We chased the truck for three blocks, the Celebrity’s hazards clacking so loud they seemed about to explode right through the dash. Finally the driver of the pickup pulled to the curb.
Through the rear window of the cab I could see the man jerking around. He looked out of his mind, yelling to himself. As we pulled up behind him his shoulder heaved and he threw the truck into park. His taillights flashed to full red. He kicked open his door.
We were in front of a bank parking lot. It was the middle of the day but the lot was empty. Black screens covered the plateglass windows as if the bank was closed for good. Trees lined the street. I felt a million miles from home.
The truck driver slammed his door shut as Maximilian was stepping out of the Celebrity. The truck driver yelled something. He was a big man, white, potbellied. He was wearing a flannel shirt. His neck seemed like one big chin and his jeans seemed too tight at the waist. Each one of his steps had a little bounce to it, as if he had learned to walk on his toes.
The man continued yelling as Max moved forward. Maximilian didn’t say a word. He simply continued to close in, his feet looking small, his shoulders broad, his tight waist neat with his tucked-in dress shirt. His tie was draped over his shoulder.
As Max got within arm’s reach the truck driver raised his hand and pointed to my cousin’s face. The man’s mouth was still going. He was looking down at my cousin. He was giving him a deep, mean look, eyebrows pointed in, teeth showing as he screamed. I think he thought Max was going to stop and start yelling himself. Max simply kept on moving, and just as the man was ending a word, drawing his mouth shut, my cousin lit into him with a flush right hand that sent the man staggering backward. Even in the car, over the now practically dead heartbeat of the blinkers, I heard something snap, the man’s jaw, his neck, my cousin’s wrist. The man fell to a seated position and Maximilian bent over him and hit him three more times, solid, deep-looking punches to the left side of the man’s face. The man fell sideways and was out cold. His short arm flopped over his thick side and landed palm up on the street. Maximilian turned and started walking back to the car. His face was red now, swollen. He was crying. He looked like he wanted to yell, to scream, but couldn’t get anything out. The Celebrity’s hazards had stopped dead. The car had died. I wished we were back in the procession. I wished there was somewhere, anywhere, for us to go.
GOD’S COUNTRY
Ask him where he learned to do that stuff and he’d say, “Sonora, God’s Country.” Chuey had never been to Sonora. He spent every day of his life right there in Pilsen, just like the rest of us, playing ball, jumping the freights. We thought maybe he’d resurrected some witch doctor’s memories of being in Sonora. I mean, he resurrected everything else: dead cats, dogs, finally a human being. So when people asked us how he learned to do the things he did, we said, “He learned it all in Sonora, God’s Country.” There seemed to be no other explanation.
He was fifteen when he found out he had the gift of life. It was one of those mornings we skipped school. It was early, right around the end of first period.
“Poor fucks,” Alfonzo said, looking to the high school, the kids transferring classes. “I’d be in algebra right now.”
“English,” I said.
“I’d be in gym,” Marcus said.
“Booo,” me and Alfonzo answered.
“No, man,” Marcus said. “Gym this early is a drag. All sweaty afterward. All sweaty for Brenda Gamino second period.”
“Damn,” Alfonzo said. “You have Brenda Gamino in a class?”
“Second period,” Marcus said. “History.” He pulled out the joint he had in the inside pocket of his leather. We were standing in front of the Pilsen YMCA, just across the street from Juarez High School.
“We’re going to get busted,” Alfonzo said. He said this as a matter of fact. That year, our freshman year, we’d been caught skipping three times by December. The limit was five unexcused absences per year. Our parents had been called. We’d been reasoned with by Mr. Sanchez, the school social worker: “So if you get expelled, what kind of job are you going to get?” We didn’t know. We didn’t care. The only thing that seemed to matter was that the thought of school made us literally, physically ill.
Marcus pulled out his tiny Bic lighter. He lit the joint and took a deep, early-morning drag. He passed the joint to Chuey, who hadn’t said a word all morning. Marcus exhaled.
“Want to walk to Speedy’s?” he asked.
Collectively, we began to move.
It was cold out that day. Alfonzo and I had on our hooded sweatshirts. Marcus had on his black leather. Chuey had on that brown, crusty leather jacket he always wore, the same one he had worn all summer. An heirloom he had called it that first day he showed up with it on. “It was my great-grandfather’s.”
“Looks like it,” Alfonzo had said.
“The fuck’s an heirloom?” Marcus asked.
“Something special,” Chuey said.
For weeks after that everything was an heirloom, a quarter someone had for a video game, a last piece of gum, a last cigarette in a pack. Some people called them “luckies.” We called them heirlooms. “I only got one left, that’s my heirloom,” we’d say. Chuey just continued to wear the jacket.
We walked down Twenty-First Place. The street was empty. All the factory workers had left for work, all the cleaning ladies, the secretaries, had taken their L’s downtown. Twenty-First Place was the only street in our neighborhood that had any trees, tall, full trees that lined the sidewalk for exactly two blocks. On summer days Twenty-First Place smelled good, fresh; birds sang and fluttered in the branches. Out of habit, on winter days we stuck to Twenty-First Place as well, even though by that time the birds were gone, and Twenty-First Place was just like any other street, cold and gray.
We kept our hands stuffed deep in our pockets, reaching out only to toke and pass the reefer. As we neared the corner of Paulina Street a beat-up white Cadillac pulled around the corner. The car jerked to a stop, seesawing in the middle of the intersection. Heavy bass rattled the trunk lid. The four of us stood still, ready to bolt down a gangway, jump fences. At the rear window a hand came up and rubbed out a hole in the steamed-over glass. Someone peered through, directly at us. Then the hand came up again, this time wiping with a blue piece of sleeve. The person looked through. We saw the face, dark, thick eyebrows, wide, flat nose. The person smiled, then held up the Almighty Ambrose hand sign. Then the car took off, tires screeching, tailpipe sparking as it knocked against the uneven street.
“Capone,” Marcus said.
“I know,” Alfonzo said. We all knew. Capone was someone we could recognize from a block away. Pilsen seemed like it would be a better place if he’d never been born.
Capone was an addict. He did everything: coke, heroin, happy stick. His favorite pastime was cornering kids in gangways. “What you be about?” he’d demand, a crazy, mindless look in his eyes. “Am-brose Love,” the kids would stammer out. They all knew the routine. Capone liked to bum cigarettes. When taking one he’d say, “Let me get a few more for later.” If you protested he’d say, “Want to fight about it?”
One time he asked Chuey for a cigarette and Chuey said no. Capone punched him so hard in the chest that Chuey lost his breath. There should’ve been payback. Chuey’s family were all Two-Ones. Chuey could’ve said something and all four of his brothers, a few uncles even, would’ve been out hunting for Capone — and they would’ve found him. But Chuey never said anything. “It doesn’t matter,” Chuey said. “It’s not like that fucker will ever learn.” Chuey was right. Once or twice a year Capone was beaten, bloodshot eyes, cut-up face, casts over broken limbs; even looking like that he’d be out gangbanging. Still, it would have been sweet to know Capone’s ass had been kicked yet again, and that Chuey’s brothers had done it.