Iron River

by Daniel Acosta

  I wanted to cry because I was laughing so hard at the picture of Dad’s head looking like a cracked-open watermelon.

  “Well, not like a real sandía, but the skin split open and blood was gushing out. Rudy ran inside yelling for my ‘amá. She came out and when she saw me, she screamed. She thought I was dead, but Rudy said I was just faking. But I wasn’t. My face was covered in blood and I had a splitting headache.” Dad laughed about the splitting part.

  “When your grandpa got home and Grandma told him what happened and that Rudy wouldn’t fess up to doing it, he marched him out to the yard and told him to drop his pants. He whipped him with a branch from the palo verde next to the outhouse. I think that hurt him more than my head hurt me!”

  We laughed together and then he hugged me tight before we went inside. Later, when I was in bed, and Mom already said bedtime prayers with me, and Grandma blessed me a million times and tucked me in, Dad came to my room and looked down at me.

  “Promise me you’ll stay away from Rudy.”

  I nodded again. Then he blessed the sign of the Cross on my forehead with his rough thumb and kissed it and went out, closing the door behind him.

  The next day, I was in my room moving my stuff from the chester drawers into a cardboard box. Cruz’ drawers were empty because he was already moved back in with his folks on Pearl Street. I just finished putting my last shirt in the box, when I heard meowing out my front window. Danny. That was his secret signal. He read in Huckleberry Finn how Tom Sawyer or somebody used it as their gang’s secret signal.

  I started reading that book, but it was too hard because there’s a bunch of spelling mistakes in it. Plus, when I tried to read the words that negro named Jim said, I couldn’t understand any of it.

  Danny says it’s a great book and it probably is, but I have other things to do and too much to think about right now to try reading it again. I went to the window and pressed my face to the screen to make my nose go all flat like a boxer’s.

  “Órale.” Danny was trying to sound like a pachuco. I laughed. He went around to the screen door, and I let him in. He followed me back to my ex-room. He looked at the box with my clothes in it and the open chester drawers. “Are you going someplace, Man?” he asked me, all worried. “Did the cops come or something?”

  “Chale.” I laughed. “Nah, my uncle Rudy’s getting out of prison. Grandma’s giving him my room for a while. I’m sleeping on the couch.”

  Danny smiled and watched me finish packing. When I was done he helped me carry the box to the corner of the front room next to the gas heater. I was going to put the box down when he stopped me.

  “Not so close. It might catch on fire,” he said.

  We moved it next to the TV by the front window. I looked at him to see if this was okay, and he smiled. We put the box down.

  “Why you smiling so much?”

  He reached in his pocket and pulled out two dimes. “All we need is four more cents and we can get Cokes.” I never have Cokes. The only thing I get to drink is Kool-Aid unless it’s a big party or Christmas.

  “Where did you get the dimes?” I asked him when he handed one to me.

  “My tío came to visit and gave me them.”

  Danny followed me to the kitchen where Grandma was taking beans out of a big brown bag with an old coffee cup and spreading them on the kitchen table. It was strange for her to start cleaning beans this early, but I just stood there not saying anything until she turned, put her hand on her hip backwards the way women do, and looked at me.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Can I look for change in the trastero?”

  Grandma nodded her head. I opened the trastero drawer where she keeps odds and ends. A trastero, in case you don’t know, is the cabinet where you keep dishes and cups. I pushed around rubber bands and pencils with broken points and an ink pen that doesn’t work and some small nails to hang pictures with and an old pair of my grandpa’s glasses and some business cards and holy cards from the funerals of people from the neighborhood, and I found six pennies. I left two of them for the future and slammed the drawer shut.

  “Can I go to Silverman’s with Danny?”

  Grandma looked over at him. I could see that he was trying to be all cute for her.

  “As long as you stay out of trouble. I don’t want nobody to call me on the phone telling me you were being traviesos.”

  I gave two pennies to Danny and put the other two in my pocket. We went out the side door headed for our Cokes at Silverman”s.

