“Just called the police,” the baldy said. “They’ll be here any minute.”
I sat there expressionless.
“What’s your name, kid?”
I looked at him.
“What’s your name—kid?” I answered.
Surprisingly, he laughed.
“The name is Kearney—Charles Kearney.”
Kearney looked at me with some interest behind a pile of papers.
“May I ask why you did it?”
“I was hungry.”
“Don’t you have food at home?”
“Sometimes, but I don’t live at home.”
“You’ve been arrested before, I gather.”
“Here and there—lightweight stuff.”
“Well, what you did was wrong,” Kearney explained. “It’s against the law to order food, eat it and not pay for it. It’s stealing!”
“I know.”
He shuffled one pile of papers to another.
“How old are you?”
“Going on sixteen.”
He shook his head.
“And you don’t have a home to go to, huh?”
I crossed my right leg over my left, placed my arms across the legs, and looked straight at Kearney.
“Listen Mr. Kurley—or whatever your name is. I was hungry. I don’t have no money. So I got something to eat. My moms works hard for the family. She don’t like me doing this, and I know she feels bad ’cause she can’t get enough for us. It’s not her fault. She threw me out of the house for being an asshole. So I can’t cry about it. I just have to make it on my own, do what I can to keep the pressure off moms and the family. You know what I’m talking about?”
“But stealing is against the law.”
“I understand I did wrong. I’m not making excuses. You caught me, up and up. I’ll go to jail.”
I paused, looked around the place a little, then back at Kearney.
“Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like jail. They beat you in jail, but like I said: No excuses.”
“What do you mean—they beat you in jail?”
“Yeah, man, the cops,” I responded. “They beat on us all the time. Especially them sheriffs. They’re the worst. They don’t care if you’re hungry, if you have a job or not, or anything about hurting your moms who works so hard. They want control over you, including over your life. That’s a fact. That’s the way of the neighborhood.”
Kearney looked intently at me.
“I don’t know about any of this, all I know is you did wrong. You stole from me. You have to pay something for it.”
“I don’t mind that. The problem is we end up paying more for the same thing than other people do. On this side of town, the cops don’t beat up people. On this side of town, the cops don’t stop you for no reason. They don’t be hitting you in the head, trying to make you mad so you do something you’ll regret later.”
“I don’t mind paying for my mistakes,” I added. “But it seems like we’re paying for everyone else’s mistakes too. Sometimes we pay even when there’s been no mistake. Just for being who we are, you know what I mean? Just for being Mexican. That’s all the wrong I have to do.”
Kearney mulled over my words in silence. Soon a sheriff’s deputy entered the office. I recognized the ugly scar across his cheek. It belonged to Cowboy.
Kearney looked up at Cowboy, then at me. Cowboy recognized me too.
“What do we have here!” Cowboy exclaimed. “Chin, my man. Yeah, this is going to be fun—right Chin?”
“You know him?” Kearney asked me.
“Sure,” I said with disgust. “He’s one of those sheriffs I was telling you about.”
“Listen, Mr. Kearney, don’t let these punk kids con you into anything,” Cowboy said. “If you ask me, they all need a swift kick in the behind.”
Cowboy pulled out a note pad and prepared to ask Kearney questions. But Kearney did a most startling thing.
“It’s okay, officer, I don’t want to press charges.”
Cowboy smiled and removed a pencil from his jacket.
“I know how it looks, but don’t feel sorry for these clowns,” Cowboy responded. “They’d just as soon shoot you as steal from you.”
“I understand, but it’s all right,” Kearney persisted. “I don’t want you to take him. I’ll take care of this.”
“Are you nuts?” Cowboy lost his patience. “This guy is bad news. I know him. He’s been arrested so many times, his record could cover the floor.”
Man, I thought, Cowboy wants me so bad he could taste it.
“No, officer, I’m sorry for having called you and making you come all the way down here,” Kearney insisted. “But this is my final decision. I’m not going to let you take him.”
