Always Running (14 page)

“Well, we’ve come this far, now what are you going to do with me?” Viviana inquired.

“You mean before or after I suck your blood.”

Again she laughed. And me, the one who can’t tell a joke!

“See all the people,” I said. “I like looking at them this way. You see things about people you wouldn’t see if you were there with them. Like a God?”

“Man, you’re crazy,” Viviana said.

“Yeah, that’s true.”

Soon we spotted a flurry of activity at the far end of the church yard. Several dudes had surrounded a
vato
whom I recognized as Enano from Lomas. Chava, in a small brim hat and leaning on a cane, led the group. One of them swung a steel-studded belt in his hand. I knew him as Turtleman from Sangra.

“Hey, I gotta go,” I told Viviana.

“No, don’t Louie,” she said while pressing me to her. “Don’t go, stay here with me.”

I felt a tightening of muscle and beads of sweat forming on my forehead, the way I usually got before fights. Viviana dropped the panda bear and stroked my head and back, loosening the tightness, and moved her hands up my chest.

“Don’t go down there. It’s not your fight. They’re always going at it. Don’t be a part of that tonight. I’m from Sangra. You’re from Lomas. So what?
¿Me quieres?”

I saw the dudes from Sangra move closer to Enano, the girls with the red hair laughing nearby.

“I can’t let my homeboy duke it out without me,” I said. “I can’t let him down, man.”

I moved away from Viviana. But from the other side of the carnival, I saw about 15 Lomas dudes—armed with sticks, chains and bumper jacks—rushing to Enano’s aid. Chicharrón was among them, his shirt adorned with blood stains. No doubt, he had already gotten into some
guantes
with Sangra.

“It’s started,” I shouted.

People ran in all directions. Screams pierced the night. Shouts of “Lomas Rifa” and “Sangra Controla” bellowed as
vatos
clashed in senseless fury.

“Don’t go
prieto,”
Viviana repeated as she turned my head toward her. “Stay with me.”

I felt torn. There I was, a
vato
from Lomas staring into the eyes of a Sangra girl. This made me a traitor. But at the same time, all I could think about was her touch, her scent—those eyes.

Viviana stroked my face with a fingertip.
Voices heightened below. Footsteps cracked on cement.
I nuzzled my face against Viviana’s; her lips parted and the eyes closed.
Bottles crashed. Trash cans tumbled over.
Viviana breathed into my mouth and I licked her lips lightly with my tongue.
Sounds of shooting.
Strained shouts. She placed her hand against the back of my head as we kissed, and reached deep inside my mouth as a sweet burning crawled over me.
Sirens wailed in the distance. A child cried.

José Palmas strums at a six-string as fluid fingers move across its neck like a warm wind across one’s brow. Every note sweating. Palmas often practices on his porch, swaying by an old eaten-up tree; sometimes his brother Bobby accompanies him on a conga and Joe on bass. He sits in for local bands who call out his name from the stage. Blues, jazz or a
huapango—
he can play almost anything. One Christmas, Palmas, Bobby, Joe and I jam in my room, whiskey bottles at our sides, and record it on a hand-held tape recorder. We call it “Latin Christmas ’69.”

The Palmas brothers are Joe’s best friends, even as Joe continues to do well in high school as a gymnast who practices karate, and turns in homework and thumps a bass on weekends.

There comes a time, however, when Palmas fails to venture too far beyond his rickety porch. He stops showing up for gigs. Sometimes he sits alone in his room, the guitar on a corner of an unmade bed.

The last I heard, he plays only when the heroin in his body gives him a booking.

At Mark Keppel High School there was an annual observance: the battle between the Mexicans and Anglos. We called it “The Tradition.” It usually started soon after the new school year. When I became a sophomore, the spark which set it off occurred during a football game between Mark Keppel’s Aztecs and a predominantly white school called Edgewood. Bus loads of whites from Edgewood came to Aztec Field to see their boys play. A few of us from Lomas decided to crash the game.

