In the year since Tina left for San Antonio, she had been kicked out of regular school and sent to a juvenile disciplinary school, where she made contacts with would-be dealers and pimps, developed a pretty bad addiction to drugs—pills and coke when they were available, but crack and meth mostly—done a short stint in rehab, and attended outpatient counseling which was working until her father lost his job and insurance. Bexar county’s LCDCs were less like counselors and more like probation officers looking to send an offender back into the system where they belonged. Most recently, she had run away and been involved in a string of home invasions with a guy named Terry who was wanted on three drug charges and a failure to appear. Over the past year, Ana had filled Chon in on the news of her daughter’s troubles as they were reported to her from San Antonio. Each time, she ended her report, in reference to sending Tina to her father, by saying, “Worst mistake of my life.”
Each time, Chon agreed with that statement—but in reference to something else.
A while back, Chon had talked a cigarette distributor into giving him a pack of his most expensive cigarettes. He thought he’d give them to Ana who always only smoked the cheapest cigarettes—Best Value, Skydancer, Leggett’s—and would only splurge the extra buck or so on Camels every third or fourth payday. When Ana came in to pick up her paycheck, he handed her the green box of Nat Shermans. She stared at them for a minute. Then she said she didn’t smoke menthols. She immediately shook her head, crossing herself.
“I mean, that was really nice of you,” she said. “You didn’t have to get these for me.” Chon was confused—weird how moved she was by a pack of cigarettes he’d gotten for free. “I mean, not cause they’re menthols. I just…Fuck—” She went to the back of the store, leaving the smokes on the counter. Chon was closing, the lights were off and the shop was locked up. Ana came to the front of the store, grabbed Chon, and began kissing him all over. He pulled back to look at her and ask what she was doing. When he did, he saw something in her eyes that had not been there before in all of the sexual encounters they had at her empty, cigarette-stinking house—he had stopped counting how many when it became something less than thrilling and more like embarrassing. What Chon saw in Ana’s eyes was something like gratitude or an actual desire to be doing what she was doing with the person in front of her. She looked at him, kissed him on the head, then opened his pants and put him in her mouth.
Reeling from pleasure, Chon fell back onto the stool behind him. He looked out at Main Street through the store’s windows, foolishly afraid that anyone would see what was going on. Ana relented for a bit, looking up at Chon with those new eyes, and scared him more than the thought of being caught with his pants down. Stroking him, she smiled and with a knowing shake of her head said, “You’re so fucking wonderful, do you know that? If you were twenty years older, we’d never do this. You’re too good for me. I’ll never deserve someone like you, but thanks for being here now.”
She went back to her business of thanking Chon. He looked down at this woman—forty-three years old, widowed once, with a delinquent daughter and two ex-husbands—working him vigorously, expertly, he thought, in her mouth. He was aware for the first time that she was more than someone with whom he was complicit in the act of using and being used. She liked him. The responsibility of that realization nauseated Chon. Because, while he was currently placed precariously between her teeth, he was not the only one in this arrangement who was made vulnerable in the frame of the floor to ceiling windows at The Pachanga’s storefront
She had offered him a cigarette that night. He accepted it to avoid any conversation in the darkness outside of The Pachanga—Ana smiling in the moonlight like a gargoyle atop the ice machine, Chon still feeling aftershock tremors of pleasure running through his belly. When she lit a second and offered Chon another, he declined and drove home. Fancy as it was supposed to be, the cigarette tasted off to Chon.
“So Bill called you and let you know?” Chon asked. To Chon’s mind, Bill Guerra wasn’t such a bad guy—just a parent, like Ana, who couldn’t deal with his lost-cause daughter. He wouldn’t tell Ana that though.
“Fuck that asshole. He isn’t telling me anything. The detective in her case has been calling me. They might bring him up on charges for letting her get into all this shit. It’d serve him right.” Ana looked at her cigarette, which she’d lit crookedly. She licked her index finger and ran it up the side of her smoke to quell its diagonally advancing cherry.
“And you? Any news on your chula?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Chon said, “her parents sent her to stay with some family friends over in Corpus. They didn’t want her to be around all this craziness. They’re going to keep her over there until school starts.”
