To Dugan, the boy’s perseverance made him a cut above his gangbanging peers, most of whom dropped out of school as soon as they could and looked no further into the future than the next day. In front of other teenagers, he spoke in the street vernacular, but when he wanted, he was articulate and well-spoken. At school, Alejandro had excelled in writing courses; the brother who taught the modern literature class (a closet fan of Allen Ginsberg’s) raved about his talents as a poet.
When Eliza called, Dugan immediately caught a cab to the New York jail, a gray and dreary monolith appropriately known as the Tombs. Although he was usually more of a flannel-shirt sort of priest, he purposely wore his “official” black shirt and white collar, knowing its effect on the Irish Catholic cops and police officers in general. He was aware that they were not really supposed to let him speak with Alejandro; the law said he had a right to an attorney, not a priest. But he figured he’d get in with enough Irish blarney and benevolence—not to mention he was a familiar face at the Tombs—and he was right.
Even without his priestly garb, Dugan in his sixties was an impressive man physically. His crew-cut hair was the color of pewter but still thick as a hedge. The hair framed a thick, ruddy face that might have belonged to a hard-drinking Irish potato farmer, though in fact he was a graduate of Notre Dame University, where he’d run over opponents in a most un-Christian-like manner as a 230-pound blocking fullback for the Fightin’ Irish. Famous for his temper if crossed, he was more likely to laugh; either emotion could make his blue eyes glint like icicles in the sun. Those eyes were angry when he sat down across the table from Alejandro and asked why he felt it was necessary to shoot the other boy.
“I wasn’t trying to shoot him,” Alejandro explained. “I was shooting at him.”
“Yes, but bullets often find unintended victims, ’Jandro,” Dugan replied. “The fact is, you pointed a gun at him and pulled the trigger. It would have almost been better if you were trying to shoot him; at least then you would have been thinking and not mindlessly spewing bullets around that could have just as easily struck a child or some other innocent not involved in your gang bullshit.”
Alejandro shrugged. “You know as well as I do that if you don’t stick up for yourself in the ’hood, everybody’s going to think you’re a pussy. And once they think you won’t fight, they’ll be all over you like pit bulls on a rat.”
The priest sighed. He knew Alejandro’s childhood secret and believed that it was a wonder the boy wasn’t more jaded than he was. But Dugan was tired of the funerals, tired of visiting young men locked up behind walls and razor wire, tired of going to the morgue with grieving families to confirm the identity of another young victim of a drug overdose or gang shooting. “You say that if you don’t shoot you’ll be perceived as weak. But someday somebody’s going to have to be strong enough to break the cycle of violence. Nobody ever said it was easy to do the right thing.”
Alejandro scoffed. “The right thing? What’s doin’ the right thing ever got me? Remember when I was a kid and I tried to do the right thing? Where’d it get me?”
It was tough to argue with the boy’s childhood, but Dugan did his best. “Sometimes it’s not a matter of whether you gain anything from it, even if all you gain is comfort and safety. Yes, you deserved better, but sometimes you do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do.”
“Well, I guess I ain’t that strong, Father,” the boy replied. “I ain’t gonna turn my cheek so that somebody can slap the other one. I did that once before and it still hurts.”
The interview ended with Dugan taking the boy’s confession. “Forgive me Father for I have sinned,” he mumbled. “I fornicated with Lydia Sanchez on Tuesday and again last night in her uncle’s car. I called Panch a stupid, punk ass muthafucka and hurt his feelings. And I might have taken the Lord’s name in vain a few times.” He looked up hopefully, “And while I shot a punk, he deserved it and then he ratted on me, so maybe it makes us even?”
“No, Alejandro, it doesn’t make you even in the eyes of God,” Dugan growled.
“Okay, then in addition to those other sins, I shot a punk who deserved it,” Alejandro grumped.
