Chango's Fire (18 page)

“I can't do it,” I say. “I know I owe you money, but I can't burn my building.”

Eddie stops rambling.

“Then take the job,” he says as he examines the stained-glass windows.

“I can't do that.”

Eddie stops looking at pictures in the stained glass and turns his face toward me. “You think it's easy. You think it's all so easy.”

“No,” he cuts me off. “I never enjoyed one bit of it. I never enjoyed it at all. Seeing all that destruction, all those lives ruined, those children burned. Some landlords would send flowers to the families. But I knew their condolences were lies. Every building that they burned was money. Others hired guys like me, didn't care. The city didn't care and I'd put it out of my head for as long as I could but then, when I had my own children, well, I did what I could. I sent out feelers. I'd pay a snitch to spread the word of the exact date of when the fire was coming. You should have seen the faces of the firemen, Julio, when they saw entire families outside, packed up with suitcases as if they were going on vacation.” Eddie lowers his head. Is it shame, guilt, that I see in him?

Once again I think about how, when I was a kid, fires were so common. A way of life even. Sometimes the date of when the landlord would set his building on fire did leak. The date of the fire had been thoughtfully sent around, so people could escape. Just like Eddie says. Kids would come up to the teacher and say, “I can't be here for the test on Tuesday because that's when the fire is.” And the teacher was as lost as Oscar Lewis. But us kids knew that kid would not be back to the same school. I lost so many friends from relocation. Until it was my turn. Until me and my family were burned out.

“But you people, you people fought back beautifully.” Eddie raises his head again. “Families doggedly resisted. When landlords cut your heat, you people survived entire winters bundling up, gas stoves on all night. When the gas bills were too high, you people didn't pay them but sent the bill to the landlord.” Eddie smiles, like he is proud. “Con-Ed was in on it too, though, and they just turned your people's utilities off. So you jerry-rigged wires to tap hall currents or street lamps. When junkies stole the expensive pipes and the plumbing was out of order, you fetched your water from fire hydrants. Filling empty milk gallon after empty milk gallon with water.” Eddie's voice has become a proud whisper. “For showers and bathroom duties you visited relatives or a friend whose building had not reached that state yet.” Eddie looks at me and I want to tell him his son is like that. That Trompo is remarkable. But I sense Eddie wants to tell me something. “When the Sanitation Department wouldn't pick up your garbage, the rats arrived. You people bought cats. Those with asthmatic kids got rat traps. The ghettoes got crazier and crazier and crazier. You people held out as long as you could. But the city fought back with what they knew you people couldn't fight against—fire.”

Eddie stands up.

“When I met her,” his eyes are distant, like he sees something out there from a past he can't kill, “she was living in such a wretched building. It was only a matter of time before they'd ask me to do that building in.”

I lowered my head.

I had had my suspicions, but I had nothing, nothing at all to back my belief that Eddie had torched his own lover's house. Trompo Loco had been burned out, but so had the rest of us. That held no weight. The stories that Trompo's mother was mentally unstable were true and some had said she lit the house herself. But I never believed it. I had seen that woman, and as scary as she was she was all talk, there was still some good in her, a part of her could still be saved. What I know now is that those stories neglected to add that Eddie drove her past help. He drove her into a character so sad that she became a neighborhood joke that wasn't funny. She became a myth, the crazy lady that children are spooked by. The lady on whose door your friends dare you to knock on Halloween.

“Whose house, Eddie?” I ask. “Who was she?”

Eddie swallows hard, then clears his palate, like he has a bad taste in his mouth. He turns his head toward me and then back toward the altar.

“I'll tell you who the real villain in all of this is.”

I know then he isn't going to fess up anything. At least anything that has to do with him.

“The real villain in all of this was the man behind the men who hired me. Moses. Robert Moses. He relocated people like cattle.”

Eddie's done talking—or was he reminiscing?

