“I don’t think there is a part of town like this up there. I didn’t see it. It looked nice to me. I wouldn’t mind living there.”
“Maybe you should go live with my old man,” Rickie says, the anger rising in his voice. The other two are quiet. Alex is a nice guy. Nobody ever gets mad at him, not even Rickie. Alex doesn’t say anything. He stares at the dirt in front of him as though it holds some important message.
“Hey, let’s go to the park, man, and swim,” Oscar calls to them. He has joined Dennis at the sycamore tree, which he is gouging with his knife, laying open the flesh of the tree.
“Can’t. No water,” Rickie says.
“Yeah, there is. I was just there.”
“Asshole, there isn’t,” Rickie says. He stares hard at Oscar.
“Why’re you calling me asshole, ese?” Oscar asks, stepping out from behind the tree.
“You think you know fucking everything just because you come from Pacoima.”
Oscar leaves the tree and comes to stand over Rickie.
“What do you know, fucker?”
There is a flat, emotionless look in Rickie’s eyes as he stares at the brittle grass in front of him.
“Back off, pendejo,” Alex says, pushing hard on Oscar’s knee with his open hand. Oscar gives way and falls back a few steps.
“Hey, dude, that’s my sore knee.”
“Then back off and shut up,” Alex says. “Some fool tagged the building and threw a whole bunch of dog shit and other stuff into the pool. It ruined the filter. They had to close it down to drain it. I heard it won’t open ‘til the 4th of July. So go back to your tree.”
“Dumb shit,” Oscar says and turns back to the tree and stabs it with his knife.
“Let’s get out of here,” Alex says to Rickie. “I’m hungry. Are you?”
“I don’t care,” he says, but he gets up when Alex gets up.
“Hey, where’re you guys going?” Dennis asks.
“Get something to eat.”
Though uninvited, Dennis and Oscar follow.
“Let’s go to Johnnie’s,” Dennis says. Nobody responds, but they’re headed that way, in the direction of Landerman.
People are out now, washing cars, watering lawns, coming home from church, from the store, from Sunday morning breakfast at El Mexicano or one of the other small take-out restaurants. Everyone eyes the four boys in the low-belted pants and T-shirts and close-cropped hair; everyone keeps track of them out of the corners of their eyes because they are a pack and dangerous. One or two might not be a problem, but they’re always a problem in a group. People who approach them on the sidewalk glance down to check the boys’ hands to see if they hold anything and then look up quickly at the eyes to decode any sign of trouble there.
They come out on to Landerman and head south on the wide boulevard. A cop car pulls up and drives at a crawl to stay parallel with them and check them out. After shadowing them for a hundred feet, the car speeds off with the siren on.
Alex and Rickie walk without speaking. Oscar and Dennis walk behind and respond to the attention being paid them by talking and laughing loudly, calling to girls in cars, elbowing each other, and commenting on people they pass on the street.
“Hey, wait a minute,” Oscar says. He and Dennis have stopped and are looking at a display window. Alex and Rickie walk back to them.
“’Tom’s Stereo,’” Dennis reads. “I never seen this place.”
“It’s been here for years, menso,” Alex said. “The guy fixes old stereos. Maybe he sells new ones, I don’t know.”
“No way.”
“Yes, buey.”
“We could be in and out in a minute,” Oscar says.
“You want to go inside?” Dennis doesn’t get it.
“I’ll bet the place isn’t even alarmed,” Oscar says. He’s lost in thought.
When they open the door, it trips a little bell. It is dark and cool inside. Oscar takes off his sunglasses.
“Old school,” he whispers to Dennis. “Easy, dogg.”
Boxes of stereo components and flat screen TVs are stacked in the middle of the floor. Smaller items like MP3 players, phones, and digital cameras are in locked display cases. A DJ’s turntable sits on the counter. In back of the counter, a broad man with fat, indelicate fingers is chewing his lunch and wiping his mouth. He has emerged from a little partitioned-off room behind a curtain. A glance through the partially open curtain reveals the contents of a bag lunch spread on a worktable next to bits and pieces of a receiver.
