Last Summer of the Death Warriors (2 page)

T
ake care of your sister.
Those were the words his father said as he left for work that last morning, and those were the words that circled in his head whenever he allowed silence to enter. Then there were the questions. How was it possible that he didn’t know Rosa was dating someone—probably seeing him after work, getting rides home with him? He remembered the sound of a motor idling outside the trailer. How was it possible that he didn’t get up to see who was driving her home? How could he not notice the sound of that engine was different from the sound of Julieta’s four-cylinder Toyota?

Then he remembered Rosa coming in. “Hi, Pancho,” she said loudly, beaming as she closed the door. He was lying on the sofa. “Whatcha watching?”

“Nothing much. Some show.”

“Hey, guess what?”

He didn’t look away from the set when he answered. “What.”

“I got a ten-dollar tip today. Wanna see it?”

“Put it in the grocery jar.”

“Okay.”

She sat down in the upholstered brown chair and began to take off her blue sneakers. Her legs were thick and she had trouble lifting one on top of the other. “I’m getting fat,” she said, rubbing her feet. He looked at her briefly. He had never heard her say anything good or bad about her appearance before. “I wish I was thin and pretty like the other waitresses. Julieta says I should use some makeup.”

“Julieta’s no expert on pretty,” he remarked.

She giggled. “Oh, Pancho.” She leaned back, slumped in the chair, yawned. “I’m sleepy,” she said.

“Don’t fall asleep in the chair,” he told her.

“Oh, Pancho.” She pushed herself slowly up. She was halfway to her room when he saw her turn around. She took the ten-dollar bill from her purse and waved it and grinned at him all at the same time. Then she pried open the lid of the can marked sugar and dropped the bill in there.

It felt as if he had been asleep all of ten minutes when someone poked his ribs. He willed his eyelids to open. Slowly, the gaunt face of D.Q. came into focus.
I don’t need to see that first thing,
he thought.

“Wake up, Mr. Pancho. It’s time to greet the new day.”

“Shit.” He fished around for the sheet, but there was no sheet to be found. “What time is it?”

“It’s eight thirty. You got to sleep late today. Everyone is already up and about doing God’s work.”

This can’t be happening to me,
he said to himself. He shook his head the way a wet dog dries himself, and then, in one forceful movement, he sat bolt upright on the bed. He blinked three times and then tried to swing his legs off the bed, but the wheelchair was in the way. “You mind moving?” he asked.

D.Q. wheeled himself backward. “Hey, look. I got you a pair of regulation St. Tony’s shorts and two T-shirts. It’s going to be hot working in that room.” D.Q. was holding up a pair of gray shorts. On one of the legs, a silver circle with the words “St. Anthony’s” curved around a man in a robe, holding a shepherd’s staff. “I also found you a toothbrush and a bar of soap. Not that I’m trying to tell you anything.”

Pancho stood up and quickly slipped into the shorts. Then he grabbed one of the blue T-shirts and put that on as well.

“Come on,” said D.Q., “I’ll show you where the dining room is.”

“I have to take a leak first,” he said.

“It’s on the way.”

“You gonna watch me do that too?”

D.Q. was moving on ahead. “Nah, you can handle that on your own.”

The dining room had five round tables with eight plastic chairs each. A skinny white vase with a fake carnation sat in the middle of each table. There was a serving counter in one wall through which you could see the kitchen. The counter held eight boxes of different cereals as well as two one-gallon jugs of milk, a tin bowl with bananas, oranges, and green apples, and a glass pitcher half filled with powdery orange juice.

Three boys sat at one of the middle tables, talking loudly. They
looked up when D.Q. and Pancho entered the room but then went back to their conversation. “You never even came close to making it, you liar,” Pancho heard one of them say.

“There’s breakfast,” D.Q. said, pointing at the cereal. “I already ate, but I’ll keep you company.”

