Always Running

by Luis J. Rodriguez

  But I was already seeing two girls who lived next door behind my brother Joe’s house. By then Joe had married a woman he met when he was a truck driver for a company where she worked on the assembly line. Her name was Elvie. They moved in next door and soon had a son they named after me, Louie, and later a daughter, Tricia.

  The girls, Rosie and Terry, were runaways who ended up staying with Joe and Elvie. Before long, they moved in on me. Terry used to throw dirt clods at my garage room door in the middle of the night. I’d open the door and she’d jump over the fence and spend the night. My mother asked me about the splattering of dirt on the outside of the room, which I pretended I didn’t know anything about, but I sensed she knew what was happening.

  Rosie got involved with me soon after, I believed to get back at Terry. One day Rosie came to my room and knocked.

  “Who is it?”

  “It’s Rosie, I need to talk with you.”

  I let her in. Rosie stood in the doorway, the sunlight behind her, and then she took off her blouse. She had nothing underneath.

  “I know this is very forward—but I want to make love to you.”

  I also dated girls Elvie hooked me up with, including her Puerto Rican friend Evelyn. There was also a mechista who I liked from Cal State.

  And there I was, falling for Camila!

  One day, a bombshell was laid at my doorstep. A letter. In it, Terry said she was pregnant—and claimed it was my child!

  I was stunned. Here I was on the verge of changing my life, in college, with a book about to happen, working in my spare time and possibly getting more mural-painting jobs. I didn’t want this child. But I didn’t know how to respond. Unfortunately, I didn’t talk to anyone before I confronted Terry.

  “Listen, Terry, I like you very much. But I’m not ready to have a baby.”

  “What are you saying, Louie?”

  “I mean, there’s many things happening for me right now. A year ago, I would’ve been game. But I don’t want to stop what I’ve started. I think you should have an abortion.”

  Terry looked horrified, then ran off. Soon after everything caved in. Elvie said Terry threatened suicide. Rosie all of a sudden took my side of the issue, causing greater conflict. When word got to my family, I faced divergent pressures: I should be responsible and have this child. I should be responsible and make sure Terry gets an abortion. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to get out of there. I called Chicharrón one night and got dead drunk.

  The next day, Rosie came to the room in a harried state.

  “Terry’s gone!”

  “She’s gone? But why, she’s going to have a baby, no?”

  “Louie, I don’t know—it’s hard to tell with Terry what’s real and what ain’t. But she left last night, took everything, and didn’t say where she went.”

  “You mean, Terry may not be pregnant?”

  “I mean, with her you don’t know if she’s just playing games to get to you, or if she left because she doesn’t want to lose the baby.”

  “Shit, we have to find her … but I can’t go now. I’m working and going to school.”

  I talked to my brother and his wife to figure out what to do. They offered to look for her. My sister Gloria went along. The next weekend, they went as far as the Mexican border, following on leads Rosie gave them. Terry’s family stayed in San Diego and they tried there. But no Terry.

  In two days, they returned.

  “Sorry, Louie, we couldn’t find her,” Joe said. “Nobody knows where she’s at. She could be having a baby. She could be living it up somewhere without one—or she could be dead.”

  Later, Rosie returned back to her family. I never did find out where Terry went. I never knew for sure if she had a child, and if so, if it was mine.

  The peace between the barrios never got off the ground after Santos and Indio were killed; I still maintained the sheriff’s were behind their murders. Regardless, the wars continued, worsening in some cases, extending in others. In one incident, a group of dudes were standing around in front of La Casa when a carload of locos cruised by. Tiburón walked out, a handgun in the small of his back.

  “You and me, Coyote,” he called out.

  Coyote walked out to meet Tiburón. Tiburón then reached behind him, pulled out the gun and began shooting. Other dudes with him opened fire as well. The Sangra guys scattered. One of them walked off for a few steps, fell, got up and then fell again; he died there on the sidewalk.

