Drowning Tucson (15 page)

Davíd let out a deep breath he had been holding throughout the healing ceremony. His heart beat heavily within his chest and he wondered if he had just witnessed a miracle. Un milagro. He’d heard of such things, but had always laughed them off. Yeah, like God’s gonna heal some dude with a bum leg when the pope’s barely able to sit up in his popemobile. Give me a fuckin break.

But now he wasn’t sure. What he had seen had been so convincing. It was almost as if he had felt the spirit of the Lord come sweeping through the crowd and burrow into the man, flushing out the cancer, cleansing his body of all physical and spiritual impurities. While the congregation had been praying and reaching toward the stage, the hair on the back of his neck had risen for no reason. A shiver ran through his body, and he caught himself lifting his hands toward the man too. He wasn’t sure why he had done it. Several women wept and people muttered in tongues, thanking God for showing Himself here tonight. Onstage someone started playing a keyboard and the volume slowly rose above the prayers of the preacher and the crowd of people giving thanks on the grassy hill in front of the bandshell. The keyboard player softly and respectfully pressed the keys, eking out sparse notes, then grew more bold and began playing a song that the people soon recognized,
and the preacher began to sing Jesus, name above all names, beautiful Savior, glorious Lord—the crowd joined in—Emmanuel, God is with us, Christ our Redeemer, glorious Lord. Over and over. People who didn’t know the words began to sing, caught up in the moment. Having just witnessed a miracle.

They sang song after song, each person praying in his or her own way, thanking God for salvation and watching the man who was now lying still beneath the sheet. After fifteen minutes the three ushers returned to the stage and lifted the man by his hands and feet and carried him from the stage. The preacher explained to the audience how they had just witnessed the blessing of the Lord, and now it’s time to take up another collection, which makes these revivals possible and covers the expenses the city charges to rent out this bandshell—it’s not free—and provides us with electricity and security. And we’re expanding. We have outgrown—glory to God—our facility in the Southgate Shopping Center and we’re building a new church on Irvington Road. But these things cost money. Find it in your heart to help the church and God will reward you. God is great. He is almighty and everlasting and He will not let his people suffer.

The KFC buckets reappeared. Parents dug deeper into their pockets. Children pulled change from their shoes that they’d been saving for after church to buy some saladitos or a Slurpee at 7-Eleven. Davíd felt around in his pockets and found a five-dollar bill. He waited for a bucket to come to him, and when it did, he placed his bill inside. The buckets passed from person to person. The translator wiped his forehead and gulped from a glass of water. The preacher rocked back and forth in his wheelchair, lightly beating his hand on the chair’s armrest to the rhythm of the music. He led the people in another song—our God is an awesome God—and then let the energy of the group dwindle, instructing the congregation to shake hands and welcome each other into the presence of the Lord. The people turned to one another, shaking hands and smiling, patting children on the head, each feeling a part of some greater work. The older believers wiped tears from their cheeks, pleased they had witnessed a miracle and convinced that the fruits of their labor were coming to pass before their eyes.

The preacher said tonight we’re going to stray from the regular service. As you all know, this neighborhood has become afflicted with violence and hatred. Senseless drug addiction and lust and all things foul and detestable in the eyes of God. And lest the Lord decide to punish the people of Tucson by drowning them in flames like the sinners of Sodom and Gomorrah or those who turned their back on the Lord prior to the great flood, we should all take heed of the Word and repent. You, people of Tucson, lovers of sin and evil, must open your hearts to the message of the Lord. Davíd knew it was time to leave. He had had his moment and now this fucker was getting annoying. He stood, barely listening as the preacher explained they were going to show a movie geared toward the people of this community—it’s called
The Cross and the Switchblade
—a movie about gangsters and how they found redemption despite being steeped in evil. Open your hearts and your minds to the word of the Lord. The lights on the bandshell dimmed. A projector placed high atop the hill started up and terrible seventies music blasted from speakers throughout the crowd. Everyone jumped with fright. Davíd turned to see what the hell was going on. After a few moments the sound was adjusted and the people settled back onto their blankets and chairs and discreetly opened cans of Coke and candy bars. Davíd was about to leave when he saw Eric Estrada dressed like a punkass Puerto Rican gangster somewhere in the Bronx or Brooklyn and decided he would stick around for the laughs. Eric Estrada. They couldn’t be serious. In a Christian film? Didn’t he play that sleazy Mexican motorcycle cop in
CHiPs?
The one whose dick was always getting him in trouble with the ladies? Maybe there’ll be some tits or something. He sat back down on the grass and cringed at the horrible music, removing the flask from his back pocket.

