The old man smiled when he saw Shane do that and let Wayne the fat boy go.
Wayne sprang up and leaped over the table and jumped out of the booth on the other side. He stood facing the old man, rubbing his wrist. His small mongoose eyes darted around, searching for Jojo, but there was only Shane, Jimmy, and the old man. Slowly he backed away, then turned and ran for the door.
But it was locked now. And you needed a key to get out.
“Unlock this door!” he yelled, banging on it with his fists, then slamming against it with his shoulder.
Shane and Jimmy didn’t move. The old man kept smiling.
Wayne whipped out Mr. Blade and flipped him open. “I said open the door, you deaf?”
“Hijo, creo que es mejor que me devolváis el dinero,”
the old man said.
“Shuddup! I don’t speak Russian, you stupit.” Wayne started toward the old man with his knife but stopped when another set of headlights flashed into the parking lot.
“Man, where are all these people coming from?” Jimmy mumbled.
“It’s Mrs. Medeiros,” Shane whispered.
Wayne, seeing the car pull up and, also, for the first time seeing the flashing blue police lights, ran toward Shane and Jimmy, looking for a back door. But the old man stepped in his way and grabbed his shirt as he ran by.
“Dinero,”
he said.
“Dólares.”
Wayne spat in his face.
Boom! Wayne was on the floor, one arm twisted up behind him and the old man’s knee jabbing into the small of his back. Wayne winced in pain. “I’m gonna kill . . .
ahhh!
”
Jimmy gaped, not believing the old man could do what he was doing. Shane saw Mrs. Medeiros at the door, fumbling in her purse for her keys. He jumped up and over the counter and hurried to unlock the door.
Wayne thrashed and gasped on the floor.
The old man, tired now of playing around, twisted the knife out of Wayne’s hand and kicked it under the counter. Then he reached into Wayne’s pocket and took back his forty dollars and let Wayne go.
Wayne stumbled to his feet and took a swing at the old man but missed by a mile.
Shane had the door open now, and Mrs. Medeiros yelled, “Hold it! Stay where you are!”
But Wayne ran out the back, shoving Jimmy back against the refried-bean tray as he ran by.
“Aw, man,” Jimmy said, pulling his hand out of the gooey muck.
“You!” Mrs. Medeiros called to the old man. “Whatchoo in here making trouble for? Shane, how come the police out there an’ not inside here? What’s going on here?”
“It was those other guys, not this old man,” Shane said.
“What other guys? I only saw one.”
“There was one more.”
The old man pushed up the brim of his hat with his finger.
“Muchachos, ahora sí que necesito esa cerveza,”
he said.
Mrs. Medeiros scowled at him. Then to Shane and Jimmy she said, “You boys get to work and close this place down,” and Shane and Jimmy did as she said.
She went over and sat at a table and motioned for the old man to sit down across from her, which he did.
“¿Pero qué quiere?”
she asked him in his language.
The old man smiled, broad and full. He took off his hat and covered his heart with it.
“Señora, yo solo quería una cerveza, eso es todo. Solamente una cerveza.”
Mrs. Medeiros studied him a moment. Then she, too, smiled and the two of them went on in the foreign language that Shane and Jimmy could not understand while they swashed and clanked around behind the counter.
“Shane, Jimmy,” Mrs. Medeiros called. “I’ll be right back. Let this old man sit here while I’m gone.” She got up and headed for the door with her keys jingling.
Outside, the cops were easing the handcuffed Corvette driver into the backseat of the police car. Mrs. Medeiros walked out just as they drove away with him.
“I gotta get a better job,” Jimmy mumbled.
“Why?”
“Why? This place is too dangerous, man. Too crazy.”
“Dangerous? It’s Taco Bell, for crying out loud.”
“Yeah, but one of these days some crazy going come in here and freak out and somebody going really get hurt and I don’t want it to be me.”
“Ain’t going be you. Why somebody going hurt you? Us guys, we nothing to anyone who comes in here. We just like the pop machine or the garbage can. They don’t see us. We just workers, part of the machinery. Crazy guys want more glory than us.”