“But I'm not like that. I did what I had to, but I did what I could to reduce it. I'll let you in on a secret, Julio. The hardest thing in this world, Julio,” he says, pointing a finger at me, “is being a good bad-guy.”

“You don't want that job in D.C. any more than I do, Eddie.” I just figured that out. “They've asked you to look for someone. Someone you can vouch for. Someone you trust who won't cost you more money.”

“Unless you do your own home in, it's your only way, Julio.”

For seconds, neither of us says a thing, and Eddie just stays there like a kid playing red light, green light, one, two, three. He just stands there silent, towering above the pews. I drop my head and realize that silent churches make noises. They hum, like Buddhist motors. Our Lady of Mount Carmel is silent, but somewhere there is this white noise. This hum.

“I don't think I need to take confession.” Eddie breaks his trance and starts to walk away, then looks back at me, “take care of your friend. Make sure you do that.”

“My check?” I say.

“I'm holding on to it. I'll see if you get that back. I'll see.”

And Eddie goes back to the altar. He slowly kneels. His old knees bother him somewhat, because I hear them crack all the way from where I'm still sitting. His knees make a sound like bones being stretched and broken apart. The sound echoes until it dies and blends itself into the holy sounds that surround us both.

Trompo
Loco is sitting on the sofa with a bag of ice on his head. My mother, father and Maritza are tending his bruises and bloodied nose. I'm outside by the door, talking with three of the activists who dragged him here. They are very apologetic and have even brought with them most of his possessions.

“We didn't mean any harm to him,
tu sabe?
” says a lean man with a mustache, “but this is serious stuff. We tried to just carry him out but he began to spin like crazy and hurt himself.”

“My wife and kids live there and you know, I'm fighting to keep it,” another activist tells me as he pushes at me a box filled with clothes. “If he wants to come by and pick up the rest of his stuff, he can.”

“Yeah, we're not going to throw any of it away,” the fraud activist, a woman, reassures me. “Can I tell him we're sorry?” She tries to peek inside my house.

“Let me ask him,” I tell them.

“No hard feelings,” she says.

I pick up the box of clothes and go back inside. Trompo Loco is taking deep, angry breaths. I'm not worried that if I let the activist in to say sorry Trompo would punch them, I just don't want him spinning around and hurting himself some more.

“Trompo, you feel better?” Mom says to him, and he doesn't say anything but puckers his lips real tight and turns his head toward the wall.

“Julio,” Maritza tells me, “those people did to him what they hope the person who owns that building doesn't do to them.”

“No, I told him that was going to happen to him,” I look Trompo's way, “didn't I tell you this was going happen? There, you happy now? See?”

Trompo shrinks, he shrugs his shoulders high and in. He slouches on the couch like a puppy, a puppy with a bag of ice on his head.

“Julio,
bendito,
the poor guy—”

I cut Pops off.

“Poor guy nothing, he doesn't listen to me.” I look at Trompo again, “You don't listen to me.”

“Basta ya,
” Mom says, “no yelling.”

No one listens.

“That was wrong, Julio,” Maritza says, “that was not right. We got to do something—”

“Like what, Maritza, like what? Those people are just doing what they know is right. They aren't hurting anybody, they just want a home, like everybody else.”

“Like Trompo wants a home too—”

“Trompo needs to listen to me!” I say to Trompo again.

“Still doesn't make it right, Julio,” Maritza says, “what are we going to do about it?”

“No one is going to do nothing,” Mom says, “
gracia' a dio'
that he's okay. Now Trompo will live with us—”

“No he can't,” I jump at that, “we need help too. I don't think we can stay here Mom, didn't I tell you this?”

“This is Trompo, of course he can live with—”

I cut Pops off again.

“No he can't, we might all have to go—”

Trompo cuts me off.

“But you said to move in. You told me to come. I want to come. I want to come.”

“Now you wanna come motherfucker, now right—”

“Mira, “Mom snaps,
“esa boca.
No cursing in my house.”

