Muckers

by Sandra Neil Wallace

  “Seen who?”

  “Aren’t you looking for Cruz?” she says, squinting up at me.

  “Yeah. I mean … no,” I mumble, focusing on the copper floor before asking, “You at the pool this afternoon?”

  “Uh-uh.” Angie shakes her head and that curly mane of hers goes just about wild, bobbing and bouncing sideways over her shoulders like a rodeo pony’s. “Not until tomorrow,” she says.

  “Well, I know the best place to swim around here, anyway.”

  “Oh yeah?” Angie finally stops messing with the books on the middle shelf and aims her eyes at me. “Where?”

  “The Verde.”

  “Too far,” she says, curling those red lips into a frown.

  “I know a shortcut. I can bring you along.”

  “What are you gonna do, carry me with you like a sack lunch?” She laughs, holding up her lunch bag.

  “No. No. Like a swim. Two people swimming. I could meet you at the tracks after school sometime. You pass right by them going to the Barrio.”

  “What do you know about the Barrio?”

  “I know you live there.”

  Angie studies my face like she’s about to bore a hole right through it with those powerful brown eyes. Then, just as sudden, they let go of me and she looks down at her watch. “Better get to my class, Mr. Sad Eyes,” she says, even though she’s got fifteen minutes. “Besides, don’t you practice football all the time?”

  “We’re done by six,” I yell over to her in my announcement-sounding voice.

  Angie hesitates before going up the stairs, and I can’t tell if she smiled at me or not—she’s in shadow. But I’m pretty sure she waved.

  “Yeah, okay. See ya around,” I call over.

  I’m trying to figure out if that went smoothly or not. I’m thinking not, if Angie thinks my eyes look sad when I’m happy to see her and that I’m just being nice to her because she’s Cruz’s sister. I pry stuff out of Cruz all the time and I don’t think he ever suspects. If he did he’d probably never speak to me again, then find a way to kill me. Slit my throat in the middle of the night. Blame it on the enemy, saying a Cottonville Wolf did it.

  I look over at Angie’s locker. Number 207. Maybe I’ll slip in a note in case she forgets. We can swim into October sometimes, if the wind coming over from Flagstaff doesn’t take hold of the peaks and send the snow down to the Valley. Two months. Gives her plenty of time to change her mind. There’s bound to be a perfect day. I’ll be there, waiting by the tracks.

  Chapter 4

  EEJIT ICING

  WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 23

  8:01 A.M.

  THE MORNING SUN HASN’T HIT the front steps of the school yet, so me and Cruz lean against the pillars, since I can hardly bend after fighting with the bus again at practice last night. Three freshmen quit already because of all that pushing. Now we’re down to fourteen players.

  Rabbit’s sitting on the cold cement, gnawing at a pencil and facing the mansion of the man who made our school the finest in Arizona. Beats Phoenix United hands down. P.U.—the school that’s won twenty-three championships and plays football on lawn Cruz swears looks too perfect to be real.

  “Like they hired a bunch of crop planes to spray green dye over the field, then white right after, on the kids at their games,” Cruz is saying. “And what do they mean if we manage to win against the South?” (He’s talking about the newspaper.)

  “Because it’s never been done before,” Rabbit says. “That’s all they’re saying … as journalists.”

  “Then they should’ve never stuck ‘manage’ in there … as idiots.”

  “Well, we are on the small side,” I tell Cruz.

  “Who is?” He shoots me a look. “The only one who comes close to Rabbit’s height is Sneep, and he’s a bench-warmer.” Cruz nicks Rabbit’s shoulder with the sole of his high-top. “Sit on the cement too long and you won’t have children,” he says.

  “What do you mean?” Rabbit asks.

  Cruz is messing with Rabbit already and it’s not even first bell. And Phoenix may have a green field to go with their state titles, but they don’t have copper underneath their school. We’ve got a hundred miles of it in tunnels snaking under every inch of our town. Hatley’s mined about a billion dollars’ worth of copper ore, and William D. Ruffner, the owner of Eureka Copper, lives across from our school on a mesa he blasted out of Bitter Creek Gulch. Ruffner plopped a lily-white adobe house on top of it as a wedding present for his bride. Takes up the whole plateau.

  It’s a real eyesore and something you wouldn’t expect to find out here. Like John Wayne talking Spanish to an Indian warrior at the cowboy matinee, it’s strictly meant for show.

