The Afterlife

by Gary Soto

  "Tío," I called. I pointed a finger at my chest. "Primo, it's me."

  They couldn't hear me. They passed through my outstretched arms and headed to the cashier, whose hatchet eyes had become sharper.

  I had never seen Uncle Richard with flowers before, but then again I had never seen him cry before, like he did early this morning in his Honda. They were going to visit my parents, I realized, and they believed it was smart of them to bring something sweet-smelling to my mom. And the potato chips? Snacks for the ride over.

  At my parents' house, there would be others to lament my death at such a young age. Angel, mi carnal, would be there, with the cement bags of guilt on his shoulders. I should have been with him, he would argue with himself. We could have took the dude! "He would be alive," he would cry, and I would cry in return, "Chale, we would both be dead!" In the three fights that I seen Angel in, he had lost them all. The guy was just a chubby, peace-loving dude.

  I stood between Richard and Eddie. Richard said, "I feel weird." He rubbed his arm with his free hand.

  Right then, I understood my power. I was dead, but I could offer a chill as cold as ice.

  Eddie looked toward the ceiling. "It's the air-conditioning. It's set too cold."

  They bought their goodies and were out the door just as the cashier cried into the intercom, "Rafael, code fourteen, aisles seven, nine, and fourteen."

  Incredible, I thought. People lifting the whole store.

  Chapter Two

  I PICKED UP right away that the dead can move with speed. For me, each step was nearly twice as long as my usual stride. However, if you're in the air flying, you hardly moved at all. You sort of strolled with your legs churning like you were on a bicycle. I giggled because it was a trip, me striding down the street and away from Longs Drugs, where I imagined the shoplifters scattering like chickens, stolen goods falling from their jackets and blouses—hair dye, lipstick, and bags of candies for those who couldn't wait for trick or treat! I was going somewhere on my own sweet time, and I was bouncing, almost leaping. I thought: Man, I could have used this on the basketball court. Me slamming the rock into a bent hoop with a ragged net. Then I would have made the team!

  I learned immediately that I couldn't pick things up. When I saw a quarter winking at me in the morning sunlight, I bent down to pocket that little piece of change. But my hand shoved right into the sidewalk.

  "Damn," I crowed as I stood up with a jerk. I studied my hand and wiggled my fat thumb that was bishop to all the rest of my fingers. I laughed at myself because what was I going to do with a quarter anyway? Help some poor soul whose parking meter had expired?

  I next put my hand right through a tree trunk and a car window. I used a karate chop on a bus bench and shoved a hand through a newspaper rack. For fun, I socked the stucco wall of a church on Mariposa Street. The church was for sale—Jesus, I suppose, had moved from that part of downtown Fresno, having had his fill of the poor, who were only half listening on how to get out of the gutter and get on with life.

  This much I grasped: I could slip through walls or doors, but none of what I found on the other side could be mine. Figure this: I could step right through a steel-reinforced vault and sniff all the hundred-dollar bills I wanted, but I couldn't walk away with any of that feria.

  The second thing I learned was that it was hard to control where I was going. Wind could boss me around, or the breeze of a car or truck could slap me down. I was like a balloon. Sure, I could command myself, "Go there," and I would move in that direction. But I traveled where the slightest wind blew, kicking along with little control. I got pushed to Van Ness Avenue toward the west side—Chinatown, as we call it. But the Chinese had moved out, the Japanese, too, and the blacks with ambition. Now there were only boarded-up stores. Winos, crazies, and the truly poor lingered, their eyes bloodshot from drink and illness. Stray cats lived on Dumpster meals. Pigeons feasted on what people tossed from cars, and they must have tossed a lot, because litter scuttled in the wind. Now and then a family of mice would scale up drainpipes and tumble down with their bellies full from drinking rainwater that gathered on roofs.

  Mi familia, I thought. I should kick over to my house and kneel in front of my mother and father. I would tell them, "Mom, it's okay to cry, but it don't hurt no more. And, Mom, I'm sorry for sometimes being stupid and not listening to you about good grades." I would tell my dad, "I'm sorry about the fender on the car—yeah, it was my fault and not the other dude's. I shouldn't have messed up so much."

