Unbroken

by Anne Schraff

  “No,” David replied.

  “How did you get rid of her then?” Jeff asked.

  David walked over to the copying machine and started making twenty copies of Bobby Padilla’s picture. “I told her we’d try to help her find her son,” David responded.

  “Morales, listen,” Jeff Caudillo scolded in an annoyed voice. “That’s not what we’re about around here. We fix potholes and straighten out zoning problems and get the city budget put together.”

  “I think Mr. Ibarra wants us to help the people in the barrio any way we can,” David insisted. “I get what you’re sayin’, Jeff, and you’re right. I’ll put in my time as a staff member here. But I’m pretty sure some of my friends can help me find this kid. I’ll do it on my personal time. I’m just gonna ask my friends to keep an eye out for the kid. Maybe we can do the poor woman some good.”

  Jeff Caudillo sat down at his desk and laughed. “Another bleeding heart liberal. Hey, David, good luck to you. I don’t know where you come from. But here in the real world there are very few happy endings. But give it a shot. I think the councilman’d be very happy with what you’ve done, but I sure wouldn’t have done it.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  A little later, Paul Morales pulled into the parking lot of the city council building. David jumped into the cab.

  “How’d it go, man?” Paul asked. “I was shaky all day. I wanted to call you, but I didn’t wanna spook the deal.”

  “Dude,” David exclaimed, “it was the best day of my life! I felt at home there. I was helpin’ people. I can’t tell you what this means to me. I’ve spent hours and hours studying the city agencies. I know what I’m talking about when people call. It’s great. Only one thing . . .”

  “Uh-oh,” Paul reacted.

  “No, see,” David explained, “this lady came in. She was all hysterical because her fourteen-year-old boy ran away. Been gone a week. She was bound and determined that Councilman Ibarra could help her. But he had to get to a council meeting.”

  “The cops are supposed to look for lost kids,” Paul said.

  “Yeah, I know,” David admitted. “But she said the police just told her he was a runaway, and he’d come home soon on his own. The poor lady, she was outta her mind. She gave me a picture of the boy, and I made twenty copies. You know so many guys, Paul, like Cruz and Beto. They seem to know what’s going down all over the barrio. I was thinking maybe if you . . .”

  Paul looked over at his brother and grinned. “Hermano, of course I’ll help. I’ll get all my low-down friends to keep an eye out for the little muchacho. We’ll pass out the pictures. My homies’ll turn over some rocks.”

  “Thanks, Paul,” David said, leaning back in the seat against the headrest and closing his eyes. “Man, I never thought I could have a day like this in my life. Lying on that cot in prison, I thought life would never be good again. I thought I’d be lucky to be washing cars or waiting tables for the rest of my life. I never dreamed somebody would give me a chance at a job like this.”

  David shook his head, as if trying to get a bad memory out of his mind. “When Hawthorne gave me that ear bangin’, I felt whupped. I felt like I didn’t have a chance.”

  Paul never took his eyes off the road. He just spoke flatly. “Unbroken, man.”

  “Yep,” David responded. “Unbroken.”

  Paul smiled and winked at his brother.

  “Hey,” Paul said after a moment, “Naomi texted me that her father was down at Councilman Ibarra’s office. He wanted to get the streetlights fixed on Bluebird. You didn’t run into Felix Martinez by any chance, did you?”

  “Yeah, he was my first customer!” David chuckled. “Really gave me an earful about what a crummy guy poor Mr. Ibarra is. But I got along fine with him. I put in a rush order to the street light maintenance people to get the lights fixed. I told them it was a safety problem and the police want the lights fixed in a hurry. Boy, that got their attention.”

  “Dude,” Paul remarked, “you’re gonna be the star in this family pretty soon.”

  “In my book, you’re always gonna be the star,” David responded. Then, in a softer voice, he asked, “Paul, do you believe in heaven?”

  “I guess so,” Paul replied. “Gotta be something better than this down the road. Or else, what are we doing here?”

