Iron River

by Daniel Acosta

  And besides, Rudy was holding me tight.

  The hard shaking finally stopped, and Rudy let me loose. I stood up to go look for Grandma, but then another quake started, and I jumped back in Rudy’s lap. The house started shaking again just as bad as the first time. I heard dishes fly out of the trastero and smash on the kitchen floor.

  The second quake finally got smaller and smaller and the rumbling got quieter and quieter like a train disappearing down the tracks until everything was still again. We waited, me and Rudy. Then Mom came out of her bedroom dressed in a bathrobe and slippers. Dad came out behind her holding a blanket bundle I knew was Dorothy. He jerked his head toward the front door.

  Rudy told me “Let’s go outside,” and wrapped me in a blanket and lifted me up. I didn’t want to be carried at first, but I didn’t want to go outside in wet underwear trying to hold a blanket around me either.

  We stood in the middle of Main Street. I was really surprised there was no train crashed on the tracks or on the rightaway or on the houses or in the street.

  Dad went back in the house and came out carrying Grandma’s rocking chair with Grandma wrapped in a blanket walking behind him. Her fingers were moving the beads of her rosary outside the blanket. When Dad set the chair down next to me, she sat in it and touched the top of my head to tell me she was all right.

  The streetlights were out and the houses were dark all up and down Main. I could hear the sirens of fire engines north of the tracks. More families came out of their houses and joined us in the street. The quakes scattered a million oak leaves on the ground in front of Danny’s house.

  I didn’t want anybody to see me in my peed underwear so I kept to myself.

  Danny came over to me. If it was anybody else I would’ve told them to scram, but Danny already knew I peed my bed, and I couldn’t help it, and he never made fun of me.

  “Man, that was a big one.” He smiled at me. I wasn’t sure if it was a real smile or if it was one of those fake ones when you need to cry but don’t want to. It didn’t matter to me with Danny. “You guys okay?”

  “I think so. I pissed my bed. I thought the train derailed and chopped my legs off. I thought the piss was my blood!” We both laughed to hear me talk like Cruz.

  Danny said, “Sonia ran out of her room naked, then she ran back in to get dressed. That was funny as hey-yell.”

  I tried to imagine what Sonia looked like naked. When I found her sitting next to her mom on the curb, she was wrapped in a blanket from head to toe. I couldn’t tell if she was wearing clothes underneath.

  My dad and other Main Street men were standing together away from the women and kids. Nobody was laughing. The whole scene was so different from Fourth of July when everybody was having fun.

  Another earthquake hit, but it was a little one. Still, I heard women scream. A couple of babies cried. Dogs barked and the wires swung like jump ropes between the telephone poles on the rightaway. After a while the men left their group, and all the families went back to their houses. I shook hands with Danny and told him I’d see him tomorrow.

  “Today is tomorrow!” he told me. He showed me the watch he got from his ninos on his last birthday that glows in the dark. The glow said 4 am.

  I went back to my bed on the couch after my shower. The sheets were already changed. I climbed under the blanket. In no time I was dreaming again. This time I was on a boat on the ocean and the waves rocked me up and down real gentle.

  I woke up when I smelled coffee. I checked myself and even though I was dry, I had to pee bad. I put on my pants and went to the bathroom. I came back out to the kitchen expecting to see broken dishes all over the floor, but it was clean.

  Mom and Dad and Dorothy were sitting at the table eating breakfast.

  “Why aren’t you at work?”

  “Work told us not to go in.” Mom works in a sewing factory downtown. She’s really good at sewing and makes all of her and Dorothy’s clothes and some shirts for me. One time I saw a cowboy on TV and I asked Mom if she could make me a shirt like his. She did, and it was perfect. She told me once that she loved to wear nice clothes as a girl, but they were too poor so she learned how to sew, and she made her own clothes. She can look at any dress or shirt or anything and make a copy of it on her Singer.

  Betty tells me Mom could’ve been a fashion designer in Hollywood, but Mom laughs when she hears that. Once I asked her why she didn’t stay home like Danny’s mom or Marco’s mom or Betty. She told me she got a job making parachutes at a factory in Long Beach during the war and found out she liked working outside the house. And besides, her and Dad were working and saving to build a house on the empty lot Grandpa gave them behind Grandma’s.

