Blood Relations (6 page)

The monitor gestured quickly for me to get up and out, then buried himself in papers again. Walking across the front of the room, I felt a surge of power as I watched every jaw in the place drop to the floor. Ruben’s eyes bugged. Baba’s narrowed.

“Hey, can he come?” I said to Toy, indicating Ruben.

Toy knew what I was up to. “Points?” he asked, mockingly.

I tried to be indignant. “No, I’m not trying to score points with anyone. Maybe I just like the guy.”

Toy actually snickered over that, as he walked back to the desk. “Ya, maybe you do,” he said.

“Cruz, get outta here,” the monitor snapped.

Ruben hopped out of his seat and made a grand exit, extra bounce in his step, big smiles, eye contact, and nods for everybody left behind. On the way out the door I took one more look toward the back of the room, where Baba was taking good long note of the three of us together.

“Jeez, Toy,” I said, “with that kind of power, why do you ever show up at jug at all?”

He refused to enjoy it, which drove me crazy. “You can’t use something like that every day, or you lose it altogether.”

“So, give it up,” Ruben said. “Whatchu got on him?”

“Nothing,” Toy answered in his now familiar end-of-discussion deep rasp. “You can go back in there if you want.”

Ruben raised his hands, surrender-style. “I didn’t ask no questions. I don’t need to know nothing.”

When we opened the front doors, Sully was there, waiting for me on the corner. When he saw Toy and Ruben, he hung his head and walked off. I called him once, but he didn’t answer. I thought about chasing after him, but I couldn’t do that. Sully was going to have to come around to new stuff. He had to. I wasn’t going back, and he wasn’t going to hold me back.

Toy, Ruben and I went to the superette, sat outside on milk crates, and smoked little cigars like we did before. I sat back and listened as Toy and Ruben talked about Cuban cigars, which I had never had, and how much better they were than Dominican ones. They talked about some other stuff I didn’t know too, talked some of it in Spanish. I felt kind of foreign, and I felt kind of lost, but I figured it would pass.

W
E SLIPPED BACK INTO
the old routine of meeting at the superette before and after school to smoke cigars. We hadn’t even discussed it, just found each other there at the right times again. Except this time there was no Sully, there was Ruben. He could have come, Sully, if he wanted to. The thing is he just doesn’t like new people, doesn’t like things to change, can’t deal with new stuff. Me, I needed new stuff.

My first new thing, besides Evelyn I guess, and besides Ruben, who was such new stuff he was frightening, was I got a hat. I went down to Walker’s, the one place in town that has all the hardest-core biker gear and all the real cowboy gear, which up close turns out to be pretty much the same thing. I looked the walls up then down, at high black square-toed mechanic boots, pointy gray snakeskin Acme cowboy boots, green lizard Tony Lamas, Dingos, spurs for jabbing your horse or motorcycle into going faster, T-shirts with big old Harley-Davidson eagles spread across the back and wolves or buffalo or mountain lions or black bears snarling on the front. There was a pair of size 14 elephant-skin boots. I felt like a better man just being there.

If I had the money I would have walked out of Walker’s taller than I was, wearing those black, knee-high square-toed mothers with the stainless steel tips. But I didn’t have the money for that yet so I bought the hat. The scoop-top Georgia straw hat with the brim bent all the way low to my nose in front and practically to the top of my shirt collar in back. I had to tilt my head back to see how I looked in the mirror, but that was fine because what I saw there looked
cool
, cooler ten thousand times than anything I’d ever seen there before, and the tilt of the head only made it look cooler.

And it did make me taller too. I knew I’d shopped well when I went to leave the house with it on in the morning and Terry yelled from the table, “Yo, Buckeroo Buttlick, take that stupid-ass wastebasket off your head before you go outside and embarrass the whole family.”

“Shut up, Terry,” Dad said in a dumb big whisper that I wasn’t supposed to hear but of course I did. “If you don’t talk about the damn stupid thing, he’ll take it off in a couple a days.”

I didn’t answer them, because that was becoming one of my favorite things to do, not answering them. I marched out, slammed the door, and bounded down the stairs, knowing how much slicker, and taller, I was now.

Until I saw Toy. As he watched me come up on the superette, he got up off his crate. I felt a big not-quite-cool grin open up my face but it was okay because the hat had it mostly covered. When I stood in front of him, I was ready to burst waiting for his comment.

