Last Summer of the Death Warriors
Francisco X. Stork
For Charlie Stork, my father
T
he ride to St. Anthony’s took longer than he expected. He always figured you could get from one place to any other place in Las Cruces in twenty minutes or less. Maybe it was a short drive that seemed long because Mrs. Olivares would not stop talking. Mostly she told him how lucky he was to be going to St. Anthony’s rather than a juvenile detention center.
St. Anthony’s was an orphanage. It was not a place for kids with problems. Mrs. Olivares had worked very hard and called in a lot of favors to get him admitted. She pointed out the high school he would attend in the fall. It was within walking distance of St. Anthony’s. He had been given a choice between going to summer school and entering as a senior or redoing his junior year. He chose to redo his junior year. He had other plans for the summer.
There was a white sign on the front lawn with the words
ST. ANTHONY’S HOME
painted in black letters. Behind it stood a one-story brick building in the shape of a lopsided cross. Next to the building was a basketball court. Kids dressed in gray shorts and
blue T-shirts were playing a full-court game. They stopped and turned to look at Mrs. Olivares’s car as it drove by. The kids on the basketball court were his age or older, but he could see younger kids on the grass fields. He noticed that there was no fence of any kind around the property.
Mrs. Olivares parked the car in front of the main entrance and popped open the trunk. “Well, here we are,” she said. She seemed like she wanted to say one more thing. Pancho stared straight ahead and waited for her to speak.
“I can’t tell you how important it is for you to get along with everyone here. I understand you’re still hurting, but why make matters worse for yourself?”
He rolled down the window. It was June and it was hot. If she was going to give him another lecture, the least she could do was keep the air conditioner on.
“You need to get over the anger. The police determined that there was no foul play in Rosa’s death. It was no one’s fault. Not yours, not anyone’s. She just died. It happens.”
“What did she die of?” He dared her to answer.
“Not that again. How many times have we gone over that? The coroner’s report lists the cause of death as undetermined. That just means they don’t know the exact reason. It happens sometimes. People die and no one knows why. Even apparently healthy young people like your sister.”
“Why was she in a motel room? Who was she with?”
“She was twenty years old. It was not illegal for her to be in a motel room with someone.”
“How can they say it was no one’s fault if they don’t even look for the guy she was with?”
“You talked to the detective. What did he tell you?”
Pancho remembered the detective. He remembered how shocked he was when the detective told him his sister had sex with someone before she died and there was no evidence of rape. He tried his best to explain that Rosa had the mind of a child. She wouldn’t go in a motel room with someone unless she was deceived or taken advantage of somehow. “You can’t just give up on this,” he told the detective.
But the detective wasn’t interested. He took notes and grinned as if he had heard it all before. “There’s no evidence that a crime was committed, so it’s a waste of time to look for him. What are we going to charge the guy with? Not calling 9-1-1?”
Pancho looked out the window. Mrs. Olivares continued, “I know it’s frustrating not to have someone to blame. I know you feel helpless. But you can’t take your frustrations out on people. I know you’re a good boy inside. I know it. I told Father Concha that you were. Are you listening to me?”
“Yeah,” he said. But he said it in a way meant to make her stop talking.
“Look.” She sounded annoyed. “As of last week, the State of New Mexico, that would be me, is your legal guardian and you are my charge.” What a strange word that was, “charge.” He was Mrs. Olivares’s charge. “There are worse places than this. What you did at Mrs. Duggan’s could have landed you in prison. I’m taking a chance here. There’s a lot of people back in the office who think I’m making a mistake bringing you here. Am I making a mistake?”
Yeah, you’re making a mistake,
he thought.
“Pancho, I’m talking to you.”
He turned toward her and saw beads of sweat on her dark brown forehead. Mrs. Olivares was a heavy woman and for a moment she reminded him of his sister. He blinked to make the memory disappear.
“I’ll be all right,” he said. Then he asked, “What’s going to happen to the trailer and the truck?”
She rolled down her window. “The State’s going to auction the mobile home and all the other things. The money will be used to cover the cost of your sister’s funeral. Any money left over will be held in trust for you. I doubt the truck is worth anything. Even the trailer won’t sell for much.”
He shook his head.
“I’m sorry,” she said. She looked as if she understood the unfairness of it all. “I wish I could just let you be until you turn eighteen next year, but I can’t. My boss feels there’s too much liability there. I’ll come get you this weekend and take you to the trailer, and we can pick out a few things for you to save. We’ll find a place to store them.”
He opened the door of the car and stepped out. It was six in the afternoon and the sun was still white, the heat oppressive. He looked around the grounds and saw the trees—pecan trees, the kind his father planted behind the trailer. The grass around the trees was littered with pecans. That was a good sign. At home he enjoyed sitting under the trees, cracking nuts with his teeth. Mrs. Olivares opened the trunk and waited for him to grab the nylon suitcase with his belongings. “Come on,” she said. “Father Concha is waiting for us.”
