Last Summer of the Death Warriors (16 page)

Marisol introduced her mother to the group. “So you are Daniel,” the mother said, hugging D.Q., who looked surprised. She pronounced his name the Spanish way. The mother hugged Josie as well, but when she came to Pancho, she stopped at a distance and scanned him from top to bottom, inspecting him.
“Ytú debes de ser Pancho,”
she said, cautiously offering him her hand. Pancho met Marisol’s eyes briefly. She must have told her mother about the incident on the bus.

“This is my brother, Ed, everyone,” Marisol announced. Ed stepped up and shook hands. His grip was strong, almost painful.
Pancho noticed the tattoos on his forearms and the bulging biceps and powerful neck of a bodybuilder.

“Ouch,” Josie squealed after Ed shook her hand.

“Sorry,” Ed said. He made to pat Josie’s balding head, but then he changed his mind.

“Let’s all sit down,” Marisol’s mother urged. “Marisol, why don’t you get everyone some sodas? We have a little time before dinner, unless you’re really hungry.”

“We have lots of time,” D.Q. said. Pancho laughed, a short nervous laugh.

They shuffled slowly forward, each one trying to determine the best place to sit. Pancho headed for one end of the sofa, but Josie beat him to the spot. He almost sat on her lap, then moved over to the middle. D.Q. picked a place on the other end of the sofa. Marisol’s mother perched on the edge of a large lounge chair covered with a blue-and-green Indian quilt. Ed grabbed the can of beer and sat on a smaller chair across from them.

“Marisol, bring the guacamole and the chips!” the mother yelled into the kitchen. “I hope you like green chicken enchiladas,” she said to D.Q. “I made some soup as well in case you can’t eat the enchiladas.”

Pancho liked the straightforward way the lady said that. In the time he had been with D.Q., he had seen many people “pussyfoot,” as D.Q. liked to say, around his cancer.

“Tonight I will eat everything,” D.Q. declared with confidence.

“I like enchiladas too,” Josie chimed in. “But my mother never makes them at home. We mostly always have them at a restaurant.”

“Luisa’s are better than any restaurant,” Ed said.

“Who’s Luisa?” Josie asked.

“That’s my name,” Marisol’s mother said, pretending to be angry with Ed. “He doesn’t like to call me ‘Mother’ like all the other sons call their mothers.”

“Luisa’s a good name. I like calling you that.” Ed shook the can of beer. It was empty. He leaned back in the chair. He had been tapping the toe of his boot on the floor nonstop since he sat down.

“Ed, can you help me?” Marisol shouted from the kitchen.

Ed jumped up out of the chair. He crushed the empty can with his hand. “Maybe she’ll let me have another one of these. You guys want one?”

Pancho, D.Q., and Josie all shook their heads at the same time.

“Eduardo,” Marisol’s mother said in a low voice.

“Not to worry, Luisa. Everything’s under control.”

When he had disappeared into the kitchen, Marisol’s mother said, “I’m sorry. We weren’t expecting him. He shows up sometimes. Unexpected.” She wrung her hands.

Josie pulled on Pancho’s arm. He bent down and she whispered into his ear, “Don’t get into a fight with that jerko.”

He looked at her, shocked—what kind of person did she think he was? Then he smiled.

“I’m glad he’s here,” D.Q. said. “I wanted to meet him as well.”

“Marisol told you,” the mother said, lowering her voice. She was about to continue, but then she saw Josie. “He’s my cross,” she said instead. There were loud voices coming out of the kitchen. “Oh, boy. Excuse me for a second.” She stood up. Pancho
looked at her pink slippers as she went by. Rosa had some just like them. Sometimes they made a smacking sound when she walked.

“Wanna go outside?” Josie asked Pancho.

D.Q. said quickly, “No, stay here. After dinner, maybe we can all go for a walk. Marisol told me there’s a park a couple of blocks away.”

Pancho understood that D.Q. planned to talk to Marisol during that walk. What would he say to her? Would he tell her how he felt about her? Yes, Pancho thought, D.Q. would not waste the opportunity. If the brother came on the walk, Pancho would have to entertain him with some kind of conversation. He did not look forward to that.

Marisol came out of the kitchen, holding a tray of soda cans and glasses with ice cubes already in them. Ed followed with the guacamole and the tortilla chips. He cradled an unopened can of beer under his armpit. She set the tray on the coffee table. Ed did the same with the two bowls he was carrying. Josie slid down from the sofa, cracked open an orange soda, and quickly took a sip. “I was sooo thirsty,” she said, when she noticed everyone staring at her.

