Meredith used the bathroom inside the Shell and I did too. I bought a Coke and a bag of dill pickle chips. Zane said to Reggie, “Watch out down there, my man, it’s gonna be a mad, mad city tonight.” And Reggie nodded like he wasn’t too concerned one way or the other. We said goodbye and thanks to Zane and he said, “I hope you find what you’re looking for in Hollywood.” And I said, “Ten-four, Good Buddy,” and he laughed and climbed into his rig and on the way out he pulled his air-horn and it was so loud that I wished I’d had time to plug my ears, but I was happy because Zane really was my good buddy, and now I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to be when I grew up.
Reggie drove an eighteen-wheeler tandem axel semi dump truck that carried twenty-seven tons of sand. We climbed up into the cab beside him and put our backpacks behind the front seat. He didn’t play the radio or a tape and he had the CB volume turned so low you couldn’t really hear what people were saying over it, but I didn’t care because Reggie was nice and he was going to take us straight to Los Angeles without passing go or collecting 200 dollars. He answered all of my questions about his truck.
“I’d say the whole rig weighs about 80,000 pounds, all told,” Reggie said.
“Whoa,” I said. “That’s like hauling an elephant!”
“That’s like hauling five or six elephants.” Reggie laughed.
“Whoa.”
He smiled at me and handed me half of his sandwich.
I had a few bites and it was good but I could hardly eat because we were entering Los Angeles City Limits and I was so excited I thought I’d pee my pants, even though I’d just peed at the Shell.
“I’m just going in to South Central to drop something off for my boss,” Reggie said. “Then I’ll show you where you can catch a bus over to Hollywood.”
“Great!” I said.
“I can’t believe it,” Meredith said.
“Believe what?” I said.
“That we actually made it to L.A.”
“Where are you two coming from?” Reggie asked.
“We’re from Niagara Falls, but our car broke down near Albany, New York, so we’ve been hitching since then,” Meredith said.
Reggie nodded. “Pretty big trek. Clear across the country. How many days it take you?”
“Five,” I said, counting on my fingers.
“Hey, that’s pretty good,” Reggie said. “Couldn’t have driven it much faster than that with only one driver,” he nodded at Meredith.
“And we didn’t even get kidnapped,” I said, grinning.
“That’s good,” Reggie said. “No one wants that.”
“Reggie?”
“Yeah, kid?”
“Do you like being a truck driver?”
He nodded. “Yeah, I’m pretty much living the dream,” he said.
“The American Dream?”
Reggie laughed a little. “You could say that.”
The sky in Los Angeles was as blue as a swimming pool and the sun shone high and bright in the sky. Tall, tall palms lined the streets and stood so straight and proud, as if to welcome us, as if to say, We’re glad you made it. There were thousands of glass buildings scraping up against the sky and more cars and people and stores and billboards than I could count. As we drove further into the centre of the city, the houses got smaller and so did the lawns. The cars got older and rustier too. Meredith asked Reggie if he had an extra smoke, and he said, “That shit’ll kill ya,” and Meredith said, “Not if something else does first.” Then Reggie laughed and took one from his pack and handed it to her and they both smoked. I rolled my window down and let my arm hang out the side of the truck and the sun glinted off my side mirror so I couldn’t see what was behind us anymore.
Then we were driving through this one neighbourhood and I thought, People in Los Angeles are kind of weird, because they were doing weird things like running into the middle of the road and yelling and throwing rocks at cars and waving bottles over their heads and flipping everyone the bird.
Then I started to get a bad feeling. A thick, heavy feeling way down in the bottom of my stomach. And I knew that something was wrong and something bad was going to happen, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
Little white dots popped out all over Reggie’s knuckles as he gripped the big steering wheel. “Something’s up,” he said. “Maybe get in the back.”
