Last Summer of the Death Warriors

by Francesco X Stork

  “Help you do what?” Pancho leaned backward and the stool wobbled. He grabbed on to the wall.

  “Help me with…the preparations. Help me and I will help you.”

  “I don’t need help with anything.”

  “I can read it in your eyes. There’s something you want to do. No, I’d say it’s more like there’s something you feel you need to do. It’s eating you.”

  “How do you know that?” He sounded more alarmed than he wanted to.

  D.Q. closed his eyes and put his hands on his temples like a fortune-teller. “I see D.Q. and Pancho taking a trip together in the very near future.”

  “There’s no way I’m taking a trip with you.” What he needed to do was start to look for companies with names that ended in “and Sons,” and then find out which of them used red trucks. He needed time to do that.

  “I have to go to Albuquerque for some treatments. I want you to come with me. Once the treatments are over, you can do what you have to do.”

  Pancho was silent. He was thinking about how he would kill the man with the red truck once he found him.

  “If you run away from this place, the lady who drove you here yesterday will have the state troopers on you an hour after you’re reported missing. What I need to do will take a few weeks or so. Then after that, you can do your thing. You can leave and go wherever and I’ll stay there a little longer. People here will think you’re with me, and we’ll tell the people there you came back to St. Anthony’s. I’ll help you.”

  Pancho thought about it. Then he snickered. “You don’t even know what you’re saying. You can’t help me.”

  “I’ll help you if I can.”

  “What kind of preparations?” Pancho asked, remembering the particular word that D.Q. had used.

  D.Q. smiled a knowing smile. “Preparations like these,” he said, waving his hand over the room. “And…there’s something I need to do while we’re in Albuquerque, a different kind of preparation. I’ll let you know when the time is right. What exactly do you need to do?”

  Pancho heard the slap of a basketball outside, then the twang of the ball hitting the backboard. He stood up and went to the window. He felt a strong impulse to speak, to tell D.Q. about his plans, but he stopped himself. “No way,” he whispered. But it was loud enough for D.Q. to hear.

  D.Q. said, as if lost in thought, “Your purpose and mine are joined somehow. You’ll see. We’ll figure it out in time. You mind wheeling me up to the basketball court? I’m refereeing this afternoon’s game. You play basketball?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so. We’ll finish this up tomorrow.”

  “I’ll come back and take out the rest of the boxes.”

  “Sooner or later, you’ll have to meet some of the other kids.”

  “Later is okay with me.” Pancho got behind the wheelchair. Before he started pushing, he asked, “Who all is going to Albuquerque?”

  “The Panda will probably drive us, but then it’ll be just you and me. In Albuquerque, we’ll stay at this place called Casa Esperanza. It’s kind of a motel for out-of-town people who come to the hospital for treatment. Then, I don’t know, we may have to go stay someplace else. I haven’t worked that part out completely. First things first. First, I had to wait for the other Death Warrior to arrive.”

  CHAPTER 7

  The next day, Father Concha said he wanted all the sports equipment moved to a different room. Pancho said he would do it while D.Q. and Brother Javier went to get some paint. D.Q. had not taken his usual nap that day, and Pancho needed a break. If it were up to him, rule number two of the Death Warrior Manifesto would be: No talking for more than three minutes straight at any one time.

  He was walking out of the dormitory when he felt someone close behind him. He stopped and turned around. There in front of him was a boy younger than any of the kids he had seen at St. Anthony’s so far. He looked like the picture of D.Q. in the yearbook, only this boy’s skin and hair were darker. “Howdy,” the boy said. He was grinning, it seemed, from ear to ear.

  Pancho stared at him briefly and kept walking. The boy caught up with him. “My real name is Guillermo, but people call me Memo.” Pancho glanced sideways. The boy came up to his elbow. “You’re Pancho, I know.”

  “How do you know?” Pancho asked without slowing down. The boy had to skip a few times to keep up with him.

  “Know what?” “My name. How does everyone know my name?”

  “I don’t know. Everyone just does. I think the Panda first mentioned you were coming during Mass.”

  “Mass?”