  Dad drops Mom off downtown then goes to work in Lincoln Heights at a plant that makes kitchen cabinet knobs. Dad got the job in the plant after he came home from the war. He told me they made him a cook in the war, and he got sent to guard Alaska from the Japanese. I asked him if he killed any Japs, and he said he didn’t think so unless they sneaked into his camp and ate his food.

  Anyway, I guess I was sleepy from last night because I sat down across from Dorothy and just stared away at nothing.

  “We have no more bowls, so you have to eat huevos revueltos.” Grandma was standing at the stove pointing a wooden spoon at me. Scrambled eggs were fine, especially when they were wrapped in a warm tortilla. “You want coffee?” I nodded my head. Mom made a face at her.

  “Where’s Rudy?” I asked my dad.

  “Out. And this time I’m not going to go looking for him,” he barked. Then he looked at me and his voice was softer. “School start next week?” Mom already measured me for new school shirts, but we still had to buy corduroy pants. I didn’t want to think about school until I had to.

  “Is the house okay?” I asked Dad.

  “As far as I can tell, the only thing wrong is the power’s out. But I’m going to spend today looking everything over to make sure.”

  Grandma set a cup of coffee in front of me.

  Mom asked me, “Are you ready for seventh grade?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “You don’t sound ready. You know eighth grade comes next, then high school. Have you thought about that?” I looked at Mom but didn’t answer her. A plate landed on the table in front of me with two rolled tortillas. I could see scrambled eggs peeking out the open tops. I took a bite of one so I wouldn’t have to answer.

  13

  The truth is I do think about high school a lot, and I don’t like the idea. I see high school guys like Cruz, and they never look happy. They go around trying to look so tough and cool. They look like they never have fun. I watch them when they dance at lunchtime out in the high school patio which is next to our play yard. Even when they dance with the girls, the boys all look like they’re doing something they don’t want to.

  Cruz is the worst one. He acts like nothing’s ever right. I used to tell him things I thought were funny or interesting, but he always said it was stupid or I was stupid so I stopped telling him anything. I keep those things to myself until I can tell the gang. They’re my age, and we still have fun and act goofy and don’t care.

  But the high school guys never do. That’s why I don’t want to go to high school.

  I was just starting on my second egg taco when Betty came into the kitchen.

  “Those were some shakers, weren’t they?” She sounded happy. Betty always sounds happy. She could say, “That was quite a bad accident,” and sound happy. She went to the stove and gave Grandma a kiss and poured herself a cup of coffee. She leaned against the sink and took a sip.

  “Those wine glasses Ted brought back from Europe are all gone now. Broken into a million pieces.” I knew the glasses she was talking about. She took them out of her trastero and showed them to me one time. There were six glasses on a glass tray and each one was a different color. She showed me how when she put a drop of water on the rim and moved her pointer finger around the edge, the glass made a ringing s
ound. “That’s how you know it’s real crystal,” she told me.

  “All six of them?” I mumbled.

  “What?”

  I swallowed the wad of egg and tortilla in my mouth. “All six of them?”

  “Yeah. I guess Ted’s just going to have to take me to Europe to get some new ones.”

  She laughed. She said she wished that was all Ted had brought back from the war. I didn’t know what she meant, but I let it slide. Grandma turned from the stove.

  “Is Ted coming over? There’s plenty of food.”

  “No, he had to go to the market. People need to eat, he says. And the power’s out all over. They’re probably going to have to give away all the meat and dairy before it spoils. Did you lose anything?”

  Grandma pointed her wooden spoon at the trastero. “Some bowls and a cup. Nothing important. My good things are down there in boxes.” I knew about the good plates and cups. I found them one day when I was snooping around. I never saw her use them, not even for Grandpa’s funeral. I don’t know what she’s waiting for.

  “Say, Manuel. I want to ask you. If the show is still on, is it okay if I take Manny with me?” She was talking to my dad. She called him Manuel English-style.

