Trashed: An Eastside Brewery Novel

by Mia Hopkins

  My blood goes cold. Ruben and Dreamer came up together. They were as close as brothers. But if there’s a green light, friendships, blood bonds, promises, nothing matters. Ruben was tasked with the murder. He had to follow orders or get green-lit along with my dad.

  “Where did they take you?”

  “Angeles National Forest.”

  Graveyard for gangsters. ESHB has buried more bodies in that forest than anyone can remember. “What did you do?”

  “I couldn’t put Daisy in danger. So I went along with them. The whole ride up I talked. I bargained. I begged. I made promises. But Ruben said, ‘Your time is up. Nothing personal, Dreamer. This is just business.’”

  As my dad and I walk along the pathway, the clouds gather and hide the sun.

  “We reached a trailhead. Demon shut off the engine and pulled a piece. Together he and Ruben walked me out into the trees. It was so dark. I thought to myself, ‘This is it. I’m never going to see my boys again. Never tell them I love them again.’”

  We’re quiet for a moment. My dad gets hold of his emotions and continues the story. “They marched me to a ridge on the side of the mountain where they could push me over. I remember looking out and feeling nothing but sky, nothing but emptiness.”

  Ahead of us, Outlaw sniffs the air. When some squirrels get into a fight in the branches of a nearby tree, he lets out a big, steamy bark. The sound echoes in the forest. I feel it in my chest.

  “At the last minute,” my dad says, “Ruben takes the gun from Demon. ‘I’ll do it,’ he says. Like some kind of hero. ‘He’s my responsibility.’ He makes me get on my knees. I say my final prayers. Then he fires—two shots. Right next to my ear. The biggest sound you ever heard, mi’jo. My ears are ringing, painful. My heart is beating hard. I’m not really sure if I’m alive or not. In the dark, I throw myself over the ridge. Roll fifty, maybe a hundred feet over the rocks. I slice open my legs, my arms. I land in some kind of ditch. Every part of me hurts. But I don’t move. I don’t breathe.”

  I stop in my tracks. “Are you saying that Ruben…let you live?”

  My father nods. “He found a way out for both of us. Faked the murder, and used Demon for a witness. Smart guy. I guess you don’t get to be top dog for nothing.” He laughs to himself. “Smart guy.”

  The story is too crazy to believe, but for that reason, I think it might be true. Dreamer Rosas lives larger than life, and this would be just one more unbelievable adventure in his unbelievable life.

  “What did you do after that?”

  “I waited there until morning, freezing my ass off, bleeding, praying to God there were no hungry bears in the neighborhood. Then I hiked until I had phone reception and called Daisy. She came and got me. That same day we cashed out my savings and I came up here.”

  “Why up here? Why Wenatchee?”

  “Lisa Jo didn’t tell you?”

  I shake my head. “Tell me what?”

  “Daisy’s her daughter. This is where she grew up.”

  The puzzle solves itself in my head. I think of the elephant on the windowsill holding a daisy. You are my sunshine. Now I understand. Daisy’s father was black.

  I watch as own my dad plays fetch with Outlaw. It’s not really fetch, more like my dad throws the stick once and Outlaw slowly goes to get it. They play a weak tug-of-war together, two old survivors who can barely grip the piece of wood between them. But the dog is wagging and my dad is laughing and I think, they’re alive. Right now, that’s enough.

  That night, Lisa Jo drives us to dinner. She and my dad are both smiling big, joking, and elbowing me like they can’t hold in their excitement. I get the sense they don’t go out much, and I can’t help smiling myself. My dad reminds me that tonight I’m Hector, not Eddie. I can call him Dad, but his name is Omar, which is the name they know him by at the packing house where he works.

  We pull into a motel whose parking lot is full. Next to the registration office is a restaurant that looks like a truck-stop diner with the lights turned down to make it fancier. We take off our jackets and coats and hang them up inside the door. It’s busy inside. The tables are full of families and big burly people in hunting camo. Almost everyone is white, including the hostess who leads us to a booth in the back of the restaurant by the kitchen.

