NIGHT TERROR 2 (VHS and Laserdisc)

I start talking shit and then I trail off. It doesn't matter if nobody's listening because I know what I said. You can bottle up something permanent and stronger than brick and hock it like an old tyme con artist or you can leave it at the fucking bus station. It doesn't mean it's going to blow anybody's mind. But I'll keep trying like the song says a hundred times. The Impressions on the turntable. Forty fives and a forty five. A wave crashes and washes some shit away. It corrodes my mind and leaves with a mighty trace.

Figured on having this just be some stories but I get caught up in the after work, the burying of the body and now they're all piled up. Impulsive rants and bullshitting with some fools on a porch and/or a scheme of paint splattered and I'm trying to make sense of all this.

What's with the delay? I ask myself. And that's it. Too many things at once so I might as well say something about it. I tried to reserve this space in the infinite erasable canvas of bullshit that is the internet, solely for completed work. But I failed this time and I'll fail again and as soon as I'm all right with it, the sooner I'll feel better about everything.

I went to New Orleans and I saw hundreds of snakes, three alligators and a million people across that southern stretch just getting by. I drank three hundred beers, got high as shit, invasive are the good times that caress your soul before they go away for good. Now I'm back in town. Oakland, California. Twothousandten.
Now I have to call the union and hear the same asshole tell me the same asshole things. He gets paid to do so. Maybe I'll take some classes at a community college. Today I'll make chorizo and green chile, some tortillas, I'll blast Anthrax once this record ends. Among the Living. I'll be forced to be all right.
Maybe someone, just someone, will come home smiling, bloody from having taken a knife to all them ruthless fuckers out there. Maybe she'll need to change her clothes. Maybe she'll stay awhile. Maybe she also likes Anthrax and Mexican food. Maybe she likes me. I don't know but I'm down to play it cool until tomorrow shows up banging the door down at dawn, DEA/LAPD style, fifty of those assholes after a week of threatening phone calls. I have to be cool and make the silence last until they show up in the early morning, saying, "Wake up Motherfucker."

true story.

The other day I was watching Rush videos on the internet when, due to the apocalyptic shithole this is, I was assaulted by one of those bullshit dancing advertisements (programmed to go off when "Rush" is typed into cyberspace.) It was fucking horrible but then it turned hilarious when I saw it was an ad for Rusch Catheters. Yes. I used to dig the lyrics to "Subdivisions" and afternoon blunts. But now I don't need that shit because I have enough catheters to last me through a nuclear winter. Thanks Capitalism!

nowhere all the time.

I walk out the door and cross the yard. I try to let everything outside the bullshit of the house invade my mind at once. There’s the familiar scent of Mesquite, Creosote and Camel Lights. The sun recedes and leaves the sky a pale red. It’s warm but the swelter is finally gone. For a quick moment I think everything might be ok.
But before I can inhale the world to come, the screen door flies open and slams shut behind her. I think maybe Lucy meant what she said about a murder suicide. I almost laugh but I’m startled at the sight of her. She’s in the yard, throwing my shoes at me as I walk out the gate and down the street. One of them hits the top of the chain link and fails to clear. The other one rolls in front of me on the asphalt. Lucy’s screaming things at me about needing shoes and a shirt in this world sometimes and then something about respect. I have to keep walking until I can’t hear her anymore.

The road feels good under my calloused feet. I’m content to leave her forever without shoes or a shirt. I can manage. I have this urge to give her one last once-over, some look to remember me by. But I keep on going, hoping that it looks like I don’t give a fuck. I’m trying to lie to her with the language of walking away, ignoring her fit in the yard, trying desperately to find some way to tell her what’s what without the impossibility of words.
I walk through the wash in the evening, fucking up coyote tracks with every step. I try not to think about what Lucy’s doing back at the house besides smoking and cursing. I look ahead and think about the night about to fall but it’s still sweltering, hot enough to expire if I don’t think of where to go next.

There’s a short cut into town. It goes on a half mile before crossing the main road that leads to the state highway twelve miles out. That road eventually finds Las Vegas going North and Mexico going south. The “Twelve Mile” road that leads to this town is a dead end. And I’m standing at that dead end. The sweltering town of Chemehuevi, California. And the Colorado River runs beside the town unnoticed. I look at it for a long time and decide I need a drink. Water most likely, but I always settle for beer.

Sullenly I walk through the parking lot that sits beside the road. Across the weathered blacktop sits the gas station and liquor mart and video store and deli. The center of town. Farther down, against the river, an ancient motel is being renovated along with but sitting apart from the main attraction, a small and unimpressive casino. It had long been a place for the older and surlier townsfolk, both white and Indian, to gamble away whatever meagerness they still possessed. But three years back, a Paiute businessman from hundreds of miles away, bought the land around the casino. He then began a venture to attract tourists with the usual allure of gambling, drinking and air conditioning. But a slew of financial problems stalled the project. The intention had been to create and sell a more remote and less bustling alternative to Las Vegas but was now just the same shit hole with a few new slot machines and half built add-ons protruding from every side. And all of this surrounded by the iconic American Southwest. It didn’t happen as rapidly as planned but it was certainly happening. I never thought it looked like much of a postcard. I can see the slow, interrupted renovation to the sign facing the river. It will soon attractively spell C-A-S-I-N-O…CASINO…in neon lights that flash big and gloriously. But for now it’s just lying there half built against the outside wall of the Whisper Valley Casino and Card Room. Motel coming soon.

