Little Boy Blue (30 page)

Fifteen minutes later they slipped out the
back way into the alley. High board fences, some sagging, hid them from the
adjacent houses and any possibly curious eyes. At the corner they turned onto
the sidewalk of a hillside street. The slope was not severe, but the hill
overlooked the Los Angeles harbor beginning two miles away and stretching to
the distance. The bright morning sunlight turned the calm harbor waters into
molten gold. “Man, that’s beautiful,” Alex said.

“Well, let’s go down to Cabrillo
Beach when we get that weed and eat.”

“Yeah… good idea,” Alex
said, standing another few seconds to look at the panorama, suffused with awe
so potent that it ached. The anchored ships were strewn across the water; some
still wore the paint of war. Others were drab, long tankers, or bulky cargo
ships with booms. One was huge and white, with a giant red cross on its side
and across its top. The arc of the shoreline had a conglomeration of
structures, the otherworldly silhouettes of an oil refinery next to giant
silver oil-storage tanks. Shipyards were there, with drydocks and giant cranes
that reminded Alex of prehistoric birds— and in the distance the skyline
of Long Beach glinted in the sunlight.

“Let’s go, man,” JoJo said.
“Any cop ‘round here knows me.”

At the bottom of the hill was the main
business street, thick with pedestrians. Alex looked at the faces, all of them
intent and serious on their own business. He wanted to scream out his happiness
at being free and able to see the world. It was a street primarily of the poor,
with small markets, a day-old bakery, small men’s shops and a Goodwill
store. The pool hall entrance was down an alley off the boulevard. Of the six
tables, two were for snookers, and just one of the six was in use. Four
Chicanos dressed much the same as JoJo and Alex were playing. It took a minute
for the newcomers’ eyes to adjust to the dimness after the outside
brightness.

“Eh, JoJo!” one of the quartet
said loudly, stopping the game. “When’d you raise, man?” He
shook hands and patted JoJo’s back.

“Hey, Rico, baby.
I didn’t
raise
. I
split.
Me and this dude here.”

The conversation paused while JoJo introduced
Alex to Rico, and the two shook hands. The other three players watched for half
a minute and then ignored what was going on. It was a lot of protocol for
teenagers, but these youths lived in a harder world than those of the middle
class. Alex felt the dark eyes studying him as he shook hands. Rico was
slender, fighting acne, his age anywhere from fifteen to eighteen.

“Got any grass?” JoJo asked.

“Quantos?”
Rico asked.

“A lid… half a
lid.
Not joints.”

“Go to the Toledo, man,” Rico
said.

“Got change, man, for a twenty?”

“Hey, brother,
you
gettin’
rich.” Rico turned and spoke Spanish to one of his
associates. Then to JoJo: “We got change.”

Alex waited while JoJo went to the
men’s room at the rear, followed by Rico and the Chicano he’d
spoken to in Spanish. The other two ignored Alex, and he ignored them,
meanwhile rolling a billiard ball across the green velvet of an empty table to
have something to do.

The trio was gone for one minute. When they
came out, Rico came over with JoJo and spoke to Alex. “I got a cousin in
Whittier, man. JoJo says he’s a friend of yours.
Lulu
Cisneros from Temple Street.”

Alex’s face lighted up with a grin.
“Yeah, man, Lulu’s my buddy. He’s a good guy.”

“How’s he doin’?”

“He’s doing all right—all
right as you can do there. He did have a motherfucker of a fight with Spider
Contreras from Eastside- Clover. One of the baddest fights I’ve ever
seen. They punched toe- to-toe for five minutes—wingin’ punches
from the shoulder. It was even. But Spider is supposed to be a duke.”

Rico listened, grinning, the anedote of
courage and toughness a thing of pride. “When does he raise?”

“He goes to the Youth Authority board
in a couple months… October, I think. He should be out for
Christmas.”

“Yeah, man, cool.” The Chicano
offered his hand, and Alex took it, nodding and winking. “If you need
anything,” Rico continued, “come on by. If I’m not here, one
of these guys will be… and they’ll know where to find me.”

