by Alec Cizak
“I’d hit that shit all night.”
“Yeah, boy!”
“Goddamn, them titties look like planets!”
“Yeah, yeah!”
“Damn, she got herself a booty, too!”
“Hell yeah!”
“You can put a drink and ashtray on that shit, know what I’m saying?”
“Aw, yeah!”
And so on.
Rex sighed. The other passengers stared down or out the closest window. They had the same expression he saw when folks passed him on the street while he was asking for change, the expression of zombies, oblivious to anything other than what they might eat for dinner while they watched Dancing with the Stars or some other million-dollar piece of crap on television. He didn’t care about the woman so much. He wanted the money in her purse and if somebody didn’t pry the posers off of her, she might exit the bus in a place without any alleys he could drag her into. There was a desolate, residential stretch of Wilshire between Rossmore and La Brea. Impossible to rob someone there. For whatever reason, people who lived in houses were more observant. Rex waited for someone, the bus driver, the half-dozen Mexican guys who worked for a living and could easily have taken on the teenagers, anybody, to step forward and tell the kids to knock it off. He rolled his eyes. But I’m the bad guy…
When he was nineteen, he was the starting halfback at Texas Christian. His first two games he rushed for a total of five-hundred and twelve yards and seven touchdowns. Early in the third contest, after a week of signing copies of Sports Illustrated with his picture on the cover, he broke his leg handing the ball off on an end-around. A linebacker didn’t notice the receiver was carrying the football and folded Rex in two. He remembered seeing a fragment of his tibia poking through his skin and then waking up in the hospital feeling as though someone had sawed on his knee and left the wound open. When the doctors confirmed he would never play ball again, the university withdrew his scholarship. He took to drinking Johnnie Walker while he worked his way through technical school. In those days, it was the best way to kill the lingering pain in his leg and his imagination, which refused to abandon the fantasy that someday he would get a second chance at a career in the NFL. By the time he received his certificate in computer programming, the habit of being drunk ensured he would never hold a job for more than a week.
And now he was here. LA. Homeless.
The Korean woman had had enough. She swung her purse and screeched “Sheba-nom! Sheba-nom!” until the teenagers took a step backwards. She shoved through them the way Rex once plowed through defensive lines. She pushed passengers standing in the aisle out of her way in search of another seat. As she passed them, she tried to force eye contact. None obliged. Los Angeles, home of the toughest cowards on the planet. The woman approached him. Her nostrils flared. She settled on a bench opposite the rear door.
“Yo, bitch,” one of the young men said, “didn’t nobody say you could move.“ He nodded to his buddies and they marched to the middle of the bus.
Balanced on the inside corner of the woman’s left eye, a tear wobbled, threatened to reveal how insulted she was. She drew in her lips, took a deep breath, and pulled up her nose. The combination allowed her to rub her eyes. When her hands returned to her purse, her makeup had smeared downward. She no longer looked like the privileged wife of a Korean banker. A few alterations to her schoolgirl skirt and she could have passed for a Goth.
“You know you want what we got.” The thuglet unzipped his pants. He showed her exactly what he was talking about.
“Nam chang!” she screamed.
The bus driver spoke up. “Do I need to call the police?” This seemed to satisfy the other passengers. They shifted their glances from the floor to the closest window or the opposite, depending on where their eyes had previously been locked. The gentlemen engaging the woman in what was inching closer and closer to a gang rape ignored the warning. The bus driver produced a cell phone, showed it to the thuglets. “You think I’m joking?”
“Shut the fuck up,” said one of them.
Rex just wanted to drink himself into the blackness. He just wanted to forget, for another twenty-four hours, what a vicious joke his life was. The door to his conscience, however, creaked on its hinges.
The young men cornered the woman in her seat once again and took turns putting their hands on her. As one grabbed her breasts, another squeezed her ass. They paused to give each other “play,” and continued molesting her. As for the woman, she must have lost all desire to look tough. Tears somersaulted down her cheeks. She choked on sobs rising from her throat in rhythmic heaves.