As I make my way toward the deli and liquor mart, an old Chevy pick up with a fresh coat of rust and a bed full of Indians erratically drives into the parking lot and skids into an open spot in front. The truck jumps the curb enough to startle some children hanging out in front. Bouncing around the back of the truck are five men, locals with long hair and furious dispositions. I recognize the driver, an old friend named Dez, but I don’t say anything, just keep walking. He looks as pissed off as anyone. One Indian jumps out of the back with a tire iron in his hand. He swiftly walks over to a newer and much larger truck parked out front and busts the tail lights out, the left one and then the right, all the while saying things angrily under his breath then more audibly screaming “MOTHERFUCKER” after each muttering. The Indian gives it everything he has. Red-orange shards litter the blacktop. Then the headlights. The other men in the truck get out and stand by. A woman sitting shotgun remains in the truck. Nobody else in the parking lot asks questions or takes any action.
Then this bleached-haired white kid, maybe seventeen, comes out of the store with another kid who looks about the same but wearing a backwards baseball hat. Both of them look terrified and rightfully surprised.
“What the fuck, bro?” the white kid says.
“I saw you up there motherfucker! I saw you!” The man has passion and rage pouring out of his eyes. His impressively long hair is tied back in one long braid. He points the tire iron at the white kids and threatens, “I told you to stay the fuck out! Keep your ass out, motherfucker!”
The white kids retaliate with counter threats but they are only half-assed attempts at intimidation. These kids are frightened and outnumbered by their evening adversaries. The five Indians all stand silently behind their spokesman, waiting for these kids to make a move. There’s all kinds of shit lying around the parking lot just asking to be used as a makeshift weapon.
I walk past all this uninterested, thinking on another scuffle, the one back at the house. The hateful exchange of words and the subsequent bullshit of the parking lot fades behind me in a loud and awful dissonance. Out of the sun and past the domestic dispute, I find momentary shelter on the other side of a glass door. The small deli has its own entrance to the right of the liquor mart. With all scuffles and bloodshed out of sight and mind, I walk in, to a woman waiting just for me.

Irene is reading a paperback that she drops, startled by my entrance. She throws off her thick black frames but then seems mildly relieved to see a familiar face, not another bullshit customer and not her boss. The place is otherwise empty.
“Hello Irene.”
She says nothing and doesn’t have to. She pops open a tall can and puts a slice of cheese pizza in the oven. I’m a regular customer.
Irene is a Chemehuevi about the same age as me, an old friend in a way. She always ignores me but knows my every move, speaks only when she has something important to say.
She puts her glasses back on and goes back to her book. I take the tall can and thank her.
“What are you reading today?” I ask.
“Looks like you got some sun today, half-breed,” she says, her eyes marvelously big and dark behind the thick windows staring at the page.
“Yeah you could say that,” as I take a good first swig from the tall can, “Sure, something like that.”
“Can I get you anything else?” she says, her eyes still fixed inside her book.
“I’ll stick with the usual, thank you.”
Then she catches me looking at her. I realize I’m just standing there awkwardly, exhausted and alone. So I take a seat at the small table by the window.
“What is it? Are you thinking about leaving again?” Irene looks at me a moment then goes back to her book.
“Yeah, I think so,” I tell her, “But seriously this time. I need to. I need something different, you know?”
“No, I don’t know.” Then she laughs. “White boy drifter.”
“Well, half white.” I say.
“What?”
“Nothing. Nevermind. I was talking to someone else.”
“You’re weirder than you think, Daniel.” And she goes over to the oven to fix my slice, hiding each smile and small bout of laughter. I do the same, although it’s easier for me considering how tired and out of place I feel today. She sets it down on the counter then makes sure she hasn’t lost her place, adjusts her glasses and continues to read.

I pay and thank her again and sit window side, trying not to bother her. Outside, a sheriff’s deputy and his Native counterpart, both of them notorious assholes, have the group of Indians seated on the curb. The one who had the tire iron is in handcuffs and pleading to deaf ears. The white kid is bloody and talking to another authority figure. A group of women stand around watching and a child is crying real loud.

I look out beyond all this. A fine line of dark has settled on the other side of the river, the growing darkness hiding the tall granite mountains beyond the blood red walls against the water. Stars begin to fade into the sky but the sun is still setting slowly in another direction. Soon it will be nighttime and although it will still be warm, I wonder if I’ll need something more besides the jeans I’m wearing and the seventeen dollars I have in my pocket. I have no idea what I need, not in the least, so I leave it alone.
The food isn’t that good but bad pizza is better than most things. And beer is almost always good. And I like Irene. She continues leaning on the counter reading. I want to say something but can’t think of a goddamn thing.

There’s this obscure painting on the wall. It’s no masterpiece but it has always mesmerized me. It isn’t quite Mount Rushmore, just the stars of the show. Washington. Lincoln. Roosevelt. Jefferson. All in proper attire. And each one hanging from the same lonely gallows. No crowd. No executioner. Just four dead figures hanging. I’ve never said anything to anyone about it nor asked any questions. But since I was leaving town forever, I decided to ask my friend.

“Hey, Irene. What’s up with this painting here?”
“That? Oh, some drifter painted that, like ten years ago. Lived up there on Bonair Road. He painted that for the guy who owns the place and it’s been up there since.” Irene takes her glasses off and stares at the painting more intently. “It’s kind of a memorial,” she says.
“To who? These assholes?” I ask.
“No. To the artist,” she says. “The guy blew his brains out after that. They found him a month or two after. Kind of sad, right?”
“I wish I could do something like that.” The painting now coming alive for me in all its wonder.
“What’s that? Blow your brains out?”
“No. Not exactly.” I say.
We both laugh. And I look at Irene one last time, perhaps for too long. She looks at me awhile and offers a slight wave from behind those wonderful eyes. Goodbye. She puts her glasses back on and continues. And I walk back out into the desert.

