All Involved (15 page)

       
2.
 
And I throw at everything else.

I only stop once when I look east on one of them main cross streets (shit, I don't remember, was it Manchester?) and see what looks like a tank or some shit, all beige and camo'd out with dudes sitting on top with rifles and vests. That shit makes my stomach drop for a second, but they don't even look my direction. They just keep sitting there in the intersection.

So I cool it for a few blocks, you know, to be safe, and it's a good thing too, cuz at a red light a bus pulls up to me on my driver's side and I kind of look up and to the side and I see the whole thing packed with soldiers and one of them looks brown or whatever and he's scoping me, so I smile and wave, and he nods and waves back, and when the green light goes, I just cool it and go below the speed limit until that bus ups and turns. I keep it low-pro for like seven more blocks, until I see people ripping up stores again. Swear to God, in one Vons parking lot, I even see cops parked there and watching! Like, what the fuck? Not trying to arrest anybody. Just standing there. Doing nothing. Only watching.

After that's when I decide to bomb it back up. I don't give a fuck. I light and throw, light and throw.

I hit more than I miss. Pioneer Chicken, boom. Tong's Tropical Fish & Pets, boom. (I kind of regret that one though.) Tina's Wigs, boom. A shack with a sign out front that says
SHOE REPAIR
in red letters—forget it, that shit went up like a firework.

When I'm done with the second box and halfway into the third, I punch the radio on with my fist and it doesn't even hurt. It pops on, catching on some white boy music, you know the kind, all guitars and screaming, and I ain't exactly in the mood for that, so I slap the AM button in and pray for some Art Laboe shit. Some smooth oldies. Something with a beat to it.

And I must catch the end of what Art's saying cuz he's laying his voice down on the airwaves, telling everybody to be safe and stay indoors, and he says,
This right here's a little something to take your mind off what's going on out there.

I can't help laughing cuz I am “out there” and
ba-bap-bap,
that's the drums coming in. Snares, I think. And the singer jumps on right after.

I know this song, I think. It's “Rock Around the Clock,” and what the fuck is a glad rag anyways?

I'll tell you what it is. It's these wicks, that's what.

All these rags I tore up and stuffed down the throats of these
bottles. They sure do make
me
glad. And when that fucking guitar solo comes in, it's like the song's playing just for me, only me, all fast and shit as I'm holding the steering wheel straight with my knees, grabbing a bottle out of the box next to me with my right hand, lighting the cloth with my left, then grabbing the neck as I switch it back to my left hand and throw it underhanded, and as it comes to the end of the song, I get sad and just keep driving.

I wish I could rewind it, and play it again and again and again.

My shit is running on fumes when I hit Sixth and Western, and I wouldn't've been if I didn't have to go around a bunch more army-looking dudes, go east on Seventy-Sixth for a bit before riding it to Hoover, then creeping onto Gage until I could sneak onto Western again and head back north. What a detour.

I didn't really plan for that, and I only got a box left when I see a strip mall on Sixth and I think,
Fuck it. Why not? It's as good a place as any for my masterpiece, cuz I'm gonna burn this whole fucking thing.

All two fucking stories of it.

But it's weird cuz I can't focus so good. See, tastes have been pinging back and forth in my mouth for blocks.

Like, one second it's peanut butter, and I'm thinking when the fuck did I eat peanut butter last? I don't even
like
that shit.

I must've been, like, what? Fifteen?

And then when I'm sure I haven't eaten that shit since I was fourteen, I taste tomatoes. Raw tomatoes. And I can smell them too.

Fuck. I've done
way
too much coke, man.

I try to put tomatoes out of my head by taking the tire iron that's been sliding around in the back since I first started driving this fucker and get out and start banging in some store windows. Once they're popped, I light a rum bottle and toss it in. I've done two doors before I realize there's a crew of fools across the street.

I can't tell from so far away but maybe they're black. Either way,
these fuckers are going crazy trying to rip bars off a convenience store window. They're even going so far as to tie some kind of rope to a rusted-out truck's tow hitch and try to yank it out the whole window cage, and then I see why.

There's still someone in there that they're trying to get at. A shopkeeper with a gun or something cuz there's screaming and people jumping back and forth in the opening and popping off shots like it's Beirut or some shit.

That makes me hurry it up.

I bust in a third window, a fourth. I'm only doing the dark storefronts.

Fuck the lit ones. I don't need somebody to be in there with a gun.