Pancho grabbed a white bowl and filled it with the first box of cereal. He poured milk into the bowl, grabbed a banana and a spoon, and went to sit down at the table where D.Q. had stationed himself. He put a spoonful of the cereal in his mouth and chewed slowly, not lifting his eyes from the bowl. He wished he had a cereal box in front of him so he could fix his eyes somewhere.

“Want me to introduce you to people?” D.Q. motioned with his head to the table with the boys.

“Nope,” he said.

“That’s all right. There’s no pressure here to be social.” D.Q. was wearing a long-sleeve cowboy shirt. It was brown with white designs around the pockets and those pearl-lacquered buttons. His blue jeans looked three sizes too big for him.

“You and me gonna tag along all day?” Pancho asked. He wiped off the milk that was running down the side of his mouth.

“Not all day. I usually take a nap, sometimes two. You’ll be on your own then.”

After Pancho finished the cereal, he peeled the banana and ate it in two bites. He dropped the peel in the cereal bowl. “You never said what’s wrong with you,” he said, still chewing.

“I have diffuse pontine glioma,” D.Q. said, smiling.

“What’s that?”

“An illness.”

“Is it in your legs, is that why you can’t walk?”

“I can walk all right. There’s nothing wrong with the legs.” D.Q. slapped both his thighs. The sound reminded Pancho of his father’s flag snapping in the wind. “It’s a question of power. There’s not enough power to move the legs, or if there is, I need to save it for more important things, like answering your questions.” He grinned.

“And I’m supposed to push you around.” Pancho slumped in his chair. He looked around to see if there was any coffee. There was no coffee. He needed caffeine in the worst way.

“I have some good news on that front,” D.Q. said. “I talked to the Panda this morning, and he thinks he can scrounge up some money to pay you for helping me out.”

Pancho thought it over. “How much?”

“Thirty bucks a day.”

“Pssh.” He could never do math in his head, but he knew right off that thirty dollars a day wasn’t going to get him where he wanted to be. “Do I got a choice?”

“Sure. I told you, this isn’t a jail. If a job comes up and you want it, you can take it. But you won’t want to.”

“Why’s that?”

“You’re going to like hanging out with me.”

“Yeah.” Pancho sat up and looked at the three boys at the next table. “Where do they work?”

“Every day, three different kids stay back to work at St. Tony’s. They help Margarita in the kitchen or Brother Javier out in the yard or Lupita in the office. The rest of the time, they sweep and mop and wipe. See that?” D.Q. pointed to a white sheet of paper
taped on the wall. “That’s the new list that just came out this morning. That last name on the list, that’s your name. You’ll be up next Friday.”

“I thought you said this wasn’t a jail.”

“Mmm.”

“‘Mmm’ what?”

“Are you done? ’Cause we got work to do.”

Pancho lifted himself up from the chair reluctantly.

“You need to put your dishes over in that tub with the dishwater. The peel goes in the garbage.”

Pancho stared hard at D.Q. He took a deep breath, picked up the bowl, and plopped it in a pink tub filled with suds. He walked back and stood in front of D.Q. “What now?”

“Can you wheel me over to that storage room, the one the Panda showed you yesterday?”

Pancho got behind the wheelchair. One of the boys at the other table smiled at him. It could have been a friendly smile, or maybe the boy was making fun of his “companion” job. Pancho flipped him the middle finger, just in case.

T
hey sorted documents in the storage room. Pancho opened a box and took out a file. D.Q. read it and instructed Pancho to put it in the garbage or another box. There were bank statements and telephone bills and pictures of boys, all with the same crew cut. Pancho saw no rhyme or reason to what D.Q. decided to keep.

After some time sifting through documents, they started on the sports equipment. There was no thinking involved here. Everything needed to be lugged to the room next door. They organized the equipment by the different sports. In one bin, they put the aluminum bats and the baseball gloves; in another, they put the shin guards and soccer balls.

“What about these?” Pancho pointed at a box.

“What is it?”

