“Monday.”
“It’s just a job, man.”
“It’s the whole thing, Snooter. Ruskin’s gon make the big cash, Aint Rosa be crowded into the Towers, and we just comin behind to do the shit work.”
“We comin before.” Snooter pressed hard on the crease.
“You don’t want to hear. Cool, Snooter, keep thinking with your other head.” Nacho bent behind the bed to get his bag. He hadn’t even unpacked it.
“Well, cuz, thinkin would be some heavy action for yours. Mine’s busier than that. So you think you too good for the truck. Your ass ain’t gon get rusty and dusty. What—you find a new janitor slave? Oh, you was livin large in Amherst, huh?”
“I was studying, doing something I wanted to.”
“Well, I’ll just keep studyin my favorite works of art—Juanita’s ass, Teresa’s lips, and Beverly’s neck. I dig sculpture, okay?”
Nacho took the duffle with him and went out the back door, climbing the fence into the alley. His lips tingled, his chest was tight, not with anger but jealousy. He’d felt the usual foolish warmth in his belly when Snooter said the girls’ names, the same as all the years when Snooter went out, when he described what they did, when Nacho saw them and could only look, not speak. He went to the McDonald’s on Sixth and sat in the back, eating fries. From the bag, he pulled out the hard folder with his sketches, careful to wipe his fingers. He found all the Westside pictures, the tumbleweeds with their tiny pink flowers that bloomed in October. One of the other students in his class had said, “It’s an interesting idea to juxtapose tumbleweeds and flowers, but isn’t the idea artificial? Like those cactus in the store that people glue straw flowers to.” He couldn’t explain it right, that the rosy blooms nestled between thorns for a few weeks, a faint mauve mist in the fields.
The next one would be Green Hollows; he pulled it closer to him, slowly, remembering how he’d pecked and dipped with the pencil, sharpening it over and over; he’d filled in the ferny leaves of the pepper trees, the notched thick bark of the trunk, and the gnarled empty bulges where bees lived. His teacher, Mr. Bowers, had found two Rembrandt prints and brought them to class for Nacho—they were almost the same, the dense black loops and lines, the dark trees and a farmer. Nacho had been shocked when he saw the way the tree branches, in Holland, bent and curved against the sky like his.
He stared at the drawing now. The black and gray against the cream paper made the hollow look misty-dark and shaded, the dust cool enough to cling to the earth and not rise around his feet when he walked. Aint Rosa was a wraith, hanging in the doorway of her house, not in her cafeteria uniform but in a long, white cotton skirt, her headrag above her eyes.
When he got to her porch, it was late, the lights all off, and in the half-moon light, low spiderwebs thick as fog hugged the ivy around the base of the house. He was quiet, listening to the crickets, lying on the long seat his father had taken from the cab of an old truck. Wings flapped overhead twice, and he remembered Birdman, who lived down the street from his father, telling him about a hawk that lived in the tallest eucalyptus tree there. The night was warm, and he slept with a shirt around his neck to keep off spiders.
But as the morning light heated his eyelids where he lay with his head near the edge, and as Aint’s whispering feet scuffed against the floor inside the house, he felt panic; he had nothing good to tell Aint Rosa, nothing to tell her at all, and he pushed the bag softly under the card table near the seat. Stepping off the porch silently, the dust soft around his shoes, he walked past the boarded-up houses; in one of them, he saw a light, smelled match smoke. Someone was getting high in the house where plywood had been pried off the windows. Nacho walked faster, toward the end of the hollow where a ditch led into the arroyo.
The arroyo cut all the way through Rio Seco, and he ducked into the huge flood-control pipe near downtown; the pipe was dry and chalky. His father had said there hadn’t been any rain since December. Nacho remembered hiding in the pipe when they were small, he and Snooter and Darnell and Birdman, their backs curved to fit the clay. He came out and passed through the edge of downtown, watching the winos look frightened when he neared them.
He kept thinking he heard a car behind him, going too slow, but he was afraid to look around and see if it was a cop; he looked bad, carrying nothing and rumpled from sleeping. He knew he was heading for the Methodist Church.