  “Our mom, she believed in heaven, you know,” David told his brother. “She was so strung out on drugs by the time you got to know her . . . Well, she started goin’ downhill fast when you were about six. But I knew her when she still had some good days.”

  David stared straight ahead through the windshield. He was remembering a good time in his life. “I was nine—almost nine—and we went to an amusement park. She said if anything ever happened to her, I shouldn’t be sad. She’ll be lookin’ after me from heaven. I didn’t want to hear about anything happening to her. She was our mom. She was all we had. But now I think sometimes she was helpin’ me when I was in prison. Maybe she put the idea of hirin’ me into Mr. Ibarra’s head. You think, Paul?”

  “She’d do it if she could, that’s for sure,” Paul agreed. “Moms are like that, even lousy moms. I’ll tell you one thing, dude. I never in a million years expected Mr. Ibarra would do something like that. He’s a good man, but that was a big stretch. It almost hadda be some kinda miracle.”

  David smiled. “I think so too.” He took one of the pictures of Bobby Padilla from his wallet and looked at it. Maybe there was a miracle out there for Bobby too.

  Just about then, they reached their apartment lot. David looked up from the photo and cried, “What’s that thing in our parking lot?”

  “My new wheels, man. You can have your truck back. I’m now a Jagman,” Paul announced, laughing.

  “You bought a Jaguar?” David gasped, staring at the beautiful electric blue car. “Man, did you win the lottery?”

  Paul laughed harder. “Nah, it’s an old Jag, but in great shape. Nice old lady always comes in the electronics shop. She knows from nothing about the new gadgets. So I take the time to explain stuff to her—how to connect her answering machine to the phone, the glitches on her computer. She’s stuck in the eighteen hundreds.”

  Paul parked the truck and handed the key to David. They got out of the cab and walked toward the Jaguar. “Anyway,” Paul continued, “her husband died a while back. It was his Jag. He loved the car, treated it like a baby. The Jag’s older than me, and she let me have it crazy cheap. She told me I been so nice to her that Marvin—that’s her husband—would want me to have it. I’m telling you this, David, but you gotta swear not to tell anybody else. It’d ruin my whole image if people knew. But some little-blue haired lady has adopted me as her grandson!”

  They stood in front of the Jaguar. “It’s awesome, eh?” Paul remarked.

  “Yeah!” David responded. They circled the car once or twice, commenting on this or that. “It’s bad, Paul,” David commented.

  Then David remembered the pictures of Bobby Padilla in his wallet. “Could you get a couple of these to Ernesto?”

  “Sure, me and Carmen are hanging out with him and Naomi tonight,” Paul replied. “Now there’s a dude, that Ernie. That old lady should really be adopting him. He’s really the nice guy.”

  “So are you, man,” David insisted. “But it’s our secret.”

  Ernesto Sandoval had a senior class meeting the next afternoon. As senior class president, he presided over the meetings at Cesar Chavez High. The meetings usually went well except for static he got from a couple of the seniors. One was Rod Garcia, who he beat out for senior class president in the election. The other was Clay Aguirre, who had hated Ernesto for a long time. Rod would never get over losing the election to Ernesto. And Clay would never forgive Ernesto for taking Naomi Martinez away from him.

  “We got some important things on the agenda today,” Ernesto announced to a packed auditorium.

  The senior class was very involved this year. Ernesto had gotten them helping with several project
s. Ernesto had a lot of enthusiasm, and it rubbed off on most of the other seniors.

  “We’re running that Saturday car wash,” he stated, “to raise money to send ten students to the model United Nations. And we got to plan Grandparents Day. That’s gonna be a big thing. It wasn’t well attended last year, but this year’s gonna be different. Ms. Wilson’s reminded me how many grandparents are involved with the students here. Sometimes they’re the only parents.” Deprise Wilson was the bubbly senior class faculty advisor.

