As traffic passed, he tried to let the whisking hum of the tires against pavement lull him into a trance. Every now and then, though, peeking up, he saw drivers staring, passengers too, gazing at the pock-faced stumbling madman and he wondered: Who are these creatures? What world do they come from? He laughed. That was it-they came from Mars or the moon or MySpace, instructed by their overlords to annoy the fuck out of anything that moved. He could hear their voices tripping away inside his brain, beamed in by radio wave, echoing things he’d heard before, things other creatures, all heartfelt eyes and misty smiles, had said when he’d ventured out.
Things like: “Welcome home.”
Things like: “Thank you.”
Things like: “Support the troops!”
Except the troops don’t need or want your support, thank you very much. They don’t want the bumper-sticker bravado, the teary moms sporting Yankee Doodle ribbons on their watermelon tits, the brainwashed kids with the scrubbed little grins and roadkill eyes. The mascara wives bearing heart-attack casseroles and lukewarm beer or shag-assing off to bed for a little marital poon that can only go screamingly haywire. One trip to the VA, listening to the other guys rotating back, taught you that much. The troops respectfully request that you and your gung-ho support kindly fuck off. The troops do not recognize you as human.
Better yet: “Bring the troops home!” Yeah? Permission requested to saw off your head, the better to shit down your neck. What the fuck do you know about it? You know nothing-because you don’t want to, you want to wax indignant, you want to blame the same old crew, the greedy preening stuffed suits you blame for everything. You want to say the magic word: peace. Well fuck you. Fuck peace. Fuck a home that has to be shared with the prissy likes of you.
Someone called his name.
He turned toward the sound. A vintage Impala, tricked out like a showpiece, had pulled to the curb, passenger-side window rolled down. A pair of chavos in the car, both watching, waiting. The faces, yes, he knew these two.
“Hola, chero. The fuck you been?”
The voice conjured a name: Chato. The other one, behind the wheel, was Puchi.
“Need a lift?”
The next thing he knew he was in the backseat, the black vinyl upholstery cool and tight. A whiff of reefer, sweat disguised with Brut. He could make out Puchi’s eyes in the rearview. He wore an A’s cap with the brim cocked up in front, a gray hoodie. He seemed bigger, bulkier than Godo remembered. Weights, maybe. Prison?
Chato, a few years younger and riding shotgun, turned around in his seat so he and Godo were face-to-face. An angry whitehead wept pus just beneath one heavy-lidded eye. He wore a hairnet, his coif meticulous, black and sleek and combed straight back, while on his neck three tattooed letters appeared: BTL. Brown Town Locos. It was the name of the clica he and Puchi belonged to, the one Godo had danced around the edges of before enlisting. The name seemed a relic from an ancient time.
Chato held out his fist till Godo bumped it with his own. “My brother from another mother. Long time.”
True, Godo thought. Two years at least. An eternity, given what happened in between. Chato had been a mere mocoso, a little snot, back then.
“Iraqistan. Musta seen some serious shit. Bet you waxed your share of raghead motherfuckers, am I right?”
The kid was wired and his breath smelled and Godo had to resist an impulse to reach out and rip the hairnet off.
Puchi chimed in, “Wondered when we’d see you around, man. Heard some things, didn’t know what was true, figured we’d wait till we caught you out and about.”
Godo waved his hand idly toward his face, as though to conjure its pitted ugliness in a gesture. “Malacara,” he said, figuring that explained it all.
“Yeah, but you’re not all picoteado from squeezing your zits,” Puchi said, slapping Chato’s shoulder. The kid glared back venomously. “And it’s not like we’re gonna mock you, homes. Not the way it is.”
Godo tried to picture what that meant-The Way It Is-wondering if it bore any resemblance to Some Serious Shit. The effort to make more sense of it foundered as they passed the fenced confines of a vast construction site, rising in tiers up a broad bare hill. Baymont, the neighborhood was called, that or Hoodrat Heights, depending on who you talked to. Boon-Coona-Luma. Ho Hill. At least, those were the names thrown around before Godo left for basic.
He’d heard the story in bits and pieces after that, following the hometown news from afar, how some developers had wanted the whole hill condemned, war-era federal housing never meant to be permanent but grandfathered in, city council deadlocked on eminent domain. So a local fixer, former honcho with the firefighters union, hired some bent ex-cop to torch the whole neighborhood, burn every home to the ground. The plan was to blame it on some arson freak, this patsy they let die in the fire, and for all practical purposes it succeeded, though the players turned on one another when the bent cop got exposed. Not that that stopped anything. What was left of the neighborhood wasn’t worth rebuilding. The condemnation vote finally passed and the developers lined up like trick-or-treaters. Then some of the local stakeholders, good old boys whose families ran things here, they began wrangling over secondary spoils; the construction unions demanded a local-labor rider in any contracts; the town’s greenies hired a lawyer and challenged the EIR; the Building Department red-flagged every plan submitted, slowing things to a crawl; then the bottom fell out of the housing market and the mortgage crisis hit, financing dried up. So here it was, a vast plot of nothing, stalled in its tracks before the first shovel bit dirt. Two years now and counting, old houses torn down, nothing new built back up. As for all the families who’d lived here? Don’t ask.
Across the side of a panel truck parked just inside the project perimeter, some tagger had written: Rio Mirada-Where your hopes come to die.
“You heard about the big bad clusterfuck, huh?” It was Chato, following Godo’s eyes.
Godo snapped to. “Some. Here and there. You know, the news.” He didn’t remember coming this way during his trek with McBee from the trailer. Were they driving back a different route? “I watch a lot of TV,” he added sheepishly.
Puchi said, “We were hoping for work, man. Whole town was. Lay some brick, pound some nails, whatever. Then the buzzards showed up. Everybody gotta have their slice of the pie. And if they don’t? Nobody gets nothing.”
“Nobody,” Chato chimed in solemnly.
Godo, still staring out the window, said, “So what is it you two do? For work I mean.”
Puchi said, “Happy didn’t tell you?”
“Happy?”
“You seen him, right?”
“This morning, yeah. First time, actually. Why?”
Puchi and Chato traded glances up front.
Godo said, “What’s the big secret?”
“We’re in the moving business,” Puchi said.
Chato laughed, a snide little wheeze.
“Great punch line.” Godo felt his temper inching toward red. “Guess I missed the joke.”
“It’s a trip, man,” Chato said, unaware. “Check this out: We got no license, the trucking company, I mean. It’s so fucked up, it’s like, backwards, you know? Like permission to steal. Yuppies never see it coming.”
“See what coming?”
“Here we are, man.” Puchi slowed to a stop and dropped the tranny into park, the Impala’s 427 throbbing in neutral. They were out in front of the trailer park. How, Godo wondered, did we get here so quick?
Puchi turned around in his seat. “Good to see you, my man. Maybe now, with Happy back, we’ll see a little more of you.”
Chato added, “He talk to you about that?” He seemed eager, too much so. The kid was pasmado, all tics and quirks.