by Christopher Sawyer-Lauçanno
Chapter 53: I Become Incarcerated
The old Victorian house stood alone in a sea of rubble, the sole survivor of several blocks of buildings demolished to make way for a new freeway. I had no idea why it had been granted a stay of execution, but amidst the swath of destruction, it possessed a singular, defiant, and intriguing grandeur. I decided to penetrate its mystery.
I gained entrance easily as only a screen door banging in the wind provided a barrier to outsiders. Inside I wandered from bare room to bare room, my footsteps echoing in the emptied chambers. Where paintings had once hung, the wallpaper was lighter in color, lending absence a ghostly existence. As I mounted the stairway to the second floor, a door above me creaked on its hinges. Then a voice, with a Southern drawl, burst the quiet: “Stop, or I’ll shoot.” I stopped. Above me, on the landing, stood a middle-aged man in dungarees and a dark t-shirt, arm outstretched. He held a revolver in his hand, and it was pointed directly at me.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know anyone was living here.”
“Fucking thief. Tell it to the fuzz.”
“Look, I’m sorry. I was just checking the place out. I didn’t come here to steal anything.” I tried to stay calm.
“Sure,” he said. “Come up here. Hands up.”
“Really, man. I’m sorry. I’ll get out.”
“Up here, you little bastard.”
I turned slightly. The front door was only ten feet away.
“I’ll fucking shoot you if you even think about making a break for it.”
I slowly walked up the stairs. He kept his pistol leveled at me.
His room was on the second floor, crammed with cast-off furniture: sofa, TV, chairs, table, radio, unmade bed, telephone.
“Look,” I said. “I didn’t come here to steal anything. I thought the place was abandoned and I was just curious. I was just looking around. Please let me leave.”
“Not on your fucking life.” He picked up the phone and dialed the police. Once connected, he reported that he’d nabbed a thief in his house.
“Downstairs. We’re going to wait for the cops downstairs.” He waved his gun at me.
It was a clear day in early spring, the sky blue. The wind was blowing hard, making it seem a bit colder than it was. Little dust clouds blew up across the fields of mangled steel and wires and brick and broken glass. I could see the speeding police car two blocks away. It seemed to arrive within seconds. Two burly Texans emerged, handcuffed me tightly, and literally threw me in the back of the car. Unable to steady myself, my head hit the roof before I landed at an angle on the seat.
“You speak English?” were the first words spoken to me by one of the cops in front. By now we were already cruising down the street.
“Yes,” I said.
A brief interrogation followed, not about my “crime,” just about who I was. The cop in the passenger seat radioed in the arrest report.
At the station I was ushered into a small room and pushed into a wooden chair. The handcuffs were biting into my forearms. I asked the cop to remove them, but rather than acknowledge my entreaty, he exited the room. I sat on the chair, hurting, bewildered, angry, scared. A few minutes later, through another door, the cop returned, this time with another officer who wore sergeant’s stripes on his sleeve. To my great relief, the cop who’d arrested me finally unlocked the cuffs and reattached them to his belt.
I suppose I must at this point have been briefly interrogated by the sergeant, but I can’t actually remember much about it. I only recall that I was not read my rights, that I profusely professed my innocence, and that I asked to make a phone call. The request wasn’t denied, but it wasn’t granted either. A few minutes later I was escorted to a holding cell; within an hour, I was handcuffed again, less tightly this time, and transported in a paddy wagon to the Juvenile Detention Center next to the golf course where I’d once caddied.
My memories of what was going through my mind at the time are curiously indistinct. Of my myriad emotions I have only a sense of rage and fear and befuddlement. My cell is more vivid: a small rectangular cinderblock room, probably 6X9, with a high barred window at one end and a rust-red metal door with a small reinforced glass window at the other; a toilet without a seat in one corner next to a tiny stained sink; a metal bunkbed with bare mattresses and no sheets or blankets; cement floor; florescent overhead.
In the early evening a key turned in the lock, the door was opened, and I was summoned by a guard.
“Comida,” he grunted.
