Drowning Tucson (22 page)

Who the fuck is this guy? Peanut glared at Jaime with obvious distrust. Jaime shifted his stance a little, trying not to look too stiff. He hoped he didn’t look too soft, but he also didn’t want to appear confrontational. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea.

I told you already. This is Gutierrez’s nephew up from Sierra Vista. He’s gonna be staying around here for a while, and I thought you guys might like to meet.

Who you down with? What’s your set?

Set? What do you mean?

Your clica. Your homies. Your fuckin posse, man. You in a gang or what?

No. That’s not really my thing. Besides, there aren’t really any gangs in Sierra Vista.

Listen homes, there are gangs everywhere. You got that? Here, we ride with the Kings. Latin Kings, por vida. Just so you know.

I’ve heard. I can respect that.

Peanut looked over at Lavinía and gave her a hard stare. He waited a few moments, letting the tension linger in the air, savoring the look on
Jaime’s face. That’s cool, man. You’re cool. Long as you’re not with some other clique we got no problems with you, homes.

Lavinía breathed deeply and squeezed Jaime’s hand. Then she looked at the Kings sitting on the couches and chairs. The room was thick with pot smoke and the electronic music of Nintendo. Ricardo and Gordo were playing some sort of ninja fighting game.

Anyway, guys, I just wanted to bring him by to meet you, so that way if you see him around, you’ll know who he is.

Jaime resisted the urge to blurt out I’M GAY TOO. LET’S JUST GET IT OVER WITH. Instead he looked around and said this is a pretty nice setup you’ve got here, trying to appear comfortable.

Peanut invited them to stay a few, have a couple tokes with us, cocking his head toward the loveseat a few feet away. They sat down and Peanut passed Jaime a joint, just to make sure he wasn’t a cop or anything. Jaime took a hit, coughed, took another, then passed it to Lavinía. She took a tiny hit and passed it back to Peanut. Then she started telling him about some shit that went down at school between Rosa and that bitch Suzy and the joint kept being passed, seeming to Jaime like it went on forever. It never got any smaller. And he wondered how high he was going to get and whether or not he’d say something stupid and couldn’t really tell how long he’d been sitting there, zoning out, listening to the Nintendo, watching as they rolled another joint, and he realized he hadn’t ever really been high before, uncertain what to expect, and he started giggling a little, man, this shit’s pretty good, feeling cotton in his brain, and Lavinía grabbed his arm and shot him a look that said get it under control, which was all she needed to do. He snapped out of it and found his way out of the fog.

Lavinía told Peanut they had to go and pulled Jaime to his feet before he got too high and maybe let something slip that made him seem gay. Jaime started to follow her out but suddenly stopped and faced Peanut. An awkward silence fell over the room. The Nintendo made the only sound. Lavinía pulled lightly on Jaime’s shirtsleeve. Look, Jaime finally asked Peanut. Can we talk out back or something?

The other guys in the room looked at Jaime, a little more critical than before, now that he was trying to get himself alone with one of their own.
After all, since the only thing they had to go on that this kid was all right was Lavinía’s word, it struck them as wrong that Jaime would just walk through the door and then demand an audience with a King.

Jaime considered retracting his question. He hadn’t realized it would be such a strange request. But it was now or never. It wasn’t like he was just going to walk into their place uninvited someday and ask to speak with Peanut again. No, it was best to try to get it out of the way, since Lavinía was here with him and he getting a pass. So he rephrased the question. Look, I’m not trying to interrupt or anything. I just wanted to ask a quick favor. But if you don’t have the time, it’s cool.

Peanut gestured with his head toward the back of the room, where a doorway led outside to the carport. He rose from his seat and Jaime followed, trying to ignore the disapproving glances from the others in the room.