I take the path that goes past the casino and down to the river. Once alongside the river, you can hike around rocks and reeds for several miles south of town.
Drifting down the riverside, I’m able to avoid the possible clusters of people taking it easy on a warm night. Drunk teenagers, people fishing and so forth. But I can’t avoid what’s constantly invading my thoughts.
About a hundred faceless questions circle around my mind like vultures unsatisfied. Any one thing I want to say or scream back in Lucy’s direction simply dead ends and dies. Still, her glare won’t go away. I start to feel bad, kicking the sand, calling myself an asshole, things like that. Then I stop because there’s no reason for it now. It’s kind of stupid pretending like things are so painless when I’m out here like this, without anybody around. I know what’s what. I’m leaving a decent house behind, a mobile estate to be accurate. And I’m leaving a decent woman behind. A radiant queen sometimes. But I’m thinking maybe that’s the problem. This is the wrong place for royalty and we’re the wrong fucking people. It comes down hard but it doesn’t matter now anyway. Then these thoughts recede a little and the river waits in front of me. We fucked up somewhere. Lucy and me, we’re just a mess. And that’s it.

The heat dissipates the moment my feet touch the cold water. I walk down between the reeds that gather at the banks, concealing a shallow pool I’m fortunate to find in the dark. Sand gnats fly up and off and back into the ground psychotically. Nocturnal things come out and about in all forms, in every way. I think about coyotes and tarantulas and rattlesnakes hiding, waiting for me to pass.

I look up and down the banks and then out across the river. Out into Arizona and more desert beyond. A few dim lights on the other side of the river that seem to be fading, about to burn out as they flicker so far away. And a billion other dim bulbs above me.
Behind me lies a changing place. The up and coming casino. The ruins of HUD homes and doublewides and many smaller dwellings. Shacks and shanties invisible to the passing eye because there rarely is a passing eye. The vacationers can’t see things like this. Every time I get some part time construction gig, it’s for one of these rich people’s houses. And with every add-on we build, it seems like part of the past is taken away. Living here year round, all the time, it’s hard to see beyond what’s right in front of you. Everyone’s distracted by survival. It’s never been a great town or anything. But it had it’s time. Now it’s just monotony and resilience and nowhere all the time.


I enter the river in my jeans. As it soaks my legs, the town around me and all others beyond falter and fade away. All grandiose disasters die swiftly as I wade out of the pool and into the flow of the river. I can float all the way to Mexico, into that fine blue Gulf. I can stay put and drown and it’d be just as well. I put my head underneath the black water and let the river take me slowly down past the casino where the neon flashing sign will soon be erected. Past the larger mobile homes at the edge of town, huge and empty places only inhabited from May to September. I drift on past the sound of their laughter and past the hum of dirt bikes and dune buggies in the distance. And past the early cries of coyotes scavenging for something to end their hunger.
It carries me about a mile before it grows cold and the dark consumes all remaining lights along the river. I’m alone and cold and submerged and ready for death. Let it go, brother.

Then at some point, I can feel a sandbar under my feet. And soon enough I’m standing with water at my waist. In one last pathetic maneuver, I sit down in the water to be finally carried away but it’s hopeless. No avail anywhere. I stand up again. I see the sad lights of the town over some large sand dunes. I wade back toward the shore where the sandbar emerged. There’s empty cans of Bud Light all over the place. An empty bag of Doritos floats past me. Nobody’s around. I shiver in my jeans but know I’ll soon be dry in the summer night again. I feel embarrassed there in front of no one but the desert. The quiet things are all laughing at me and I’ll just have to do the same. Fuck it.

There’s a trail at the far end of the dune. It goes steeply up some rocks and then straight toward a dirt road that leads into town. I find the trail. Drenched and stumbling, I make my way back. Reluctant in the desert dark.

Last Days of Joaquin Murrieta

"California's gonna die," she said. "And I'm pretty sad about it."

If you cut someone's arms off, one then the other, they will eventually bleed to death. Even if it takes a good long while, it happens. While it's ignorant to think otherwise, it's convenient as fuck. So people did that awhile. People moved into and around this place. Other people, a good slimy handful, made a killing. And made some money. Lives with breaths and blood and sacred places under a distant audience of fading stars were sold out and sold off like sickly cattle. An oblivious execution trip. Keys to the cages were thrown into the ocean. And the rich hid while the poor starved. It had happened before but not in this place, in this way. The real culprits got out clean. And they left the TV on and the engine running.
Their racket went on until the well ran dry and me and my kind are waiting around what was home, shells of cities in deserts and forests shaking heads and fists, saying, screaming, pointless questions. Why now and what for, etc.

California, she's not alone. In fact, it's not even that bad. It's just the enormity and symbolic importance of such a state of mind finally succoming to the strangulation is sad and it leaves my head spinning sometimes. I see the faces and hear the voices and it makes me want to take up arms, and without ideology or prejudice go down to the old factory where the scabs came in and blow them all away. 6112 Crosby Ave. Oakland, California. I can see you, you can see me. That's all technology has done.


But I'm just sitting down with you on a makeshift porch and we're discussing the weather, the strange and ruthless storm about to hit. Otherwise the sun usually shines. California like a motherfucker. Sometimes I can hide out and really lose it. And these times are becoming the only times I can revel in or hang with. A blanket on the grass. There's a baseball game somewhere. Dominoes in the park. A wanderer has reached the summit of a great and unnamed peak. Some longhairs have infiltrated a localized point break on the coast and will kill the rich fucks who think they know something about territory. A lowered Cutlass cruises for the last time, can't believe they could outlaw such a thing. Fresh tortillas all the time. A joint of native herb ignites. A soccer ball on the sand. Shitspeakers on a jambox. War, 2pac, Black Flag and The Beach Boys. The wind shuffles the past around softly. The sun smiles. California comes out and shines. The scent and the sight and the sound. I can dig it.
But it's too late to dig. Too goddamn late for anything.

science fiction bullshit disaster: my life in film.