Despite his concerns for the boy, Dugan smiled. He was not going to change his gangster mentality just because he was scared and in jail. Dugan had mostly gone so he could call Eliza and say he’d seen Alejandro and that her grandson was all right—gangbangers had been known to meet with accidental bumps and bruises in the squad cars on the way to the Tombs. Maybe Alejandro, who despite his notoriety had never been arrested, would learn from this experience enough to save his life, but for now, all the priest could do was hand down spiritual penance. “Ten Hail Marys and ten Our Fathers…no more fornicating with Lydia Sanchez—from what I understand, she has been fornicating a lot and sooner or later is going to give you all the clap or worse. Panch is a stupid, punk ass muthafucka, but he is also a loyal friend and deserves better. Watch the swearing…and no more shooting punks, even if they deserve it.”
• • •
The New York District Attorney’s Office charged Alejandro with attempted murder. A court-appointed defense lawyer got the DA to go for reckless endangerment in exchange for a guilty plea and eighteen months at the Mario Cuomo Juvenile Corrections Facility in Rockland County.
Even before the boy was sent to Cuomo, Dugan had regularly visited the facility. Quite a number of sons from families he’d known when he was a parish priest in Spanish Harlem were there, and he’d made it a point to try to visit at least once a month. Many of them were uncomfortable confessing to the facility’s official chaplain, figuring he probably went back to the warden and told on them, so Dugan’s visits often lasted well into the evening. It was surprising how many sins they could commit even while locked up.
It was a long drive—two hours up and two back—in the old black Buick sedan he drove, but after Alejandro was sentenced, Dugan tried to double his visits, unwilling to lose another of the ghetto’s best and brightest to the New York Department of Corrections. To keep Alejandro connected with his home, the priest sometimes brought special visitors—Eliza, or some friend who the priest thought might be a good influence on his young friend.
One of these was one of Alejandro’s oldest pals, Francisco J. Apodaca Jr. Francisco wasn’t in a gang, but he’d never broken his ties to Alejandro and Pancho. He was bookish but too poor to attend a private Catholic school, so instead had to do the best he could at the run-down, quasi–war zone that passed for a public education in the neighborhood. Every day he had to pass a gauntlet of drug dealers and thugs—and that was just in the hallways. However, he did not let them quash his dreams.
Ever since he was a boy, he had insisted that he was going to college to become a doctor. So he’d put up with a lot of teasing, and sometimes bullying, from classmates. They resented that he sat in the front of the classroom, raised his hand to ask and answer questions, and committed the unpardonable sin of taking his books home to study. His life would have been harder except that the bullies knew that if they pushed too hard, they would have to answer to Boom Garcia and Pancho Ramirez.
During one visit to Cuomo a half year into Alejandro’s sentence, he and Francisco were sitting on a bench talking when the latter asked something that had been on his mind as he watched teenage boys shuffle past in handcuffs and ankle shackles. “What are you going to do when you get out?”
Alejandro shrugged. “Don’t know, ’Cisco. Maybe get a place of my own, then the same old same old.”
“Same old same old,” Francisco repeated. “You mean dealing crack and gangbanging?”
Alejandro smiled. “Whatever it takes, dog.”
“But you know you’ll just end up back here…or worse, some hellhole like Attica.”
Again, Alejandro shrugged. “Nothin’ much I can do ’bout it. I am what I am. Like the counselors say, ‘a product of my environment.’ The system is stacked against me, so I ain’t gonna make it, unless I take it.”
Francisco reached out and grabbed Alejandro’s face with a grip that was surprisingly strong for such a thin boy. “Look at me, ’Jandro. Look at me, mi amigo,” he shouted. “Every time the bleeding hearts give someone like you an excuse to fuck up because ‘he’s just a product of his environment,’ it’s a slap in the face to those of us who actually work to make something of our lives. It lets the bigots think I’m a freak, an exception to the rule that all Puerto Ricans are lazy, no-good criminals…. You’re as smart as I am, ’Jandro, maybe smarter. You could be someone in this world, but instead you’re too busy blaming ‘the system,’ whatever that is, for fucking up. It’s just an excuse, hermano, a bad one.”
