Last Summer of the Death Warriors (13 page)

“How are you feeling?” the policeman asked.

D.Q. and the bus driver were talking to a second policeman. D.Q. seemed agitated. He was waving his arms, pointing at Pancho and then pointing someplace outside.

“You bleeding anywhere?” the policeman said.

“You don’t bleed when you get hit in the balls,” he said. Then he remembered that Josie and Marisol were within earshot. “Sorry.” He glanced at Marisol. She wasn’t smiling.

The policeman asked, “Can you stand up?” He offered Pancho a hand. Pancho took it and pulled himself up. D.Q. stopped talking and came over to him.

“What happened to those other guys?” Pancho looked down at the pieces of cell phone.

“They took off when they heard us,” the policeman answered. “They were probably packing and didn’t want to risk getting frisked.”

“Officers, I gotta get goin’. I’m waaay behind schedule,” the bus driver said.

“You want us to call an ambulance?” the policeman asked Pancho.

Pancho shook his head. “I’ll be all right.” He was tempted to feel himself down below. Parts of his body seemed to have ended up in the wrong places.

The policeman bent down to pick up what was left of the phone. “You were lucky today. Those kids were probably high on meth. It makes people violent, crazed. They could have killed you.”

“It’s my fault,” D.Q. said. “I asked them to turn down the noise and then I tried to turn the volume down myself.”

“Who busted the phone?” the second policeman asked.

“I did,” Pancho admitted.

The second policeman picked up the broken phone parts. “Joe,” the first said, “I don’t even think we need to file a report here, do we?” He took a long look at D.Q. and then at the wheelchairs. “You coming from the hospital?”

“We’re from Casa Esperanza,” Marisol answered. “We were going to the zoo.”

“That’s that place for kids over by the golf course. We can give you a ride back there.”

“Can we still go to the zoo?” D.Q. asked. “I mean, if Pancho feels okay.” He looked at Pancho.

“I’m okay.”

“Yeah!” Josie piped in.

“You sure?” Marisol asked.

“Sure.”

“All right. You could probably file assault charges,” the first policeman said to Pancho, “but I’m not exactly sure you’re all that innocent, you know what I mean?”

It was as if the policeman could see that he harbored just as much violence as the kid who kneed him in the groin. He could
not interpret the look on Marisol’s face. It wasn’t pity. She seemed puzzled by him.
Join the club,
he thought.

“Officer,” he heard D.Q. say, “it really was my fault. My friend was trying to protect me.”

“You all have a good day, then,” the policeman said, his eyes still on Pancho. Then the two men left the bus.

“Let’s all sit down now ’cause I gotta make up some time here,” the bus driver said. “I knew those kids were trouble. I never shoulda stopped to pick them up. They get on like they own the bus, they don’t pay or nothing. What can I do? I’m lucky they don’t beat me up.” She had her hands on the steering wheel and was looking out the side-view mirror. “Go on and sit down now.”

Josie grabbed Pancho’s hand and pulled him down to her seat. D.Q. sat behind them, next to Marisol. They were all quiet for a while and then Josie said, “I want to see the chimpanzees first.”

T
hey were in front of the tiger pit, waiting to see them get fed. Marisol pushed Josie to where she could see the big cats a little better. Pancho stood next to D.Q.’s wheelchair and looked down. One of the tigers began pacing back and forth on a ledge. Apparently he smelled something, or maybe he just knew it was time to eat.

“Do you think Marisol is mad at us?” D.Q. asked.

“Why?” Pancho continued to peer down. He had never seen a tiger before and was surprised by the size of its paws.

“She seems kind of quiet.”

Pancho shrugged his shoulders. He too had noticed something come over Marisol after the bus incident—a distancing where there was none before. She was more subdued and less talkative. D.Q., on the other hand, seemed charged up.

“It wasn’t very smart of us, was it? Back there in the bus.”

D.Q.’s words reminded Pancho of the numbness between his legs. He adjusted himself slightly.

“Everything still in place?”

“Yeah.”

D.Q. continued, “It was stupid. We endangered Josie and Marisol.”