Mrs. Olivares led the way to the front entrance. When she got there, she opened the glass door and waited for him. He stopped
before entering. He had the sensation that someone was staring at him. He turned slowly toward the basketball court. There were several kids on the sideline, but the stare he felt on his back had not come from any of them. He shifted his gaze toward the trees. There under a pecan tree, a boy in a wheelchair had his eyes fixed on him. The boy wore khaki pants, a black sweatshirt, and a blue baseball cap. His body had a frozen, slumped look, like he had died sitting and someone forgot to bury him.
Pancho stepped into the dark hallway and let the door close behind him. When his eyes adjusted, he saw a glass case full of basketball trophies. On the other side, a cream-colored wall was lined with pictures of boys grouped in different formations. Mrs. Olivares stopped in front of a glass door and knocked. She waited, knocked again, and tried to open the door, but it was locked. She looked at her watch and pointed at one of the two plastic chairs next to the door. “Wait here. I’ll check out back where the Brothers live.”
He sat down on the chair, the suitcase next to him. She went down the hallway and turned left, the tapping of her heels filling the silence. He stood up and walked over to the trophy case. There on the bottom shelf was a small, dusty trophy of a boy about to throw a right hook. He knelt down and read the engraving. L
UIS
R
IVERA
—G
OLDEN
G
LOVES
—1998.
Mrs. Olivares had left her briefcase by the glass door. The sound of her heels had faded away. He crossed over to the briefcase and took out a folder the color of a grocery store bag. The words “Coroner’s Report” were stamped on front in purple ink. He opened it and read. He read slowly because slowly was the only way he could read. When he heard her heels in the distance, he
closed the folder, placed it back in the briefcase, and sat down in the chair again.
He stood up when he heard Mrs. Olivares’s voice. Then he saw her and a tall man walk toward him. The man wore black pants and a black short-sleeve shirt. He did not have the white collar Pancho had come to identify with a priest. His hair was gray and short and his skin was white except for dark circles around his eyes.
Mrs. Olivares said, “Father Concha, I want to introduce you to Pancho Sanchez.” Father Concha nodded. Pancho kept his hands in his pockets.
“Pancho. Is that short for Francisco?” Father Concha’s voice was deep. There was nothing friendly about it.
“No.”
“Is that what you want to be called?”
For a moment, he thought about making up another name. Since he became involved with the authorities, he had stopped liking his name. It sounded childish in the mouths of policemen and judges and social workers. Now someone was offering him the opportunity to call himself something more formal, more grown up. But the only other name he could think of was Vicente, and he didn’t think he should take his father’s name.
“Pancho it is, then.” Father Concha turned toward Mrs. Olivares and said without smiling, “I’ll take it from here.”
“Oh. Sure.” She seemed surprised by his directness. “Well. You have everything you need? All the paperwork?”
“You sent it last week.”
“That’s right.” She turned to Pancho and said, “Well, I guess I’ll be seeing you.” She stretched out her hand, but when Pancho
made no move to take it, pulled it back. She began to walk away and then stopped. “Oh, I told Pancho I would pick him up Saturday and take him home to get some things.”
Father Concha looked at the suitcase. “He doesn’t need anything else.”
“No, we won’t bring them here,” she said quickly. “We’ll find a place to store them. Someplace else.”
“I don’t want anything. You can get rid of all of it,” Pancho said. What was there to keep? An old TV, hammers, saws, drills, Rosa’s dolls? He had his father’s army medals in his suitcase. He had his mother’s and father’s wedding rings. He had Rosa’s family album. That was enough.
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t want me to pick you up on Saturday, then?”
“No.”
Mrs. Olivares looked hurt. She lowered her eyes. “I’m going to go anyway. If I see anything worth saving, I’ll get it for you.”
Pancho shrugged. She could do whatever she wanted. He didn’t care.
F
ather Concha opened the door and held it long enough for Pancho to step in with his suitcase. Then he walked to the desk and sat down. He picked up the receiver and punched the buttons on the phone. Across the room, Pancho heard a busy signal. Father Concha hung up. “Sit down,” he said. It was more a command than a request.
Pancho sat on a wooden chair that looked like it came out of someone’s kitchen. He prepared himself to hear a speech. When he first got to the foster home, Mrs. Duggan had sat him down and listed all the things he could not do.
Father Concha asked, “You like to fight?”
Pancho sat straight up. “What?”
“You got into a fight with another boy at the foster home. You must like to fight.” Father Concha looked at the scarred knuckles on Pancho’s right hand.