  I heard a rumble and felt the kitchen move up and down slow and gentle like a fresh sheet spread on a bed. Betty fell back against the sink and grabbed the edge of the counter. “Oh, Jesus!” she yelled. Dad grabbed Dorothy’s hand. Mom grabbed mine and Grandma held on to the stove. By the time I looked at everybody, the quake was over. It was an aftershock.

  “I hate these aftershocks,” Mom said. “I’m always afraid they’re going to be big like the first one. I don’t know how they tell if it’s an after-quake or a new one. Won’t they cancel the show because of the quakes?” she asked Betty.

  “They probably will. But it’s still two weeks away. If they don’t, I’d like to take Manny with me. Ted doesn’t want to go. He said he’s too old for teenage dances, but I promised Cruz I would. To show him support.”

  Cruz and the Casual Tones were going to be part of a big rock and roll show. He said the Tones went to Los Angeles and sang for some man who signed them up for the show.

  It was going to be at the Legion, and they were going to get ten dollars for singing three songs. Ten dollars! Cruz would tell people they were going to sing with a famous negro group called Don and Dewey. I heard Don and Dewey’s records on the radio station that plays negro music. All the teenagers in Sangra listen to the negro station. If you walk down Main Street, all you hear is negro music or Mexican music. Cruz says the negro station plays better music than the white stations.

  Everybody Cruz told about the show wished him good luck. He didn’t tell them there was seven other groups singing that night before Don and Dewey. I guess that wasn’t important.

  Anyway, Dad looked at Mom and then at Betty. Dad growled at Betty, “We’ll see. He’s been getting into a lot of trouble lately. I don’t know if I can trust him.”

  I really wanted to go—not to hear the Tones. I hear them practice in Grandpa’s garage all the time. I wanted to be with Betty because she’s the only grown-up I know who’s fun. She taught me how to dance the boogie-woogie and bee-bop when we all went to somebody from Sangra’s wedding reception at the Arbor Hall.

  At first when my dad said, “We’ll see,” I thought I had a chance. But when he talked about trouble, I thought about the hobo and Colton and Yoci, and I didn’t blame him for not trusting me. I looked at him, and I tried to imagine what his face would look like if I was looking at him through prison bars.

  Or maybe he would never visit me like he never visited Rudy.

  “Did you see Rudy on your way over here?” Dad asked Betty.

  Betty rinsed her dirty cup and put it in the sink. “No, why? Is he AWOL?”

  “He was supposed to go into L.A. with me today about a job I found for him.”

  “I don’t imagine anybody is open for work today with the earthquake and everything,” Mom said. “Besides, you could use the day off. You didn’t sleep all night.”

  Dad growled again at Betty, “Well, when you see him hanging around Silverman’s, tell him I’m looking for him.”

  Betty rolled her eyes. “Whatever’s eating you, keep me out of it! I’m going home.” She walked across the kitchen and out the screen door without saying goodbye to anybody.

  I put what was left of the egg taco in my pants pocket for later and ran out after her. “Why is Dad mad at everybody?” I asked her.

  “He’s just mad at Rudy.”

  “Why? What did he do?”

  Betty stopped walking. She looked around, then took my hand. We sat down on Grandma’s little bench under the fig tree.

  “Honey, Rudy didn’t…Rudy’s sick.”

  “Is he a tecato?”

  Betty looked kind of surprised. “How do you know?”

  I thought about what I had promised Rudy. Hush-hush. But that was to Dad, not Betty. “He sort of looks like them in a way, and a week before he came home a tecato named…” I tried to remember his name. I tried remembering what he looked like in front of Grandma’s house and in the Merc in front of Silverman’s. “…Lino. This tecato named Lino came to our house asking for him before he came home from Folsom.”

  Betty patted my hand. “Honey, don’t call them that name. It sounds bad. They’re sick. Some of them die because of that heroin drug. Somebody gives them marijuana to try, and they like how it makes them feel. Then those people give them heroin, and they get hooked on it, and they can’t get away from it.” I got what she was talking about. I thought about Cruz smoking marijuana.