He looks the boys over carefully. His face is tired, his eyes wary.
“Got anything cheap?” Dennis asks.
“Got any money?” the man asks in return, sure that the boy does not.
“Can’t we take a look?” Alex asks.
“For a minute.” He keeps a close eye on the boys as they move around the store. The boys spread out.
“Can I see this MP3 player?” Rickie asks.
“Just look at it in the case.”
“I can’t even see it?” Rickie asks. The others look up as well.
“Bring some money next time and I’ll let you see it.”
“How do you know I ain’t got money?”
“Okay, show it to me. If you got enough, I’ll hold on to it and you can look at the player.”
“What?” Rickie asks, incredulously.
“Collateral,” the man says. “Do you know what that means?”
Rickie does know what the word means; he learned it from teachers who ask for something in return for the pencils or pens he borrows in class.
“Man, this store is whacked. No wonder you don’t do any business.”
“I think it’s time for you boys to leave.”
“You don’t like Mexicans, do you?” Oscar says. They have all come up to the counter.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” the man says wearily. “Just leave.”
“Maybe we don’t feel like leaving. We ain’t doin’ nothing,” Oscar says.
Rickie sees the man glance below the counter; he has something hidden there, a bat or a gun. Alex sees it, too. “Okay,” Alex says. “Let’s go. There’s nothin’ here we want anyway.”
“Who you going to sell to if it ain’t us?” Dennis asks.
“I don’t know, kid. Maybe nobody. Maybe I’ll close the place. Then you all can go to Best Buy.”
“You can go to hell,” Oscar says as he walks toward the door.
“This ain’t no Best Buy,” Rickie says.
They file out of the store. Dennis closes the door hard so that the glass shudders and the little bell jangles crazily. When they get out on the sidewalk, Rickie turns and surveys the place without speaking.
“What’re you thinking, Rickie?” Alex asks.
“That fool doesn’t belong in this neighborhood. He’s a racist. You hear him talk about Mexicans?”
“He didn’t say nothing. Oscar did.”
Rickie stares at him for a long moment. Finally he says, “He didn’t have to say nothing. You could feel it in that place.”
“We oughta hit this place, dogg. Clean it out. That’ll get him out of the ‘hood,” Oscar says. “We could do it tonight. I say we do it,” he says and looks at the others. Dennis looks to Rickie expectantly, but Rickie and Alex act like they don’t hear Oscar.
“It would be easy, dude,” Dennis says. “We could be in and out before the cops ever get here. Just grab some stuff and go. I could bring my little brother’s wagon, dude. We could load it up with a badass system.” He mugs scratching like a DJ and makes bass and drum noises with his mouth.
“What’s the matter with you two?” Oscar asks of Rickie and Alex, who walk in front of him. “You scared? This crew is fucked.”
Rickie stops walking and turns around. Everyone else stops as well. Rickie stares at Oscar, who grows tense as he waits for Rickie to do something.
“What the fuck is with you, dude?” Rickie says. Out the corner of his eye, he can s
ee that pedestrians on the opposite side of the street have stopped to watch. On their side, people gather in front and in back of them.
“More cops,” Alex says. “Coming down Landerman. Start walking.”
The four boys begin to move again. People on both sides of the street join them, but they eye the four nervously, worried that something might still develop; they are anxious to get where they’re going. The cop on the passenger side eyes the boys as the car passes slowly by, but he doesn’t say anything. The car continues on.
“I’m hungry,” Alex says finally to break the silence.
“I don’t got any money,” Dennis says.
“I got enough for me only,” Oscar says.
“How about you?” Rickie asks Alex.
“I got a couple of dollars. Not enough for all of us.”
Rickie looks at the other two, wishing they’d disappear. They stand and wait.
“My old man gave me some,” Rickie says finally.
“I thought you and him fought,” Alex says.