(Today I watched two American films while I was recovering from the flu.)

The film, "Over The Edge" is an indictment of suburbanization that resonates even more today than upon its initial release in 1979. It has increased in popularity over time, through its availability and exposure. Junior high, shitty suburbs, hash, acid, beer, rock music, sex and rebellion. It's as good a film as you'll ever see. That's that.

Terminator 2: Judgement Day is an apocalyptic ballet of gargantuan explosions and cyborg death matches. It really makes the best of its billion dollar budget and hundreds of dead stuntmen. Trying to stop the future is hard. And makes for a good story.


Look. Being bedridden with swine flu has apparently seeped through my skull and corroded my brain. It has caused me to do a bunch of fucking asshole things like critiquing a film real loud in my head, quelling that goddamn notion by writing it all down, then submitting it to the shadowy abyss of the internet. Now I'm staring into this strange screen where I can write stories while checking basketball scores and chatting with my 4th grade teacher.
The internet. The audience that may or may not be. A million eyes or perhaps just one, an eye patched pedophile, may read anything anyone ever does on this deal. That's quite a range of possiblity. The be all, end all possible-audience machine. We've beaten science fiction in a footrace and we're not slowing down for anybody. It's stupid, it's heartwrenching, it's full of shit. And here I am.

Oh well, I've blamed myself enough. Those string pulling dickheads are the reason for the season and I hope they all get theirs. These films sure ignited something.
Over The Edge bleeds escape and rebellion.
T2 features man and machine coming together to fuck with time and murder the apocalyptic future. And it stars the governor of California, the failed state I love and defend and currently witness burning alive.
It really is too bad Arnold Schwarzeneggar couldn't have died after the filming of Terminator 2 in 1991. No "Junior." No "Collateral Damage." And most importantly, no governorship. He wouldn't have to be the face for the bullshit disaster we've all been buried in. It'd probably just be some other rich asshole who sucks.

All that acid jazz aside, these are fucking good movies. And they are truly inspirational testaments when mixed with cold medication and seething anger. Fuck swine flu, I think I'm suffering from dementia.

I know I should have taken an extra dose of Nyquil and just shut the fuck up. I could have just fallen asleep and dreamed about something weird and psychedelic like fly-fishing with Louis Armstrong on the River Styx. And then kept it to myself and went on and got well. But it's all I had today.

Bad times coming down and two films to help me wait it all out.

Execution Style.

The baseball card shop I used to frequent as a child still occupied the same building downtown. It had changed hands, I had heard, but still sold cards and collectibles. It used to be run by a young Italian guy in his late 20s, always wearing a pompadour and a Misfits t-shirt. He was a really nice dude. When I was some 8 year old kid coming around with innumerable questions about baseball cards and never buying a goddamn thing, he never once gave me the brush off. Twenty years later, with the same curiosity and lack of funds, I walk into the shop. At the very least, I’d like to price some of the cards still housed in my mother’s garage. A mighty fortune may await me.

First thing, the bells on the door ring. No response from the proprietor as I enter and greet him. Just a stone look, arms folded, a fat man with slicked back gray hair. He doesn’t look the least bit happy at the possibility of business. In addition to this asshole, the place has changed dramatically. There are hardly any cards here at all. Nothing in the flat and formerly eye level glass display cases. Just packs, mostly unopened complete sets, overrun by the scatter of sports memorabilia. Autographed portraits in overpriced glass frames. A neon sign with Budweiser and San Diego Padres logos brightly linked. A life sized cardboard cut-out of Derek Jeter, a large tag that reads Limited Edition. The price is so fucking ridiculous that I feel sick and angry and never want to think about it again. Anyhow, the place sucks now.

I don’t know what to ask the fat man behind the counter, perplexed by the erosion all around me. And it’s almost as warm in here as it is outside. So I move about the place. It’s still small but now more crowded with clutter. I ask the man, the only other person in the store, if they sell price guides and he still doesn’t say anything. The fat fuck just moves his head in the direction of a rack. It’s sitting in the far corner of the tiny shop. He lazily points at it, flailing his left hand slowly in the general direction. He’s putting more effort into the thousand ounce fountain soda in front of him. The occasional slurping is the only sound in the world. I try to pay it no mind.

I see shit in here people would never buy. Out of market stuff, things from Milwaukee that people in Milwaukee don’t want. I don’t understand it but it doesn’t get me down. It’s just another place that isn’t the same anymore. And I don’t know how any place selling collectibles survives in this town, past or present. Nobody has the money or the time for this shit. So I distract all these thoughts along with the mute behind the counter with the magazine rack where several price guides are waiting to answer the questions that this asshole won’t.

There’s only one price guide that I can recall and it stands out in front of the several others I’ve never heard of. So I pick it up and look for some year in the 1980s, which is easier to find because there used to only be a small handful of brands. And I’m about to find this rookie card to see if my fortunes in life have changed and if I have finally found the reason why my path has lead to this moment in time!

And then the dick behind the counter finally speaks.
“Hey,” he says.
So I look up at the sound, the interruption, the proprietor of this stupid establishment.
He says, “Hey pal! There’s no looking up the prices, ‘kay?
You gotta buy somethin’, you gotta pay for that thing there, y’understand? There’s no lookin’”

I say nothing, suspended in my own shock and disgust. I can’t believe this motherfucker. I look all around me for support, for other eyes of mutual disdain, makeshift weaponry pointed in his direction.
I look outside into the heat of summer and search the parking lot for possible recruits for the angry mob I hope to assemble. There’s nobody there. All is empty and quiet and dead.