He slapped it right off my head.

I stood, no longer smiling as I watched Toy kick the hat into the gutter. Water actually welled up in my eyes, even though there was no reason for it, none. He didn’t slap
me
, he wouldn’t do that, but he slapped the hell out of that hat. And I sort of expected a lot out of that hat. Expected a lot out of me
in
it. Expected a lot out of Toy.

“You’re not me,” he said, stomping the hat. It half sounded as if he was addressing the hat, not me. “Don’t
try
to be me, don’t
pretend
to be me, don’t
aspire
to be me.”

I had seen Toy be intense before, and even inexplicably strange. I hadn’t seen him be nuts before, though. His voice didn’t go up higher than usual, he didn’t rant, just stomp stomp stomped my new Georgia straw bent brim hat from Walker’s. I didn’t quite know whether to be more hurt or more afraid of him. I knew which way I
felt,
though. I turned to walk on to school.

“Wait a minute,” he said.

I waited, as he slowly picked the beat-up hat off the ground and walked toward me. “I’m sorry,” he said.

But he didn’t give it back.

He continued on to the trash barrel, dumped the hat inside. Then he came back to me, stuck a ten-dollar bill in my hand. The hat cost me twenty-five. And it would cost me a lot more if Terry ever got around to counting the gym bag full of one-dollar bills in the corner of his closet and found out I stole a fistful.

“That should cover it,” Toy said. “I mean, I hope you didn’t pay more than that for that piece of crap.”

I stuck the ten in my pocket. “No, come on, what do you think, I’m stupid?”

“I’m sorry,” he repeated. He didn’t add anything like an explanation, but he’d already said sorry twice more than I would have expected. He stuck an obscenely fat cigar in my hand and sat back down on his milk crate. “Cuban,” he said as he lit one for himself.

“Here, this is better for you anyway,” Ruben said, popping up and jamming his own hat on my head from behind.

I spun to look at him.

“Bueno,”
he said, nodding several times and smiling his broad, no-front-teeth smile. “Wanna know what I think, you looked pretty stupid in that cowboy hat anyway.”

“You were watching,” I said, feeling a new level of stupid.

“Right over there,” he said, pointing to a mailbox across the street. “Thing is, Mike—”

“Mick.”

“Thing is, you gotta be a big
persona
to gedawaywit wearing something like that.” He pointed at Toy with his thumb. “This one, big. Beeeeeg
persona.
And you know what? Even he can’t gedawaywidit. Look like a big dope, don’t he?” Cruz laughed and walked up to Toy, who stuck out his hand. “¿
Porqué
, man? Acting all mental already, so early in the morning. Beating up on the guy’s
sombrero
?”

They shook hard and Toy blew smoke in Ruben’s face, squeezing his hand harder and harder until Ruben’s knees bent. He didn’t make a sound, though, or ask Toy to stop.

I took the hat off and checked it out. It was like an old man’s hat, a gray felt fedora with a black band. Inside was a bright yellow silk lining. The hat Ruben always wore. I fixed it back on my head.

“It fits you nice,” he said, walking up to me to adjust it to about a forty-five degree backward tilt. “There you go. You know, you’re taller than me, but I do have this really big head. Everybody says so.” He bent down to give me the full on-top view of his head.

“I see,” I said.

“It’s good on you, Mick,” Toy said easily, like nothing had happened.

“It feels good,” I said, sliding it off then on again.

Ruben turned to Toy again. “If you’re happy, I’m happy.” Then to me. “If you’re happy, I’m happy. The hat is yours.” He held out his hand. “Ten dollars.”

“You were watching pretty close,” I said, pulling out the ten Toy’d just handed me.

“All
right
,” Ruben laughed. “Now I can go out and buy me ten more a them cheap-ass hats.”

To close the deal, Ruben pulled out his lighter and lit my cigar. Toy threw one to Ruben and soon we were all floating in a fog of Havana smoke.

“
Dios mío,
this is freakin’ fan
tas
tic,” Ruben said, and they both nodded. They made moans and yumm sounds like they were munching chocolate-covered macadamia nuts. The first long pull tasted strong, bitter, but good, burning up inside my sinuses. Then I started going downhill. My stomach jumped, I got a headache, and the back of my mouth started watering uncontrollably, prevomit condition.

