Kung Fu High School (9 page)

"What else?" Jimmy was behind me again.

"Boil six hot dogs in—" I was pointing to a small pot but the sander stopped abruptly and I got interrupted by Cue.

"Eight hot dogs, you know I need my protein!" The sander started right back up again. Sneaky bastard had the best ears of anyone I knew.

"Okay, eight, and just leave those two extra out for Cue's plate. The rest get chopped up and put in the mac, okay?"

With Jimmy and I both working on dinner, it went pretty quick. I accidentally dumped some paprika in the mixture and later Dad said it was the best I ever made so there you go.

After dinner, I got Dad to bed early and we didn't have any recurrence of bathroom problems. I checked and made sure that he didn't need my help and he said he was fine. So Jimmy borrowed some of Cue's warm clothes and we all walked out the door to Remo's mom's house. I made sure the oven was off and closed the door fast behind us, then locked it tight, to keep the heat in.

It was getting darker and colder as the three of us walked the two blocks to the Rodriguez house. Remo wouldn't mind us being a little late. We didn't go out in the open. Cue led. Jimmy and I followed him as he cut through Mr. Hampton's yard, up onto the picnic table, over the fence, and through Mrs. Johnson's rock garden. She had it done up in a Zen motif and Cue said she'd be sure to notice our footprints next morning so I had to go get her special rake leaning against the house and re-scrape everything in a big oval after we walked through. I made Jimmy hold the tamales that I had made for Remo's mom, then I had to take a running leap at Mrs. Johnson's unfinished six-foot-high fence. Of course I got a bunch of splinters when I clung onto the top. But it was that or rake again, and I didn't feel like it.

Once I was over the fence we followed the rut in the field all the way to Tell Hill. You can actually see a huge chunk of the spreading suburbs from there because the whole thing got developed on an incline: all yellow dots of light with the occasional blinking red from the new power plant towers. A quick right and we were on the cul-de-sac, then another right. Almost lost Jimmy though and I had to grab him by the belt to make sure he didn't walk off into the dark in the wrong direction. It was Cue's belt and it was too big, so when I grabbed it, I got a lot of it in my hand. Like pulling back a slingshot but only getting slack.

When we got to the front door, I stood in front but Cue knocked. He had our backs. Until we were in the house, we weren't safe. That was the general rule of thumb: no relaxing until inside, until you could lock a door. Once you were inside you could do whatever you wanted, you could be yourself again, but not outside. You never knew who could follow.

When Remo opened the door I said, "Meals on Wheels," and pushed past him into the warm living room. Their heat hadn't gotten turned off. Lucky bastards.

"Yeah, yeah, come on in. Hey, Jimmy, looking good out there but come into the light here so I can check you out." Remo was wearing his black Green Lantern T-shirt, with just the symbol on it that looks like a white circle around a green "O" but with a horizontal line at the top and bottom. He always looked skinnier without his white lab coat on. I think he was trying to grow a beard too.

"Any concussion signs on this guy, Jenner?" Remo shut the door behind us and locked all three locks: both deadbolts and the chain. He pulled out his penlight and looked in Jimmy's eyes, then made Jimmy follow his finger left, right, before he was satisfied.

"Nope," I said. Remo looked at the green bowl I was holding and the little flecks of blood on it. Then he looked at my hands.

"Damn, Cue, why don't you rake for once? C'mere, Jenner." Remo set my covered bowl down on the hall table. "You know you can clear that jump better than she can."

"You worry about your own business. My sister can take care of herself." Cue winked at me after he said it. When he talked like that, it was hard not to feel a little pride at being worse for the wear. That was just one of the qualities that made him our leader.

"Ma, can you get me a bowl of hot water please?" Remo grabbed Jimmy and Cue's coats, tossed them onto a chair. Well, they were both Cue's coats, but it didn't matter to Remo.

All the walls in the house were painted a dusty tan color, even the wooden trim on the doorways. Here and there, hung up on the walls, they had these great Aztec relics. Well, replica relics of masks and stuff but they were really cool. Better than our house. We just have movie posters and sports stuff up.

"Huh?" Remo's mom was watching a dubbed version of
Matlock
on Telemundo and not really listening to us. She's the cutest old lady in the world.

"
¡Mamá, tráigame un tazón de agua caliente!
"

"
Sí, sí.
" Mrs. Rodriguez shuffled into the kitchen and came back with a yellow bowl but no water, warm or otherwise.

"Sit," Remo said to me and went to fill the bowl himself By the time he came back with it, his mom had discovered the food.

"
¡Ay los tamales! Gracias, señorita.
" She clapped her hands together when she said the words and then did a kind of dance where she dipped and swayed at the knees. Like I said, so cute.

I always make my dad's mom's tamale recipe for Mrs. Rodriguez when we come to visit. I know that she doesn't eat too good with Remo always cooking. Sometimes I bring over two meals a week, but usually at least one. Tamales are one of the only things I can do well though, so I've had to be good with experimenting or else it would get too boring. I made tuna tamales once but that was a disaster. I mostly just stick to ground beef or chicken, but I make pork when we can afford it.

Remo's mom has early onset Alzheimer's. She'd be asking me who I was in ten minutes. You get used to it eventually. Her condition is why Remo lived at home still. He was probably twenty-six when she got diagnosed. He'd definitely be married and super rich and successful by now if he didn't insist on staying at the free clinic and taking care of his mom.