Jimmy looked at Shane, then shook his head. “You more crazy than the crazies, you know?”
Shane laughed and looked up as Mrs. Medeiros came back in carrying two bottles of beer. She took them over to the table and handed one to the old man, and the two of them talked and laughed and drank beer together like a couple of old friends from way back.
After a while Mrs. Medeiros called to Jimmy, “Try bring me one paper and envelope from the office.”
Jimmy got them and brought them out. Mrs. Medeiros pointed to the old man with her chin, and Jimmy put the paper and envelope down in front of him. Mrs. Medeiros dug a pen out of her purse.
While the old man wrote something on the paper, Mrs. Medeiros said to Jimmy, “This man is from Spain. He’s staying at the Waikiki Beachcomber. He said he was dragged here by his son and daughter-in-law as a retirement gift, when what he really wanted was just to stay home and work in his garden. But his son always thinks he knows what’s best.” Mrs. Medeiros chuckled to herself. “Sounds like my husband . . . Anyway, all this man wanted was a beer.”
Jimmy said, “But Taco Bell don’t sell no beer.”
Mrs. Medeiros shook her head. “This is why you should have stayed in school. Your mind needs more exercise.”
Jimmy looked down at his hands, and Mrs. Medeiros added, “He thought this place looked like a cantina.”
“It looks like the Alamo,” Jimmy said.
Mrs. Medeiros studied him a long moment, then with a sigh said, “Why don’t you just go finish up so we can all go home to bed.”
The old man finished his beer and got up to leave. He whispered something to Mrs. Medeiros and handed her the envelope.
“Buenas noches, muchachos,”
the old man said, tipping his hat and heading toward the front door with Mrs. Medeiros.
“Que os vaya bien.”
He chuckled and vanished into the night.
“Weird,” Jimmy said.
Shane agreed, “Weird, but pretty cool, too. The way he shame that punk Wayne.”
“Yeah, that was awesome.”
Mrs. Medeiros handed Shane the envelope. “This is for you two,” she said. “Lock up this time, okay? I’m going home, already. This business going put me in an early grave.”
Mrs. Medeiros left, and Shane and Jimmy studied the envelope.
“What it says on the front?” Jimmy asked.
“Para mis valientes amigos,”
Shane read slowly, stumbling over the strange words.
“What’s that mean?”
“I only recognize
amigos,
which means ‘friends,’ I think.”
“In Russian?”
“Not Russian, you idiot. Spanish. All this time you thought it was Russian?”
Jimmy shrugged. “That’s what those punks said.”
“Jeese.”
“Open the envelope,” Jimmy said, and Shane tore the end off.
Inside Shane found the two twenty-dollar bills and a note that he read slowly.
El mundo necesita más muchachos trabajadores como vosotros. Os ruego que aceptéis este dinero.
And it was signed
Vuestro amigo, Manuel Rodríguez Martín, comisario de policía (retirado), Valladolid, España.
“You understand any of it?” Jimmy asked.
“Well, I heard
muchachos
before, that means ‘boys,’ I think. And there’s
amigo
again.”
“He gave us this money?” Jimmy asked.
“Looks like it.”
“Hoo, maybe I’ll keep this job after all.”
“See, I told you. We’re just part of the machinery. This is like a tip, like oil for the engine that runs the place, know what I mean?”
“No, but what we going do when those two punks Jojo and Wayne come back? We going die then.”
“They not going bother us.”
“How come you say that?”
“Because number one, Wayne going be mad at Jojo for run out on him, and number two, we never went rat on ’um.”
“Whatchoo mean ‘rat’?”
“We didn’t call the police. We handled it ourself.”
“That’s because the phone broke.”
“So? They don’t know that.”
Jimmy thought about that, then said, “Yeah, you right. No police!”
“Of course I’m right. That’s why I’m assistant manager and you the taco flipper. Come on, let’s get out of here. How’s about we unload some of this cash? You hungry?”
“Yeah. Where you like go?”
“McDonald’s.”
“Right on.”
