The hearing was on the fifth floor, and the courtroom was big and cold and almost empty. When we walked in, a white policeman and a white lady were smiling and talking at a side desk, but when they saw us they put their smiles away. Dad sat us in the back row.
In a minute, another white man in a wrinkled suit rushed in. He took a fast look at us then stopped at the cop and the lady, said something to them, and disappeared through a side door. In a minute the man came back out and put his brown briefcase on a table near the cop. He took out some papers, looked at them then put them back in his case.
The side door opened again. Another cop came out leading Rudy. His face still had bruises, but his black eyes were gone. The cop led him to the table next to the man in the wrinkled suit.
Rudy was wearing dark blue overalls and was handcuffed behind his back. Before he sat down, he looked up and saw us. His face changed a couple of times in a few seconds—first his eyes got real big, then his face brightened and he almost smiled. But real quick his eyes filled with tears. Then he looked down and away.
Grandma started sobbing. Dad put his arm around her. She took a handkerchief out of her purse and put it to her mouth.
A loud voice said, “All rise.” A door opened and a judge in a black robe came in and sat at his desk. When he sat down, everybody else sat down too.
The judge said something and the wrinkled man and Rudy stood back up. The judge said something else. Rudy’s shoulders sagged like somebody pushed them down. Then the judge nodded his head, and the wrinkled man turned around and nodded to us. Rudy turned around to us, and the cop moved closer to him.
Dad got up, then Grandma, so I stood up too. Dad led Grandma up to where a short wall separated us from Rudy, and Rudy moved so that he was just on the other side. Grandma threw her arms around his neck and now she was crying real loud like she did at Grandpa’s funeral. Dad tried to pull her arms away, but it was no use. She wouldn’t let go.
Rudy let her do it. He kept saying, “Tranquila, ‘ama. Yo me cuidaré. I promise, ‘ama. I’ll be all right.”
Grandma finally let go and made the sign of the Cross on his forehead and chest a bunch of times like she does to me when she tucks me in at night.
When Grandma finally let go of Rudy, Dad nodded his head, and Rudy nodded back. I thought Dad was going to hug his brother, but he just stood there looking down at his hands until Grandma moved me closer to Rudy. I got next to the wall and put my hand on Rudy’s arm. It felt skinny and weak, like a dead tree branch. I slid my hand down his arm and bumped into the handcuffs. The metal was heavy and cold.
Rudy smiled at me, but I knew he didn’t mean it. His eyes were filled with tears. “When are you coming home again?” I asked him. I felt stupid as soon as I said that. It sounded like he was just visiting us. Now that I think about it, he was.
“Promise me you’ll write to me, Man-on-Fire. I’m going to miss you.” The way he said my name hurt my heart.
“Time.” The guard said it low in Rudy’s ear. Rudy turned and started walking toward the door he came in. Grandma started crying again, and I thought of how she told me a long time ago that the Blessed Mother’s heart was wounded seven times by what they did to her son Jesus.
I wondered how many wounds Grandma had.
We ate lunch at Phillipe’s near Olvera Street. That should have been a big deal, but I had a hard time tasting my French dip or the Coke Dad bought me. The sandwich tasted like paper and the soda tasted like fizzy water. All I could think of was the brown bus.
After we got out of court, Dad drove the car around the block to another side of the Hall of Justice. He didn’t want to, but Grandma made him.
“’Amá, the sooner we leave downtown, the sooner you’ll get over your pain.”
Grandma folded her arms and turned away from Dad. “What do you know about my pain?” she mumbled out the side window.
We waited until a gate opened and a brown bus with “Los Angeles County Sheriff” on the side in big gold letters and bars on the windows came out of the bottom of the building. The bus stopped at the street then made a right turn and disappeared into the downtown traffic.
Six more years. That’s what Dad said the judge gave Rudy. Six plus the three he still owed from the last time. Nine years. Arithmetic is my favorite subject, but I didn’t like these numbers. I’d be twenty-one when he came home again unless he got another parole. By the time he came home for good I might be in the army like Dad. Or the Marines. Or maybe just working. I would be a man, and Rudy would be old.