Standing outside, Peanut lit a cigarette and turned to Jaime. He peered at Jaime through the cloud of smoke that surrounded his head, waiting until he’d finished half the cigarette before he spoke. So what do you want? You trying to get in with us or something, cause it’s not that simple, man. You can’t just appear from nowhere, smoke a little weed, and think we’re gonna let you in, no questions asked. This is some organized shit we got going on here, with connections in most of the big cities in the southwest and even up in Chi-town. If that’s your question, you can forget about it.

That’s not what I was going to ask. Jaime stood his ground, his gaze meeting Peanut’s. What I was going to ask might be out of place, so don’t take offense.

Peanut raised his eyebrows, blew the ash off the cherry of his cigarette, and nodded for Jaime to proceed.

It’s like this, man, what I left behind in Sierra Vista was some serious shit. Jaime tried to match the way these machos talked. I can’t get too deep into the story, so let’s just say that some dudes back in Vista took out my boy. Me and this guy were like this—he crossed his index and middle finger together—we knew each other for years. Hell, we grew up together. Same schools. Same church. Our moms were tight. The whole thing. Anyway, these guys, well, I guess you could say they’re
a gang, sort of. But not like you guys here, with the organization and network. This was just a pack of dudes who were out fuckin around one night and decided to off somebody for the fuck of it. Just for the fuck of it. Not over turf, not over bitches or drugs. They just trapped my boy one night and took his ass out. The simple answer is that I want revenge. I need it. I’m sure you’ve had that happen around here. Someone takes out one of your own and you have to retaliate, right?

Peanut didn’t say a word. He smoked and blew on his cigarette. His eyes remained locked to Jaime’s, weighing the truth of his claim. Maybe this guy is just tryin to blow smoke up my ass, tryin to seem all tough and shit when he’s really just testing out how we take care of our own. He might even be from a gang, though his threads are kind of weird. Nothing like the dudes wear around here.

Murmurings from inside the house distracted Jaime, hurrying him to get to the point before he lost Peanut’s attention for good.

I’ll just be up front with you. I need to get my hands on a weapon. A gun. A blade. Anything. It’s just that I can’t keep sittin here and lettin those assholes get away with takin out my boy like that. I don’t know anybody here. Only Lavinía, and we just met through Gutierrez. I’m workin now, helpin out at his shop and shit. So I can come up with the money. I just need to get back at these guys. These fuckin faggots. It stung him to say those words. But he knew he’d made the right decision when Peanut’s eyes squinted. Jaime held his gaze, then moved a step closer. So, can you help me or not?

I’ll see what I can do. Just watch your ass around here. Flipping his cigarette into the driveway, Peanut turned his back on Jaime and retreated to the house, slamming the screen door in Jaime’s face.

Dinners at Rudolfo Gutierrez’s house went something like this: Jaime set the table for two while Rudolfo whistled over the stove in the kitchen. When the food was finally set out and they both took their seats, Rudolfo asked little probing questions. After three months of dinners together, he’d managed to find out Jaime’s reasons for appearing in the shop one afternoon with a backpack full of his belongings. Jaime had eyes that reminded Rudolfo of a one-way mirror. Rudolfo
was certain something hid on the other side, just beyond reach, pictures or shadows or something to explain the premature wrinkles around the boy’s eyes.

By telling Jaime little bits and pieces of his own past, Rudolfo managed to extract parts of Jaime’s story, and what he heard was enough to make him want to grab the boy and hold him close to his chest. To rub his hair and rock him in his lap, telling him the world is indeed a harsh place, but you must not let it get the best of you. You must learn to forgive yourself. And you must learn, especially, to forgive those who have harmed you.

He never touched the boy, but he did try to teach him forgiveness. He told Jaime how he had learned to forgive himself for losing his son and his wife, which was a lie. But each time he tried to help lift some of the burden from Jaime’s shoulders, Jaime cut him off. He simply stopped listening and hunched over closer to his plate, shoving the food into his mouth. This always made Rudolfo feel as if he’d failed miserably, and he wondered if he could help the boy at all. Maybe Jaime was beyond help. He feared what the boy would do, because on the night Jaime revealed his friend’s murder, his eyes clouded over. His entire face turned red, the veins on his forehead crisscrossing and bulging. He clenched his jaw together and kept mumbling, those fuckers, those fuckers, they’ll pay, and Rudolfo Gutierrez shook his head. No amount of coaxing or explaining was going to change the mind of this young man, who was harboring enough hatred in him to keep him fighting day after day.