I'm onto my fifth, a video store with posters in it I can't fucking read cuz it's got a different alphabet, when I hear screeching behind me, like a car burning rubber and coming to a hard stop, and I'm sure it's the truck, but then somebody's yelling something like, “We will shoot, we will shoot!” But I don't turn around. I bash out another window, figuring it's for the fuckers on the other side of the street. But when I'm hucking a flaming
ron
in the window, I hear, “Stop or I'll shoot,” all loud in English and maybe this one's meant for me.

If it is,
I think,
fuck it
.

I pick the tire iron back up and go to smash in another window out . . .

But I hear a pop before I can bring the thing forward and smash the glass and my ears start ringing, like instantly. And there's a hole in the window now, a real little one, like someone threw a pebble through it just now.

I cough and blood hits the glass in front of me.

Like, a spatter.

I know right then that that shit is mine. I'm like, “fuck.” I whisper that shit as I reach out and touch it on the window.

It looks way darker than I thought blood was supposed to look.

And I try to put it back. I actually try.

Estupido,
right?

I try to swipe my blood up off the glass and put it back inside me, but when I touch my cheek, I find out I got a hole in it.

A hole as big as my fingertip. I know cuz I feel it.

And I try to plug it.

But when I try, my finger goes all the way through to the other side and I feel whiskers on my cheek . . .

On the
outside
of my cheek.

That's when it hits me that I'm almost touching my ear.

When half my hand's
inside
my mouth.

Fuck.

That's not good.

The numbness is starting.

In my head. Like, in my skull, I don't feel anything.

Not no more.

And that's weird. Cuz I got no headache.

There's . . .

Nothing.

Just blackness coming up from the floor.

Grabbing at me like hands.

APRIL 30, 1992

6:33
P
.
M
.

It would be a school night—and I would be at home—if the riot hadn't spread. Looting has been reported in Hollywood, at some locations in the San Fernando Valley, and even in Beverly Hills, the radio says. It's everywhere, but it feels like it's here the most: Koreatown, my family's home, my home. I bet nobody in those other places is sitting in the backseat of a car with the radio up loud though, scrunched between his dad and his old neighbor who smells like
bonjuk,
trying to keep a gun gripped tightly between his feet while another gun digs into his hip.

Both actually hurt. I feel rigid metal bruising the arches of my feet, pressing through the leather of my Jordans, but my father's gun is worse: he wears it like a gunslinger, in a holster at his side. Every time he shifts, its weight grinds into my hip and a hot little pain shoots down my leg.

With what's going on, my dad is a different person, not the guy who lets my mom talk over him at the dinner table, or the one who watches the Dodgers in arms-crossed silence. My father leans into me as the car banks left and another stinging bolt goes up and down my leg. I hold in my wince. The last thing I need is him accusing me of being soft, not in front of these people.

Mr. Park is driving. He lives in our building too, but I only met him an hour ago in our lobby. It's his car. He has a big mole on his left cheek and he wears the collar up on his polo shirt to try to cover
it, I think. His brother sits shotgun, wearing a flannel shirt and a Lakers cap. He's got glasses like me. On my left, Mr. Rhee has gray hair, and a grayer sweatshirt with checkered pants pulled way up. Because I am the youngest and smallest, I have to sit in the middle. It's embarrassing and uncomfortable. I can't even see out the windows. I know there's smoke, though, lots of it. I can't smell anything else now. I might as well have charcoal stuffed up my nose. I also know Mr. Park uses the horn a lot as he drives and curses people in Korean—people in the streets, I guess.

When I did my Modern California History paper on Los Angeles, I found out that there are 146 nations represented within its confines, and 90 different languages spoken. I'll have to check the library encyclopedia for how many countries there are in the world now. I used to know how many there were, but then the Soviet Union broke up last year, and this year Yugoslavia did too, so that could be as many as twenty more with Croatia and others now independent.

“
Ya
.” My father elbows me. “
Jib-joong hae
.”

He wants me to pay attention to Korean Radio USA, 1580 AM. He knows I'm trying not to because it's depressing. Each story is exactly the same. Everywhere in L.A., Korean businesses have been ignored by police and firefighters. In fact, that's why we're here, in the back of Mr. Park's Toyota hatchback driving up Wilshire, patrolling our neighborhood because no one else will. That's why I have a gun.

“I
am,
” I reply in English, but he looks at me like I'm lying.

“Man protect what is his,” he says in English without any shame for how incorrect it sounds. “This
America
.”