The
Hurricane
For my twelfth birthday
my mother got me a pair of ten-pound dumbbells and a booklet that showed how you could build your arms and chest big enough to beat up anyone who kicked sand in your face at the beach. And it only took
six
weeks.
Ho! I liked that!
You couldn’t tear me away from those dumbbells.
I worked like a dog before and after school and sometimes put in a few hours on the weekends. Soon I actually began to feel the muscles in my arms and chest getting bigger. I was becoming invincible, though I wasn’t so sure I wanted to get in any fights at the beach.
But I did wonder about something: How come Mom got me the dumbbells? I’d never asked for them. In fact, I never once in my life even thought I needed bigger muscles. So why’d she buy them?
When I brought it up, she said, “Gee, I don’t know, Joey. It’s what your father would have gotten you . . . isn’t it?”
I shrugged.
Who knows?
My father was a big fat blank spot. He and my mom split up before I was even born. I met him once when he came back to visit the islands. I liked him. He was nice to me. He was Mom’s height and was dressed in shorts, T-shirt, and rubber slippers, like everybody else. But now he lived in Las Vegas with his new wife, Marissa. That’s about it.
I had a stepfather, too, for about a year and a half. But he was killed by his best friend in a hunting accident. Now I live with Mom, Darci, my seven-year-old sister from my stepdad, and Stella, our teenage live-in babysitter. Me, in a house of girls.
So you could say my luck with dads wasn’t very good. The dumbbells were about that, I guessed—Mom trying to be a dad, too.
One night she
came into my room. It was late, maybe nine o’clock, since she doesn’t even get home from work until around seven. She picked up one of the dumbbells, then sat down on my bed and started curling it. “Got your homework done?”
“Almost,” I said, but I hadn’t even thought about it yet.
“Things okay at school?”
“Yeah, sure.”
Mom nodded. “Good. You know, I bet Ledward can show you how to use these things.”
“Pshh,” I snickered. What did Ledward know? He was a tour bus driver, not a weight lifter. He was also Mom’s twenty-six-year-old boyfriend. She was thirty-one.
Ledward was an okay guy. I liked him. He was Hawaiian-Chinese and big as a house. But I didn’t want him or anyone else to know I was working on my muscles.
“I’ll ask him,” Mom said.
“What?”
“Ledward. I’ll ask him to show you how to use these weights.”
“Mom, all you do is lift them.”
“He’ll know, you’ll see.”
She put down the dumbbell and picked up my football, then tossed it up and down, kind of clumsily. What’s going on? I wondered. Why’s she here?
“Hey, let’s go toss the ball around,” she said. “What say?”
I glanced out the window. It was pitch-black.
“Okay,” I said.
Outside, vague light glowed from the house, enough to throw a ball around. The toads were croaking down by the canal that ran past our house at the bottom of our sloped, grassy yard. I stepped lightly because sometimes they came up into the yard and dug down into the grass and hid there, and I didn’t like stepping on their bloated bodies.
“I thought I told you to mow the lawn today,” Mom said. But she didn’t sound mad.
“I . . . I didn’t have time.”
Mom nodded. “Listen to me, Joey. It’s very important that you cut the grass first thing after school tomorrow, okay? Will you do that for me?”
“First thing?”
“Before I get home. It’s Friday, and I want the place to look nice for Ledward.”
“All right.”
“Thank you. Here. Catch.”
She quickstepped back and tried to throw the ball like a quarterback on TV. It wobbled out and fell short. “Sorry.”
I jogged up and got it, then tossed it back.
We were only about twenty paces apart, and still she couldn’t make it. She was small, only a hair taller than me. I moved closer.
She tried again. This time the ball made it to me.
“You got a good arm,” I said.
We did that a few more times.
It was fun. We hardly ever did anything together. I didn’t know why she was doing this, but I wasn’t about to ask and ruin it.
Mom stopped throwing and started to cry. “What’s wrong?” I said, walking over. “Did I do something?”
She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “No . . . no . . . I just love you so much,” she said. “But I can’t even throw a ball with you.”
She tried to smile.
“What do you mean? You were just throwing it.”
“Am I a good mother, Joey?”
“A good mother?”