“Well, that sucks for you, Chon-chon. You wait for an opportunity like this to come along and your girl leaves the county.” She laughed smoke through her nose.
“Ana, those guys died,” Chon said, shaking his head.
“And? Death is a perfect opportunity for new love. That’s how Bill got me—when Jo-Jo had his embolism. Believe me, in this life you get left so much that it doesn’t matter how—if they die or leave you for someone else or even go gay or something like that. All that matters is if you get found by someone else. You know?”
So much of this struck Chon as wrong. But he didn’t want to argue with Ana however much he hoped it wasn’t true. He had lately realized that he could—if he chose to—change any of her beliefs or ideas by simply disagreeing with them. For that reason, he stopped disagreeing with her completely. He knew Ana was lost right now, had been for as long as he had known her. He resisted, as strongly as he could, her attempts at finding herself in him. They hadn’t had sex in weeks.
“Anyway,” Ana said in the wake of Chon’s silence. She slipped off of the ice machine onto the trashcan and stepped down onto the milk crate. “Her parents are right to get her away from this place. It’s like people around here aren’t happy enough sharing the same however many square feet of town, they have to share their sadness over two boys most of them didn’t even know.”
Chon nodded, holding the door open for Ana. He went behind the counter and opened the register.
“You left me two tens,” he looked at Ana.
“Just drop some from the safe,” she said on her way to the back.
“Ana,” Chon said when she came back with her purse on her shoulder, “they come once a week to fill the safe. We’ll run out of tens if we drop them so many times.”
It was Sunday. Rocha was off, so Ana had worked the first shift.
“Sorry, Chon-Chon, I promise I’ll be a good girl from now on and be real careful with the register,” she said, walking out.
“Ana,” he called to her, “have you even closed your till?”
She stood in the doorway and stared at him. “No. Will you count it for me?”
“You know, you’re a cashier. You have to count every now and then,” he said, opening the drawer and counting the money in it.
“Not to close my till, not when you’re here to do it for me,” she said with a smile.
He looked up at her and rolled his eyes. A girl no older than thirteen walked into the store. She wasn’t from Greenton, but Chon thought he recognized her. Ana walked to the counter, putting her purse down to wait for Chon to run her numbers in the register.
The girl interrupted Chon’s counting. “Do you guys sell the stars?” she asked. “The John stars?”
“Yeah,” Chon said, starting over on the dimes.
“How much are they?” the girl asked.
“$2.70…$2.80…$2.90…” He raised his index finger to indicate to the girl that he needed one minute. He wrote down the total.
“$5 a pop,” he told the girl.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll take five.”
“Alright,” he said. “That’ll be $25. Just hang on a second. I have to open this register.”
There were only seven nickels in the register. Chon
looked at Ana and at the nickel slot in the register. She shrugged.
“Isn’t it open right now?” the girl asked. “My brother drove me over from Premont because you guys are the only store selling the real stars. We’re getting one for his car, one for my parents’ and some for our neighbors.”
“Well—” Chon began. Ana turned toward the girl.
“Listen, little girl,” she said, “he has to count the money in the drawer and put the total in the machine to close the last shift’s totals. It’ll take five minutes tops. But if you keep interrupting him, he won’t be able to finish, and we won’t sell you any damn stars. Understand?” Ana took the pack of Best Values from her purse and pulled out a smoke and her lighter.
Chon counted the pennies quickly, added the drawer total, and ran the numbers. The printout he put in an envelope with her credit card receipts said Ana’s drawer was forty cents over. He input the total as his starting balance and rang up five John stars.
“Alright, sweetie,” he said to the girl, who was staring at her feet, “$25.”
The girl gave him two twenties. He gave her back three fives.
“You didn’t have to—” he began to tell Ana.
“I know,” she said.
“She was just trying to—”
“I know. It’s just I see a little girl like that, all happy and shit, and I want to shake her. I want to fucking strangle her, it just hurts so fucking much.”
