“You got that right, Wendy. Aooohhh!” howled Goose.
“If I was your dad, I’d demand to have Spirit back as my valet,” said Terrance. He hung his tongue out of his mouth and panted like a thirsty dog.
“Aooohhh!” Goose howled again.
We put away our trays and headed outside to the blacktop. Terrance ran and grabbed a basketball from the ball rack next to the gym.
We shot a few baskets before Wendell, all tired out, decided he’d rather stand against the wall and watch us play.
I didn’t feel like playing much either, especially after the comments the guys made about Spirit.
The next time I got the ball, I took a shot at the hoop and missed. After that, I decided to call it quits and walked off the court.
Wendell’s eyes lit up. I’m sure he thought I was going to join him. Instead, I headed in the opposite direction and turned the corner of the building. I wasn’t in the mood to hear Wendell rant about his favorite subject. Maybe I could find something else to do to kill time until the bell rang.
Up ahead I saw Manny and Chester and Hugo huddled together behind the gym. I wondered what would be worse—turning around and having to listen to Wendell jabber about wrestling or risk getting taunted by Manny and his goons.
As I took a closer peek, I noticed they had someone surrounded against the wall. Someone who looked like . . . Sara?
“Let me go!” Sara screamed.
Hugo and Chester had her arms pinned back while Manny held her purse.
“Let’s see what we got here,” he said. He opened her bag and rifled through its contents. “Hey, six bucks.” Manny stuffed the bills into his pocket. “Here’s a handkerchief.” He sniffed it, then tossed it to the ground. “A hairbrush . . . lipstick . . . ”
“Leave her alone, you creeps!” yelled a girl with short black hair. I recognized her as one of the girls who had sat with Sara in the cafeteria.
Sara, now in tears, struggled to free herself, but Chester and Hugo held her tightly, hee-heeing like a pair of hyenas.
“Go get a teacher, Karen!” Sara told her friend.
Manny grabbed Karen by the wrist and pulled her toward him. “You’re not going anywhere, chula.”
After the horrible morning I’d had, the last thing I needed was to get involved in a confrontation with Manny and those other Neanderthals. But I had to help Sara, somehow.
I hesitated for a moment, then headed toward the wall.
“Leave them alone,” I said. My voice cracked and the pitch came out higher than I had intended.
Manny whirled around and glared at me. “Take a hike, dork! You don’t wanna mess with us.”
He was right. I didn’t want to mess with them. But it was too late. Trying to keep my voice from shaking I said, “D–Don’t pick on the girls, that’s all I’m saying.” My throat dried up. Breathing became difficult. I could feel my heart slamming itself against the inside of my chest.
This time Manny released Karen’s wrist. She ran off, hopefully to get some help. He stormed up to me. “Think you’re tough enough to take me on, dork?” he asked.
“Look, Manny,” I said. My right leg was now trembling out of control. “I–I don’t want to fight you. I just want you to leave the girls alone.”
Chester and Hugo let Sara loose. They stood alongside Manny with their arms crossed.
To my surprise, Sara remained where she was. I had expected her to run and join her friend Karen, but she didn’t. Then I realized Manny still had Sara’s purse in his hand and her money in his pocket.
“You wanna play hero, dork?” Manny growled. “The good guy? The knight in shining armor?” He punctuated his questions by gesturing quotation marks in the air with his fingers. “You’re gonna wish you’d never gotten involved.” He gave me a hard shove.
Chester and Hugo grinned and nodded, almost as if on cue.
Despite my fear, I managed to say, “Give her back her purse and money.”
Manny sniggered. “You’re something else, you know that? Well, c’mon, hero, you want it? Try to take it from me.”
He took two steps back and dangled Sara’s purse in front of me. With his other hand, he motioned me toward him.
“Get ‘im, Manny!” cried his cheerleaders, Hugo and Chester.
A crowd quickly gathered. Manny circled around me, daring me to fight him. Some kids cried out, “Death! Death! Death! Death!”
