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CHAPTER 1
TORCHY'S
There's the goddam spics I was telling you about. Hanging out next to Torchy's. If they aren't sticking up poor Torchy, they're laying some girl behind the place. Nothing but trouble. You'll learn. Officer Loudermilk's new partner nodded, making notes. Torchy's. Spics. He listened to Loudermilk. Yep, you'll see. Get a chance to meet em soon enough. Especially them fuckin Nuñezes. This is their favorite hangout. This and Reid Park. Nuñez. Reid Park. Torchy's. He wrote fast. Officer Loudermilk pulled the cruiser up next to the liquor store, flipped on his cherries. What you boys up to? They cuffed their cigarettes, choked back their smoke. Nothin. Just waitin on the school bus — which was a lie. School was within walking distance. They were waiting on Felipe to show up. Well, you'd better get moving. I'll be back in fifteen minutes and if you're still here, I'm taking all of you in to juvey for truancy. He rolled the window up and drove off. The kids waited until he turned the corner, then they flipped him off. Fuck you, Loudermilk. Yeah, and your punkass wife. Trying to one up each other. And your mom, with her stank fifty-husband-havin ass. Hahaha. Fuckin pigs. They leaned back against the wall and puffed their cigarettes, waiting on Felipe to show so they could rib him a few more times before he was made into a King and became off-limits, unless you wanted to get the shit kicked out of you.
A few of them scraped paint off the walls of the liquor store. It came off in big flakes, and sometimes a sharp point stabbed the flesh beneath their nails and hurt like hell. Felipe's best friend, Ricardo, used his house key to carve his name into a poster advertising Mexican beer. La cerveza mas fina. They always made Mexico look so pretty. You think he'll show, Ricardo? You damn right he'll show. Felipe aint no bitch. He'd take you and Loudermilk at the same time. He talked his friend up, but even he was worried about whether or not Felipe was going to show. Today Felipe was going to get his ass kicked worse than he ever had. For him, becoming a King was going to be harder than it had been for his brothers because he was the last one. The last Nuñez. The one who had to continue the dynasty. Nuñez. That's no small shit around here.
Ricardo was glad they were friends. He liked Felipe because he was different from the others. His conversations were about more than bitches and drugs. If you got him alone, he would surprise you with his ability to carry on an intelligent conversation. He told good jokes. Said smart things. He didn't judge Ricardo for wearing the same pair of jeans for the past two years. Plus Ricardo knew something the others didn't. Felipe, for all of his toughness, loved books — especially their smell. When he wasn't hanging out with the Kings and his brothers, or sitting beside Torchy's watching his friends breakdance on a flattened refrigerator box, he hid in his bedroom reading Dickens and Hardy. On their walks to and from school, they talked about how they wanted to save up money and one day go to London to see if the city was still as crazy as Dickens made it sound.
Unlike the rest of the guys standing next to Torchy's waiting to see how scared Felipe was, Ricardo wanted to talk with Felipe so he could tell him it was going to be all right. He wished the other guys weren't there so he could go up to his friend and give him a hug and say I'm here for you man, if you need a place to go or someone to talk with. He was scared for Felipe. Although Ricardo had never been beaten himself, he'd seen the way people were inducted into the gang plenty of times. On rare occasions a person or two had almost fought his way out — the bigger and older ones — but they always fell to the sheer number of men beating them. A hard enough blow to the kidneys, a well-placed kick to the stomach, and the guy just dropped and folded into a tight knot, waiting for the punches and kicks to stop. Even though he wasn't in a gang, he knew how these things worked. The more they liked you and the more respect they had for you, the worse the beating.
While his friends waited for him outside Torchy's, Felipe kissed his mother goodbye and pulled on his backpack. On his way out the door his brothers waved and told him see you after school. He was nervous about the beating he was going to get, but he didn't want his mother to notice and do that huggy thing where she never let go of him, as if she were never going to see him again. Every morning before school the same thing. Hug your mother, Felipe. Give an old woman a hug and don't be so mean. He stood beside her while she sat in her rocking chair, leaning down and immediately trying to pull away as soon as her arms were around his neck. It bothered him the way she held on a little too long. Like she loved him more than a mother should. But today he let her hug him longer than usual, and then he kissed her goodbye and closed the door behind him and left her sitting in her rocking chair where she stayed every day since her husband had died three years earlier. The fear he had been suppressing all morning came crashing down when he walked through the front yard and out the gate to meet his friends. He was afraid of the asskicking planned for this afternoon, but that's what it takes to be a King. Especially being the last Nuñez brother. All of them were Kings. Even his dad had been one, though he had gone into retirement by getting married and having four sons. Felipe kept repeating to himself, just play it cool. You let the others see you're scared and you'll only make it worse. But he was scared. Not of a few punches. His brothers had been abusing him since he was two years old, took turns punching him or smothering him with a pillow. So that wasn't it. Besides, punches and kicks stopped hurting after a while. He was scared it would be worse than that. A royal beating. That's the life here. He understood that much. You take your raps and keep going. He didn't feel sorry for himself. It was much more than that. He was at a crossroads. Soon he had to make a decision. Though his path had been chosen for him before he was born, he tried to understand the consequences in his adolescent sort of way. There were certainly benefits for joining the Kings. He'd have the respect — or at least the fear — of all his peers. He'd get the chance to lay girls he had only dreamed of. There would always be money, booze, drugs. And while these things were nice, Felipe knew there was a price. That's what bothered him the most. Knowing his life would improve but living with the fear of prison or death. He didn't want to be found in the desert with a bullet in his head, or locked in the trunk of a car in the Tucson Mall parking lot. He wanted something else. To be a man in a different way.