On the last few times they’d all walked down the arroyo, Nacho had left the others to keep on toward the river-bottom, and he’d stopped at this church, peering into the arched doorway at the dank, cool wood inside, the stained glass and faint colored light on the floor. He’d been glad that Snooter and the others laughed and didn’t want to come with him, because they’d only get loud and cause trouble. It was always Sunday afternoon when they came, and the church people were gone, but the doors open.
Sitting on the cement bench at the edge of the lawn, looking at the arched, recessed doorway, not open yet for the people in suits and nylons, he imagined how he would draw the sculpted blossoms, the delicate intertwined rope. The most beautiful church in Rio Seco—a dome with a cross on top, blue and gold tile edging it, and the magnificent doorway. Six rounds of carving, each edge just behind the other to draw in the eye, and the massive curves were each a differing pattern. Seashells linked with a curly vine, the point-petaled flowers, heavy braided rope, diamonds, rounded daisies, and a chain of squares.
He heard tires crushing the sand in the asphalt behind him, slowly, and he was afraid to turn around. Johnny Law, he thought, and definitely wanting to know why I’m sitting here. He heard the door slam, and waited with shoulders straight.
“What you studyin?” his father said.
Nacho took his thumbnails out of the pads of his ring fingers and didn’t answer.
“Lookin suspicious as all hell, police be by here in a minute to wonder which old lady you plannin to rob.” His father sat on the other bench. “Or you get in the Methodist habit, too, when you was in Massachusetts?”
“I’m looking at the doorway, okay?” Nacho said. “Art, all right? I was wondering how long it took somebody to carve all those flowers and designs. They’re all perfect.”
His father laughed and threw back his shoulders in a stretch, got up and walked to the arch. “Shit,” he said.
Nacho jerked his knee up and down. “Yeah, like I expected you to see what I’m talking about? You never saw cathedrals in France, not even in books.”
His father was still laughing. “Boy, you don’t know shit. Ain’t you never looked at that?” Nacho followed his father’s finger to the far end of the facade. Etched into the bottom square, the cornerstone, was “First Methodist Church—Erected 1955 A.D.”
“You use a mold on these. I made one for Esther’s mama when she moved into the new house. Made her three benches for her yard, with flowers on the edges.” He was quiet, and Nacho could hear pigeons stirring inside the bell tower. “Only time I did that,” his father said, turning back toward Nacho. “You been sitting there on that bench, sitting back there all google-eyed, thinking about some dude with a chisel, sweatin on each flower. Sweat turning to dew drops on the petals and shit.” He lit a cigarette and flicked the match toward Nacho. “We got a full day’s work.” He walked toward the truck.
“So?” Nacho said, pressing his thighs against the cool bench. “You can go to Lincoln Park. You don’t need me. I’m too ignorant for you, and you too ignorant for me.”
“Boy, stop talking that shit before I whup your back-East ass.” He started up the engine and backed the truck into the street, and Nacho turned back to face the church. He heard the truck move away. When it was quiet again, he walked up to the doorway and ran his hand over the seashells, the braided rope. Tiny holes, like pores, speckled the flowers and shells, and he could see the hair-thin lines where blocks of each pattern had been cemented together. The artist had placed them perfectly, each scallop and leaf fitted together as one. The cement was rough against his p
alm. He turned, and the big wooden doors swung in, a draft of dark air pushing out. The startled face of a small, old woman, pale skin and hair and pink-framed glasses, floated like a tiny moon in the black doorway. Nacho walked quickly toward the street.
When he turned the corner, the truck was there, idling, and he could see two big pots sitting in the bed, close to the cab. They were greens trees, in the black-plastic containers Red Man raised them in. He knew his father had gotten them for Aint Rosa. Hesitating, he saw the iridescent oil spots at the bottom of the door, where the swirls of color clung to the rust, and he pulled it open.
safe hooptie
BRENDA / JULY
DARNELL AND ME WERE driving to his house like always, but nobody out on they lawn, not even the Thibodeaux boys and they live on the grass. This supposed to be a Friday night, it’s summer, and people should be washing cars, breathing some air, getting ready to go out. When we got to Picasso Street, I saw the record player wasn’t out on the front porch at Darnell’s. Mr. Tucker, Darnell’s father, play records on Friday evening, put the old beige stereo facing out to the street so you can hear it for a couple of houses. He play Billie Holiday, sad Billie, and some scratchy records by Earl Grant. I wanted to hear them, the organ real husky and low swinging in the background, because nobody play music on my street, but I knew tonight me and Darnell wouldn’t be sitting on his car in the driveway. No Tiny or K.C. coming by to say, “What up, homes?” Darnell always say, “The Lakers, man, they up by ten games.” Tiny answer, “I heard that,” and always looking down the street to see who at Jackson Park. He usually start singing, “In the Westside, the cool cool Westside, where the people gon party all night.”