Chon didn’t say anything. He walked to the back room, slid the envelope under the office door to be counted along with the rest of the week’s receipts by Sammy Alba, Art’s cousin, tomorrow, like on every Monday.
Ana was standing at the front of the store, watching the girl from Premont tell her brother what had happened in the store.
“Ha,” she said, “he flipped me off.” She stood there, looking at the dust kicked up by the brother and his sister and the car that would carry them to their loving home three towns over. “We’re out of Bud Light tall boys and Miller Lite caguamas,” she said. “And four of the microwave burritos were cut into. I think Rocha did it when he opened up the box. I bagged them, they’re in the cooler, leave a note for Sammy so he can write them off and order more beer.”
“Okay, Ana. Thanks,” Chon said.
Ana turned around and looked at him.
“Sometimes I just want to fucking scream. Hell, sometimes I do. I get home and I call detectives and call Bill and I cry. And then I get two days off, and I’m too sad to even go to Flojo’s so I sit at home and drink and cry and, sometimes, I scream.” She gave a laugh. She always laughed at awkward moments. “I’ll see you Wednesday,” she said.
“Well, I’ll be here if you want to drop in,” Chon said. A month ago, she might have taken him up on the offer—showed up on her day off with leftovers and helped him mop the store or stock the cooler.
“I’ll see you Wednesday, Chon-Chon,” she said walking out of the store.
She stood in the doorway trying to light her cigarette. When the wind wouldn’t let her, she crouched down in the corner made by the ice machine and the storefront. Small as she was, she disappeared from Chon’s sight. She could have been crying or curling up in a ball to give up on life or crawling away in the thirty seconds she was down there.
She popped up, cigarette lit, waved goodbye to Chon, and walked around the side of The Pachanga to get to her car. In the drive-thru window, Chon saw a woman tired and alone and who, in a bigger city, would fit right in pushing around a shopping cart and screaming at traffic passing by. She honked her horn when she pulled onto Main, waving at Chon with the back of her hand.
The John stars were Ms. Salinas’ idea. The Mejias were left with some debt after the funeral. Keeping up with the Robison’s arrangements was no easy task. Andres refused any of Arn’s offered money to bridge the gap. Julie had life insurance policies on herself and Andres and had even taken one out on John, but it was a minimal thing—who can ever foresee having to pay for the funeral of your youngest son? Who would want to? Everyone in town knew of the Mejia’s financial problems, so Ms. Salinas took action. What better way for the boys’ teacher to get over her own grief than by helping out?
Ms. Salinas brought up the idea of selling car magnets—stars, like the Johns were and would have been—to raise funds to erase the Mejias’ debt. They agreed—so long as the money made from such a venture would be split evenly with the Robisons. Arn had reservations about accepting any such money but didn’t object because he knew his agreement on the matter would be the only way he and Angie could help Andres and Julie.
The magnets were bought at a discount from Ms. Salinas’ cousin, the owner of a copy shop in Laredo, who informed her of the fact that the color burnt orange is trademarked by the University of Texas and, as such, could not be used commercially. So it was decided that Greenton High’s spearmint green would do as the color for the stars, which read “JOHNS 3:16.”
Art Alba was the only storeowner in town who initially agreed to sell the stars profit-free. When the other stores caught wind of his offer and changed theirs to match, Andres Mejia told them they could all fuck themselves and made The Pachanga the exclusive handler of the stars.
The funeral costs were recouped after a week. The Mejias and Robisons, when they saw that the sale of the stars was not likely to soon die down, decided that all the proceeds would go to a charity.
They had discussed giving the money to UT, but what for? The school had more money than it needed and hadn’t regarded with wonder and awe the Johns the way the Johns had regarded UT. Then there was the Bee County hospital that had treated the boys. But it was agreed by all four parents, without being said by any of them, that the hospital that couldn’t save their boys could burn to the ground for all they cared—and this was also their sentiment regarding the rural ambulance company that responded to the accident. Angie Robison suggested Greenton High and they all agreed. The dirty business of wiping their hands clean of the profits made by the memory of their dead sons was complete. The money would buy new uniforms for the baseball team.