The night before, he had lain awake listening to the sound of the swamp cooler switching on periodically, its engine vibrating the ceiling, and it took him a long time to find a rhythm to the motor's whirring, a regularity to the intervals when the sound would cease and he could doze off. When he finally slept, his dreams were short, violent snatches of being chased by cops, beating groups of rival gang members, the sounds of weeping mothers and girlfriends mourning the loss of their men. It seemed the whole city wept, like it was drowning in tears over the blood shed on its streets every day. Felipe woke with the sound of wailing in his ears and lay awake the rest of the night trying to erase the terrible ../images from his mind.
After he hugged his mother goodbye, he walked toward Country Club Road, wondering why he was more ashamed and scared than proud. Although it was his fifteenth birthday, he didn't feel any wiser. He had been looking forward to this day forever. He was supposed to gain some sort of knowledge about life, but he only felt confused. And lonely. His friends waiting for him at Torchy's could never understand the pressure he was under. Even Ricardo could not know how Felipe was torn between his destiny as a Nuñez and his desire to leave this neighborhood to seek an entirely different life.
His friends were only waiting so they could make fun of him one last time. He knew they were actually terrified of him. They were probably jealous too, though Felipe thought he had a better reason to be jealous than they. At least they had a choice in their futures. If the Kings didn't pick one of them, they could fade into anonymity. But he had been chosen. He had never specifically been told there were no other options. He simply became aware of the fact as he grew older. It was his arranged marriage.
His brothers had sculpted him into a petty criminal before he was old enough to realize what they were doing. When he was six, they'd babysat him every Friday while their parents worked late. Instead of playing with Felipe in the backyard or reading him books, they walked him over to Food Giant, plopped him into a shopping cart, and toured around the grocery store, filling his pants and shirt with cigarettes and candy and beef jerky. They bought a gallon of milk, then wheeled him out of the store, laughing about how they'd pulled another one over on the gringos. It was always pulling one over on the gringos. It would be another two years before Felipe understood what gringos were. He thought they were some kind of monster when he was a boy. He couldn't understand why every night when he asked his mother to tuck him in and pray the gringos don't get me mommy, she'd laugh and sign the cross above him. If it was so funny and they were so harmless, then why were his brothers and their friends always talking about getting them? Every Friday they'd go back to Food Giant and fill Felipe's clothes and get the gringos, and Felipe grew so used to their game that for years he had to check himself when he went grocery shopping with his mother. His hands would grow itchy. His pockets felt twice their size, taunting him to stuff them full when no one was looking.
It didn't take long for his brothers to tire of that game. There were other ways to get gringos. Other ways to groom their youngest brother for greatness. The Food Giant jobs were fun, but they were too easy. After all, if a six-year-old boy could get away with stealing cigarettes week after week, then the gringos had bigger problems than the Nuñezes.
The day after Felipe's eleventh birthday, he pulled his first real job. It was the one that finally earned him respect and credibility with the Kings. He was sitting at the park watching his brothers play ball with their friends, smoking cigarette butts he found lying along the edges of the basketball court. When it began to get dark, they sat on a picnic table passing a joint between them, watching the occasional drunk stumble past with a brown bag clutched in his fist. They made bets on which ones would fall over and which ones would actually sit down before passing out. The bet with the highest odds was guessing which drunk would actually puke. Most of them pissed themselves, a few even smelled like they had just shit their pants, but puking was something these guys just didn't seem capable of doing. They didn't waste liquor.