  “We have Mass every night, but you don’t have to go if you don’t want to. That’s when the Panda makes announcements.”

  “What else did the Panda say about me at Mass?”

  “That’s all. That a new kid was coming and his name was Pancho Sanchez. He didn’t say anything else, like about your past and all, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “I’m not worried.”

  “Kids come and go all the time. Sometimes they come for a few days. Others come to stay. D.Q. says you’re here to stay.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Yup.”

  They stopped in front of the room where the sports equipment had been stored. Pancho expected the boy to keep walking, but he remained by his side. He stepped inside the room and gathered five aluminum baseball bats in his arms. The boy picked up the catcher’s gear. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m helping you,” Memo said.

  “I don’t need your help.”

  Memo didn’t answer. “I usually play catcher,” he said. “Maybe because it doesn’t hurt me to squat. No one else likes to do it.” He blew into the catcher’s mitt and then proceeded to have a coughing fit. When he stopped, he said to Pancho, “D.Q.’s room is going to be nice when we get done with it. I’m really good at painting.”

  The room where Pancho had first stored the sports equipment was just like D.Q.’s, except it didn’t have a bathroom and it had only one window. Pancho wondered why the Panda had told them to store the equipment there in the first place. Maybe he was making up work for them, which was okay with Pancho. A whistle blew outside. He stooped to look out the window.

  “How can it be a foul if he’s the one who knocked me down?” one of the kids asked, his arms opened wide and palms turned outward.

  “Because your feet were still moving when he bumped into you,” a very tall pimply-faced boy explained with complete authority. The boy who was fouled grabbed his head in disbelief. It was the closest thing Pancho had seen to any kind of discord since he arrived at St. Anthony’s, and it gave him hope that maybe the kids were not totally brainwashed zombies.

  Memo grabbed a green canvas bag on the floor. He was about to put the catcher’s gear in it when Pancho reached out and took it from him. “I’m going to use that,” Pancho said.

  “For what?”

  “You know where I can find a shovel?”

  “Yeaaah,” Memo answered as if he was afraid of what Pancho might do with the information. “In the toolshed out back. Why?”

  “I’ll need some rope.”

  Now Memo seemed really interested. “There’s a nylon rope out there too. We used it to hang our clothes outside before someone donated us a couple of dryers.”

  They walked out the side door, past the bicycle that Pancho had borrowed the day before, and past the Dumpster where he had thrown the trash from the storage room. The toolshed was made of unpainted galvanized steel. It wasn’t locked. Memo pulled at a string that only he could see and a lightbulb flicked on. They found a shovel hanging against the wall, and a nylon rope neatly curled in a corner with a variety of extension cords. Then they walked outside, Pancho leading the way with the shovel and the green canvas bag and Memo following with the rope.

  Pancho found a place by the pecan trees where the ground was soft and he began to fill the bag with dirt. The dirt stayed soft only a couple of inches down and t
hen it became rocky. When he hit rocks, he began another hole. All this time he worked in silence, ignoring Memo’s questions. He stopped when the bag was three-quarters full. He took the rope and threaded it through the grommets on top of the bag. Then he walked around, sizing up the pecan trees, until he found one with a strong branch about ten feet from the ground.

  “It’s a punching bag!” Memo exclaimed.

  “Go get the stepladder in the shed,” Pancho ordered. In the meantime, he lifted the bag, hugging it with both arms against his chest, and carried it to the tree.

  “We’re going to need some help hoisting it up there,” Memo said when he returned. He set the aluminum ladder under the branch. Before Pancho could say anything, Memo stretched his lips with thumb and index finger and let out the shrillest, loudest whistle Pancho had ever heard. Kids standing by the court watching the basketball game turned around to look. Memo waved them over. Two of them started toward the tree.

  “Just hold the ladder,” Pancho told Memo. He lifted the bag again and tried to support it on one of the middle rungs, but the bag slipped and landed on his foot. He tightened his jaw and swore silently.

  “Hold on a second. Marcos and Coop are coming,” Memo said, clearly trying not to laugh. Pancho failed to see how the pain in his foot was in any way funny.

