Give My Love to the Savages

by Chris Stuck

  We were the only bystanders out there, pushing our luck in a new Porsche among all that lawlessness. But relatively speaking, things didn’t seem that bad yet. No one was bothering us. No one even noticed us. Across the street, a Payless shoe store was being ransacked, the parking lot littered with empty shoeboxes. Down the sidewalk, an interracial couple steered a new leather sofa dollied on two skateboards. Even some guy clutching an armful of bathrobes rambled by, touting, “Robe. Robe here,” as though peddling peanuts at a Dodgers game. Who knew what would happen next?

  On our left, a Humvee rumbled past Dick’s Donuts. Not far behind, six National Guardsmen on horseback clopped by. A Black dude who’d somehow climbed on top of Dick’s and was now sitting inside the large donut on the roof yelled, “Hey, GI Joe. You hungry?” as he pelted them with donut holes. I turned back to Pop, but he was lost in thought, studying the smoke churning over downtown and feeding his face. He’d ordered two double-doubles animal style and had already dispatched both in ten flat. He was stuffing handfuls of fries into his mouth while I only nibbled at my burger. I hadn’t had an appetite for months. I didn’t even bother with the bread, just ate the meat, which I was trying to choke down when Pop said, “You know why those flight attendants couldn’t tell you nothing, Junie?”

  “No, but I’m sure you’re gonna tell me.”

  “Because they don’t know nothing. I do. Cops in this town think their shit don’t stink. But that don’t make it cool for every Black mope and his fat mother to turn the city into a goddamn ashtray, know what I’m saying?”

  I just shook my head. “Black mope? Fat mother?”

  “You see any white people out here other than us?”

  “You mean other than you?” I scanned the street and spotted a scruffy white guy in two seconds. He maneuvered a shopping cart full of Budweiser with a perverse glee. “What about him?”

  Pop blinked at him and then glanced at me. “An anomaly,” he said.

  “I’m just saying, Pop. You sound kind of Aryan right now.”

  “Do I? Well, I guess beating up a bunch of Pakistanis makes you Martin Luther King.”

  My belly gurgled. I was pretty sure I had the beginnings of an ulcer. “It wasn’t a bunch,” I said. “Just one. And I didn’t beat him up. I was only there.”

  He looked at me out of the side of his eye. “Only there, huh?”

  I nodded and tried to take another bite of my burger but couldn’t stomach it. I lobbed it into the nearest trash can, took my pack of antacids from my duffel bag, and chewed a few.

  “There or not, you’re lucky I got you that lawyer. Otherwise, you’d be doing time right now.”

  “That lawyer was a horrible person.”

  “I know. Why do you think I hired him?”

  “He made me sound like a sociopath.”

  “Yeah? What if you are one?”

  I looked at him, wondering if he actually thought that. When he cracked a smile, I told him to eat me, and he slapped my thigh and laughed.

  “Who cares what he said? You’re free, aren’t you?”

  I was just about to say I shouldn’t be when he turned to me with an indignant sneer.

  “And how can you call me a racist? I married your mother, let’s not forget. She’s as Black as they come.”

  I studied him for a moment. If I disagreed, he’d be mad at me for the rest of the night and probably punish me for it. I just said, “Yeah, you married her. And you had me.”

  He said, “Yeah, I did,” as though that proved his point.

  We sat there a little longer, being father and son in our own dysfunctional way, and for some reason everything stilled around us. The sirens ceased. The crashing glass and bleeping alarms stopped, too. Looters froze midstep and searched the sky curiously. Maybe it was over. In the distance, two helicopters clapped toward us from the south, their spotlights scanning Compton. I heard what sounded like a string of fireworks blocks away and watched as the helicopters split off from each other. One of them seemed to teeter, as if it would suddenly drop from the sky. Then, as if nothing happened, it righted itself, and the two of them moved back into formation. They quickly banked east in tandem, and I realized it’d been an evasive maneuver. Someone had shot at them from the ground.

  “Damn. You see that?”