Rex clamped his teeth together. Dammit. As far as he was concerned, any woman dressed the way the Korean woman was dressed should arm herself for precisely this kind of attack. What really bothered him, though, was the apathy of everyone else on the bus.
One of the thuglets put his hand up the woman’s skirt and attempted to yank her panties off.
Rex stood. “What the hell is the matter with you people?”
The passengers bowed their heads. They refused to respond in any other way. The thuglets made no such show:
“You talking to us?”
“Actually,” Rex said, “I was addressing everyone but you.”
The bus driver bounced his eyes into the rearview mirror. “Sit down, mister. I’ll call the police at the next stop.”
“Yo, man,” said one of the thuglets, “why don’t you mind your own damn business?”
“I am.” Rex stepped away from his seat. He clenched his fists and approached the young men.
The teenagers eased off from the woman, ready to fight.
The bus stopped and the back door hissed. The Korean woman kicked her boots into the legs of the young man directly in front of her. She swung her purse at him. When he ducked, she charged forward, stumbled out and onto the street, and ran as fast as her high heels would allow. Rex glared at the young men and said, “You little jerk-offs just cost me my dinner.”
The thuglets found their collective spine and descended on him. He felt six bony fists pummel him until the warmth of his own blood coated his face and he blacked out.
* * *
Two EMTs hoisted Rex onto a stretcher. The remaining passengers, the ones who had no choice but to stay on the bus, stared at him. Their frowns didn’t claw him any different than the majority of the sour faces he witnessed every day on the streets. No matter what he did, he was an inconvenience to the clones who resented him because he didn’t have bills to pay, mortgages to settle, children to tend, pots of stew to serve by seven or suffer the wrath of an unreasonable spouse.
As the paramedics carried him down the steps of the rear door, the gurney tilted and he slid off. He hit his head on the curb and nearly blacked out a second time. The men dressed in blue, medical jumpsuits laughed.
They took their time putting him back on the stretcher and extending the wheels. As they rolled him to an ambulance, he noticed the bus had stopped next to a liquor store. Giant words, painted in red on the side of the building, “Beer! Spirits!” floated by, like an advertisement suspended from heaven. Then he felt the reconstructed landscape of his face, round welts, some open, stinging to the touch. I must look like a map of Mars. It would be at least five days before he would be able to collect money without scaring off normal folks. His stomach turned and he wondered if he could even make it that long without a drink.
DUMB SHIT
Donny was the one what noticed the Mexican first. He said, “Smitty, you see him?” I followed the aim of his finger out the windshield.
A runt, if you asked me. Maybe five-two. White t-shirt and jeans, just like all them illegals wore. Sort of rubbed it in how they was doing the jobs we used to do.
“Yeah, I see him.”
The Mexican was walking down Thompson Boulevard, an off-shoot of Raymond Avenue. Majority of the streetlamps was busted. There was some railroad tracks what weren’t hardly used no more. Tall, dead grass here and there. M
ostly patches of dirt. Looming over it all was factories what closed when we was still in high school. Places our dads worked at. If it weren’t for the Mexican’s bright shirt, Donny might of never spotted him.
“You think he’s one of the beaners from the site?”
“The hell would I know?”
“Shit, brother, you were there.”
He was talking about that morning, about our gig at a cookie-cutter development in Greenwood. A five-minute neighborhood with manicured lawns covering up what used to be farms. We was supposed to get twenty-eight an hour for fixing roofs onto the houses. That was a wage set during them days we still had unions. Jimbo Pincer, the contractor, told us the Mexicans was willing to work for ten dollars an hour.
Donny threatened to grab his hunting knife what his Pa give him just before he went to Pendleton for manslaughter. Said he’d slice Jimbo’s throat open, bleed him all over the fresh blacktop.
“You threatening me?” Jimbo said.
“What do you think?” Donny said.