“You’re the one who started it,” Pancho said. He slid down and sat with his back against the ledge. He felt very tired.

“I had no idea it could turn violent.”

“Didn’t you see what they looked like?” How could someone so smart be so dumb?

“I know, I know. I didn’t think I was making an unreasonable request. It was bad enough that he was talking on the phone as if no one else existed. The guy was yelling obscenities.”

“Those people aren’t reasonable.”

D.Q. bit his lip and furrowed his brow. Pancho knew that as far as D.Q. was concerned, the kids on the bus and Pancho were the same—they were all Mexicans. But he had always seen himself as different from the Mexican kids who sniffed glue or tattooed themselves with gang signs. Those kids were wild, angry with everyone, violent. And he was…what? He was…someone who didn’t care what happened anymore. He was going to kill someone in a few days, no matter what. Maybe he wasn’t so different after all.

“I should’ve recognized they were high on something,” D.Q. said.

Marisol walked up to them. She spoke to D.Q. without looking at Pancho. “We’re going to move on ahead. Do you want to wait here? Are you feeling tired?”

“I’m feeling great,” D.Q. responded, full of pep. “We’ll follow
you. I’m not keen on seeing raw meat.” He put his hand over his mouth and made as if he were going to vomit. It elicited a smile from Marisol.

Pancho slowly stood. He positioned himself behind the wheelchair and pushed. He wished he were the one sitting in the wheelchair. The zoo was crowded with groups of children in T-shirts announcing their various summer camps. They ran back and forth in packs from one exhibit to another. Pancho had to dodge baby carriages pushed by parents who were looking everywhere except where they were going. People tried not to stare at D.Q., but they did anyway. They stopped to admire an elephant taking water from a pond and spraying his back. They watched a male lion sprawled totally unconscious in the shade of a red flowering tree. The female nearby kept a sleepy guard. They saw orangutans leapfrog each other and heard chimpanzees screech with terror or delight, Pancho wasn’t sure. The Mexican wolves paced back and forth on top of a mound of dirt. They had tall, skinny legs, but they were not much bigger in bulk than Capi, and they kept their heads down, as if they had just been caught doing their business inside the house.

They bought hot dogs and sodas at the Cottonwood Café and ate outside. D.Q. took one bite of his hot dog and stopped eating. He spit what he had bitten into a napkin and folded it. He asked Pancho to get him a cup of ice. Pancho got him one and D.Q. chewed the ice chips. Marisol smiled and listened attentively to Josie. Pancho saw D.Q. look longingly at her and sigh. Pancho took a deep breath and volunteered to take Josie to the camel ride. Just before he left, he saw Marisol edge her chair closer to D.Q.

The camel ride consisted of a man with a white ponytail leading an old-looking camel by a rope while a little kid sat on a special seat located in front of the camel’s humps. Josie told Pancho she wanted the camel to kneel down so she could climb on, but the man with the ponytail led the camel to a platform with stairs up to it instead. Josie insisted on getting out of the wheelchair and waiting in line standing up. She was afraid the ponytail man wouldn’t let her on if he saw her in the wheelchair and thought she couldn’t walk. “Because you hold on to the camel with your legs”—she had read that somewhere.

“How was it?” he asked her when she climbed down.

“It was bumpy. It was like riding on a mountain. I was scared. Could you tell?”

He picked her up and sat her in the wheelchair. “You didn’t look scared.”

“I was holding the scaredness in. I’m good at that. Sometimes. Except when you were fighting with those mean boys on the bus, I cried then.”

“I wasn’t fighting,” he protested. “Where to now?”

“Can we go find the birds? I want to see the vultures.”

“The vultures?”

“Yeah. They’re awesome ugly.”

“I don’t know where the birds are. Don’t you want to pet a burro? They’re right there.”

“That’s the petting zoo. That’s for little kids. I’d rather see the vultures and then the Tasmanian devils.”

“Those aren’t real. Those are cartoons.”

“Silly. They are so real. They’re like dogs. They’re from
Tasmania. That’s a place in Australia. Do you know why they call them devils?”

“In the cartoon, they look like the devil, with the pointy ears and the fangs.”