She put her hand on my cheek.
She hugged me.
Then handed me the ball and went into the house.
Back in my room
I climbed the ladder to the top bunk and lay on my stomach, propped up on my elbows. I had stuff to read for school: three pages. That was all. What a joke. I’d read a paragraph, then drift into some thought. Like why was Mom being so weird?
I jumped when a sudden breeze rustled the bushes outside.
Jeez! I was getting spooked in my own room, if you could call that place I lived in a room. What it was was half the garage. One flimsy wood wall stood between my bunk bed and Mom’s beat-up old car. On the ceiling was a single bulb in a circular, cake-shaped fixture with a few small moths glued to it. On one side of the light, a model B-52 hung by a piece of thread with its nose pointing down.
I tried to read.
The gulf which separated the chiefs, or
alii,
and the commoners had to be accepted. No one dared question the fact that chiefs were descendants of the gods.
Another short gust of wind rustled the bushes. I looked up. The weather must be changing.
I stuck my pencil in my mouth and bit down, crunching into the yellow paint—then spat the pencil out.
A centipede was oozing out of the rock-and-cement wall along the opposite side of my room. There were cracks in the mortar where those things came out of at night when the place was quiet.
Icy prickles rose up all over my neck.
The centipede was red brown, with dark bands dividing its segments. It undulated on a hundred spiky legs, flowing and rippling down the rock, following the rough contour like a snake. It had to be five inches long at least.
I felt sick to my stomach.
A countertop ran along that side of my room, and the centipede flowed down onto it and scurried behind a picture of my grampa in a standing frame.
I spat bits of yellow pencil paint off my tongue, waiting for the centipede to come back out.
I froze, afraid to even move.
Centipedes stung, they were ugly, and I hated them more than scorpions and wasps and blue-bubble Portuguese man-of-wars. I even hated them more than black widows, which hid in girls’ hair at school and could kill you, a true fact I’d heard from a kid on my street named Frankie. But worse than all that, centipedes made me sick because of one time when I was with Willy and Julio and went to get a drink of water, hanging my head under the faucet on the side of our house, and a
monster
centipede came scrambling out into my mouth.
Ghhaaaaaaaahh!
I ran around in circles, spitting and gagging and wiping my tongue off with my hand. The centipede disappeared into the grass. Willy and Julio thought it was the funniest thing they’d ever seen.
Now I turned my book over and inched down the ladder, keeping my eyes on that picture frame. I slipped out into the garage, then into the house.
Everything was dark and quiet.
My feet were silent on the cool linoleum kitchen floor, on the scratchy grass mats in the living room, on the waxed concrete hallway down toward my mother’s darkened bedroom.
At first I thought everyone was asleep.
But as I passed by Stella’s room, I saw a sliver of light running along the bottom of her closed door. I could hear her radio, too, playing low. I tiptoed by. If she knew I was scared of a centipede, she’d torment me for weeks with her smirks.
Stella was seventeen years old. She was from Biloxi, Mississippi, a place she said was a lot like Hawaii. She came out here to live with her aunt. But that didn’t work out, so she looked around for a live-in baby-sitting job. She was a junior at Kailua High School and didn’t want to leave her friends.
Mom slept curled up on her side, facing the wall. I crept closer, tripping over her fat scrapbook, where she kept magazine cutouts of her future dream house.
“Mom,” I whispered.
She bolted up. “Huh? Oh . . . Joey. You startled me.”
“There’s a centipede in my room.”
Mom sighed and lay back down. “It’ll go away. Go back to bed.”
I waited a moment, then said, “I can’t sleep with it in there.”
Mom reached down to the floor, fumbling with her eyes shut. “Here, take my slipper and kill it.”
I took it. A flimsy rubber thong.
Mom rolled back over to face the wall.
“Good night, Joey.”
Back in my room I reached out with the slipper and knocked the frame over. The centipede woke up and raced across the counter with me slapping after it.
Whop!
Missed.
Whop!
Missed.
Whop!
I was too afraid to get close enough to actually hit it.
It ran behind my U.S. Army ammo box.
Whop! Whop!