Down the hall I could see a number of young men lining up, slowly walking. I joined the queue. In the cafeteria, a large room with long metal tables and benches, I followed the example of those in front of me, picking up a tray, a spoon and a fork (there were no knives) and received my serving of goulash and bread. The prisoner in front of me, a kid about my age, began chatting with me in line. He didn’t ask my name. Instead, his first question was what I’d done.
“Nothing,” I said. “Just went into an old house and got picked up. I don’t even know what I’m charged with.”
“B and E, trespassing, burglary,” he replied.
“What?”
“That’s probably what they’ve got you down for.”
“What’s B and E?”
“Breaking and entering.”
“Oh. But I didn’t break and enter. The door was open.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“What’d you do?” I asked. He seemed so friendly, young and innocent that I expected some similar tale of false accusation.
“Murder,” he calmly replied.
“Did you do it?”
“Oh, yeah.” He gave a little chuckle, then shoved an enormous quantity of food into his mouth.
I tried not to gasp. “Who’d you kill?”
“This fucker who hit on my girlfriend,” he mumbled, still chewing. Little dribbles of stew were running down his chin.
“Did you mean to kill him?”
“Yep. Glad I did too.” He flashed me a grin.
Around midnight the door to my cell opened and a young man was ushered in. The guard turned the overhead on, then immediately closed the door. I greeted the arrival, asked him to turn off the light that was blinding me, then tentatively queried him as to why he was here.
“Curfew violation.”
I was greatly relieved he wasn’t a murderer. I told him my story, and in the darkness we talked for a while. His name was Juan or José or Tito. He didn’t seem like a bad kid, just somebody who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time (after 11:00).
“They’ll let me out at 8:00 tomorrow,” he said, “as long as my mother shows up to fetch me.”
“Did they call your mom?”
“Yeah, she knows about it. When you getting out?” he asked.
“Damned if I know.” I wasn’t lying. I had absolutely no idea how long I was to be detained. I also realized, for about the fiftieth time that day, that I had never been allowed to make my phone call. Intense panic temporarily gripped me and it took me a long while to fall asleep.
On Sunday, long after my cell mate was released, even after breakfast and lunch (where I tried to be friendly, but keep my distance from the genuine ruffians who clearly ruled the detention center), an officer finally took a statement from me about what had happened. I was also able at that point to call my family. My mother knew where I was, having late on Saturday night called the police. She was not, however, allowed to see me until my arraignment on Monday. I spent Sunday and Sunday night alone in the cell. Apparently, they didn’t need to double up miscreants.
Only my mother and Ray were in the courtroom when I was led in before the judge. My name was called out, and the charges read by a bailiff. They were identical to what the young murderer had predicted. Some documents were handed to the judge, and I was told to stand. He read over my statement in which I professed total innocence, then asked me a few questions. Then, turning to the assistant district attorney, a little man, who seemed totally disinterested in the whole proceeding, he remarked that he saw no evidence to hold me over for trial.
“Did I miss something?” he queried. The D.A. shrugged. “Dismissed,” said the judge. He then leaned over to me and lectured me for a full minute on trespassing law.
“Am I free?” I finally asked.
“Get out of here,” he yelled.
Unlike in the movies, I didn’t stride out of the court room into the setting sun and get on my horse and ride away, although it was fairly late in the day, and the sun wasn’t too far from setting. Nor did I throw my arms around my mother and Ray and yell out “Free at last, free at last, oh God almighty I’m free at last.” No, it wasn’t like that at all. It was corridors and doors, and gray metal, and a long walk through a connecting passage to the police station, and waiting in a windowless room where I had to go collect my belongings and sign some forms, and then a quick exit into a side street, and walking around to the front of the station, with the breeze blowing against my face, a free breeze, and finding eventually my mom and Ray who were sitting impatiently in the parking lot in the car, and getting yelled at all the way home for being such an idiot.
Chapter 54: I Become a Carpenter
The day after school got out in late May, I went to work for Jim Carney, the father of one of my classmates. Jim had recently lost his used car business and had gone into construction as a contractor. He somehow managed to get a job remodeling portions of the NCO Club at Fort Bliss. He needed a helper. The pay was a dollar an hour. I was glad for the job. It was a welcome relief from washing dishes and I needed the money.