Francisco let go of his grip and, much truer to form, burst into tears. Alejandro’s cheeks hurt but that wasn’t the reason he rubbed his jaw. The truth was worse. He stood and hugged his friend. “I’m sorry, ’Cisco,” he said. “I’m just talkin’ big ’cause I’m scared. I’m just afraid that there’s nothin’ out there for me. I don’t have dreams like you. All I see is bangin’ or some menial job that will suck the life out of me until I’m just another washed-up nobody drinking beer out of his car on 106th.”
“Find one, ’Jandro,” Francisco said as they stood back from one another. “Find a place in the world and a dream to hold on to. You’re a writer, a poet, so write…maybe you’ll write the great Puerto Rican–American novel.”
Alejandro smiled at the suggestion. “Yeah, maybe I will…Ernesto Hemingway,” he said, and they both laughed. But the seed planted by Francisco took hold and sprouted, though not in a way either had imagined at that moment.
• • •
Almost a year after Alejandro’s arrival at Cuomo, Dugan saw him one day sitting beneath a tree and writing in a notebook. The teenager tried to hide the material from him, but the priest insisted on taking a look. The notebook was nearly filled with handwritten poetry, or more aptly, rap lyrics. The work was raw and street-hard, filled with violence and despair. But it was also powerful because it was honest.
With Dugan’s encouragement, Alejandro began trying out his material on his fellow inmates with Pancho providing the background percussion by sputtering an imitation of a bass guitar and slapping his thigh for drums. It wasn’t long before Alejandro was attracting a crowd, winning over even some of his former enemies with words they all understood.
Alejandro’s rap was the hit of the annual talent show that year. But his pride took a fall when he saw a pained look on Dugan’s face after the show and asked what was troubling him. The priest tried to blow it off. “It’s nothing,” he said, feeling suddenly that he was too hard on the boy. After all, Alejandro had made good use of his time in Cuomo, going to school and getting his GED, keeping his nose clean. Let him enjoy his moment in the sun, he thought.
But Alejandro kept insisting that he say what was bothering him. Finally, the older man allowed that he was disappointed that Alejandro’s message was not growing beyond the violent, demeaning language common to gangsta rap.
Hurt by the criticism, the teenager got defensive. “This is the poetry of the streets, Father. Ain’t no bullshit sweetness and light on 106th and Third. Besides…,” he said, shrugging, “they’re just words.”
“Nigger isn’t just a word, Alejandro,” Dugan said softly. “It isn’t all right just because a bunch of lowlifes, who have no perspective on the legacy of pain associated with that word, use it on each other. How can you expect whites to stop referring to black men and women that way if those men and women call each other ‘niggah.’ ”
Alejandro tried to object, but the priest wasn’t finished. “Bitch. Ho. They’re not just words. They’re demeaning to someone’s mother, sister, girlfriend. Glorifying guns and drugs aren’t just words. They’re a perspective on how you see the world and they’re poison to young minds.”
“But nobody takes that shit seriously,” Alejandro argued. “What do you want me to write about…some fuckin’ crap like ‘A Rose in Spanish Harlem’? There weren’t any roses in my neighborhood, Father, just weeds.”
The priest was having none of it. “Maybe your older listeners will know that,” he said. “But little kids are listening to that gangsta shit over and over in their heads until they know it better than the Lord’s Prayer. They start to think that it’s okay to think of women as bitches and whores and that shooting people is a game. They hear you, or some other gangbanger they respect, rapping and think it’s how you live your life, and they want to be like you.”
Dugan sighed. How do you get through to them? “It’s about taking responsibility for what you say, as well as your actions, and the effect it has on those who look up to you, Alejandro. They’re not just words.”
On that day, Alejandro stomped off. But Dugan noticed the next time he heard the boy performing, the N-word was missing from his vocabulary, as were derogatory references to women. And when he spoke about guns and drugs, it was with sadness for lives lost and families shattered. As disappointed as the priest had been before, he let him know how proud he was of him now.
