Leaving: A Novel (49 page)

“Please let me up,” Snapple cried out. He lifted his body with his stomach muscles so that both boys could see his face before he fell back against the building again with a thud.

“On the count of three, we’re going to let go of you,” Carlyle yelled.

“No you ain’t, motherfucker. Let me up! Pop, tell them to let me up!”

Carlyle nodded at Love with a smile and a wink, and Love smiled back.

“One.”

“One,” Love repeated.

“I’m going to kick your ass, Pit Bull, unless you pull me back right now,” Snapple yelled.

“Two.”

“Two.” Love nodded at Carlyle, his arms stretched out of his shoulder sockets with the weight of Snapple’s body. Then they both said together:

“Three.”

Love let go of Snapple’s ankle and thrust his hands into the air triumphantly. Snapple screamed and his body flew to one side as Carlyle tried to hold on to just one leg. He had him by the foot and grabbed at his pants, but Snapple was swinging back and forth from the momentum and his other shoe came off in Carlyle’s hand. Like the tail of a snake, Snapple’s foot slid the rest of the way out of the window. They watched him fall six stories down to the cement.

SANTA RITA JAIL

TODAY I READ
to you from Proposition 209, entered in to the State Constitution by Californians in 1998:

AMENDMENT TO ARTICLE I

Section 31 is added to Article I of the California Constitution as follows:

SEC. 31. (a) The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.

CHAPTER 1

JANUARY 1994   •   LOVE 14, LI’L PIT 10

LOVE AND LI’L
Pit finally fell asleep on the bus as it left California, and they woke up the next morning at the stop in Phoenix. They had forty minutes to scrounge up some food. There was a restaurant in the terminal, but without the bag of money from Ruby, the kids were completely broke.

Li’l Pit went to a table that hadn’t been cleared, and he scooped up the remains of scrambled eggs with a piece of half-eaten toast. But the waitress noticed him and removed the leftovers from all the other tables. She dumped the extra food into the trash and then took the busing tray into the kitchen.

“I’m going around back,” Li’l Pit said to his brother. “You comin?”

“You ain’t gonna catch me eatin out of no Dumpster,” Love said. He hadn’t had to do that since before his time at Los Aspirantes, and if there was one thing he’d been told over and again there, it was that you needed to be clean and sanitary. Li’l Pit shrugged and left Love staring at the menu above the round cases of doughnuts and bear claws dripping with white glaze.

The restaurant filled with passengers from early-morning bus routes. The sizzle of bacon and scraping of metal spatulas gnawed on Love’s stomach as the chefs ran around the kitchen yelling out orders and placing food on the service counter. He stared at a plate of sausage and pancakes as the waitress passed by him.

There was a wait for seating now, and Love went up to the first man in line. He had a long beard and long hair, wore blue jeans and a T-shirt.

“Excuse me,” Love said. “Can you spare a dollar for some food?”

PART IV

Everyone else in line, within earshot, immediately straightened up and looked away.

The man rolled his eyes and shook his head but reached in his pocket with a look of obligation. “Here’s all the extra I’ve got.” He handed Love a quarter.

“Thank you.” Love took the quarter and went to the next few people, who, before he asked, shook their heads. He looked at the hanging menu again, but the least expensive item was a doughnut for sixty-five cents. His stomach was so hungry it pulsated like a pounding fist. He went out into the general seating area and looked for the pay phones. He spotted them by a gift shop, but a thin old man in dirty clothes was already checking the return slots.

Love went into the gift shop. The shelves were loaded with desert memorabilia: ceramic sculptures of cacti and snakes, leather Indian tepees and moccasins, the jawbones of a coyote and the horns of a steer. There was also a rack of books and, under the register, a shelf of candy and gum. But all the candy bars cost over fifty cents.

“Can I see one of them radios back there?” Love pointed to the Walkman behind the cashier. When the cashier turned around, Love grabbed a handful of candy bars and lifted them to his pocket. But then he saw a security guard at the edge of the store with his eyes on him.

“This one?” The cashier held out the Walkman.

“How much is it?”

“Thirty-nine ninety-nine.”