He lifted out a pair of fourteen-ounce boxing gloves. The red leather was peeling in places. The box contained another pair of gloves, three jump ropes, and two sets of protective headgear.

“I haven’t seen those in years.” D.Q. stretched out his hands,
and Pancho threw him the gloves. They landed in his lap. He tried to put one on, but the effort required to push his hand through the opening was too great. “Used to be when two kids got angry, they could request the gloves. One of the Brothers would referee. The kids would put on the helmets and whack each other for a couple of three-minute rounds.”

Pancho slipped on one of the gloves and smacked his open hand. A puff of dust appeared in the air. “Guess no one gets angry anymore,” he said. He remembered the boxing trophy at the bottom of the case. He took the glove off and threw it back in the box. “How long have you been here?” he asked.

“Since forever. They left me out front in a basket when I was no bigger than that football.”

Pancho scrutinized him. “Since before you were ill?” He didn’t mean to sound like he cared one way or another.

“Yeah. You know that one time when I was about thirteen, I beat the crap out of this kid, Rudy, with those very gloves?”

“You?”

“I know. It’s hard to believe, isn’t it? Oh, well. Being strong and good-looking isn’t everything. It’s what’s up here that counts.” He lowered his head and tapped his skull with his index finger.

Pancho bent down to pick up a baseball that had rolled to his feet. He thought,
What else is someone in a wheelchair going to say?
He tossed the ball up in the air with his right hand and caught it with his left. “How long have you been in the wheelchair?” he asked without looking at D.Q.

“Just recently.”

“But you can walk.”

“Sure.”

“You don’t have the strength.”

“Correct. They zapped all the strength out of me.”

“Who did?”

“The doctors.”

“How?”

“Radiation.”

Pancho was silent. It occurred to him that this was a good time to stop asking questions. He didn’t want to know any more than he already did. Nevertheless, he heard himself say, “You’re dying.”

D.Q. smiled. “You could say that we all are. You are too. I’m just doing it faster.”

“How fast?”

“No one knows for sure. It could be any day. It helps me to look at each day that way. Statistically speaking, people with the type of brain cancer I have usually live twelve months from the time they’re diagnosed. I was diagnosed about six months ago.”

Pancho laughed. It lasted a second or two at most, but it was still a laugh, and Pancho did not know where it came from or what to say next. “Life sucks,” he finally said.

D.Q. considered that. “I know what you mean, but no, fundamentally it doesn’t.” He paused. “You know what we’re doing here?”

There was a tin bucket nearby. Pancho turned it over and sat on it. He hadn’t done any heavy lifting to speak of, but he was tired. Just looking at D.Q. made him tired. “Here? Like on this earth?”

D.Q.’s face lit up. “That is
the
question, isn’t it? Actually I was referring to this room. Do you know why we’re here, in this room, cleaning it up?”

“The Panda said so.”

“Yes, the Panda has agreed to let me have this room. After we get all the junk out and paint it and put in some curtains and a new toilet, I’ll move in here.…Look out that window. What do you see?”

Pancho looked. “The basketball court.”

“The head of my bed is going to be right there where you’re sitting. I’ll be able to lie there and watch the basketball games. I’ll hear the kids argue about calls and complain about fouls. At first they’ll be aware of me and maybe try to keep it down or something, but after a while they’ll forget I’m here and they’ll just play. That’s why we’re fixing up this room. Do you get it?”

“What’s not to get?”

“I’ll spell it out for you just to make sure, since you’re my appointed helper. The Panda and I have reached an understanding. At the point that it’s evident that more treatment is not going to do anything besides weaken my body and mind, at that point, I’m coming home. We’ll get one of those hospital beds that crank up and down and a nice soft chair and this is where I’ll be. The Panda wanted to give me a room at the other end, closer to where he and the Brothers live. He thought it would be too noisy here, next to the door with the kids coming in and out. But I want it to be noisy.”

Pancho looked around the room. If you placed a chair beside the second window, you could look at the pecan trees. “You got it all worked out.”