  Marcos and Coop looked at the bag full of dirt with no surprise on their faces. Apparently, filling a canvas bag with dirt and stringing it up a tree was perfectly normal around here. “I’ll climb up to the branch and tie the bag. You guys lift it,” Memo said. Before anyone could object, he had gone up the ladder and straddled the branch.

  Pancho got under the bag and lifted it up to his chest. Marcos and Coop grabbed the bottom on either side of him. Pancho kicked the ladder out of the way and it went clanging down. With one hand, he tossed the ends of the rope to Memo. “Twist the rope around the branch as many times as you can and then I’ll come tie a knot in it,” Pancho yelled up at him. Then the three of them heaved the bag, and Memo began winding the rope around the branch. When the rope was almost totally gone, they let go of the bag. The middle of the bag dangled level with Pancho’s eyes. It was exactly the right height. Pancho got the ladder and Memo climbed down. Then Pancho climbed up and tied a series of knots with the remaining rope. He came down, moved the ladder to one side, and socked the bag with his closed fist.

  “Let me try it,” said Memo. He punched it as hard as he could. “Ouch! It’s hard.”

  Marcos took a shot. “Maybe the dirt will loosen up after a while.”

  “You have to jab at it like this. Move around and then jab, jab,” Coop said, demonstrating.

  “You know boxing?” Pancho asked.

  “I’ve done a little here and there.” Coop bobbed left and right and hit the bag with a flurry of combinations.

  “What kind of name is Coop? Like chicken coop?”

  “The actual name is Cooper,” Coop answered calmly. He stopped punching the bag and began to rub his knuckles. Coop was taller than Pancho by a head. He had a bulky body, and it was hard for Pancho to tell whether the bulk was muscle or fat. His biceps looked solid. He was probably a year older than Pancho.

  “You have any money, Coop?” Pancho asked.

  “Why?”

  “Since you’ve done a little boxing, I thought you might want to go a couple of rounds with me. I found some gloves in the storage room. I have twenty dollars I can put up.”

  Coop looked at Marcos and then at Memo. Memo shrugged his shoulders as if to say, Don’t look at me. “I don’t know,” Coop said. He looked down at the ground and shuffled his feet.

  “The gloves are fourteen ounces, padded. There’s headgear too. No one will get hurt,” Pancho said.

  “Who’ll decide who wins?” Memo asked. “I could be the umpire.”

  Marcos slapped Memo on the back of the head. “It’s not an umpire, it’s a referee,” he said.

  “I can be the referee,” Memo said.

  “Usually there’s three,” Marcos said. “I’ll be the second one.”

  “It’s not how hard you hit, it’s how many times you land punches,” Memo informed everyone.

  “What do you know about boxing, you little pingüino?” Marcos began to jab at Memo. Memo flicked Marcos’s hands away.

  “What do you say, Chicken Coop?” Pancho asked. There was no taunt in his voice.

  “Oooh,” Marcos exclaimed. “Them are fighting words.”

  “Shut up, Marcos!” Memo said.

  “Okay, but we’re going to get in trouble,” Coop said.

  “Why?” Marcos asked.

  “It’s gambling,” Coop answered. “It’s against house rules.”

  “It’s not gambling. It’s a twenty-dollar prize to whoever wins,” Memo argued.

  “It’s the same as playing hoops for money. We decided not to do that.” Coop waited for Memo to respond, but Memo was still thinking about the comparison. “Okay,” Coop said after a few moments of silence. “I’ll do it.”

  Pancho was tempted to tell Coop to forget about the twenty dollars, but he needed the money even more than he needed to hit someone. With any luck, those twenty dollars would be the first of many more to come. All he had to do was get kids pissed off enough to want to punch him out. From what he had seen, getting the kids at St. Anthony’s riled up was not going to be easy. “I’ll get the gear,” Pancho said.

  “You want to do this now?” Coop asked.

  “Yeah, why not?”

  “I think the Panda is in his office,” Marcos said.

  “No,” Memo said, “I saw him go out a while ago. He took Larry to the dentist. He won’t be back for an hour.”