“Thanks, Father,” Alejandro said as they shook hands. “I think I’ve found what I want to do. Maybe things are looking up for me.”
Dugan gave him a hug. “Maybe they are, son,” he said, though he wondered what other obstacles might be laid in the boy’s path to a brighter future. He didn’t have long to wait.
• • •
A month before Alejandro’s release, he saw Dugan walking across the grounds toward him. He was happy to see the priest and wanted to talk to him about getting a job and someplace to live when he got out. He also wanted to run some ideas past him about breaking into the music business, but his smile disappeared when he noticed the sadness in his friend’s eyes.
Dugan led him to a bench where they sat down next to each other. “Son, I have some bad news for you,” he said softly, placing a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Eliza…your grandmother…is dead.”
For a moment, Alejandro just looked at him, blinking his eyes rapidly. Then a sob escaped from his lips, which released a torrent of tears. When at last he calmed down a bit, he asked the question that the priest had hoped to avoid. “How?” the teen asked, swiping at his tears with his shirtsleeve. “How’d it happen? Was it her heart? Did she forget to take her heart medication?”
Dugan shook his head. He wished it were that simple. “She was walking home from the subway after work,” he began but had to stop to clear his throat. “It was supposed to be a simple purse-snatching, but you know your grandmother, she held on and wouldn’t let go until the guy hit her and knocked her down. She struck her head on the sidewalk…,” he paused again, “…she never regained consciousness.” As he spoke the last part, the priest had looked down at his own clasped hands and said a silent prayer, but he looked up in time to see the grief on Alejandro’s face turn to anger.
Alejandro’s dark eyes had turned darker still until there seemed to be no color, only blackness. “Who did it, Father? Who killed her?”
Dugan looked at Alejandro for a long moment, then shook his head. His eyes were still sad, but his voice was tinged with anger when he answered. “Why, Alejandro?” he asked. “So that when you get out of here, you and your gang can go kill him? Take another life and ruin your own?”
“Don’t give me that shit, Father, the muthafucka killed a sweet old woman who never hurt nobody,” he fumed. “The asshole needs to pay for that.”
“And when his people come gunning for you? Where does it stop Alejandro,” Dugan countered. �
�When you’re all dead or in Attica? Let the system deal with finding and punishing him.”
Alejandro snorted and barked a short, bitter laugh. “The system? Who? The police? The DA? Where the fuck were they when she was trying to get home? Eating doughnuts? Sipping a martini with some other lawyers? She deserved their protection. But has anybody been arrested? No? I didn’t think so. They could give a shit about what happens uptown, unless there’s an election, or some white dude from midtown cruisin’ the ghetto for crack or whores gets his ass shot. Then they’re all over it.”
Dugan conceded that the justice system had failed Alejandro’s community more often than it had succeeded. “But it is still our best hope,” he said. “Without it, there is only anarchy and chaos. It’s up to us to make the system accountable.” The priest passed a hand over his brow. I’m so damned tired. He patted the boy on the knee. “God loves you, Alejandro. Your grandmother loves you. I love you. We want you to live and make something of yourself.”
The boy drew his knees up and buried his face. “I shoulda been there,” he cried quietly. “I was the only family she had, but she had to die alone and scared ’cause I was here.”
It hurt Dugan’s heart to hear the depth of the grief in Alejandro’s voice. The priest wanted to take the grieving boy in his arms, tell him it was all right, that it wasn’t his fault. But he knew that there were times for hard lessons that meant something and this was one of them. So he hardened his heart and his voice. “Yes, Alejandro, you should have been there,” he said. “Life is all about choices. Some good. Some bad. You made a bad one, and so you weren’t there when your grandma needed you.”
Dugan let the words sink in. “But you have another choice now,” he said at last, more gently. “In a month, you walk back out that gate a free man. You can return to the streets, back to the gangbanging, in which case I’ll be visiting you someday in a real prison or at your grave.
Hoax Page 3