Afterward, Alex had trouble going to sleep. Teresa kept jumping into his mind, amplified by the occasional soft sounds from the adjacent bedroom—especially by the music from the all-night disc jockey specializing in romantic ballads of the era: “Sentimental Journey,” “For Sentimental Reasons,” and “To Each His Own.”
Because sleep came late, it lasted late. Teresa was gone to school when Alex awakened. It was JoJo’s idea to buy the clothes. Now Alex was unpacking what he’d bought when the unusual noise came up the stairs. They could hear voices, but the words were indecipherable. Once Lorraine’s laughter burst forth clearly.
“I think that’s Wedo,” JoJo said after a couple minutes.
“It ain’t the cops or she wouldn’t be laughing, would she?”
“I don’t think so. Lemme go check.”
While JoJo’s feet were clumping on the wooden stairs, Alex recognized the painful feeling in himself as jealousy. In his short life he’d been envious of things that other people had, but nothing had this combination of hurt and anger.
He finished unpacking the clothes and stuffed the brown paper in a wastebasket. The clothes he left on the bed in a neat pile. He lighted a cigarette and looked out the window to the street below.
The cigarette was near its end when Alex heard footsteps on the stairs. He turned. Wedo was leading the way, JoJo at his heels.
“Hey, man, you’re Alex, que no? I’m Wedo.” His hand was extended and Alex shook it, surprised by the gesture. Most youths he met merely nodded when introduced.
“So you split from Whittier, eh? That’s cool, man. Fuck ’em in the ass.” Then to JoJo, “When’s my chick gettin’ here?”
“She gets outta class at three-fifteen. We’ll call the Kit Kat to make sure she doesn’t get hung up there.”
“Yeah, cool,” Wedo said. “Say, you got any c-c-clean socks. My feet are phew.” He held his nose to illustrate.
JoJo got socks from a dresser drawer, and while Wedo changed into them, telling his story, Alex watched the newcomer, fascinated. The earlier jealousy was gone. He liked Wedo immediately.
“Yeah,” Wedo said, running a finger between his toes before slipping on the socks, “the fuckin’ heat stopped us over on Soto and Marengo. Jive motherfuckers! Just ’cause it was five vatos in the ranfla. They wouldn’t’ve fucked with no rich Paddy-boys in a high-rent district, verda? They found eight joints next to the car—not in it. The fuckin’ punks couldn’t pin ’em on anybody, so they slammed us around, one at a time, three or four to one. Anyway, they didn’t have anything to file except a drunk and disorderly. I told those putos I was eighteen, so they took me to Municipal Court. The judge gave me five days, and the fuckin’ cops left me in the drunk tank at Lincoln Heights … full of punk winos with d.t.’s and shit. Some of ’em were cryin’.…”
“That’s a bummer,” JoJo said.
“What if I told ’em my right age—seventeen? Sheeit! I’d be in Juvenile Hall six weeks before seein’ the judge.” Wedo pulled his shirt away from his torso and put his nose down inside the collar. “Phew!” he said. “I gotta get home and get a bath and some clean clothes.”
“You can take a shower here.”
“Naw, ese. Hank’s got his car outside. I know my mother’s outa her mind right now.” Wedo laughed, as if picturing the hysterical woman. “I gotta let her know I’m okay. I just wanted to see Teresa—but she ain’t here. So tell her what happened … and all that shit. I’ll give her a buzz later … or come back.”
Alex had listened and watched intently. Wedo talked fast, with an occasional slight stutter and much emotion, and with an occasional word of pachuco Mexican thrown in. Did he have trouble with English? He didn’t look Mexican. Wedo meant “light-skinned,” but Wedo didn’t have any Indian features, and all Mexicans had some Indian forebears. Wedo had thin, sharp features on a narrow head. He wore the ubiquitous ducktail, though now his hair jutted out wildly in some places; pomade was unavailable in the jail. His clothes were dirty and he had the stubble of a developing beard. He bordered on being skinny, but it was a muscular skinniness.
