On the Other Side of the Bridge (12 page)

Then there was the housework. His dad had never lifted a finger to do any of it. As a truck driver, he would be gone for days, and he expected the house to be clean
when he returned. Sometimes Lonnie helped out by polishing the furniture and sweeping the floor. Now, it appeared that he would have to do all the cleaning, including scrubbing the toilets.

Lonnie also wondered about the wash. Who was going to do that? He had absolutely no idea how to wash clothes. He didn't even know how to turn on the washing machine, and he doubted his dad did, either. Lonnie would have to learn in a hurry. He would also have to figure out how to iron and fold clothes, plus everything else his mom used to do that he and his dad had taken for granted.

All these thoughts burned in Lonnie's mind, and he needed to get out of the house to sort things out.

His dad was still asleep, and nothing short of a nuclear explosion was going to wake him, so Lonnie didn't let him know he was leaving. Anyway, he had his cell phone, and unlike Axel, he always kept it charged. If his dad grew worried about him, he was just a phone call away.

Lonnie crossed the street and headed toward the back of the Winfield Road Presbyterian Church. He climbed over the fence and hiked up the hill to the railroad tracks, then down the other side to Catfish Creek. Having taken this same route countless times, he had formed a walking path in the grass.

Near the bank of the creek, he sat on a boulder and took in the scenery. Minnows blew tiny bubbles in the water as they swam along. Dragonflies flitted back and forth above them. A couple of turtles crawled on a rock to bask in the sun.

Lonnie thought about all the Sundays he had made his mother believe he was in church when the whole time
he was out here, playing hookey. Was hookey the right term to use? Can a person play hookey from church, or does that apply only to school?

The first time he came to Catfish Creek was to sneak out of church. But he kept returning because it was the only place where he could truly be alone, where he could meditate and reflect on life. In a way, he felt closer to God out here than he did inside the church.

Lonnie had gotten over his anger toward God, although he still couldn't understand why He had taken away his mother. What was He planning to do with her soul? Lonnie knew what Brother Elrod preached, concerning the hereafter. Still, he was curious about what really happens to people when they die. Do they go to heaven? To hell? To purgatory? Do they become angels? Was his mom now an angel? Had she been issued a harp and a pair of wings? Was she flying around like those dragonflies near the water?

In pictures Lonnie had seen of angels, they usually wore white choir robes with halos encircling their heads. Somehow he couldn't imagine his mom as an angel, unless she was an angel with a gun belt strapped around her waist and a badge on her robe.

She hadn't attended church much, but Lonnie knew she believed in God. When he was little, she had taught him the “God is Great, God is Good” prayer, and he used to recite before he ate. She had also taught him the “Jesus Loves Me” song, which they would sing together. Surely God wouldn't keep his mother out of heaven just because she didn't go to church or read the Bible on a regular basis.

Lonnie had seen a movie — he couldn't remember the name of it — about a guy who died and had been condemned
to live on Earth as a ghost, until he could earn a place in heaven by helping a troubled kid turn his life around.

Was that what God had in store for his mom? Was Lonnie that troubled kid? Was she still roaming the Earth as a ghost, watching over him, making sure he didn't muck up his life anymore than it already was?

The sound of rustling leaves startled him.

Lonnie spun around and looked in the direction of the noise. Something was moving through the underbrush, about twenty yards away. At first he thought it might be a feral dog or even a coyote. They'd had problems with coyotes preying on domestic dogs and cats in their neighborhood. Lonnie jumped to his feet and hid behind a tree, fearful of being attacked by a wild animal, with no one knowing where he was. He ventured to poke his head out and saw a skinny man with long, gray hair and a long, gray beard emerge from the underbrush.

Moses! What's he doing here?

