The Bronze Eagles rolling slow on State, four abreast, hissing, jerking, followed by a pair of poker-faced motorcycle cops wearing mirror-lensed shades.
"Viva la Fiestal" cries Rudy. "Viva los low-riders!"
Twas there that I met her, my dark Senorita, Black silken hair hanging down to her waist. Her name was Lupita, she danced in a tavern, A flash of her eyes and my youthful heart raced.
They have to pass by the Anglo block parties to get to Murieta Park. Lanterns strung, warm red light, people sit ting or standing to the sides of the dance area, politely clapping time for the fast numbers. At one the old Anglos, the pensioners and retirees, are milling about to "Spanish Eyes." At the next middle-aged Anglos hop to a swing band playing "Rose of San Antone," and at the next, slightly younger Anglos slow-dance to an Italian singing "There is a Rose in Spanish Harlem." Amado, Rudy and Parrando skirt the parties, look for friends beneath the streetlights. They try to keep their bottle out of sight.
"Estoy bombo," grins Parrando. Parrando is weaving, smiling at everything, liquid. Rudy wants to ditch him and find girls but Amado is afraid he'll pass out somewhere and be arrested.
"Take it easy, hijo," he says to Parrando in Spanish. "In this town if you lay down on the walk, there isn't a neighbor to throw a blanket on you."
Parrando weaves.
They hear it way back on Milpitas Street, carrying in the night air, welcoming. When they're a block away they see the banks of field lights beaming over the rooftops. Murieta Park, and everybody is there. The warm-up group for Los Babies is set up on the pitcher's mound, guitars, woodblock, congas throbbing, amplifiers cranked up full letting the whole town know about it. Dancers dance wherever they are, children chase across the infield, groups of boys and groups of girls cluster on opposite foul lines, then break off in twos and threes to cruise by each other. Farmworkers in straw Stetsons, already loaded, wander happily through it all while others huddle around bottles, getting there. People sing along with the music in the key that suits them, while others sing totally different songs, shouting out to the black beyond the field lights. There are booths for food and drink, tables for this cause and that, a blanket spread by home plate for sleepy kids too heavy for their parents' arms.
A patrol car glides along the four sides of the Park, never leaving, never stopping.
"Viva la Fiestal" cries Rudy. "Viva la Razal"
Amado, wine-high, gives a whoop. For the first time in so long he feels at home outside of the kitchen. He stretches his arms out wide, throws his head back and yelps to the sky. Parrando joins him, howling like a pair of coyotes, howling at the top of their lungs.
"Tas lucas," says Rudy, smiling but looking at them warily.
They meet Jesus and his Anglo girl. She isn't as pretty as Jesus has described, but she's just as blond, sun-and-seawater blond like Skip at work. When she smiles in greeting her gums show. Jesus rolls his eyes and tells them in Spanish what he's going to do to her, and how he'll come back later and find another, a Chicana.
"One for the belly," he says in Spanish, "and one for the soul."
Jesus sees Ramiro and Mendez and some others he knows who work at the Country Club and he takes his girl to show her off.
Rudy sees a girl he knows from the junior high school, walking with two friends. They wear high-waisted, bottomhugging pants, long sweater-coats. Rudy's girl has streaks of red in her hair.
"This is my friend Amado Cruz," he says. "And that is Parrando."
Parrando waves in their direction.
Rudy is very smooth, Amado is glad to be with him. He pairs them up right away. Amado gets Celia, who is pretty. With a good shape at thirteen, brown and thin like Nalda Perez back home. Nalda a mother already. Parrando is left with the heavy, Indian-looking one. She doesn't seem pleased.
Celia has her black hair in a braid for the Fiesta, and a flower behind one ear. Under her sweater-coat she wears a white camisole top, with a small golden cross around her neck. When Amado talks to her in Spanish she doesn't understand.
"I used to know some," she says. "From my grandmother."
Amado struggles with the words as they walk, his stomach tight now.
"Is like Cinco de Mayo," he says, "like Cinco de Mayo down South."
"Yeah, we have that up here too, Cinco de Mayo. The Chicano Caucus puts it on. We have that and the Fourth of July. Lots of fireworks."
"Que?"
"Fireworks. Boom-boom-boom," she mimes an explosion in the sky.
There is a rumbling, a roar, and a pair of low-riders screech onto the street beside them, front hubs running inches from the ground. They hop the curb, drop even lower — Skreeeeeeekl a shower of sparks from their plated bottoms, a cheer from the crowd in the Park, and then they cut hard and thunder away with the patrol car yowling after them.
Amado watches after, their sound fading slowly. "I save my pay," he says to Celia. "I buy one. A low-rider. I give you a drive."
Celia says that would be nice.
The wine finished, Rudy gone off with his girl, Celia and the little one home to their mothers and the field lights shut down for the night. Amado steering Parrando, lost, but somewhere near the ocean. He hears the surf. He hears others still loose in the night, distant shouts, curses, glass shattering. The night hot, still charged with Fiesta but scary now. Amado thinks they're still on the West Side, he looks out for the train tracks — "If you ever get lost, campesino," Jesus always says, "go find the ocean, take a left turn, an just keep walkin."
"Estoy bombo." Parrando's eyes are nearly shut now, he moves in a daze. "Stoy muy borracho."
"You ever drin before this, Parrando?"
"Nunca," smiles Parrando. "De ningi n modo."
Surf breaking close by, the backs of hotels rising, then -
"Viva la Fiesta!" cries Parrando when he sees the floats.
"Chist!" hisses Amado. Parrando covers his mouth, giggling.
The floats are unattended, moonlit in the beach parking lot. Crowded together they seem like a small amusement park, towers and banners and platforms, pennants flapping in the night air. Parrando darts in among them, tearing at crepe and flowers, tosses the bits over his head.
"Viva la Fiesta! Viva 01 Hispanish Day!" he yips.
Amado catches him on the Native Daughters of the Golden West float, tackling him in a tangle of hibiscus, bowling over a trellis. Parrando giggles, agrees to come along quietly, but first he has to pee. Amado has to also, they turn back to back, count five and let go, like duelists.
Amado is tapped and tucked when Parrando is just getting going. Amado stares, it really is huge. Parrando irrigates the bougainvillea, the hibiscus, the camellias, splatters the papier- mache wall of the Old Spanish Days hacienda and is baptizing the throne of La Reina de la Fiesta when a strobe light flashes across his back and a loudspeaker crackles -
"STAY RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE."
Amado is off, sprinting into the dark, hurdling driftwood, the beach-sand slowing his flight like a bad dream, and dreamlike, the thought keeps touching his mind — wait till I tell them in the kitchen. Parrando startled in the light, fumbling to stuff it all back in, reeling away with it still out, flapping — Even Jesus, who never laughs at the jokes of others, even Jesus would be laughing.
Amado sprawls into a runoff ditch behind the bathhouse, legs rubbery, wind sucking in through his ears. He swallows his wheezing, tries to hear them. Surf breaking. Others still loose in the night, cursing, crying, shattering glass. Amado will get overtime for a few days if they catch Parrando, both he and Luis doing double shift till someone's brother or cousin just up comes to fill the opening. Parrando will be better off down South.