Since my house was on the way to Fort Bliss, Jim would pick me up every morning at 7:00 and drop me off at 4:30. For the first few weeks we got on OK. He’d ride me a bit now and then, mainly to work faster, and if I didn’t do something to his satisfaction he would immediately erupt, hurling a volley of curses in my direction, but I guess I was a pretty good worker because that didn’t happen too often. I even learned something about carpentry.
What I hated most about Jim, though, was the way he used to talk to me about my future. It usually went something like this: “As you know, my son Jack’s going to go to college, but you don’t have that opportunity so I’m giving you a chance to learn something you can use for the rest of your life to make a good, honest living. That’s why I’m doing this. I feel sorry for you. I really do. I know you’ve got it tough at home, what with your old man laid up and in his cups most of the time and your poor mother strapped with those little ones. That’s why I’m helping you out, boy. So you can compete in the world. For sure, you’ll never be a doctor like Jack but there’s nothing wrong at all with being a blue-collar worker. No, it’s honest labor to work with your hands. You’ll never regret what Jim Carney’s teaching you now, and I’d like to think that someday, years from now, maybe when you’ve got your own family and a high-paying construction job, you’ll look back on this time and thank me for what I’ve done for you. I don’t expect you to thank me now. No, I understand you’ve got your pride, but someday I like to think you’ll know how good I’ve been to you. Treated you like my own son, gave you a job when I didn’t need to just because I care, because I know what it’s like to have to shift for oneself in this dog-eat-dog world.” All this without hardly ever taking a breath or (thankfully) expecting me to respond.
We went on that way for a while. Every day I got better at tuning him out when he was either cursing me or sanctimoniously proclaiming his charity towards me. I just listened to what I needed to listen to so I could do what needed to be done. Every day I also got a little better at the job and began to take a bit more initiative. Once he saw that I actually could do most of what had to be done, he relaxed his vigilance, often letting me work by myself in the afternoon after lunch for a couple of hours on my own. I got a strict half-hour to eat; he usually went off the base and would reappear, sometimes around quitting time, half-loaded. He would probably have stayed away even longer except that he was terrified of the sergeant-major who was in charge of the army’s remodeling effort. I couldn’t stand the way Jim would act in front of the self-satisfied old fart, laughing too loud at his dirty jokes, always responding to any little suggestion with total acquiescence: “What a great idea. Yes, sir. We’ll do that right away. No, no it’s no problem in the least.” Fortunately, the sergeant usually didn’t acknowledge my existence so I never really had to enter into any of these phony exchanges.
Before leaving for lunch Jim would remind me what to tell the sergeant-major should he happen to drop by when he wasn’t around.
“Never, ever, tell him I’m at lunch. You got that?” Jim would say. “I’m out buying supplies. Got it?”
I’d nod and sit down to my burritos or sardines, then go back to work more-or-less on time. The sergeant-major rarely came around anyway, so I couldn’t understand why Jim was so scared of him talking to me.
Finally, of course, the sergeant came by when Jim was “at lunch.”
“Where’s Carney?” he asked.
I looked at my watch. It was 2:30. “He’s out buying supplies,” I said.
“What’s he buying?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“When’s he coming back?”
“I don’t know.”
This kept up for a few minutes. No matter what the sergeant asked, I replied “I don’t know.” I could tell the guy was getting exasperated.
“Tell Carney I need to see him when he gets back. And boy, when you speak to your betters, particularly a man in uniform, show some respect. Tack a ‘sir’ onto the end of your responses.”
“I’m not in the army,” I said.
“What’d you say, you little son-of-a-bitch?” The sergeant was red in the face and his teeth were clenched.
“I said, ‘I’m not in the army.'”
“Yet!” he said, and stormed out.
Jim came back an hour or so later, fairly lit. I told him the sergeant had come by.
“You told him what I told you to tell him, didn’t you?”
“Yes, siree,” I said.
“Good,” said Jim, relieved, then left before I could mention the little altercation.
When Jim came back he was fuming, even redder in the face than the sergeant had been. Before I could open my mouth, he started screaming at me. I turned off the table saw but caught the stream of his outburst: “You’re fired, you’re fired, you little disrespectful bastard, you fucking insolent smart-ass pig. You’re fired.”