  My dad orders the most expensive thing on the menu and encourages Lisa Jo and me to get whatever we want. We order beers—just the regular stuff, nothing like my brother’s beer. Dreamer tells Lisa Jo to get the sautéed mushrooms on her steak like he’s just won the lottery and can’t wait to spend the prize. He’s loud and charming, like he wants everyone in the dining room to know he’s a celebrity.

  The diners look over their shoulders at us and for a second, I’m embarrassed for my dad. Sometimes he’d act like this when he worked at the slaughterhouse. He’d tell my mom to dress us all up. He’d take us to a restaurant and order enough food for an army. For a night, he got to play the big successful man he always wanted other people to see whenever they looked at him. He’d blow a week’s food budget on one meal. My mom hated it. My dad loved it.

  One round of beers turns into two. My dad’s voice gets louder. “Lisa Jo,” he says, “this kid, his nickname is Trouble. You know how he got it?”

  She shakes her head. “How?”

  “Tell her,” my dad says to me.

  For some reason, my dad loves this story. “I was ten,” I say. “It was the Fourth of July. Everyone was on summer vacation. All us kids stayed out late, watching the neighbors set off all their fireworks. At midnight, almost everyone had already gone to bed. But my brother Sal—I don’t know how—got his hands on some illegal fireworks. We snuck out to light them. Sal handed me the lighter and a bottle. I had never lit anything before so my hands were shaking, like this.” I’m already laughing. “I knew what to do because we’d been watching our neighbors all night. So I set up the bottle. I lit the rocket. But I didn’t look up to see what was above us.”

  Lisa Jo starts laughing too. “Oh no.”

  “The rocket went off—hiss, pop, pop, pop! And it landed right in the branches of a palm tree.”

  “An old palm tree,” my dad adds. “A dry palm tree.”

  “Apparently they’re extremely flammable,” I say. “So there’s my brother and me, standing there, and the palm tree ignites like the Olympic torch. It’s the biggest fire we’ve ever seen. The tree is four, five stories tall. Flaming branches are coming down. The little sparks burn holes in our T-shirts. You can see it from the freeway. You can see it for twenty miles.”

  “Three fire engines showed up,” my dad says. “Everyone came out to watch.”

  “My brother was smart. He went back into the house and climbed into bed like he’d been sleeping the whole time. But I hid in the crawlspace under the house. My mother found me and dragged me out by the collar. She was yelling, ‘You are nothing but trouble!’ Everyone in the neighborhood saw us and started laughing and pointing. Then they started cheering, ‘Trou-ble! Trou-ble! Trou-ble!’”

  My dad is laughing so hard he almost knocks his beer off the table. “And this kid”—he slaps my back so hard I cough—“raises his hands like Rocky Balboa. Hyping the crowd up. ‘Trou-ble! Trou-ble!’ From that moment on, that’s what we all called him.”

  Twenty-Five

  The restaurant is crowded and cozy. My steak tastes delicious. I see Lisa Jo’s smiling face and hear my dad’s big laugh. My heart is warm in my chest. For a second, I imagine I’m in some weird version of Dreamer Rosas’s afterlife.

  After he pays for our meal, my dad asks Lisa Jo to drop us off.

  She hesitates. “You sure?”

  He’s got his arm around her, which seems weird, but I chalk it up to being squashed in the truck. Also, he’s always been a touchy-feely guy, especially when it comes to women. “Sure I’m sure,” he says. “A couple drinks with my son. No big deal.”

  “What time is your shift tomorrow?”

  “We won’t be out too late.”


  “But—”

  Dreamer makes his voice soft, just like he used to when he needed to calm my mom down or persuade her to do something she didn’t want to do. “Don’t worry about me, mi’ja. I’m a big boy, okay?”

  In the end, Lisa Jo pulls up behind a biker bar off the highway. It’s nothing much—a brick building with a metal door.

  Lisa Jo’s face is worried as we climb out of the truck. “Can you call me when you’re ready to come home?”

  “Okay.” My dad kisses her cheek and slides out of the cab.

  “Look after your dad,” Lisa Jo calls to me.

  “Hey, I don’t need looking after!”

  “I will,” I tell her and turn to follow Dreamer inside.