“Give him the Death Drop Pile Driver!” shouted some moron from the crowd.
Oh, please, I thought, give me a break.
Nevertheless, that made Manny waver. He seemed a little unsure of himself. He glanced over at Chester and Hugo, to make sure they were there in case he needed them.
I had no intention of fighting Manny, unless I absolutely had to. And even if I did, there was no way I could apply my father’s finishing maneuver on him. But Manny didn’t know that. I could sense that he was wondering exactly what I was capable of.
The Death Drop Pile Driver appears devastating on TV. After my father weakens his opponents, he tosses them over his shoulder, turns them upside down, then he drives them, head first, onto the canvas, knocking them unconscious.
Except that it’s all an illusion, like a magician’s trick. No one ever gets hurt. Their heads never even touch the mat. But that’s only because they practice it over and over. Otherwise, someone could get seriously injured.
Luckily for me, Manny didn’t get a chance to find out if I could perform the Death Drop Pile Driver. Coach Johnson burst through the wall of kids that had fenced us in, followed by Karen and some other kids who had evidently heard about the confrontation.
“He’s got my purse!” Sara shouted, stating the obvious. For the first time since confronting Manny, I realized how ridiculous he looked, standing there, holding a girl’s purse in his hand. I had to smile.
Coach Johnson jerked the purse away from Manny. “You’re going to the office, son.”
“We were just horsing around, Coach, that’s all,” Manny said, feigning innocence.
“He also stole my money!” said Sara. “Six dollars. They’re in his pocket.”
From the expression on the coach’s face, it didn’t appear that he had any doubt that Sara was telling the truth. It seemed that Manny’s reputation preceded him. “Let’s have it,” he ordered.
Realizing there was no point in denying it, Manny fished out the dollar bills from his pocket and slapped them in Coach Johnson’s outstretched hand.
“Chester Leonard and Hugo Sanchez were part of it!” yelled Karen, scanning the crowd for them. But Manny’s bookends had disappeared the moment the coach arrived.
“What about you?” Coach Johnson barked at me. “What’s your story?”
“Jesse came to help us,” Sara broke in before I could respond. “He made Manny and Chester and Hugo leave us alone.”
I couldn’t believe it. She knew my name. Sara knew who I was!
Coach Johnson grunted. Then he said to me, “You’d better come along, too, ‘til we get everything straightened out.”
“Yes, sir.”
Manny glared at me as if to say, This isn’t over between us.
I didn’t care. I’d stood up to him. I had helped Sara. And she knew who I was. Things were finally starting to look up.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Jesse Baron?”
I poked my head out of my locker, glanced up, and smiled.
“Hi, I’m Sara Young.” She extended a hand to me.
I rose from the floor with an armload of books. I tried to shake her hand, but my books began to spill.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. She helped me adjust them back into my arms. “Listen, I want to thank you for helping Karen and me out on the blacktop this morning.” She flashed a wide, dimpled smile.
I shrugged modestly. “It was nothing. Glad I could help.”
“I hope you didn’t get in trouble with the principal for getting mixed up with Manny,” she said.
“N
o, not at all. Coach Johnson explained what he saw to Dr. Seamster. Then I gave her my version of what happened. After that, I was sent back to class.”
“You had just left the office when we walked in,” said Sara. “Karen and I were called out of class, along with Chester and Hugo, to give our sides of the incident.”
“Did Dr. Seamster do anything to them?”
Sara shook her head. “Nothing much. They got a three-day vacation from school. That’s how much a suspension means to them.”
“Well, at least the rest of the kids will have a three-day vacation from those bozos,” I told her.
Sara smiled and nodded in agreement. “You’re the wrestler’s son, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am. Why? Are you a wrestling fan?”
She giggled. “No.” Then she caught herself. “Please don’t take offense, Jesse, but it’s just that . . . well, my parents don’t let me watch wrestling. They think it’s . . . it’s . . . ”
“Junk, right?”
Sara blushed.
“That’s okay.” I said. “A lot of people feel that way about it. But it’s how my father earns a living.”