  6

  There’s three little marquetas in Sangra: Silverman’s Market and La Princesa—which Sangra calls “Pendejadas” because that’s all they sell—and Tanaka’s, but Mom buys her groceries up at Safeway because Ted works in the meat department. And besides, she says, Silverman cheats customers and Tanaka’s is filthy.

  I know what she means about Tanaka’s. I only been in there a couple of times and that was just to see Tanaka’s finger or show it to another kid.

  Danny’s brother Rafa told us about the finger. The story goes Tanaka chopped his pointer finger off one day cutting a piece of meat for a customer. He didn’t go to the hospital, just put the finger back on the knuckle and wrapped a band-aid around it. The finger grew back except he put it on crooked so the fingernail is sideways.

  I had to see it for myself so me and Danny went to Tanaka’s one day to look. We went in and walked around so Tanaka wouldn’t think we were there just to see his finger. That place was as dirty as I heard. There were dead flies on the sills of the front windows and spider webs in the top corners. There was a layer of dust on the cans and boxes. Can labels were faded and some were peeling off.

  Tanaka keeps his candy in a big glass case to stop kids from shoplifting it. Danny pointed at the penny candies and held up two fingers in a V. Tanaka reached into the glass case, and I saw it, just like something in a museum. There was Tanaka’s finger with the sideways fingernail! The thick glass made the finger look even bigger than real life. The pointer-finger looked normal and the color of a Tootsie Roll till about halfway up where it was almost black, and there on the side was Tanaka’s fingernail all dark, ashy gray and cracked like an Egyptian mummy in its own glass case.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Danny nod to Tanaka, and the old man grabbed two strips of button candies and held them out to us over the counter.

  “Two cent,” he said.

  When we got outside, Danny threw the button candies down a storm drain.

  The back of Silverman’s Market is at the end of the alley on Sunset Avenue. What Mom said about Silverman’s is true. Little told me Big told him. Big works at Silverman’s. He’s Little’s half-brother.

  There are two Gutierrez families in Sangra. Little Guti’s family lives three blocks away from us on El Monte Street and Big Guti’s family lives on Sunset Avenue next door to Ted and Betty and across from Silverman’s. Big is three years older than Little and he goes to Mission High like Cruz. Both Gutis are named Carlos after their dad. They have the same number of brothers and sisters and—you won’t believe this—they all have the same names too. I mean Big has a brother named Anthony and so does Little. And Big has three sisters named Marta and Irene and Stella. So does Little. And so we just call the two Carloses Big and Little to make it easier and to keep them straight.

  When I found this out about the Gutierrez families, I asked Grandma if she knew more about them. She said that Carlos Gutierrez—the father—was married to the woman who lives on Sunset Avenue, but then he met the other woman, moved her into the house on El Monte Street, and they started living together. I know that’s a sin, but they don’t go to church except for Little so I guess it doesn’t matter to them. Anyway, Missus Guti complained that he was married to her, so all three decided that they would share him fifty-fifty as long as he paid all the bills.

  I told Grandma I thought that was a strange story, and she said at first she thought so too. But that was a l
ong time ago, and Sangra didn’t care anymore.

  Big’s job is to sweep Sid Silverman’s floors and refill the shelves and help viejitas with their shopping bags and stop people from shoplifting. Big says people shop Silverman’s when they don’t want to walk all the way to Safeway, or they’re short on grocery money for the week.

  If they want eggs or a can of lard or flour for tortillas but don’t have the money, Sid gives it to them and writes it down in little books called tabs. On payday the people pay their tabs. But Sid doesn’t just write down what things cost. If a can of lard costs 60¢, he writes 64¢ on the tab. So when people come in to pay their tab, the higher price covers the shoplifting. That’s Sid’s story.

  Customers steal from him because he cheats them. That’s Sangra’s story.

  So when me and Danny walked into Silverman’s, Sid stopped us at the front counter.

  “What do you want?” He looked down at us like we were Mickey Cohen or something.