I know there are things of more importance and misery going down outside the tinted storefront windows, far worse things in my own life as well. But something inside here has to be settled. The world gets worse everyday and we still strive to find the surface and live. And here this spineless fuck sits and looks at me like I’m the asshole! Maybe it’s the fact that I am an asshole for being here and wasting precious hours of my life once again, wasting precious energy on the hatred of this man I don’t know and his Steve Young collectible plates. Whatever it is, I can’t take it. I want to kill this piece of shit. But instead I just stand there. I drop the magazine on the floor. Its pages crumple and rip a little and the fat man just looks at it. He looks startled now and is once again mute. I want to tell him my story and how it has all come to this. I want to tell him how his worthless position and his smug demeanor have led to this final and violent moment in time.

Despite my thoughts of murder, I leave the magazine on the floor and try to laugh a little, breathing in heavily each time. And I walk out of the store, across the empty parking lot and I’m thankful when my car starts. I drive over to my mother’s house where I spend that evening going through old baseball cards and quietly plotting arson and murder. I think about the gasoline and the rags and an array of bludgeoning tools that hang above me in the garage.

Then I find a Fernando Valenzuela card. It’s a 1986 Topps #630. And it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I know it’s not worth that much. It’s no rookie or rarity. But I’ll never trade it so its price remains a nameless and redundant figure. For me, it’s a rare find, perfect and inexplicable.
I look at the card and I see Fernando, poised, clocked in, a seasoned veteran at twenty five. The still photograph makes it look as though you’re at the plate and Fernando’s about to throw it straight through you. The wind up, the pitch, another screwball to Mike Scioscia. Strike three, motherfucker.

I find a plastic case to put the card in and think of the inevitable cathedral. I will construct an altar to be built around it. There will be other things to be blessed and sacrificed, small things within reach that spark far greater ones, inside the noise of my skull and the pain in my chest. They are the only things that matter.
I take the card with me when I leave the next morning. I drive North on the boulevard, away from the town, the card shop and everything else.

I never kill the proprietor. I never burn the place down. I never go back there for that reason or any other.

All Day Music.

I.

Out in the garage, he opened the hood of a ’72 Electra and his first tall can of the day. The Buick and the Budweiser. It was warm and early and pleasant. Half past ten in the morning, cold beer, birds screaming at each other, Henry Lopez surveyed the day’s work as it sat there inside the cluttered one car garage. He had been offered a hundred dollars cash to tune-up the Electra by an ex-brother in-law who lived down in Norwalk. He knew the job was worth more and that the labor would be tedious and unfulfilling. But he took a second swig, looked around and tried, with all conjured might, to evade his own thoughts.
Henry looked down into the heart of the weathered monster. A corroded 455 big block. He stared down into what had once been a glorious machine. And then began his work.

“Henry! Phone for you!” A child’s voice screamed from inside the house. A screen door separated his place of business from the inside of the tiny house, starting with the kitchen. He ignored the noise and lit a non-filtered cigarette, continuing his labor under the hood. He didn’t like phones.
Then, a lovely little woman, nine years in age, wearing two long black braids, appeared before him, hands on her waist, startling him just a little.
“Uncle Henry, there is a phone call for you,” she said.
Henry stood up and smiled. Hello Priscilla.
“Who is it?” he asked, ash finally dropping from the cigarette in his mouth.
Priscilla rolled her eyes in frustration.
“You know who!”
“Yeah, yeah, ok.” He laughed a little and looked away.
“I just thought you should know,” she said. “You know she’ll keep calling.”
Henry thought about it, tried not to, couldn’t help it.
Priscilla, his niece and accomplice, walked back into the house to where she left the phone, gave the familiar excuse for his absence and took the familiar message, usually an earful of shit about responsibility and money and so forth. Then she hung up and returned to reading her book and watching TV simultaneously.
Henry yelled to her from the garage, “Thank you mija. You’re an incredible woman.”
No response. “Did you know that, baby?”
“I don’t like when they yell in my ear on the stupid phone!”
“You’re more of a woman, than…any woman I’ve known, more than any one of them you know…” Henry trailed off, talking to himself, unsure if his niece was still listening. He figured she was.

Priscilla opened a can of orange soda and listened to her uncle work. Priscilla Mejia, at her young age, knew some womanly truths. Men were little babies, no matter what. No different from her little cousins, crying when they want something, console them and satisfy them, then they're crying about something else. They seem to bury themselves with needs. Men were incapable but also inevitably threaded into her life in one way or another, for better or worse. She loved her uncle though, loved him just the same.

By noon, it was searing and uncomfortable, especially inside the garage. He knew he should take a break and go inside the house where it was cooler but he had already changed the oil, replaced a hose and topped off all the fluids. He planned on finishing up early and having the end of the afternoon to sit on the porch and listen to a Dodger game, or call up Lilia to see if she was down. But he couldn’t think too far ahead. Something was leaking from under the Buick. He needed a beer. He dropped a wrench. The phone was ringing. Goddamn, it was hot. He could hear his niece tell her that he wasn’t around. He was busy. He was working. No, not like a real job but real work. No, he isn’t here.
Henry stood and walked into the front yard where he didn’t have to hear a child make excuses for him. He wanted to pick up the phone and viciously explain to the voice on the other end that he didn’t have any money. To stop fucking with his niece’s head. He was trying real hard. A dark and murky feeling began to settle. It seemed that every breath he drew was heavy with reminiscence and longing. He wanted to be left alone.

All the houses in Baldwin Park looked more or less the same. Different colors, some standard, some pink, some bright green, some small and clean, some run-down, a little fucked up. Cars worse off than the Buick were being worked on in other garages or else lay rusted in the yards. Music poured out from every other garage or backyard. Oldies played soft and slow. Or else Banda raged loud and proud. Every sound dissonant and beautiful. He looked at the houses on the street. He saw each one as a tiny mansion, workers and warriors under the sun, getting by and moving through the spiral of time. This was his neighborhood and always had been.

