Stick (31 page)

I watched his hands and listened to his narration.

The movement and tone of his voice hypnotized me, and sometimes the entire audience would laugh in unison. The man running the game was apparently very funny, while he worked at crossing and looping those walnut shells.

I didn't think people actually did things like that, either, except maybe in movies about other times and places. But here it was, in the shadow of skyscrapers, this dance and spectacle taking place in front of my eyes, right on a sidewalk in Los Angeles.

It was amazing to me.

I thought it was beautiful.

I watched the game for a while. Money changed hands. The man rarely looked up from his shells. When he did, he'd take only the quickest glance, like his eyes were snapping machine-gun flash photographs of the spectators. Then he noticed me, and stopped shuffling his hands.

He pointed to me and said something.

It sounded friendly. He had kind eyes.

But everyone around the table turned and looked at me. They were waiting for me to do something as an answer to the man running the game.

Then he pointed from me to the shells on his table.

I felt myself turning red. I didn't know what to do.

People began talking, saying something to me, calling me
joven
.

Joven
.

I shook my head, backed away, and tried to disappear up the sidewalk, into the drifting sea of the crowd, but I could never just blend in. Not anywhere.

Especially not in Los Angeles.

And as I got farther up the street, my escape route was blocked by a wall of people that cut across the sidewalk and created a pathway in front of the stairs that led through the front doors of a church. I couldn't get around the pack of bodies. The street was choked, at a standstill, too. Cars had pulled up to the curb, decorated with streamers and paper flowers, their doors standing open.

Four little girls in yellow frilled dresses, and wearing pale white leggings that wrinkled around their ankles, with black shoes polished like mirrors, came through the doorway. Each one of them carried a basket of flowers, and they scattered petals and blooms down onto the sidewalk where they walked. Then eight little boys, Mexicans, stepped out from the church, lined up like soldiers, and all dressed in matching green suits and ties, their hair slicked down across the tops of their heads, shining like the shoes worn by the flower girls. More men and women, young and old, all brown-skinned, shining, swaying in their dresses and suits, walking proudly like hunters carrying a trophy, and waiting beside the open cars with their gleaming eyes fixed on the façade of the church.

Finally the bride and groom emerged through the doorway, and the voices of their party rose in happy and musical salutes. The man looked scared. I knew how he felt, with all these people watching him. He was thin, with barely a trace of mustache, and he wore a very simple suit with a yellow shirt. His eyes met mine, and it was like we both knew something about the other.

He looked to be about seventeen.

And I thought he looked brave.

But I didn't feel bad or out of place watching as the groom nervously led his bride into their car. And when the people forming the lines caved in behind them, a pathway cleared through the crowd, so I continued up the sidewalk, looking for anything I could find that said Angel Street on it.

I stopped in front of a shop with the word
CARNICERÍA
painted in blue across its wide glass storefront. At some time, the letters had been rained on, and they dripped down the window like melted wax.

Inside, I saw a glass case that was filled with meat, pale sausages, and parts of animals. A beautiful girl in a white apron stood behind the counter, and an old woman with her back to me pointed and waved her hand, “no,” at things she wanted the girl to turn over, lift.

No, again.

At the back of the shop, a stocky man, bare-armed and wearing a T-shirt smeared with blood, hacked away at a leg joint, swinging a wide and flat cleaver while a lit cigarette dangled from his lips and smoke curled back into his eyes.

Even from where I stood on the sidewalk, I could hear the drumming whacks of the cleaver, and I could see the bone dust and marrow that flecked out across his wooden block.

And in front of the girl, at the very center of the meat case, was an enormous pig's head, blanched white, smiling at me, his eyes squinted like he was laughing, as if he was so happy I had come there to see him, surrounded as he was with curved platters of cow brains, tongues, and tripe.

I thought he was like the king of all the dead things, the ruler of all the pieces that had been so carefully arranged around him, all the missing parts everywhere in the world.

I had never seen anything like this before—certainly never seen an entire pig's head for sale—and I tried to calculate if there was a price you could pay for something like that.

His ears looked nice, too.

I wondered if anyone could just buy one ear.

A scale with a stainless metal pan hanging beneath it dangled over the counter. It reminded me of a prop you might see in a horror film. The girl who worked there dropped something red and wet into it, and she watched as the needle danced its clockwise, twitching response. Her dark hair fell over her shoulders, and she was saying something to the old woman customer, who nodded. I was mesmerized by her mouth, the whiteness of her teeth.

She was perfectly beautiful.

She must be the daughter of the butcher, I thought, because she couldn't have been much older than I was. And I wondered if she had ever kissed a white boy from the state of Washington before.

One with anotia.

I looked at the pig head again.

When I lifted my eyes, I noticed that the girl had seen me. Maybe she knew I'd been watching her; but we just stared at each other for a while. She didn't smile. Neither did I. It was like she knew me.

She pulled a piece of brown paper out from beneath the case and scooped the contents of the metal scale onto it. As she tucked the paper around the piece of meat, flipping it over, turning it around, I saw that her slender left arm ended just below her elbow.

But she worked quickly, like missing a hand was nothing to her.

The butcher kept chopping.

The old woman counted out money from an orange wallet.

I watched the girl behind the counter, and I wondered if Mrs. Mendoza had a word for this girl, too.

She looked at me again.

I left.

I was sorry I watched the girl. It made me feel like I'd stolen something from her.

Maybe she thought the same thing about me.

Maybe that's what the pig was smiling about.

*   *   *

I almost walked right past Angel Street
without noticing it.