Tonight it wouldn’t be kids walking by to yell, “Take that old stuff off the stereo, man. Play some Ice T, some Eazy-E. Bust a rhyme out them ancient speakers.” None of Mr. Tucker’s friends, Roscoe Wiley and Floyd, standing around to laugh at the kids. “Red Man ain’t hardly playin none a that rap mess. Listen. These people singin, not hollerin. World a difference, boy.” Darnell’s arms wouldn’t be around me at my waist, and his father working on a old battery or motor. The street was empty all the way down to the park. Nobody out in they yard or in the street because the cops looking for Ricky Ronrico, and they been searching one night and one day. Longer than it sound.
Everybody in the front room, near the swamp cooler. Darnell’s little sisters, Sophia and Paula, making those string bracelets all the kids are wearing. Darnell tell his father, “I heard it on the radio comin back.”
“Where was y’all working this week?” his mother ask. Darnell with the firefighter crew they run in the summer, out in the dry mountains all over the county, from the desert to near L. A. I only see him on the weekends, and he pick me up straight from work.
“We was over by Chino Hills. Rattlesnakes everywhere. I heard the two cops got shot on the south end, over on Eddy Avenue past the mall. That ain’t no black neighborhood.”
“So? Ricky Ronrico shot them and he black for a fact. Bout as no good as that sickly stuff he name after,” his father say.
Mr. Lanier standing there with a big shopping bag full of plums. “And you know they figure he somewhere on the Westside.” He live on the next street, always musty because he got a bunch of pigs out somewhere. My mother use to buy chitlins and pig knuckles from him every New Year’s, before we moved away from the Westside.
Mr. Lanier say, “That why I walk over here, ain’t taking no chances with my brake lights. Rio Seco finest in the streets tonight, lookin hard.”
It’s only the TV talking then, and I know everybody’s thinking about 1973. I was eight, and the only thing I remember was all the red lights flashing on my bedroom walls cause the cops came and took Mr. Wiley from next door. He was gone all weekend. Somebody had ambushed two white cops at Jackson Park, but I just knew the lights looked like Hawaiian Punch spilling over my bed, and I thought they were so pretty then.
“What they lookin for this time?” Mr. Lanier say.
“It was white sneakers back in ’73,” Mr. Tucker say. “That’s what they said the fellas did it was wearin. What was them two cops name?”
“I don’t rightly remember,” Mr. Lanier say.
“Please and Christensen.” Darnell talks real quiet. He never forget anything. “Kelvin and every other Westside brother between sixteen and thirty went down to the station, all weekend.”
His mother looking at her catalogs, don’t say anything. Her oldest son, Kelvin, live in L.A. now. Darnell’s father light another cigarette. “White tennis shoes,” he say. “But they got Roscoe Wiley and that other poet, the one use to teach in your school, Brenda.”
“Brother Lobo,” I say.
“Kept his ass for a week.” For a second between the commercials, we could hear the drip of water from the cooler, the fan going around over our heads. Mrs. Tucker put in a beautiful one, with wood and lamps, this summer.
“So who they want this time?” Mr. Lanier say again, getting up to go.
“They want Ricky Ronrico,” Mr. Tucker say. “And they talkin about somebody hidin him, wantin to harbor him. Huh.” His face pull itself together while I watch, like his eyebrows and that big nose and mouth get in a line straight up and down as a totem pole, piled on top of each other. Like he’s Indian all the way through. That’s why they call him Red Man. “Damn sure wouldn’t hide him if he came to me.”
Nobody on Picasso Street liked Ricky because he always raced his van up and down by the park. But that wasn’t what Mr. Tucker was thinking about, I know. Hearing that name remind him of the time Darnell spent two nights in jail, in the same cell with Ricky. Thinking about that still make Mr. Tucker hot.
“Go on and take Brenda home, now,” he say, real loud, to Darnell. “This ain’t no time to be out. And bring your ass right back.”