  In the wee hours of the morning, plainclothes detectives busted into several homes belonging to Lomas members. They were being arrested for the murder of 16-year-old David Alcón. One of those they picked up was Chicharrón.

  The police issued a warrant for Tiburón’s arrest. He was nowhere to be found. For weeks, the police combed the Hills, visited his family, even called on authorities in Mexico.

  Then in the Hills, in the quiet of night, somebody thrust a shotgun through a bedroom window and opened fire, striking Tiburón’s 13-year-old brother in the head. Pellet holes and blood scattered on the far wall. Sangra claimed the shooting. Soon after, Tiburón turned himself in.

  A jury found Tiburón guilty of murder and he was sent up to San Quentin. Chicharrón, who was 17 then, was found guilty of accessory to murder and sentenced to YTS prison in Chino. A couple other dudes from the Hills received various lesser charges relating to Alcón’s death.

  Junior no longer came to play in the back yard. Shoshi took care of him following Chicharrón’s verdict. Chicharrón then left to serve his time—I was the last of anyone who ever claimed los cuatro.

  I started to see more of Camila. She moved in with an older sister after being thrown out from her mother’s house. But once her mother found out I was seeing her, she started to spend more time at the house on Ferris Avenue where Camila and her sister, Irma, lived. The first time I took Camila to a movie, her mother forced Camila’s younger brother to come along, armed with a kitchen knife in case I “got out of hand.”

  Once I drove a large bob-tail truck to the front of Garfield High School to pick up Camila after school. As I strolled the walkway leading up to the main building, dudes moved out of the way, some giving me nods, as Camila waited for me, smiling, on the school’s steps. She looked so pretty with skin of soft brown, shapely legs and a shapely behind, and one of the cutest faces I’d ever seen. I felt proud to be her boyfriend.

  Everything seemed to come my way—with a beautiful woman at my side.

  The woman screamed but nobody appeared to hear. I saw a couple of deputies push her against a car parked in the lot of an after-hours club in Norwalk. I looked to see if anybody else was around, but the few who were there turned away, ignoring the screams as a deputy punched the woman in the face.

  “Hey, get off her!” I yelled.

  I didn’t know who she was or what she did; I just couldn’t stand there and witness the beating.

  “Get the fuck out of here—now!” shouted an officer as he pulled hard on the woman’s arm so he could put handcuffs on her. Her face smashed against the asphalt, bleeding from the mouth.

  “¡Pinche cabrones!” she managed to say.

  “Leave her alone—can’t you see you’re hurting her?”

  At this, a couple of deputies pounced on me. I fell to the ground. Officers pulled on my arms, picked me up and threw me against a squad car. I felt the blows of a blackjack against my side and back. I tried to pull them off me, when suddenly eight other deputies showed up. As they pounded on me, my foot inadvertently came up and brushed one of them in the chest.

  The deputies threw me inside a squad car, the woman in another. By then a crowd had gathered, but they appeared helpless as more deputies swarmed the club’s parking lot.

  For about a half-hour the squad car drove around. A deputy hit me in the stomach. Another struck me in the face:

  “You got something to say … it looks like you got something to say to us,” an officer implored.

  I didn’t say anything. Not
even fuck you. I felt my cheek swell. Another fist smashed into an eye, the end of a blackjack into a rib. I clenched my teeth, holding back a cry so that they couldn’t use anything I said or did to intensify their attack.

  The deputies drove me to the prison ward of the L.A. County Hospital to have my injuries checked. Within hours, I was declared fit and taken to the County Jail. Familiar territory. This time, I was an adult and belonged here. This time I faced a hard-time prison sentence for assaulting a police officer.

  On the bus to the County Jail, a woman sat chained with her head down in a caged area near the driver. She looked up and saw me.

  “Hey you … yeah you, ése—what’s your name?”

  “No talking!” shouted a deputy sitting nearby with a shotgun in his hand.