“Thanks, man,” Alex said, then
glanced to JoJo, who gave a head motion of “Let’s go.”

As they
walked toward the door, Alex felt good at being accepted by Rico, hence
Rico’s friends.

The marijuana was in a paper bag stapled at
the top.

“I hope it ain’t full of stems
and seeds,” JoJo said.

“We’ll see when we get where
we’re goin’.”

“We’re goin’ to the beach,
remember. Let’s get something to drink. Weed makes my mouth dry.”

“That’s a good idea.”

“How’s ale sound? It’s a
lot more potent than beer.”

“Yeah, that’s cool, too.”

They found a wino leaning in the doorway of a
flophouse hotel. For half a dollar (he could buy Muscatel) he took their money
into a liquor store and came out with two quarts of ale and a bottle opener.
Then they took a nearly empty bus two miles to the stop for Cabrillo Beach,
where they had to walk down a steep sidewalk.

Part of the beach, to the right, faced the
open sea, but on a right angle to the left the beach was behind the giant
seawall that created vast Los Angeles Harbor—the largest
man-made
harbor in the world.

The beach cafe and small museum of
oceanography were at the bottom of the street, near where the breakwater
separated sea from harbor. So, too, were most of the people. The beach open to
the sea was small because the cliffs came down to the water a few hundred yards
northward. But the beach within the harbor was two miles or more in length,
several hundred yards wide beneath the cliffs of Fort Douglas McArthur (sic).
Nobody trekked very far up this beach, or at least Alex saw nobody, and the
sand touched by the tide wasn’t marred by recent feet.

Alex removed his shoes and walked barefooted
on the hard- packed damp sand. Because it was within the seawall there was no
real surf, just softly lapping water at low tide exposing the harbor’s
flotsam cast upon the shore to the high-water mark. The two boys trudged and
drank the ale. Eventually they reached where the beach curved sharply away from
the cliffs. Ahead was a fence jutting into the
water.
Beyond was private property and a yacht marina, a line of floating docks with
myriad pleasure craft tied up side by side— everything from a twenty-foot
cabin cruiser to a hundred-foot motorsailer, though the largest yachts were
anchored offshore. Another
man-made
breakwater of
granite blocks separated the marina from the vastness of the harbor.

Beneath the seventy-five-foot cliffs of the
fort they found an empty antiaircraft gun emplacement. The cannon
was
gone, but the pit, trenches, and sandbags remained,
though one already had leaked its contents into the wooden slots of the floor.
They went down a ladder and were out of the wind. It was a good place to roll
the joints, and an old newspaper was found to do it on.

They dumped the marijuana out, ground it down
in their hands, and then shuffled it on the newspaper so the seeds separated
from the rest. Alex rolled the joints, using one paper, which made JoJo
frown—most persons used two papers, he said. “That’s ‘
cause
they can’t roll,” Alex explained.

When they lighted up, Alex inhaled as he
would a regular cigarette.

“Man, are you sure you smoke
grass?” JoJo asked.

Alex’s face burned.
“Whaa?
Man, you saw me roll these joints. What the fuck do you think?”

“Yeah, well…” JoJo inhaled
deeply, sucking the smoke as far into his lungs as possible, making the
necessary sucking sound of the deep toke.

And Alex watched, obliquely but intently, so
when the joint was handed back he knew what to do. He fought back the cough as
the strange smoke burned his throat and lungs. He held the smoke in and handed
the joint back.

Three times they passed back and forth, and
suddenly Alex could feel the elevation in his mind, in his whole being, in
fact. A sudden laughter or chuckle, senseless yet hilarious, started somewhere
inside and burst from his mouth. JoJo grinned in sympathetic unison.

“Oh wow, man!” Alex said.
“I’m high!” The words seemed to echo and resonate; they
seemed almost visible.

“Good weed, man,” JoJo said,
blowing on the joint so the orange tip glowed brightly.

The statement and gesture looked strange, yet
wonderful. Everything, in fact, looked strange, both more real and less real.