“Mmmm. And you know what? Almost all the Tasmanian devils are becoming extinct because they get tumors on their face.”

“Where’d you learn all this?”

“On the Internet. I think the birds are that way.” She pointed to her left.

“How do you know?”

“I saw a sign that said ‘Aviary.’”

Pancho had seen the same sign, but he had no idea what “aviary” meant. All those years at home living with his father and his sister, he had never felt ignorant, and yet clearly he was. He never used a computer, except occasionally at school. He did not own a cell phone or play video games. Back home, before everything happened, he thought of himself as bright enough. He knew where his left foot should be when he sent a left hook. He knew how to find the studs behind a plaster wall and how to lay a plumb line straight. He explained TV mysteries to his father and repeated ordinary well-known facts to his sister until they sank in. Now he felt out of place, like he did not belong in this city where even eight-year-olds knew more than he did.

There was an empty bench in front of a cage filled with bright green birds, like the parrot he had carved, only smaller. He sat down. A woman in front of the cage had one of the birds perched on her index finger. A circle of kids surrounded her. “I think that bird talks,” Pancho told Josie. “Why don’t you go see what it says?”

“Naah. I’d rather listen to you.” Pancho thought that at least he was more interesting than a bird. Josie was twitching her nose as if gathering her nerve to ask a question. “Why did you smash that cell phone?”

Pancho covered his face with his hands. “I don’t know.”

“Maybe you thought that boy was going to hurt D.Q. and you wanted to protect him.”

“Could be. But the kid wasn’t hurting D.Q.”

“You got angry because they were teasing D.Q.”

“I wasn’t angry. I didn’t feel angry. I just up and did it. I don’t know why.”

“The boy was saying mean and dirty words. He was loud too.”

“Yeah.”

“I thought you died when you fell. I cried.”

“I saw you crying before I fell.”

“I cried different tears after you fell. First I cried ’cause I was scared and then I cried because I thought you were dead.”

He observed her carefully to see if she was telling the truth. “How can you cry if you don’t even have eyelashes?”

She stuck her tongue out. “They fell off. Meany. Just for that, I’m not going to tell you a secret.”

“Good.”

“I won’t tell you even if you give me one million three hundred dollars.”

“All right.”

“I would have told you too.”

“What is it?”

“I’m not gonna tell you. Take it back a thousand times.”

“All right, I take it back. Take what back?”

“That I don’t have eyelashes.”

“I take it back that you don’t have eyelashes. You have them. I see two. One there and one there.”

“Okay, I’ll tell you, but don’t tell Marisol I told you.”

“I won’t.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

“Cross your heart and hope to live?”

“All right. There. I cross my heart and hope to…live.”

“Marisol likes you.”

“Is that it? I already knew that. What did she say?”

“Will you buy me a snow cone?”

“Maybe. If it’s not too expensive.”

“You were giving a ride in the rickshaw to Phil and Kelly yesterday, and my mom, she said to Marisol, ‘He’s a hunk, isn’t he?’ And Marisol, she went ‘Mmm-hmmm.’ Like that.”

“A honk? A honk? That doesn’t mean anything. That’s how a duck goes. Honk. Honk.”

“Not honk. A hunk. And it does so mean something. When a girl likes someone, she calls him that.”

“It was your mother who said it, not Marisol.”

“Marisol went ‘Mmm-hmmm.’ That means like ‘For suuure!’”

“You know what I think? I think we better go find D.Q. and Marisol. D.Q. is probably starting to get sick about now. Honk. Honk. That’s the noise the seals were making.”

Marisol and D.Q. were still sitting in front of the Cottonwood Café. From a distance, Pancho could see that they were carrying on a quiet, serious conversation. D.Q. talked and Marisol
listened. She held a paper cup in her hands and nothing seemed to exist in her universe other than D.Q.’s words. Now and then, she tilted her head and smiled appreciatively at D.Q. What could he ever say to Marisol that would make her listen and look at him that way? He could not think of one single thing. All he was and all he ever would be was a honk.

H
e was tightening the brakes on the rickshaw with an old pair of pliers when he felt Marisol standing behind him. “I have some customers for you when you’re ready,” she said to him.