“How come?” I managed to interject.
“You goddamned well know fucking why,” Jim shrieked.
I shook my head.
“You fucking asshole,” he yelled, “I give you an opportunity most disadvantaged kids would kill for and you’ve nearly cost me this fucking job and you’ve certainly cost me any future fucking jobs here. Because of you, you. God damnit. You fucking say ‘sir’ to any fucking person who’s bigger and better than you.”
All I could say was that since I wasn’t in the army I saw no reason to say “sir” to the old fart.
“Who do you think is paying your fucking wages, wise ass?” Jim yelled.
“You,” I said.
“You moron. You’re even stupider than I thought you were. And who pays me so that I can pay you for this shit work that you do? You fucking moron.”
I didn’t say anything, just glared at him the same way he was glaring at me. Then, to break the silence, I said, “You owe me $32 for my shit work this week. I’ll take the bus home.”
I brushed the sawdust off my shirt and pants and grabbed my bag. When I turned around Jim had moved to block the door out of the room where we were working.
“Apologize first. Then you get paid.”
“I’m sorry I fucked things up” I said, “but I’m not sorry I didn’t kiss the sergeant’s ass like you do.”
Jim swung at me. I darted to the side to avoid the blow, then took a quick step backwards. Jim lunged forward, throwing a haymaker, catching air. The next blow hit my bag which I’d thrust in front of me to block his heavy fist. By now I was yelling at him, telling him to back off and calm down. I hadn’t been in a fight since I was in grade school, and was totally bewildered at his menacing rage. He also had at least six inches on me and a hundred pounds. He was drunk too, and I knew I wasn’t much of a match for him nor did I want to be. I just wanted to get out of there. I quickly moved behind the table saw, figuring I’d use that as a barrier.
Jim charged, the saw arced into the air, then jammed into me knocking me down. I was on my back, the naked blade, raised about a three-quarters of an-inch, was pressed into my chest and Jim’s fists were still swinging wildly as he attempted to get at me under the wreckage. Neither could I slide out, nor push up the saw as he now was leaning over it, his weight bearing down on the saw, on the blade and on me. A fist finally connected with my face. Then another. Somehow I managed to push the saw up at a 45-degree angle. His next blow landed squarely on the edge of the blade, then glanced into my shoulder. He screamed and jumped back just enough for me to throw off the saw with one thrust, then heave it into him a second later. This slam knocked him over. I grabbed a two-by-four and jumped up.
“Ok, OK,” he screamed. “Stop. Stop you maniac. I’ve fucking cut my hand to the bone.”
“Bullshit,” I said. The blade’s only set at a half-inch.”
I then noticed I was bleeding. My shirt front in fact had grown rather red. My chest wasn’t hurting that much, though, so I didn’t examine it further. Instead, I raised the two-by-four menacingly.
“Apologize for making a fool out of yourself and for hitting me. Hand me your wallet too.” I was in command now and I was exhilarated. Jim moaned as if I’d already hit him. I could smell the alcohol on his breath.
“Yeah, OK, OK. You’ll have to let me get up so I can get my wallet.”
“Get up and turn around,” I said, trying to sound kind of John Wayneish. “I’ll get it for you.” He did as he was told, holding his cut hand, that was streaming blood, with the other. With the board still firmly grasped in my left, I pulled the wallet out of his pocket with my right. He had five dollars in it. I took it, picked up my bag, and exited. Just as I was through the doorway, I tossed the wallet over my shoulder. I then said very quietly, “You owe me $27 dollars more.” I didn’t drop the two-by until I was outside the club.
The sun was brilliant, the air dry, hot, dusty. My shirt had a bright red irregular patch from just below my neck to my navel. It was quite wide in the middle, thin and spotted on the top, and funneled into a narrow streak at the bottom. My face throbbed where Jim’s two jabs had connected. The adrenaline rush had dissipated and I felt drained, dizzy, enervated. My emotions bounced between fear, anger, relief, disbelief, pride. I walked about 50 yards, then collapsed under a scrawny oak. I lay on my back for a few minutes, staring up at the leaves and the blue beyond. I was shaking all over as if I had had a bad case of chills. In an effort to stop trembling, I sat up and examined my wounds. I had stopped bleeding. I had eight small holes in my chest, the ones in the middle fairly deep; the others were superficial. I lay back and looked at the sky again. After a minute or so when I had stopped shivering, I got up and walked slowly to the bus stop.