Cowboy’s face turned red, infuriated. He jammed the pencil back into his jacket and stuffed the note pad into his back pants pocket. He turned toward me, fire in his eyes and a tremble in his lip. Then, without a word, he swung around on his boots and left, slamming the door behind him.
What a relief! I already imagined the beating Cowboy had in store for me.
“Look kid,” Kearney said. “I want you to get out of here. Don’t misunderstand what I’ve done. I don’t want to see you in my restaurant ever again, you hear?”
“That’s fine with me—and thanks.”
Kearney allowed me to leave out the back door. I cross-looked down the alley. I sensed Cowboy lurking around somewhere, waiting for me.
I sprinted up the alley.
“Orale, homes,” a voice came at me from some bushes. I looked over and saw Chicharrón emerge through the branches with a piece of pipe in his hand.
“Chingao, am I glad to see you,” I said. “You been here all this time?”
“Sure, man, I saw them get you,” Chícharrón explained. “So I hid back here and then Cowboy parked and went inside. I figured as soon as he brought you out, I’d bash him over the head with this pipe. But he came out alone. What the hell happened?”
“You’ll never believe it,” I said. “I can hardly believe it myself. I’ll tell you later.”
Then I looked around for Arnie.
“What happened to the lambe.”
“Arnie—that puto! As soon as I get the pipe and tell him what we’re going to do, he babbles some nonsense about us being crazy and takes off running.”
“No matter,” I said. “Let’s get out of here before Cowboy finds us.”
Chente entered the John Fabela Youth Center, the place dense with smoke, and the slow-talk and laughter of vatos and rucas. As director of the center’s activities, Chente played administrator, father-figure, counselor and the law. But he had to do it through strength of character. With style. He knew these teenagers didn’t respect imposed authority.
Chente opened up classes at the center such as martial arts, arts & crafts and photography. New government programs existed then for agencies like the Bienvenidos Community Center, which ran the youth center; Chente tapped into some of these funds to provide Lomas its first and only recreational facility.
Chente eyed me standing with Chata and Trudy, and came by.
“Luis. I’d like to ask you something.”
“Go ahead dude.”
“In my office, it’s a little quieter.”
I followed Chente to a small room with ancient metal files and a carved-up desk. I stood next to a window which overlooked the billiard-playing area.
“I got a job for you,” he said. “It’s part of the Neighborhood Youth Corps. We got funded for several slots. I’d like for you to have one of them.”
“What do I have to do?”
“Well most of the jobs involve cleaning up parks, painting, carpentry and alley maintenance,” he said. “I want you to run one of the crews. We’ll be hiring next week, but you have to sign up. It’s for families below the poverty level. What do you say?”
“Sure, you know I ain’t working right now.”
“There’s one catch though,” Chente
said, looking intently at me. “I want you to consider going to school next semester—to Keppel.”
“What for? I’ve had it with school. Anyway, they don’t want me at Keppel.”
“Listen, there’s going to be some changes,” Chente informed me. “Keppel is getting a new principal, Mr. Madison. He says he wants to meet with the students from Lomas. We’re working on this now. Some of the community have already met with him and he’s agreed to provide a Chicano Student Center, a full-time Youth Adviser and—get this—a school club for Chicano students.”
“No! What a change, man.”
“I’d like for you to go back and get involved. We need strong leaders. We need intelligent voices. We’re going to make deep changes and you’re one person who can help make them.”
“Are you sure?”
“Believe me, I’m sure—what do you say?”
“I don’t know, man. Let me think about it.”
“Okay, all right. You have a whole summer still,” Chente said, shaking my hand. “And don’t forget to come back next week for the job.”
By summer, I worked on an NYC crew. We took an old flatbed truck with wood planks on the sides to use on the various cleanup sites. We piled up the back of the truck with junk which had been dumped on the roadways, parks, empty lots, and abandoned buildings. From there we trekked over to the dump to unload it. We also hung wallboard, did light carpentry and some electrical, and helped build the new daycare and student dropout center next to the John Fabela Center.
