We Were Here (21 page)

Rondell was feeling good too. He grilled all his dogs until they were burnt as hell and sucked ’em down whole. When Mong asked him to describe what it felt like to be so good at ball he got a giant smile on his face and shrugged, took a long swig of beer. “In the rest of everything,” he said, staring down
at his feet, “you gotta sit there and think of all these little things.” He looked up at us. “But not with ball, man. With ball you don’t gotta think about
nothin’
. It just flows.”

“You had that shit flowin’ today,” I said.

“It’s like a rap,” Rondell said. “Or when a preacher starts shoutin’ ’bout the Testament at church. Or the women sway back and forth singin’ and clappin’. And you don’t never get tired either. That’s my word.” He paused for a sec, got a look on his face like he was thinking. “I don’t even know why about that part.”

“Maybe you love it so much,” Mong said.

“And you’re so good,” I said.

Rondell shrugged. “Everything just flows and flows and you ain’t gotta think about nothin’.”

Me and Mong nodded our heads. I tried to think if I’d ever felt that way about anything. Loved it so much I could never get tired. Maybe fishing off the levee with Diego. Or reading on the beach. Or writing in this journal like it’s a real book. But it didn’t seem like the same thing. I looked back at Rondell, who was still nodding his head, looking at the fire. For the first time since I knew him, I actually felt jealous about the guy.

An hour or so after we finished eating, Rondell fell sound asleep on his bag, and Mong motioned for me to follow him closer to the water. I got up kind of hesitantly, though. I didn’t know what he wanted all drunk like he was. Which version of Mong would the drunk one turn into?

Me and Mong Have an Actual Talk:

We walked down to the edge, right by the water, and he plopped down with his whiskey bottle, patted the beach for me to sit next to him.

“What’s going on?” I said.

“Nothing,” he said, digging his bottle into the sand so it would stand upright. “I just felt like talking.”

I looked the guy over for a few seconds. “You?”

He nodded.

“About what?”

“I don’t know,” he said, glancing up at me. You could see in his eyes how wasted he already was from the whiskey. “Just talk. Like regular people.”

“Like regular people,” I repeated, grinning on the inside. “Right. Okay.” I kicked a rock out of the way and sat down, still watching him. Took a swig of beer.

“Look how giant it is,” he said, pointing his bottle at the ocean. “Sometimes I look out there, and I can’t believe it. Ocean water makes up seventy percent of the earth’s surface, you know.”

“Yeah?” I said. I watched a small swell crumble near the shore and roll up the sand over clumps of seaweed and rocks and shells, then suck back into itself.

“People spend so much time on trivial things they forget to look at the ocean. Look at it, Mexico.”

“I am,” I said. It felt mad weird how Mong was talking so much. I didn’t know how to react.

“Really
look
, though,” he said.

I tried for a sec, but I kept peeking at him every couple seconds. I knew how people got when they drank. Like Diego, for example. He
always
wanted to fight. Didn’t matter who was around, if it was a girl, an older person, or his own damn brother. He just had to yell or hit somebody. I tried with the ocean a few more times, but after a couple seconds I’d be right back to peeping Mong again.

He spit in front of him, said: “When you look at the ocean, like you and me are right this second, you realize how small we are.”

I nodded my head some.

There was a long silence and then Mong smiled and said: “I can’t believe how good Rondell was.” He laughed, tossed a bulb of seaweed into the water. “I wonder what it feels like to slam one home.”

“Shit,” I said. “I wouldn’t even know.”

“Me neither.” Mong made like he was dunking a ball with his right hand and laughed a little more. Then he drank from his whiskey bottle.

Seeing him laugh without being all psycho about it made me think how little I actually knew about the guy besides what I read in his file. I took a long pull of beer imagining the dude as any regular kid I might pass in the halls at school. It was probably the first time I’d ever thought of Mong like that.

“Hey, Mong,” I said, feeling the buzz move through my body, into the tips of my fingers and toes.

“Yeah.”

“I wanted to ask you something.”

“All right.”

I picked up a smooth black rock, felt it between my thumb and forefinger. “You’re gonna be straight with me, right?”

“I’m drunk on whiskey,” he said, holding up his bottle. “I’d probably tell you anything right now.” He took a long swig and made a big production out how refreshing it was—even though he was still sort of cringing.