When he was home, I always wanted to play catch with him out in Main Street, but we never got the chance. And he told me once he wanted to take me fishing in the San Gabriel Canyon. I never fished before. I still haven’t. Now I was going to have to wait for Rudy to take me. Or me take him.
I looked at my sandwich there on the plate. I only took two bites. My Coke bottle was mostly full.
“We have to go,” Dad said. “I can still get in half a day at work.” He put the last piece of his sandwich in his mouth and stood up.
Grandma took my sandwich and folded it in waxed paper. She still had most of her sandwich, and she wrapped that one too. She put the sandwiches into the bag she brought our breakfast tacos in and folded the top shut. I sucked up as much of my Coke as I could through the paper straw, but I sucked too fast and the bubbles fizzed up and burned the inside of my nose.
I looked up at the sky the rest of the way home. Pretty soon our car was back in the driveway, under the ramada Grandpa built a long time ago before I was born.
22
For the next week Dad made me come straight home after school and stay in the yard. Betty had to take Ted to work so she could have the car to pick me up from school, but I never heard neither of them complain about helping Mom and Dad with me.
Dad called a lawyer and made me tell him about what happened to Lawrence. Dad didn’t say much about what the lawyer said was going to happen to me, but he did say the lawyer told him not to let me say anything to anybody else about what I saw at the train station. I didn’t tell him I already told Danny because that was a club secret, so it didn’t count. I wondered if the other kids in my class thought I got polio or something because I was missing so much school now. And Dad was missing work.
Another week later me and Dad drove up to the courthouse in Pasadena to talk to a man from the District Attorney’s office. Dad said the lawyer he talked to set up a meeting for us with the D.A.
The man we met was a deputy D.A. The word deputy made me think of cowboy movies where the sheriff has a sidekick who wears a badge, but this man was dressed in a suit. He was a tall, skinny old-looking white man who looked like it hurt him to move. He had long, bony arms and legs, and he made faces when he talked. He shook a bony, white hand with Dad and then me, and he said his name was Mr. Fullmer, and he asked me my name.
I watched his eyes follow the port-wine stain from my neck to my ear while I told him “Manuel Maldonado, Junior, Sir” without a sus órdenes. He asked me if I wanted a Coke. I looked at Dad, and he shook his head. I said, “No, thank you.”
Mr. Fullmer walked us over to a leather couch and asked us to sit down. Then the deputy told me to tell him what happened to Lawrence.
This was the fourth time to tell it. The first time was to Dad and Ted and Betty. The second time was to Danny up in the club. And the third time was to the lawyer Dad called. The story was exactly the same every time. The sounds and the cold air and the smell of blood and poop and Lawrence’s dead body and throwing up and running to Betty’s. But this was the first time Dad heard about the Turk. He almost hit the roof.
He jumped up from the couch and stared down at me. He said why didn’t I tell him it was the Turk that night at Ted and Betty’s house. The deputy put up his hand to Dad to let me tell the story, but Dad only wanted to know why I didn’t tell him.
The deputy told him if he interrupted again he’d have to wait outside. Dad sat back down, crossed his arms and le
gs and didn’t say anything else. I had thought about telling him at Betty’s, but I was afraid that if I told him, he would go looking for the Turk and get beat up like Rudy. Or killed like Lawrence.
The deputy wanted to know who else I told the story to and what was I doing at the train station. Did the San Gabriel police know I saw what happened? After I finished, he told me to tell him what happened two more times, but all I wanted to do was go home and sleep.
When I got to the part about running all the way to Betty’s, he stopped me and went out of the room a minute. While he was gone, I looked at Dad. He looked like he was going to say something to me again, but then he changed his mind and got up and walked across the room to a window. I wasn’t sorry I didn’t tell him about the Turk before.
When Mr. Fullmer came back, a lady carrying a machine on a little stand was with him. The deputy pulled a chair up next to the couch, and she sat down and put the machine in front of her. She looked at the deputy. When he started talking again, she started tapping keys on the machine. Mr. Fullmer told me to say my name again and to tell the story one more time. That would make seven times telling about Lawrence Collison dying, and I didn’t want to tell it again. The deputy said I only had to tell it one more time then he would take me up to the top floor and buy me lunch.