“Your parents bought the Bennetts’ house,” she said, changing the subject.
“How did you know?” I was surprised that this beautiful dream of a girl whom I had been gawking at for the past week seemed to know so much about me.
“My parents and the Bennetts have been friends for years. After they moved out of the neighborhood, the house sat vacant for about four months. Until your family bought it. We live a few houses down from yours.”
An idea hit me. Before I could chicken out, I said, “Would you like to walk home with me, Sara? I–I mean, if you’re not hanging out with your friends or anything.”
To my delight, she said, “Sure. Just let me run and tell Karen I won’t be going home with her.”
While she spoke to her friend, I gathered my books and stuffed them into my backpack.
When she was ready, Sara and I squeezed out the front door through the piles of students that were congregated there and headed up the sidewalk.
“Death! Death! Death! Death!” some kids shouted out the windows from the school buses parked along the curb as we passed by.
Sara turned to me with a worried look on her face.
I laughed. “Ignore them. It’s not as creepy as it sounds. That’s what they chant for my father.”
By the baffled look on her face, I knew Sara had no idea what I was talking about. But then, not being a wrestling fan, I didn’t expect her to understand.
We crossed the street, turned the corner, and headed for the quarter mile walk home.
“That took a lot of courage, standing up to Manny and Chester and Hugo the way you did out on the blacktop,” said Sara. “Weren’t you scared they might hurt you?”
I shrugged. “Not really. I figured help was coming. Anyway, you were the one they were hurting. I couldn’t just look the other way and pretend I hadn’t seen anything. I had to stop them.”
“But, Jesse, what if they beat you up or something? They’re the biggest bullies in school.”
It felt nice to hear her sound so concerned about me.
“Sara, do you know what frightens kids the most about fighting?” I asked. “They’re afraid of the pain from getting hit.”
“Well, of course they are,” she said. “Are you going to tell me you’re not afraid of pain?”
“No, not exactly. But I once asked my father how he could handle getting punched and stomped and gouged and slapped all the time. He told me, ‘We’re in the hurting business, Jesse. It’s part of the job. But once you come to terms with the fact that no matter what, you’re going to get hit at some point, you learn to expect and accept the pain. After that, it doesn’t hurt nearly as much.’”
“The ‘hurting business,’” Sara said. “That’s an interesting way of putting what your father does for a living. I guess then, in a way, my dad is in the ‘protection business.’”
“Why? Is he in the Mafia or something?” I teased.
“No, he’s a police officer.”
“Really? My father wanted to be a cop for a while.”
“A cop?” Sara laughed. “How would he arrest criminals? By giving them the Death Drop Pile Driver?”
That made me chuckle. “I thought you said you didn’t watch wrestling.”
“I don’t,” she replied. “I don’t even know what a Death Drop Pile Driver is. It’s just something I hear kids say whenever they talk about your dad.”
“Well, my father wasn’t born the Angel of Death, you know,” I told her. “Long before that, he was Mark Baron, criminal justice major at the University of Texas in Austin. He planned to join the San Antonio Police Department after graduation.”
Sara frowned. With a tinge of disdain in her voice, she said, “I suppose he found being the Angel of Death more thrilling than fighting crime.”
“No, that’s not it,” I told her. “He didn’t become the Angel of Death until years later. He used to play football in college, defensive tackle. His teammates nicknamed him the ‘Mangler’ because of the brutal way he sacked opposing quarterbacks. Anyway, in his senior year, he was drafted by the Dallas Cowboys.”
“Your dad played for the Dallas Cowboys?” Sara asked in astonishment. This obviously impressed her much more than knowing that my father was the Angel of Death.
“No, he never had a chance to play for them. During training camp, he tore some tendons on his right knee and had to have surgery. While he was recuperating, the Cowboys cut him.”
Sara seemed momentarily distracted. Something down the street had grabbed her attention. “Hey, there’s a paletero.” She pointed at an old man pushing a green cart.
“A what?” I asked.