An automobile horn bleated from in front of the house.
“That’s Hank … with his balls in an uproar. I gotta split. Why don’t you vatos come on? We’ll cruise and fuck around.…”
JoJo shook his head. “Naw, man. I gotta stay and do somethin’.”
“What about you, Alex?” Wedo asked. “You wanna fuck around?”
The invitation was total surprise, and he replied with total impulse. “Yeah, I’m game—for anything.”
“Well, let’s split, man. We might get back here later.”
* * *
Following Wedo down the sidewalk to the car, Alex was filled with anticipation of adventure. The car was a black ’39 Ford convertible customized according to the fashion. Both the windshield and the canvas top had been “chopped,” so the roof was very low. Nobody mentioned the decreased visibility—how it looked was what mattered. This was a really sharp car, Alex thought, the black bodywork gleaming from many coats of paint and wax. The wheels had chrome spinners. It was the first time Alex had ridden in a peer’s automobile, and it made him feel good. It was a sign of getting older, the way to greater freedom of choice and experience.
Hank was husky and swarthy. He nodded at the introduction as Alex slid in beside him and Wedo took the outside.
“Where to, man?” Hank asked. “I can’t fuck around too long right now. I gotta be at work, you know. Payin’ this car off keeps me on the ball.”
“Well … fuck … cruise by Metropolitan. I know some fine chicks there from the west side. And I gotta check in.”
Alex didn’t care where they went. He felt gloriously adult. He leaned back and devoured the city scenery. The dingy streets of East Central Los Angeles seemed beautiful. Unlike the slums of other cities, where the poor were stacked in tenements like sardines, in Los Angeles they were just as likely to be in a bungalow or duplex—and no matter how ramshackle, it was in the sun with a palm tree on the street in front.
Alex liked how teenaged girls ogled the car. Wedo flirted with two waiting for a bus, offering them a ride. They giggled but declined. Hank didn’t even look, and when the traffic light turned green, he released the clutch and pushed the gas. He spoke very little, and Alex wondered about him. He looked to be eighteen and had a dark shadow of a heavy beard. He drove fast, accelerating hard from each stop, braking equally hard on every red light. It kept Alex keyed up, but he also enjoyed the excitement.
As they crossed the city, Alex learned that Metropolitan was a special high school. Its students attended as little as four hours a week and had permits to hold jobs the rest of the time usually spent in school. Wedo had a permit but no job. He was supposed to attend school six hours a week, but it was rare that he attended six hours a month. In fact, he hadn’t been in a real class for half a semester—and under the circumstances the Board of Education had no way to force him. His mother couldn’t even understand the papers they sent.
“Wedo, man,” Hank said as they turned down the last block, “I’m gonna have to leave you here. I gotta get to work.”
“Where do you work?” Alex asked.
“At the Examiner,” Wedo answered. “He takes proofs around to the department stores—proofs of their ads—to get them okayed.”
“That sounds like a good job,” Alex said, and he meant it. For a moment he imagined himself having a car like this and a job like this; it was all he wanted to change his whole life.
“Usually I don’t make the run until later, but this is for the Sunday paper and they run it early.”
“Okay, man,” Wedo said. “I don’t wanna hang you up, ese. We can come by later on, que no?”
“Sure … you been there before.”
“Yeah.” Wedo turned to Alex. “Hank here got me a way-out picture of John Dillinger, a big, glossy thing.” He shaped his hands to show a ten-by-twelve photo. “He sure looked square, Dillinger, I mean. His hair
was short and parted … and he wore a square suit with a necktie.”
“It was a different time,” Alex said. “You know, man, styles change. A couple years ago everybody was wearing full drapes, now it’s semi’s.”
“Yeah, right. I didn’t think of that.”
Hank pulled to the curb in front of the brick administration building. Alex and Wedo got out and the customized Ford pulled away, tires screeching.
“Wait here,” Wedo said. “I’ll be about ten minutes. Then we can go to my pad so I can change my rags. Is that cool?”
“Okay, fine.”