  Danny told him, “We just want to buy a Coke, sir.”

  “Let me see your money,” Sid said. We pulled out our coins and showed them to him.

  Sid yelled “Carlos!” without taking his eyes off us, and then he reached for the telephone.

  We looked at each other. We were done for. He was calling the cops and Big was going to hold us till the cops came. Grandma warned me not to get into trouble. I thought about her and Mom and Dad all in like two seconds flat. When Big got to the counter, Sid talked without looking at him. “I gotta make a call. Take these two to the back and make sure all’s they get is two sodas.”

  Big was wearing a work apron and holding a broom. He jerked his head to tell us to follow him. The soda box was in the back near the meat counter. Big opened the lid and we stuck our hands into the ice water.

  “I heard about the hobo,” Big said. We kept our mouths shut. “Cruz told me.”

  Stupid Cruz, I thought. Thanks to him probably all of Sangra knew.

  “I heard the Turk collared you.” We didn’t answer him.

  We fished around in the ice water till our hands hurt, but all we pulled up were Nesbitt’s and Dad’s Root Beer bottles. Danny looked up at Big. “Aren’t there any Cokes?”

  Big looked down at the underwater bottle caps. “Not cold, I guess. I’ll go get two from the back.”

  “I don’t want a hot Coke,” I told him.

  “Me neither,” Danny said.

  I reached down and pulled out a Dad’s and Danny grabbed a Nesbitt’s strawberry. We paid Sid and took the alley behind Silverman’s to get home.

  On the way home, I was pretty quiet.

  “What’s the matter, Man?”

  I took a drink from my Dad’s. I didn’t have an answer.

  Danny said, “Is it the hobo or the cops? For me, it’s the hobo.”

  Our shoes crunched along the dirt part of the alley. I took another sip of my soda. Danny kept talking.

  “It didn’t seem like killing the hobo was a big deal to the Turk, but I can’t get him out of my head, seeing him all broken up in the dirt like that. Murder’s a sin, Man. I don’t want to go to hey-yell.” He was right about all those three things: the Turk was like people say he is, and murder is a sin, and I didn’t want to go to hell either.

  I asked Danny, “Should we go to confession on Saturday?”

  He already had that red smile you get when you drink Nesbitt’s strawberry. He wiped his mouth with his arm, but the smile was still there. “Yeah, probably. Do you think the hobo’s in hey-yell?”

  Grandma always blesses the hobos. And me and Grandma prayed the rosary for him.

  “I don’t think so. Maybe Purgatory. I don’t know. I hope not.”

  Danny was quiet this time. Then he said, “It’s a hard life living like a hobo, don’t you think? Always begging for food and people telling you to go away and even getting hurt. Rafa told me those railroad cops they call bulls beat up hobos real bad.”

  We were about halfway down the alley where the ground was like street and our steps got quiet.

  Danny said, “Sometimes when the train goes by, and I see them sitting on top of the boxcars, I wonder what it’s like to travel all over the place and see different things. Different places and different people, even if you have to beg off them or get beat up.”

  That’s one reason Danny’s my best friend: because I was thinking the exact same thing. Another reason is that I can trust him with any secret I have, like wetting my bed.

  We kept walking.

  “Hey, remember the time we did the dare thing at the tracks? Did you get scared?” Danny asked me.

  “Hell yeah!”

  “Me too!” And we laughed.

  I thought back to that day in April when the spring grass was as high as my belt on the rightaway, and we could cut trails in it and lay down in it and suck on its sweet roots.

  I don’t remember who dared who to get closest to the train, but we laid in the tall grass waiting, and when the engine passed we crawled through the grass till we got to the edge of the ballast shoulder.

  We started to crawl on our stomachs like crabs, sideways, little by little toward the rails, facing each other. At first I was closer, then Danny got closer. I crawled until the next thing I knew my hair was being pulled up by the wind of the train. Then I felt my body being pulled up too. I looked over and saw the shiny rims of the steel wheels flashing by real close. The clicking wheels crossing the rail joints were so loud I couldn’t hear my heart pounding, but I could feel it. I thought the train was going to pull me in. I grabbed any part of the ballast shoulder I could to make myself stick to the ground.

