Praise for the work of Ray Villareal
My Father, the Angel of Death is included in The New York Public Library’s Books for the Teen Age 2007 and Who’s Buried in the Garden? is the winner of LAUSD’s Westchester Fiction Award.
“Villareal tells a taut and believable story about a young man’s coming-of-age and the choices he must make. … Of special appeal to boy readers.”
—Booklist on Body Slammed!
“This wonderfully moving novel alternates between humor, tenderness and insight about what it means and takes to become a man.”
—KLIATT on My Father, the Angel of Death
“This story is written in a high-interest, low-reading-level style that makes it a perfect title for kids with reading-motivation issues … its appeal to its intended audience should be a smack-down.”
—School Library Journal on My Father, the Angel of Death
“Villareal takes on several important themes including illegal immigration, bullying, parent/teacher relationships and bilingualism. Ultimately, many of the characters—and readers — learn that there can be more than one truth, more than one point of view.”
—School Library Journal on Alamo Wars
“A solid glimpse at seventh-grade life from a writer who understands the age—biography reports, friendships made and lost, crushes, misbehavior and, sometimes quiet heroism. This story of three Latino boys with Stephen King-ish imaginations ought to find a wide audience.”
—Kirkus Reviews on Who’s Buried in the Garden?
ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE BRIDGE
Ray Villareal
On the Other Side of the Bridge is made possible by grants from the City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance and the Texas Commission on the Arts. We are grateful for their support.
Piñata Books are full of surprises!
Arte Público Press
University of Houston
4902 Gulf Fwy, Bldg 19, Rm 100
Houston, Texas 77204-2004
Cover design by Mora Des!gn
Photograph by Jair Mora & Alexio
Villareal, Ray.
On the other side of the bridge / by Ray Villareal.
p. cm.
Summary: Lon Chaney Rodriguez is a typical thirteen-year-old until his mother, a security guard, is shot and killed, and he becomes haunted by the feeling that he is letting her down by getting bad grades, skipping church, lying, and goofing off while worrying that he and his alcoholic, unemployed father will wind up homeless.
ISBN 978-1-55885-802-2 (alk. paper)
[1. Death—Fiction. 2. Conduct of life—Fiction. 3. Homeless persons—Fiction. 4. Hispanic Americans—Fiction.] I. Title. PZ7.V718On 2014
[Fic]—dc23
2014022876
CIP
The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
© 2014 by Ray Villareal
Printed in the United States of America
October 2014–November 2014
Versa Press, Inc., East Peoria, IL
12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To my friend Ron Cowart, for his diligence and
commitment to his work with the homeless
population in Dallas, Texas.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
EPILOGUE
“BE SAFE,” Lonnie Rodríguez told his mother, as he always did each time she left for work.
He never worried about her, though. There was nothing really dangerous about working security at an apartment complex. Lonnie’s mother was a basic rent-a-cop, who patrolled the area in a security car. She dealt mostly with noisy tenants, drunks, and kids riding their skateboards too fast in the parking lot. Anything more serious and she was instructed to call the Marsville Police Department to handle it. Lonnie’s mother was armed, but she had never pulled her weapon on anyone.
When Lonnie was little, he used to make up stories about how his mother got into gun battles with drug dealers, thieves and murderers. Occasionally, she would drive the security patrol car home during her break, which added credibility to his stories. As far as his friends were concerned, that was a real cop car sitting in front of his house. It didn’t matter that the emblem on the door said Wyndham Security.
Lonnie watched his mother drive off into the night, unaware that it was the last time he would see her alive.
CHAPTER ONE
“SO YOU’RE TELLING ME YOU DIDN’T LIKE Feast of the Dead?” Lonnie asked. He flung a stone across the creek water’s surface and watched it skip four times before it sank with a final plip.
“I didn’t say I didn’t like it,” Axel said, balancing on a seesaw he had constructed out of a wooden plank and a large rock. “It’s just that zombie flicks all have the same basic plot. I mean, you always have a group of survivors that spend the whole movie fighting off about a million zombies. And in the end, it doesn’t matter ’cause the survivors still die, or they get turned into zombies.”
“People don’t watch zombie movies for the plot, Torres,” Lonnie said, making a face. “They watch them for the blood and the guts and the gore. And you’ve got to admit, Feast of the Dead has tons of that.” He skipped another stone. “Boo-yah! That’s seven!”
“Six,” Axel said.
“You weren’t even watching.”
“I can watch and count and balance myself at the same time.”
“Well, it was seven,” Lonnie said, though he wasn’t sure if he was correct.
“Whatever.” Axel hopped off his makeshift seesaw and joined him in skipping stones.
Lonnie tossed another one, careful not to get too close to the water’s edge. The last time he went home with wet sneakers, his mother detected the foul odor and questioned him about why his shoes smelled like fish. Acting embarrassed, he told her that his shoes stunk because he hadn’t changed his socks in three days. She chewed him out, saying that by the age of thirteen, he ought to know better than to wear the same dirty socks over and over. Then she made him put on a clean pair, which was fine with him. At least he didn’t have to tell her the truth, that his sneakers smelled like fish because he had gotten them wet playing at Catfish Creek.