I was the only kid in the top-floor cafeteria. There was a couple of cops eating lunch up there but none of them asked me why I wasn’t in school. The food was way better than the school cafeteria. This one had green salads and jello in different colors and sandwiches and mashed potatoes and meat loaf and slices of pie and cake. I picked a tuna sandwich even though it wasn’t Friday because I love tuna, and a bowl of chicken noodle soup with saltine crackers and a slice of chocolate cake. I wanted a Coke but Coke doesn’t go with chocolate cake so I decided to have a glass of milk even though milk doesn’t go with tuna.
Dad had a roast beef sandwich and a cup of coffee. Mr. Fullmer just got a cup of coffee and the lady at the cash register wrote it all down on a tab for Mr. Fullmer like at Silverman’s. We took our food trays to a table next to a window facing the mountains. As soon as I sat down, I looked out the window for the brokenhearted mountain like I always do. Even though I spotted the TV towers on top of Mount Wilson, I couldn’t find the heart with the arrow through it. Then I remembered what Rudy said about looking at it from a different angle.
From this angle the mountains went almost straight up. There were trees and power lines I never saw from home. I looked down the mountain range and the slope was like an ocean wave ready to break on Pasadena and Monrovia and Azusa where some of my cousins live and all the way east to where the mountains disappeared in the brown air.
The tuna sandwich wasn’t as good as Grandma makes and the soup was too salty to finish, but I ate all the cake and drank most of my milk before Dad said we had to go. The deputy stood up and said I’d probably have to come back in again but not to count on getting another free lunch.
Then he smiled for the first time all day and his teeth were crooked and gray so I guess he was joking about no lunch.
When we got home, I heard piano music coming from Grandpa’s garage. It was a song I heard a bunch of times but played in a way I never heard before. I went inside the garage and was surprised to find Brody sitting at Cruz’ piano. I already told you Brody’s the negro who sings the bass parts in the Tones.
His real name is Marcus Brody and he lives in Monrovia and his brother drops him off at Grandma’s after school on the Tones’ practice days. Sometimes Brody’s grandma Willie comes with Brody to massage my grandma’s arms and hands.
Grandma’s arthritis hurts her real bad. Dad heard about Willie that she’s real good at making old people feel better, so he brought her from Monrovia to massage Grandma. At first Grandma didn’t want a massage—not because Willie was a negra or anything, but because Grandma said massages are for rich people. But then Dad made her try it, and she liked it. Now she knows why rich people like to get massages.
When I know Willie’s there, I like to go in the house and watch. When she’s finished with Grandma, she gives me a little massage. Willie’s fingers are bony and strong. You wouldn’t think a tiny old lady could have strong fingers like that, but Willie does. One time she told me she was born in Mississippi, but then she moved to New Orleans, then Texas—like the Collisons—then to Monrovia where she got a job as a maid for a rich white family in Pasadena.
I asked her if she knew the Collison family, but she said she reckoned she didn’t. I didn’t care because it felt good when she rubbed my head and then my neck and then the middle of my back with her strong, bony fingers. Her hands were cool and dry. On my neck her finger skin felt like she was wearing soft leather gloves. I liked how her fingers would work the knots in my shoulder wings that gave me shivers. That made her laugh.
She told me Jim Crow chased her to California and the Lord willing he wouldn’t come here looking for her. I asked her who’s Jim Crow and why was he chasing her, but she just laughed again and told me to hush and made me shiver.
I figure all negros know each other, so when I saw Brody I wanted to tell him about Lawrence and the deputy and how the law was going to make the Turk pay, but I kept my mouth shut like the lawyer said to. I stood next to the piano and listened to Brody sing.
Negro voices are different than Mexicans’. Mexican voices like Cruz’ and Rafa’s can sing the same notes, but negro voices come from a different place that Mexican voices never been to. Brody’s voice was like dark honey.