JoJo upended the green bottle of ale, some of
the liquid leaking from the corner of his mouth as he guzzled. He finished,
handed it to Alex, and belched, grossly and happily. Alex drank deeply, came to
the end of the bottle and pitched it out of the hole. It would join other
bottles and cans on the beach.

Alex was unaccustomed to alcohol and its
effects—and in a short time he was really high for the first time in his
life. He tried to study how he felt, as if a chamber of his mind was watching
detachedly, yet struggling not to be sucked down into the vortex. His eyelids
were weighted, and his eyeballs needed rest. Yet everything looked cleaner,
clearer, new and different. His being seemed to soar, and he couldn’t
find even private articulation for what he felt. It was true that his lenses of
perception were more open, with colors brighter and truer than ever before.
Every sound had a unique tone, a musical quality that entranced him. Suddenly,
as before, an urge to wild laughter welled from deep in his belly. It carried
JoJo along, so both of them sat laughing loudly and privately at nothing on the
beach in the waning afternoon sunlight.

“Hey, man, this is good pot,”
JoJo said.

“Yeah, it’s pretty good.”
The understatement seemed hilarious, and there was another gale of laughter.

Time was lost, but soon enough Alex’s
thoughts began to slur; his head spun and his stomach followed. Nausea was
next. He vomited on the wooden slats and the dirt. He tried to kick dirt over
the mess, but the earth was too hard.

JoJo watched, eyes
blurred,
a grin on his mouth.

The vomiting made Alex feel a little better
and lessened his inebriation. In fact, he felt good. The earlier fear of the
unknown— of what marijuana would do—had gone away. Now he flowed
with the high and luxuriated in the sensations. He wanted to go somewhere,
but nowhere specific. “C’mon, let’s walk.”

They climbed the steps and walked along the
hard-packed sand toward the populous area around the beach cafe and the
beginning of the breakwater.

The marijuana increased his fascination with
looking at things. He stared avidly at everything, registering freshly what
usually would have gone unnoticed. “God, look at ‘em,” he
said in awe, watching the soaring beauty of seagulls in flight. “Nothing
flies more gracefully.”

“Or shits on more things,” JoJo
said; the high was obviously different for him.

On the breakwater, which stretched for about
three miles, a few
fishermen
watched lines draped into
the harbor side. The seawall was made of huge granite blocks. It was wider at
its unseen base beneath the water. It rose in steps, and was flat (roughly so)
and five feet wide at its top. The waves and tides rose and fell against it.

“Let’s take a hike out
there,” Alex suggested.

“Why? What’s there?”

“Just to see.”

“Man, I can see everything from
here.”

Alex made a snorting noise of disgust and
shook his head. JoJo had understood from the beginning and now dropped his act.
“Okay, I know,” he said. “I can understand—but I
don’t wanna go. So why don’t you go, and I’ll go over
there”—he pointed toward the large, low stucco building containing
the small marine museum and cafe— “and get myself something to eat.”

The tide was out, so the first thirty yards of
seawall were on the shore. Alex walked gingerly; the granite blocks
weren’t flush to each other, and sometimes the cracks were large enough
for a foot to slip inside. About fifty yards out the waves began crashing
against the barrier, throwing foam and spray high above the parapet, then
backing up to try again. What really fascinated Alex was how they came at an
angle, the explosion of collision starting in the distance and racing down the
wall toward him, then going past while another assault began far
away.
Sounds of roar and hiss jumbled with the raucous cries
of countless seagulls.

Alex was suffused with scrambled
feelings. He looked up at the scudding clouds,
then
studied the rolling wild sea on one side and the oily, smooth water on the
other. Although he was young, he’d both experienced and read a lot, and
he now saw a metaphor for life in sea and harbor and breakwater—and he
knew he wanted to live on the wild sea, not the polluted harbor. He also knew
that his destiny was to be an outlaw, a criminal. Indeed, it was already
branded on him and within him. It was already too late to turn back. Strangely,
the recognition made him feel free, and good, deep inside. He began laughing;
it was soundless against the sea’s roar.