So we climbed into the back cab. It wasn’t set up all cozy like Zane’s was. There was just a tool box, a hatchet, an old grey army blanket, a pile of candy wrappers, and a bunch of empty coffee cups back there. Reggie stopped at a red light and there was a thunk and a craaaack as a brick hit the windshield, and then another one, sending a million spider webs across the glass.
“Get down!” Reggie said.
“Oh, this is not good,” Meredith said. “This is not healthy.”
Then Reggie’s door opened and a mad-looking black guy grabbed Reggie and ripped him out of the truck. I crouched behind the driver’s seat and could see a little bit through the space between the seat and the door. Meredith smushed herself up against me so that she could see too. Two men hurled what looked like a fire extinguisher at Reggie’s head, and then the first guy hit him three times in the face with a claw hammer. “Oh my God,” Meredith said as Reggie fell to his knees. She bit down on her knuckles. We watched through the crack in the door as four black guys took turns kicking Reggie. They kicked him in the head so hard, his head bounced off the pavement, again and again. I could hear him saying, “Stop, please, stop.” But I knew that they wouldn’t. One guy stepped on his neck while the others kicked him in the head. My hand closed around the hatchet. I could do something. I could chop their nuts off, I could save him. But those guys were so big and angry, they were men, and I was only a kid, and small for my age. Meredith put her backpack on and handed me mine and I put mine on. Then there was a noise so loud above us it sounded like the world was caving in, but I could feel the hard wind blowing through the door and realized it was a helicopter. Probably a police helicopter, I thought, come to save Reggie, to save us. But it didn’t.
One of the guys took a huge slab of concrete, held it up high, then dropped it on Reggie’s head. Then he danced a little jig over Reggie and pointed and laughed at him and gave the helicopter the finger. Meredith turned away from me and puked. Cherry-slush vomit flooded the back of the truck and soaked through my jeans. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to say. For a minute, I thought I was having a terrible dream. I slapped my cheeks and pinched my arms, but I couldn’t wake up no matter how hard I tried, so I knew it must be real. A guy spat a big loogie on Reggie’s face and then he and the guy who dropped the concrete on Reggie’s head left. They just walked away, whooping and laughing and slapping each other high-fives. Where were the police? Where was the ambulance? I saw some people take out cameras and take pictures of Reggie lying there on the ground. Some people threw beer bottles at him and they exploded in bright brown bursts around his head. A man came up and rifled through Reggie’s pockets and took his wallet, but no one did anything to help him. Not me, not Meredith, not anyone. Then we heard gunshots and the ping of bullets hitting the truck.
“We have to get out,” Meredith said. “They’re shooting at the truck.”
I couldn’t move. My legs were heavier than twenty-seven tons of sand.
“Come on, we have to go!” She pushed the door open, grabbed the hatchet, took my hand, and dragged me out of the cab. We ran across the intersection to a gas station and laid on our stomachs behind a sign for diesel. I felt dizzy and nauseous and sick. The whole world blurred around me.
“I can’t see!” I said. “I can’t see!”
Meredith put her hand inside the sleeve of her sweatshirt and wiped my eyes.
“Oh,” I said.
“Shh.”
“We have to get Reggie. We have to help him.”
“We can’t.”
“But who’s going to help him? Nobody’s even helping him!”
> “Look,” she said. We watched as Reggie, head covered in blood, his white T-shirt stained red, struggled to get to all fours. He pushed his hand out in front of him again and again, like he was waving us away. His long hair fell in front of his face, streaked red with blood. He grabbed hold of the running board, staggered to his feet, and leaned against the open door of the cab for a few seconds. Then he started to crawl into his truck. A black lady ran to him and helped him get inside the truck. We could see Reggie’s work-boots poking out the door as she laid him across the front seat. Then a black man and woman drove up in a little blue car. The man got out and the woman spun the car around so it pointed away from Reggie’s truck, which was slowly creeping forward. Another big black guy ran up to the truck and hoisted himself into the driver’s seat. The guy who came in the blue car stood outside on the running board, hanging onto the side mirror. The truck started and they drove away, pulling 80,000 pounds behind them.
