“Okay, Coach, I’ll do better.”
“These guys need to see it from you, you understand?”
“Yeah. Sorry, Coach.”
“Okay, do your laps. Let’s go.”
The sun has set by the time practice is over. Rickie approaches the bleachers where Alex is sitting slowly and without energy.
“You tired, fool?” Alex asks as they walk from the field.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“You looked like your heart wasn’t in it.”
“It wasn’t, dude. It’s too hot. Coach was pissed. I don’t blame him. I sucked today. I don’t care.”
Alex looks at him closely, startled by the bleakness of his friend’s attitude. “Yeah, you do. Baseball’s your life, your ticket out.”
“That’s a long shot,” Rickie says dismissively. “Come on, let’s go.”
“Okay,” Alex says as he stands. “If you say so. Hey, if baseball doesn’t work out, we could both go to Mexico to my grandpa’s hacienda. You could go with me, dude. It’s beautiful there. We could work for him.”
“You can’t go there. You’ve got your mom and little sisters to take care of here. If you go, who takes care of them?” Rickie asks. Alex doesn’t answer.
Alex is Rickie’s only real friend. They have been friends since grade school. It doesn’t bother Rickie that Alex feels responsible for him, but Alex is wary of him as well—Rickie does things impulsively, stupid things, like stealing the car when the guy had left it running to sprint into his house to answer the phone. A veterano no less. Rickie roped Alex into that one. They did their community service hours together cleaning up the school and formed a crew with Tony and Dennis.
“Not a gang. A crew. Crews are different,” Rickie told his brother Bill. “Crews aren’t gangs.”
“What does your crew do?” Bill asked. “The same shit gangs do. Vandalize, tag, steal cars, who knows, maybe someday getting guns and shooting people. It’s no good, mi’ jo. You’ll get yourself in big time trouble. You, too, Alex. What about your mother and sisters?”
“Where am I going to get guns?” Rickie asked, scoffing at his brother’s worries.
“You should come work with me, Junior. Maybe both of you. They don’t pay good, but at least it’s a job. You could stay at my place,” Bill offered.
“You have your parties, your girls. No way I want to be there listening to you snorting like a bull in the next room.”
Rickie wanted Bill to insist, but he didn’t. Instead, he looked at his younger brother and his friend and was silent. Rickie knew that Bill needed their grandfather, too, maybe more than any of them.
“Where’s abuelito when you need him?” Bill asked out loud after Rickie was caught with the car. “I miss him and all his advice. Who’s going to save us from ourselves?” Rickie looked at him curiously. What did he mean by that?
“You’re probably right, Junior. I barely know what I’m doing, trying to figure shit out on my own; living my life is hard enough, much less yours or Alex’s or Daisy’s or abuelita’s.”
“You got a game tomorrow?” Alex asks.
“Yeah.”
“What time?”
“Nine. I have to be there at eight-thirty.”
“Who with?”
“The Red Sox. They’ve got that tall dude who can throw an eighty-mile fastball. They put the gun on him.”
“¡Hijole! You ever hit him?”
“I struck out the first two times. I got a double the last time. Just put my bat out and the ball went into right field.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“Go home and change.”
“I know that, fool. After that.”
“I don’t know.”
“You want to go meet up with Tony and them?” Rickie knows that Alex actually would prefer to stay home. It’s safe there and he can relax and indulge in his dreams of going to Mexico.
“I guess so.”
“Maybe we’ll go to the UA and find some girls.”
They walk through the neighborhood they have lived in since birth, past the elementary school they attended with its asphalt playground where they scraped knees and elbows and bloodied their mouths when they fell; with its low main building and added portable classrooms, all painted beige with blue doors; with its high fences and the sign out front which read “L st Day of S hool, Jun 21,” because some of the letters have been stolen or blown away by the Santa Ana winds the previous week; past little block houses painted in faded colors with high wrought iron fences and wrought iron at the windows and heavy black security doors and dogs that charge the gate when people pass.