  Pop swiveled his head, oblivious as always. “See what?”

  Everything started back up, the sirens, the looting, the alarms, like a crazy merry-go-round cranking back to life.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Can we go now?”

  He smirked and tossed his soda overboard. “Stop whining. We’re going.” He backed the car up and got us on the road. He pounded the Porsche into high gear. The whistling turbocharger went up an octave. The tires broke loose a bit.

  “Where are we going now?”

  He smiled. “You’ll see.”

  * * *

  That school year, I’d moved in with some white guys I barely knew. We shared a crumbling Victorian near the UMass Boston campus, where our academic careers hung by a thread. Their families all had a lot more going for them than mine, but we’d all been given the same opportunities in life, good schools, summer camps, money. So, all of us living together didn’t seem like such a bad idea. We were spoiled and took things for granted. We operated under the assumption that no matter what dumb shit we did, everything would somehow work out, the usual attitude of people who were high most of the time. We had so many pills and herbs and mind-altering powders in our house we didn’t know what we were taking half the time. Speed or Ritalin for studying, K and E for screwing off. We were so out of hand that at parties we’d leave stray tablets of Correctol around and then make bets on which guest would be the first to mistakenly take one, hoping it was a Valium or benzo, and get the squirts for a day and a half.

  Our time would end badly. It was obvious. But stopping that freight train would’ve taken more willpower and sense than I had at the time. At the trial for the thing with the Pakistani kid, I thought our guilt was pretty apparent. We’d be going away for a while. But not everyone thought so. Our families had money and lawyers. Young men like us couldn’t have done such a thing. My mother blamed the white boys for it. They corrupted me, she said. Anyone would end up in court after hanging around white kids named Tyler, Tucker, and Chase. They sounded like a law firm.

  Her support was unquestioning at first, but once the trial started and our pictures were in the Globe every other day, she could barely look at me. She’d sit in the back of the courtroom, if she was there at all, wearing a wide-brimmed hat. When reporters rushed us as we left each day, she lowered her head, putting a gloved hand out at the sight of photographers. A couple weeks of that, and she stopped going altogether. From then on, I sat at the defense table, trying not to look over my shoulder every two seconds to see if she was there.

  I couldn’t blame her. The lawyer Pop hired painted me as some racially confused kid with neglectful parents. He even used an expert witness, a psychologist who testified to the emotional effects of being of mixed race in this country, how it led to “antisocial behavior in the desperate quest to fit in.” During the cross-examination, I turned to my lawyer and whispered, “You’re making me sound like a freak.” He said, “That’s because you are a freak. This country made you that way. It’s not your fault.”

  He insisted I believe it if I wanted to stay out of jail. In the end, he was right. I came home from sentencing and found my mother in her bedroom, whiling away her evening as she always did, at her vanity, nursing a glass of red wine and a roach clip. She didn’t look at all surprised when she saw me there. “And?”

  I loosened my tie. “Probation. Three months.”

  She took a sip of wine, set her glass down, and then turned away as though the sight of me burned her eyes. “And your friends? What about them?” She’d never called them my friends before.

  “A year of jail time each.”

  She grunted as though it served them right. Then she got up and clo
sed her door on me. I retreated to my room and hid there, chewing antacids till they stole all the moisture from my mouth.

  * * *

  By nightfall, Pop and I had to stick to the freeways, the 5, the 10, the 405, the 710. Driving the surface streets was no longer advised. Radio reports said whites traveling through Black areas were being pulled from their cars and beaten. On Florence and Normandie, a white truck driver had been dragged from his semi and smashed in the head with a brick. At the same intersection, a Latino man, mistaken for Korean, had been wrenched from his car, stripped of his clothes, and spray-painted. And of course, we were in a new Porsche, a fact Pop now regretted. “I should have my head examined for taking this car out on a day like this. Should’ve driven the Jeep. I finally had the bulletproof windows installed. I ever tell you that?”

  “Why would you need bulletproof windows?”

  He looked at me like I was stupid. “Because, Junie, this is LA.”

