Last Summer of the Death Warriors (3 page)

H
e left the bike outside of St. Anthony’s where he had found it, drank from a faucet sticking out of the ground, and went into the building. D.Q. was in the storage room, holding a thin black book in his lap. “There you are,” he said without looking up. Pancho waited to be asked where he had been, but D.Q. was absorbed in the book. He grinned and shook his head. “Look at this.” He handed the book to Pancho. “That little kid in the bottom picture. That’s me the first year I got here.” The picture showed a smiling, wide-eyed boy in a white shirt and skinny black tie. Pancho looked from the picture to D.Q.’s face. It took some effort to see the resemblance. “St. Tony’s has a rule that you have to be at least fourteen to live here. I was the first exception. That’s because even at ten, I was old and wise beyond my years.”

Pancho ignored D.Q.’s wink and gave the book back to him. His T-shirt was sticking against his skin and his head was still burning from the bike ride. He sat on the upturned bucket. “What now?” he asked.

“We move these boxes to Lupita’s office and let her go through
them. She’s the ultimate arbiter of what is kept and what is tossed. You never did see the library, did you? After we move the boxes, I’ll take you there and show you what we got.”

“I don’t read.”

“Not even comic books? We have the best collection of comics anywhere. Imagine kids saving all their comic books since this place opened in the 1950s.”

“I don’t read comic books either.”

“But you can read, right?”

“I can read.”

“Good, because later, when we become friends, I want to show you something I’ve been writing.”

D.Q. kept flipping through the pages of the yearbook, apparently unaware of what he had said. Pancho stared at him. He had never heard anyone speak the way D.Q. spoke. And what made this Anglo kid think the two of them would ever be friends? D.Q. closed the book and laid it on his lap. He went on, “This book I’m writing, I call it the Death Warrior Manifesto. You know what a manifesto is, right?”

“No.”

“It’s a declaration of intention. In the case of the Death Warrior, it is a public declaration of how the Death Warrior is going to live his life.”

Pancho took a deep breath. He thought about the thirty bucks a day he was going to be paid and knew it was way too little if you took into account the effort of trying to understand D.Q. On the other hand, he had been fortunate in getting those clues about Rosa’s boyfriend, and nothing could lessen his sense of good
luck. He decided to let D.Q. speak. It was possible that he would speak himself out.

“I’m not crazy about the name ‘Death Warrior,’ because it has all kinds of negative implications. ‘Life Warrior’ is probably more accurate because the manifesto is about life, but ‘Death Warrior’ is more mysterious-sounding.”

An older man. An Anglo. A red truck. A silver toolbox. A company name that ended in “and Sons.”
He repeated the words to himself so he wouldn’t forget.

“Do you want to know the first rule of the Death Warrior Manifesto?”

“No.”

“Okay, I’ll tell you, but only because I know you to be the kind of person who would understand. The first rule is: No whining. No whining of any kind under any circumstances.”

“I don’t whine.” For a moment he thought D.Q. was criticizing him.

“Yeah, you do. You’re a whiner. You just don’t hear yourself whine. It takes training to hear one’s internal whine.”

“I’m no whiner!” Pancho felt a rush of anger.

“You know what whining is? Whining is that little voice inside of us that always complains about whatever happens. The voice doesn’t have to be heard by others for it to be whining.”

Pancho turned sideways and looked out the window. Kids were beginning to assemble on the basketball court. He faced D.Q. “Are you a whiner?” he asked.

“Yes. Like you, I don’t whine out loud all that much, and I’m getting better about the inner whining, but I still whine. It’s the
hardest thing, not to whine. It means you accept whatever is happening to you. I’m not quite there yet. That’s why I’m writing the manifesto, as a reminder. ‘Rule number one: A Death Warrior does not whine aloud or in silence under any circumstances.’ You want to know rule number two?”

“No.”

“All right, one rule per day. If you ever hear me whine, feel free to whack me in the head.”

Pancho stared at D.Q.’s head.

“Okay, maybe not on the head.” D.Q. lifted his cap for a second and rubbed the top of his skull. Underneath the soft thin hair, the skin was fragile and shiny like an eggshell. Pancho looked away. D.Q. placed the cap back on his head, and the cap sank down to his ears. “There’s something I need to ask you.” D.Q.’s voice was serious.

Pancho stood up. “I’ll take these boxes out,” he said.

“The boxes can wait. Sit down. I need to ask you something.”

Pancho was about to walk out, but he stopped, put the box down, and said, “Look. I’m not much of a talker. I’ll push you around and clean rooms until the Panda gets me another job, but that’s as far as it’s going to go.” He pointed at the open window. “Why don’t you get one of those kids out there to talk to you?”