  “We need one ref and two judges,” Marcos said.

  “How ’bout we get D.Q.? He’s the fairest ref we got,” Memo said. “I saw him pull in with Brother Javier a little while ago. I’ll go ask him.” He ran past Pancho toward the front entrance.

  Pancho, who had taken a few steps toward the building, stopped. He was about to object, but then he would have to explain why D.Q. was not a good choice and he wouldn’t know what to say. He kept on walking. He felt a strange feeling, like he was pulling a fast one on a child. It reminded him of the times he would cheat Rosa out of her allowance by some trickery she was incapable of detecting. He started to jog, but the strange feeling remained.

  He walked out of the building, carrying a box with the boxing gear, and saw the crowd of kids by the punching bag. He looked for D.Q.’s wheelchair but didn’t see it. He was relieved. The thought came to him that he was about to violate one of his own rules: Keep a low profile. But it was not possible to back away from the momentum that had gathered. He didn’t know whether the energy came from the crowd of buzzing kids or from inside him.

  They parted ways for him, and he saw that someone had drawn a large square in the dirt. Coop had already taken his shirt off and was limbering up. His bulk was not fat. Pancho took the headgear and the boxing gloves and offered them to him. “No headgear,” Coop said.

  “Put it on,” Pancho told him.

  “No headgear.” Coop threw the gear back in the box. The crowd got to him, Pancho thought.

  “Have it your way,” Pancho said. He walked to the opposite corner of the square. Don’t get angry. You just need to make twenty bucks. Make sure you pull your punches.

  “I want to be the ref,” Memo said.

  “I’m the ref. Albo and Robert will be the two judges,” Marcos told him.

  “Help me tie the gloves,” Pancho said to Memo.

  “Then I’ll be Pancho’s trainer,” Memo said, happy to have an official role.

  “Where’s D.Q.?” Pancho asked him softly so no one else could hear.

  “I tried to get him when you went in for the gloves, but he had a phone call from his mom.”

  “He has a mom?”

  “She lives in Albuquerque with D.Q.’s stepfather. They’re filthy rich.”

  “What’s he doing here then?”

&nb
sp; “She dropped him off here before she remarried. D.Q. doesn’t want anything to do with her. How tight should I tie these?”

  “As tight as you can.”

  “Keep an eye out for the Panda,” someone said.

  “He wouldn’t get pissed about this. Kids used to box all the time,” someone else responded.

  “Who’s going to keep time?” Marcos asked. He had finished tying Coop’s gloves and now Coop was stretching his neck like a professional. Pancho could not help but smile. The sight reminded him of the first time his father took him to The Aztec, a boxing club on the outskirts of Las Cruces. He was six years old, and when his father sat him on a stool to watch his fight, his legs did not reach the floor. The man in the ring with his father stretched his neck sideways till his ear touched his shoulder, and Pancho could hear the bones crack all the way over where he sat. The man was big, a giant compared to his father, who seemed at that moment fragile. Pancho started to cry. His father must have seen the tears on his face because he suddenly climbed out of the ring and came to him. He grabbed him by the shoulders, looked straight at him, and asked him what the matter was. But he had no words for what he felt and he already knew that the boxing ring was not a place for tears. “Mijo,” his father said to him, “I’m not going to let him hurt me. It’s not how big you are, it’s how fast and how determined you are to hit someone. Boom, boom.” His father tapped him lightning fast with a left and a right on his cheeks. The hits were just hard enough to stop the tears.

  The tall boy, the same one who had refereed the basketball game, blew a whistle, and Coop jumped into the middle of the square, dancing and bobbing. Pancho stepped forward. There was an intense, concentrated look on Coop’s face. It was hard to believe he was the same boy who a few minutes before had worried about violating a house rule. Pancho knew what was happening; fighters often made this mistake in boxing competitions. Adrenaline bursts into the bloodstream with the noise of the crowd and the shouts of the fighter’s name, and that energy easily turns to a venomous anger. Then the other fighter becomes an enemy and there are no more tactics, only the desire to assert superiority in the eyes of the crowd.