“I’m ready. I’m just fixing the brakes.”

“Brakes would be good,” she said. He glanced back just long enough to see her smile. It was the first time she had spoken to him in a friendly way since the incident on the bus three days before. “How’s D.Q. today?”

“I just brought him back from the hospital. He’s in the room. He was looking for you.”

“We were going to go out for our walk.”

“He looks too tired to walk.”

“Walking helps with the nausea. It’s not good to be lying down all the time even if that’s all you feel like doing.” She paused. Pancho shook his head to let her know he heard her. “It’s a good day for a walk. It’s not hot.”

He gripped the right brake handle tight and pushed the bike
at the same time. The front wheel squeaked. “The brake pads wore out.”

“Is it dangerous?”

“Only if I have to stop.” He hadn’t meant to sound like a smartass; it just kind of came out that way.

“We can buy some new ones. I can get Laurie to give us the money.”

“It’s okay. I don’t go down any hills.”

“There’s a bike store on my way home. I can buy the parts if you tell me what to get.”

“It’s all right. The bike stops. See.” He squeezed the brakes and pushed. The bike screeched and slid, but the front wheel didn’t turn. Her presence irritated him, he didn’t know why.

He saw her move her head back as if struck by the force of his words. There was neither hurt nor anger in her eyes. Instead, he saw kindness. Or pity. “What?” he said. He didn’t need anyone feeling sorry for him.

“Nothing,” she said softly. Then she asked, “Who are you anyway?”

“What do you mean?” But he did understand the question. He too had tried to go inside of himself and sort out the different people who lived there. He took a step backward and almost stumbled over the rickshaw.

She moved closer to him. “It’s like you’re two people,” she said, looking into his eyes. “One Pancho is funny and kind and patient with little kids. And another is…I don’t know, angry. It’s like you can’t make up your mind what kind of person you want to be. I don’t know. Is there something bothering you? Is there something you want to talk about?”

He snickered. “With you?”

“If you want to with me, why not? Or with D.Q. You’re helping him so much. Why not let him help
you?”
She moved to one side and leaned against the bike. “D.Q. told me about your sister. I’m sorry.”

He felt a pang of humiliation as he imagined D.Q. and Marisol talking about his sorry past. “It’s none of D.Q.’s business,” he said. He wondered what exactly D.Q. knew about his sister. He had never once talked to him about her. Back at St. Anthony’s, D.Q. had said, “Something’s eating you, I can tell,” and he had mentioned that in Albuquerque they would help each other out. How much did D.Q. know and how much did he tell Marisol?

“D.Q. thinks he’s your friend,” she said. “Friends talk to each other.” She wasn’t accusing him of not being a friend, he could tell, she was encouraging him to be one.

“D.Q. likes to talk.” And he didn’t. That’s what he was telling her.

“You do too, with the kids. I’ve heard you.”

He shrugged his shoulders. It was true. Sometimes he forgot himself and the kids would get him going with some kind of foolish conversation or another. It was fun to tease them and they liked being treated like regular brats.

Mrs. Rivera came out of the house, holding the hand of her five-year-old son, Phil. Phil broke loose and ran toward Pancho, arms outstretched. Pancho lifted him, embarrassed. “Which Pancho is it going to be?” Marisol whispered to him as she walked by.

Later that evening, D.Q. was sitting at the desk writing in his notebook, the one that contained the so-called Death Warrior Manifesto. Pancho came into the room and threw himself on the bed. He had been playing a spaceship video game with a ten-year-old named Andrés for twenty-five cents a game and ended up losing eight dollars. The conversation with Marisol and then the loss to the little hustler had put him in a foul mood.

“Listen, I want to read you something,” D.Q. said. Pancho grabbed his pillow and put it over his head. “Come on, this won’t take very long. We need to make some progress here—in passing on to you the principles of the Death Warrior, I mean.”

Pancho groaned.

“The sooner you listen, the sooner I’ll stop. You know I’m going to read you this no matter what. Might as well listen to it now rather than having me wake you up in the middle of the night.”