“I’ll answer your question in a moment. Sit down. This is important.” D.Q. motioned to a stool by the door.

Pancho deliberated for a few moments and then sat down. He did it in a way that conveyed he was doing it voluntarily and not in obedience to a command.

“Thank you,” D.Q. said. His voice was soft. He rolled the
wheelchair closer to Pancho and fixed his bloodshot eyes on him. “You have to understand that if I seem pushy, it’s because I’m living in a different time zone than you are. You perceive time as open-ended. I don’t. It makes me want to get to the point.”

Pancho nodded. Somewhere in what D.Q. said, there was some kind of an apology being offered. He glanced at D.Q.’s face. It was hard to imagine that the person speaking was his same age. The words, the voice, they all seemed to come from someone not just older, but ageless, if such a thing were possible.

D.Q. continued, “Your question is a good one. Why don’t I ask one of the other kids to help me out? There are kids at St. Tony’s I’ve known for years. We’re a close-knit group here, a family. Something happens to a kid when he comes here. Maybe it’s the fact that we’re pretty much on our own. The rules we follow are the ones we all agree on. Or maybe it’s the fact that we know the Panda will send us back to where we came from the first time we mess up, and there’s no one here who hasn’t been a lot worse off. It’s an unusual place, you’ll see. I hope you stick around long enough to find out.”

D.Q. paused, narrowed his eyebrows, and licked the thin, cracked lips. He reached into something like a diaper bag hanging from the side of the wheelchair and took out a plastic bottle with a built-in straw. He squirted water into his mouth. It took a few seconds for the water to make it down his throat. Then he went on, “So, why you, Mr. Pancho? Mmm. Let me see. What’s the best way to phrase this so you don’t get scared?”

“Scared of what? You?”

“No. Not scared of me. Of what I say.”

“What people say doesn’t scare me.”

“If I told you I was waiting for you to come, does that scare you?”

“I told you words don’t scare me.”

“Well, that’s good, because I don’t have energy or time to pussyfoot around the truth. I like the phrase ‘pussyfoot around,’ don’t you?”

“Go ahead then. Say what you have to say.”

“Okay. The answer to the question ‘Why you?’ has no answer at this time. I don’t know exactly why you. We’ll find out soon, I’m sure. But I do know that you’re the one. I knew you were the one when I saw you drive in yesterday. The hard part to explain is how I knew. Let’s just say that one of the benefits of this illness is the increased power to recognize a gut feeling and take it seriously. I knew someone would come to help me. It had to be the right person. You are it.”

“Help you do what?” Pancho leaned backward and the stool wobbled. He grabbed on to the wall.

“Help me with…the preparations. Help me and I will help you.”

“I don’t need help with anything.”

“I can read it in your eyes. There’s something you want to do. No, I’d say it’s more like there’s something you feel you need to do. It’s eating you.”

“How do you know that?” He sounded more alarmed than he wanted to.

D.Q. closed his eyes and put his hands on his temples like a fortune-teller. “I see D.Q. and Pancho taking a trip together in the very near future.”

“There’s no way I’m taking a trip with you.” What he needed to do was start to look for companies with names that ended in “and Sons,” and then find out which of them used red trucks. He needed time to do that.

“I have to go to Albuquerque for some treatments. I want you to come with me. Once the treatments are over, you can do what you have to do.”

Pancho was silent. He was thinking about how he would kill the man with the red truck once he found him.

“If you run away from this place, the lady who drove you here yesterday will have the state troopers on you an hour after you’re reported missing. What I need to do will take a few weeks or so. Then after that, you can do your thing. You can leave and go wherever and I’ll stay there a little longer. People here will think you’re with me, and we’ll tell the people there you came back to St. Anthony’s. I’ll help you.”

Pancho thought about it. Then he snickered. “You don’t even know what you’re saying. You can’t help me.”

“I’ll help you if I can.”

“What kind of preparations?” Pancho asked, remembering the particular word that D.Q. had used.

D.Q. smiled a knowing smile. “Preparations like these,” he said, waving his hand over the room. “And…there’s something I need to do while we’re in Albuquerque, a different kind of preparation. I’ll let you know when the time is right. What exactly do you need to do?”

Pancho heard the slap of a basketball outside, then the twang of the ball hitting the backboard. He stood up and went to the window. He felt a strong impulse to speak, to tell D.Q. about his
plans, but he stopped himself. “No way,” he whispered. But it was loud enough for D.Q. to hear.

D.Q. said, as if lost in thought, “Your purpose and mine are joined somehow. You’ll see. We’ll figure it out in time. You mind wheeling me up to the basketball court? I’m refereeing this afternoon’s game. You play basketball?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so. We’ll finish this up tomorrow.”