“Naw. That’s okay.” He put the candy back and nodded to the security guard as he left the store, like they were old friends.

Around back, beyond the bus stalls, was a large rust-colored Dumpster surrounded by a high gate and barbed wire, so that even people desperate enough to look in the trash couldn’t. But the huge quantity of waste was too large for the terminal to keep up with, so there was a line of additional trashbins outside the gated area waiting to be unloaded.

Li’l Pit went to the last of the Dumpsters in line and stepped onto the wheel carriage. He pulled himself up over the rim and balanced himself on his chest so he could take a look at the offerings. It was only half full. The restaurant’s garbage was mixed in with the mechanic’s and janitor’s garbage, so that under small piles of paper and lint were empty cartons of milk and cans of beans, all surrounded by greasy bottles of oil and darkened rags. In order to reach the food below, Li’l Pit leaned over the edge of the Dumpster, his stomach pressing into the rim, his legs straight out in the air behind him. He sifted through the pencil shavings and paper clips, below the paper towels and gum wrappers. By the time he dug deep enough, his stomach hurt from the edge of the Dumpster. So he let himself slide all the way in like a diver, hands out in front of him. Then he stood up inside, on top of the trash.

His feet sank beneath him and he found himself knee-deep in seating foam and applesauce. He laughed out loud, as if he were being watched by his old crew. But then he began to dig through the top layer of trash, uncovering an area of mostly food items. There were pieces of toast, half-used jam containers, orange slices, bacon strips, and lettuce leaves. He found many partially eaten or uneaten pieces of food, which would have been perfectly edible if they hadn’t been mixed in with the other garbage; but as they were, each was stained with some bit of oil or Liquid Paper. He then spotted a Styrofoam take-out container with a lid and dug it out carefully like a buried skull. He popped it open and found the food still organized into separate compartments, some scrambled eggs with catsup and two and a half sausage links. The links were covered in some white-ish liquid that was probably milk, though he lifted one and smelled it to be sure. He also found an unused plastic orange-juice container with its aluminum-foil top still sealed. Although it was damaged, bent at the side and leaking, there was still enough in it to accompany a meal.

Li’l Pit was too hungry to wait. He stood in the Dumpster and scarfed down the sausage links and eggs, then peeled off the orange-juice top and drank it down quickly. He finished and tossed the containers to the side. Nothing else looked salvageable in this Dumpster, and he decided to check out the other ones. He tried to move to the edge of the bin but found he had sunk up to his waist in trash.

As he pulled his left shoe out and over onto the top of the heap, he noticed it was soaking wet with something very similar to the color of grape juice. He had to lie forward onto the trash in order to get both legs fully out, which put his face an inch away from a powerful smell of fish and ammonia. As he pushed with his hands to stand up, they quickly sank into the pile and he smashed the side of his face into a wet mush. His arms were now deep in the garbage, and as he pulled each one out, they too were streaked with dark oil and an unidentifiable white liquid. The front of his shirt and pants were also covered with jam and coffee grounds. He was literally covered in garbage to the point that he seemed to be a part of it.

“Hey!” he yelled, sinking down with every attempt to turn and get on top. He kicked the side of the Dumpster and made a thunderous banging. “Hey, I’m stuck! Hey.”

A bus started and the engine drowned him out completely. He stopped yelling and struggled some more. Then, without warning, a bucketful of garbage came over the top of the Dumpster and rained on his back.

“Hey, there’s somebody in here, you know!”

A Native American man’s face appeared at the edge.

“Don’t you look where you’re throwing things?” Li’l Pit yelled at him.

“No. Not usually.”

“Well, are you going to help me out?”

The man reached his hand down and Li’l Pit grabbed it. He catwalked up the slick metal wall, and the man lifted him the rest of the way and put him on the ground.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” the man asked.

“That ain’t none of your business.” Li’l Pit brushed himself off as best he could.

“You sleep in there last night?”

“Naw! I didn’t sleep in no garbage can. What you think I am, a rat?” He walked away from the man, across the parking lot to the terminal, and just as he reached the door, Love came out to meet him. He panicked when he saw Li’l Pit.

“What happened to you? They ain’t gonna let you on the bus like that!”