The boys turn down Rickie’s street. It is cooler now. Friday. Young guys just home from work, or guys who don’t have a job and have spent the day inside, are outside now, leaning against the long Chevys or Oldsmobiles or Buicks of twenty, thirty years ago. They gather in groups of three and four, beers in hand, in T-shirts, undershirts, or no shirts, with shaved heads and goatees and black sunglasses, brown torsos with tattoos in Old English across the shoulders or the lower back. They watch the boys pass silently; someone laughs after they have passed, but neither boy looks back. Older men water dry lawns, women sweep yards, music blares, and children run in the street.
“I’ll meet you at Tony’s house,” Alex says when they reach the cross street midway down Rickie’s street. Alex lives one block over.
“In about an hour.”
“How come?”
“I’m tired, Homes. I need to take a shower, sleep a little.”
“Okay, pues.”
When Rickie arrives at the house, he hopes to find his brother’s car parked out front. Rickie wants to get some food with his brother. Bill is the only person he feels strongly about other than his grandmother, and he feels mostly pity for her, pity mixed with anger at some anonymous “them” who make her life so hard and at himself for not being better for her. When Lopez asked the boys in the group if they could think of anyone they loved, Rickie thought of Bill with a tenderness that surprised him and brought tears to his eyes. He knew that Bill missed their grandfather, too, and he was having a hard time living on his own, without anyone to guide him.
When it was his turn to speak up, Rickie kept his head down and said he couldn’t think of anyone.
But no car is parked in front, and the front door closes behind him with a sound that echoes through the empty house.
He tells himself he is only going to lie down for a minute, stretch his legs and relax his back, but soon he is in a deep sleep.
The weapon he’s carrying he can’t name but he knows it. He can picture it; he has used it in a video game. It is too heavy for him. His arms are being strained in their sockets. He is in a war zone, and the sky is the lurid orange of battle, of fire and smoke and sunsets. He has to find his squad leader to exchange this weapon for something lighter, but he can’t find him in the ruined buildings which are just fragments of brick and mortar walls. It all looks like a scene out of an Xbox game, but there is real danger, not from bullets, but from something lurking behind one of the walls. So far, he has turned each corner without coming to harm. He has one more to turn, and he is terrified of what is waiting for him. He awakens as he is about to turn that corner. His T-shirt is soaked with sweat.
CHAPTER 6
All of the others are sitting in a line on the front steps when Rickie arrives at Tony’s house. He opens the gate carefully, his eye out for the Rottweiler.
“He’s in back,” Tony says. “He wanted to chew Alex up.” They all laugh except Alex.
“Pinche perro,” Alex grumbles. “I hate that dog.” He flicks dirt clods and stones with his thumb onto the brittle grass.
“So, what are we gonna do?” Dennis asks.
“What can we do?”
“Anyone got any money?”
“I got a little,” Alex answers.
“I got some, too,” Dennis says. “I got it out of my mom’s purse.”
“Asshole! Why’d you do tha
t for? That might be food money,” Tony says.
“Those people pay her good,” Dennis says. He needs to defend himself. “She would’ve gave it to me anyway. She was asleep. What was I gonna do, wake her up? She’d a’been really pissed. I’ll tell her later.”
“How much we got?” Oscar asks. He stands and faces them. “Everybody give me theirs. I’ll count it up.” They hand him the money and he counts it slowly.
“Twenty-six bucks and twenty-nine cents.”
“We could go to the UA. We gotta hurry. The cheap prices end pretty soon.”
“I don’t want to see no dumbass movies,” Oscar says. The others look at him.
“What do you want to do?” Rickie asks. His stomach tightens. Tony and Dennis stand; Alex remains seated next to Rickie.
“I don’t know. Something. You’re like a bunch of little kids with nothing to do. Stealing money from your mommies. Going to the UA. What’s that all about?” He stands away from the group, above them.
“Hey, fucker, what’s your big idea?” Dennis asks angrily.
“You guys don’t ever do anything. Why do we have a crew? I’m getting tired of just hanging out. I need some action.”