I looked at the ocean for a few seconds, tried to think how to put it. I looked at Mong. “How sick are you, anyway?”

He turned to face me. “Very sick.”

I was surprised he just came out and said it like that. I flung the rock in my hand toward the water. “You’re gonna get better though, right?”

His eyes went to the label on his bottle. “They told me I’d
have to get a new kidney.” He paused, flipping the bottle so he could see the other side. “But I was far down on the list.”

I stared at the side of his face, at his scars. I’d never known anyone who needed a new kidney before. I thought how maybe somebody in Mexico might have one for him. We could get him into a hospital first thing, and they’d operate and he’d be straight. Maybe that’s why he wanted to go there in the first place.

He took another sip of whiskey and then just sat there, staring at the quiet ocean. “I don’t really wanna talk about that stuff,” he said. “Not tonight.”

“Nah, that’s cool,” I said, picking up another flat rock. I skipped it across the water, watched it disappear into a little crumbling swell.

“Maybe you can ask me something else,” he said.

I nodded, thought about everything since we left the Lighthouse. All the walking we’d done and the tied-up store guy and the cave, the guys who took our petty cash. “Okay,” I said, “how could such a small Chinese kid like you fight so good?”

“I’m not afraid to get hurt.”

“Why not?”

He shrugged and then turned to look me in the eye. “I guess because I don’t care what happens to me.”

I nodded and looked back to the ocean.

It was a trip to hear somebody like Mong say the exact same thing I’d thought since what happened in Stockton. I wondered if almost every kid in a group home feels that way. Stops caring what happens to them. ’cause first of all they did something bad to get put away, and second everybody in their family is disappointed, and third you start to wonder if maybe that’s really who you are. A group-home kid. A
fuckup. And once you start thinking you’re a fuckup maybe you automatically stop caring what happens to you.

“But what about with those dudes today, man,” I said. “They were big as hell.”

“They were big,” Mong said, “but they also knew they were wrong to take our money. They knew they deserved to lose.”

I picked up another rock, said: “Why’d you bite that one guy in the face?”

Mong looked at me, fingering his brown tooth necklace. “I couldn’t think of what else to do.”

I frowned and shook my head. “You know that shit was kind of sick, though, right?”

He nodded.

“I mean sick in the head, man. Psycho.”

“I understand.”

“And you don’t care if that’s what people think of you? That you’re fucked-up or whatever?”

He took a sip of whiskey, spit in front of him and went quiet for a few seconds, like he was thinking about it. “Ever since I found out I was sick I feel like I’ve been fighting,” he said, staring out at the ocean. “Not just people, either. Everything. I thought the more things I could wreck the better I’d feel. But then today … Afterwards, I felt … I think that was the last one.” He turned to look at me. “I don’t think I want to fight anymore.”

He looked back at the ocean.

I took another sip of my beer, thinking about that. I felt the liquid drain down my throat and into my stomach. The beer was warm now, but I wasn’t drinking it for the taste. I was drinking it ’cause of how it made me feel and how all the things I wanted to say came right into my head without me
even trying. I turned to Mong. “So why’d you spit on me that first day?”

“To find out who you were.”

“And who am I?”

He smiled and picked up another bulb of seaweed. “You’re a normal kid who did something very bad. And even though it was just a mistake, you’re trying not to forgive yourself.”

I frowned at him and shook my head. “Nah, man. You got that part wrong—”

“And you’re trying to convince yourself you don’t care. But you do care. You care a whole lot. I can see it.”

“Ha!” I said, waving him off and making myself laugh. “That’s some damn BS if I ever heard it.”

“It’s what you hate most about yourself,” Mong said, grinning at me. “You hate that you care so much.”

I laughed some more and sipped my beer. I tried to think up something I could say to show him how dumb as hell his opinions were, but nothing was coming in my head, so I just picked up a rock and fired it into a small wave.

“I’m just being honest,” he said. “Did I say too much?”

I shrugged, said: “Whatever, dawg. That’s how you wanna believe then that’s how you wanna believe. Don’t mean you’re right, though.”

He held out his whiskey bottle. “Cheers?”

“’cause actually, if you wanna know the truth, I don’t give a fuck about
anything.”

