back yard full of flowers and exotic plants, the way of many Mexican homes. A back porch had leisure chairs and gaily-painted rubber tires filled with soil and topped with purple, red and yellow petals.

  It looked similar to my mother’s back yard.

  Santos poured gasoline into the bottles and stuffed the rags at the top, leaving a section hanging over. We each had a bottle. We were to toss them at the back porch, then run like hell to the car where Beto kept the engine running.

  I didn’t want to do it, but I couldn’t stop. I felt trapped. I knew the only thing for me was to go through with it, and get out of there as fast as possible. I felt excitement. And an ache of grief.

  A news account reported five people ran out of a house in San Gabriel after four molotov cocktails struck its back porch. Everybody got out safely, but the back of the house went up in flames and the rest of it sustained irreparable water damage from the fire hoses.

  Little Man’s death and the firebombing were part of a series of violent incidents between Lomas and Sangra which stretched back generations. Dudes had fathers and even grandfathers involved in the feud.

  Of course, word got around about who did Chava’s house. I don’t know how this happened. But it soon involved my family.

  By then my sister Gloria, 13 years old and a student at Garvey, looked up to me. To her, I was independent, in starched khaki pants, tattooed, with an earring in one ear before anybody did this kind of thing; always full of stories and good times. Her inexperienced mind soaked it all up.

  Gloria joined a younger set of Lomas girls called United Sisters or US, and called herself Shorty. Sometimes I hung out with them, just for the kicks. I didn’t see Shorty becoming a crazy Lomas girl. I saw it only as something she would get over as she matured.

  One night she attended a dance at the San Gabriel Mission sponsored by Thee Prophettes, another girl’s club. I didn’t go, so Shorty played it smooth, hanging with her homegirls Cece and Huera from US.

  Sure enough, Cokie and Dina showed up at the dance with a few Sangra girls. One of them was Spyder, who knew me from Garvey before she moved to Sangra and became one of the locas. When Spyder first noticed Shorty she felt a tug of recognition.

  The Sangra girls gave everyone hard looks. US and Thee Prophettes kept cool, not wanting anything to undermine the benefit dance. Later that evening, though, Spyder figured out Shorty was my sister. I was “marked,” meaning Sangra members were obligated to shoot Chin from Lomas. But a sister would do as well, Spyder reasoned.

  Spyder relayed the information to Cokie and Dina. They had small caliber handguns. They discussed how they would corner Shorty and then let her have it, possibly in the girl’s restroom.

  Sometime later, my brother Joe received a phone call.

  “Pick us up Joe,” Shorty whispered in a frightened tone. “There’s something happening here—and I’m scared.”

  Shorty told Joe to drive around the dance hall to a back entrance. Shorty, Cece and Huera planned to be there and get into the car. Timing was everything.

  Joe didn’t know what the problem might be. He got into his car and proceeded to do as Shorty asked.

  He drove to the side of the dance hall where a door entrance was located, but Shorty and her friends weren’t around. He waited. Suddenly the doors burst open. Shorty, Cece and Huera ran out, almost tripping as they held their heels in their hands.

  “Joe, get the car going—hurry!”

  “What the …”

  But Joe couldn’t get the final words out. A volley of gunfire came toward him. My sister and her friends rushed into the car, piling on top of one another. Joe pressed the accelerator, forcing the car to peel across the asphalt. Shorty didn’t quite get inside but she held on as the car sped off; Cokie and Dina stood in the entranceway, and, firing from the shoulder, continued to pump .22 bullets toward the car as it vanished into the fog-drenched distance.

  Sheriff’s helicopters were a nightly annoyance. It could have been Vietnam, only we were the enemy. They hovered above the slopes and ravines, covering the ground with circles of lights. Deputies drove by often, pushing dudes against walls, detaining them and dispersing crowds of two or more. The homeboys shot out the few lampposts to keep the place in darkness. We hid in bushes, in basements and abandoned buildings. We were pushed underground. Codes, rules and honor became meaningless.

  Rapes became a common circumstance in the Hills. They began as isolated incidents, then a way of life. Some believed this ritual started with outsiders, not from within the Hills. Others said it began with one guy who happened to be crazy, but the rest followed suit as the attacks signified a distorted sense of power. One dude was said to have raped 17 girls one summer.

&nb
sp; Enano once pulled up in a four-door green Chevy as Chicharrón and I lolled around on Teresa Avenue. He climbed out of the car, opened the back door and invited us to “get in on this.” A naked girl, passed out, lay in the back seat. A black patch of pubic hair stood out on a shock of white skin which looked as if she had been immersed in flour.

  “Chale, homes,” I responded. “I ain’t with it.”

  Chicharrón nodded the same sentiment.

  Without hesitation, Enano closed the door, entered the front seat and took off, perhaps looking for somebody else to approach.

  A rainy evening greeted Yuk Yuk, Fuzzy, Ernie López and me as we left a quinceñera dance in the Avenues, a barrio northeast of downtown Los Angeles. We jumped into Ernie’s lowrider van. Paco and two girls were inside the van. Ernie put on some music which rattled the brain cells through speakers in the front and back of the van. Fuzzy and Yuk Yuk talked with the girls as I took swigs of Silver Satin wine and snorts of heroin. Mellowed and mumbling, we drove through the wet side streets toward the Hills.

  The girls were loaded; incoherent and sleepy. Makeup smeared their faces. Paco groped through the blouse of one of the girls, who faintly tried to pull him off. Fuzzy held the other girl up as he smiled at Yuk Yuk and me. I nodded off, and then woke, nodded off and then woke. Soon I noticed Paco on top of the girl he had been manhandling. Her legs were spread outward, and a torn underwear twisted around an ankle. Paco’s pants were below his knees and I could see his buttocks rise up and down as he thrust into her, her weak moans more from the weight of the body than anything else.

  Ernie pulled up to Toll Drive. Yuk Yuk and Fuzzy pulled the other girl out and down the slope to the field. Paco kept at it with the girl in the van. I clambered out, the cold humid air jolting me to my feet. Ernie passed me the bottle of Silver Satin as he wobbled down to where Yuk Yuk and Fuzzy were already situated. I looked back. I could hear Paco coming, scratchy noises rising from his throat. The girl, who was somewhere between 12 and 14 years old, had her arms laid out over her head, her eyes closed, her mouth opened—unconscious, but as if in a silent scream.