  Maw liked calling that house “the silliest, most peculiar topper an eejit could fi-end for a weddin’ ceck.”

  “Go on now, Felix,” she’d beckon, pointing at the house and tracing lines in the air with her finger. “Squeeze your eyes a wee bit and follow the mounds to the mansion.” But I’d watch her instead, until she took my hand and we’d sift through the layers together. When we got to the top of the imaginary cake, she’d laugh, then we’d go to Peila’s for some flour to make cookies we’d cover with “eejit” icing.

  “Don’t you know when a girl sits on cold cement, it stops her from having kids?” Cruz points at his crotch and assumes the huddle position, getting down on his haunches to meet the screwball look Rabbit’s giving him. “Freezes up her privates or something. Shrinks her pink taco.”

  “No fooling?” Rabbit asks. He’s already slid Geometry under his bony butt and is looking at me for an answer.

  I mouth the word “no”—Cruz is so full of baloney it’s practically coming out of his ears—and I shake my head in disagreement, getting jabbed in the neck by one of those double-fisted plumes Ruffner had carved into the pillars.

  Our school didn’t start out as the finest, but by the time Ruffner was through with it, we’d gotten solid copper doors as tall as two men, five-foot-high windows with HHS etched in Italian stone above each and every one, and these Roman pillars I’m leaning on. Before that, it was just a plain old structure, the color of sunbaked skin. Ruffner said if he had to keep looking at three stories of flesh every morning, he didn’t want it bringing up his bacon and eggs.

  “What, you think I never been inside one before?” Cruz says, snatching Rabbit’s pencil away. “That all the girls at Hatley High are virgins, especially the gringas?” Cruz slices through Rabbit’s perfectly Brylled bangs with the eraser tip.

  The truth is, I don’t really know if Cruz has been with a girl. He shoots pool, giving lessons to the women at the Copper Star and moving his body so much that I have to look away, so he might have. But when he’s anywhere near Beebe Vance and her blond curls, his hips don’t act crazy like that.

  And it’s beyond me how Ruffner could’ve felt sick to his stomach about our building and not want to puke whenever he sees the dilapidated shanties in the Barrio on the other side of his dining room window because of those lowly wages he pays the Mexicans.

  The ground trembles beneath us, heaving like an aftershock, and I hit the cement, crashing into Rabbit, not anticipating the morning explosion.

  “That was only a charge of fifty thousand. No big deal, Ugly.” Cruz grins, pointing to my books sliding onto the road. “You should know by now your pop only orders a tame one before nine so it won’t scare the ankle biters walking to school. Wouldn’t even get the jail to slide again.”

  “Just enough to wake up Father Pierre so he can say Mexican Mass, he’s so deaf,” Rabbit says, handing me Advanced Typing.

  “Not when you owe him money for a pew.” Cruz smirks. “He hears real good then. Even when they’re blasting.”

  That’s how Pop and his crew get the ore out of the mine these days—filling coyote holes with long brown sticks of dynamite and shaking up the whole town. The E.C. doesn’t work the tunnels underneath us anymore since the shafts caught fire.

  Francisco’s char
ging down the hill on Paradiso, his burro. Paradiso’s loaded with a sack of empty dynamite boxes to heat up Francisco’s garage.

  “You better hurry before Loco Francisco’s ass shits all over your books.” Cruz is doubled over now. “He can make that donkey do it, you know. If God tells him to.”

  “That would be a good omen, shittin’ on your books!” Francisco scowls. His shirt’s coated with dirt in the creases as if he still worked the mine, picking up steel as a tool nipper. “A job,” Pop says, “left for those too daft to do anything but crawl on their hands and knees.”

  Paradiso chaws at my arm while Francisco takes out an orange. He offers the fruit to me, like he did when I was a kid, but I’m too embarrassed to take it. And I can’t tell what Francisco thinks—his face is hidden under that fedora and the silver beard, bristly as a pipe cleaner. Then he’s gone.

  “Gonna work for Loco again,” Cruz jokes, “tearing up those dynamite boxes for kindling? Must be worth at least two oranges.”

  “Brace yourselves,” Rabbit warns, pulling out a handkerchief as the rotten-egg smell from the explosion reaches us. I swing Advanced Typing against my face, and Cruz makes like he’s sniffing the inside of his elbow.