The movie made him laugh more than anything. I mean seriously, what kind of gangs name themselves the Warlords and the Bishops? How scary was that supposed to be? They even met before they had battles to discuss the terms—chains, blades, and baseball bats. Oh yeah—and zips. Zip guns. How pafuckingthetic. Like they were going to play a game of soccer or have a bake sale. But there were some good asskicking scenes. There were also some slow parts because this white dude decided
he was gonna save the gang members. Got them all to go to his church and be Christians. It was all such bullshit. Davíd thought about running up to the stage and tearing the movie screen down and telling the people you have no fuckin idea what being in a gang is like. We don’t sit around talking about fighting and getting together to plan wars. Man, the second some other cat from a gang tried to bring his ass anywhere near us, he’d have a fuckin knife in his throat. Look around, you sorry buncha fuckin churchy gringo muthafuckas. Right here, right where your kids are playing and sleeping and you’re giving your money to Jesus, I have personally killed people. Yeah. And it wasn’t no chains-blades-bats kinda shit. It was blades and guns. Real guns. Glocks. AK-47S. TEC-9S. You can spray em with bullets before they even get out of their cars. Davíd wanted to jump up and put this movie to shame. And these Jesus freaks were looking at it and probably thinking how horrible, this street life. They’d go home afterwards and tuck their kids in bed and say their prayers and go to work in the morning and have a nice lunch at some restaurant and leave a good tip. He’d go home and fall asleep wondering who’d be dead when he woke up in the morning.

He thought about all the battles he’d been in. The last one before he began to pull away from the Kings had been right here in the park. Some of them had been sitting on the bandshell stage, smoking joints laced with angel dust, and a couple of them taking their rucas to the back of the stage where they could feel up on their titties and rub their pussies through their jeans until the weed kicked in and the girls didn’t put up as much of a fight and pretty soon they were fingering their girls and pulling their pants down and eventually the sound of women moaning could be heard echoing through the bandshell and up the hill where Peanut came running down, shouting MAN, THEM NIGGER CRIPS ARE HERE, CMON WE HAVE TO WASTE THOSE FUCKIN MAYATES, and the Kings barely had time to tuck their pricks back in their pants and reach for their guns before they heard the bass booming and knew the cars were just on the other side of the row of bushes that ran between the road and the parking lot behind the bandshell. Then they heard the first shots. The girls crouching in the back of the bandshell, struggling to pull up their pants and button up their shirts, started screaming, and
Davíd looked over and saw Cheeseburger take a shot to the chest and it exploded, splattering blood and shards of his ribcage, and pieces of his organs went flying and some of the guys standing by him wiped Cheeseburger’s blood from their faces and stopped to watch as he slowly dropped his gun and fell to the ground. Then more shots. Then Peanut yelled THEY’RE GONNA KILL US ALL IF YOU DON’T SHOOT BACK, VATOS. SNAP THE FUCK OUT OF IT. They left Cheeseburger’s body lying on the bandshell stage and scrambled down the front, crouching and running toward the bushes and firing in the direction of the bass, hearing the thunk thunk of bullets piercing metal and the cries of one or two guys who got hit. Tires squealed. The girls kept screaming. Davíd broke through the bushes and ran toward the last car that was pulling away, emptying the clip of his 9mm into the back of the car. The car swerved wildly and crashed into a tree and more of the Kings caught up with Davíd and shot their bullets into the car, screaming incoherently and firing firing firing, thunk thunk thunk. The rest of the Crips’ cars had gotten away. They found the bodies of a few who had been hit by their bullets and thrown from their cars. Davíd walked up to one of them and kicked him in the ribs, and the man groaned and blood seeped from his mouth and a hole in his shoulder. THIS ONE’S ALIVE. Davíd stomped the man’s head. Jumped up and down, landing on it with both feet over and over again until there was only a pile of blood and chunks of bone that felt like a squishy rotten apple. He heard more gunshots and looked behind him and saw eight Kings unloading their guns into the bodies of the other two niggers who’d been thrown from their cars.