Anyway, Brody looked at me while he was singing, and I got a shiver when I saw his eyes. It scared me that he looked like Lawrence. I imagined Lawrence sitting there playing the piano. Something in my face must’ve been wrong because when Brody finished his song he looked behind him and he said to me, “Man, you look like you just seen a ghost.” I pretended to laugh.
“Where you been, Man?” That was Cruz. I didn’t hear him come in the garage. “I never see you out in the yard anymore. You miss as much school as Brody.”
Brody laughed real loud and deep and honey-like. “Well, sheee-it,” Brody said, “maybe we just too damn good-lookin’ for school. What you say, Man? Am I right?” His smile uncovered the whitest teeth I ever saw. I shook my head yes.
“He had to go to court for killing a hobo,” Cruz told Brody. “The other kids in his gang skated because Stupid here took the fall.” Cruz and Big and Rafa laughed, but Brody didn’t. He looked at me kind of sad.
“You shouldn’t’ve took the fall, Man. Friends like that ain’t worth it.”
I didn’t like the joke on me, and I didn’t know what Cruz meant by skating or taking the fall, but I didn’t say anything. It made it easier to keep the truth a secret. I know none of the gang told anybody about the hobo. It must’ve been Marco’s mom or some metiche mitotera in the neighborhood who saw what happened on the rightaway and had to tell the whole world.
Cruz didn’t let it go. “Maybe he’ll get life and be with his jailbird uncle Rudy.”
Big said, “Yeah, I bet he gets the gas chamber,” then he raised his leg and ripped a fart and the other guys in the group all cracked up.
I wanted to cry, but I wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction. I don’t know why I even went in the garage in the first place. I should’ve knew that was going to happen because Cruz always turns everything into a mean joke on me.
23
I had to go to the Hall of Justice one more time. This time Mom took off from work to come with me and Dad. Mr. Fullmer met us in an office on the second floor wearing a nicer suit than the first time. He looked like he got a haircut and a new leather case.
He sat me on another couch and told me I had to tell my story again—this time to the grand jury. He kept saying “your story,” but I didn’t want him to call it my story. It was Lawrence’s story. He told me to tell the truth and not leave out anything. He asked me if I wanted to go over my story again, but I shook my head. I didn’t need to practice. I’
ll never forget what the Turk did to Lawrence that night.
The phone on the deputy’s desk rang, and he answered it. He told Dad and Mom that they could wait for us up in the cafeteria. Then we all got up, and he put his hand on my back and gave me a little push toward the door.
I thought we were going to take the main elevator, but the deputy took me to a smaller one with no driver. He punched a number button and smiled down at me with that gray smile, the fake kind grownups give kids.
When we got to our floor, Mr. Fullmer took me to a small office and told me to wait there and left. The place was real quiet. I couldn’t look for my mountain because there were no windows so I broke the quiet by making my shoes squeak on the shiny floor.
In a minute Mr. Fullmer came back and took me next door into a courtroom half the size of Rudy’s. There was no judge’s chair, but there was a chair for me and two rows of seats filled with grownups. There was about half and half men and ladies, pure white people. The men were in suits and the ladies were dressed like for Sunday Mass. Besides them, there was a another white lady with a little typing machine sitting in a chair near the deputy and an older white lady sitting at a desk. Nobody was smiling.
The deputy walked me to a chair inside a witness box like they do on TV and pointed for me to sit down. As soon as I sat down, I looked all around for the Turk. The deputy had told me he wouldn’t be there, but I didn’t believe him.
The deputy walked up to a stand facing the rows of people. He smiled the same elevator smile at the people in the rows and told them good morning and said his name and then told them why we were there. He read some stuff to them from the papers on the stand, then I heard the Turk’s whole name for the first time. The deputy said, “Everett Earl Turkness.”
It was strange to hear the Turk’s name said out loud after I’d been keeping him secret for so long. It was like a big sack full of schoolbooks was lifted off my back. I looked at the people to see if anybody looked like they knew who the deputy was talking about, but nobody looked surprised or nothing.
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