“Where you think I’m going? I’m about to find the bathroom.” Love walked with his brother back inside, trying his best to shield him from the view of the other passengers. They went into the bathroom and Love pulled out a pile of paper towels as Li’l Pit took off his shirt and dunked it in a sinkful of water.

“Did you get food?” Love asked.

“A little.”

“I was just about to come see what you got. These people ain’t nothin but s-t-i-n-g-y,” he spelled.

“I’m still hungry.”

“I feel ya. We got to get some money.”

“I’m gonna ask for change. They always pity a little kid like me.”

“You do look awful pitiful right now. I just hope they let us back on the bus with you all smelly like that.”

Love washed off his brother’s face and legs and squeeze-dried his shirt. By the time Li’l Pit came out of the bathroom, he looked like he’d been swimming with his clothes on.

“We got to hurry up,” Love said.

They stood by the entrance to the terminal, and Love let Li’l Pit do the begging, holding out a plastic beer cup.

He tried a few different approaches. First he was sad and scared: “Please, don’t you have any extra money for food for two little kids?” The few people who looked at them shook their heads and smiled apologetically. Then he tried to push them: “Come on, man, I know you got some money.” No one took well to the accusation. He eventually started insulting them when they didn’t give anything. One woman shook her head and put on her sunglasses. “Ugly ole bitch,” Li’l Pit said. “Probably couldn’t earn nothin for yourself last night.”

A few people who were standing in front of the terminal waiting for rides kept glancing back at the boys. In a quiet moment, when no one was passing through the doorway, Li’l Pit began to rap toward them:

I know you hear us

’Cause you standin near us

You keep turnin ’round

Then lookin at the ground.

All we askin for is dimes

But you ain’t got no time

To help us get some food

And you know that you just rude.

One of the women in a yellow dress turned, smiled at them, and dropped a few coins in their cup.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” Li’l Pit said genuinely. He grabbed the change and counted it.

“Fifty-five cent.”

“Keep rappin,” Love said. This time he laid down a back beat for his little brother that went “Boom, ba-
boom
-boom, ba-boom-
bap!
Boom, ba-
boom
-boom, ba-boom-
bap!
”

We the LeRoy boys

Comin in from Oaktown

You can listen from your rear

To our beefy phat sound.

Put your money in our cup

so our stomachs can fill up

We could come out there an take it

Or our mama could go make it

But we comin to you for change

So to keep us outta gangs.

Every other person seemed to drop something in their cup now. One man put in a whole dollar bill, and a kid put in a Canadian penny, which Li’l Pit said he would save for a collection. After ten minutes of rapping, they’d earned enough money to each get the $1.99 egg, hash brown, and toast breakfast. But there was no time to eat at the station.

They bought their food and started to chow down as soon as they got on the bus. When they finished eating, Li’l Pit made up new lyrics for the next stop, and Love wrote them down for him. Then they talked about their dreams, not of getting spare change, but of being discovered and getting a record contract when they got to South Carolina.

*   *   *

AFTER PHOENIX, THEY
rapped for money in Tucson and made enough to split a dinner. It was the last long stop until Dallas, eleven hours away. They left at six-thirty, and Love slept through the short stop in El Paso, but at one in the morning, he was wide awake again and hungry. A pocket of emptiness pulsated in his stomach as he pushed against it with his forearm.

The hunger was awakened in him by the smell of food coming from somewhere in the bus cabin. He stood up and noticed a single light over a pair of seats six rows up. He didn’t know how he would do it, but he had to get some of that food. He walked up the aisle and heard the chewing. He smelled garlic and tomatoes, not that he knew the exact smells, but he knew it was spaghetti sauce or maybe a meatball sandwich or lasagna.

He heard whispers and saw hair wound up like a cobra’s on the head of a girl in an aisle seat; through the space between the seats, he saw the face of the girl sitting by the window, an oak-colored face, with short red hair as short as velvet. This girl by the window had a large red apple in her hand and opened her mouth as tall as a lion’s, as if her jaw unhitched. The juice dripped from the apple onto her chin. She laughed and quickly wiped it with the sleeve of her sweater, then chewed as she shoved part of it into one cheek.