“Huh,” Darnell start to say, but then his father cut him off.
“You know you gotta drive her up to the Ville, and I ain’t playin.”
When we close the front door, I hear Mrs. Tucker say, “He twenty, he ain’t a boy no more,” and Darnell’s father quick to stop her, too.
“That’s the point.”
At first, I think he’s mad about the way his father talk to him. He don’t say anything going down Picasso, waiting a long time at every stop sign. “Good enough?” he whisper real strange at the last two, looking out his window. I look out of mine, and I see the chainlink fences around yards like they lit up, electric, because the sun just now going down. The folding chairs on somebody’s lawn seem like they on fire, glowing metal. I can smell the cooking meat, the way it drift through the streets when we get closer to Canales Frozen Foods.
Only railroad tracks to pass now, on Third Avenue, and then Canales and The Pit. After you leave the Westside, you smell nothing but orange groves for a few miles. My cousins from L.A. always laugh at me when they come out to visit Rio Seco. “Man, y’all niggers country. Only a hour away and might as well be in Mi-sippi. Y’all ain’t got no clubs, no disco, nothin live. You got Jackson Park and The Pit.”
Nobody’s even parked down there at The Pit now, that dirt lot bare as the desert. My mother use to work at Canales—they cook the meat for Mexican food, frozen burritos and tamales, and when the shift is going, the whole Westside full of a smell so rich, so warm and spicy, it’s nothing better. Mama said the meat itself was real poor, but when I was small, I’d walk down there to meet her getting off work, sit in the heat by the fence and breathe that smell, sometimes mixed with the barbecue smoke coming from the roof of The Pit. I couldn’t go nowhere near even the parking lot of that place—it was where people drank and played cards and ate ribs, and beat each other up.
Darnell look over there, laugh a little now. “Them old-timey kind that hang out at The Pit know better than to come out tonight. They scared of they own shadow cause it’s got a Mi-sippi accent.”
I’ve known Darnell since we were five, when I lived on Picasso. He’s been like this three times: w
hen his friend Roger got shot at our graduation party, when he got out of jail that time last summer, and now. It feels strange not knowing what to say to him, and we’re almost all the way up Third to the Ville already.
Everybody from the Westside call it the Ville because it was only white people lived up here, on this slope, back then. Honkyville. We left the Westside and moved up here when I was nine. Some Japanese people, three or four Mexican families around by then, and after we came, the Orlandos and Tyners move here from DaVinci Street. But everybody on the Westside still call it the Ville and laugh at my father, say does our grass grow greener and our mail come earlier? When the Santa Ana wind blow the power out, do the city come and fix it a hell of a lot faster than they do on Picasso?
All the orange groves thin out now, and we pass by the little park just off Third. About five cars there, stoner white boys drinking beer, smoking at the picnic tables. Darnell say, “Can I get a swig, homes? Can we chill in the park with you?”
“Getting mad ain’t likely to change the situation, Darnell,” I say. “Don’t you go driving crazy on the way back to the Westside.”
“What do you suggest I do?” He finally look at me, and the scar push out mad and jagged on his forehead, just heading into his hair. Even when he got that, it turned into something else. He and his father were looking for a radiator at the junkyard, and he ran into a pole, split his head open. I took him to the emergency and they made us wait. Blood all in his hair, his pants got mud at the hems, and I was trying to clean him up when the doctor take him into a room. Darnell came busting out a few minutes later, said, “We gone. Now.” He told me the doctor didn’t believe the pole, kept laughing, “Your woman must have hit you over the head with something awfully heavy. What did you do to deserve this?”
While I laugh about stuff like that, Darnell get blind mad. I say, “I suggest you come inside when we get to my house. Cool you down.”
“I gotta be up at six to help Daddy fix the big truck. He’s supposed to pick up a load of brush somebody cleared off for fire season.” When we stop at the last four-way before my street, a boy pull up beside us, gunning his engine like firecrackers. Darnell looks over and wait til he drive off. “I suggest white boy racin his hooptie around fast as he want. Probably got a open container of Jack Daniels on the seat and shit. Hair streamin in the wind.” He don’t even bring his lips close to mine when he pull into the driveway. I thought he would walk me to the porch so I could stand on the steps above him, like always, and look into his eyes, touch his eyebrows, straighten them with my fingers.
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