TRUE COLORS
1
After tonight, everything will be different. Nobody called for a fair one this time. Turk said that Panama has a pistol. A real one. His father was supposed to have brung it home from Korea, and Panama got it when his father took off. I don’t believe it. I mean, why would anyone leave a real pistol behind? His father probably never even lived there. With him and his mother, I mean.
I don’t know nobody who’s got a father. In the same house, I mean. We all got fathers. Sugarcane, hell, he
is
a father. That baby Rhonda has, everyone knows that’s Sugarcane’s. Everybody but the Welfare. If they knowed about it, they’d do something to him. I don’t know exactly what they do, but everybody knows you can’t tell them nothing. They’re just like cops, only without the blue and the steel.
It’s funny when you think about it. I mean, Rhonda don’t have no father, but her mother’s boyfriend, he lives there, so he’s kind of like her father. I know he tried to stop Sugarcane from coming around there. He was real vicious about it. I don’t know why he gives a damn. It ain’t like Rhonda’s his own kid or anything. But he don’t have no job or nothing, so he’s always around the house.
Anyway, Rhonda lives on the block, so she has to be with one of us. That’s just the way it is.
You can’t Jap nobody where we got the meet set for. I heard one time there was this big meet Uptown. They made it for under the El. And one club, they got a couple of men in first. Up top, I mean. They just waited there. And when everyone got into it, they dropped stuff down on the enemy. Heavy stuff, like cinder blocks and all. Like concrete rain. So, anyway, ever since that, nobody makes meets except out in the open. This one’s for the vacant lot off Forsyth. It ain’t in our territory, and it ain’t in theirs, either. I mean, one of us could claim it, but it wouldn’t do no good, ’cause there ain’t nobody living there.
It’s better this way. There’s something about walking to a meet with your boys. All together. You feel like nothing can hurt you. Some of the guys make a lot of noise. Some of them are real quiet. But the thing is, we be flying our colors. Everybody see us walking, they see us together, they know what’s coming down.
It’s funny how everybody knows except the rollers. I mean,
everybody
knows it’s going to happen tonight. Even the teachers at school. But the rollers won’t show until we’re into it. I would never say this to anyone, but I think we all glad when they come, with their sirens and all. ’Cause if they didn’t come nobody could leave.
Panama isn’t the one I’m thinking about, even if it’s true that he has a pistol. Mystic is the one. He’s the head man of the Enchanters. The one who gives them heart. I don’t think he’s their best fighter. I mean, I don’t know for sure, but he’s not the biggest one. Usually, it’s not the best fighter who’s the head man, anyway. Like with us: Ramón is the best fighter. He
loves
it, man. I think if he wasn’t in the club he’d be fighting all the time. With one of us, even. But Torp is leader, and Ramón never tried to take it from him. Ramón, he’s a good man in a rumble, but he can’t scheme. And if you can’t scheme, you can’t be leader, everybody knows that.
Me, I’m nobody. I mean, nobody in the club. I’m somebody on the street. I’m not no coolie, no off-brand. I’m in the Latin Savages. I wear the jacket, and everybody can see my true colors. What I mean is, I don’t got no title. Not Warlord or Minister or nothing like that. So I never get to go first when we pull a train. And when I talk, they listen, but you know they waiting on some bigger man before they go one way or the other. And even the debs, they got their own . . . order, like. So I wouldn’t get one of the best ones.
I think that’s where I first got the idea. Lucy Ann just moved into the block. I didn’t even know she was here until I saw her in school. She was very nice. Very polite. I told her all about the school and the teachers and the candy store and everything about the neighborhood, you know? We was getting along real good until she asked me about my jacket. It’s silk. Black and blue. That’s our colors. The debs wear the same jackets, only theirs are blue and black. Reversed, like. So she asked me, was I in a gang? Nobody ever asked me that before. I mean, everyone’s got to be in a club or they ain’t even like real people. I thought she would be impressed, but she didn’t say nothing.
I saw her in school a lot. I mean, I don’t go to school all that much, but she went every day. I found that out, so I went so I could see her.
I couldn’t take her to the candy store, ’cause she wasn’t a deb yet. So I talked to her in school. And after school one day, she said, did I want to walk her home? I figured that was it, you know? I mean, she didn’t need no protection, not in the daytime. So why else would she ask me, right?