  I loved my parents and wanted to see them. But the wind blew in the direction of the west side! I didn't want to go there!

  The morning wind nudged me westward three blocks from Longs Drugs, five from where I was stabbed, and six from the abandoned church on Mariposa Street. Then the wind stopped. I anchored myself in front of Cuca's Restaurant, closed up with a sign that read ON VACATION. I peered in. The kitchen was all shadows, and the booths where Mexicanos usually hunkered were empty. A single light in a hallway was on, casting a yellowish glare. The clock on the wall read 9:17. Time was still speeding along in that restaurant, but no one was there to care.

  I turned from the window and spied a husky cop across the street frisking a cholo, who had his arms raised as if he were praising the pagan god of Don't Move Or Else. I walked over in four long strides, looking neither left nor right for there was no traffic to speak of, except for a dog who was in the middle of the street sniffing a flattened milk carton. I approached the cop and stood so close to him that I could smell the breakfast burrito on his breath. And was that Old Spice cologne, the kind my dad uses? The cop wheeled around and looked directly at me. This spooked me a little, a guy so close I was seeing cross-eyed. He felt something; his sixth sense was in working order. Of course, he couldn't see me. If he whacked me with his nightstick, what harm would result? I had already seen worse.

  "Hey," I mouthed.

  The cop wrinkled his brow. He could feel my presence.

  "Leave the carnal alone," I scolded. "Go jump on someone else. Begin with the mayor and work your way down!"

  Although I could talk, I couldn't be heard.

  The cop licked his lips for moisture. He looked at me, and, like a spear, I plunged a hand right into his chest and felt his heart. It was flabby and clotted with cholesterol. The cop was out of shape. His gut hung over his belt and his muscles were soft as water balloons. The guy must have liked his bacon and his ham thick as shoe leather.

  "Ahh," the cop cried, stepping back, his hand over his heart. The badge on his chest sparkled from that electrical charge of my hand coming out, bloodless.

  The wiry cholo staggered backward, nervous. "I didn't do anything."

  He hadn't. He was a little gangster, but that morning, sporting a black hat, he had just been walking across Chinatown to god knows where, his death for all anyone knew. Maybe his luck, like mine, would run out later that day. Quien sabe?

  The cop examined the front of his shirt, surprised perhaps that his ticker was still thumping. He then winced at the cholo.

  "Something wrong?" the cholo asked meekly, his arms still in the air. His tiny rat eyes were getting smaller. His goatee was twitching, and the tattoo of a snake on his arm was throbbing. The guy was terrified.

  "Get out of here!" the cop snarled.

  The cholo, hand on his hat, hurried away, scaring the dog that was now gripping in his chops the flattened milk carton.

  The cop rubbed his chest and got into his cruiser. I followed by the force of my spirit. This was also what I was learning, that to penetrate something solid you had to issue up a little grunt, like opening a heavy door or lifting a sack of my dad's cement. I grunted as my ghostly body lowered itself into the backseat. I smiled. I'm going somewhere in a police cruiser, I thought, and I ain't even in trouble!

  The cruiser pulled away from the curb and the cop raised his attention to the rearview mirror. He was looking at me, but he couldn't see me. It was a trip, me in the backseat and laughing to
myself. I have to admit that I had never been in the back of a cruiser before, and assessed the quality of the ride. Kind of nice, I judged. Then we hit a pothole and I sank into the seat and rose violently, my head for a moment jammed through the roof. It was like I was in a tank, my head out and searching the grubby west side passing before my eyes.

  The radio squawked and the cop picked up.

  "Car twelve," the cop mumbled, his trigger finger on the button.

  "Domestic on Yosemite," the dispatcher cracked. "Backup in five."

  The cruiser sped up but not by much. And by his groan, I was sure that he was thinking, Yosemite, crackheads sitting on car fenders. Lazy-ass fathers already popping open their first beers of the day. Why hurry?