Peanut finished last, and when he did they all heard the sounds of sirens in the distance and knew they had to run. RUN. THE POLI. They ran back the way they came, past the bandshell and Cheeseburger’s destroyed body and over the hill toward 22nd Street, splitting up, knowing if they could just make it to the street then they had a million places they could hide and nobody, not even that pig Loudermilk, could find them.

On screen the niggers were running after the Puerto Ricans, hopping over fences and chasing them through the Bronx. Music played in the background. Maybe George Clinton. Eric Estrada ran the fastest and got away, but one or two of his boys were caught and beaten with
chains and pieces of wood. The movie didn’t show much. Bad special-effects blood that looked like watery Jell-O, not like the stuff that had come flying out of Cheeseburger’s chest. That had looked like molé and was thick like syrup and never would have washed out of the shirt Davíd ended up burning in the alley behind his house right after he stashed his gun inside the swamp cooler. He wanted to tell them the stuff in the movie isn’t the way it looks in real life. He wanted to show them the scar on his back that he’d gotten when a Crip saw him riding the Sun-Tran bus one afternoon and walked up behind him and stuck a blade in his back. Before Davíd realized he’d been stabbed, the nigger was already off the bus and running down an alley, down into a wash and out of sight. Fuck. That’s all Davíd had said. Fuck. He rang for the next stop, pulled the blade from between his shoulder and spine, stepped down from the bus, and passed out the moment his foot touched the ground. He woke up in a hospital the next day, his brothers sitting around him. His mother never came. They never told her. Her heart had long before collapsed over the loss of her husband and youngest son.

The movie kept going. Kept trying to tell the story of the street and failing miserably. Still, Davíd kept watching, like there was something here he needed to see. Sitting on the grass, sipping his flask, he thought about all the people he’d killed or seen killed. Goddam lucky to not have been killed four or five times now. Maybe his was a life of miracles.

He watched the fags come sneaking back from the bathroom and ignored the urge to beat their asses. He didn’t want that now. He was tired. He had the teardrop tattoos to prove he’d killed. Some were niggers. Some were wetbacks like him. Even his own brother. He remembered smashing his fist into his baby brother’s face—the face their mother, every time Felipe walked through the door, said looked just like their father when he was that age, ay, que chulo—and he just kept going. When they had finally stopped beating Felipe and spat on his body and cursed his soul, they walked away and left him for the fuckin buzzards. Let the bitches stay there and cry over him. He’s a bitch anyway. Not a fuckin Nuñez. But after many nightmares, Davíd had finally gone back to Torchy’s in the middle of the night, while his boys were passed out from drinking or dropping acid all day, and he’d sat next to the stain in
the parking lot where his brother lost his life, and he wept uncontrollably. He lay on the ground where his brother had breathed his last breath and said I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. It wears me out, this guilt. It wears me out. And he felt the ground beneath him give and his body sank slightly and all of a sudden he was Felipe, watching as his oldest brother, Chuy, threw the first punch and feeling the unbearable pain from each punch and kick, and Davíd realized the last moments of Felipe’s life had been utter terror and indescribable pain, yet there was the slightest bit of joy as Felipe’s courage rose within his own chest and he realized that the youngest Nuñez was the biggest man in the family, the way he had faced his death knowing it was going to happen, and he wept more because it wouldn’t stop, the hitting and kicking and swearing and stomping WOULD NOT STOP, and the faces were all a blur, all except for Davíd’s, whose eyes possessed a rage and a hatred that nothing could quench. Nothing. And then it was over and Davíd lay on the stain of his brother’s blood, gasping, his body sore from Felipe’s death.

Sitting on the grass in Reid Park, the near-empty flask in his hand, Davíd decided he was ready. Something had to change tonight. He was ready when a strange man with long blond hair walked up to him and asked him if he had ever been saved.

Saved? What the fuck does that mean?

Have you accepted Jesus into your life and begged forgiveness for your transgressions?