But when we get to her apartment, her mother is there. She works nights. Her mother, I mean. So she is home in the day. She was very nice, just like Lucy Ann. But she didn’t like my jacket, either. I could tell that. She didn’t say nothing, but her face got all funny.
She gave me food.
Good
food, man. Lucy Ann told her we was going to do our homework. Homework, that was funny. I figured, okay,
now
it was gonna happen, right? But Lucy Ann does her homework in the kitchen. There was only one bedroom, and that was her mother’s. Lucy Ann told me she sleeps on the couch. It folds out, like. I didn’t know what to do. I mean, I didn’t have no books or nothing. So I just sat there with her while she did her homework.
I did that every day after that. I even brought some books with me. I mean, I can read and everything. A lot of guys can’t, but I can. I used to like it when I was little. Before I was even a Junior in the club.
After homework, we would talk. Just me and Lucy Ann. Her mother never came in, ’cause she was getting ready to go to work. Sometimes I was even there after she left, but we never went out of the kitchen, me and Lucy Ann.
Bongo, he asked me once, was I cutting Lucy Ann? This was on the corner. Our corner, the Latin Savages’ corner. Right outside the candy store. Now, there ain’t no rules about it. I mean, it wasn’t like you could only make it with a deb or nothing. Jaime, he got a girl way over in Brooklyn. That’s okay. But I was . . . stuck, like. I mean, I wasn’t gonna lie and say I was having Lucy Ann. And I wasn’t gonna get ranked behind spending so much time and not getting any. So I told Bongo it wasn’t his business. He gets mad behind that. But he don’t say nothing more. I ain’t the toughest one in the club, maybe, but I will go . . . and everyone knows that. I got heart. I proved in a long time ago, when I was just a little kid.
One day, Lucy Ann told me about her brother, Hector. She showed me his jacket. It was like mine, only gold and red. It said Dragons on the back. Underneath it, it said Warlord. I was . . . I don’t know . . . shocked. The Dragons are a
big
club. All the way over in East Harlem, but we heard of them. Everybody heard of them. They was even in the newspapers. I asked her, was they coming here?
She said no. They weren’t coming down here. She said her mother moved to get away from that. I didn’t understand. I mean, how can you get away from what’s everywhere? I couldn’t see no Warlord moving just because his mother did, anyway. But if Hector stayed Uptown, how come they had his jacket? That’s what I asked her.
“They wanted to bury him in it,” Lucy Ann told me. “But my mother took it out of the casket. Right in front of them. In the church.”
“He was killed? In a bop?”
“Yes,” she said. Her eyes were wet. I guess he had been a good brother.
I didn’t know what to say. I could see, right then, that Lucy Ann didn’t want to be no deb. And I know what the debs would do if she tried to be independent. You can’t have that. I mean, if you let people not be in the club, then nobody’s really gonna respect you. So I knew Lucy Ann was going to be a Latina Savage. And I didn’t want nobody else to have her.
That’s when I got my idea.
But Lucy Ann had an idea too. “There is a way out, Sonny,” she told me.
“What way?” I asked her. “What you talking about, anyway?”
“For you,” she said. “A way out.”
“Why would I
want
to be out?” I asked her.
“So we can get married,” is what she said.
I couldn’t believe she said that. I mean, she wasn’t even my girl. She wasn’t in the club. And I never made it with her either, even going over there for a couple of months. Nobody gets married. You have to have a job for that. How was I gonna get a job? I am seventeen years old and in the tenth grade. I ain’t gonna graduate. I got no . . . skills, I guess you call it. Even in shop class, I was no good.
“You will go in the Army,” Lucy Ann told me. “It’s four years. I asked the man in the booth. The one in Times Square. He said you would get an education. And you would only be twenty-one when you got out. The Army will teach you how to do something. They have all kinds of trades you can learn.”
“I don’t wanna go in no—”
“And every month, you would send me some of your pay,” she said, like I hadn’t said nothing. “I would save it. When I graduate, I will get a job. And I will live with my mother, so I could save most of my money too. When you come out, we will get married.”
I knew guys that went in the Army. Right from the block. Sometimes, the judge will let you go in the Army instead of to reform school. But I never knowed nobody who ever came back here with nothing. José, he went in like that. But he was back in a few months. And he’s still a Latin Savage. Just like the rest of us.