“My house too,” I say and feel this rage like I have all this stuff to worry about and it keeps piling up. “He can't move in.”

“Talk to my father,” Trompo whimpers like a puppy who's lost his mother, almost crying. “Talk to him, Julio.”

My parents wait for my response. Like everyone, they know who Trompo's father is. I look back at them and yell in disgust.

“I'm not going to talk to your father, all right?”

“I thought you said he's not my father?” Trompo shoots up.

“He ain't your father—”

“Nah, nah, you just said he is my father—”

“Listen, he ain't your father! And even if he was he ain't never going to do a thing for you! So stop crying, stop that shit, ‘talk to my father, talk to my father' baby whining, and deal with it that he ain't your father, and start listening to me when I tell you to do something!”

The doorbell rings. I go get it. I tell the activist to go home, Trompo isn't talking. I close the door. Maritza has her arms crossed like she is waiting for me to give her something.

“What, Julio,” she says, “are you going to do about this?”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Something.”

“Well, why don't you,” I sneer at her, “why don't you start. Why don't you start by paying Trompo for the work he does. Huh? What about that, huh? And leave me alone.”

Kaiser appears out of nowhere, like he was sleeping and we woke him.

“Fine!” she shouts, “still look what happened to him and you just want to blame someone else instead of doing something—”

“Like what Mari, like what? You want me to go there at night when everyone's asleep and burn the building down?”

Everyone looks at me in disbelief. Except for Trompo they all have this intense expression as if they are trying to solve a puzzle.

“You want me to do that, Mari? Cuz I can. I can make all of them homeless and then you'd be happy, everything would be just great!”

“What are you talking about?” my father asks, “burn what down?”

With
all this yelling and screaming, all this anger, I let that slip.

I point at the cat.

“This is your fault!” Cat licks his whiskers like he could care less. “I should have let you burn!” I yell.

No one knows what the hell I'm talking about.

The doorbell rings again.

“Fuck!” I yell, “I told those fucking people to go the fuck home.” By now I've lost Mom, Pops and Maritza. They can't stand me and I know it.

I don't answer the door, I yell at it.

“Go the fuck home!”

The doorbell rings again.

“You need a fucking map?” I shout, and a disgusted Maritza goes over to answer it.

It's Helen.

“Hi,” she says a bit embarrassed, because she must have heard the shouts, “there's a group of women downstairs, by your church, asking for you.”

“For me?” Maritza frowns.

“Yes,” Helen says. I think she senses something is wrong, not in my living room but outside. “They said to get a … broom?” Helen says. “I don't know why, but they said to go get you and a broom?”

Maritza looks back at us. Her face turns pale in total horror. Something about that broom makes the entire household shake with fear as if it wasn't a broom she has been asked to find but a gun.

“Señora Santana, I need your broom.” Mom leaves Trompo's side as Pops takes over tending him.

“I'll go with you,” I say to Maritza.

“No, you can't, Julio,” she says nervously and looks at Helen. “It has to be handled by us.”

Helen nods repeatedly and fast, like she's already made up her mind to go, though she is as lost as I am.

My mother brings Maritza a broom. She grabs it.

“Be careful,
dios lo cuide, santo Señor.”
Mom says, knowing something urgent is happening, something more urgent than what has happened to Trompo Loco, and only Maritza knows about it. The immediacy of the situation shifts Helen's attention as well. From the look in her eyes, she has seen something really ugly outside, like a lynch mob. We haven't talked since that night we went drinking. She hasn't written me a letter but, looking back, she didn't really need to. That night wasn't that bad at all. Right now, there is something that needs direct attention, it can't wait and, knowing Maritza, I know it's ugly.

Maritza dashes out of the house and Helen follows her. Though Maritza said not to come, I don't listen and trail behind Helen.

Outside, Papelito is surrounded by angry women. Many are from Maritza's church, newly arrived immigrants. Helen joins them, sticking out like a goldfish.