  People crowd the dark, smelly bar even though it’s a weeknight. I figure this place is the only game in town.

  My dad greets his friends with fist bumps and chest bumps. He’s happy, loudly introducing me to everyone as his son. I shake hands with everyone, but inside, I’m worried. Who’s in here? Who’s listening? After the story he’s told me, we should be laying low, not playing celebrities.

  I follow Dreamer to a table on the other side of the pool table where a group of guys are already congregated. They’ve got pool cues, and their table is full of dead soldiers and empty pitchers. My awareness level goes up a couple notches. But the guys cheer when they see my dad, and he shows me off to them—“My son. You can call him Trouble. Takes after his old man.”

  My dad’s friends are mostly coworkers from the packing plant. I can’t hear what they tell me over the noise of the jukebox, but I nod and laugh when I can. I don’t share anything about myself.

  The beer in my hand goes warm as I keep an eye on my dad, like Lisa Jo told me to. Impatient, I take my phone out of my pocket. Still no service. I see a payphone in the back of the bar. I think about calling Carmen—but she’ll see where I’m calling from. She’ll ask questions.

  I put my phone back in my pocket.

  The less she knows about this part of my life, the better.

  One round of pool turns into two. Three rounds of beers turn into four. Soon Dreamer has ordered a tray of tequila shots for his buddies. He’s too trashed to notice I don’t drink one.

  He’s buying drinks left and right, flashing his feria.

  Where the hell is he getting all this cash?

  More people come into the bar. It’s so crowded I can’t see who they are. I try not to show it with my body language, but I’m on alert. I squint my eyes. A shaved head? Tattoos? Did I see what I saw?

  When I was locked up in general population, I could sense when a fight was about to break out. The energy in the room would change. I can feel the change now.

  I keep my sights on the exit of the bar. I lean my back up against the wall. The knife I brought from LA is hidden in my sock. The weight of it makes me feel both anxious and calm.

  Dreamer staggers over to me and throws his arm around my shoulders. He’s leaning back and forth, unsteady on his feet. Even though he’s skinny now, I can feel the strength in his wiry body. Indestructible—gangbanger, drunk, addict. He’s like a piece of beef jerky that can’t be chewed.

  “How you doing, Trouble?” he asks. “Are you having a good time?”

  “Fuck yeah.” I fake a smile. “How about one more and we call Lisa Jo?”

  Before he can answer, one of his friends grabs at his jacket. “Come on, Omar,” Larry says. He’s one of my dad’s coworkers from the plant. He mimics smoking with his hand.

  I follow them out of the back door. It’s cold as fuck. I zip up my jacket and shove my hands into the pockets. One weak bulb lights up the alley. It’s snowing, just a little. The flakes disappear when they hit the ground.

  I watch as Larry, a guy with a gray beard and bony shoulders, sways on his feet and slowly pulls a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. I watch as the two borrachos struggle to light up. They almost cheer when they finally accomplish their goal.

  I’m laughing when two shadows appear behind us.

  Someone was watching us in the bar. Sent a quick text when we left—easy money.

  They’re big. White dudes, maybe bikers.

  More importantly, they’ve done this before.

  “Empty your pockets! All of it!”

  One goes straight for me. He’s counting on me being drunk, so when I rush him, he’s not ready. We crash to the muddy asphalt and start whaling on each other. Adrenaline fills my veins. The smell of wet dirt fills my lungs.

  I land a few blows, feel the satisfying impact against my knuckles. He gets in a few, and I brace myself to take the punches. He pops me in the face, same side where Lalo got me the other day. But I’m too amped up to feel any pain.

  I get him in the side of the head. He’s stunned for half a second, just enough time for me to get to my feet and pull the knife.

  That ends things fast. When he sees the flash of the blade, he scrambles backward and takes off down the alley.

  I turn around. My dad’s friend is sitting on his ass, dazed. My dad is trading blows with the other robber, which I chalk up to muscle memory, not sobriety. The other guy is more annoyed than hurt.

  “Hey!” I yell.

  The guy looks up. I lunge at him. To avoid the knife, he trips backward over Larry’s legs and falls. He looks like he’s about to get up so I kick him, hard, in the side. Groaning, he struggles to his feet. His path is crooked as he jogs away, escaping into the shadows of the alley.

