All Involved

by Ryan Gattis

  “Sure you do,” I say, “you were saving up for the TV and everything.”

  She puts her head down and says, “That money’s gone, Jermy.”

  She calls me Jermy when she’s serious, so I back off a little. She wets a cloth and dabs at the floor where I was eating the tamale and must’ve spilled. After she tosses it in the sink, she tells me she had to spend all that money on something, but she won’t tell me what. She tells me I’ll understand someday.

  After that, she gives me $10, but she says that’s all she has cuz she and her coworkers won a scratchers pool at work. I seen her go in her purse and everything, so I can tell she’s not lying. Ten bucks really was all she had. That’s me at $338 then, which should just about be enough to get me to Phoenix and started up, I think. I hope so anyways.

  After she hands me the ten, she says, “All right, have you seen Aurelio or what?”

  Her little brother’s older than me by two years, but I haven’t called him Aurelio since we were kids. Sleepy, sure. Sleeps. Sleep Machine. Sleepertón, I call him sometimes. But not Aurelio. Never that.

  “Haven’t seen Sleepy and haven’t heard about him. Why? You think he’s out fucking up or something?”

  She shrugs, which means yeah, not only does she think that, but she worries about it. Constantly.

  I decide to change the subject so I don’t got to hear about it for twenty minutes.

  “Where’s Lydia at? Where’s the little man?”

  “Together,” Gloria says. “She took Mateo to the Chuck-e-Cheese to give me a break.”

  “Hey,” I say, changing the subject again, “can I borrow your car?”

  She gives me a good long look over her white tea mug that she must’ve been sipping on while she was on the phone. It says GILROY: GARLIC CAPITAL OF THE WORLD on it. It has a little drawing of a garlic head on it too. It’s done all up in a green outline.

  “For what?”

  “A thing,” I say.

  “So, to do that graffiti nonsense you do.”

  “No,” I say, and I think I play it pretty cool, pretty genuine, but yes, to do graffiti.

  Obviously, yes.

  “Sorry, primo,” she says. “I can’t. I got a date.”

  She hasn’t had a date in as long as I can remember, so I say, “With who? Is it that Cookie Monster dude?”

  I’m playing, obviously, cuz Cookie Monster’s from the neighborhood and he’s three hundred pounds give or take a couple burgers, but she throws a banana at me from the fruit bowl on the counter, and when I duck it, it hits the door to the garage and then falls to the floor.

  As I pick it up and put it back, I bug her to tell me who she’s got a date with, and I keep that up for like three whole minutes, but she’s real serious all of a sudden and won’t tell me. She just kinda smiles to herself and twists her hair like she was twisting that phone cord.

  Finally, she cuts me off with “I got to take a shower. You better not be here when I get out.”

  I nod, cuz I can do that, and when she leaves the room, I go in her purse and fish them car keys out, the ones with a little Mother Teresa charm on the ring. I feel bad taking her ride, but not that bad. She’ll understand when I’m safe in Phoenix and I tell her all about how I did it cuz I didn’t want to be a gangster. She’ll be glad. Maybe not today. But someday. I know she will. She loves me. She wants me to be safe.

  6

  I’m not a total asshole. I am a little, but not all the way. I do take Mateo’s car seat out of the back first and I set it on the floor, not even in an oil stain or anything. After that, I roll the garage door up as quiet as I can, put the car in neutral, push it out, shut the garage door, lock it, put the key back in its hole with the rock, then start the car up and get rolling. I need to get to my aunt’s place and pack up quick before Gloria finds out I took the car and calls her mom and they both freak out on me. It’s a little complicated.

  I live with Gloria’s mom and dad and her bro, Sleepy, but her dad’s only home about eight days a month cuz he’s a truck driver and Sleepy’s never around, so it’s usually just me and my aunt Izel. She and Gloria don’t really get along too good cuz Gloria’s not married and had a drug dealer’s kid in sin and right now she and my little kindergartner second cousin are living with Lydia in the house their grandmom left to them. I’m with Aunt Izel now cuz my mom is back in Mexico. She left me in California cuz she thought I had a better shot at being something here than there. My aunt in Phoenix, the one I told you about? That’s my mom’s sister. So, anyways, like I said, complicated.