“It’s almost time for school,” I warbled as I stubbed out the ash on the sidewalk. “I’m gonna save this for later.”

I didn’t wait for any response. The two of them looked knowingly at each other, and I just started walking, weaving like a drunk toward the school, trying to hold it together. The street ahead floated in a heat-vapor wave, making me sicker. In a few seconds, they were there again, Toy on my left side, Ruben on my right, bumping me with their shoulders, keeping me up and steady. They knew. But they didn’t make me say it.

By the time we reached the school, I was clearer. Not quite lifelike yet, but better. I still needed a minute of air before going into the school, which always smelled like wet smoke and oil paint anyway. Toy was going inside. He stopped to look me over again.

“You look good,” he said, pointing at the hat, or maybe at my face. I reached up to rub my hot-then-cold temple, and the skin felt like the skin on old pudding left in the back of the refrigerator.

“I do?” I asked.

“You do.
Cambio está bueno
,” he said as he went in. “I’ll catch you later.”

Ruben was still next to me. “What did he say?” I asked him.

“He said you was a asshole.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Hey, you know, you done all right,” Ruben said. “Smokin’ on that big ol’ Cubano. You didn’t fall down or nothin’, so that was pretty good.”

“Thanks again,” I said. “Listening to you is gonna give me a big head, the way you throw around compliments.”

“Serious, Mark—”

“Mick.”

“Serious, that was a little kindova test, and you passed it all right. You might not turn out ta be such a stupid shit as you seem.”

I didn’t suppose it was going to get any better than this, so I made my little pitch.

“Listen, Ruben, man, I know we didn’t always get along too good, but I think we should put all that stuff in the past. All right with you?”

“All right with me. Long’s you don’t turn out ta be no fool. You got a rep, man. As a big-time fool.”

“Ya, well, that rep’s wrong.”

“No it ain’t. I seen you be a fool. I seen you on TV. And if there’s anybody stupider than a ordinary fool, it’s somebody who be’s a fool on the TV.”

The goddamn sonofabitch TV thing. Did I think that it went away? Did I think people forgot? Did I think that somehow, the day Baba cleaned my clock that he somehow cleaned everybody’s, wiping out all the time that came before then? Yes. I did think that. But every time I heard it mentioned again, I wished Baba or somebody could please come and hit me in the head again, and again, and again, so I wouldn’t have to hear it even once more.

“Okay, man, the rep wasn’t wrong, exactly, but it’s out of date. I’m not that. Not now.”

The bell screeched, calling us inside.

“Okay,” Ruben said, shrugging, walking in.

That was easy, I thought. So I swung for the fences. “You know, I’m kind of seeing your sister, so we might be seeing—”

“
My
sister?” he asked, appearing shocked.

“Ya, Evelyn. So—”

“I ain’t got no sister Evelyn. I got a sister Juana.”

“Juana?”

“And listen, if you gonna wear the hat, you gotta button your shirt.” He stepped up and buttoned my shirt tight at the neck. Then he yanked the shirttail out of my pants. I looked like I was in the band Los Lobos. “Gotta let it
hang
, baby,” he said, stepping back to admire me. “Pants are too tight, and the shoes are all wrong, but you’s movin’ the right way.”

“Okay, but about me and your sister—”

“Forget it. My sista’s too ol’ for you. She don’t live around here anyway. Find somebody your own... style.”

“I don’t want...” I said, but he ducked into a classroom as the bell rang. He had me confused, thinking more about Evelyn, wanting to talk to her. But I started toward class, and as I felt myself move, felt the collar grabbing at my neck, the hat sitting up there, the shirt
hangin’
, I lightened up. I swung when I walked. I felt a little different. Which is to say I felt good.

Sully stared me naked as I walked down to the seat right in front of him. “What the hell happened to you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, turning my back to him.

“Yes you do,” he said. “You’re all greased up. Like the spaniels. You a spaniel now, Mick?”

I turned around in my seat. “Y’know, Sul, you’re a real ignoramus when you want to be.”

“Hey, I may be an ignoramus, but at least I ain’t no pretend spaniel just to get a little face off some chick.”

Even as he said it he looked like he was afraid, and he should have been. But he looked more angry, at me, for whatever.

“Hey, Sul, remember when we were ten and you whipped that kid with the car antenna ’cause he was kickin’ my ass? Well, because you did that, I’m not killin’ you now. But remember, you only saved me that one time.”