I nod. Mr. Tuttle, my A.P. History teacher, says nothing happens in a vacuum. Everything has context. If you understand the context, you understand the cause, and the effects that come out of it. So if the riot is an effect, what caused it? Rodney King and the video, of course, but there's something else: a girl named Latasha Harlins. She was the subject of my social justice assignment last semester. I had to play devil's advocate and put myself in an African American's shoes.

Less than two weeks after the beating of Rodney King, fifteen-year-old Latasha Harlins was shot and killed in March of 1991 by a Korean store owner named Soon Ja Du. There was video of that one too. Soon, a woman who looked like the old ladies in my building but was only fifty-one, shot Latasha in the back, and was convicted of voluntary manslaughter, fined, and given five years' probation even though the crime she was found guilty of carried a maximum sentence of sixteen years in prison. Understandably, this was viewed as a miscarriage of justice in the black community and people were very angry. Nothing happened after that verdict though.

Mr. Rhee derails my train of thought by pulling out a gun with a long silver barrel. He checks once more that it's loaded. It is. The gold-bottomed bullets are huge in their chambers, thick like my pinkies. In their middles, they have black dots rimmed with little silver circles. They look eerily like eyes: six eyes staring at me from inside the cylindrical cartridge before he snaps it shut. I cannot imagine what they would do to a human body; maybe it would blow somebody's whole head off.

That's when it occurs to me that we are technically vigilantes, and I don't know how I feel about that. The term has a negative connotation, but really, it is just self-appointed citizens who fill the void when there is no law enforcement. The police told us to evacuate, to leave our homes and our businesses. At first, the radio told us to do that too, but then a lawyer called the station and said we shouldn't. He said we have the Second Amendment. He said we have the right to protect our property and ourselves. When my father heard that, he asked me to explain. I said it was from the Constitution; it was our right to keep and bear arms. After I said that, everything changed. My father's face reddened and he nodded. It seemed like whatever was about to happen was my fault when he opened his closet and took the guns out. Some I'd seen from when he took me to the firing range for practice and gun safety a year ago. Most I hadn't. It was scary seeing them lined up on the floor. They looked like toys but
heavier, shinier, and I just stood looking at them as my father picked up the phone and called Mr. Rhee.

Mr. Park slams on the brakes and I jolt forward, hitting my chin on the shoulder of the shotgun seat. He curses at someone in front of the car as his brother rolls down the window and aims a gun outside. Whoever got in the way must have scurried off, because soon enough we're moving again.

At this point, I wonder if I'm a vigilante too. The thought scares me at first, but then it feels warm in my chest because I wonder what Susie Cvitanich would think. She probably wouldn't believe me. Susie goes to my high school. Her family's Croatian. She thinks I'm a straight arrow.
Señor Aburrido Amarillo,
she calls me when we're studying A.P. Spanish in the library. That means Mister Boring Yellow. It sounds racist, but it's not like that. It's just that the Spanish words sound funny together.

I pick the gun up from between my feet. It's still in a scuffed brown leather holster that my dad must have gotten in the 1970s. Nobody ever tells you how heavy guns are. I guess it's something you have to find out for yourself. As I weigh it with my hand and figure that it must be at least a pound and a half, maybe two, I'm sure Susie wouldn't call me boring if she knew I was a vigilante.

The more I think about that term though, the less I like it. I would like to think of us more as a posse. Truly, we are just a group of concerned citizens who live in the town and contribute to its daily life and commerce. Mr. Park and his brother run a dry-cleaning store. Mr. Rhee is retired, but he owned a liquor store before he sold it. My dad is the only one who doesn't work in the neighborhood. He's an engineer. He works for TRW. They might seem common, but what people might not know—the people who want to rob us, hurt us, and burn our homes—is that all the men in this car but me have at least three years of military experience. That is because military service is compulsory in South Korea. They all know how to use guns. If Koreatown is saved, it will be because men like my father are trained.

Historically, posses were made up of law-abiding ranchers and shop owners. They were civilians, not sheriffs, but when the time came, they put on badges because they were asked to. They enforced the law when they had to, like when the sheriff needed help, but what happens when the police abandon you?

The sheriffs never abandon the town in western movies. It'd be un-American. But it's happening here. The National Guard is in South Central, but they aren't up here. We don't have badges, but we should. Mr. Tuttle says there is nothing more American than standing up for yourself when people are trying to bully you. It was practically the founding ethic of this country. Britain was a bully, so we beat them. There is nothing more American than defending yourself and others.

Mr. Park takes one hand off the wheel to turn the radio up.