  Soon as I turn the ignition on, some musical jumps out of the speakers, and even worse, I know what it is cuz Gloria made me listen to it before, that song “America” from West Side Story. She says it’s all smart and well written and I should learn to appreciate it, especially coming from where I come from, but I think it’s fucking gay.

  I eject the tape and throw that shit in the back where Mateo’s car seat used to be. I’m trying not to get it lost somewhere in the pile of clothes she’s got back there. This thing is a closet on wheels. She’s got like three different coats piled up on each other, a few pairs of shoes, all of them white and clunky, arch-support specials.

  I shove my mix in the deck. Tex Ritter’s “High Noon” from the Gary Cooper movie gets near its end and stops abruptly cuz I fucked up the mix and cut the tape before the song faded out, but it had to be done.

  I only get thirty minutes a side on these cassettes I got at the swap meet, and besides, I wanted “Hurry Sundown” in there, a song that makes a lot more sense to me on today of all days. It’s about having a bad fucking day and wanting it to end quick, so you want nighttime to hurry up and come. That’s some Hugo Montenegro music, totally underrated. It starts out eerie with a guitar and humming and then turns into a duet, and that rolls up like a wave and breaks at the end with a full-on chorale. It’s almost like a spiritual. Well, I think it is, anyways.

  I decide to take Wright Road to the 105 so I can scout if there’s any way I can paint the underpass if it hasn’t been totally done over by now.

  The first time I ever fell in love with tagbanging was standing on Rosecrans facing the 710 Freeway when everything in my field of vision was bombed with black spray paint. I’m talking the curb in front of me, the sidewalk, almost every inch of the wall thirty feet high, the fucking palm tree next to it. Man, it looked like a ninja army did it. That day changed how I see the world. It made it so I don’t see concrete so much anymore. I don’t really see walls, or even buildings. I see opportunities, you know? A place to put my mark. I see big, permanent canvases just waiting to be hit . . .

  Hang on, there’s some sheriffs and fire trucks up ahead of me and it looks like they’re detouring people onto Fernwood. At first, I can’t see why cuz there’s a big, tall Jeep the color of brown puke up in front of me with a flat spare tire still stuck to its back gate, but as it turns onto Fernwood, I see why we can’t go through.

  There’s what looks like a big city truck under the freeway and it’s completely burnt out, and so is the concrete under there too. Right as I’m about to turn, two firemen release the back gate and it falls. Ash goes everywhere in this big black cloud as the singing on “Hurry Sundown” fades out and something new starts up, one of the real weird songs on this mix.

  It’s an old Sesame Street track, “Be Kind to Your Neighborhood Monster,” from a totally genius and totally ignored album called We Are All Earthlings, and I’m always kinda stuck between shivering and laughing when I hear this song cuz I guess that stuff means something a lot different to me living where I live. I mean, I don’t picture hairy purple monsters when I hear it, put it that way. I picture cholo dudes with tattoos, shaved heads, pulled-up socks, and a long perfect crease in their khaki shorts.

  It’s my turn to turn right and I can almost see into the truck as this sheriff in his brown uniform and hat is trying to wave me through, and he looks back at what I’m looking at and freezes for a sec like he can’t
believe it either, and then when he turns back to me, he waves me on faster. I blink, cuz I can’t believe what I’m seeing.

  Behind me, somebody honks.

  “Holy shit,” I say to nobody at all, trying to make out the black shapes on top of each other. “Are those fucking burnt-up bodies in there?”

  The tamale in my stomach tells me it’s in danger of pressing the eject button, so I gulp, look away, and speed the hell up.

  I might be completely wrong, but if Fate’s click did this, it makes a ton more sense now about the Goon Squad rolling up and kicking doors in. A ton more.

  I’m in a haze, more focused on what I saw than what I’m seeing now. I mean, I think I saw an AK-47 sticking out of there. And so much ash . . .

  Fernwood becomes Atlantic, becomes Olanda, and I’m passing Wright again on Olanda, when I kinda click back in and stop in front of my aunt Izel’s place.