Rudolfo eventually let the subject drop and tried to lighten the mood by telling jokes he remembered from his school days. Or he would tell Jaime funny stories about the people in the neighborhood. Such as the time he told about the little Nuñez boy who, one morning years ago on his paper route, had fallen over into a row of cactus and had to stay home from school while his brothers and mother picked each individual needle out of his flesh. Jaime liked that one. Rudolfo laughed heartily when he told these stories, but after the dishes were cleared and cleaned, he shuffled off to his bedroom where he threw himself onto his bed, buried his face in his pillow, and wept until he fell into a fitful and bitter sleep.

This was how the dinners always went, so it was no surprise when Jaime revealed one night that he had finally worked out a way to avenge Sammy’s death. Rudolfo listened in horror as Jaime described his plan to get a ride back to Sierra Vista, where he would corner the murderers one at a time and subject them to the worst tortures he could imagine. He might superglue their mouths shut, then watch as they suffocated themselves with panicked breathing when he glued one of their nostrils shut and left a hole in the other one the size of a pinhead. It’s enough to breathe if they’re calm, but they’ll be too freaked. They’ll drown themselves.

Rudolfo tried to talk the boy into scrapping his plans, but knew deep down he still wanted to walk into the army recruitment center downtown and line the recruiters up and shoot them one by one for convincing his son the army was not only a great way to build a future but also a completely safe venture. They had promised Alberto no harm would come to him. All he had to do was enlist and serve four years, and then Uncle Sam would cut him a check. Alberto’s eyes had lit up, overwhelmed by the glory of being able to serve his country. When they slid the papers across the desk for him to sign, Alberto had barely been able to hold the pen to the page he shook so much.

If he could go back to that day at the office, Rudolfo Gutierrez would grab the papers up when they slid them under his son’s nose and tear them to shreds and shove them down the throats of those animals. How could he really tell Jaime to forgive the sick kids who had beaten his friend to death with their bare fists and chains and rocks? If given the chance, Rudolfo knew he would not hesitate to grab each recruiter by the throat and fling him down on the floor and put his knee to the bastard’s neck and flog his head good until the man promised to never take another son from his mother and send him out, scared and ignorant, into a wild jungle halfway across the world to be burned alive by napalm and sent home a twisted and unrecognizable corpse with his weapon welded to his hand and his dogtags melted into his chest.

So he listened to Jaime’s plan and knew there was nothing he could say to change the boy’s mind. Instead, he merely picked up Jaime’s plate and told him to get some sleep, tomorrow is going to be a busy day. But
Jaime didn’t get up and go to bed, instead he stared at the spot where his plate had been moments before and clenched his jaw and his fists, his whole body trembling.

More than anything, Rudolfo wanted to persuade him to reconsider. He worried the boy might get hurt. And he couldn’t help wondering what all this rage might do to the kid. What if he tries to do something to me? I’m too weak to defend myself. I don’t own any weapons. But he went to bed anyway, resolving to lock his door at nights from now on. Just in case. Just in case Jaime flipped out one night and turned into a monster.

But in the morning, the boy was a different person.

After his bath Rudolfo left the bathroom and wandered out to the dining room, where Jaime had a plate of chorizo and a warm stack of tortillas steaming on the table for him.

Jaime sat down, looking refreshed, as if he had no worries other than how to help Rudolfo meet the recent demand for wild orchids at the shop. Jaime was full of smiles, cracking jokes and ribbing Rudolfo about being old and living alone. How in the name of sweet baby Jesus did you ever get by before I got here?