“He’s an ice cream vendor. Don’t tell me you’ve never bought an ice cream from a paletero?”
“I’m such a deprived child,” I said, faking a sad face.
“Come on,” said Sara. “It’s my treat, my reward to you for rescuing me this morning.”
We crossed the street and approached the paletero. He was a hunched-back, old Mexican man. He wore a weather-beaten brown hat that matched his weather-beaten brown face. On his cart, various pictures were pasted of the kinds of frozen treats he sold. The push handle of his wagon had a small bicycle bell attached to it, which he rang as he walked to attract customers.
“I want you to try the watermelon-flavored ice cream,” said Sara. “It’s my favorite.” She turned to the vendor. “Dos de sandía, por favor.”
I stared at her, amazed. “You spoke to him in Spanish!”
“Well, I would have asked him in Chinese, but I’m a little rusty at it,” Sara said, jokingly. “Of course I spoke to him in Spanish, silly.” She took the ice creams and her change from the paletero. “Gracias.”
The old man smiled appreciatively. He headed down the street, pushing his cart, ringing his bicycle bell. Soon he was surrounded by a group of little kids, anxious to sample the paletero’s treats.
“My mom’s Mexican,” Sara explained. “She was born in Monterrey. Her family moved to the United States when she was a little girl. How about you, Jesse? ¿Hablas español?”
“Muy poquito,” I replied. “My parents are much more fluent in Spanish than I am, but we mostly just speak English at home.”
“Qué lástima,” Sara said with a sigh.
We stopped under a tree and ate our ice creams. I could see why Sara’s favorite flavor was watermelon. It was delicious.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt your story about your dad,” said Sara. “What happened to him after he got cut from the Dallas Cowboys?”
“Well, at that point, he had pretty much decided to become a police officer,” I continued. “He was going to move back here, to San Antonio. But while he was working out in a gym in Dallas, a man named Luke Winston approached him. He was an ex-professional wrestler. Luke Winston suggested that my father try his hand at wrestling
. He told him that he still had some contacts in the business if he was interested.”
“Is that how he became the Angel of Death?” Sara asked.
Having gobbled up my “reward,” I looked down the street for the paletero. My taste buds hungered for another watermelon-flavored ice cream, but the old man was gone.
“That’s how he broke into the wrestling profession,” I said, “but he was still a few years away from being the Angel of Death. His first ring name was The Mangler, his college nickname. Actually, he was called Mark ‘The Mangler’ Baron. He played a ‘face.’”
“What do you mean, he played a face?” Sara wanted to know.
“In wrestling, Sara, a ‘baby face’ or a ‘face’ is a ‘good guy.’ The ‘bad guys’ are called ‘heels,’” I explained. “My father wore burnt-orange tights and white boots, the colors of his alma mater, the University of Texas. The number 78, his old football jersey number, was stitched to the back of his trunks. His boots sported pictures of Texas longhorns, the school’s mascot. Fans used to show up in droves to watch him wrestle, mainly because they remembered him from his football days at UT.”
“So when did he become the Angel of Death?” Sara seemed to be growing impatient. For someone who didn’t watch wrestling, she sure seemed to take a lot of interest in my father’s career.
“Do you know what my father looks like?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I told you, I’m not allowed to watch wrestling.”
“Well, my father’s six feet, seven inches tall. He weighs around 320 pounds. With his size, it was difficult to continue promoting him as a face. So after his stint as The Mangler, he wore a black and silver mask and played a heel called the Annihilator. He wrestled as the Annihilator for a good part of his career until he signed up with American Championship Wrestling.”
“That’s when he became the Angel of Death, right?” said Sara.
“Yes. Frank Collins, the ACW promoter, likes to create his own characters. He usually doesn’t allow wrestlers to keep the gimmicks they’ve used with another organization unless it’s a character that’s real popular with the fans.”
“And I take it that as the Annihilator, your dad wasn’t a well-known wrestler,” said Sara.
My Father, the Angel of Death Page 3