  There was no way we were going back to Malibu to switch cars. We just made do, ripping along, stopping to check on this dealership or that, Pop’s mood gradually changing. He was back to his old self again and kept going on and on about the cops and the verdict and what he would’ve done had he been an elected official. None of it made sense. He took us down freeways and off-ramps so fast I could barely hear him over the wind, but I was trying to listen as best I could. I didn’t know what he’d get me into.

  We’d checked on all his dealerships but the one in Koreatown. Pop was still talking a mile a minute, and I caught only a word or two. We slowed to take the 110 North exit, the wind dying down as we curved around the ramp, and I finally heard him clearly. “So, I’m afraid I have to put you to work earlier than usual, Junie.” His preface to any sort of bad news. “So, I’m afraid your mother kicked me out, Junie. We’re getting a divorce.” “So, I’m afraid you’re going to rehab, Junie—again, you little shit” would come later in my life.

  “Hey.” He snapped his fingers. “You hear me?”

  I nodded but didn’t say anything. I looked farther up the highway at a white sheet draped over a fenced overpass. On it NO JUSTICE 4 RODNEY was painted in a bloody maroon. I wanted to raise my fist in solidarity at the Black kids standing next to the sign. But then I thought it might look weird coming from me: a mixed kid riding next to his white father in a new white Porsche.

  Pop snapped his fingers again. “Hey, I asked you a question.”

  I rubbed my eyes. “Put me to work doing what?”

  He actually grinned and patted my thigh again, his ponytail lashing his headrest. “Oh, you know. The usual.”

  I popped an antacid into my mouth.

  “Keep eating those things, and you’ll get kidney stones.”

  I waved him off and grabbed his pack of Swishers from the console. There was only one cigarillo left, hiding in the corner of the pack. I took it just to spite him. “Don’t change the subject, dummy. You’re getting me into some shit. Just say so.”

  He reached over and lit the cigarillo for me with his butane, a sly look on his face. “Don’t doubt your pop.” He gave me one of his special winks, the kind he used on ladies next to him at red lights. “Believe me, it won’t be bad.” He waited a moment, calculating as ever, and said, “Really,” as though there were a chance of me believing him.

  * * *

  The Koreatown lot was the dealership I’d worked at the most, and also the shittiest. Pop, the shrewd businessman, positioned his dealerships in some of LA’s sketchier areas, places you’d see a good number of walls tattooed with graffiti, crackheads trying to sell you a broken VCR, or maybe a few women on the stroll. Whether he’d admit it or not, Pop capitalized on the low resources of the poor. Immigrants and Black single mothers didn’t have the money to sue if the hooptie they just bought took a crap a month later. It was how he made his money, how he buttered his bread, all of it owed to the inequity of the world. One day, my riches would be owed to it, too, as long as he didn’t blow it all before he croaked.

  As we exited the freeway, Pop took out the PPK again and held it in his lap. We crossed Venice and Olympic Boulevards, coasted down South Western Avenue. The surroundings worsened street by street. The tang of burning wood and rubber was heavy in the air. Crowds roared and security alarms sounded in the close distance. On Wilshire, hordes of people blocked the intersection, pushing each other around and throwing bricks at passing cars. A Toyota a block ahead got all its windows broken out. The glass had barely hit the ground, and looters were already reaching inside. The driver sped off with a couple of them hanging on for dear life.

  We wove through the loose crowds as we approached Wilshire, Pop honking the horn for people to move. With the sun down and the fires more intense, Koreatown glowed a dangerous orange. I could feel the heat as we passed blazing storefronts. The ones that weren’t on fire had looters gushing out of the shattered windows like water through a breached dam. They carried every kind of merchandise imaginable, random things like hair dryers and lamps and packs of lightbulbs. As we approached the mob, a small pocket of space opened, and Pop told me to hold on. He mashed the throttle, raised his gun, and waved it around like a wild man, parting the crowd.