I had to struggle to get him back to his Ford. It was one thing to lose another job to the Mexicans. Sure as shit didn’t need to go to the pokey on the count of a no-good contractor.
Soon as we was on the road, he called me a pussy for keeping him from killing Jimbo. Having known Donny my whole life, I couldn’t think of him as anything but a friend. Times like that, however, I got to wondering why I put up with his dumb shit. I shrugged it off. Same as I done since we was kids. Plus, he was bigger and weren’t past kicking my ass to make a point. My mind was fixed on deeper issues anyway. Tricia, my old lady, was going to have to sell her pussy to make our bills. Again. Weren’t no choice. What I said to Donny was:
“Don’t you think they want us to stomp that fucker into dust? So they can put us in the gas chamber?”
Donny was obsessed with Ruby Ridge and Waco and considered the Unabomber his hero. Read all manner of conspiracy books. Felt the government had been took over by something unseen and Satanic. Straight out of a horror movie. Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the good one with Donald Sutherland, or maybe that Roddy Piper masterpiece, They Live. Didn’t take long for him to grab the conspiracy ball and roll with it—”Hell yeah,” he said. “What do you think they refurbished the train depot in Beech Grove for? They’re building concentration camps for working class Christians.”
It didn’t make no kind of difference that Donny hadn’t been to church since he was five or six years old. Set him to weaving tapestries of Uncle Sam’s connivance with Big Business and Socialists and Wicca and Area 51 and all hell else and you could guarantee he’d forget whatever happened five minutes previous.
He turned on to Thompson and crept behind the Mexican. “Baseball bats are still in the bed,” he said.
I had forgot about them.
After leaving the job site that morning, we did what we always did when a contractor hired Mexicans without telling us—we went to the Body Shop to watch the daughters of girls we grew up with shake their titties for rent. We was sitting at Pervert’s Row, stuffing money down the panties of a gal named Theresa. Her mom and Tricia was good friends. Donny was on his fifth bottle of Bud and probably pulled some crystal up his snout one of the ten times he went to the pisser. Point being, he was twisted and decided he was going to join Theresa on the stage and dry hump her. Didn’t take Bonks, the bouncer, more than ten seconds to bull across the room and tear him off her. Bonks was built like a VW bug set on its rear end. One of the only sons of bitches what could tell Donny or me what to do and get away with it.
“You boys going to settle or hit the damn road,” he said. He directed that to me as well, which weren’t too cool considering I weren’t the one engaged in dumb shit. I let it drift, though, mostly because Bonks was my brother-in-law.
Donny, who had known Bonks since high school, said he would get his hunting knife and slash his throat open and bleed him right there on the stage. That got the both of us thrown out. “We’re going to my place,” he said. “Going to get my son’s baseball bats, come back here and cripple that goddamn mutant.”
I did my best to talk him out of it on the way to Fountain Square. He pulled into his gravel driveway. Called me a pussy and told me to shut the fuck up. As he went inside to get the bats, I noticed he hadn’t cut his lawn in a while. When he returned, he stomped across the high grass with two aluminum sluggers and tossed them onto the bed of the truck.
As he drove us to Madison Avenue, toward the Body Shop once more, I finally convinced him to let it go. “Why don’t we check up on Tammy and Heather over at the Silk ‘N’ Lace?” I said. Now, the Silk was one of the most disgusting strip joints in the city. Grass was so high it had sort of taken over the parking lot. Inside, it weren’t unusual to see rats hopping across the floor, picking at peanut droppings. The dancers was either junkies or preggers. For a dollar, you could get them to squeeze titty milk on you. Donny loved that sort of shit. He agreed to head there and mellow. We tossed what cash we had at middle-aged women what never figured out a different way to make their bills until the sun set. Until we was drunk enough to face our wives and explain why they was going to have to pull twice their weight. Again.
That’s when Donny saw the Mexican.
I searched for an excuse to get him and his Ford back on Raymond, back in the direction of Fountain Square. “You want to be pissed at somebody,” I said, “get pissed at Jimbo Pincer. He’s the son of a bitch what hired us and then brought scabs in to cut our wages.”