By now, whatever it was that leaked from the Buick had spilled down the driveway and a dirty stream now gathered around his boots. Henry knew he would have to fix all these additional problems. It was real fucking hot outside. Henry went back into the garage. He needed to fix this car. He needed another beer.





II.

Moises Arias thought about the ocean as its breeze came through the screen door, having traveled some thirty elusive miles to find him. It rattled chimes in a faraway backyard and finally embraced him completely. Moises had spent that morning scrounging through an ash tray, looking under a couch, searching frantically for a roach, a misplaced crumb or with greater hope, an endless fucking mountain crop of weed, hidden, just waiting to reward him for his relentless search and pursuit. He eventually found his prize. It was nearly half of an old blunt, a super roach, discarded and misplaced long ago. Moises found it in a jar of change, with a book of matches, perfection and peace finding him at last.
Soon he was high and reading Antonio Gramsci, studying for a college class, happy to be alive. When he was bored, in the early afternoon, he continued to greet the day and wait for another pleasant breeze and meditate in his own way on the wind and the reality of things. Moises put his long black hair into a pony tail that reached the small of his back and it shined like obsidian when he walked outside into the sunlight.

Henry was underneath the Buick now, fixing another ailment. He moved in a quick cycle of ferocious labor, flashes of fatigue and then cold beer to regenerate. Any alleviating breeze was lost on him, never making it inside the garage. By two p.m. he didn’t know where he was or why he was fixing this goddamn car. Just when he felt he could expire, a voice picked him up out of his daydream. He slid from underneath the car and saw a Mayan prince eclipsing the merciless and beautiful sun. Then he saw it was only the neighbor kid. Not the divine design of the gods, just some acne scarred Chicano. Henry recognized this pudgy stoner as the same kid wandering into the middle of the street in diapers. He thought Moises looked about the same, more age to the face, a hint of a mustache but still a baby’s face. The only real distinction that Henry noticed was in the eyes. Moises now had a dark ferocity in them, even though they were only half open and bloodshot from a morning of weed smoke. His voice was deep and commanding but stoic and slow. Moises, high as fuck.
“Henry, carnal, I thought that was you,” Moises said. “I didn’t know you were out.” He shifted, feeling awkward, hoping he didn’t sound like an asshole.
“Yeah, I’m back in the world, ese. How are things, Moi?”
“Oh you know, mas o menos, going to college.”
“East Los or…”
“No, No, Cal State now, I’m gonna fuck some shit up from the inside, you know?”
“Oh yeah?”

Henry was listening, was interested, but his work preceded all other interactions and interests. He had to get this fucking car fixed but couldn’t just tell this kid to fuck off, couldn’t tell the evil voices that screamed through the telephone to fuck off, couldn’t stop this car from falling apart, needing the small amount of cash and being this hard up, he couldn’t tell his tightwad ex-brother in-law to take his car and fuck off. Henry couldn’t keep these thoughts from invading the afternoon. The car needed to be fixed. But it was an endless slew of problems. Now the coolant was leaking everywhere.
“Need any help, man?” Moises asked.
“No.” Henry thought about it. He could put some of these youngbloods to work, have his niece out there holding tools, a team of surgeons and such. He laughed to himself.
“It’s cool, Moi, it shouldn’t take me too long,” Henry said.
“Ok, that’s good anyway, ‘cause I can’t work on cars for shit.” Moises laughed loud with his full heart, put his hand on Henry’s shoulder, “I better stick to the books, you know?”
“Yeah, you should do that. You want a beer, man?”
Moises couldn’t refuse a tall can with a weathered legend of the barrio, this barrio, this town, this street.
“Fuck yeah, ese, they in this ice chest here?”
“Go for it, there’s a few more in there.” Henry could see the kid was a little uneasy but played it off with ease. Moises was big and soft and couldn’t hurt a blade of grass, but he looked strong and fierce and he was smart. Henry liked him. But he hoped the tall can would send him on his way. It was hot and it was Saturday, he thought, didn’t this kid have somewhere to be?

Moises didn’t have anywhere to be. He hung out for over an hour. Drinking two tall cans, offering to go buy some more, saying although he was only nineteen, the Korean dude at the store on the corner sold to him all the time. Moises was drunk after the first tall can and then felt comfortable opening up. He told Henry about school, about this woman in his Political History of Latin America class. Her name’s Raquel and she lives in Boyle Heights and her father was this Peruvian revolutionary but she never met him, she lived with her mother, a Mexicana, in Boyle Heights, and that usually he liked to get laid and be on his way but this mujer was different, something about her and the things she said in class, she countered all the bullshit regular ass college kids with her intelligence and insight, “And on top of that,” Moises concluded, “She’s fucking down, you know?”
Henry just worked and half listened. Moises talked about everything. He was normally quiet and liked to read and he performed his own rituals, summoning gods left alone and suffering since 1519 and so forth. But the warmth of the sun and the taste of cold beer made him feel comfortable.
Then he asked Henry some questions about cars, about Electras, Cutlasses, Impalas, wanted to know about the old days, low riders, 1968 in East L.A. Did he ever meet Oscar Acosta or did he know any brown berets, did students walk out of Sierra Vista like the vatos at Roosevelt, pausing in his wondering, how old was Henry? Did that make sense chronologically? Moises wanted to know if Baldwin Park was as down for La Raza so he could feel good and proud about the history under his feet. But he paused at some point in his rambling, wondering if he was asking too many questions. Moises and his insatiable thirst for knowledge gently collided with twenty four ounces of beer. It had been a great day for him so far.