“It’s all falling into place. Now that you’re here, we can proceed with the plan.”

“I have my own plans,” Pancho protested.

D.Q. ignored him. “Right now, this body plans to take a nap,” he said.

H
e wheeled D.Q. to his “room” and watched him lift himself up from the chair in slow motion and stretch out on the bed. It was a quarter past twelve. “Margarita puts out some bread and cold cuts for lunch,” D.Q. said, his eyes already closed.

Pancho walked past the room they’d been working in and out the side door. On one of his trips to the Dumpster, he had noticed some bikes on a stand. They weren’t locked. He took one out, the worst-looking one, the one he figured no one would even miss. It was small and bright green, but the paint had begun to peel in places.

He went down some side streets and got on North Valley Drive heading south. He biked in the direction of the traffic, cars whizzing by on his left. It took him an hour to get to the Green Café. He went to the back door, the entrance to the kitchen, and leaned the bike against the wall. He asked one of the cooks if Julieta was there.

“Hi, Pancho,” she shrieked when she saw him. She headed toward him as if ready to envelop him in a hug, but the serious look on his face stopped her a few feet away.

“Can we talk someplace?”

“Come on. No one’s in the bar right now.”

He followed her through the kitchen and past the eating area into a room that smelled like spilled beer. The room had red stools against the oak bar and four green Formica-top tables against a wall. She pulled out two chairs, sat on one, and waited for him to sit.

“You’re looking good,” she said. “Are you still living with that lady?”

He wondered how she knew about Mrs. Duggan, and then he remembered that he saw Julieta at his sister’s burial after he’d been placed in the foster home. “I’m at an orphanage now. A place called St. Anthony’s.”

Julieta was twenty-one years old, one year older than Rosa. He knew because one time Julieta came home with Rosa after work and, after Rosa fell asleep, he and Julieta ended up alone. They were watching a movie when she asked if she could stretch out on the sofa and put her head in his lap. It turned out to be the first time he had physical relations with a girl. It was also an event he regretted the next day. She wasn’t the kind of girl he wanted to get involved with. He made it a point to avoid being alone with her after that. But she was kind to Rosa and so he tried to be friendly. She and Mrs. Ruiz, the owner of the Green Café, alternated bringing Rosa home after work.

“Oh. They treating you okay?”

“It’s okay.”

“Good.” She crossed her legs and tugged at her skirt. Pancho waited. “Oh, before I forget. Manuel, Mrs. Ruiz, all the people at work, we got together and wanted to give you something.” She went behind the bar and came back with a large white purse. She opened it and took out an envelope. He could tell there was money in it.

“I don’t want any money.”

“It’s not much. It’s just that people wanted to give you something.” She held it toward him, but he didn’t reach for it. She put it on the table. “I’ll leave it here, okay?” She took a pack of Salems out of the purse and then searched around the room for an ashtray. “You mind?”

“No,” he said.

She stretched out her arm until she could grab the ashtray on the next table. “This orphanage place you’re at, you got an air conditioner in your room or anything?”

“We got fans.”

“Oh.”

“It’s all right.”

“Not like home, huh?”

“No.”

She uncrossed her right leg and then crossed her left. This time she didn’t tug at her skirt. Her legs were smooth and her scent had begun to affect him slightly. She had shoulder-length black hair that swung when she moved her head. Pancho thought that if you erased the green eye shadow, washed the rose cheeks, and wiped off the orange lipstick, she could almost make it to pretty.

“What will happen to the trailer?” she asked, blowing out a stream of smoke.

“They’re going to sell it.”

“You get to keep the money?”

“Someday, maybe. I need to ask you something.”

“What is it?” She looked alarmed. She shifted in her chair, placed the purse on the table, and then grabbed it again. “Want to go outside? It stinks in here.”

“I gotta go back,” he said. He fixed his eyes on her. “Was Rosa seeing someone?”