“We did. He didn’t actually give it to me. I found his wallet on the sofa. He had more than a hundred bucks in there, so I grabbed some. He can afford it,” he says by way of defense, but no one is accusing him. It wasn’t his father’s wallet; it was his grandmother’s, but he doesn’t say it. He rarely takes money from her, adhering to a code of honor that holds that, no matter how much he wants or needs money, he doesn’t take it from her unless he asks. If she says no, he accepts it. But this time, his anger at her for just sitting there and saying nothing got the best of him. Her worn men’s wallet sat on the arm of the sofa; she had been paid yesterday by the lady in Burbank, and the wallet was fat, at least to his eyes. He will tell her later if she doesn’t already know by the time he gets home.
The four boys continue down Landerman until they reach the restaurant. They escape the late morning heat in the shade of the overhang and scan the menu above the order window—hamburgers, burritos, tacos, and menudo on the weekends. The swamp cooler is already on inside, forcing the strong smell of menudo out the order window. Rickie doesn’t eat it. It reminds him of the locker room smell at school and the mensos who get so drunk on Friday and Saturday nights that they don’t notice the bits of food and saliva mingled with the greasy sweat on their stupid faces; men who spit when they accost you on the street, coming toward you in their marionette stagger and stumble, hand out for money to buy menudo to help them sober up before trying to find Sunday work on street corners. Not him.
Rickie pays for Alex and Dennis; his generosity lessens the guilt at stealing the money. They sit at one of the concrete tables alongside the restaurant. The tables have been tagged and scoured, tagged and scoured again, over and over, the ghosts of names creating a crazed pattern on the table tops. Others have scribed their names on the once polished surfaces or simply gouged holes in the benches or the tabletops on long and boring afternoons. The boys eat without speaking and read the graffiti to find evidence of themselves or of people they know. The sounds of passing traffic and people ordering and food being prepared inside the little restaurant provide the rhythm against which they push the food into their mouths. When they finish, they shove all the trash to the edge of the table and sit back. Oscar lights a cigarette. Rickie and Alex sit with elbows on the table, holding their chins in their hands. Dennis finds a bottle cap and scribes his tag in the stone. The rest of the day yawns emptily before them. No pool to swim in and too hot to do anything else.
“Dude, it’s quiet on Sundays,” Dennis says, not looking up from his work.
“What are those real noisy planes?” Oscar asks.
“Private jets.”
“Man, sometimes they scare the shit out of me. I think they’re coming straight at me.”
“You get used to it. I don’t even hear them anymore,” Alex says.
“Sometimes I’m in my house, it feels like the house is going to shake apart, the windows break, everything,” Dennis says.
“Imagine working there. Those guys must be deaf, dude.”
“They wear ear plugs or headphones,” Rickie says.
No one says anything for a minute.
“You ever flown?” Dennis asks Rickie.
“No.”
“Remember?” Alex says to Rickie. “We went to the airport on a field trip in elementary. What, third grade? Miss Fisher? They let us go on a plane and sit down for a minute and put on those big ass headphones. You couldn’t hardly hear anything, that’s right.”
“You ever flown on a plane?” Dennis asks Alex.
“No, I never been out of this place hardly,” he says with short sweep of his hand to mean the neighborhood. “Except for driving to T.J. and one time going with my uncle and my mom and sisters all the way to my grandpa’s place in Jalisco. That was cool,” he says, and Rickie knows Alex is eager to tell them how much he wants to go there to live, that it’s his life’s dream to go and work on his grandfather’s ranch, but he holds up. It’s too valuable to throw out into the hot, close air with the stinking cars going by.
“I never flown,” Oscar says, anxious to be part of the conversation, “but I been to the beach.”
“I been to Santa Monica,” Dennis says.
“Dude, you were on that same field trip to the airport,” Rickie says to Dennis. “Don’t you remember?”
“I was?”
“I been to Santa Monica, too, dude,” Oscar says. “The water’s dirty there. I thought I was going to get sick just from putting my feet in it.”
“Me, too,” Dennis says. “You swim?”
“I can’t swim.”
“M’either. I wouldn’t want to swim in that water anyways.”