“I’ll come back and take out the rest of the boxes.”

“Sooner or later, you’ll have to meet some of the other kids.”

“Later is okay with me.” Pancho got behind the wheelchair. Before he started pushing, he asked, “Who all is going to Albuquerque?”

“The Panda will probably drive us, but then it’ll be just you and me. In Albuquerque, we’ll stay at this place called Casa Esperanza. It’s kind of a motel for out-of-town people who come to the hospital for treatment. Then, I don’t know, we may have to go stay someplace else. I haven’t worked that part out completely. First things first. First, I had to wait for the other Death Warrior to arrive.”

T
he next day, Father Concha said he wanted all the sports equipment moved to a different room. Pancho said he would do it while D.Q. and Brother Javier went to get some paint. D.Q. had not taken his usual nap that day, and Pancho needed a break. If it were up to him, rule number two of the Death Warrior Manifesto would be: No talking for more than three minutes straight at any one time.

He was walking out of the dormitory when he felt someone close behind him. He stopped and turned around. There in front of him was a boy younger than any of the kids he had seen at St. Anthony’s so far. He looked like the picture of D.Q. in the yearbook, only this boy’s skin and hair were darker. “Howdy,” the boy said. He was grinning, it seemed, from ear to ear.

Pancho stared at him briefly and kept walking. The boy caught up with him. “My real name is Guillermo, but people call me Memo.” Pancho glanced sideways. The boy came up to his elbow. “You’re Pancho, I know.”

“How do you know?” Pancho asked without slowing down. The boy had to skip a few times to keep up with him.

“Know what?” “My name. How does everyone know my name?”

“I don’t know. Everyone just does. I think the Panda first mentioned you were coming during Mass.”

“Mass?”

“We have Mass every night, but you don’t have to go if you don’t want to. That’s when the Panda makes announcements.”

“What else did the Panda say about me at Mass?”

“That’s all. That a new kid was coming and his name was Pancho Sanchez. He didn’t say anything else, like about your past and all, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“I’m not worried.”

“Kids come and go all the time. Sometimes they come for a few days. Others come to stay. D.Q. says you’re here to stay.”

“Is that right?”

“Yup.”

They stopped in front of the room where the sports equipment had been stored. Pancho expected the boy to keep walking, but he remained by his side. He stepped inside the room and gathered five aluminum baseball bats in his arms. The boy picked up the catcher’s gear. “What are you doing?”

“I’m helping you,” Memo said.

“I don’t need your help.”

Memo didn’t answer. “I usually play catcher,” he said. “Maybe because it doesn’t hurt me to squat. No one else likes to do it.” He blew into the catcher’s mitt and then proceeded to have a coughing fit. When he stopped, he said to Pancho, “D.Q.’s room is
going to be nice when we get done with it. I’m really good at painting.”

The room where Pancho had first stored the sports equipment was just like D.Q.’s, except it didn’t have a bathroom and it had only one window. Pancho wondered why the Panda had told them to store the equipment there in the first place. Maybe he was making up work for them, which was okay with Pancho. A whistle blew outside. He stooped to look out the window.

“How can it be a foul if he’s the one who knocked me down?” one of the kids asked, his arms opened wide and palms turned outward.

“Because your feet were still moving when he bumped into you,” a very tall pimply-faced boy explained with complete authority. The boy who was fouled grabbed his head in disbelief. It was the closest thing Pancho had seen to any kind of discord since he arrived at St. Anthony’s, and it gave him hope that maybe the kids were not totally brainwashed zombies.

Memo grabbed a green canvas bag on the floor. He was about to put the catcher’s gear in it when Pancho reached out and took it from him. “I’m going to use that,” Pancho said.

“For what?”

“You know where I can find a shovel?”

“Yeaaah,” Memo answered as if he was afraid of what Pancho might do with the information. “In the toolshed out back. Why?”

“I’ll need some rope.”

Now Memo seemed really interested. “There’s a nylon rope out there too. We used it to hang our clothes outside before someone donated us a couple of dryers.”

They walked out the side door, past the bicycle that Pancho had
borrowed the day before, and past the Dumpster where he had thrown the trash from the storage room. The toolshed was made of unpainted galvanized steel. It wasn’t locked. Memo pulled at a string that only he could see and a lightbulb flicked on. They found a shovel hanging against the wall, and a nylon rope neatly curled in a corner with a variety of extension cords. Then they walked outside, Pancho leading the way with the shovel and the green canvas bag and Memo following with the rope.