"So I hear there's a guy
en el hospital
who needed some real TLSC." Remo was looking right at Cue. "Tender loving sternum care."

"Really?" Give Cue credit. He genuinely sounded surprised.

"Dr. Vanez got called in. Saved the kid's life, as per usual." Remo looked at Jimmy, who was sitting down on the arm of the chair I was sitting in.

"That's good. I've heard of Vanez. He's the best supposedly." Cue knew Vanez real well. The guy was an orthopedic surgeon and a legend. When we still had a mom and a family insurance policy because of her teaching job, Vanez rebuilt Cue's shoulder. He did an amazing job too. Unless I'm a foot or two away from his skin, I can't see the scars. They blend real well.

"Indeed he is," Remo said, "indeed he is."

He made me soak my hands in the hot water. It was almost too hot. Then he took out his tools and sterilized one of the needles before picking out the splinters. Total: five, but one big one underneath a fingernail. That hurt, but as far as splinters went, it was pretty good for me. Last time it was seven. Remo didn't stop with just the removal though. He dried my palms with a towel and then rubbed this real dark brown stuff on my hands. It smelled like tequila and evergreen trees but it looked like mud.

"What the hell is this?" I asked. He'd picked splinters out of my hands before but never used brown stuff to salve it.

"Good Mexican medicine, just keep your palms up until they dry. Then rinse it off" Remo went to put his tools away.

"Just as long as it isn't shit," I said, and I heard Remo laugh from down the hall but he didn't contradict me. Great. It probably was shit, part of it anyway.

We said goodnight to Mrs. Rodriguez as she got shepherded back to her own room to watch the rest of her show. I did always wonder if she could keep up with those mysteries. I mean,
Matlock
was an hour long so I'm sure she'd forgotten everybody by the time they figured out who the killer was.

"So, what did you bring for me today? Jeunet
y
Caro? A little
Delicatessen?
" Remo was anxious but probably because he thought we forgot to bring a video again.

"Warm. Better than that though." Cue pulled a video out of his back pocket. It was wrapped in brown paper. Jimmy and I moved over to the couch and just waited for their little dance to end. Disappointingly, he didn't smell like licorice anymore. I brushed by him to check, dragged the flat of my knee across his, not too slowly, just as I sat down next to him but made real sure to leave a few inches in between in case he thought I was doing it on purpose.

"
Dogme 95?
" Remo shouted it from the kitchen. He had put popcorn on the stovetop.

"Colder. Better than that crap." Cue squeezed in between Jimmy and me. Bastard.

"What is it, man? Just tell me."

Pop.

"
Hate.
"

Pop. Pop.

"Hater?"

Pop.

"Yeah,
La Haine.
It's French."

Pop. Pop. Pop.

"Is it any good?"

Pop. Pop.

I could hear Remo pull his popcorn off the burner early. He was a weird guy. For some reason he liked his popcorn really underdone and he'd eat the kernels all the time, real loudly, always during the most tense moments in the movie too.

"
Jusqu'ici, tout va bien
...mon
ami ... jusqu'ici, tout va bien ...
"

"What the hell is that supposed to mean? I asked if it was any good."

"So far so good."

"Well, put it in, I got to see this."

Mrs. Rodriguez had a VCR from like 1986. It was a top loader. Bad as it was though, it was better than nothing. We didn't even have one. We had to come over to the Rodriguez house to watch anything. That is, if we hadn't already seen it at the video store on Bleak while some Wave was working.

Well, normal me, quiet Jimmy, loud Cue, and popcorn-crunching Remo finally shut up and watched the movie and Remo ended up loving it. The little French wannabe gangsters getting sucked into something so much bigger than them because of a lost gun that they found and how all the time they were looking for revenge when one of their buddies got hurt by the cops, he loved all of that. In fact, even though it was just a copy the video clerk gave us, he bought it for five bucks.

"Take the car," he said when we were getting our coats on to leave. "I'm too tired to drive you."

"No, that's cool, Remo. It's not too late. And we got three." Mr. Cue, always the tough guy. I wouldn't've minded a ride in a warm car.

"The way I hear it, you got two and a half" Remo didn't need to look at Jimmy this time. "Just leave the keys under the mat, I'll pick it up in the morning."

Alfredo loved his kinfé, probably slept next to it too. When we pulled up outside of our house, he was standing there, playing with it. We don't call them knives here because they're so much more than knives. For one, they're smaller. Two, they're sharp on all four sides, sort of like an awl but longer and with a different blade. Always homemade, but not like a prison shiv that's just made out of anything hard enough to sharpen. It takes a whole lot more to make a kinfé and you got to pronounce it right too. Kinfé, like kin-fay, right? I've seen kids beaten up for saying it all wrong: ka-nee-fay. You ever hear someone call it that, it's usually followed by a good smack.

When making one, you got to find the right metal, or the right knives. The easiest ones to make come from just stripping four knives of their blades, cutting them in half and then taking the cutting edges and welding or fusing them together, edges out, so that the whole thing looks like an extended tip of a Phillips head screwdriver and sharp all around. It takes skills to make good ones but there's plenty of crap out there. I heard some guys in the Whips make theirs to be disposable and just put them together with sharpened plastic and superglue, then they use duct tape for the handles. The Hunters though, they take theirs real seriously. Most take about a week to make and

FIGURE 5. HOW TO MAKE A KINFÉ (BLADE)