“’I need some action.’ You been watching too much TV, Homes.”
“Yeah, well, what’ve you been doing besides jacking off?”
“Fuck you,” Dennis says. He stares at Oscar.
“Relax, Dennis. It’s too hot.”
“Well, tell him to shut up.”
Rickie stares at Oscar’s face. He recognizes something there that scares him. Something dead. Something sightless and ugly. Oscar doesn’t give a shit about anything. He’s empty. That’s what allowed him to kick a kid to unconsciousness and to gang rape a silly thirteen-year-old girl who thought that hanging out with tag bangers would be cool.
“I don’t know why I asked to join this crew. You’re a bunch of pussies. I’m going to…”
From his sitting position, Rickie lunges for him out of hate for the deadness he sees and the fear that it might have infected him, too. He’s tired of Oscar’s criticism, tired, too, of worrying that Oscar might be right about him, about his crew. He grabs Oscar’s right calf with his left hand and jerks it up and slams hard with his open right hand on the other kneecap. Oscar loses his balance and goes down hard with a loud explosion of air. Immediately Rickie’s on top of the taller boy and going for his face, wanting to tear out of him the condescension and the stone cold lack of feeling he sees there.
“Rickie!” Alex shouts and wraps his arms around him and pulls him off. Oscar gets up quickly and is about to run at Rickie, who’s pinned in Alex’s bear hug, but Dennis and Tony each grab and wrap up one of Oscar’s arms.
They stand like this for a minute breathing heavily and watching one another. “Fuck, dude, what are you guys doing?” Alex asks, finally letting Rickie go when he feels him relax. “It’s too hot!”
Oscar shakes himself out of Tony and Dennis’s grasp. Neither Rickie nor Oscar speaks; they continue to eye one another warily, ready to respond if the other makes a move. Rickie and Alex sit down on the step; Oscar stands at a distance with Tony and Dennis at his sides. No one says anything.
“Dude, you’re bleeding back here,” Tony says, pointing to a spot on the back of Oscar’s head. “I’ll get you something.” He goes inside the house and comes back out with a wet paper towel. “It’s cold. Put it on your face first. Your cheek is sort of messed up.” Oscar touches his cheek, winces, and presses the wet towel there for a minute.
“Dude, what the fuck is with you?” he says to Rickie, but Rickie doesn’t respond.
“Here, give it to me. I’ll clean back here.” No one says anything while Tony cleans the back of Oscar’s head.
“So, what does anyone want to do?” Alex asks quietly when no one has spoken for a while.
“Nothin’. I just remembered: I gotta go to my little cousin’s birthday party,” Oscar says. He hands the money to Alex, removing the couple of dollars he put in, and brushes himself off.
“Well then? What’s all the talk about doing something when you’re going to some little kid’s birthday party?” Dennis asks. “I don’t get you, fool. You cause a bunch a crazy shit to happen and then tell everybody you got to go to a birthday party. That’s fucked, dude. Who’s the pussy now?”
After Oscar leaves, the other four sit and stand around for a few minutes and don’t speak.
“That dude is crazy,” Dennis says finally. “I don’t trust him much. It’s not that hot. Why’d he act like that?” He looks to Rickie, believing that he has the answer, but Rickie looks down at his hands and doesn’t say anything. He shakes his head slightly. There’s no way to explain it. It’s something like a disease, something in the air or water or in the ground here, something larger than he is and more powerful and frightening. Something that makes you not care about anything, that makes you want to destroy things. What is it? He sees it in Oscar’s eyes and knows that he’ll always have to be on his guard around him.
“Patty’s going to be at the UA,” Alex finally says.
“How do you know?”
“She told me her mom was going to let her go.”
“If Patty’s there, maybe Claudia’s mom will let her go, too. She trusts Patty. Marta and Michelle might come. I say we go. Maybe who knows,” Dennis says. He has never had a real girlfriend even though he is tall and handsome. Girls, even the ones in his Special Ed. classes, see him as too childish, too much a little boy who still does goofy things to get attention.