Chapter 55: 1 Become Enamored of Mercedes
Mercedes should have been named Blanca because she had the whitest of white skin, almost like English skin, pale and soft, with an ineffable translucence, more like white rose petals than human flesh. In contrast, her eyes were nearly black, and her hair, long and flowing and shiny, was as black as black gets. On second thought, Mercedes wasn’t really a misnomer either for she clearly considered herself a deluxe model. Indeed, at first, she seemed unapproachable, a first-order snob, with her delicate nose, where just a hint of tiny red veins was visible around the nostrils, disdainfully and perpetually raised in ascendance over the majority of humanity.
I would probably have never met her had Carney not canned me, and if I hadn’t gotten a job working as a painter for Jaime’s cousin, Pete Martinez. So Carney, as it turned out, actually did do me a favor, even if it wasn’t the one he thought he had. Mercedes was the daughter of a guy whose large house near the college we had been hired to paint.
During the couple of weeks we scraped and sanded and caulked and painted, I fell madly in love with her, and though I did my best not to show it too openly, I secretly plotted opportunities to talk with her. I even once faked falling off of a ladder, hoping that she’d come to my rescue, but she never even emerged from her room, plastered with Beatles posters, to see what the commotion was about.
Finally, on the last day of the paint job, even though Mercedes and I had so far spoken no more than probably twenty sentences, I girded my loins and asked her if she’d consider going to the movies with me sometime. To my total stupefaction she agreed, providing we could go see Help! Though not much of a Beatles fan, I immediately replied that that was exactly the movie I had in mind. We arranged to meet at the theater for the Saturday afternoon matinee.
I was in a turmoil of delight for the next couple of days. On Saturday morning I changed my clothes several times, finally deciding, despite the 100-degree heat, on a black shirt with white pearl buttons and jeans. By the time I got to the theater I was soaked in sweat, and ducked inside an air-conditioned department store for a while to cool off and dry out, returning to the cinema fifteen minutes ahead of schedule. She arrived, in a white dress, two minutes before the film started. By then I was sweaty again, but strode gallantly forward to meet her, damp tickets in my palm.
I didn’t even try to hold her hand in the theater, since I realized, once the opening credits rolled, that unlike me, she was there to see the film. Not once did she even look over at me as she was so intent on catching every move, gesture, word, note, smile, frown, mugging stare, and sidelong glance of John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Moreover, in unison with the 300 other teenage girls in the audience, she screamed indiscriminately through most of the songs. A veritable St. Teresa in ecstasy, she was oblivious to anything outside herself. There, in the gloom of the cinema she entered into singular and sublime celluloid communion with the Fab Four, was transported beyond the realm of worldly interaction by her perfect love for the mop-topped little English pricks. I not only had to endure the film once, but twice. Between the showings, she could barely speak, and even the milk duds and coke I fetched her couldn’t break the appalling spell cast over her by my rivals, the Liverpool lice.
After the movie ended for the second time, I invited her to have a snack and a coke with me, but she said that she had to get right home. I walked her over to San Jacinto Plaza and waited with her until her bus came. She could only talk about the Beatles, though I tried to steer the conversation toward a future rendezvous. As she boarded the bus she yelled out at me, “thanks.” I walked home, not caring at all if I got all sweaty. I felt a bit used, but not enough to let it bother me too much. She had, after all, assented to go with me to the movies. What else could “thanks” mean?
That night I rearranged various Beatle lyrics into a poem, hoping to come up with a dazzling confession of love that she could somehow understand. This, as it turned out yielded only meager results. I got stuck on “I wanna hand your hole,” which while quite clever and honest, I knew wouldn’t do. I finally abandoned the enterprise and wrote some sort of awful but heartfelt doggerel, in which I did employ the phrases “Norwegian Wood” and “Help.” The next morning, without rereading it, I stuffed my “poem” in an envelope, erased the faint franking stripes from a used stamp, affixed it with glue, and ran down the street to the mailbox.