The phone was ringing again and the Buick wasn’t leaking anymore. Henry was sweaty and his rough hands were covered in grease. Moises’ voice drowned the noise of the phone and caused the sound of Priscilla excusing her uncle to be inaudible. Then it was momentarily quiet. Priscilla walked into the garage, regarded Moises with a smile that was returned, then glared at Henry relentlessly.
“I know baby, I know,” he said.
“This one sounded more serious,” she said.
He nodded and looked away.
“It’s getting kind of ridiculous.”
She stood there for what seemed like a large portion of time, a still frame, a scowling and radiant and eternal glare. “You think they’re going to stop?” she said.
Then she looked away. She turned to her neighbor. “Moises, did you want an orange soda?”
“No thank you, maybe later.” Then Moises remembered something.
“Hey, I have a book you might like. I can bring it by later. It’s about desert things. Native people, animals, wildflowers, everything.”
“Cool. Thank you, Moi.”
She then disregarded her uncle and went back into the house. The sudden silence in the garage seemed to seize and strangle Henry. Moises noticed but was too buzzed to figure the reasons why. Henry looked out into the street, tried to fix his eyes on something to take him away from this moment in time. Moises killed the last of his tall can and looked up. “Hey Henry, if this car’s running ok, you think I could get a ride somewhere?”


III.

The garage was still open. The Buick continued to fall apart, stretching the afternoon into a grueling and laborious time. All of this against an otherwise warm and easy afternoon. Fucking L.A., man, Henry thought. His heart was always in so much pain on days like this. He looked around and saw everything changing, something beyond nature. He felt some inexplicable force, poised to strangle this place, his home and his family and then evasively slip out unnoticed. Henry would look around at all the remnants of his youth still living in the gravel and dead grass of the neighborhood. He could still conjure all the little fortunes lying around. The barbeques in the park and listless window shopping on the boulevards, Saturday in California, early beers and old stories. Children playing, moving through the neighborhood in all their glory. And he loved every last one of these kids, these young people that ran the streets, the corners, the parks. Some would not live long and he took pride in his own survival. And even the child inside the house that he loved, could not shake him from the nightmare in his head. He didn’t want to go back to jail, didn’t want to go to church, didn’t want to go back in time and do it all over. And he didn’t want to think about the bleak and stagnant future that lied ahead for him. It seemed that only the simple things remained. But all else had become disfigured and strange. All he could see was the fucked up Buick and the handful of cash he might have for another Saturday night in Los Angeles.

People kept coming by. Henry was happy to see them, old friends and cousins and such. But they were all interruptions. Gloria, who his sister used to roll with, was having problems with her girlfriend and wanting his advice. Moco, the biggest dude in the barrio and a legendary character, came by with some beers and talked about the old days but had to take off to his son’s soccer game. And Simon, who was Luisa’s five year old boy, walked over dressed like a cowboy, chaps, vest, gun belt, a blue bandana over his face. But no hat. Simon also refused to leave, telling Henry about how his horse was stolen by bandits to which Henry played along until Simon’s mother called from two houses down. Off into the sunset, the little cowboy ran.

The phone kept ringing, Priscilla took the calls, Moises was inside watching TV with her. Moises was a good companion for any age and Henry was glad to have some time alone finally with the car.
Eventually, people stopped coming by. Some older people would walk by and wave and Henry would wave back. By now it was early evening, the car still falling apart, several more beers gone down, sweat burned Henry’s eyes and his thoughts lingered on. His chest hurt. He needed to get out of here, away from this feeling. He drained the last lukewarm swill of his Budweiser and patched up the Buick as best he could. With Band-Aids and prayers, it would have to do.
Henry walked into the house and into the room he had once lived in as a young man, as a child, as an infant.
He showered and shaved and ironed his favorite pair of khakis. He found a Fernando Valenzuela jersey he hadn’t worn in twenty years. He put it on over an undershirt and a simple gold crucifix his grandmother gave him when he went away for the first time. Henry loved her more than God.
He tried to call Lilia one last time, in hope of a decent Saturday night. But nobody answered. So he took one last look into the mirror before walking out into the front room. Moises slept sitting up in a chair while Priscilla watched TV.
“Did anyone call who I might want to talk to, baby?” Henry asked.
“No,” Priscilla said.
“Well,” Henry looked around the room and finally felt relaxed, “Don’t worry about it anymore. I’m sorry you’ve had to do all this for me and I’m sorry I haven’t been around to take you to the park and to help you with things. Just know that I wasn’t meant to be around all the time. But I love you just the same.”
Priscilla had never heard her uncle say that much at one time before. Not to her or anyone else. He was always such a quiet man, a listener, a hard ass who would fix cars and fight other men in parking lots. But here he was, kneeling beside her, looking straight into her eyes. She could see his eyes welling with tears but they didn’t fall.
She knew what was next. She knew that she wouldn’t see him for some time. But this time held some kind of affirmation that she needed. Henry would always love his family and take care of them when he could. She had nothing to say but let him know that she understood, in the same way she always did, a look a feeling, something inexplicable that they shared. Henry said nothing more. The profound silence was broken up by Moises as he began to snore loudly. It was louder than any of them had ever heard and strange sounding. Like a large animal suffocating then breathing fluidly and peacefully, then suffocating again. Henry and Priscilla both broke into laughter and neither of them could stop. They laughed so loud that it woke Moises up to which he replied something incoherently and then fell back into the heaviest nap of all time.
Henry stood up and walked into the bedroom feeling the weight of many years recede and fall away.