“That’s all right. You’re entitled.” Marisol began to pour soda into the glasses. “I didn’t get anything with caffeine.”

Ed opened the beer, and foam began to pour out. “Shit!” He held the erupting can away from him.

Marisol made a point of ignoring him. “What kind of music do you like? We have other CDs,” she told D.Q.

“I like Mexican music,” D.Q. responded. “That’s a Mexican corrida, isn’t it?”

Pancho crunched an ice cube in his mouth. Josie elbowed him.

“That’s very good,” Marisol said. It took Pancho a few moments to realize she was not commenting on his ice-crunching ability. “How did you become an expert on Mexican music?”

“I’m not really an expert. Whenever I hear a guitar play like that, I think of corridas. I learned about them at St. Anthony’s.”

“One time,” Josie said, “my dad surprised my mom on her birthday with a mariachi band. She was asleep already when we heard them outside playing. They woke up the whole neighborhood.”

“Ooo, that’s so romantic,” Marisol said to her. Pancho crunched again, this time on a tortilla chip with guacamole. “Is it too hot?” Marisol asked him. He looked at her, befuddled. Why would it be hot?

“She means, is the guacamole spicy?” Josie translated.

“No.” He finished chewing what was in his mouth quietly.

Ed, who had been staring at D.Q., said, “So what kind of cancer do you have? If you don’t mind my asking.”

“Ed,” Marisol warned.

“I’m just asking a question.”

“I don’t mind at all,” D.Q. said calmly. “I have something called diffuse pontine glioma.”

“I have leukemia,” Josie piped up.

“Would you like to see my room?” Marisol asked Josie.

“Yeah!” she said, jumping down from the sofa and handing Pancho her soda.

“Your mouth is colored orange,” Pancho told her.

“So is my tongue. See?” She stuck her tongue out at Pancho as she left the room.

“What kind of cancer is
that?”
Ed asked D.Q. There was a slight tone of disgust in his voice.

Pancho saw the physical resemblance between the brother and Marisol. He had her good looks, the same straight nose, the clean forehead and deep, dark eyes. But Marisol’s face was inviting, while the brother’s was hard to look at directly. And Marisol was nice. The brother was turning out to be a jerko, like Josie said.

“It’s a cancer that forms at the base of the brain where the brain and the spinal cord connect, a place called the pons.” D.Q. touched the back of his head. “It’s not a tumor. It’s diffuse, spread out.”

“Like a fog,” Pancho said, remembering what D.Q. had told him once.

“Like what?”

“A fog. I told Pancho that I sometimes picture it like a low-lying fog.”

“How about you? What kind of cancer you got?” Ed asked the question as if he wanted Pancho to take offense.

“I don’t got any,” Pancho responded.

“He came with me to help me. We’re from the same boarding school in Las Cruces,” D.Q. said quickly.
Boarding school?
Pancho inquired silently. D.Q. blinked, or was it a wink?

“That’s cool. Like you got your own little servant.” Ed laughed to himself.

Pancho felt his stomach tighten, then he remembered what Josie had whispered in his ear. He raised his eyebrows at D.Q.
I’m trying,
he was telling him. This time D.Q. definitely winked at him.

“How was prison life?” D.Q. asked.

Ed began to cough, as if his beer went down the wrong way. “What did you say?”

“I was wondering what your time in prison was like?” D.Q. seemed to be enjoying himself.

Ed seemed flustered by the question. He moved his tongue once around his cheek before he answered. “It wasn’t hard time. I had friends there.”

“How does it work?” D.Q. continued. “What if there are no other members of your gang in prison?”

“There’s alliances,” Ed answered. “Everybody knows that.”

“So you need to find other gang members to align yourself with, if there’s no one from your gang.”

“I don’t have to
A-line
myself with anyone. The alliances already exist.”

“So it’s not like all the Mexican American gangs against all the Anglo gangs against all the African American gangs? It’s more complicated than that?”

“Yeah, it’s complicated.”

Pancho reached for some more guacamole. So far he was the only one who had eaten any. He crunched away.

“Suppose I do something stupid and end up in prison. What would I need to do to survive? Would I have to align myself with the Anglos or could I make it on my own? If I just keep to myself, let’s say, could I survive?”