Pancho found a place by the pecan trees where the ground was soft and he began to fill the bag with dirt. The dirt stayed soft only a couple of inches down and then it became rocky. When he hit rocks, he began another hole. All this time he worked in silence, ignoring Memo’s questions. He stopped when the bag was three-quarters full. He took the rope and threaded it through the grommets on top of the bag. Then he walked around, sizing up the pecan trees, until he found one with a strong branch about ten feet from the ground.

“It’s a punching bag!” Memo exclaimed.

“Go get the stepladder in the shed,” Pancho ordered. In the meantime, he lifted the bag, hugging it with both arms against his chest, and carried it to the tree.

“We’re going to need some help hoisting it up there,” Memo said when he returned. He set the aluminum ladder under the branch. Before Pancho could say anything, Memo stretched his lips with thumb and index finger and let out the shrillest, loudest whistle Pancho had ever heard. Kids standing by the court watching the basketball game turned around to look. Memo waved them over. Two of them started toward the tree.

“Just hold the ladder,” Pancho told Memo. He lifted the bag
again and tried to support it on one of the middle rungs, but the bag slipped and landed on his foot. He tightened his jaw and swore silently.

“Hold on a second. Marcos and Coop are coming,” Memo said, clearly trying not to laugh. Pancho failed to see how the pain in his foot was in any way funny.

Marcos and Coop looked at the bag full of dirt with no surprise on their faces. Apparently, filling a canvas bag with dirt and stringing it up a tree was perfectly normal around here. “I’ll climb up to the branch and tie the bag. You guys lift it,” Memo said. Before anyone could object, he had gone up the ladder and straddled the branch.

Pancho got under the bag and lifted it up to his chest. Marcos and Coop grabbed the bottom on either side of him. Pancho kicked the ladder out of the way and it went clanging down. With one hand, he tossed the ends of the rope to Memo. “Twist the rope around the branch as many times as you can and then I’ll come tie a knot in it,” Pancho yelled up at him. Then the three of them heaved the bag, and Memo began winding the rope around the branch. When the rope was almost totally gone, they let go of the bag. The middle of the bag dangled level with Pancho’s eyes. It was exactly the right height. Pancho got the ladder and Memo climbed down. Then Pancho climbed up and tied a series of knots with the remaining rope. He came down, moved the ladder to one side, and socked the bag with his closed fist.

“Let me try it,” said Memo. He punched it as hard as he could. “Ouch! It’s hard.”

Marcos took a shot. “Maybe the dirt will loosen up after a while.”

“You have to jab at it like this. Move around and then jab, jab,” Coop said, demonstrating.

“You know boxing?” Pancho asked.

“I’ve done a little here and there.” Coop bobbed left and right and hit the bag with a flurry of combinations.

“What kind of name is Coop? Like chicken coop?”

“The actual name is Cooper,” Coop answered calmly. He stopped punching the bag and began to rub his knuckles. Coop was taller than Pancho by a head. He had a bulky body, and it was hard for Pancho to tell whether the bulk was muscle or fat. His biceps looked solid. He was probably a year older than Pancho.

“You have any money, Coop?” Pancho asked.

“Why?”

“Since you’ve done a little boxing, I thought you might want to go a couple of rounds with me. I found some gloves in the storage room. I have twenty dollars I can put up.”

Coop looked at Marcos and then at Memo. Memo shrugged his shoulders as if to say,
Don’t look at me.
“I don’t know,” Coop said. He looked down at the ground and shuffled his feet.

“The gloves are fourteen ounces, padded. There’s headgear too. No one will get hurt,” Pancho said.

“Who’ll decide who wins?” Memo asked. “I could be the umpire.”

Marcos slapped Memo on the back of the head. “It’s not an umpire, it’s a referee,” he said.

“I can be the referee,” Memo said.

“Usually there’s three,” Marcos said. “I’ll be the second one.”

“It’s not how hard you hit, it’s how many times you land punches,” Memo informed everyone.

“What do you know about boxing, you little
pingüino?”
Marcos began to jab at Memo. Memo flicked Marcos’s hands away.

“What do you say, Chicken Coop?” Pancho asked. There was no taunt in his voice.

“Oooh,” Marcos exclaimed. “Them are fighting words.”

“Shut up, Marcos!” Memo said.

“Okay, but we’re going to get in trouble,” Coop said.

“Why?” Marcos asked.

“It’s gambling,” Coop answered. “It’s against house rules.”

“It’s not gambling. It’s a twenty-dollar prize to whoever wins,” Memo argued.

“It’s the same as playing hoops for money. We decided not to do that.” Coop waited for Memo to respond, but Memo was still thinking about the comparison. “Okay,” Coop said after a few moments of silence. “I’ll do it.”