  We turned onto West Sixth and pulled up in front of the car lot. He gave me a ring of keys, and I got out and unlocked the gate. I got back in the Porsche as fast as I could, even though West Sixth was quiet and seemed to be untouched. Unlike Pop’s other lots, this one was a small affair, a stamp of asphalt with a ten-foot fence surrounding it, only about fifteen clunkers on the premises. Once we’d pulled in and parked, I looked up at the roof to see if anyone was standing guard, but there was only Pop’s huge face on the billboard. WE FINANCE in big block letters jumped out of his mouth.

  “No one’s here.”

  “I know.” He scratched his nose.

  “No fucking way.”

  He nodded. “We’re gonna watch it till all this blows over.” He shut off the engine and unlatched his seat belt. He opened his door halfway, and then he turned and looked back at me. “C’mon.”

  Without thinking, I got out of the car and closed my door. When I looked back, he was still behind the wheel. “Sorry to have to do this to you,” he said, sitting back.

  “You’re not sorry. You’re never sorry.”

  “Junie,” he said. “Take it like a man. I need you here tonight. I got guys watching the other dealerships.”

  I hesitated and then asked if he was crazy. It seemed like an appropriate question.

  “No,” he said. “I’m as sane as ever.”

  “C’mon, Pop.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “What? This’ll all blow over by tomorrow. You’ll forget all about this.”

  Sometimes, this was true. I could be bought off with drinks and a good time in the right context. It was how our relationship worked. He’d do something to piss me off, and then he’d buy me something or take me wherever I wanted. There’d be women and weed, and we’d be friends again.

  “C’mon.” I tried to climb back in, but his eyes went black.

  “No, no, no.” He took the gun from the dash and just held it. He chewed his lip and considered me for a long moment. Finally, he leaned over the seat. I thought he was going to let me back in. But his hand went to the glove box instead. He pulled out a PPK identical to his and held it out for me. “Here.” When I refused, he shook the thing at me and then forced it into my hand. “And don’t start whining. I’m tired of it. You sound like those bastards you call friends.”

  I was about to say they weren’t my friends when he said, “Junie, don’t kid yourself. You wanted to be just like those kids.”

  “I’m not like anyone.”

  “Sure you’re not. You’re unique.” He fluttered his hands in the air. “A pretty little baby. That’s what your mother wants you to believe.”

  As soon as he said it, something lit me up. I stood back and kicked the passenger door. “Say something else about my mother, motherfucker.”r />
  His eyes went blacker. “I swear, if you do that again, Junie—”

  That was all it took. I kicked the door again. “Look, I even took some paint this time.”

  A tense few seconds passed, and then a pack of looters ran near the lot. Some were silent and ashamed, the rest desperate and mechanical. They left quickly, and another small gang stopped at the entrance, at least ten deep. They were teenagers, Black and Latino, in T-shirts or wifebeaters. They’d apparently never noticed the dealership before and now thought it suddenly looked like a good place to steal shit from.

  Pop waved his gun. “Keep it moving, people.” They didn’t move, so he aimed his gun and added, “Unless you feel like catching one in the ass.” The pack paused for another second and then did as he said, shouting epithets as they left. Pop just rolled his eyes and waved, as if he knew them. “Yes, and give my love to the savages.”

  “Your mama’s a savage,” they said.

  He opened the car’s console and removed a fresh pack of Swishers. “I don’t care, Junie. Kick the car till your foot breaks. I can get another. You know how many insurance claims there are gonna be after all this?” He lit one of the cigarillos and sent smoke out his nostrils. For a long minute, he watched me, the smoke slithering up around his eyes.

  “What?” I said. “The guilt finally getting to you?”

  “No, not really.” He slid the lighter into his breast pocket and put the car in reverse. “I don’t have time for this. If I don’t get off the streets now, that’ll be the end of me.”

  “Yeah, that would be really unfortunate, wouldn’t it, Pop?”

  He looked at me and sighed. “Junie, it makes more sense for you to be here. No telling what they’d do to me, but you—they’ll think you’re one of them.”

  I shook my head, astonished at his stupidity. “How are you my father?”