  I go in the back door, real grateful it’s not a restaurant day. Sometimes, my aunt runs a little restaurant out of here and I help out. She’s from Tlaxiaco in Oaxaca, where they do some real traditional Aztec dishes. A couple days a week, we put tables on the back lawn and she cooks for people that come up. She bakes chicken thighs in yellow molé that she cooks in a clay pot for like two days first. She does tortillas from scratch. Around here, she’s famous for her lentejas oaxaqueñas though. It’s two bucks for a bowl of little lentils and pineapple and plantains and tomatoes and spices.

  Anyways, today is her normal prep day, and some neighborhood markets finally opened back up this morning, so she’s out buying ingredients, which is good for me cuz I’m in and out like a thief.

  I’m snagging my toothbrush and paste, my aerosol Right Guard, my Santa Fe cologne, before grabbing my vandal kit, a little G.I. Joe logo pencil bag I’ve had forever. I stay maybe two minutes after that, throwing my T-shirts and jeans and sweatshirts and socks and underwear and my favorite Reeboks in a little round-ended duffel. I take both black books with my sketches and that’s it. They got my other aunt’s letters and her address in Phoenix for bookmarks. From the kitchen, I take peanut butter and all that’s left of a loaf of bread, maybe five pieces. I’m back to the car and pulling it out before anyone even knows I’m there.

  My only thought is to cruise by a few layup spots and hope I get lucky.

  7

  Did you know that San Francisco is only seven square miles? I didn’t. When Fat John told me that last month, it kinda blew my mind. Cuz L.A., she’s endless. There’s beaches, hills, tar pits, mountains, Downtown, desert, and a big old concrete river. We go on and on. We’re our own fucking country. I feel that now more than ever.

  I’m cruising Lynwood, looking for layup spots. I check one I know of on Atlantic on the other side of the 105. There’s nothing though.

  I keep my eyes peeled for parked buses. They’re almost always a small street off a main one, like, a few layers back from a boulevard, maybe in an industrial area or a cul-de-sac, with a shoulder big enough to park a bus cuz sometimes RTD just sets buses aside for whatever reason, like, they might be having mechanical problems, or some dude got sick or was late for a shift and wasn’t able to come in and take over so they just got to park it till somebody can pick it up and drive it back to the yard, or maybe there was a big fucking riot that lasted days and service was disrupted and shit went unaccounted for. Buses are like the holy grail of graffiti right now cuz it’s a prime way to send your name all over the city and show everybody what you’re about.

  All my life people have said graffiti is a menace. They say it’s completely useless. I get the menace part, cuz it is. But it’s not useless. For me, it’s like a video game. It’s taught me how to use maps, how to navigate. It’s taught me about politics. What gang is where, who owns what. Places you can go. Places you better not. It’s taught me to watch my back. It’s taught me how to be bold. When I started, I was just a toy that didn’t know shit, I was gun-shy, but over time you get good if you keep going, and you learn, and you adapt fast. It made me FREER. Well, that and Ernesto did.

  I got that shot-up house of his in my head again. I kinda can’t believe he lived with those people, with Big Fate, in the same house, under the same roof, without being involved. It hits me now how bad he must have wanted to get out and that shit makes me sad. Ever since we hit up that sushi spot with the railroad tracks all out in front of it, he wouldn’t shut up about it. He had plans, that guy. All kinds of plans. It was inspiring, you know? Made me dream too. Made me want to be more than I was. Made me want to be FREER. So I put in work. And now I am.

  Every insane vandal needs a kit. In my passenger seat, I got my backpack with my pencil case in it that’s got six mean streaks, some sandpaper squares, and two scribers, and also there’s the spray paint I grabbed, Krylons and Testors. Sandpaper is only for big scribes, and spray paint is self-explanatory, but mean streaks are the L.A. marker. You can write on anything with them, cars, glass, metal, anything. It’s solid paint. You twist at the bottom when it runs down at the top. In fact, you can even twist them all the way out, cut them vertically, and blend colors together. Lately, I been getting psychedelic, so I cut my streaks three ways to combine yellow, white, and blue. Scribers are drill bits that look like arrowheads with their sides filed off, perfect for carving over anything, especially glass.

  I check another layup, and again there’s nothing and I’m starting to get discouraged, like I won’t have anything to pay tribute to Ernesto with and I got to start making a list of walls in my head if I come up empty one more time.