  Then Ernesto said, “Before we get to anything else, I have a kind of unusual request. A freshman boy here at Chavez has gone missing. I know some of you guys are already into planning for a program where we help struggling freshman. But this is an emergency. He’s been missing for a week, and his mom’s a single parent. She’s out of her mind with worry. The police have him down as a missing person, but they haven’t found him. He’s just another runaway. A friend of mine is on the staff of Councilman Emilio Ibarra. This request comes from there.”

  Ernesto held up a handful of paper as he spoke. “I’ve printed out enough pictures of Bobby Padilla so you all will have a copy. On the back of the picture are the phone numbers of Mrs. Padilla and my friend in Mr. Ibarra’s office. If we all keep our eyes open, we might be able to do something really great. We could find this kid before something happens to him.”

  As they were passing out the pictures, Rod Garcia raised his hand. “Ernie, I think this is ridiculous. We’re wasting valuable time at our senior class meeting to try and find someone. And who is it but a little gangbanger punk who ran away from home? Actually, this isn’t the first time you’ve had a personal agenda during these meetings. I don’t think I’m the only one who’s sick of it.”

  “Yeah!” a girl responded. She’d been buffing her fingernails during Ernesto’s presentation, but now she came alive. “Our meetings should be about us.”

  Ernesto struggled to keep his usual composure. “Thanks for your input. I’m always glad to hear other opinions. We’re not gonna spend a lotta time on this. We have many other things to deal with. But I don’t think most of you mind spending four minutes on it. Just take a picture and keep your eyes open over the next few days. It’s voluntary.”

  Abel Ruiz and Naomi Martinez quickly passed out the pictures of Bobby Padilla.

  Rod Garcia continued trying to make Ernesto look bad. “You’re kind of a megalomaniac, Ernie. You’re so full of your own sense of importance that you think you can save the world. You’re willing to sacrifice the time and energy of the whole senior class for your own purposes. We need to make this a great senior year for us, and it’s not happening, man.”

  Deprise Wilson raised her hand and Ernesto recognized her. “The teachers who’ve been here for a long time—maybe ten and fifteen years—are saying wonderful things about this class. They’re telling me they have never seen such a spirited, enthusiastic, compassionate senior class. I see it myself. Kids are caring about each other, even about strangers, in a way I’ve never seen. You guys want a great senior year? You’re well on the way.”

  Wild applause broke out all over the auditorium, and Rod Garcia looked very dejected.

  After school, Ernesto called David Morales. He told David that he’d made copies of Bobby Padilla’s picture for all the seniors. He mentioned that he’d put David’s cell phone number on the back of the copies. “That’s gonna be a lot of coverage, David,” Ernesto said.

  “You’re awesome, dude,” David responded. “Paul told me you were the most good-hearted person he ever met, and it’s true.”

  “David, there are a lotta kids at Chavez with big hearts,” Ernesto declared. “A few of the other kind, but we won’t think about that right now.”

  “I hear you, man,” David replied. “I just got off the phone with a psycho. He swore that he read an article in the paper. Councilman Ibarra, he says, just voted to double his own salary and cut the pay of police officers and firefighters. It never happened, man. But this guy was yelling and cussing and asking me if council members could be impeached. Some people aren’t happy unless they’re making other people miserable.”

  “Know what, though, David?” Ernesto remarked. “Last night, when I went to visit Naomi, the street lights were burning bright on Bluebird Street.”

  “Ay! Gracias a Dios!” David exclaimed. “They promised me at street light maintenance they’d get on it fast, and they did!”

  A little later that day, David was working on his computer, checking with the road department about some serious potholes. Mr. Ibarra came out of his office and spoke to David, Jeff, and Livy. “We have the one cent sales tax increase on the council agenda today. Nobody likes to raise taxes, but we’ve already made painful cuts in every department. It’s either the tax or brownouts at the fire stations. That could mean closing down some stations. And that could be the difference between life and death for somebody—some little kid choking or a heart attack victim.”

  The councilman’s brow became wrinkled. “But tonight on the local news, they’re going to be calling us ‘the tax and spend crowd’ again. I’ve already heard lies on the Internet. And the radio shock jocks will be working the public into a frenzy. You guys have to get ready for the irate taxpayer calls. Calm and nice is the word, even if they’re cursing us all out.”