Fake stars were popping up in the surrounding counties, one or two actually surfacing in Greenton. They were shoddy replications. Ms. Salinas’ cousin in Laredo had made a simple but distinguishing augmentation to the shade of Greenton’s spearmint green, which lightened it a bit. The counterfeiters couldn’t seem to duplicate this. Some people were even coming into The Pachanga and purchasing scores of stars to sell at a marked-up price in counties farther away to people who were sympathetic to Greenton’s loss. The Mejias and Robisons, it would seem, were alone in their compunction regarding profiting from the deaths of two teenagers.
Chon was helping a customer, a man in a black Mercedes that had overheated, when Henry walked in.
“Well, sir, we have a water hose at the side of the building that you can use to cool your car down before you put the coolant in,” Chon said, giving Henry a nod. Henry gave him a nod back and walked to the soda fountain in the back of the store.
“But you’re not supposed to take off the radiator cap when the car is hot,” the tall man in khaki shorts and polo T-shirt said. Chon could tell the guy was a Mexican national from his accent and his clothes.
“Well, not really, but you’ve been parked for a while. We can be careful when we open it.” Chon tried to speak slowly, breathing out through his nose—the way the training video Art had all of his employees watch instructed in dealing with elderly and mentally challenged customers and armed robbers. “Listen, sir, I’m just trying to get you out of here as soon as possible. You keep saying you’re in a hurry.”
“Fine, fine,” the man said. “So we cool it with the water and fill it with coolant, but won’t some water stay in the radiator?”
“Well, yeah, but that’s fine. It’ll just dilute the coolant a little bit, but it’s totally fine,” Chon said, looking back at Henry who was calling the guy a jerk off with his hand.
“No. The manual says to only put 50/50 coolant
in the radiator, no water,” the man said, putting his car’s manual on the counter and giving a chortle as if to tell this kid that there are complexities of German engineering that he would never comprehend.
Chon let the sarcasm roll off his back. He had become near immune to assholes of all nationalities.
“Alright then, you’ll want four gallons of coolant. They’re across from the Pepsi cooler in the back,” he said.
The man made his way to the automotive section. As he walked up the last aisle, Henry walked down the first—smiling and shaking his head the whole way. He leaned against the ice cream cooler and crossed his arms. Chon showed Henry the palm of his hand and gave him a nod. Just wait.
“$13.99?” the man yelled from the back of the store.
Chon smiled at Henry, who tried to hold back a laugh.
“You people charge $13.99 for a gallon of coolant?” The man came back to the counter with two gallon jugs of the stuff.
“Yes sir, it comes out to $15 a pop after taxes,” Chon said, giving the man his back to Windex and squeegee the window behind the register.
“That’s bullshit,” the man said.
Chon turned around and scanned the jugs. “Well, sir, I don’t set the prices here. I just ring stuff up and make change. But, I mean, you’re kind of in the middle of a desert. There are towns and houses and stuff, but you see the sand and the cacti? That means you’re in a desert.”
“So you’re going to be a smartass now?” the man said.
“No, I guess I’m just making excuses for my boss. Anyway, it’ll just be the two of these?” Chon asked.
“Yes, that’ll be it.”
“So you’re going to risk putting the water in? Because the first gallon and a half of coolant will evaporate and be sucked into the car, you’ll need at least four gallons of coolant to top your car off.” Chon pointed at the man’s car in front of the store. He was feeling big—in control, like he was winning some respect from the man or at least evening a score between them that wasn’t being kept—until he looked at the car. The wheels, dirty from not having been washed in a while, were of a quality that Chon had never seen in a town where driving in luxury was a brand new truck with a Flowmaster exhaust system or a Lincoln or Caddy that one of the town’s retirees spent all of their squirreled-away money on and only drove to the post office and back. The curves of the car, its tinted windows and ultra bright headlights, fit the iconic hood ornament perfectly. Chon had seen it on TV or in magazines so many times that he hadn’t thought seeing the real thing would come as such a shock. But it did. He wanted to walk outside and touch it—to feel what it was made of and complete the sensory experience.
Seeing Off the Johns Page 4