She called me two days later.
Chapter 56: 1 Become a Brother (Again)
At the end of August, 1966, just a week before my sister’s second birthday, my mother had another baby. I was so thrilled that I took the day off from work so I could pay a visit to Rolando Martín. However, once Ray realized I was going to be home for the day, he called from the hospital to charge me with taking care of César and Maríaelena. I didn’t get to glimpse my new sibling until that evening, and then only for a short while.
I was delighted that Rolando had come into the world healthy and pink and barrel chested, with all his fingers and toes, but I was somewhat annoyed that I had to delay my brotherly gratification until a half-hour before visiting hours were over. I suppose this had something to do with the argument that I got into later with Ray, though I didn’t focus on this annoyance. Instead, my stated concern was with the casual way my step-father labeled his children.
Ray, when describing who I was to others, often referred to me as his “wife’s mistake.” Rolando, even before his birth, was dubbed his “wife’s surprise.”
I never had challenged his sobriquet for me, nor did I now. Instead, I directed my energy toward his characterization of my new little brother. It seemed incongruous that Rolando was a surprise only for my mother. I also felt that it shortchanged the new arrival, since the implication was clearly that not only had Rolando been unplanned and unexpected, but unwanted as well. I didn’t want the littlest member of the family to grow up stigmatized, or feeling somehow lacking. I decided the day of his arrival to nip short whatever tendency there might be in that direction. During the half-hour it took to walk home from the hospital, I worked up my attack, tried out thrusts, conjured up possible parries.
Ray was sitting at the bar in the living room, sipping tequila, when I arrived. Since we weren’t talking a whole lot at that time (fallout from my pinko pronouncements and general adolescent snottiness) he was a bit wary when I began to run on about how elated I was over Rolando’s existence. I then segued, rather skillfully I thought, to the matter that was really concerning me by informing him that I thought he should cease from that moment on with his characterization of Rolando as my “mother’s surprise.” He took immediate offense, as I figured he would. I laid out my reasons.
“So who are you, Dr. Freud?” he challenged. “Well, he’s my son and I can call him whatever I god damn choose to call him.”
“Think about what I’m saying. Please.” I was struggling to seem as if I were an apex of rationality.
“You’re full of shit,” he replied. He poured another shot and downed it in one gulp.
“Look.” I said, as calmly as I could, “I only want Rolando to feel as welcome in this family as César and Maríaelena, and I don’t want him to be slighted, just because it isn’t convenient right now for you and mom to have another kid.”
“Well, it isn’t convenient, but that’s not the point. The point is that you’re trying to tell me how to be a goddamned parent.” His eyes were red and wide and he clutched the empty shot glass so tightly I thought it might shatter in his hand.
“That’s not it,” I yelled, “And you know it.”
He looked off into space, then back at me. When he spoke again there were spaces between his words, and each word was enunciated precisely. I knew this meant that an explosion could or would follow.
“This is not…your business. I do not…I will not…put up… with this…shit. We will not…discuss.it…any…further.”
I had enough sense to back off. Ray, despite his temper, was not a violent man and I didn’t fear any physical attack. But I also knew that I wasn’t going to get anywhere.
In bed that night my thoughts centered on the breakdown in our relationship. While we were once so close, since our return from Mexico, Ray and I had not gotten on terribly well. I knew that Ray was bitter about the loss of the mine, of Mexico, that he was in almost constant pain from his fused ankle, that he detested having to work as a printer, that we were overwhelmed with financial difficulties, that he was drinking more than ever. I wanted to tell him that I knew all of this and that he wasn’t to blame, but I didn’t. I wanted to give him an abrazo and pledge my allegiance to the new order of things, but I couldn’t. I wanted to tell him I missed him, and that I even loved him, but it seemed corny to say something that true and plain. Instead, I retreated, kept my distance, decided all I could do was carve out a world of my own.
And then, the next morning, just before I was to head off to work as a painter, Ray sat down at the table across from me. “Chico, call Pete and tell him you’ll be late today. Let’s go together to visit Rolando Martín.”
I immediately said yes, then got up, walked around to his side of the table and we exchanged abrazos.
***