  “I take it you’re gonna vote for the one cent increase, huh, Mr. Ibarra?” Jeff asked.

  “Of course,” Emilio Zapata Ibarra boomed, his mustache dancing over his lips. “What can we do? We’ve already cut the library hours. We’ve cut staff in all the departments. The federal government can just print more money or borrow from China, but cities can’t do that. We’ve got to have money to put gas in the fire engines and the patrol cars!” Mr. Ibarra was red in the face as he stomped into his office.

  Livy Majors was at the desk next to David. She looked fragile, but she was tough. She had a black belt in karate. In the short time David had worked here, he’d seen her deal masterfully with angry citizens. “I’m going to be finished with college next semester, but I’m going to continue working here. I like the political circus. If all the good, dedicated people abandon ship, we’re all sunk. We’ve got the best government in the world in this country, and we need to make it work.”

  David looked at the young woman with admiration. He wished more than ever that he wasn’t an ex-convict. If he were just a young man finishing his own college degree, he might ask Livy to join him for a cup of coffee. But doing that was totally out of the question; it struck him as insane.

  David winced at the thought of either Jeff or Livy learning of his true background. Anyway, he thought, this lovely, professional girl had to have a fine boyfriend of quality. David felt a little sick to his stomach to imagine the look on Livy’s face if she were to find out where he’d been for the past two years. David himself shuddered to recall the company he had kept in those cell blocks. He’d seen the terrible ugliness of men stripped of all dignity, reduced to brutes.

  The phone rang on David’s desk.

  “I wanna express my opposition to the fifty cent sales tax increase,” a woman said in a high-pitched voice. “Do you realize what that will mean to everything we buy? We’re middle class people and—”

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” David broke in. “It’s a one cent sales tax increase. One cent added to the present rate.”

  “I don’t believe that,” the woman declared. “The man on the radio said it was fifty cents.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I’m sure that’s what you heard,” David responded. “But the man made a mistake.”

  “Well, I don’t want those crooks down there raising my taxes,” the woman raved on. “I work hard, and I can’t afford more taxes. Councilman Ibarra is just like all the rest. They’re livin’ large, and they want us poor workin’ people to pay for it all.”

  “Well, ma’am,” David replied, “I will certainly share your opinions with the councilman. Thank you so much for calling.”

  The next
caller had a different complaint. “Those blasted dogs are tearin’ up my rose garden again.” David had no idea who those “blasted dogs” were. “Isn’t there a law against dogs runnin’ loose without a leash? They’re runnin’ around, destroyin’ other people’s property. I’m a senior citizen, and I fought in two wars. And I think I have the right to enjoy my rose garden without my neighbor’s Rottweilers running through it.”

  “Yes, sir, you’re right,” David answered. He was relieved that the solution was simple. “There is a law against unleashed dogs. When dogs are not on their own property, they have to be leashed. You need to call Animal Control. They’ll send someone out to speak with the owner. I’ll give you their number.”

  “Could you tell Councilman Ibarra that I voted for him?” the man asked. “I’d appreciate it if he would take a hand in this. He might even remember me at one of his rallies. I’m six foot six, and he commented about how tall I was.”

  “Yes, sir, I’ll tell him,” David replied. “I’m sure Councilman Ibarra appreciates your support. And thank you for serving our country. However, we just don’t have people down here in the City Council to deal with dogs on the loose. So if you would call Animal Control—”

  “Passin’ the buck,” the man snarled. “That’s what I call it. Just passin’ the buck. Well, thanks for nothing.”

  “Well, hold on a second, sir,” David said, just before the man was about to hang up. “Why don’t you give me your name, address, and phone number. We’ll make the call for you. Maybe we’ll get a little faster action for you.”

  “Well, that’s more like it,” the man responded, a little less angrily. David spent a few minutes on the line taking down the information.

  When David hung up, Jeff glanced over at him, a smirk on his face. “You mean you’re not personally going out with a net to round up the dogs, David?”