  Dammit, I want to hit a bus so bad though. That’s status. They’re the daredevil shit right now cuz there’s a million ways to get caught. It’s nonstop cat and mouse, all adrenaline. Drivers are always looking out for you. Undercovers have always got their running shoes on and their little fanny packs for their badges and cop shit.

  Sometimes whole crews take buses over and try to tag the entire interior, even the ceiling, and I heard once about how an undercover tried to lock a bus down so, like, the hundred dudes inside it had to bust out the emergency exits and run not to get caught. Like I said, it’s the Wild West out here. I’m telling you.

  I hit the third layup spot, right behind Tom’s Burgers on Norton, by Imperial and MLK, and I’m driving by thinking, fuck, another wasted layup, when the sun bounces off a windshield and almost blinds me. I turn Gloria’s car real fast, completely by instinct, and pull faceup to a perfect bus, and I mean perfect.

  Maybe it got left here only minutes ago, maybe yesterday. Who knows and who cares? It’s in front of me and it’s pure. Unbelievably, not a single motherfucker has tagged on it. I’m the first. I get to take its virginity.

  It’s hard to explain, but I feel so lucky that I’m actually paranoid, like, is this a setup or what? Are cops staking this shit out? Trying to catch writers? I guess they got bigger things to worry about.

  But then I figure if it is a setup, fuck it. I have to at least try. This bus can be my legacy. If I hit this right, heads will talk about it for years. Years.

  I don’t even really remember parking in the closed-up bank’s parking lot across the street, but I did cuz I’m here and the car is off. I unzip my backpack and go digging in my pencil case as I step out of the car. I’m so excited right now that my mouth’s drying up and I’m babbling to myself when I pull my headphones up and on.

  8

  Feeling like I’m buzzing down to my toes, I go straight for the front of the bus. I hit play on my Walkman. That’s when Wagner and his Valkyries ride straight into my ears. Just hearing them strings starts me getting hyper. Getting all into it.

  I’m so excited I’m shaking, so I take a quick deep breath and try to calm down enough so my hand doesn’t twitch. When I let it out, I’m good.

  Still though, a virgin bus all to myself? A virgin GMC bus with the tinted side windows I’m about to hit with a streak I just cut last night?

  My God, dude.

  I feel like I died, went to heaven, s
trolled through them pearly gates and Marilyn Monroe just begged me to sex her.

  My heart’s still going crazy wild fast in my chest, smacking on my ribs, as I hit a destination on the front windshield. Fucking brand-new streak, dude. I uncap it and it smells like Windex, perfectly like Windex.

  Tagging the windshield’s called a destination cuz that’s where the name of the destination is on the bus, at the top, above the driver’s head. But that’s blacked out right now cuz the bus isn’t on. But right then I decide to scribe first instead.

  I pull out my scriber and catch a big one right where the driver’s face would be, going F.R.E.E.R! with all kinds of punctuation and everything as I dig the glass out, but here’s the crazy shit: I do it backward. That way, everybody in the bus will see it as they’re going, and people in front of the bus looking in their rearviews will see it too!

  I wait for a sec when I’m done hitting it. If there’s gonna be sirens, if cops are gonna swoop up, it’s gonna be right now. I wait ten seconds, and I wait ten more, and then it’s shopping spree time. Time to go crazy.

  I take my mean streak I did up with white, yellow, and blue, then stand on the front bumper and go as fucking big as I can. I go top to bottom, taking the whole glass, going F-R-E on the left side, and then skipping the little black bar that splits the windshield in two, and then I go E-R.

  I spend an extra few seconds making sure every one of my angles is tight. I fix up the last R and make it so sharp the legs could cut somebody. After that, I put x’s on the right legs of my R’s, like in a pharmacy, cuz my style is like medicine.

  Under all that, I tag my crew name.

  I never had this much time before. Ever.

  Anytime before this when I hit a destination, it was just a little one on the left outside, and I hit those when Fat John’s running interference, arguing with the driver about transfers and I’m leaning and scribbling it all unperfect. But this? This is a masterpiece, dammit! This is what FREER’s all about.