The truck came to a stop. Donny said, “You sound like one of them fruity kids from IUPUI that’s always trying to rationalize amnesty for these goddamn invaders.” He switched on the dome light and squinted at me. “You haven’t been cloned or something, have you?”
The kind of shit he often came up with went a long way toward explaining why every movie or television show I ever seen depicted poor folk like us as the dumbest fuckers in the universe. All I could say was, “Man…”
“Let’s go,” he said. He jumped out his side, walked around the back and grabbed the baseball bats. When he got to my door, he ripped it open and pulled me by my arm from the truck onto the street. He shoved one of the bats at me. “Take it, brother.”
By then, the Mexican noticed us. Stood still. Hands in his pockets.
“Donny, you don’t know who he is,” I said. “Could be legal, could be a family man what got nothing to do with them Mexicans at the site today.”
He started in the Mexican’s direction.
The Mexican didn’t move. Maybe he was afraid. Maybe the complete opposite.
Donny saw I was loitering on the street. He waved me over, said, “Let’s go, pussy.”
What I wanted to do was run in the other direction. That would have branded me for the rest of my days. Would have forced me to move somewhere else. So I chased after him, mostly to talk him out of whatever dumb shit he had in mind. When I got a good look at the Mexican, I said, “This ain’t one of them scabs.”
“That doesn’t matter. Not now, brother.”
I said the only thing I figured might turn his intentions—”You want to go to Pendleton, like your dad? Over someone you don’t even know?”
The Mexican said: “What you want?” He spit on the sidewalk in front of him, like a border he dared us to cross.
Donny slammed his baseball bat into the Mexican’s knee. The Mexican collapsed. He screamed and shouted, “Pendejo!” Donny hit him in the same spot and we heard a pop. This made the Mexican grab his leg and squirm. The purple reflection of the nearest street lamp weaved down his face in tears.
When Donny drew back to hit him again, I grabbed his hand. “Ain’t that enough?”
I let go and he hoisted the bat over his head, aiming for me.
“Come on, Donny.”
The Mexican stopped making noise.
Between clenched teeth, Donny said, “The fuck you say my name for?” He tapped the baseball bat in my hand. “Take a swing.”
I sho
ok my head.
He grinned and nodded.
I shook my head again.
“You’re taking swipes at this piece of shit or I’m leaving two corpses for the rats.”
“I ain’t going to jail. Not over a Mexican.”
He smiled. “Nobody gives a damn about a goddamn illegal.”
When I didn’t move, Donny smashed his baseball bat into my side. “Swing, you goddamn pussy!”
I blasted the Mexican in his chest, over and over. If my conscience crept up, trying to sneak a word in, I lied and said it was Jimbo Pincer I was beating into hamburger meat.
Donny joined me, bashing the Mexican all over. Every hit made a different noise. I thought of that old cereal commercial, Snap Crackle Pop! We turned the Mexican into a twitching bundle of bloodied clothes. Eventually, he stopped moving. I figured we killed him. When I said so, Donny said he didn’t care.
We kick-rolled the body into the tall grass and dumped the bats near it.
* * *
Got a call from Donny the next morning. Cops had already been to his place. Found two blood-stained DeMarini bats with his son’s initials etched into the bottom of the handles. The Mexican weren’t dead, he said. In a coma. Wouldn’t never walk again. He chuckled about that, claimed it served the Mexican right for taking our jobs.
“Here’s what I told them,” he said. Then he explained the story he’d come up with. How the Mexican had attacked us. “They tried to get me to turn on you, brother. Promised they’d keep me out of the pokey if I testified it was all your idea.” He assured me he did no such thing. Stuck to his self-defense story until the cops gave up and left.
He insisted I do the same.
Tricia shouted my name from the living room. I heard the knock on the door while I was still on the phone, heard the door open, heard the official voices of at least two detectives. “Don’t you worry about a thing,” I said to Donny.