The boys pool their money to get into the UA; they barely have enough for admission. They want popcorn and a soda but can’t convince the kid they know from school to give them anything for the little they have left. He looks at them for a long time, but then catches the eye of the manager watching him and shakes his head.
All of the people who work there are classmates of the boys or just a year or two older. They wear a uniform of burgundy pants and pale yellow short-sleeved shirts that look as though they were bought for someone else, and they have plastic nametags on the breast pockets. They’re from the neighborhood, except for the manager, and they know what it’s like having nothing to do and having no money, no job, and no car. They turn a blind eye to most of what goes on—kids going from theater to theater, having sex in the back corners of the theaters, talking, putting their feet up on the seats. They think it’s funny or just what kids do.
Alex finds an usher he knows, goes through an elaborate handshake, and asks if he has seen the girls yet. His friend shakes his head. The boys look for the girls in the lobby and check for them in the darkened theaters, but there’s no sign of them.
“I bet Patty fought with her mom,” Alex says. “They always fight. Patty can’t keep her mouth shut.”
They go from theater to theater. At some point Tony has half a bag of popcorn and a drink.
“Where’d you get that?”
“I found them on a seat.” When the others laugh and tell him he’s crazy, he says, “I checked them out. There’s nothing in the popcorn. I’m hungry.”
“How about the drink?” Dennis asks. “How about backwash?”
“Shit,” Tony says and puts the drink down.
They leave after midnight, after watching parts of three movies. Their eyes burn. Rickie knows Coach Vega will be really pissed if he finds out that Rickie spent all night before a morning ballgame watching movies. He’s always telling the team members to rest their eyes the night before a game so that they’ll be sharp for hitting. If Rickie goes 0-for, Coach will know.
They don’t see enough of the movies or don’t care enough about them to talk about them afterwards. They stand in the lobby looking around for people they know, but there’s no one.
“You want to do something?” Dennis asks.
“Yeah, eat. But we ain’t got the money.”
They push their way through the glass doors and stand on the sidewalk. The wind has begun to blow, tearing at the ski
nny trees planted in the squares of dirt cut out of the concrete. Papers, empty cups and plastic bags swirl around in the hot wind. A lone soda can rolls noisily against the curb and away again.
“We’re going to have a fire,” Alex says, looking toward the foothills for the telltale orange glow in the sky. Rickie looks as well, remembering his dream earlier.
“Fuck,” Dennis says. “The wind just blew sand or some shit in my eyes.” He stands with his head down, rubbing his eyes. The others turn their backs to the wind and begin to walk backwards.
“I’m going home,” Rickie says. “I’ve got that playoff game tomorrow.”
“Yeah, I’m going, too,” Alex says. “I don’t want to stay here.”
The four of them walk with their heads down, away from the shops and stores and well-lighted streets into the neighborhood.
It’s a dangerous time—after midnight, walking home on poorly lit streets. Easy targets for drive-bys. They walk warily, watching each car as it passes, turning to look at any car approaching from the rear. Each boy picks up a rock to carry concealed in the hand away from the street. Most cars drive by silently, faces staring at this group of four boys. Some people yell at them, call them names and laugh.
Finally, one car slows and the rider in the front passenger seat leans out the open window. Here it comes, Rickie thinks. The shots—they sound almost insignificant, almost harmless. Not loud retorts, but a sort of sputter, a popping. Then flesh will tear, the searing pain, the surprising blood.
The boys freeze, unable to do anything other than be spectators or victims of whatever is going to happen next.
“What are you little boys doing out so late? It’s past your bedtime, ain’t it? Where’re you from?”
No one answers. They begin to walk again, heads down.
“I said, where’re you from? Too scared to answer? Too sleepy?” The voice waits. “I got something to wake you up.” The lowered Chevy painted in grey primer lurches ahead and stops, goes at a crawl again. “You’ll love this,” the voice calls. He throws something out the window. Simultaneously, someone else in the car says loudly, “Oh, shit,” and the car speeds away.
Rickie Trujillo Page 4