He could see her swallow. She licked her lips. Her teeth were smudged with lipstick. She spoke without looking at him. “Why do you ask?”

“She was found in a motel room. Someone was with her. Whoever was with her, killed her.”

“How do you know?”

“I know.” He didn’t want to tell her how he knew.

“I know in many ways she was a child, you know, mentally, but she was an adult too. A woman. She had a right to her private life.”

“I need to know who she was with that night. Did you ever see her with anyone?”

“I thought the police said there was no crime committed.”

“Rosa’s not important to the police. Did the police ever ask you anything? Did they even come talk to you or anyone here where she worked? Did they even try to find out who she was with?”

“No.”

“I’m asking now.”

She put both feet on the ground and leaned forward. “I asked
her. One day she came up to me and said she didn’t need a ride. Someone was taking her home. I said, ‘Who’s taking you home, Rosa?’ and she said, ‘My boyfriend.’ I asked her who it was, but she didn’t say. She used to walk out at eleven and meet him down the block. I mean, I don’t know, you have to respect a girl’s privacy…if that’s what she wants.”

“You never saw him?”

“Not really saw him. One time I was going home and I saw her getting into a red truck with a man. I never saw his face because he was leaning to open the door for her. He didn’t have much hair, just some around the sides. He looked like an older guy. An Anglo—I could tell by the top of his head. That’s all I saw, Rosa getting into a red truck with some old guy.” She thought about it for a minute. “There was something written on the door of the truck—something or other ‘and Sons.’ Oh, and the truck had a silver toolbox. It looked like he worked in construction or something.”

“‘And Sons’?”

“Yeah. I wish I could remember the first part, but I know it ended with ‘and Sons.’”

“Did Rosa ever mention a name?”

“A couple of times she started to tell me. She seemed happy and you could tell she wanted to girl-talk about him, but then she’d hold back, like all of a sudden she’d remember she wasn’t supposed to say anything.”

“She must have met him here. Where else would she meet him? Did you ever see her talking to anyone?”

“She talked to everyone. Everyone loved Rosa.” She reached over and touched his knee. He pulled his leg away from her. “She
was special, delicate, you know. It was like she didn’t belong in this world, like any day she’d leave us and go back to heaven.”

Pancho chuckled. Julieta’s words reminded him of what his father used to say about Rosa.
Es una angelita que nos presto Dios. She’s a little angel on loan to us from God.

“Want some ice tea?”

“I got to go back,” he said. Then he thought of something else he wanted to ask. He deliberated for a moment. “There was a boy in the foster home where I got kicked out. His name was Reynolds.” He paused. “He said some things about Rosa. At first I thought he was just saying them to piss me off. But he knew who she was and where she worked.”

“Ohh.” She covered her mouth with her hand.

“You know a kid called Reynolds?”

“No. It’s just that…I’m afraid of what you’re going to say.”

“Is it true then? What he said about Rosa?” He could feel the blood rush to his face.

“I don’t know.”

He took a deep breath. “He said she did things for money. What did he mean?”

She covered her eyes with the palms of her hands and then brought her hands together as if she were praying. “Pancho, there’s no need to go into this.”

“Tell me. I want to know.”

She squirmed in her chair. “This was a while back, when she first started working here. She’d go outside during her breaks. Boys, you know, high school kids, would sometimes wait for her out back, by the kitchen. It was just kid stuff. She didn’t know any better. It wasn’t like it was dirty to her or that it meant anything.
She was getting some attention. It was just touching, you know, necking, petting.”

He remembered what Reynolds had told him, just before he broke his jaw.
I knew your sister. She’s one of them ten-dollar sluts at the Green Café.

“Jesus Christ,” he said. “You didn’t do anything?”

“I’m sorry,” she said. He had his elbows on his legs and was resting his head on his hands. She touched his head as if to bless him. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I really am.”

“Yeah, me too.” He stood up and headed for the door.

“Pancho, wait. Take the money.”

“Keep it,” he told her.