Community projects popped up all over. The government brought out a number of teen programs and job placements. Activists came into Lomas with various ideas. They opened up a food co-op run by the Lomas mothers. They hired consultants, grant writers and fundraisers.
I became deeply involved at the center. On weekends, I woke up at 3 a.m. to go with some parents to the farmer’s market in downtown L.A. and pick up crates of fruits and vegetables for the food co-op. During the week, I worked a regular day shift cleaning up the neighborhood. Then in the evenings, I hung around the youth center, often volunteering for various programs, including giving out bags of groceries for families without food.
One time a man named Daniel Fuentes came in to sign up dudes for amateur boxing. There were a number of tournaments opening up: the Junior Olympics, the Junior Golden Gloves, the Golden Gloves and Olympics. I decided to try boxing. Fuentes ran the boxing club out of his house in the Hills. We used the almost-collapsing auditorium of the elementary school just below Graves Avenue to work out. We ran laps around the school’s play yard.
On the days we sparred, Fuentes piled up all the guys into his hand-painted black station wagon and had us ply the rings at the Main Street Gym in downtown L.A. or at a makeshift gym in a South El Monte warehouse.
Fuentes demanded so much of us. He knew he had mostly undisciplined, could-give-a-fuck street dudes to shape up. He had to make skilled boxers out of some difficult, raw material. But he had one thing in his favor: We had guts.
The first days of training, we tried to look like bad-ass dudes with our high fists and our bouncy stances. Fuentes had his son Steve go a couple of rounds with us. At 18, Steve was an experienced amateur, having won a few local titles with almost 100 fights under his belt. He didn’t look like a homeboy. But when he got us in the ring, he tore us to pieces. We had no defenses. We had no combinations. We understood nothing about balance, footwork or even where to place our eyes when we fought.
“You guys think you’re the toughest people around,” Fuentes said. “Well, you wouldn’t last a round in an amateur fight. But this is going to change.”
Every evening we did our laps around the elementary school. On certain occasions, Fuentes dragged us to East L.A. College where we ran our butts off around a large track field. Fuentes taught us how to hit the heavy bags, use the speed bag and jump rope, and he helped build up our shoulders and chest areas.
“The power doesn’t come from your arms,” he said. “It comes from your shoulders. You put the force of your whole body into a punch. This way, you make every punch count.”
Rubén Navarro—also known as The Maravilla Kid—was then a contender for the world’s featherweight title. The Maravilla Kid became our sponsor. We were then known as the Maravilla Kid’s United Teen Pugs.
The Maravilla Kid would pay a visit every other week or so. He drove up in a classic 1930s motorcar, all stocked and shiny. He emerged in a long wool coat, silk shirts and fedora hat. A lot of the dudes lit up at the sight of him. Sometimes a blonde woman sat beside the Kid as he watched us work out.
One day, I sparred with this dude we called Left Brain. The Maravilla Kid looked at us for a while, then got up and stopped us.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.
We didn’t have any words.
“Tell me, I want you to explain what you’re doing.”
“I’m trying to protect myself and wait for an opening,” Left Brain offered.
“Protect yourself?”
Then the Maravilla Kid threw a slap from his left side and smacked Left Brain solid on his cheek. Everybody else stopped what they were doing. Left Brain stood there, embarrassed and hurt.
“I didn’t see you protect yourself,” The Kid said. “This is what happens when somebody really hits you. I want you guys to go at it for real. Not this paddy-cake shit. When you’re in the ring, nobody is going to play paddy-cake with you.”
The Kid turned toward me, a look of disdain on his face.
“And you, I want you to go at him like he just spit on your mother.”
Whenever the Kid came, everything turned up a few notches. Sometimes Fuentes got frustrated. He had his own way of training. But the Kid wanted some trophies. He wanted our names to spell fear for the other amateur clubs. He wanted us to take the Golden Gloves and Olympic championships.