The homeless man made his way to the creek bank, where he slipped off his backpack and dropped it on the ground. He rolled up his pants legs, removed his T-shirt and stepped into the water. Stooping, he splashed his face, chest and arm pits. When he was done, he toweled himself with his shirt. He sat down, opened his backpack and took out a water bottle, an apple and a 7-Eleven sandwich.

Lonnie felt like a Peeping Tom watching him, but he didn't know what else to do. If he made any sudden moves, Moses was sure to hear him. Shielded by the tree, he remained a captive audience, hoping Moses would hurry and leave.

When he finished eating, Moses wiped his teeth with his T-shirt. Then he pulled a clean shirt out of his backpack and slipped it on. He gathered his trash and stuffed it into his backpack, which Lonnie thought was commendable. He would have thought that a homeless guy wouldn't care about being a litterbug. Moses stood and stretched his arms, inadvertently turning his face toward Lonnie.

“Hey, I see you! What are you doing, kid? You spying on me?” Moses took a couple of steps, then stopped and motioned for Lonnie to move away from the tree. “C'mere, kid, I wanna talk to you.”

The “stranger-danger” sirens sounded in Lonnie's head, and he ran up the hill, ignoring the limbs and overgrown prickly weeds that scratched his face and arms.

Reaching the railroad tracks, he looked back to see if Moses was following him. Thankfully, he wasn't. Lonnie paused to catch his breath. He felt mortified. His private hiding place had been invaded. Moses had taken it over. Or maybe he was the invader. Catfish Creek might have been Moses' home, and Lonnie was the one who had intruded on his privacy. Moses probably slept out there somewhere.

Lonnie didn't know much about homeless people, except for what his dad had told him. He had seen them on major street corners throughout the city, holding cardboard signs that said things like, WILL WORK FOR FOOD or HUNGRY PLEASE HELP or SPARE CHANGE? And each sign ended with GOD BLESS. Sometimes when Lonnie and his parents drove through downtown, he would see homeless people lounging outside the city's shelters, like stray animals.

As shaken as Lonnie was, he couldn't help but be curious about Moses. Had he once been a working stiff, like his dad, with a home and a family? Had he lost his job and was never able to find another one?

Heading home, Lonnie thought about their situation. His parents had seldom discussed money matters with him, but he knew that ever since his dad had gotten fired, they had struggled financially. His mom had never earned much as a security guard, but somehow she had managed to pay the bills, even with his dad's meager unemployment checks. What was going to happen to them now that she was gone, and they could no longer count on her income? His dad would have to find work soon. But what if he couldn't? What if no one hired him?

Lonnie shuddered to think that the same thing that happened to Moses could happen to them.

I
N THE WEEKS THAT FOLLOWED
, Lonnie learned how to make dinner. After reading through a cookbook he had checked out of his school's library, he was able to prepare a number of meals, including baked chicken and mashed potatoes, beef patties and fries, and spaghetti with meat sauce. It wasn't gourmet, but they weren't starving. Breakfast was usually cereal or Eggo waffles. If Lonnie had time, he would fix sausage and eggs.

He even learned how to do the wash. It took a few mishaps, such as turning their white T-shirts and underwear pink, when he mixed colored clothes with white ones, but in time, he got the hang of it.

Lonnie kept the house, including his room, tidy and clean, something that would have shocked his mom. He didn't do it because he thought she was an angel who was trying to steer him in the right direction so she could earn a place in heaven. Mainly he did it because his grandparents popped in one day, unexpectedly, and saw the house in a mess. Appalled, his grandpa threatened to report Lonnie's dad to Child Protective Services.

Lonnie knew his grandparents Salinas loved him and were concerned about his well-being, but there was no way he wanted to live with them. He had been surprised to learn that his mother had considered divorcing his dad
and had planned to have Lonnie move in with her at his grandparents' house. Why hadn't she asked him what he thought?

His grandma was okay. She was a gentle, soft-spoken woman, who always welcomed him into their home with a warm hug and a kiss. She laughed at all his jokes, no matter how dumb they were. She never got tired of playing checkers or tic-tac-toe with him, and she always let him win.