“We have heard from a woman in trouble.” The disc jockey's voice sounds panicked. “This is the address: Five Six Five South Western Avenue. Please help!”

“Where is that?” Mr. Park, the driver, wants to know.

His brother, the other Mr. Park, has a Thomas Guide in his lap and a flashlight in his hand that he smacks to get it to turn on. He flips pages before saying, “Sixth and Western. Left up here.”

“When you hold a gun, do not think too much,” my dad says in Korean. He has his gun out. He pulls the top of it so far back that I can see the small round barrel at the front, but he's only checking the chamber. I only see a fraction of the casing before the slide jumps forward with a heavy click. With a half wave, he motions for me to remove the holster on mine. “I would remind you of Ecclesiastes.”

He means Ecclesiastes 3:3, I think—the bad times, not the good times: a time to kill, a time to break down. I take a very deep breath, the deepest one I can with my shoulders squished. Mr. Rhee pats my knee.

“
Gwen chan ah,
” he tells me.
It's okay
. “These are animals, not men.”

My parents always told me school would prepare me for anything, that school was the most important thing in the whole wide world,
but school never prepared me for anything like this. It couldn't. My stomach drops as Mr. Park takes a wide turn on Western and accelerates up the block. For at least the sixtieth time, my father shows me where the safety is on the gun I'm holding, with one major difference: this time, he clicks it off.

Everything happens too fast. I've heard that in stories before, and I always thought it was so stupid, a trick almost, but now I know it's true. When it's chaotic, when there are too many things to pay attention to and your heart beats a hundred miles per minute, everything
does
happen too fast. There's just no way to pay attention to everything. You can only do the best you can under the circumstances.

Through the windshield, I see us coming close to a truck. It looks like four people are gathered around it. Two of them have handguns. My mouth goes dry when I see that. All of them are black.

Mr. Park screeches to a stop at the curb—trying to scare them, I think. Whether or not he means to hardly matters, it works. All four of them jump back.

Both Mr. Parks roll their windows down and open their doors like TV show cops and lean out, extending their pistols through the space where glass used to be, but still using the doors as cover. They're both screaming. “Go or we will shoot!”

They scream it at least twice, maybe three times as my dad and Mr. Rhee open their doors too and they get out and point their guns, but they steady their arms on the tops of the doors, which leaves me to scramble out from the middle with the radio blaring behind me.

“I am speaking with the woman,” the DJ says in Korean. “She says the shooting has stopped, and it sounds as though help has arrived. Whoever you are, thank you!”

The truck with the looters in it reverses, trying to pull out, but it's still attached to the building by a rope. The Park brothers scream at the looters to unhook it, and oddly enough, one of the guys flopped in the back of the truck bounces up and starts tearing at the knot, trying to free the rope.

Blocks away, I hear a siren. As I stand in the street for a moment, I wonder, is it coming or going? My lungs feel heavy just breathing the smoky air. In front of us, the looters are well and truly spooked. They obviously didn't expect us to fight back.

I hear a crash and look behind and across the street, to a two-story mini-mall where a black figure raises his arm and drops it by a dark window. Several of the ground-floor windows are orange. At first, I don't know why that is, and then it hits me: fire!
Oh heavenly God,
I think,
this guy is setting fires!

There's no time to think and I need that. I need time to think. One second passes, and two, but I'm no better than when I started. I need to stop him somehow.

“Stop or I'll shoot” is the only thing I can think to shout at him. I feel stupid saying it, but I pray it's enough.

It isn't. He doesn't stop. As I run closer I see he has a crowbar in his hand now and he's leaning back to smash another window when I stop and raise my gun. My dad told me to only fire warning shots, to shoot into the air. Scare them, he told me. Just scare them. I aim, certain I'll miss. I think,
If I can get close, I can scare him more.

I line the black figure up with the metal sight on the end of my pistol, and then I aim to the right of his head, at a Korean movie poster I recognize in the video shop window:
Death Song
. On it is a cameo with a woman's picture, almost round, surrounded by a field of white. It makes a perfect target in the dark. I squeeze the trigger slowly, like I've been taught, and the .22 pistol pops, jumping in my hands.

This figure, maybe twenty yards away, stops, then sways. He drops the crowbar and it clangs to the concrete. I hear it from across the street. That's when it occurs to me: I hit him. I
hit
him!

Behind me, I hear the truck speed off and both Mr. Parks shouting
to the store owner inside the convenience store, telling her she's safe. It doesn't occur to me to run over to the man I shot until Mr. Rhee does.