Pancho removed the pillow from his face and tucked it behind his head. He was just beginning to get the hang of simultaneously turning, accelerating, and shooting lasers from his spaceship. If the mother had not taken Andrés to bed, he would have recovered his losses, he was sure of it.

“Okay, here goes.” D.Q. read out loud:

1. Who is a Death Warrior?

Anyone can be a Death Warrior, not just someone who is terminally ill. We are all terminally ill. A Death Warrior accepts death and makes a commitment to live a certain way, whether it be for one year or thirty years.

2. When does one become a Death Warrior?

There is a specific moment during which you can decide to become a Death Warrior. That moment is when death shows you that you will die.

3. How do you become a Death Warrior?

Once you accept that life will end, you can become a Death Warrior by choosing to love life at all times and in all circumstances. You choose to love life by loving.

4. What are the qualities of a Death Warrior?

A Death Warrior is grateful for every second of time given and is aware of how precious each second is. Every second not spent loving is wasted. The Death Warrior’s enemy is time that is wasted by not loving.

5. Why should you become a Death Warrior?

So you can live and die with truth and courage, and because life is too painful when you’re wasteful with the time given to you.

“Who are you writing that for?” Pancho interrupted.

“This is the Death Warrior Manifesto. I’m writing it for you. It’s what we talked about.” He was sitting on the edge of the chair, the notebook on his lap. “Those are the first five points of the Manifesto. I had lots of pages, but I’m condensing it into the essentials.”

“I thought the first rule was ‘no whining.’ I didn’t hear
anything about ‘no whining’ in there,” Pancho said, sniffing the air. He could tell D.Q. had been vomiting. He probably missed the toilet bowl again.

“It’s implied in the third principle. When you love life, you don’t whine.”

“I liked the no-whining rule better. It was easier to understand.” Pancho touched his ear, his chest, and finally his groin—all the places that still hurt.

“You look like a third-base coach signaling a batter,” D.Q. said. He started to laugh and then the laughter turned to coughing.

When he stopped, Pancho said, “You didn’t write that stuff for me. You wrote it for Marisol. All that stuff about loving.”

“It’s for you, honest. I wasn’t even planning on showing it to Marisol. These are the principles you’ll need to follow to become a Death Warrior. I wanted to put them in writing so you’d have them after I’m gone. I’m hoping you’ll be a Death Warrior before then. You need to make a decision in order to be a Death Warrior. You need to decide.”

“To love.” Pancho tapped his heart melodramatically, like a character in one of the Mexican soap operas that Rosa liked to watch.

“Correct.”

“You’re full of crap.”
D.Q. and Marisol are perfect for each other,
Pancho thought.
They even sound like each other. Which Pancho is it going to be?
says one.
You need to decide,
says the other. They sounded like the same person, both full of the same corny crap.

“I sure am.” D.Q. grabbed on to the side of the chair and stood. “Speaking of which.” He walked into the bathroom, leaving the door slightly ajar.

“Shut the door,” Pancho ordered.

“I can’t reach it,” D.Q. whimpered.

Pancho swung his leg and slammed the door shut with his foot. It was around the time of the evening when D.Q. started to fall apart. He could hold his bodily functions more or less in check during the day, but as soon as night came, his body began to crumble. He came out of the bathroom with a white towel around his neck.

“Shut the door,” Pancho ordered again. “It smells.”

“Sorry. It’s the chemo.” D.Q. closed the door.

Pancho watched him shuffle over to the bed. “What does all that have to do with being a warrior? That crap you just read. It has nothing to do with being a warrior.”

“I was just getting to that part.” D.Q. started toward the desk and the notebook.

“Just tell me,” Pancho said impatiently. “Warriors fight. Who does your Death Warrior fight?”

D.Q. collapsed back into bed. “The Death Warrior fights against time that is wasted. Time that is wasted by not loving is the Death Warrior’s enemy. I say it right there. But I need to expand the warrior theme, I agree. The Death Warrior fights against all that seeks to diminish the value of life. He fights against the death of the spirit, whatever form it takes. The death of the spirit can come when we grasp life more than we should or it can come when we fail to appreciate life, when we are not grateful for it, when we don’t even notice we’re alive.”