  Betty squeezed my hand, and I came back to her. “I’m going to tell you something but I need you to promise me you’ll never—ever—tell another person, okay?” Another secret and another promise. I didn’t want to make another promise to a grown-up, but it seemed like Betty needed to tell me worse than I wanted to know.

  She squeezed my hand harder, and it almost hurt. “When Ted came back from the war, he was pretty messed up. He told me he saw and did some horrible things. Some of his buddies didn’t make it home. And he was hurt pretty bad.”

  Right away I remembered his scar. One time last summer we all went to Marrano Beach to go swimming and have a picnic. Marrano Beach isn’t really a beach. That’s just what Sangra calls this place along the Rio Hondo where mostly Mexicans go. Marrano Beach is a bend in a stream that flows into the San Gabriel River.

  Ted was in his trunks. A red scar ran across his chest and left arm from the top of his shoulder to his elbow. It wasn’t as dark as my port-wine stain, but it was really red and almost looked like a port-wine stain except it was kind of crinkly and had white streaks.

  Anyway, Betty said, “When he got home from the war, he was real quiet and angry all the time. He didn’t want to do anything but sleep. Sometimes he would have real bad nightmares, and he would wake up screaming and crying. I know this sounds scary, but I want you to know something important.

  “Eventually, Ted was able to go outside our house and even across the street to Silverman’s. He met some guy there and pretty soon Ted was coming home late smelling like marijuana. And after that he wasn’t so mad, and his nightmares weren’t so bad, but I was scared he was becoming a drug addict. I don’t know what happened, but the guy he was hanging around with got arrested and put in jail, and Ted stopped smoking reefer. He still has bad dreams and sometimes he drinks too much but at least he’s not an addict.

  “I’m telling you all this about Ted because I think Rudy saw and did some bad things in the war too. Even if he didn’t get a Purple Heart like Ted, you know?

  “Your dad’s very angry at Rudy and I understand that, but you and I don’t have to be. We have to love him and pray for him to get well.” I wanted to tell Betty that I already do love him and I already do pray for him, but I didn’t want to butt in when she was talking.

  Betty patted my hand. “I should’ve asked you if you wanted to go to
Cruz’ show with me before I asked your father. That was disrespectful. I’ll ask you now. Would you please go with me?”

  I think that’s one of the reasons I love Betty so much. She treats me like a kid but she doesn’t make me feel bad that I’m a kid. She’s not like all the other grown ups. She never makes me feel like I’m in her way or do things that bug her. She makes me feel like I’m her friend.

  “Sure, Betty. If you want me to go with you, I will. But won’t you feel stupid going to a rock and roll show with a kid?”

  She smiled at me and stood up.

  “If they let a vieja like me in, who cares how old my date is?” She laughed. “But do me a favor. Stay out of trouble until the show, okay?” She laughed again and mussed up my hair. I watched her walk out the back gate and disappear. Then I took the taco out of my pocket and finished eating it in the shade of the fig tree.

  14

  Two days after Betty invited me to Cruz’ show, Danny invited me to go with him to see the Man From Mars. He read in the newspaper that the Man would be on display at the San Gabriel police station for one week only. I don’t have to tell you I wasn’t crazy about the idea.

  Once Cruz told me about the Man From Mars. That he robbed some markets in San Gabriel. That he was called the Man From Mars because he would go in the stores dressed in black clothes and a black football helmet and a gas mask and cartridge belts across his chest like the Mexican bad guys in the movies. He would point his shotgun at the store people and make them give him money. Then he would run out and escape down a manhole and get away through the storm pipes. He robbed five markets before a cop killed him in a shoot-out at the Boy’s Market on Valley Boulevard.

  Guess who killed him? Yeah. He got some award from the city for bravery or something.

  Anyway, they don’t put the real Man From Mars on display. He’s dead and buried somewhere, so they use this dummy wearing the helmet and the other stuff but not the shotgun. This would be our first chance ever to see him.

  But what if the Turk saw us there? I remembered laying up in the club and thinking that the cops were going to come get us. Now Danny wanted us to walk into that police station right under their noses.