Wedo disappeared through the tall doors and Alex loitered on the sidewalk. He really liked Wedo, who seemed so smart and confident—and he also liked Hank. It was so good to be free, away from institutions and able to do precisely what he wanted. Moreover, he was being accepted by youths several years older. They were almost grown men. He would never let them know his real age, not by word or action. He would make them respect him by their own standards.
The fifteen minutes became half an hour, and still Wedo failed to reappear. Alex began to fret. He felt conspicuous standing on the empty sidewalk, and he got scared when a black-and-white police car cruised past, the uniformed passenger eyeing him. He felt sure they would have stopped and asked why he wasn’t in school, except that he was standing in front of one. Policemen were suspicious of youths with long, duck-tailed hair.
A minute later, however, the bell rang, and within seconds the doors flew wide and a multitude spilled out, hiding him in the crowd. Cars went by filled with students. Metropolitan was the only school of its kind in the Los Angeles School District. Its students came from everywhere, a polyglot collection. Nobody more than glanced at the boy lounging against a wall. Wedo exited as one of the multitude. He was shaking his head in apology as he came over.
“Carnal, I’m sorry. That fuckin’ ruka made me go to class.”
Alex moved away from the wall, preparatory to departing. Wedo held up a hand in a gesture of restraint. “Hang on, man. There’s a fine gabacha chick comin’ out in few minutes. I wanna shoot on her.”
So they waited, Alex copying Wedo’s pose of propping one leg up on the wall, meanwhile flourishing a cigarette and commenting on the girls going by.
“Where you from?” Wedo asked.
“Here … L.A.”
“What neighborhood?”
“I dunno. Fuck … all over in foster homes and military schools. Mostly in the Valley and Hollywood.”
“Your people got money or somethin’?”
“Uh uh. I’m an … orphan.” It was the first time he’d formed the word consciously—and doing so meant something painful that he rejected instantly. To Wedo it had no special significance. He just nodded. “How long you been busted?”
“’Bout two years.”
Wedo whistled silently.
“I shot a guy in a burglary.”
Now Wedo’s eyes were wide, his head cocked. His was the world that admired violence. Alex had proven himself really violent by that world’s standards. “You kill him?”
“No, just fucked him up.”
Wedo nodded slowly, savoring the information, planning to ask JoJo if it was true. So many punks bullshitted about how tough they were. “I asked you if you were from a neighborhood ’cause you could go in the wrong one and get hurt. Vatos from Maravilla are after White Fence, Temple Street is at war with Alpine and Third Street.”
Alex nodded, although he already knew the facts from reform school. Suddenly Wedo was moving toward a pale girl in ponytail, bobby socks, and saddle shoes. She blushed as he cornered her, some distance down. Her back was against the wall and Wedo leaned over her, one hand against the wall, his face close to hers. It was a position of capture and domination. The girl was husky; she would be fat at thirty. She had precociously large breasts encased in an uplift bra within a tight blue sweater. Alex imagined how they would look (his vision didn’t match what would have been the sag of reality) and how they would feel against his chest. It dizzied him.
He watched avidly, wondering if he would ever be half so confident and relaxed with girls. Finally Wedo nuzzled the girl on the ear, whispered something, and touched her breast. She pushed him away, raising a hand in feigned readiness to slap. He turned away, laughing, and she was smiling, too. He had a street-hip walk, exaggerated by a slightly pigeon-toed right foot. It added bounce to his stride.
“Sorry, man, but her tits are—” He grunted in punctuation. “Besides, she fucks … she likes it. We might go by her pad tonight. Her folks go out a lot.” He had started down the sidewalk with Alex beside him. “I live about six blocks away. We can wait for the bus or walk.”
“Let’s walk.”