The competition between the various boxing clubs in and around L.A. was fierce, almost deadly. A lot rode on the boxing business for Chicanos. Fuentes argued long and hard with the Maravilla Kid about funds. We needed gloves, we needed bags, we needed so many things, but the Kid would only say “in time.”
Soon I came home with the whites of my eyes glazed in red because of broken blood vessels; bruises and welts on my nose, cheeks and mouth. After a heavy night of working out, I’d still work the next day at my Neighborhood Youth Corps job, all beat up and sore.
I had a few fights for trophies with clubs from East L.A., Pomona, Azusa, the L.A. Harbor and South Central L.A. They consisted of three torturous rounds. We put so much into each round, so many blows and energy, that most of us practically died of exhaustion by the end of a bout.
My skills weren’t very good. But I had what they called heart. I came to kill. I rushed up to my opponents and mowed them down. Not much of the sweet science, I must say. The Maravilla Kid didn’t mind, as long as I won fights.
Fuentes asked me to try for the Junior Olympics tournament. I had bulked up to middleweight. The dudes in this division were harder-hitting but not so big they weren’t able to move around and rouse up excitement. The competition proved stronger and better trained. Most of the boxers came from clubs with more money and prestige. The Maravilla Kid’s United Teen Pugs were like everybody’s sick stepchild. Because of our lack of resources, we had this added pressure to be better.
My big chance to make the top of the tournament came with a bout at the Lorena Street Gym in the basement of a church in East L.A. Fuentes worked to build up my confidence.
“This is your big break,” Fuentes said. “If anyone can make it, you can.”
In my enthusiasm, I invited my whole family to see me: My mother, my brother and sisters showed up for the match; the first time they had anything to do with me in months.
The place was packed with spectators. Clubs from all over L.A. came to box. Most of the clubs’ fighters consisted of blacks or Latinos, boxing for us being the proverbial way out.
Fuentes and his assistant, t
his old pro named Winky, who had slurred speech and the cartilage removed from his nose from being battered so many years ago, gathered the Teen Pugs in the back of the gym for a pep talk. I sat there along with the others—in maroon boxer shorts, shoes, a towel around my shoulders, and Winky going through the ritual of wrapping tape around my hands to protect them from getting broken.
“This is a big fight for you guys,” Fuentes said. “But I believe there’s no better fighters in the world than those sitting right here. You’ve trained hard, considering the conditions we have to work under. But remember the one who wins is the one with the most jaspia. If you guys don’t have this, I don’t know who does.”
Jaspia meant hunger and Fuentes often yelled it at us from the corner to remind us of our motivation.
Hector Sorillo came in, late as usual, with the arms of a pretty, light-skinned Chicana named Delfina around his shoulders. The club’s best fighter and Steve’s former stable mate, Hector obtained most of the trophies and glory. I believed Fuentes hated him because Hector threw his weight around, but the Kid praised him to the gods.
“Hector, you’re looking too pretty,” Fuentes said. “This is a fight. Get your gear on. You’re good, but not that good.”
Delfina sat next to me while I waited my turn to enter the ring. She had on a going-out lavender dress which crinkled when she moved; her light-brown hair piled up nice around her flawless face. I sat there relaxed, gloves on hands and sweat dripping on my lap.
“How you doing, Louie?” Delfina asked. She never talked to me before.
“Not too bad—I got my family out there.”
“You nervous.”
“All the time. But Fuentes thinks I’m going to do good here.”
“What do you think?”
“I think I better think what Fuentes thinks.”
Our team went about half and half with losses and victories. Hector and Steve won their bouts, and even Left Brain managed a victory. But the other dudes were losing. There were some great teams out there. Winky then came in, gestured to me and said: “You’re next.”
I stepped up to the ring. People were sitting on fold-up chairs scattered throughout every corner of the gym. As I climbed the ring, I saw my mom at ringside, Joe and my sisters around her. I could tell she wasn’t enjoying herself. But she came out for me and I felt I had to win this one for her.
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