“Do you think he’s okay?” I said.
“No,” Meredith said.
“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” I said. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
“I know,” she said.
“Was that our fault?”
“No. No way.”
“We should have …”
“We couldn’t,” she said.
“Do you think he’ll die?”
“I don’t know,” Meredith said.
25
Hundreds of people ran by us screaming and yelling and smashing bottles in the street and throwing bricks and rocks at cars and shop windows. Cars full of men waved sticks and bats and guns as they drove past, shooting bullets up into the crystal blue sky. Tires squealed, cars crashed into each other, guys ran after cars and hit them with bats and sticks and rocks, reaching through the drivers’ windows to take purses, wallets, cans of soda. Six guys picked up a white Buick and flipped it over and someone fired shots at the red news helicopter that hovered above the intersection.
“This … this is …” I had trouble getting my words out.
“This is a riot,” Meredith said.
“Usually people say that when they’re having fun.”
“Not today,” she said, her eyes scanning the intersection.
People ran around, smashing everything in sight, chanting, “Rodney King! Rodney King!” I knew who he was; he was the man on the video who was driving too fast and those cops had beat him up, and now, I guess, the cops weren’t going to jail for it, and all of Los Angeles was going insane. People ran out of a liquor store across the street carrying bottles of wine, cases of beer, arm-loads of alcohol. Guys were shaking up beer bottles and spraying them over each other and laughing. They smashed the windows of the liquor store with steel bats and the glass crackled away. Someone set fire to a rag sticking out of a bottle and threw it into the liquor store and then the liquor store was on fire and we could see the smoke begin to build and flames licking around the edges of the broken window. You could hear the glass bottles that were still inside exploding in the heat. Then a white delivery truck stopped at the intersection and the same guys who had beat up Reggie surrounded the truck and one guy opened the door and pulled the driver out of his seat. They started beating on him, kicking him in the nuts, in the knees. He had brown hair and wore a grey T-shirt and jeans and he held his hands above his head, but they kept on kicking him until he fell. Once he was on the ground, they kicked him in the head over and over and over again. The same guy who had dropped the concrete slab on Reggie ripped the stereo system out of the truck and threw it at the driver’s head. Another guy pulled out a Swiss Army knife and tried to cut the truck driver’s ear off. He held up a little piece of flesh, dripping with blood, and waved it above his head like it was a trophy. I was shaking all over and the ground was wobbling and everything was wrong. A guy came up and took the truck driver’s wallet out of his back pocket. Then he and the guys who had beat up Reggie started ripping the truck driver’s clothes off. First his shirt, then his shoes and jeans and underwear, until he lay naked on the ground, covering his head with his arms. Another guy came up with a can of black spray paint and started spraying the truck driver’s chest and his body and his privates black. People were laughing and pointing and taking pictures and some people ran up and kicked him and then ran back to their friends. It was the worst thing I’d ever seen and there was nothing I could do about it. I closed my eyes for a minute and told myself not to throw up. But it didn’t work. I did throw up. A lot. Then Meredith was rubbing my back and saying, “It’s okay, it’s okay.” And when I opened my eyes again someone was pouring a jerry can full of gasoline all over the truck driver and dumping it right into his face and mouth and eyes and people were still throwing bottles and rocks and trash at him and no one was doing anything to help him and someone in the crowd was videotaping the whole thing and I said, “It is not fucking okay.”
“You’re right,” Meredith said. “It’s not.”