  In a few minutes, somebody passed me a gum wrapper. I grabbed it, although my arms and legs were also in chains. On it was a phone number and a woman’s name: Licha.

  Licha Rubalcava and I appeared together for our preliminary hearing. She faced charges of drunk, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. I had disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and assaulting an officer—presumably when my foot struck one of the deputies. Licha was 27 years old, a mother of three children, whose husband was serving time in Tracy prison in Northern California. She lived in Riverside and worked as a barmaid. She was in Norwalk with friends that night just to party.

  We were assigned a public defender, since neither one of us could afford our own counsel. The judge and the PD worked to determine whether we would be released on our own recognizance or forced to make bail. Both Licha and I were denied release. Licha ended up at the Sybil Brand Institute for Women. I went back to county jail. Before we split up we made a pact:

  “Whoever gets out first, has to go see the other one, all right?” Licha said.

  “That’s fine with me.”

  Despite some bruises, a swollen and cut lip, Licha looked real nice.

  Trying to get somebody to post bail became an arduous task. My parents didn’t have any money. Neither did my brother. I called Chente and also tried the people at Cal State. Eventually I came up with enough for a bail bondsman, which was 10 percent of the required amount.

  As soon as I could, I went to Sybil Brand, which was over the freeway from Cal State in City Terrace. I was taken to a room where a scattered number of people visited with prisoners who were behind thick plates of glass. A guard brought Licha to where I was standing. She had, on a blue smock, her hair in disarray and bags beneath her eyes. She seemed embarrassed and didn’t look at me at first. But she smiled prettily.

  “Man, I’m so happy to see you,” she said.

  “Me too, how you been?”

  “What do you expect! These god-damn bitches treat you like shit here. All day they fuck with me!”

  “Hey, don’t get mad at me, mujer!”

  “I’m sorry … you’ve been so sweet.”

  She looked down, embarrassed again. I looked at her wrists and saw a red tag.

  “Why do you have red on your wrists? What’s that mean?

  “Oh it’s nothing,” Licha said. “Naw, why lie … it means I’m suicidal. I tried to cut my wrist here the other night.”

  “No, Licha, don’t do that—we’ll help each other. You’ll see, you’ll be out in no time.”

  “I’m so glad you’re here, Louie. I really need you.”

  We didn’t know each other, but our experience brought us real close, real quick. We talked about so many things. I told her I’d help her make bail so we could work on our case together.

  I hustled money everywhere, even getting advances from work and using some of my college money. In the next weeks, I didn’t attend any classes. I failed to follow up on the Loyola-Marymount mural project and lost the account. But none of this mattered. What lay before me was a possible future in prison—for something I didn’t do! I had to do all I could to avoid this; I wasn’t sure it would work.

  Licha was finally out on bail. We had a court hearing together and I began to get help in trying to win the case.

  I approached a judge in San Gabriel who helped me out once when I was a juvenile offender. He remembered me and, although it was a shot in the dark, wrote a letter to the court on my behalf. I then obtained letters from Mrs. Baez, from Chicano Studies professors at Cal State and from EOP coordinators.

  I read all the letters. So many nice things were said about me, sincere efforts to keep me out of la pinta. I realized how much support I had—and I felt bad about failing all these people again, although I knew this time, it wasn’t entirely my fault.

  I called my public defender about the letters. He didn’t know if they were going to do any good, but he would work with them. Unfortunately, Licha couldn’t get anybody to write letters for her.

  We called each other almost daily. We made plans for me to visit her in Riverside. She gave me an address, and I figured out the best way to get there.

  On a Saturday afternoon, I jumped on a bus from downtown Los Angeles to the desert. With all the stops, it was about a two-and-half-hour ride. I pulled into the Riverside bus station in the early evening, and stepped off, a small bag in my hand. There were a lot of people hanging around, some looking as if they had no other place to go—drifters, the homeless and tired, men and women, unbathed and hungry.

  I continued past them, looking for Licha’s street. I got lost a few times, asked directions, started out again, then lost more time because of wrong directions, but finally pulled myself back on track by the time it had gotten dark.