Pancho was tempted to tell Coop to forget about the twenty dollars, but he needed the money even more than he needed to hit someone. With any luck, those twenty dollars would be the first of many more to come. All he had to do was get kids pissed off enough to want to punch him out. From what he had seen, getting the kids at St. Anthony’s riled up was not going to be easy. “I’ll get the gear,” Pancho said.

“You want to do this now?” Coop asked.

“Yeah, why not?”

“I think the Panda is in his office,” Marcos said.

“No,” Memo said, “I saw him go out a while ago. He took Larry to the dentist. He won’t be back for an hour.”

“We need one ref and two judges,” Marcos said.

“How ’bout we get D.Q.? He’s the fairest ref we got,” Memo
said. “I saw him pull in with Brother Javier a little while ago. I’ll go ask him.” He ran past Pancho toward the front entrance.

Pancho, who had taken a few steps toward the building, stopped. He was about to object, but then he would have to explain why D.Q. was not a good choice and he wouldn’t know what to say. He kept on walking. He felt a strange feeling, like he was pulling a fast one on a child. It reminded him of the times he would cheat Rosa out of her allowance by some trickery she was incapable of detecting. He started to jog, but the strange feeling remained.

He walked out of the building, carrying a box with the boxing gear, and saw the crowd of kids by the punching bag. He looked for D.Q.’s wheelchair but didn’t see it. He was relieved. The thought came to him that he was about to violate one of his own rules:
Keep a low profile.
But it was not possible to back away from the momentum that had gathered. He didn’t know whether the energy came from the crowd of buzzing kids or from inside him.

They parted ways for him, and he saw that someone had drawn a large square in the dirt. Coop had already taken his shirt off and was limbering up. His bulk was not fat. Pancho took the headgear and the boxing gloves and offered them to him. “No headgear,” Coop said.

“Put it on,” Pancho told him.

“No headgear.” Coop threw the gear back in the box.
The crowd got to him,
Pancho thought.

“Have it your way,” Pancho said. He walked to the opposite corner of the square.
Don’t get angry. You just need to make twenty bucks. Make sure you pull your punches.

“I want to be the ref,” Memo said.

“I’m the ref. Albo and Robert will be the two judges,” Marcos told him.

“Help me tie the gloves,” Pancho said to Memo.

“Then I’ll be Pancho’s trainer,” Memo said, happy to have an official role.

“Where’s D.Q.?” Pancho asked him softly so no one else could hear.

“I tried to get him when you went in for the gloves, but he had a phone call from his mom.”

“He has a mom?”

“She lives in Albuquerque with D.Q.’s stepfather. They’re filthy rich.”

“What’s he doing here then?”

“She dropped him off here before she remarried. D.Q. doesn’t want anything to do with her. How tight should I tie these?”

“As tight as you can.”

“Keep an eye out for the Panda,” someone said.

“He wouldn’t get pissed about this. Kids used to box all the time,” someone else responded.

“Who’s going to keep time?” Marcos asked. He had finished tying Coop’s gloves and now Coop was stretching his neck like a professional. Pancho could not help but smile. The sight reminded him of the first time his father took him to The Aztec, a boxing club on the outskirts of Las Cruces. He was six years old, and when his father sat him on a stool to watch his fight, his legs did not reach the floor. The man in the ring with his father stretched his neck sideways till his ear touched his shoulder, and Pancho could hear the bones crack all the way over where he sat. The man
was big, a giant compared to his father, who seemed at that moment fragile. Pancho started to cry. His father must have seen the tears on his face because he suddenly climbed out of the ring and came to him. He grabbed him by the shoulders, looked straight at him, and asked him what the matter was. But he had no words for what he felt and he already knew that the boxing ring was not a place for tears.
“Mijo,”
his father said to him, “I’m not going to let him hurt me. It’s not how big you are, it’s how fast and how determined you are to hit someone. Boom, boom.” His father tapped him lightning fast with a left and a right on his cheeks. The hits were just hard enough to stop the tears.

The tall boy, the same one who had refereed the basketball game, blew a whistle, and Coop jumped into the middle of the square, dancing and bobbing. Pancho stepped forward. There was an intense, concentrated look on Coop’s face. It was hard to believe he was the same boy who a few minutes before had worried about violating a house rule. Pancho knew what was happening; fighters often made this mistake in boxing competitions. Adrenaline bursts into the bloodstream with the noise of the crowd and the shouts of the fighter’s name, and that energy easily turns to a venomous anger. Then the other fighter becomes an enemy and there are no more tactics, only the desire to assert superiority in the eyes of the crowd.