Then a black man went over to the truck driver and you could tell he was a priest because he was wearing the black suit and the white collar that priests always wear, and the priest said, “Stop! Stop this!” but people still kept throwing rocks and bottles at the truck driver who lay unmoving on the pavement beside his truck while people took everything out of the back of his truck like furniture and instruments and stereos and whatever else he was hauling. Then the priest spread his arms wide and he held a book in one hand, probably a bible, and he hunkered down over the truck driver and covered him with his own body and yelled, “Kill him, and you’ll have to kill me too!” Then the crowd booed and someone else threw a bottle that landed right beside the priest’s head and a green shower exploded in his face, but the priest just shut his eyes and shook his head, and then across the street, someone threw a brick through the window of a convenience store, and you could hear the tinkle of glass and the sharp pops of gunshots a little further up the street.
I don’t know if the priest did that because God told him to or if he did it because it was the right thing to do, maybe the only thing to do, but I was glad that there were people like that priest in the world, and I wished that I had been able to do that for Reggie.
Then people started flooding into the gas station and filling their cars and filling up jerry cans and bottles with gasoline. They were going into the store and taking whatever they wanted. People came out with bags full of chips and pop and cigarettes and magazines. One guy held a stack of lottery tickets in his teeth. A fat, pale man with light-brown hair stood across the street talking into a microphone and someone else was videotaping him, a blond guy. We watched as a group of people came at them and one guy took the microphone out of the news reporter’s hand. “Hey,” he said, “I’m a reporter.” And the other guy started hitting him in the face and head with the microphone and yelling at him, “Get out of here! Get the fuck out of here! You don’t belong here!” Then the cameraman dropped the video camera and took off running down the street and a bunch of people followed him, hurling rocks and bricks and bottles at him, and the reporter cowered, shielding his head and crying out until a big white van that read KTLA NEWS pulled up and opened its back door and the reporter hurled himself into the van and it sped away. A white Toyota Corolla drove through the intersection and someone threw a garbage can at it and it cracked the glass. The car stopped and some guys ran and pulled out the driver and it was a tall lady with red hair and she covered her face and screamed, “Don’t hurt my baby! Don’t hurt my baby!” and the crowd started whipping all kinds of things at her like beer cans and stones, and she got down on the ground and covered her head with her hands and a guy ran up and kicked her in the stomach and she rolled under her car so the guy opened the door of the car and a little kid crawled out, a little redheaded baby, it just plopped out onto the road and started crawling down the street, crying. Then a bus stopped on the corner and an Asian guy stepped off the bus and a mob of five or six people surrounded him and clobbered him, bashing in his face, punching
him all over, and he tried to get back on the bus, but the bus closed its doors and drove on.
“What should we do?” I said.
Meredith pulled her hood up over her head and dug around in her backpack and pulled out a green bandana and tied it around her face so that only her eyes were showing. Then she took out a black toque and handed it to me. “Put this on,” she said. “Pull it down low over your face.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re white.”
I took out my knife and cut eye holes and a mouth hole in the toque so I could see and breathe. Meredith got to her feet. She took my hand and pulled me up, and together, we ran.
26
We didn’t make it too far before someone threw a shopping cart at a car, the car spun out of control and slammed into the front window of a shoe store and a hundred people climbed over the hood of the car to load up on Adidas, Nikes, and Reeboks. Guys destroyed abandoned cars with tire irons and bats, and windshields lay in smithereens all over the road, bottle rockets sailed through the air, and car tires screeched like cats in the night. I could hear gunshots and glass smashing all around me and then Meredith was pulling me inside a little hot dog stand that was painted blue and white and said ART’S CHILI DOGS. There was no one inside, but all the food and drinks were there. Meredith closed the door and locked it and we sat on the floor. She pulled her bandana down, and I took off my toque.
“Are you hungry?” Meredith said.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Thirsty?” she handed me a cream soda from the cooler beside us and took a Coke for herself. “I don’t know when we’ll be able to eat or drink again.”
We could hear the crowd rage on outside. I drank the cream soda and tried to think. “I don’t know what to do,” I said.
“We have to get out of here,” she said. “We could die.”
“What about finding my father?”
“If he is here, he’s probably trying to get out too.”
Niagara Motel Page 16