  I located Licha’s street and kept going. It was a curbless road, small but well-kept homes to the sides of me. This was the Casa Blanca barrio, one of the bigger Mexican enclaves in Southern California. I also knew it was tough territory, so I had to avoid bumping into any vatos.

  Licha’s address finally popped up. But the house was dark. My heart seemed to drop in that instance. I took a deep breath, then walked up the weed-filled grass to the door and knocked. No answer. I found a doorbell, but it didn’t work. So I knocked again. Still no answer. I stood there for 45 minutes, not believing Licha wouldn’t be there. She never showed.

  I kept on walking. By then it was late and awfully cold. It was too late to take a bus, so I couldn’t get back home. But I knew something about surviving in the streets.

  I found a church with a set of double, hardwood doors. I pushed in one door—it was open; many churches stayed open all night for prayer. I walked up an aisle. Rows of pews radiated to the sides; an immense statue of Jesus Christ on the cross in front of me. Nobody else around. My footsteps rung out as I neared a pew at the front. I sat myself down on the hardness. The cold increased in intensity. I looked around. At the statue. The lit candles. The stations of the cross. It had been a long time since I’d been inside a church. Although at my mother’s heeding I had gone through all the required Sacraments, some years back I stopped religious instruction, making confession or attending Mass. A priest once called me a bonehead heathen, and I never returned.

  I lay back on the wood, closed my eyes, and descended into sleep.

  More bad news: Quinto Sol Publications was embroiled in an internal squabble. One of its editors split from it and started his own press. This editor took along with him a number of Quinto Sol’s authors, splitting up the contracted books. My book, unfortunately, was too far off in production and had to be put on hold. Eventually it got dropped in the jostling, and Quinto Sol reorganized into Tonatiuh Press without me.

  I also got word the deputies who filed the assault charges on me were going to attend the hearing. The public defender said this looked bad. If I pled not guilty, I would have a trial. But if a jury were to convict, I would obtain a prison term. The public defender made an offer:

  “I think you should cop a plea.”

  “No, man, I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t assault no cops—they assaulted me! And I got the scars to prove it.”

  “It’s their word against yours. You got
nothing to stand on. Nobody is going to testify for you, they’re all scared. This happens all the time. Your only hope is to plea bargain.”

  “I just can’t. It’s the principle …”

  “Fuck principle—it’s your ass here! You got some good letters. They’re good enough for the judge to consider another plea. But you have to cooperate. You have to say guilty to something else, okay? Come on, Luis, this is the only chance you got.”

  “Louie, do it,” Licha interjected. “Take the lesser charge.”

  Although Licha had stood me up—she said she forgot I was coming—she didn’t give any excuses and apologized. I felt she didn’t owe me anything, so I let the incident drop.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It’s not right—they’ll do it to somebody else.”

  I turned away; I also felt scared. I knew the chances of a judge giving me a break if I pled not guilty were practically nil. But I recalled the beating, the way the fists came at me, the taunting, the thrust of blackjacks. I just couldn’t let these deputies get away with it. I called Chente to hear what he had to say.

  Chente understood the dilemma. But he also felt I needed to get out of this as fast and as cleanly as possible.

  “You’re fighting something more powerful than your puny plea for justice,” Chente said. “Your day will come—our day will come! But, right now you can’t make up for the Chicano Moratorium, for Miguel Robles and all the others who’ve suffered because of this society. It’s more important you are around—to do the hard work required to help change this.”

  Licha and I showed up together for the next hearing. She looked sharp in a tight-fitting, gray-and-black dress-suit. She had her hair streaked, her face healed; so much beauty shone through again.

  “You look pretty today.”

  “Oh, querido, you look pretty too.”

  Then the public defender arrived.

  “The judge is prepared to offer a plea, Luis. The judge has the letters. But you got to tell me now. This is it; there’s no backing off. What do you say?”