Pancho exhaled loudly. It was hopeless to even try to understand.

D.Q. continued quickly, “Like right now. Part of me just wants to give up. The feeling of wanting to give up, of thinking that life as I’m living it now is not worth living, that’s a kind of death. That’s the kind of death the Death Warrior fights against. I’m a Death Warrior when I struggle against that feeling. Not very successfully right now, I admit.” D.Q. burped.

“How are the walks with Marisol?” Pancho asked. It was amazing how D.Q. was well enough to go for walks in the afternoon, and then at night, when Pancho had to take care of him, he turned into a stinking mess.

“They’re so good, Pancho. We go to this bench over by the golf course and watch the golfers. It’s been so good to be able to get to know her and talk to her. It’s been perfect, a real gift.” D.Q. took out a pair of pajamas from the top drawer of the dresser and began to undress.

“What do you guys talk about anyway?”

“I don’t know. Everything.”

“I know
you
talk about everything. What does she say to you?”

“Her plans. Her family. You know how she seemed upset with you after you demolished that kid’s cell phone?”

“Yeah.”

“She has an older brother who just got out of jail. He was in a gang. Still is, I guess. He did time for selling drugs. So it was scary to her, to see you be violent.”

“I’m the one that got kneed in the balls.”

“She doesn’t understand how her brother could have turned out the way he did. They grew up with loving parents. Her father died three years ago of…cancer. But her brother was already
on a bad path by then. So you see, that’s why she felt the way she did about you.”

There was a pause. Then Pancho said sternly, “Don’t talk about
me
to her.”

“What?”

“You told her about my sister. You don’t know nothing about my sister.”

“Oh.” D.Q. finished putting on the pajamas. The pajamas were light blue with pencil-thin red stripes. Every night D.Q. put them on and every morning Pancho threw them in the wash along with the soiled sheets from D.Q.’s bed. “She asked me about you. She’s worried about you.”

Pancho jumped off the bed almost in one motion. He stood in front of D.Q., glaring at him. D.Q. stood still, unflinching. “She told me you told her about my sister. What did you tell her?”

“I told her your sister died not too long ago.”

“What else?”

D.Q. put his hand on Pancho’s shoulder. Pancho flicked it away. “I know you want to find the man you think is responsible for her death. I didn’t tell her that, though.”

Pancho’s hard face softened. “How did you know that?”

“I read your file in Father Concha’s office the day you came to St. Anthony’s. I went to ask him if he would assign you to be my helper. He had to leave the office for something or other and the file was there.”

“There’s nothing in that file about the man.”

“Actually, Mrs. Olivares’s report said that you believed your sister was killed by the man she was with. She said a detective told
her you should be watched to make sure you didn’t go looking for the man.”

Pancho let his body sink to the floor. He leaned back against the bed, drew his knees up, and put his hand on the side of his head. He was a stupid, ignorant fool. He had gone to all the trouble of hiding his purpose and it turned out everyone knew what he was after.

D.Q. sat on the edge of his bed. “The guy you’re looking for is in Albuquerque, isn’t he?”

“Is that in Mrs. Olivares’s report too?”

“I figured that one out myself. I’m not stupid. Why else would you come?” There was hurt in D.Q.’s voice.

“Why else.”

“I take it you know where to find him.”

“I’ll find him.”

“But you haven’t seen him yet?”

“No.”

“I’ve kept you busy, huh?”

Pancho looked up and nodded absently. The only light in the room came from the lamp on the desk, where D.Q. had been writing his manifesto. He could barely see D.Q.’s face. “What are you gonna do?” he asked D.Q. point-blank.

“What should I do?” D.Q.’s voice was shaky.

“Nothing. You should do nothing,” Pancho said without emotion.

“What are you thinking?”

“I’m done thinking. He killed my sister. I have no doubts about that. In one way or another, he killed her.”

“Even if the police say there was no foul play?”

“I know for sure he did it. I thought about it a long time. I wouldn’t do what I’m going to do if I wasn’t sure.”

“You need to explain to me how you’re so sure. Is it a gut feeling?”