  I know the blasts don’t happen as much as when we were kids, but they still get to me. The broken windows and shifting buildings. The reeking mix. But what I hate most are the sirens. Pop knows which rocks not to tamper with, and even when he’s had too much to drink he can sniff out the ones that might kill you. I suppose only God knows for certain where every shaft lies. But when a siren goes off, you know a miner’s gotten too close to one that was hidden and gone up with the dynamite hole he’d been filling.

  “Hey, look at the Ruffner mansion,” Cruz says. “I think it moved a foot. It’s a wonder our field hasn’t fallen right into the pit.”

  “His house has been doing that for years,” Rabbit sniffs, “just like the rest of the town.”

  “Makes our school into a holy shrine but he doesn’t give a shoveling shit about our team,” Cruz says, heaving a wad of spit into some ivy. “How come he won’t get us new cleats for the big games anymore?”

  “Because they’re shipping the Hatley kids to Cottonville next year,” I tell him. “At least, that’s what Mr. Mackenzie thinks might happen.”

  Cruz fishes in his pocket for a cigarette. “There’s no way they’d go,” he says. “They’ll ditch school by then. And there’s no Mucker I know who’d put a Wolf uniform over his head instead of setting it on fire.”

  “You can’t smoke that on school property,” Rabbit says, pawing at Cruz’s cigarette.

  “What are they gonna do, Rabbit, ship me to Cottonville?” Cruz sticks it in his mouth anyway. “Just let them try,” he says, taking out his lighter. “I’d rather get sent to Korea.”

  “You wish,” Rabbit says.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Cruz shoots Rabbit a look like he’s popped a gasket, same as Pete Zolnich when a miner can’t pay at his tavern.

  Somebody comes out of the mansion. It’s Jigger Datchi, Ruffner’s Apache servant, carrying a bucket of suds. He splashes it over Ruffner’s Packard and the soap drips off the swan ornament and onto the yellow hood, bubbling up like the macaroni and cheese Mrs. Slubetz serves in the cafeteria.

  “A car like that’s gotta cost more than new uniforms or that shift he cut out at the mine,” Cruz says. “They should strike and make Ruffner pay.”

  “Ruffner wouldn’t care.” I look at the traces of grease caught under my fingernails from all the flats Ernie’s had me fix on that yellow machine.

  “Nick Managlia’s dad got fired when he asked for a raise,” Rabbit says. “He thinks it’s because there isn’t anything left in the mountain worth blasting.”

  “Don’t believe it.” Cruz scowls, glaring at a few anxious freshmen brushing past us to get inside. “I bet Ruffner’s getting them to close our school to make it an open pit.”

  “Then why are all those houses for rent, huh, Cruz?” Rabbit asks. “Up on Company Ridge.”

  “How many times have they closed the mine and opened it again?” Cruz says. “Besides, your opinion doesn’t count, Rabbit. You flunked kindergarten.” Cruz shoves his chin in my direction as if I might know something. “What’s your pop say?”

  My face goes all sweaty when Cruz asks about Pop. Like I’ve done something wrong, which I haven’t. “He’d never tell,” I mumble. I don’t think I’ve seen Pop this week. Big deal. It’s not like we keep track of each other. All I know is that he took the Chevy early this morning—it’s been on blocks since they took his license away. Pop never lets me drive it.

  “You’ll see, stupid,” Cruz says, tossing Rabbit’s pencil at him. “The mother lode might be right here.” Cruz jumps over the front steps and scrapes up a clump of dirt, shaking it around in his palm like dice. “Or down there, under Charlie’s place.” He lets the dirt escape through his fingers and looks through the caretaker’s window.

  “Like who, Cruz? Who’d you go inside?” Rabbit asks, and we’re back on the subject of vaginas.

  “Shut your mouth, Rabbit,” Cruz whispers. “Think I’d tell you that on school property?” He grabs hold of the collar on Rabbit’s flannel. I don’t like it when Cruz gets this way—picking on Rabbit when he’s really sore about something else. Rabbit barely reaches Cruz’s shoulders and maybe my chin.

  “And what does it really do to us guys, huh, Cruz?” I want to make him work hard at a comeback. As hard as Rabbit does getting those Levis to look like they fit, rolling them over his copper belt buckle so they won’t drag across the entire Valley.