“Just one time,” Axel said, “I’d like to see a zombie flick where they find a cure for zombie-ism, or whatever they call it, and people return to normal.”
“That’s never going to happen, Torres,” Lonnie told him. “Don’t you get it? Zombies are already dead. They’re reanimated corpses. You can’t cure the dead and have them lead normal lives again.”
“Then what’s the point of zombie movies?” Axel asked. “If there’s never going to be any hope for zombies, if there’s never going to be a solution to the zombie problem, then wh
y bother making the same flick with the same ending?”
“Jeez, Torres,” Lonnie said. “I didn’t realize you were so sensitive about zombies. Maybe you should just stick to Disney movies.”
Axel climbed on top of a boulder and stood on one foot, like a circus bear. “All I’m saying is that I’d like to see something original, a zombie flick that has some kind of hope.”
Lonnie didn’t know why he had bothered to lend Axel his Feast of the Dead DVD. He had missed the whole point of the movie. Zombies don’t get cured. They don’t get better. They multiply by creating other zombies until finally, they take over the world. That’s what the zombie apocalypse is about. There isn’t supposed to be an answer to the zombie problem.
Lonnie had seen Feast of the Dead with his dad when it first hit the theaters. Later, he bought the movie when it was released on DVD. He owned close to a hundred DVDs, a large number of them monster and sci-fi.
His dad, a horror film buff, had introduced him to dozens of horror movies, from the original Nosferatu and Phantom of the Opera, to the much creepier ones, like Return to Darkness and The Butcher of Buffalo Bayou. Over his wife’s objections, he insisted on naming their son Lon Chaney, as a tribute to the legendary horror film actor.
Lonnie threw another stone, and this time it did skip seven times, but he didn’t mention it. “Your family doing anything tomorrow for Labor Day?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“I thought we’d do something, maybe go to the paper company. The place will be closed, so we won’t have to worry about the workers hassling us.”
“I’ll have to see,” Axel said. “But like I’ve told you before, my mom doesn’t like me hanging around you too much.”
Lonnie looked up at him. “Why not? I’m always nice to her. I don’t cuss in front of her or anything.”
“I know. It’s just that she thinks that your parents give you too much freedom. That they allow you to go and do whatever you want. She says you’re a vago.”
“A vago? What’s that?”
“You know, a vagabond.”
Lonnie sighed. “Okay, I give. What’s a vagabond?”
Axel leaped off the boulder and landed next to him. “A vagabond’s a drifter, a guy who wanders around from place to place, with nowhere to live.”
“You mean like a homeless person? I’m not homeless. I’ve got a home, and I’ve got parents. Just ’cause I don’t sit around the house all day like some momma’s boy …”
Axel glared at him. “Are you calling me a momma’s boy?”
“I didn’t say you were a momma’s boy.”
“But that’s what you’re implying, right?”
“I’m not implying anything,” Lonnie said, thinking how quickly Axel had switched their conversation from his mom criticizing him to his saying he was a momma’s boy. “Look, if you want to get together tomorrow, call me. If not, I’ll probably go to the paper company by myself.”
Lonnie had never thought of Axel as a momma’s boy, but he did feel that his parents were too protective of him. They hadn’t allowed him to go to Regina Hulcy’s birthday party at the Ice House because Axel didn’t know how to skate, and his mom was afraid he would fall and hurt himself.
His parents also monitored everything he watched on TV. They would have gone ballistic if they learned that Axel had watched Feast of the Dead, plus a bunch of other horror DVDs Lonnie had let him borrow. Fortunately, Axel had a TV with a built-in DVD player in his room, and he watched the movies with the sound turned down.
If his parents thought watching horror movies on the sneak was bad, they would have freaked out if they discovered that their son sometimes hung out at Catfish Creek with Lonnie. But Lonnie had never forced him to go to the creek or anywhere else. Axel was old enough to make his own decisions. All Lonnie did was offer him an alternative to being stuck at home all day. It was Axel’s choice to say yes or no.
Lonnie checked the time on his cell phone. Three minutes after twelve. “We’d better start heading back,” he said and stooped to pick his Bible from the ground.
The boys hiked up a hill until they reached the railroad tracks, which stretched above Catfish Creek. From up there, they could see the Winfield Road Presbyterian Church below. Service had just ended, and people were making their way toward the parking lot.
They ran down the hill, stopping at the bottom to pick grass burrs off their pants. They climbed over the fence behind the church, hurried inside the building through the rear door, and walked down the hallway until they reached the sanctuary. Then they slipped out the front doors, avoiding making eye contact with the Reverend Rodney Elrod, who was talking with a group of ladies about a women’s retreat.