When I arrived at Keppel that evening, the football field was lit up; the bleachers were covered with people on both sides. Almost all of them were white, including those on Keppel’s side. My homeboys were loitering in the parking area. They were Enano, Santos, Midnight (the only black guy in the gang: One night the homeboys found him AWOL from the army, homeless and sleeping in the fields. The next day they initiated him into the ’hood and he’s stayed ever since.), Carlitos, Baba and Lencho; some of the homegirls included Payasa, Trudy and Chata. We shared a bottle of T-Bird.

Dressed-up, prim students from Edgewood walked past. We called out to them.

“Hey, got any change
lambe?”
Santos queried.

“What’s your name baby?” Lencho asked one of the girls.

“¡Chúpame!”
Baba added.

They looked scared, walked around us. One guy got huffy: “Hey, can’t you see we came to see a game? I’m sure you have something better to do.”

“As a matter of fact,” Santos said, “we don’t, so come over here and hand us your money—you butt-on-the-back, paddy motherfucker.”

They started to run, but we surrounded them and forced them to fork over some bills. As they ran off, Lencho kicked one of them in the ass.

Nothing would have come of any of this. We were bored. Everyone else soon watched the game, the cheering and roaring—something we weren’t a part of.

“Let’s squint to the Hills,” Santos suggested.

We turned and walked down Hellman Avenue. Suddenly a Monterey Park police car drove by and stopped. Two uniformed officers rushed out.

“Hold it right there,” one of them ordered.

This became a routine with us. Whenever the people from the Hills made it down to Monterey Park, San Gabriel or Alhambra, the police departments in those communities made it a habit to roust us out.

We placed our arms on a chain-link fence and spread our legs. One officer searched us while another radioed in. They asked for identification. Where did we just come from? Where were we going? The regular.

Carlitos questioned why we were being stopped and searched.

“We didn’t do anything. We just walking, man.”

One police officer told him to shut up. But Carlitos kept on.

“Why are we always being harassed?”

The police didn’t want to hear it. Before long, an officer struck Carlitos with a baton on his knee. He buckled and fell. We turned around but the other officer pulled his gun out on us. Two more cops arrived. One of them put a choke hold on Carlitos as the other struck his legs. Payasa yelled out: “Leave him alone—he ain’t doing nothing, man!”

Carlitos looked like he lost his breath. His face turned blue as the officer behind him put pressure on his neck.

“He can’t breathe!” Trudy yelled “You’re killing him!”

They knocked Carlitos to the ground and held onto his head. He looked bad—slobbering from the mouth, his pupils turned up. More officers came. Carlitos was out cold. The paramedics arrived, but the police refused to let them do anything. They left Carlitos lying in the street. By that time more Lomas people had arrived, including some older ones who had come to watch the game. Anger flowered among the crowd as word spread about what had happened. A bottle struck one of the police cars. Then another. And another.

Things soon exploded. More cops came but they too were pelted. A major confrontation erupted just above where the two high schools were playing their game, oblivious to what was going on. Soon the police pulled out. The ambulance took Carlitos and sped off, but not before receiving a barrage of rocks, bottles and debris. We assumed more police and firepower were coming. The only path out was toward the football field.

Santos led the way. A car with a local resident drove by. Santos picked up a trash can and threw it in front of the grill—it rolled beneath the car, slowing it down. Then people threw rocks, smashing windows. Whoever drove the car pulled it out and took off, dragging the trash can bunched up under the car, sparks flying everywhere.

We pushed our way through the entrance, some tore down part of the fence surrounding the field. We pulled white guys from out of the stands. Some of them tried to fight back. Even older men, probably war vets and construction workers, got into it but we thumped on them as well.

The game continued for a few more plays before the realization set in a battle was raging out of control in the stands. We rushed into the grandstand, smacking people around. The rage from seeing Carlitos being choked and the cops pushing us around had been building up for years. Spectators tried to flee, a number of cars were smashed. The crowd with us grew larger. More homeboys were involved, ready for
pleito.

I removed my belt and walked down the street with Santos, Lencho and Midnight, who had experience with racial violence among Blacks, Whites, and Latinos from his time in Army boot camp. Skirmishes popped up in the middle of the streets, in alleys and on front lawns. Whites got together and attacked as well. They found isolated groupings of Mexicans and pounced on them.