  My dad is unhinged. He screams and hollers after the guy. “That’s right! You better run! ¡Culeros!”

  “Dad, pipe down,” I tell him. I put the knife back in its hiding place before helping Larry up and leaning him against the wall. He’s dizzy on top of being drunk. The side of his face is swollen where he caught a solid punch on the jaw. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, yeah.” He sways before getting his balance. “Thanks.”

  “¡Pinches maricones!” My dad is still yelling. Someone inside the bar might hear him, might come outside to investigate. We’d have to answer questions.

  “Dad—”

  Before he can answer me, my father bends over, braces his hands on his knees, and barfs up a tequila shot, ten beers, and a fancy steak dinner.

  When he’s finished, Larry hands him a handkerchief. “Good one, boss.”

  My dad wipes his face. They’re giggling.

  Fucking drunks.

  “Give me your phone,” I tell my dad. “We gotta get the hell out of here.”

  “I don’t have it, mi’jo. They took it. My wallet too—all my cash.”

  I bite back my annoyance. I can’t get a signal on my phone. There’s a phone in the bar, but I don’t want to go back inside and risk running into more trouble.

  I look around, watching for witnesses or police or the robbers returning with bigger, angrier friends. There’s no one. What do I do? We need to leave this place.

  “I got a car,” Larry says. “The guy didn’t take my keys.”

  After a slow, drunken search, we find Larry’s Bronco parked on the street not far from the bar. He gives me the keys. I start it up and run the heater. Larry climbs into the back seat and falls asleep, groaning and holding his jaw. I strap my dad into the passenger seat and slide back the driver’s seat so that I can fit. I adjust all the mirrors. Because of my run-ins with the law, I’ve lost my license and driving privileges. I haven’t driven a car in five years. When I turn the key, the roar of the engine sends tingles all the way up my spine. A rush. I grab the wheel. I missed this.

  “We’re going to have to take him home to Lisa Jo.” I toss my head toward Larry, groaning in the back seat.

  “She don’t care,” my dad slurs. “’S’fine.”

  I put the truck into gear. “All right. Tell me which way to go to get back.”

  “Sure, sure, mi’jo. Of course.”

  We pull onto the highway.

  I’m a patient guy, more or less. You don’t survive five years in prison u
nless you learn how to swallow your anger and wait patiently.

  But not even time in the state pen prepared me for the night ahead.

  Dreamer Rosas, drunk as fuck, telling me to turn right, then left, then right again. To make a U-turn because I’ve gone too far. To cross this bridge and make a left at the stop sign. To look for a gas station that isn’t there, to look for a barn we already passed twenty minutes ago.

  Forty-five minutes later we’re lost in the woods in the middle of the night, and I’m gripping the steering wheel to keep from putting my fist through the windshield.

  The heater in the Bronco sucks. I’m cold and wet and dirty from my fall in the mud, my eye is swelling up again, and my dad smells like vomit. Larry’s passed out in the back seat, groaning in his sleep. I’m half anticipating that he’s going to barf too.

  In frustration, I pull over into a turnout and stop the Bronco a safe distance from the highway. I put the car in park and turn to my dad.

  “Why are you stopping?” he says. “We’re almost there.”

  “No, we’re not.” I let out a big sigh. “We’re going to wait until you’re sober enough to give me some decent directions.”

  “I have been giving you decent directions!” He throws his hands up in the air. “You just don’t listen. You’re just like your mom. Never listen. Think you know everything.”

  Inside, I flinch. I hate that he brings her up so casually. I was never my mom’s favorite, but as I get older, I realize her intentions were always good. She tried to teach us to behave. She kept us safe and fed. She acted out of love.

  So it makes me angry that my dad—the guy who was supposed to look after us and failed spectacularly, miserably—feels entitled enough to talk shit about her like this.

  But what’s the use of arguing with a drunk?

  “Get some sleep.” My voice is defeated. No fight. “When you wake up, we’ll get going.”

  “We’re going to freeze out here!” My dad bangs the dashboard. “Just go, go straight. It’s up the road.”