He rolled three joints, grabbed a Pendleton and a little money he had stashed away.
When he came back into the front room, the TV was still on. Cops in Albuquerque were arresting an old drunk man for stealing a bike. They were rude and condescending and abusive. They were cops all right. Henry turned it off, woke Moises up with a slap to the leg and stood straight and summoned the room.
“Ok, peoples, get your shit and get into the car. Moises, you need a right somewhere, no? Priscilla, I’m gonna need to drop you off at your prima’s house, ok?”
“Lorena’s house? That place sucks.”
“No, at Darlene and Flaca’s. In South Gate, baby. I’ll let your mama know. Come on, Moises, go get a jacket and a joint. Vaminos, bro.”
Moises was still sleepy but got up and was ready. “I got everything I need, carnal.”
Priscilla got a jacket and a backpack with her colored pencils and a notebook. They were all ready to roll.

For all its constant problems that day, the venerable 1972 Buick Electra ran pretty good. Henry felt good driving it, the work was done, the day was fading away. They listened to oldies on the radio with the windows down and sat comfortably in the wide vinyl seats. They cruised past familiar parks and down boulevards and side streets that Henry hadn’t been down in awhile. Moises, sitting comfortable in the big backseat, had to be in East L.A. for a community organizing function. “Extra credit for school and plenty of girls,” he explained.
Priscilla wore sunglasses and felt calm and grown up cruising in big car down a wide boulevard. These boys in her life would have to be taken with a hundred grains of salt. She wouldn’t have it any other way.
“You’re a Big Girl, Now” by the Stylistics came on and everyone leaned back and simultaneously, though in their own way, felt the good times coming on. The afternoon faded faraway behind them and the summer night greeted them . More cars on the road but no weekday traffic. The radio seemed to know what they wanted to hear. Henry felt himself cruising back in time. Every corner, every park bench, every woman walking down every street seemed to evoke some long lost memory.
With his mind full of painfully hard times, these fine sceneries revealed themselves and embraced him as he rolled down Whittier Blvd. And when the sun was finally gone, streetlights and headlights all around, they arrived at the Salazar Community Center.

When Priscilla let Moises out, he gave her a hug and looked at Henry.
“Gracias, carnal. Good times hanging out today, good luck with this fucking car, man. Thank you for the ride. I guess that’s it then. I gotta see about a mujer.” Moises laughed a little. He was going to be all right. Henry nodded his head in recognition.
When Moises was walking away and Priscilla was sitting shotgun again, Henry whistled to get his attention. He walked back to hear what Henry had to say.
Henry suddenly conjured countless things to tell his friend upon this departure. But he just looked him in the eye, straight and stern, and said, “Worship the earth around her, ese. And you know…be cool.”
And the two men clasped hands, the eternal handshake of brotherhood. Priscilla rolled her eyes a little under her shades and watched the sun set over the evasive ocean that seemed so far away. In this Buick, they could go anywhere.

Then Henry and Priscilla were cruising down the 710 toward Long Beach. The night air had relieved the ruthless heat. Henry still felt a certain heaviness but it was mostly the residuals of earlier thoughts. He felt a sweet admiration for his niece and a deep longing for all the dying times around them. The Buick sounded great and Henry was proud of that. It had to be in Norwalk soon. Luis, his ex-brother in law, would be waiting with the chump change for a nearly rebuilt engine. It was an injustice embedded in a million others.
Henry couldn’t hang. That was his problem all along. Priscilla was enjoying this cruise with her uncle. It seemed pivotal and strange. In her short time, there had been so many goodbyes, piled atop one another. She couldn’t wait to see her mother when she finally got off work, at the hospital, later that night.
“Baby, you think you could do me one more favor?” Henry asked.
“I called my mom before we left.”
“Thank you. You’re the greatest woman that has ever lived,” he said.
Henry said nothing more as they exited the freeway and rolled down more familiar streets. They pulled up to an old apartment where her cousins and her aunt on her father’s side lived. The street was dark and quiet.
“You comin’ in Henry?” Priscilla asked somberly.
“No. I think I’ll just head out. But I’ll make sure you get in ok.”
“You look real nice. Do you have a date tonight?”
He smiled, could feel himself smiling.
“No baby. Well, not yet. You never know.”
They both laughed. The engine was idling loudly and the radio hummed softly. Henry did look good. And for the first time in awhile, he felt good. He knew these feelings were like smoke in the air. They hang there awhile and eventually fade, sometimes slowly, most times in a desperate flash.
And when she hugged her uncle this time, long and good and poised for departure, she left a stain of tears on his Valenzuela jersey.
And then she walked away, trying to act tough, knowing she would always have to. Her cousin greeted her at the door and Priscilla waved back at the Buick as it slowly rolled away.

When Henry got back onto the freeway, he knew what roads to take to go east a few miles to Norwalk, to get his payment and return the car. His ex-brother in-law had enough money to pay him fairly but Henry knew he wouldn’t. On top of being cheap, Luis remembered every rift, every scuffle, every ounce of bullshit in their lives. It wasn’t worth the trouble. Henry couldn’t live that way. And he knew Luis would be too drunk to give him a ride back to Baldwin Park.
When he cruised down and found Interstate 5, he stopped at a red light. The mercy would not be found and tomorrow the sun would rise and do its thing once again, burning holes into hearts, playing music for everybody, low and slow and just on time. With the chaos of luck, it might be all right.
Henry turned the radio up, rolled the windows all the way down and took the freeway south. He didn’t know where he was going. And a lot of people would be calling, looking for him. But he couldn’t think of that. He had to roll with what consumed his mind tonight. A sea of dim lights flickered across South Los Angeles. Henry pushed the pedal down and leaned back in the old and wide and comfortable bench seat. The Buick felt good. Nothing left but a serenade, the sweet sound of oldies finding their way through muffled speakers and a bent antenna, over the victorious roar of the engine, igniting the night around him. They don’t make them like they used to, he thought. It was his work. It was his world.