  The street was mostly Section Eight apartments with radios and televisions blaring in English and Spanish. Babies in strollers rocked back and forth by slightly older babies. Laundry hanging like the faded flags of defeated nations. The yards were cropped to dirt from bored dogs wagging their sorry tails back and forth. Why hurry, the cop probably thought. Maybe he was right. Unless someone got killed. Then he would be wrong.

  I hunkered in the back of the cruiser, hands on my lap, as I pretended that I was in a limo. The luxury of a free ride! If only my friends were with me, alive of course. I closed my eyes, then opened them quick, scared awake by the vision of the knife plunging just above my navel....

  THE COP WAS backed up by another cop, a Chicano, who was trim in his waist and all rocks in his shoulders. The guy was huge, nothing to play with, a guy so strong he could lift up a car if it, by chance, had rolled onto your foot. I followed the cops into the apartment where, we learned, the previous night a husband had slapped his wife once and not very hard. His wife then crashed a ceramic planter over his head as he slept off his cruda, his hangover. And that was the argument. Who was going to clean up the broken pot that lay on the carpeted floor? The plant in it was wilted, the dirt scattered like ashes.

  Dawg, I thought. A couple arguing over who's going to pick up the pieces of a broken pot? What about their broken marriage? What about the two babies on the couch, neither of them moving? Were they broken, too?

  The cops, invited inside the apartment by the wife, strode across the living room. The fat one snapped off the radio and the muscled one turned down the television, though his eyes sized up a basketball layup—it was Saturday morning and the second week of college hoops. Cal Berkeley was getting a big-time whipping from Arizona.

  The two cops gave the husband and wife the once-over, then the babies who were sharing a single bottle. A Chihuahua was shivering under the dining table.

  "We have a problem, don't we?" the fat cop asked. There wasn't much confidence in his voice. Perhaps he was still concerned about his heart.

  The husband shrugged his shoulders. He munched his lower lip.

  "He's messing with that puta," the wife scolded. She pointed a hand shaped into a gun. If it had been a gun, her husband would be flying across the living room, in midair and already dead.

  "Don't call her that," the husband returned. "Her name is Pumpkin."

  The wife's eyes got bigger. Her hand was still shaped like a gun. "I see you with her and I hurt you both!"

  The two cops let them have their say for ten long minutes. Then the muscular cop instructed his partner to take the wife and babies outside. The Chihuahua followed, its tin bell tinkling on its collar.

  The muscled cop quietly closed the door and, turning, hissed, "Pick up the vase." His chest rose, his jaw hardened.

  The husband stubbornly sat in his recliner, an obvious mistake. The cop pulled him up by his wrists and squeezed.

  "Ay, dios," the husband cried. His mouth made the sorrowful pout of a fish freed from a hook. He did a little dance when the cop squeezed even harder.

  "Pick it up—now!" The cop's eyes were wired with an electrical charge called anger. I figured bolts of lightning would soon be zapping out of his eyes. He released the husband and threatened, "I should break your ugly cara!"

  The husband was quickly on the floor scooping up the pieces as if they were gold nuggets. He let the debris rain onto the open face of a newspaper.

  "I don't want to come back—entiendes?" the cop warned. He glanced around the apartment and his attention was drawn to the water dripping in the kitchen sink. "And I want you to do the dishes after I leave."

  When the husband only sobbed, the cop booted him lightly. "The dishes! You understand, cabrón?"

  This was better than a telenovela. I watched the scene while kicking back in the recliner, feet up. I had to agree he was a cabrón, a weak-brained guy making a scene in front of his children. And in the apartment complex, the neighbors were probably dunking pan dulce into their coffee and gossiping. Such was the pastime of neighbors—all chismosos and chismosas—with time on their hands.