  I looked across at Danny. His eyes were really big, and he was holding on for dear life too.

  Just when I thought we were going to get sucked into the wheels and die, the caboose went by with a whish. The clickety-clack of the wheels faded away. Everything got real quiet. I didn’t move, but just laid there with my eyes closed, waiting for my heart to slow down.

  Then a bird’s wings whistled close by. The pigeon landed and cooed. Probably one of Mundo’s. I heard crunching and the pigeon took off with another whistle of wings. I opened my eyes. Danny was standing over me. His clothes were black from the ballast shoulder. I pushed myself up, and we walked through our two grass trails back to our houses without saying a single other word.

  I was thinking so hard about the dare that I didn’t notice the police car until I nearly walked into it. I almost choked on my soda when I saw the Turk through the driver’s side window. He had those sunglasses on again so I couldn’t see his eyes. Then he took off the glasses, and I saw that they were blue like mine, but that probably didn’t matter to him.

  “Orale. Where are you vatos going?” Pachuco Spanish sounded wrong coming from a white man, especially a cop. The Turk was smiling a fake smile. His teeth looked like broken yellow crayons.

  “We’re just going home from Silverman’s, Officer,” Danny said. He sounded like a little kid.

  “Officer, huh?” the Turk grunted. “Did you lift those sodas from Silverman’s?” He pointed at the Nesbitt’s in Danny’s hand.

  “No, sir. We bought them.”

  “Oh, you did, did you? And where did you get the money?”

  This time it was me. “His uncle gave him two dimes, and my grandma gave me the rest.”

  The Turk pointed his sunglasses at me. “You sure you didn’t take it off that tramp?”

  My body felt a shock like touching a live wire.

  “No, sir. My uncle.” Danny said it, because I couldn’t have said another word to save my life.

  It felt like the Turk stared at us for an hour while we just stood there until his radio buzzed. Without taking his eyes off us, he said, “I’m going to check with Silverman’s. If you’re not telling the truth, I’m coming after you.”

  Then he pulled his sunglasses back on, put the car in gear and burned rubber taking off. At Sunset he took a left and headed away from us—and away from Silverman’s.
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br />   When I got to my house, I went around to the side porch and into the kitchen. Something was different. Grandma had the radio on to a Mexican station. She was cooking at the stove and singing real happy along with the radio.

  Then I saw a man sitting in a kitchen chair with his back to me. When the kitchen screen door slammed behind me, he turned around. He looked like my dad but smaller and skinnier and more worn out. And he had a bad haircut and tattoos on his neck and on the arm that he curled around the back of the chair.

  Grandma turned to me about the same time. “Come and say hello to your uncle Rudy,” she said. ‘He just got home.”

  7

  I wiped my hand on my pants and held it out for my uncle Rudy to shake.

  “Manuel Maldonado, a sus órdenes,” I said.

  He smiled. His eyes were blue like mine, and he was missing a front tooth like my little sister Dorothy, but the rest of his teeth were real white. When he shook my hand, I saw a pachuco cross tattoo in that spot where his pointer finger and thumb met.

  “Qué hubo, Little Man.” His voice was higher than my dad’s and sounded weak like he was sick or something. He said liddo like that tee-cat Marcel. Lino. Then I remembered I was supposed to tell Rudy that Lino came by looking for him, but something told me not to right then.

  I stared at my dad-looking uncle until Grandma said, “Wash up and come and eat with us.”

  I looked at the stove. Grandma had made caldillo, Dad’s favorite. When I got out of the bathroom, Rudy was already scooping up pieces of stew with part of a tortilla. Next to his plate was a cup of hobo coffee. Grandma saw me look at the cup. “He can’t have alcohol. Parole board rules.” When she said parole board, Rudy’s shoulders slumped a little.