Alex asks Rickie quietly, “Remember that time me and you went?”
“Yeah. I didn’t like it. Too much sky and water. Going on forever. It made me feel sick or scared or something.”
“It’s cooler there.”
“It’s crazy, dude,” Dennis says. “We live like a little bit from there, and we never been and we never go. We stay in this shithole and fry and listen to the planes going off to somewhere we’ll never go and those people over there at the beach enjoy all the cool air and the ocean breeze. That’s sad, dude. Wait until my dad lets me take the car. I’m going every weekend. Pick up girls and shit.” He stops to think about that, and the others nod quietly in agreement.
Oscar stands up.
“Where’re you going, dude?” Dennis asks.
“I don’t know. My house, I guess. I can’t stand it when it gets hot. I’m gonna call Patty. She’s got a pool. You want to go over her house?”
“Yeah,” Dennis says.
Alex watches Rickie to see what his response will be. “Maybe,” he says. “Call me if she says it’s okay.”
“Me, too,” Alex says.
“I’m comin’ with you, dude,” Dennis says as he gets up from the table and throws the bottle cap into the trash can by the side of the building. He raises his arms in celebration when it goes in. “Two points!”
After they’ve gone, Rickie and Alex sit without speaking for a while.
“That guy’s an asshole,” Rickie says finally.
“Who?”
“That guy at the music store. Oscar. My old man. They all piss me off.”
Alex says nothing. They both look around and take in the immediate surroundings—the overflowing trash can at the sidewalk, the walls of the restaurant grey from car exhaust, the marred tables and benches, dark splotches of gum ground into the concrete, plastic ketchup packages on the ground with squirts of ketchup hardening in the sun and packs of flies buzzing around; the pawn shop and second-hand store, the pupuseria and the old movie theater across and down the street turned into some kind of crazy church.
“This place, dude…”
“What?”
“Look at it. Damn! I feel like I’m finally seeing it. I want to get my mom and sisters outa here. It makes me sick.” He pauses for a moment. “It scares me, dude, lik
e it’s going to hold on to me and not let me go. D’you know what I mean? You don’t want to get out of here, get out of this?” he asks Rickie quietly.
“No. I don’t know.”
A smoking car putters down the wide boulevard.
“I’d go in a heartbeat if I could get my mom to move back to Mexico. I want to get out of here. Ride horses, help my grandpa on his ranch. When’s the last time you been to Mexico?” he asks.
“I never been. My grandma has a sister there.” He gets up. Alex carries the trash to the barrel next to the restaurant wall. They walk to the end of the block and across the boulevard back into their neighborhood.
“The people there made fun of my Spanish, laughed when I said things and asked me to repeat them. That sucked,” Alex says.
Mailboxes that tilt back or lean on bent pipes toward the street are hand-lettered in black paint that dripped and ran; faded newspapers, hardened black dog shit, paper cups, broken glass at the curbs; curtainless windows, houses painted so long ago that the paint turned to powder and blew away, leaving grey board or naked cinderblock to the relentless sun and wind; but most of all the dirt, the barren hard-packed dirt of backyards under shade trees, the pebbly dirt of the baseball diamond, the fine choking sand carried by the Santa Ana winds that sneaks in beneath sashes and past louvers and coats window sills and dressers and anything left untouched or unmoved for a few days—this is what Rickie knows, what he has come to expect and accept as the real world. Everything else is a fantasy or an unfilled promise. Even if he were to leave it physically, he fears he will end up in a place that looks just like this. Or even if it doesn’t, even if his father isn’t lying and where he lives the air is clear and the sun bright and the streets clean, Rickie fears that he carries some contagion, some alien seed, that will infect the new place and turn it into this place. He can’t leave. What if he finds his vision of people and places to be true? It’s better to stay, better not to know for certain.
“See ya,” Alex says as he turns off on his block. “I’ll call you if I’m going over Patty’s. It’s going to be too hot.”
SUNDAY AFTERNOON
Rickie Trujillo Page 13