“Call me tomorrow,” Lonnie said before crossing the street and heading home.
Lonnie’s parents weren’t church goers, but his mother thought it was important for him to get some religion. When Brother Elrod stopped by their house one day to invite them to attend Sunday services, Lonnie’s mother explained that she worked a late shift and couldn’t make it to church, but that she would send her son.
So each Sunday morning, she made Lonnie walk across the street to the Winfield Road Presbyterian Church, even though they weren’t Presbyterians. If pressed about their religion, Lonnie’s mother might have replied that they were Catholic. But Lonnie hadn’t been inside a Catholic church since he was baptized as a baby.
His dad didn’t care if Lonnie went to church, but he wasn’t going to fight his wife on the issue. Although he had been raised a Baptist, he wasn’t sure if he believed in God, but like his wife, he thought it was good if their son did.
Lonnie hated going to church, especially to Sunday school. The pastor’s daughter, Jo Marie Elrod, who attended Aaron Wyatt Middle School with him, was in his Sunday school class, and she always made him feel stupid because he wasn’t nearly as knowledgeable about the Bible as she was.
Jo Marie howled with laughter when Lonnie once asked Mrs. Finley, the Sunday school teacher, if Jesus could technically be considered a zombie since He had been raised from the dead. Mrs. Finley told him that his question was inappropriate, if not blasphemous. Lonnie didn’t know what blasphemous meant, but he wasn’t trying to be funny or cause trouble. He thought he had asked a perfectly legitimate question. He had planned to ask the same thing about Lazarus, whom he learned had also returned from the dead. The following day, Jo Marie blabbed it all over school that Lonnie Rodríguez thought Jesus was a zombie.
Lonnie begged his mother not to make him go to church anymore, but she refused to listen. She would stand on the porch, watching, until she saw her son cross the street and walk through the church’s front doors.
Then one Sunday morning, Lonnie left the sanctuary to go to the bathroom. He didn’t really have to use it, but he had to do something to avoid falling asleep, while Brother Elrod droned on about the book of Habakkuk.
He strolled past the fellowship hall and the Sunday school classrooms until he reached the back of the building. Stopping there, he looked out the window. The back yard had a kiddy playground set enclosed by a chain-link fence. Beyond the fence, he could see the hill that led up to the railroad tracks.
Lonnie stepped outside, quietly shutting the door behind him. He was alone. The little kids were in children’s church, and almost everyone else was sitting in the sanctuary, listening to Reverend “Snore-rod.”
Walking around the playground equipment, he thought that if he was a little kid, he would have enjoyed playing in the fort and coming down the slide on his belly, or crawling through the plastic tunnels.
He turned his attention to the fence, and a wicked idea began to form in his mind. He looked around. No one was watching. Without giving it another thought, he hurried to the fence and scrambled over it.
Lonnie glimpsed back at the church, feeling like an inmate who had just made a prison break. He couldn’t stop now. He raced up the hill until he reached the railroad tracks.
He took in his
surroundings: cedar elm trees and red oaks that had begun to sprout leaves in the warm, April air; black-eyed Susans, bishop’s weed and dandelions that blanketed the hilly terrain. The sun shone brightly, and the wind caressed his face. Feeling liberated, Lonnie inhaled deeply and smiled. Mrs. Finley might have found it inappropriate, if not blasphemous, but he turned his eyes skyward and exclaimed, “Thank you, Jesus!”
On the other side of the tracks, he could see Catfish Creek. He would have liked to have gone down there, but he didn’t have much time. The service would be ending soon. Instead, he remained where he was, playing on the steel rails, until a couple of minutes past noon, when he headed back to the church.
From then on, Lonnie spent many Sunday mornings, either at the railroad tracks or at Catfish Creek. And if his mother happened to be standing on the porch when church let out, she would see her son, Bible tucked under his arm, smiling like a saint, walking out of the Winfield Road Presbyterian Church.
Axel was Catholic, and he attended Sunday mass regularly with his family. Once in a while, though, he would tell his parents that Lonnie had invited him to go to his church. That way he could join him on his excursions.
Sometimes Lonnie wondered if sneaking out of church to play at Catfish Creek was a sin. Would God punish him for doing it? If He did, Lonnie figured the punishment couldn’t be any worse than having to endure listening to the Reverend Elrod’s coma-inducing sermons or his daughter’s self-righteous, flapping mouth.
CHAPTER TWO
LONNIE’S DAD WAS SITTING IN THE DEN watching a baseball game between the San Francisco Giants and the Chicago Cubs when Lonnie walked in. An open bag of Fritos lay on the coffee table, along with two empty beer cans. Lonnie’s dad wore blue-plaid pajama bottoms and a black T-shirt with a picture of Ghostface from the Scream movies on the front. His face was peppered with five-day-old stubble, and his hair stood on end, as if he had poked a finger into an electric socket.
“Hi, buddy, how was church?” he asked.
On the Other Side of the Bridge Page 1
