El Armero
by Mario Acevedo
Globeville
I exit the number 12 bus at the corner of Forty-fifth Avenue and Camino de Frida Kahlo. Traffic rumbles above me. I’m under the Mousetrap, an immense concrete confusion straddling Globeville, where Interstates 25 and 70 intersect north of downtown Denver. I take a moment to catch my breath. The air carries a metallic tang and tastes of grit filtering from the rush of trucks and cars on the overpass.
My path is blocked by yellow tape and a battered metal placard: Detour Desvío. Tire marks from construction equipment crisscross the sidewalk. To my left extends an immense pit where the highway will be broadened. Es el año de Nuestro Señor 2027, and time for the politicians to pay back favors by diverting public money into more “infrastructure.”
I take note of the arrangement of square holes beneath the overpass where the footings for a new foundation will be poured. My gaze continues to the existing interchange. Street legend has it a lot of problems were solved when that part of the highway was built. Snitches and witnesses disappeared, buried beneath thick layers of concrete.
I shrug. Not my concern what happened. Nor what might happen.
In that mysterious way that rumors circulate through the barrio, I got word that Toro needs me, which is why I’m here. I want to hope I know why he summons me, but I know I’m wrong.
I amble north, taking it easy. If I walk too fast, the left side of my chest hitches, constricting my breath.
I pass the parking lot where bolillos queue up to take advantage of today’s specials at Sweet Buds Cannabis. Round the corner, cars, pickups, bums on bicycles wait their turn at the take-out window of Pato’s Liquor Drive-Thru. While the weed store looks as neat and slick as a Starbucks, Pato’s is a cinder-block shack flanked by walls of particle board, the surfaces coated by flaking house paint and tattered posters advertising cheap beer and whiskey. There’s little in my surroundings that isn’t tagged with graffiti. The posts of streetlamps litter the sidewalk like fallen timbers, mowed down by bad drivers.
Across the street stands the city’s latest attempt at solving the area’s crime problem. An electronic billboard cycles through a red X canceling a pistol, bullets transforming into doves, and the message: Stop the shooting! Love one another! The mayor says this billboard is a peace memorial to the victims of gun violence. She calls it “a compelling symbol of hope triumphing over despair, of virtue over lawlessness.”
But ask me and I’ll tell you we have enough symbols.
Every time it rains, this stretch of real estate, from here to Elyria-Swansea, floods like a motherfucker, the way it’s done for years, but the government never gets around to fixing that mess. Dolores Huerta Vocational closed due to lack of funding, which cut short both my GED studies and my chance for a certificate in applied electronics. Drug abatement and rehab counseling also got axed. Fiscal restraint and all that. Yet City Hall managed to cough up two and a half million dollars to shower on the media relations firm that designed this “symbol.”
If you want more irony, here’s some: The local gangster wannabes use the billboard for target practice, and the more brazen they are about it, the better to gain street cred. One chica — all preggers — was strolling past when she got clipped by a ricochet. She not only lost the baby, she wears a colostomy bag for life. Talk about bad luck, ese. So the word around here is, don’t get close to the Peace Memorial or you might get popped by a stray bala.
So why stick around?
Because you can run away to another town but as long as you live among raza, you’ll end up in yet another barrio. Go a thousand miles, it’s really just like you only got up on the other side of bed. The view is a little different but your situation hasn’t changed.
For sure, one way out is the military. Because of the war against terror, which never ends, and a lack of volunteers, the army dropped its recruitment standards so low even someone as rasquache as me is eligible (that is, prestabbing). Uncle Sam dangles all the bennies: steady pay, enlistment bonuses, job training, mierda, mierda, mierda. Of the eight vatos I know personally who signed up, four never returned — meaning they found new lives somewhere else; two did come back in coffins, and one came back covered in burn scars and missing most of the top of his head. That’s Tomas Sada — we used to call him Guapo. You’ll see him out shambling about in his walker, drooling and pissing all over himself.
Then there’s Marco Paz, a drone technician who came back from the Air Force strung out on Modafinix (weapons-grade Adderall that jazzed his brain to work at computer speed) until the morning he stretched his neck across the track of the J-Line light rail. When the cops showed up, they had to chase away the raccoons playing tug-of-war with his severed head. That’s the image I think about every Veterans Day.
This afternoon I keep walking past St. Joseph Polish Catholic Church. Hard to believe the neighborhood was once home to Poles, Russians, and Slavs. Then the Italians came, followed by us gente. Actually, we were always here, but back then we didn’t count.
Funny name for a place, Globeville. This misshapen plot of land abuts the South Platte River (what Mark Twain once called a “yellow trickle”) and was named after a smelter. I wipe my nose, mindful of all the crap the government keeps finding in the soil. Cadmium, zinc, arsenic, lead. Don’t eat from vegetable gardens. If the air smells bad, don’t go outside. Don’t play in standing water.
Arriving at Reies López Tijerina Acres (aka subsidized housing), I climb the outside stairs, slowly, to the third floor. The punteros on lookout give me the nod.
Toro answers his door on the second knock. His craggy face looms over me, and he glances to the tool bag in my hand. “Éntrale, Rafael.”
Thick kohl sets off Toro’s eyes, the color of rusted steel. The electro-ink on his thick neck dances like snakes on fire. A tank top drapes his broad chest and shows off biceps each as big and square as the business ends of sledgehammers. Gym shorts ride up on hairy thighs so muscular they seem powerful enough to bulldoze through a police roadblock. His massive, scarred hands are matching résumés of every beat-down he’s given. Toro couldn’t be more intimidating if he had horns growing out of his head.
But he’s got his charms. I should know, me and him had a thing going for a while. Sometimes my vieja at the time, Delia, would join us. She and I used to watch Toro snooze after we’d worn him out, the tats on his wide back writhing and smoldering as they faded from neon yellow to a cool aqua color. Delia totally freaked out in a good way and she got herself inked up too. But then she overdid it like she does everything else, so balling her became like fucking one of those anime sex robots you can rent on Colfax.
Domestic Intervention Services peed their polyester pants in happiness when Toro came out about being bi (who isn’t these days?), thinking that would put him in touch with his feminine side. They also loved that he bleached his hair and dyed it bright pink.
Toro lays a big paw on my shoulder and the old feelings soak through me. My knees threaten to give and as I think about falling, I want to drag him on top of me. I pretend to believe that I’m wrong about how he feels about me. I pretend to believe that things between him and me can go back to the way they used to be.
“Un cafecito, hermano?” He steps back to let me pass. “Pan dulce?”
Hermano. Sigh. I used to be his pan dulce.