The neighborhood was mostly brick warehouses and garment factories, or other light industry. Occasionally a faded-gray frame house sat between the business buildings—a house with a sagging board fence, a dirt yard, and plants in gallon cans on the porch railing. In the window of one such house were three small flags with stars. One flag had a blue star. The others each had a gold star. Wedo pointed them out. “That’s where a camarada of mine lived. His older brother got killed at Guadalcanal, so Ralphie lied and enlisted. They got him at Iwo Jima. Their mama went crazy. I was thinking ’bout joinin’ the Eighty-second Airborne, but—” He stopped.
“But what? Your family won’t sign?”
“I just got my mother—and she’d sign anything I gave her. I just don’t read too well.” The end of the phrase was very soft.
When they passed the neighborhood Catholic church, Wedo made the sign of the cross. “No use takin’ chances.”
Where Wedo lived in one room with his mother was a three-story wooden building that appeared never to have been painted. The bare wood was dark brown; it had been jerrybuilt forty years ago. The entranceway reeked of urine and Lysol, and up the stairs the hallways reeked of cooking odors impregnated in the walls.
When Wedo opened the door to the room, a stench assailed Alex and made him queasy. It wouldn’t have been so distasteful if it hadn’t been so heavy. It came from a homemade altar that covered a dresser and half a wall. Dominated by a crucifix, the tableau was jammed with icons, plaster saints, pictures of the Madonna, and dozens of candles. The stink came from years of incense and candles. Alex nearly gagged, but Wedo didn’t notice.
“Where’s the toilet?” Alex asked, wanting a chance to open a window to prepare himself for this ordeal.
“Down the hall to the right,” Wedo said. “The last door. Here.” He took a key from a nightstand table and handed it over. “We gotta lock it or the winos sneak in and sleep.”
Alex took his time in the bathroom. When he came back, Wedo had changed clothes. The style was the same, but these were clean. More than clean, they were pressed faultlessly. His shirts hadn’t been folded in drawers; they were on hangers and had military creases down the back. He buttoned a maroon sport shirt to the very top, yet wore no necktie. Over that he put on a surplus Eisenhower jacket, patches removed, dyed black, and also faultlessly pressed.
“Say, man, look here,” Wedo said. “My mom is worried like a motherfucker. I know her. She’s out to church now—goes three times a day to her Jesus. I expected her to be here, but I gotta leave her a note. I ain’t been around for a week. I don’t write too good. Do it for me, carnal.”
“Gimme a pencil and paper.”
The stub of a pencil was sharpened with a used razor blade. The paper was the back of an advertising handbill. The note neglected any mention of jail; it simply said that he was okay, would be home later, and she was not to worry. “It’s silly to tell her not to worry,” Alex said.
“I know it, but what the fuck … I gotta say it … just like she’s gotta do it.” Wedo took the pencil to sign his own name, doing so with filigree and curlicue. It was more than a bare signature. While it had letters, its origins were the specialized “mark.”
Darkness reigned in the lower canyons between the buildin
gs, though the parapets still reflected the sliding sun.
“So whaddya wanna do?” Wedo asked. They were on the sidewalk.
“I dunno. I’m with you.”
“Got any hondo?”
“What’s that?”
“Money, scratch, lace, bread, all that shit.”
“Yeah, about seventy bucks.”
“Damn, you rob a bank or somethin’?”
“Uh-uh, a market.” Alex told the story of the canister of orange smoke. They walked while he talked. As he finished, he noticed that the buildings were taller. “Where we going?”
“To see if Hank’s busy. We might borrow his car anyway. Drink some white port, smoke some yeska, and pick up a couple of sisters I know—fine young Chicanas with fat legs. Actually they’re half-breeds. Their old man trains fighters.”
The sprawling building housing Hearst’s Examiner and Herald-Express was nearby, and they started walking there. En route, Wedo pointed out a furniture warehouse he’d burglarized by going through the skylight. He’d shot a flashlight beam down into an office; then he’d hung over the open skylight and dropped down. However, he hadn’t seen that the office was glass-enclosed. He’d smashed through, landing terrified amidst a rain of glass. A shard had sliced something in his leg. He’d managed to get away, but the result was the slightly twisted right foot that gave him a pigeon-toed gait.
Little Boy Blue Page 27