The ammo box jumped, and the loose machine-gun shells inside it rattled. I hit my U.S. Army helmet liner and sent it flying to the floor with a loud, thwacking crash.
Whop!
The centipede slipped down a crack in the back of the counter, then went under the counter.
I stepped back, my heart pounding.
I dropped the slipper and lunged back up the ladder. I checked under my sheets for more centipedes, looked under my book, under my pillow and in the pillowcase, then sat there with my heart trying to leap up out of my throat.
After a few minutes I picked up my book.
The gulf which separated the chiefs . . .
The next day
after school a huge mass of clouds swarmed in from the west and swallowed the islands. The whole sky rolled toward the earth and coiled down around the mountaintops. Shaggy beards of rain hung deep into the valleys, turning everything gray.
Me, Willy, and Julio were out in the middle of our street. My hair stood straight up from all the electricity in the air. A gust of wind whipped up and flapped my shirt. A miniature tornado twirled in the dust along the side of the road, and cool earth smells of mud and iron rose from the ground.
Just up the street Maya came bounding out of her house, and when she saw us she waved and shouted,
“Bring it on!”
There wasn’t one of us who didn’t love a good storm.
Except Stella.
“Look at her,” I said, glancing back at her looking out of our plate-glass living room window.
“How come she don’t come out?” Julio said.
“She’s worried. She thinks a hurricane is coming.”
Willy raised his eyebrows. “Sounds good to me.”
“Come out!” I shouted, knowing she’d rather be in a room full of furry spiders than in a hurricane. But this was no hurricane . . . yet.
Stella ran her finger across her throat, meaning she was going to get me for making fun of her.
I laughed.
In a way I couldn’t blame her for being scared. She’d been in some bad hurricanes. She told me she once saw a stop sign stabbed halfway through a pine tree by the force of the wind. She told me about the ruins of houses along the oceanfront in Biloxi and Gulfport, most of them little more than tangled piles of sticks.
“You have no idea what you’re even talking about,” she said when I told her storms were fun. “You’re just a stupid little boy and you always will be. Unless, of course, something wakes you up. Which would be a miracle.”
“We’ve had hurricanes here, too,” I said. “And I didn’t see any of that. You’re just trying to scare me.”
She smirked. “Someday you’re going to regret that you were born with such a small brain. You just wait, buddy.”
Buddy.
She liked that word.
I turned back to Willy and Julio. “Anyways, what’s she so scared of? This ain’t even a hurricane. It’s just a regular old storm.”
Later I was sitting
on the grass with Darci where our yard started to slope down to the canal. I glanced over my shoulder when I heard a car pull up.
Ledward spilled out of his canvas-topped Jeep and hitched up his pants, all dressed up for Mom. He wore a yellow-and-green Hawaiian shirt, hanging loose, Hawaiian-style. He even had on shoes.
He saw me and lifted his chin, Hello, then walked over. He was so tall it hurt my neck just to look up at him. Darci leaned into me. Even though Ledward had been coming around for about six months now, his size still scared her.
“Hey,” I said.
“What you two looking at out there?” he said.
I shrugged. “Nothing.”
He looked up, scanned the sky. “Storm coming.”
“You heard if it’s going to be big?” I said.
“No. But pro’bly. Yeah, I t’ink prob’ly.”
I nodded, hoping he was right.
“You mine if I wait for your mama?”
“Sit,” I said.
He eased down and sat facing the canal with his arms resting on his propped-up knees. He peeked around me. “Hi, Darcigirl.”
Darci moved back so he couldn’t see her.
Ledward chuckled.
We sat a moment, saying nothing.
Then Ledward said, “We going Buzz Steak House tonight, me and Angela.” That’s my mom, Angela.
I nodded. “I like that place.”
A bufo croaked down in the weeds by the water.
“Grass getting kine of long,” Ledward said.
Dang. I’d forgotten all about the grass. But Mom wasn’t home yet. I could still do it, I guess. “Angela told me you had one centipede in your room.”
“Yeah,” I said. Man, was there anyone she didn’t tell stuff to?
“Still in there?”