His grandpa, on the other hand, could be rough and demanding. He never made a request. Everything was an order.

“Bring me the newspaper. Serve me some coffee. Call the plumber, and tell him I said to hurry it up.”

When Lonnie was little, his grandpa would take him outside to play baseball, but it was never fun. He would always yell at Lonnie for any mistake he made. And he made plenty of them.

“You're not keeping your eyes on the ball!”

“Is there something wrong with your arm that you can't throw any harder than that?”

“Stop acting like you're scared of getting hit!”

Lonnie could tell that his dad was intimidated by his father-in-law, so he had to give him his props when he stood up to him the day of the funeral. He may not have been the ideal father, but he was still his dad, and Lonnie was not about to abandon him, especially at a time like this.

The problem was, his dad wasn't making much of an effort to take care of him. He continued to drink, averaging a six-pack a day—more on the weekends. Whenever Lonnie talked to him about trying to stop, he would get defensive and tell him to stay out of his business.

He still hadn't found a regular job. His dad contacted his former boss at Mateo's, the restaurant he once worked at as a waiter, but was told that with the economy being so bad, they couldn't afford to hire anyone. He tried other restaurants and got the same response. Even the fast-food places — McDonald's, Burger King, KFC — all turned him down.

“They want kids working for them, not old guys like me,” Lonnie's dad complained.

He did manage to talk Gilly Sandoval, Joe Lara and Mario Hernández into reuniting Los Brujos, and Gilly was able to book the band for some gigs at a club called El Mocambo, but it wasn't anything permanent.

If Lonnie brought up the subject of money, his dad would tell him not to worry about it and to just focus on school. What he didn't realize was that with all the chores Lonnie had to do, he had little time left for his studies. His dad expected him to do all the housework, just like he had done with his wife.

A week after Lonnie's grandparents' surprise visit, a case worker from Child Protective Services showed up at their house. The woman introduced herself as Peggy Fontaine, but Lonnie's dad made her produce her ID before letting her in.

The second she entered the house, Ms. Fontaine's eyes darted around. Luckily, Lonnie had cleaned house the day before. When she shook his hand, she reeled him in and sniffed his hair, while giving his clothes a subtle glance.

They sat in the living room, which was seldom used except for company. Ms. Fontaine was pleasant, but Lonnie knew this wasn't a social call. She had come to see if there was any truth to his grandpa's allegations that his dad was doing a poor job raising him. She asked Lonnie's dad how they were adjusting.

“It's hard, as you can imagine, but we're doing the best we can,” he said.

Ms. Fontaine asked him if he was working, and he told her about Los Brujos and their gigs at El Mocambo.

“Plus, I still got my unemployment checks coming in,” he said. “I'm also following up on some job leads, and I oughta be hearing something pretty soon.”

“Where does Lonnie stay when you perform with your band?” Ms. Fontaine asked.

“Well, you know, he's thirteen, and he's pretty responsible for his age. Lonnie does a lot of the cleaning and cooking around here, so he knows how to take care of himself.”

A lot of the cleaning and cooking? Lonnie did all of it, but he didn't tell the case worker that.

“Just to make sure he's okay, I have our neighbor, Mrs. Escamilla, check in on him from time to time. Her daughter Carmen used to babysit Lonnie when he was little. Usually, though, he spends the evenings doing his homework.” He turned to his son. “Right, buddy?”

“Where do you do your homework, Lonnie?” Ms. Fontaine wanted to know.

“In my room.”

“May I see it, please?”

“Sure.”

Whenever his mom went inside his room, Lonnie would panic because she would see that he had lied
about having cleaned it. But Ms. Fontaine was met by a neatly organized room, with everything in its place. Again, her eyes roved around, making Lonnie nervous because his walls were covered with horror movie posters. She also directed her attention to his DVD rack.