“Okay,” Mong said, smiling big. “Come on, though, cheers.”

I looked at his bottle, still shaking my head. I thought about not giving him a cheers. Thought about going back up with Rondell and letting Mong’s drunk ass alone for the rest of the night. ’Cause, come on, man. Dude was trying to talk
like he knew me. He didn’t know
shit
about me. Like Jaden even said, nobody knows anybody. But for whatever reason I tapped his bottle with my can real quick and turned away, took another sip of warm beer.

We both sat in silence for a while. I couldn’t stop thinking of what he’d just said, though, so I decided to change the subject. “Yo, man, what’s up with that flea-bitten tooth you always got around your neck?”

He set down his bottle in the sand and held up the ugly brown thing so he could see it. “This?”

“Yeah, man. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but that shit ain’t exactly fashionable.”

“You don’t think so?”

I pointed at it, said: “Look at it. What the hell’s it supposed to be, anyway?”

“A tooth.”

“I know
that
, man. I’m saying whose is it? And why do you wear it all the time?”

I figured it must have some important meaning or whatever. Like it was his old man’s or somebody’s who he’d beaten up before. Why else would a person wear a cavity-ass tooth like that? But he shrugged his shoulders at me and said: “I don’t know whose it is. I found it on the ground somewhere like three years ago.”

He let it fall back to his chest and lifted his bottle to his lips again.

I gave him a crazy-ass look, said: “You don’t even know whose tooth it is?”

He shook his head.

“That’s nasty, man.”

“Why?”

I frowned at him, said: “Well, for one thing it’s unsanitary as hell.”

He smiled. “You’ve never had a good-luck charm before?”

“Not one that came out of some homeless person’s damn mouth.”

He chuckled a little and said: “It’s good luck. I’ve worn it every day since I found it.”

I thought about that for a sec. How his parents are dead and he got thrown in a group home and now he’s sick. I told him: “You really think it’s been lucky, though?”

He nodded.

“How?”

“It’s not about what happens to people,” he said. “It’s how they figure out what it means. It’s helped me understand all the meaning.”

I took a drink. Picked up another rock and flung it at the tide, thinking about what he said. I wondered if that was what I should do. Find meaning.

After a short silence Mong said: “I wanted to ask you something too.”

“Okay.”

“What’d you think about what my cousin said in the car when we were going to San Francisco?”

I reached up and touched my cut, felt the swelling. “Which part? She said a lot.”

“She was telling us the story about a man and woman in China.”

I looked at Mong out of the corner of my eye, surprised he was bringing it up. “I guess she was just saying a random story,” I said.

“Did you agree with her, though? That it was true love?”

“How would I know, man? I don’t know nothin’ about no love.”

He frowned at me.
“Everybody
knows about love,” he said.

I scooped a handful of dry sand and let it pour out slow through my fingers, shaking my head.

He turned back to the ocean, took another swig of whiskey. “People only think of romantic love, but that’s just one kind. Love can be anything. Since I was a little boy, staying here every summer, I’ve been in love with the ocean.”

I didn’t say anything back. Dude wasn’t even making sense anymore.

“Tonight it’s even bigger,” he said. “Tonight I’m in love with the whole world. Everything of the earth. The dirt. The sand. The sky. That cave we went inside the other night.” He paused a sec and took another drink. Then he looked at me all excited. “Maybe when a person dies they don’t really die, Mexico. Maybe they just go back into the earth again.”

I shot him a confused look and took a sip of my beer. I didn’t really know what he meant.

“What about you?” Mong said “What do you love?”

I thought about his question for a sec. I actually took it serious. “My family, I guess. Especially my brother Diego. And my moms.” I looked at him, said: “Yeah, man, my family.”

He nodded.

I pictured Diego’s lit-up face whenever he’d be reeling in a fish at the levee. Or how he’d roll his eyes at me when he got dropped off at home from some white chick’s car. When she’d make her window go down to say one last thing to him. I laughed a little under my breath, said: “Yo, I used to try and be just like my brother. In every possible way. Used to copy his clothes style and how he did his hair. Even copied the way he
walked
. But then I realized I was wasting my time. ’cause no matter how hard I tried, Diego was always gonna be Diego and I was always just gonna be me.”