Pancho covered his hand. What surprised him about the question was the word “like.” He remembered his fist striking
Reynolds’s cheekbone, the pain of the impact traveling up his arm, the way Reynolds clutched his face. Yes, he had liked it. It felt good to hit someone. But he was not about to admit that to a priest. He looked up and saw Father Concha waiting for an answer to his question. “I was defending myself,” he said.
The smallest of smiles appeared on Father Concha’s face. Pancho sensed that every one of his thoughts was being read. Father Concha picked up a manila folder and flipped through the pages, deep in thought. What did those pages say? Pancho had never read his file, but he could imagine.
The mother dies when the boy is five years old. The father raises the boy and the older sister. The father dies in a freak work-related accident. Then the sister dies from undetermined natural causes three months later.
The list of losses that made up his life was so unbelievable, it was embarrassing. It was like he made the whole thing up just so people would feel sorry for him.
Pancho glared at Father Concha. He did not want pity. Pity turned his stomach. The priest put the folder down and met Pancho’s eyes. There was no pity there. “You need a job for the summer,” he said after a few moments. “Your father was a carpenter. Did you ever work with him?”
“Some.”
Father Concha picked up the telephone and entered a number. Pancho heard a man’s voice on the other end of the line. “Mr. Lawrence,” Father Concha said, and swiveled his chair away from Pancho. “This is Father Concha at St. Anthony’s.…Fine, thank you. I have a new student. I’m wondering if you’d be able to put him to work in your construction crew?” There was a pause. “I see. No, I understand. Yes, call me if you need someone.”
Father Concha put the receiver down and exhaled all at the same time. Then he stood up. “Come with me,” he said. “Leave the suitcase.”
Pancho followed Father Concha down the hallway in the direction that Mrs. Olivares had first gone, only instead of turning left where she did, they turned right. At the end of that hallway, a side door opened, and the kids who had been playing basketball streamed inside. They were jostling each other but stopped when they saw Father Concha. Pancho sized them up as he walked by. A few were taller and a few were older, but he didn’t see anyone he wouldn’t be able to take down.
Father Concha stopped before the exit. He pulled out a ring of keys and opened an unpainted wooden door. He entered and waited for Pancho. The room was stacked full of cardboard boxes, rusty filing cabinets, aluminum bats, dusty baseball bases, old hoses, burlap sacks, and bed frames. Father Concha swept the room with his arm. “Starting tomorrow morning, I want you to clean up and paint this room. Someone will help you sort through the boxes. The stuff that is useless, take to the Dumpster. I’ll get you some paint.” He pointed to a door at the end of the room. “There’s a bathroom through there. We’ll get new fixtures for it.”
The room had two windows. Pancho saw two kids outside on the basketball court playing one-on-one. Father Concha saw them as well. He stepped out of the room and stuck his head out the exit door. “Mass in twenty minutes,” he said.
“Aww,” Pancho heard one of the kids say, “just when I was about to win me five bucks.” There was a moment of silence. Then he heard the same kid say, “Just kiddin’, Father. He don’t even have five bucks.”
Father Concha walked past Pancho. “Let’s get your suitcase and take it to your room,” he said.
Father Concha led him to a dormitory that looked like a converted gym, where all twenty-five, now twenty-six, students slept. What he called “your room” was a space shaped like a stall. Each space contained a bed, a desk, a chair, a nightstand, a bureau, and two lamps, one on the desk and one on the nightstand beside the bed. The three walls that formed the enclosure were chest high and made out of plywood. If you were sitting at your desk or lying down in bed, you’d have privacy on three sides. Otherwise, you were out in the open.
As he and Father Concha walked down the aisle, they passed by kids changing out of their gym clothes. He was glad that Father Concha did not introduce him to anyone and glad that once he was in his stall, no one came up to him. Maybe the kids had been warned to stay away from him. Maybe they’d been told what he had done to Reynolds.
Father Concha told him he could either unpack or attend Mass at the chapel. He chose to unpack. He wasn’t big on church. His father used to take him and Rosa to church on the anniversary of their mother’s death. That was about the extent of it. He hoped Mass was not a daily requirement, but he would deal with it if it was. He had plenty to think about while the priest did his thing up at the altar.
The bureau had a cupboard for hanging clothes next to four drawers. Pancho put all his clothes in the drawers. He had
nothing to hang. The desk drawer had a key attached to it. He sat down, opened the drawer, and put his sister’s album, the wedding rings, and the medals inside. He took out the wallet with the twenty-dollar bill that Mrs. Olivares had given him and threw that in there as well. He locked the drawer and looked for a place to hide the key, but there was no place to hide anything.
“Hey!”
He looked up, thinking that someone from the next stall was speaking to him. Then he turned sideways and saw the boy in the wheelchair. He was still wearing the blue cap and black sweatshirt, even though it was hotter inside than it was outdoors. Up close, the boy seemed older than he was, but it was hard to tell by how much.