“Someone like you might survive,” Ed snickered.

Pancho thought this was meant as an insult, but D.Q. either didn’t see it that way or didn’t care. He persisted with his questions. “What about someone like Pancho here? Suppose he did
something stupid and he ended up in prison? If he kept to himself, would he survive? Or would he have to join a gang—like yours, for example?”

Pancho stopped crunching and stared at D.Q.

Ed scanned Pancho from top to bottom. Then he said, still looking at Pancho, “He’d be killed within a month if he didn’t hook up with an organization.”

“Why? Why couldn’t he just stay out of trouble and do his time?” Either D.Q. was truly curious or he was doing a good job pretending.

“Because of the way he looks at people. People would want to take him on. He’d piss people off.”

“How? How does he look at them?”

Pancho and Ed stared at each other. “Like he’s looking for a fight,” Ed said.

D.Q. seemed happy with Ed’s answer, like that was exactly what he was hoping he’d say.

“Dinner!” Marisol’s mother called.

D.Q. struggled to stand up. Ed crushed another beer can as he rose. Pancho remained seated for a moment. He couldn’t see himself “hooking up” with an organization and taking orders from people like Ed. He had always supposed he wouldn’t last long in prison once he got there. Now he knew for sure.

Fortunately, Marisol’s mother didn’t ask him any questions during dinner. Every once in a while, she would look at him and make like she wanted to ask him something, but just then Marisol would steer the conversation in a different direction. D.Q. kept up the fantasy about the boarding school where they lived. He
made it sound as if it were a place where only a few privileged kids were admitted. Marisol’s mother was impressed with the fact that they held Mass every night, and almost all the kids attended without anyone forcing them. Pancho let her suppose that he too was one of those saintly kids.

It turned out that D.Q. was not able to eat the enchiladas. Pancho thought D.Q. was going to vomit right there on the table when the plate was set in front of him. Marisol rushed to take the plate away from him and he accepted a bland-looking bowl of chicken soup instead. Even then, it was obvious to all that D.Q. was suffering, and everyone except Ed hurried through the meal. It was too bad because Pancho could have gone for another helping or two.

After dinner, Josie went back to Marisol’s room to play with her old dollhouse. Ed, Marisol’s mother, and D.Q. went out to the backyard for fresh air. Marisol volunteered Pancho to help her with the dishes.

He was standing next to her by the sink, drying the dishes, when it occurred to him to ask, “Does your brother have a car?”

“No.” She laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

“It’s just funny what’s in your head sometimes. I was wondering just now what you were thinking about and you asked me if my brother had a car.”

“I just want to know how we’re gonna get back. You need someone to jump your mother’s car to start it. If your brother had a car, we could use his.”

“Why would you be worried about that at this particular moment?”

“I don’t know. Why not?”

She shook her head, smiling. “Are you that anxious to get out of here?”

“I’m not anxious.”

Marisol took a dinner plate from the sink with suds, scrubbed it with a sponge, and dipped it in the adjoining sink filled with clear water. Then she gave the dish to Pancho, who dried it with a towel embroidered with blue daisies.

Marisol said, “What were you guys talking about before dinner, when I was with Josie in my room?”

“Prison.”

“Oh, great. Of all the times for Ed to show up.” She sighed. “And no, he doesn’t have a car. He lives in a house with other…”

“He’s in a gang.”

“Yes. Have you ever been in one?” She seemed afraid of what he might answer.

“No.”

“Would you ever be in one?” She was scrubbing the same dish she’d been scrubbing for the past minute. He took it from her hand and dipped it in the sink with the clean water.

“No. I can’t see it.”

“We didn’t always live in this house, in this neighborhood. Till about five years ago, we lived in a pretty bad section of town. I guess Ed felt he had to join for his own protection.”

“You
didn’t join.”

“No. But I didn’t have to. My older brother was in a gang, so I was protected. In a way he made it possible for me to go to school and study and be a regular kid.”

They continued washing the dishes in silence. Pancho let himself imagine what Marisol would think of him in two weeks if he ended up killing Robert Lewis. Would she be surprised? Would she be talking to him now if she knew what he might do? She seemed relieved when he told her he wouldn’t join a gang. He would kill for his sister. That’s how he saw it. But the reason he killed wouldn’t matter to Marisol, he knew.