  Cruz lets go of Rabbit and eyes me, disappointed, as if I’ve let him down. And I hate that part, too. It happens when I throw him a lousy pass because my fingers are way past frozen, or if my arm’s all shaky because I’m starving and Cruz doesn’t say anything after, so I can’t even be mad.

  “It gives you a shriveled-up pecker like Sims, that’s what it does to you, Ugly,” Cruz says, throwing his smoke in the ivy.

  “It just makes you go to the bathroom,” I tell Rabbit. I’m not any good at lying.

  “Dammit, now I have to take a piss, you idiot,” Cruz moans, jiggling on one foot while me and Rabbit laugh our faces off. He’ll have to hurry not to miss our class with Sims. Being late for him just isn’t worth it.

  * * *

  Sims has on a striped necktie knotted tightly below his Adam’s apple. He’s got his arms folded like he’s hiding something, and looks up at the three letters written in yellow chalk on the blackboard: ISM.

  Sims is always putting on a show. Monday it was about “mulligatawny-as-in-the-stew.” He had the girls so confused at the opening-assembly spelling bee, saying the word so fast that it tripped up most of them. Except Angie.

  She looked calm—especially for a sophomore—her brown eyes staring into space like she was taking in more of the word. Not intimidated at all by Sims’s sloppy delivery. She reached for the microphone and it made that loud, eardrum-breaking sound. But Angie just waited for the shrill to stop and spelled out the word.

  “M-U-L-L-I-G-A-T-A-W-N-Y.”

  There was a long pause. Then Sims pulled in his microphone and announced, “That is correct, Miss Villanueva.”

  Cruz gave me a nudge and whispered, “Damn straight she’s correct, Mr. Ass-in-the-Hole.” Cruz sure was fired up. “You might be able to kick me around in English class, but you can’t stump my sister.” Smart-assy, too.

  It’s true that even if you try in Sims’s class and screw up, he can make you feel small. That’s when Cruz’s ego erupts. He’ll either sulk in his chair or march over to Mr. Mackenzie’s office. Cruz says Mr. Mac’s about the only Anglo teacher who thinks like a Mexican or maybe even Jesus. But I think that’s too much to expect out of anyone. Even Mr. Mackenzie.

  It’s a funny thing about our town. Despite Sims having a pickle up his butt, everyone’s got the spirit of good ol’ Hatley High. They rally on the sidelines at our f
ootball games, but if you want to go for a swim or, say, get married, it better be “with” or “to” your own kind. We come together during the day, but we all head home to our places on the hill. And whichever way you go lets people know who you are. If you climb up from Main to Company Ridge—Gringo Ridge, Cruz likes to remind me—you’re rich and help run the mine your house overlooks.

  If you stay on Main and follow it to the city limits, just before it curves around toward Hatley High, you could be Rabbit’s dad, Vince Palermo, heading to a clapboard in the middle of Little Italy. If you walk down the hill in either direction from the pool hall that fits your nationality, chances are you work in the mine.

  If it’s the Copper Star and your legs are draped over a burro laden with firewood, you’re Mexican, maybe Santiago, Cruz’s father, working your way down the switchbacks to the bottom of the Gulch and a little wooden shanty in the Barrio.

  And if you just left Pete’s Tavern, you’re either a Slav or Irish and you live down the hill, too—in the Hogback section like we do—or maybe even in the Gulch, but high enough and far enough away from the Barrio. “Because we speak English,” justifies Pop, knowing that’s a definite advantage. After all, he does shout orders to Santiago in the pit every shift—the way Sims does with us in English.

  “What is an ism?” Sims asks, scanning the classroom for an answer. “Anybody?”

  “An awful itch you can’t get to?” Clem Pratty says. A few of us laugh, and Sims shoots an accusatory look in our direction, since Pratty’s sitting behind us in the last row.

  “It looks innocuous enough, doesn’t it?” Sims says, tapping the letters with the tip of the wooden pointer. “Just three letters that sound odd and look even more peculiar.” He tugs at the ring of the projector screen and the screen snaps and coils, rattling Penny Bruzzi in the front row. “But once you put another term in front, it’s not so harmless, is it?”

  It spells COMMUNISM now that the screen’s up.

  “What’s the jerk going on about this time?” Cruz asks me.