A drunk gringo stumbled toward them in a dirty, grease-stained trenchcoat. Felipe's two oldest brothers, Chuy and Rogelio, bet their friends the guy would pass out standing. Five bucks. Five bucks? How bout I get Marcela to suck you off instead? Okay. Everyone watched as the drunk drew closer, stopped, teetered, found his footing, then bee-lined for a metal trashbarrel and hugged it as he vomited into the container. They all thought the same thing. FUCK. I knew I should've bet this one was a puker. The boys laughed and Chuy told them if I get that bad, just kill me. Just give me a kick in the head. His best friend, Peanut, said why don't we get a little practice on him? The drunk was slumped against the trashbarrel, breathing heavily and cradling his paper bag. Felipe laughed, trying to sound tough. Kick his ass. They all laughed at him. Talkin like a big man. Like a real vato. Peanut said why don't we let Felipe do it? He needs to take things up a notch. Show his Nuñez blood. If Peanut hadn't said that last line, Felipe's brothers might have laughed it off. But once he mentioned their name, they were obligated to make their little brother go through with it.
Felipe looked at his brothers. They were silent for too long. Usually they'd snap right back with a smartass comment or something, but they weren't talking. They were trying to decide between the danger of sending their baby brother to beat a grown man — what if the guy's not that drunk and he hurts Felipe? — and the necessity of upholding the family name. Felipe knew it was decided before his brother Rogelio elbowed him in the ribs and told him go roll that fuckin bum. Just go up and blast him upside the head and check his pockets. Before he could think of an excuse, Felipe was being cheered on by the guys, and Peanut was pointing to the crown tattooed on the back of his neck, nodding to Felipe and looking genuinely proud of him as he stood up and walked quickly over to the drunk before he could chicken out. When he was still more than twenty feet away, he could smell the liquor pouring off the guy and knew he was probably blacked out already, or at least too wasted to fight back, so he ran straight at the man, the cheers of the guys behind him propelling him faster, and he kicked him dead in the side of his skull and the man's eyes shot open, confused, full of pain and surprise, and for a moment Felipe thought fuck, I'm dead, he was faking all along, not realizing he was still kicking the guy in the side of the head until he heard the man grunt and saw him fall over onto his side, spilling his beer on the ground around him, and Felipe's foot hurt like hell, but he ignored it and punched the guy in the stomach, then shuffled through the stinking-drunk gringo's pockets, only finding a dollar and some change and a crumpled pack of Merits, happy the man had been too far gone to fight back or even see him coming and pleased with himself because he knew he had made his brothers proud, their whoops and yells of approval making him feel twice his size.
All the way home, his brothers congratulated him on how he'd rolled the fuckin gringo like a Nuñez. Just like a real goddam vato. They took turns rustling his hair and slapping him on the back. You're one of us now. At the time Felipe wasn't sure what that meant. One of who? A Nuñez? A King? But as the years passed and he grew closer to his brothers and their friends, he realized he was both.
The day in the park had been a test for Felipe. Peanut had wanted to see if the little guy had the same craziness in him as his brothers. He also wanted to know whether or not Felipe would take orders. Kicking some drunk's ass was only a start. A baby step. Felipe knew this too. So he wasn't surprised when their neighbor, Señor Gutierrez, went on vacation and the Kings decided to poke around in his house a bit. Since it was summer, Felipe was left alone all day with his brothers. The Kings gathered at the Nuñez house and snuck down the alley toward Señor Gutierrez's backyard.
Behind the back wall someone said okay Felipe, you're the first one in. Climb through that back window — break it if you have to — then go around and unlock the back door. We'll take care of the rest. They lifted him over the wall, giving him words of encouragement, and he ran to the house, stopping only to pick up a stone and throw it through the old man's bedroom window, then feeling around for the latch. He unlocked the window and climbed inside. The house was cool. It felt quiet and holy, like a church, and he immediately regretted breaking in. He suddenly realized this wasn't a gringo's house they were messing with. It belonged to Gutierrez, the poor man everyone in the neighborhood liked. He wanted to run out the front door, circle around, and tell the guys some bullshit about how there was an alarm or he'd heard a dog growling. Besides, there isn't shit here to steal anyways.
He looked out the window and saw them waving and gesturing impatiently. A couple had already jumped the wall and were walking toward the house. Felipe turned around and passed through the room — trying to ignore the old man's neatly made bed and the photos of his dead wife and son on the nightstand — and into the kitchen where he unlocked the back door and let them in and considered yelling why are we messin with old Gutierrez? But he'd already been pushed out of the way by the guys surging through the back door. In all, they spent less than ten minutes ransacking the house, and when they met back at the Nuñez's house their take was a VCR — the TV was a console and too heavy to get out in a hurry — eight cassettes, a gold-plated Seiko watch, and a jar full of quarters. Not much of a haul, someone said. But for Felipe it was too much.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Drowning Tucson"
by .
Copyright © 2010 Aaron Michael Morales.
Excerpted by permission of COFFEE HOUSE PRESS.
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