  The husband set another newspaper on the floor. My attention locked onto the news of my death shown there—a photo of me taken in my freshman year. My ears stuck out, almost stupidly because my head had been shaved at the time. I had always wanted to be mentioned in the newspaper, and finally I was: a three-inch column. I got out of the recliner and was on all fours reading this tidy news of my passing. Three inches was all I got: The story said I was killed at Club Estrella and mentioned that I was a high school long-distance runner. No más. Then a single quote from Angel, who lamented, "He just went into the restroom. I'm so angry." Behind that simple pronouncement I could read: He was going to find the guy who did me. Revenge was the flip side of a dirty coin.

  Ghosts can't cry. But I learned they can send a chill, and that's what the husband first felt—chills riding down the back of his neck as he stood up, scattering the pieces of the planter funneled in the newspaper. He sensed me. The cop sensed me.

  Both took steps away from my cold breath blowing the newspaper. It was fluttering at its edges, actually rising from the floor and scattering the debris.

  "Jesus," the cop shouted, his hand reaching for his holster. He unbuckled the leather strap and undid the safety of his gun. The husband backed into the kitchen, scared.

  Angel, I thought. I've got to see my homie! I pictured him in his cluttered bedroom studying the dry rivers of his palms. I pictured those rivers filling with tears and his hands closing into fists of anger. I could never use a word like love for a homie, but that's the kind of language I had in my heart.

  I howled my ghostly breath on the newspaper, and the bits of dirt arranged themselves like a beard on my photo. I was dead, I realized, but I could still have my say. I had influence. For all I cared, the no-good husband was going to get religion. Or at least the dishes were going to get done without his old lady getting on his case.

  I cruised through the wall, fists first, and down the balcony littered with toys—one was a rubber knife that could bring down a child in a pretend death. Kids practicing for the future.

  FROM THE Section Eight apartment, I drifted toward Angels house, or tried to drift, because the October wind blew me westward to Chinatown, where the bars were now open—Mexican rancheras were hollering for attention from jukeboxes. A couple of gold-toothed borrachos staggered down the street, slurring in Spanish. The dog I had seen earlier was still in the street, this time sniffing a crushed carton of Chinese food. Times were hard, and going to get harder. Three stray cats were having a powwow on the hood of an abandoned car. They were sharing a meal of a pigeon that was now mostly feathers.

  Luckily, the wind shifted and sent me eastward, toward Angel's house, off of Tulare Street. I learned that if I tightened my belly, like I was doing a sit-up, I could ground myself. But even then a wind could come up and direct me where I had no interest in going.

  I kicked toward Angels house and found him in the front yard raking leaves. It was Saturday, and death or no death, his papi, an ex-Marine who had trooped through the brief Persian Gulf War, expected a clean yard. He expected the car washed, and all the weeds to be yanked from the cracks in the driveway and sid
ewalk. His family had to set an example for others on the block.

  By the movement of the rake, I could tell that Angels own spirit was sadly deflated. I wanted to stop his sadness, to tell him that it wasn't too bad, to tell him not to be stupid and not to go hunting for the guy who killed me.

  "Angel," I called.

  Angel poked at the leaves gathered under a bush.

  "Angel," I called again. "It ain't all that bad."

  His dad appeared on the porch. His eyes were wet, and I realized for the first time that his papi was tender underneath his muscular arms and chest. He had been crying over me, his son's best friend. He was crying for every young man who goes down by a violent crime.

  "Come in, mi'jo," his father cooed softly.

  "In a second," Angel answered, not looking up. If he had, he might have seen a V-shaped formation of geese, something I myself hadn't seen in years. I watched the geese and then turned my attention to Angel's dad. He was staring at his son, and I know that he longed to hug him, to bring him into his body and say, "I'm sorry for Chuy." He pulled at a tear in the corner of his eye, and plucked off the dead head of a rose that had climbed onto their porch. He crumbled the petals, and scattered them in the flower bed. He went back inside, an ex-Marine who was still all rock.

  I blew my ghostly breath on the leaves, and the leaves danced a polka, rising ankle high. Angel, somewhat confused, raked them up again. I blew once more, this time sending the leaves fluttering shoulder high, like playing cards tossed in the air.