Well, there wasn't much to notice in the first place; just a crooked, hand-painted sign nailed to the top of a heavy door with a small, grated window cut into its center. The door was squeezed inconspicuously between two storefronts, and when I pulled it open, the only thing on the other side was a dark and worn, narrow flight of stairs that led straight up to another doorway.

It reminded me of the way up from my basement. The stairs that would take me to Saint Fillan's room, to Mom and Dad. But these stairs at Angel Street smelled like piss.

I stood in a puddle of it at the bottom landing.

A bare, yellowed lightbulb hung down from the ceiling above the stairs. It dangled on a blackened cord of wire. When the door shut behind me, it was like I'd stepped into another world, or maybe another time.

The stairs creaked under my feet.

I looked back and saw the patterns of my shoe soles printed in piss on the lower steps. When I got close enough to the upper doorway, I could read the words that had been stenciled in black with spray paint:

ANGEL STREET YOUTH SHELTER

I didn't want to wait anymore. I imagined pulling open that door and looking right into my brother's eyes, seeing him the way he was the last time we were together and happy, on that Easter morning when we surfed together at the Strand.

But the door opened onto another dark and quiet room.

I went inside.

It smelled like smoke. I stood with my hand on the door, inside an old lobby, very small, with a torn sofa and a table that had equally torn magazines and coverless books on it. A mute television sat on the floor beside one wall. It had only one rabbit ear. The other was missing; and I thought,
I have come home.

At the back of the room was a curved, wooden registration counter, like you'd see in an old run-down hotel.

A man smoking a cigarette leaned behind it, like a tired bartender.

He didn't have any hair on top of his head, which helped spread the light from the flickering artificial-flame glass bulbs in the fake electric candles behind the desk. But the hair on the sides of his head hung down to his shoulders.

He said, “You're       the last one.”

“Uh. I am?”

It was all so surreal, like the guy had been expecting me. And for just a moment I thought that maybe I was dead, and maybe this was where you go to get sorted out or maybe to find your missing parts.

I watched him, hoping he might give me some kind of clue. Like we were speaking in code or something.

As my eyes adjusted, I could see a hallway behind him, and a door with a brass number nailed onto it.

He took another long drag from his cigarette.

“The last      bed. You never         been here before?”

I shook my head, and kept my back pressed against the door out to the stairs.

“Room two has three         beds. Two boys checked in              today. You're the last one.”

The bald man pinched his cigarette between his lips and pulled a clipboard up from beneath his registration desk. He started to write something on it, and checked the time on his wristwatch.

I looked at the door again.

“You're new         on the streets, aren't you?”

I shook my head.

“Um. I don't think I'm on the streets.” I cleared my throat. There was no window in the room, and I became aware of how much smoke had filled up the space between me and the guy at the desk.

“I'm looking for my brother. He called me yesterday and said he was going to be here.”

I took a cautious step forward.

On the wall in back of the man, there was a sign. It said,
ANGEL STREET RULES
.

I guessed it was there to make boys like me and Bosten feel at home.

NO DRUGS.

NO SMOKING IN THE DORMS.

IF YOU ARE UNDER 18,

CALIFORNIA LAW REQUIRES

ANGEL STREET TO CALL

A PARENT.

YOU MUST LEAVE AFTER 2 NIGHTS.

At the bottom of the poster, in what looked like red crayon, someone had scribbled, “No Sex,” and, below that, in pencil: “Especially not with Steve.”

I assumed Steve was the bald guy smoking the cigarette—the guy who ran this place. He put down his pencil.

“My brother's name is Bosten McClellan.”

“I know      Bosten.”

For some reason, just hearing Steve say he knew my brother made my heart start beating faster. “Is he here?”

Steve shook his head. Ashes dropped onto his desk and he swiped them away with the underside of his forearm. “Nuh. He checked in today, but he's          out on the street right now.   You know that kid.    He needs to straighten his shit up.

Slow down a bit.

He's going to end up dead.

Everyone's tried talking to him.”

“Oh.” I didn't know if it meant I should leave. “Is he going to come back?”

“He knows to       come back before      midnight.”

I thought about the man who was going to lock the gate at ten pee-em.

“My brother is only sixteen.”

“What's that      supposed to mean?” Steve sounded annoyed. He pressed his cigarette butt down into the lid from a pickle jar and twisted it around.

I didn't know what it was supposed to mean. I just wanted Steve to tell me Bosten was going to be okay.

I shrugged.

“Look. Every time       your brother's come in here…” Steve flipped back through the pages pinned to his clipboard. “Three times in the past two weeks. He                     stayed here     three times,      counting showing up this morning.”

Steve did the math.

He pivoted the clipboard around so I could read it.

“See that   phone number?”

Steve bit his nails. And his finger was yellow. He put it down right under the phone number next to Bosten's name. It was our phone number in Washington.

I nodded.

“Look     familiar, kid?”

“It's ours.”

“Every time        he's been here, I've talked to your dad.    We have to. To get permission.     I talked to him about an hour ago.”

“My dad knows Bosten's here?”

Steve let out a heavy sigh, the kind people would make when they were about to call me
retard
.

“You know the drill,   kid.    Your dad doesn't want       the boy to come home, anyway.       Why wouldn't he give permission?          

If he didn't give permission, we'd kick your brother out.

You're not dumb.

You know what happens to

boys like Bosten

on the street.

Your old man even sent him some cash a few days ago.”

I didn't know what happened to boys like Bosten on the street.

So I supposed I
was
dumb.

“My dad sent money?”

“And you know what boys       on the street do with their money. Or the things they'll do        to make money.

And Bosten       needs to slow it down a bit at both ends of the cash-flow gig.”