“No one ever steals anything around here,” the boy in the wheelchair said.
Pancho put the key inside his pants pocket. “Yeah, sure.”
“If it’ll make you feel better, you can get a chain from Lupita and hang the key around your neck.”
“Who?”
“Lupita. She works in the front office.”
Pancho stared at the wall behind the desk. He found it hard to look at the boy directly: the dark eyes sunk in their sockets, the yellowish skin, the cracked lips, the long, thin strands of blond hair poking from underneath the cap. Looking at the boy made him feel ill. He pushed his chair back and stood up. The mattress had a dark stain where someone had once wetted it. Two white sheets, a pillowcase, and a gray blanket lay at the foot of the bed. He put the pile of bedding on the chair and then extended one
sheet over the bed. He hoped his silent movements would make the boy roll back to wherever he came from.
He had to walk around the wheelchair to get to the other side of the bed. He was stuffing the pillow into the case when the boy spoke again. The voice had a raspy, exhausted quality to it, like there was a limited quantity of sound in there and it would soon run out. “The Panda asked me to help you sort out the papers in the storage room.”
The flat, skinny pillow filled only half the pillowcase. He threw it on the bed and sat down next to it.
The Panda?
It took him a few seconds to see the resemblance: Father Concha’s white face, the dark circles around his eyes. He almost smiled, then he caught himself. “What’s wrong with you anyway?” He stared at the kid’s ankles. They were the width of broomsticks.
“I’m training for the Olympics.” The boy tried to laugh but began to cough instead. When the coughing fit ended, he said, “My name is Daniel Quentin, but everyone calls me D.Q. You’re Pancho.”
“That’s my name. So is everyone here like an orphan?”
“In one way or another.”
“What?”
“Technically, an orphan is someone whose parents have died. Some kids have parents who are still alive but who might as well be dead. You see?”
He saw. “I always figured orphanages were for little kids.”
“If the little kids don’t get adopted, they have to end up someplace.”
It crossed Pancho’s mind that these were the kids no one
wanted. He looked around. People were entering the dormitory in twos and threes. One of the walls held a white clock. It was too early to go to sleep, but he wished he could just lie down and close his eyes.
“You want me to show you around?” D.Q. asked.
“What’s there to see?”
“Bathrooms and showers are at the other end, where that orange light is. There’s a TV room, a game room, a library, computers.…”
“Can we go outside?” He looked at the door marked exit.
A strange look came over D.Q.’s face. “This isn’t a jail,” he said. “It’s supposed to be a home. There are procedures for telling people where you are, but pretty much anyone can leave at any time.”
Pancho could not imagine why anyone would not leave for good if that were the case. He felt himself being studied. “Good,” he said.
“I take it you have a place you’d rather be?”
He pictured his trailer out in the desert. He remembered the screen porch his father had built, where he slept during the summer. He saw in his mind the flagpole out front and the tattered flag his father had brought back from Vietnam. “Yeah,” he answered.
“This place isn’t so bad. The best thing is that, if you want, people let you be. I got a feeling that’s what you’d like, isn’t it?”
Pancho forced himself to look steadily into D.Q.’s eyes. “Yeah, that suits me just fine,” he answered.
“That’s all right. We all felt the same way when we first got here. Unfortunately for you, you’re stuck with me for the
summer.” D.Q. paused, waiting for the words to sink in. “I’m your summer job. You’re going to be my aide. You’ll come with me to my treatments. You’ll be my companion.”
“I thought I was supposed to clean up the storage room.”
“That’ll only take a day or two.”
“This ‘companion’ job pay anything?”
“You get to be around me.” D.Q. grinned.
“I need to make me some money,” Pancho said.
“What do you need money for?”
“I just do. The kids here that have summer jobs working in construction and all—they earn any money?”
“Sure, they get paid. Minimum wage, at least.”
“Well, what happens to that money?”
“One-third they give to St. Tony’s to help out. The other two-thirds they get to keep for school supplies, clothes, etcetera.”
“Etcetera,” Pancho said, mimicking D.Q. Mrs. Olivares had told him he would have a summer job. He was counting on the money.
“Oh, relax. It won’t be so bad. I’m the best thing that ever happened to you. You’ll see.” D.Q. made an effort to smile, but the smile turned into a grimace. “Oooo. That was a good one,” he said, grabbing his stomach. “Hey, can you wheel me over to my room? Talking to you has pooped me out, literally.”
“Where is it?” He did not get up from the bed.
“It’s at the other end.”
“That’s no room. That’s one of these—I don’t know what you call it.”
“We call them rooms. The name helps. Wheel me over
there. The other kids will show you respect if they see you pushing me.”
Pancho stood up and walked behind the wheelchair. He turned it around and began to push it. “I can get my own respect,” he muttered.