Your mother has to sign papers for you to go in the Army if you’re seventeen. But that’s nothing. My mother, she would sign anything. I don’t even really see her much.
But I told Lucy Ann she didn’t understand. I had a plan. If it worked, then nobody would bother her. She asked me what the plan was. I wouldn’t tell her. But I told her I would protect her.
She said she trusted me. Nobody ever said that before. I mean, I guess the club trusts me. I got heart. Everybody knows Sonny will be there when it comes down. But this was different.
It was a couple of weeks later when they grabbed me. Right off the street. They was in a car. An old beat-up crate, a Mercury, I think. I was just walking home when the car pulled up and they all jumped out. They was Dragons, flying their colors like they knew nobody was gonna do nothing to them. Dragons walk anywhere. And the pistol they showed me, it wasn’t no zip gun. I didn’t say nothing.
We drove a long way. I was in the back seat, between two of them. They didn’t say nothing. The best I could do was be a man, not say nothing myself. I wasn’t going to sound on them, but I wasn’t gonna be no bitch either.
They had a real big clubhouse. A whole apartment just for them. It was on the top floor. In the Projects. I’d never been there, but I’d heard about it.
We walk upstairs. It was a long way. There was Dragons on the staircase. Like guards or something.
The Projects is big, but they smell just like my building. I guess they all smell the same.
Inside, there’s a man. He’s in a chair in the corner, away from the window. I know who he is. Who he has to be. Durango. The head man of the Dragons. He tells me to sit down. Not like I’m a prisoner or nothing, like he invited me into his crib. A . . . guest, maybe.
But he doesn’t offer to slap skin with me or nothing. Just looks at me for a minute. I look back at him. Not hard, but not scared, either. That’s what I was trying for, anyway.
He asks me about Lucy Ann. I wasn’t even too surprised. Not after what I knew about her brother. I told him the truth. About everything.
“They giving her a long time to choose,” Durango says. Like he’s wondering why.
I knew he meant the debs. “She don’t go out,” I told him. “You never see her on the block. So she’s not in their faces, you know.”
“But summer’s coming,” he said. “Won’t be no school.”
“That’s right.”
“And that’s when they make their move, right?”
“Probably,” I told him. It made sense, but I didn’t know for sure. They got their own ways, the debs.
“It’s on with the Enchanters, right?”
I was surprised for a minute. I mean, everybody in the neighborhood knows, that’s true. But this was a long way from there. I was kind of proud—I mean, a big club like the Dragons knowing we was going to war. But I told him, sure, it was on.
“Hector was
mi corazón
,” Durango said. “I was with him when he went. There was three guys hacking at him. Hector stood alone against them, but when he slipped, they had him. I stayed even after the rollers came, holding him. I watched the light go out in his eyes. His mother, she doesn’t understand.”
I didn’t say nothing. I mean, sure, Lucy Ann’s mother don’t understand. But it wasn’t my business.
“You want her in the club?” Durango asked me.
“No,” I told him. “She don’t wanna be no Latina Savage. I know that.”
“So they gonna jump her in?”
“I dunno,” I told him. Truth. “But you right. Summertime, they got to do something.”
“Can’t be on the street without showing your colors,” Durango said. “You fair game then. Everybody take a shot. You don’t want that for her neither, right?”
“No. That’d be worse. But I got a plan,” I told him.
“What plan you got, Sonny?”
I liked it that he used my name. I didn’t have no permission to use his, but it was respect he was showing me. So I explain. I take out Mystic. By myself. That changes things. I move up in the club. Maybe not to no title or nothing, but up, you know?
Durango, he just nods, like he can already see where I’m going.
“Then, when Lucy Ann comes in, I claim her,” I said to him.
“You don’t do no train for initiation?”
“No!” I told him. “We ain’t like that. It’s funny, right? I mean, we call ourselves the Savages, but we don’t go for that rape stuff. And the Enchanters, that
is
what they do. Their debs, they all gotta do at least six, the way I heard. Gotta do six right in a row. Word is, it’s their debs who made that rule. It don’t make no sense to me, but I never talked to one of them, so I don’t really know. But nobody gonna rape Lucy Ann.”