At first we avoided jumping on the Asians, even if they were with the Anglos and had lettered jackets and were members of the teams. Maybe the whites didn’t care for them either, but at least they had their money, status and grades. But one Asian guy got into our face. It wasn’t so much he thought he was white. It was more in defense of what was “right.” It was wrong to jump on innocent people. It was wrong to focus on the color of skin. It was wrong to throw rocks at cars, police and homes.

“You can’t do this,” the Asian guy clamored. “We didn’t do anything to you!”

Five guys jumped on him.

A group of whites from Edgewood came by our way. We confronted them in the street in front of the school. Everybody started throwing blows. I held on to one guy’s shirt, tight, and punched him repeatedly in the face. He tried to kick and hit and block my hands, but I just held on, pulling him to the ground while hitting.

Some other guys jumped on me, but I continued clutching this guy’s shirt and watching my fists beat his face, making deep cuts and welts. They tried to pull me off, and I even felt some blows, but I wouldn’t let go.

Assistance came from various police departments. Streets were blocked off to keep the disturbance from moving to the main business section on Garvey Avenue. One white guy found himself surrounded by a large group of us. I felt sorry for him for some strange reason. I walked up to him.

“Get the fuck out of here—now!”

“Fuck you beaner,” he responded and hit me square on the jaw. I fell back onto the asphalt. I looked up and saw a swell of guys on him.

“Get off him,” I yelled.

Then I rushed up and struck the guy. He fell back too, but got up and ran through the crowd.

The Mexicans moved toward Garvey Park, armed with hand-held weapons as we pushed ourselves out of the flat land area toward the Hills. I found myself walking with Payasa, Trudy and Chata to get them home. As we turned down one desolate street, a car pulled up. I swung my belt, ready to strike. It turned out to be Mexicans.

“¿Qué pues, compa?”
one of them greeted.

“Shit, I almost went after you guys.”

I didn’t recognize them, but they offered to take the girls home. Just then the white guy who I struck earlier showed up in a car and pulled out a gun.

“Hey, you fuckin’ spic,” he said. “Come get some of this!”

I looked at the barrel of the gun. His taut finger encircling the trigger. The flash of his blue eyes and his clenched teeth.

“Go ahead,
puto,”
I said. “But make sure you kill me, or I’ll come after you.”

The white guy looked at me, and then the others, who just stood around not knowing what to expect. The tension lasted for a long minute. But his threat was a bluff; he put the gun down and took off.

Although I didn’t really know her, Chata gave me a wet, desperate kiss, as if it were our last moment on earth. We had to go in opposite directions. I lived past the tunnel and they were going up into the hills. She wished me luck and went with the dudes in the car. I found myself alone in hostile terrain.

The night blazed with car fires, and the whirling lamps of police and fire vehicles. The Sheriff’s department blocked off all entrances to the Hills, stopping people and cars before allowing them to go in or out.

I continued toward home on the other side of the San Bernardino Freeway, where I would be safe.

Suddenly a jeep came screeching down the road, its headlights blinding me as it approached. It went past me, then stopped. I saw about 10 guys crammed inside. White guys. With baseballs bats.
¡Qué desmadre!
I was going to get it good!

The jeep turned back and came at me. I took off. I heard yelps and hollers, like cowboys do on TV shows, as the vehicle closed in. I propelled my legs through several yards, leapt over fences and hid next to some trash cans in an alley. I heard the peeling of rubber and the yelling as the jeep circled around to locate me. It entered the alley and I ran again. Somehow I made it over to the underground tunnel which led into my neighborhood: Various colored markings located its entrance. The jeep came up to its mouth. I could see the headlights beam through the darkness. After a few moments, it turned around and sped off. This was one Mexican scalp these cowboys wouldn’t get.

The next Monday at school the fights continued. The Tradition for that year had started. Mexicans roamed the hallways, beating on any white guy they could see. Girls got into it too, ripping the blouses of the prim and proper “society” girls and wreaking havoc in the gym area. Parents came to pull their kids out of school.

Some whites gathered in the parking lot behind the school and began an offensive. The fighting would last for two or three weeks, tapering off for the rest of the year with only isolated incidents. But during the heat of the Tradition, classes were canceled. Police brought in. Ambulances summoned.